Walter Lippmann 1417

Talking about the Party (III)

4 years ago Translations


Talking About the Party (III)

Diversity and representation

By Rafael Hernández
April 14, 2021

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews

Plaza de la Revolución on the morning of November 28, 2016, three days after the death of Fidel Castro. Photo: Gabriel Guerra Bianchini.

We cannot determine today how the republic would have been born or what would have happened to the Cuban Revolutionary Party, had Martí survived. What we do know is that his art for understanding and alliances between such diverse actors in pursuit of independence was a precedent to unite the political forces that conquered revolutionary power, and consolidated them, despite their differences, in the same Party.
 
To the distinctive features I have already mentioned with respect to other communist parties, I will add three that also differentiate the Cuban one, often overlooked in this happy world of digital networks where everything is “known.” It never received directions from Moscow. Its Marxism was focused on anti-colonial and national liberation alliances (other than armed struggle). It has survived a dangerously close superpower, which forced it to create a defense and security apparatus, and blames it for not admitting an opposition sponsored by itself [Washington]. The latter differentiates it, let us say, from the Communist Party of Vietnam, where opposition groups and media are imprisoned, and with which the US and its allies maintain the best relations. 
 
This Party has not been equal to itself. Among the requirements for joining its ranks that I mentioned earlier, relations with émigrés, including close relatives, and religious beliefs were also disqualifying. In a very long speech to the party members in 1979, Fidel Castro explained the reasons for no longer considering those emigrants as enemies [1]. The IV Congress (1991) would agree not to “deny admission to the Party to a vanguard revolutionary because of his religious beliefs”. Naturally, many militants, educated in atheist Marxism-Leninism and in the idea that all those who left had sided with the enemy, accepted the new policies, but not always, in their inner self, assimilated them.
 
In the Central Report to the 1975 Congress, the working class was mentioned 34 times and the Party as its vanguard 6 times. The 1976 Constitution would define it as “the organized Marxist-Leninist vanguard of the working class” (Art.5). However, the Resolution on the Statutes of the IV Congress, fifteen years later, characterized it as a party “of the Cuban nation,” as well as “Martiano, Marxist and Leninist,” instead of “Marxist-Leninist,” a concept belonging to the Soviet manuals and officially adopted until then.

When the 1992 reform incorporated this new formulation, it seemed as if almost nobody, inside or outside, had noticed. Perhaps because we were in the free fall of the Special Period; or because by then it was obvious that the workers’ party condition had not propped up the “popular democracies” of Eastern Europe and the USSR. Perhaps it was because the 1992 reformers, in the spirit of continuity with the Cuban revolutionary ideology, decided not to call attention to this reformulation, along with the suppression of references to the USSR, among other substantive arrangements to 43% of the articles of that constitution.
 

Photo: Randdy Fundora

The historical narrative of the process tends to ignore the fact that we have gone through very different policies at each stage. These included government teams and “prime ministers” (or their equivalents), as successive administrations elsewhere might be. In addition to the ideological changes noted above, there have been changes in economic policy, conceptions of democracy and approaches to its functioning, application of cultural policies, national security and defense strategies, as well as the emphasis on foreign policy and the architecture of international alliances.
 
Without space in these notes to illustrate each one, I will limit myself to pointing out the very different ideas and practices that presided over each economic cycle:

From a first decade (1959-68), in pursuit of a model different from the Soviet and Chinese ones, and never fully implemented, which would allow almost 60 thousand small and medium-sized enterprises to still be private, some of them very well in sync with the dominant state sector.

This was followed by passing through a Management and Planning System patented in the USSR (1975-85).

Then a “rectification of errors and negative tendencies” (1986-91) of this system, interrupted before establishing a new one.

Then, a package of emergency measures (1993-96) to overcome the crisis of the Special Period, almost unchanged for more than ten years of uncertain recovery.

This continued until the beginning of a program of structural reforms called Updating the Model (2011), which produced nothing less than another conceptualization of socialism, economic guidelines and a new Constitution.

In this last, a mixed economy model is advocated, property relations are substantially modified, the private sector and the market are legitimized, and the most radical decentralization of the system is proposed -almost everything still pending implementation. 

 
While perhaps some economist friends would argue that in none of these cycles did the state cease to rule the economy, ordinary citizens could probably recall the sensible differences of each in their daily lives. I leave it to the followers of the theory of generations to explain how all these cycles could have taken place with the same “historic leadership,” whose last representatives are on their way out.
 
To compare the composition in the ranks and leadership structures of the Party, and to analyze how they have evolved and what the changes mean, I prefer to wait for the VIII Congress to pass. I will limit myself now to pointing out that the transformations in its composition mirror those experienced by Cuban society in the last decades.

Plaza de la Revolución. Photo: Kaloian

According to the figures of the VII Congress, the Party had 670,000 members, 13% less than five years before. Added to the 405,830 of the UJC (2012), they were still a very high number with respect to the population and other political parties where it is enough to register, according to those figures in Cuba, out of every 4.5 people of working age 1 is a PCC militant. In its occupational structure, professionals had been the most represented sector (41.6%), above leaders and workers. A quarter of these professionals, equivalent to 11.1% of the total number of militants, were teachers.

Of every 6 members of the PCC, 4 were under 55 years old (2 ½ under 45); 1 between 55 and 60 and 1 over 60. The Central Committee (CC) of the PCC elected at the VI Congress (2011) had an average age of 57, and that of the VII (2016), had decreased to 54. The rejuvenation policy lowered the average age of the top leaders in the provinces to 52 (2018), five less than that of current President Díaz-Canel.

Women were 39% of the Party’s militancy, but 52% of the UJC. In the current CC, they are 42%; and in the Political Bureau (PB), they increased from zero or one, to 4 since 2016. Non-whites in the ranks, as well as in the Political Bureau, represent 35%, the same proportion as in Cuban society, according to the last Census. In the CC, they are 31%, of which the majority are black (16.6%).

The entry of five new members to the Political Bureau at the VII Congress had already lowered the average age from 70 to 63. This PB was the first one where the positions by professional profile (9) -defense, economy, diplomacy, public health, science and technology- exceeded those of career political leaders (8).

Among these political cadres, 5 had led in the provinces, and 3 joined the PB under Raul’s command. Contrary to what is repeated, more military personnel did not enter, but left, and those who remained were already there before Raul’s command. This pattern, which leads provincial leaders of the PCC and the People’s Power to the highest national level, is also part of his legacy.

Probably, this pattern will be maintained in the leadership bodies to be elected by the VIII Congress. The number of women and non-whites, as well as provincial leaders, will increase. Very surely, the age of the Political Bureau will decrease again: the outgoing First Secretary will soon be 90 years old, and the incoming one will have barely turned 61 when taking office. If the number two were a non-white woman or a provincial leader, known for their popular roots, everything would fit.

A friend of mine says that he doesn’t care about the age, color, profession, or even gender of those who lead, as long as they adopt intelligent and effective policies. I don’t know how many people think this way. Still, even if its implications for equality of access and opportunity among diverse groups were to be overlooked, the proximity of profiles between militancy, leadership and society is by no means irrelevant, if only as a point of linkage between the society and its political institutions.

Throughout my life, I have known many Party militants, and not a few leaders, from the local level to the CC and the Political Bureau, including the historical generation. Although I can identify common traits among many of them, their diversity is more revealing to me. Let us say that it would not be difficult to find two Party militants with ideas more different from each other about socialism, its problems and how to solve them, than any Democrat and any Republican with respect to the system of the North.

One of these militants could affirm, for example, that such differences weaken the unity necessary in a Party “of steel,” which assures sovereignty and independence, confronts the internal and external enemy, by force if necessary, and serves as an example to the younger generations. The other would say that, for a democratic socialism, public debate of these differences strengthens a Party that should be flexible, adapt to the historical moment, and apply political solutions to political problems, instead of the simple use of force.

My two militants, who could be 35 or 70 years old, would agree on many other things: the Party could promote a better citizen democracy; sovereignty, social justice, equity and human dignity are non-negotiable. Our system, with its flaws, surpasses any capitalism. However, the two might disagree even more if I asked them what to do in economic policy, how to discuss and legislate in the National Assembly, what are the limits of expression in art, or what they think of the Party-oriented media. Probably, both could cite the historic leadership to support their arguments.

If socialist policy generates judgments like those of my two militants, shouldn’t they be expressed in the Party press? If that policy claims to channel the dissent of society within the framework of established institutions, and if these, in order to remain unique, should be “the most democratic in the world,” should not a legitimate space be provided for a loyal opposition, within the socialist ranks, even if it disagrees with certain policies?

In an increasingly diverse society, thinking creatively about the continuity of this unity would contribute to place – to paraphrase Cintio Vitier – “the devices at the center of the flower.”

***

Note:

1 Speech by the Commander in Chief, Fidel Castro Ruz, Meeting of information to cadres and militants of the Party, Karl Marx Theater.” February 8, 1979, Versiones Taquigráficas del Consejo de Estado, quoted in Cuba y su emigración, 1978: Memorias del primer diálogo, Elier Ramírez Cañedo. Ocean Sur, 2019.

Talking about the Party (II)

4 years ago Translations

Talking About the Party (II)

Dialogue between different generations will just be a good wish as long as the Party and the rest of the institutions it guides do not achieve an environment conducive to respect and trust, to discussion, criticism and ensuring a truly participatory and democratic style in decision making.

By Rafael Hernández
March 31, 2021

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews

Plaza de la Revolución. Photo: Kaloian

Earlier I pointed out that the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) was not founded to take power, but to defend the revolutionary order from above, which had faced since 1959 a spiral of violence imposed by its discontents; a civil war that radicalized the process and polarized the whole society.
 
Those tensions survived the huge internal insurgency supported by the United States, defeated in 1965 when the Party was formed, a few weeks after 42,000 US marines landed in Santo Domingo, less than 500 kilometers east of Guantanamo.
 
Born in a context marked by paramilitary actions from the North, the blockade and international isolation, its first Congress in 1975 represented, among other things, the celebration for having prevailed, in spite of everything. That survival had high costs, which only a documented and fair-minded history could reestablish.
 
Another great difference between the PCC and the other communist parties was its methods of membership incorporation. The bitter experience of sectarianism in that first unitary organization, the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (ORI) between 1961-1962, gave way to the construction of the United Party of the Socialist Revolution (PURS) on new bases. Although its rules established that the organization approved or rejected the entry of its aspiring members, the primary rule that differentiated it from other Parties in the world was the mechanism for entry, based on a public discussion on each aspirant and the endorsement of “the mass”, as it was then called.
 
The first step to enter, both in the PURS and later in the PCC, was an assembly where the collective proposed and voted on the exemplary workers. It is worth noting that exemplarity implied much more than supporting the Revolution. In addition to defending its policies, it was necessary to work very well and without limiting oneself to working hours, to join the militia, the reserve Armed Forces, or some form of defense at work centers or neighborhoods; to participate in the mobilizations, especially agricultural work, during weekends or months.
 
It also required constantly “improving oneself”; a term that arose in an era inaugurated by the Literacy Campaign (1961), which implied attending general education courses, labor qualification, languages, or any other activity aimed at acquiring knowledge. In addition, the exemplary person had to maintain fraternal relations with their compañeros, including those who performed the humblest tasks, which entailed not only good treatment but also solidarity, cooperation and support, both inside and outside the workplace.
 
Regardless of the [place in the] hierarchy of the proposed nominee, everyone could express their criticisms about the elements mentioned above, as well as about their moral and civic conduct, in the same assembly of exemplary workers or by addressing the Party in private. The assembly of exemplary workers also evaluated how critical the nominee was of the problems of the workplace and the country; and how capable they were of identifying their own defects. Finally, the assembly voted on whether or not the aspirant was worthy of being evaluated by the Party to join its ranks, that is, if they were truly exemplary.
 
From that point on, the aspiring militant had to submit, for the Party’s evaluation, a detailed biography, with the places where they had lived, the schools they had attended, employment history and the beginning of their social and political activities. This was needed in order to facilitate an anonymous inquiry about every moment of their previous and current life, with neighbors, classmates and workmates, people who accompanied them in crucial moments of the Revolution. In the jargon of the time, this biography was known as the “cuéntametuvida”.  [“tell me about your life”]
 
To get an idea of that examination of consciousness and its intimate meaning – alien to a totalitarian culture – read Las iniciales de la tierra (1987), by Jesús Díaz, written in its first version in the wake of the 1970 harvest. The structure of this novel, originally titled Biografía de un militante, corresponds exactly with the “cuéntametuvida” (tell me your life story) filled out by Party aspirants.
 
The author, who had joined the Party in August 1969, and with whom I shared intellectual and literary interests in the Philosophy Department of the University of Havana between 1970 and 1972, transmits in its pages, with high artistic fidelity, the human meaning and feelings associated with joining that Communist Party.
 
According to a classic of political science such as Maurice Duverger, there are mass parties and cadre parties. This basic classification does not distinguish them by the number of their members, but by their structure and functions. For example, the U.S parties -the Democrats and Republicans- emerged as electoral currents within the political elite, and based on financing, resource management and mobilizing apparatus, are classified as “cadre parties”. The European socialist parties would be among those of the masses, considering their support, representation and social base of workers.
 
According to the Bolshevik conception of an organization of professional revolutionaries, Duverger placed the communists in a particular variant of the category of cadres. However, once in power, Lenin himself had proposed to incorporate people from “below”, both in its ranks and in its Central Committee, where their voices could be heard.
 
Although the Cuban political organizations that waged war against the dictatorship did not identify themselves as Leninist (except for the Popular Socialist Party), their insurrectional combat structure would not be the same as the one that required to maintain the new order established by the Revolution, and to provide it, not only with cadres, but also with a broader and more representative social base.
 
From its origins, and with the passage of time, the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) supplied cadres to the new State. Without space to comment here on what a cadre meant at that time, I only note that for Che Guevara, who devoted much time to why and how to train them, it was not precisely a bureaucrat or an apparatchik. Che characterized the cadre, in 1962, as “a creator, a leader of high stature, a technician of good political level, […] an individual who has reached sufficient political development to be able to interpret the great directives emanating from the central power, make them their own and transmit them, capable of perceiving the “most intimate desires and motivations” of the people; “always ready to face any discussion, […] with their own capacity for analysis, which allows them to make the necessary decisions and practice creative initiative in a way that does not clash with discipline”.  
 
As part of the institutionalization of the political system, which Ché already foresaw as essential for Cuban socialism, the Party would outline its organic structure between 1975-1976, in a way very similar to the current one. That structure, which begins where the Party’s nuclei and grassroots Committees end, joined by rank and file militants and goes up from the municipalities to the auxiliary apparatus of the Central Committee, which is composed of professional cadres. [that is, the auxiliary apparatus, not the CC, is composed of professional cadres].
 
These were formed into departments parallel to the areas of the State and the government: industry and construction, tourism, transport and services, agriculture and food, education, sports and science, international relations, culture. There was also some specific to Party activity such as organization, training, promotion of cadres, ideological, propaganda, schools of cadres, PCC press, among others.
 
So, when Cuban say “the Party”, they may be speaking in particular of one of the three bodies, different from each other and, strictly speaking, also from the historical leadership: the rank and file militancy, in the first place, the organizational structure and the auxiliary apparatus, in second place; and in third place, the Central Committee and the Political Bureau.
 
Obviously, to derive the composition, functioning and specific problems of each one from the PCC Statutes, or from a critique of Article 5 of the Constitution, would be like trying to decipher the knots of the political system and its institutions through scholarly glosses to the constitutional text.
 
In a study on the demographic structure of the institutions of power in Cuba, published a few years ago, I referred to the composition of the Party at its different levels, from a sociological approach. In the brief space of this article, I will limit myself to commenting on some problems in its organic functioning.
 
The top leadership of the Party itself has criticized the functioning of the organization. Raúl Castro, who will soon cease to lead it, has been the one who has called for the acceptance of differences and diversity of ideas, not when it is specially called for, but as a rule; and to banish the old mentality, founded on dogmas and obsolete approaches.
 
Among the main deficiencies pointed out are the superficiality and formalism of the political-ideological work, the use of methods that underestimate the cultural level of the militants, inflexible agendas handed down “from above” without taking into account the diversity of the society in which they live, the large number of anniversaries and formal commemorations, with rhetorical speeches without real content, which only provoke disgust and apathy among the members. This structure suffers from a lack of creativity and links with citizens, bureaucratic management methods, and loss of authority and exemplarity, caused by negative and even corrupt attitudes.
 
It is also necessary to point out that the bodies in charge of guiding communication do not manage to conceive messages that reflect the heterogeneity of a society where older adults coexist with young people who knew socialism [only] in its version of the Special Period.
 
Contrary to what is repeated, those under 40 years of age not only have a higher level of schooling, but also carry with them an inherited political culture much more complex and critical than that of their parents and grandparents. Instead of dialoguing with them, they are stigmatized because they do not respond to a paternalistic and tutelary pedagogy.
 
This dialogue will still be only a good wish as long as the Party and the rest of the institutions it guides do not achieve an environment conducive to respect and trust, to discuss, to criticize and to ensure a truly participatory and democratic style in decision making; in order to exercise its role towards civil society organizations, respecting their democratic and autonomous functioning.
 
A goal still to be fully achieved continues to be the use of information and communication technologies. These are not only to promote science and economy, but also ideological activity. In addition, there is strengthening popular control and confronting impunity, family and gender violence in neighborhoods and communities, not only and especially with law and order, but with political resources that go to their roots.
 
It is up to the PCC to develop policies against all prejudices -racial, gender, anti-religious, sexual orientation, etc.- that limit the rights of people in the performance of public and political positions, or in organizations and armed institutions. It is also incumbent upon it to facilitate the active participation of intellectuals and artists in a climate of understanding and freedom.
 
If the criticism above has been taken from the Party documents (such as the First PCC Conference in January 2012), the proximity of the VIII Congress would facilitate a deeper reflection on its role in a new socialism. To put it in the words of Raúl Castro, if we are to have only one Party, it must be the most democratic, starting with its own ranks, where everyone has the right to criticize and no one is exempt from being criticized.
 
Now, what does it mean to be the Party of the Cuban nation? Is defending the national interest the same as defending the interest of all those born here? Since there is no unlimited democraticity, what are the limits of Cuban democracy? How to determine them?
 
It would be worthwhile to stop here, in order to continue. 

Talking About the Party (I)

4 years ago Translations

Talking About the Party (I)

Reducing the socialist revolution to the protagonism of a party or an ideology does not help to understand its complexities and problems.

By Rafael Hernández
March 17, 2021, in With all its letters

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews

Photo: Randdy Fundora

I believe that I am not making any revelation when I say that ours does not resemble, neither in its origins, nor in its primary rules for becoming a member, nor in the historical circumstances that surrounded it, any of the living or dead communist parties.
 
The lack of a history to explain it is one of those gaps, among the many with which today’s society demands information and knowledge,  for the Revolutionary process. In case of doubt, conduct your own survey and ask: Which organizations considered socialism as a political project before 1959? What political strategies did they adopt to achieve it? When and how was the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), which governs today, founded? Where did those who were part of its leadership come from? What ideas did they have about communism and socialism?  With these five questions, there is enough to explore a plain where many are slightly lost [Cuban slang for “not having any idea about anything].
 
I can think of other issues, perhaps even more enigmatic: How many of its members called themselves communists five years before the PCC was founded? What did they think and say about some other Communist parties in sister countries [‘other socialist countries”]? Why wasn’t the meeting where it was constituted its first congress? How can it be explained that it was held only 17 years after the beginning of the Revolution and 10 years after it was founded? Did it maintain its original seal when the “Soviet influence” predominated in Cuba? How did it go from identifying itself as the vanguard of the working class to the vanguard of the Cuban nation? At what point did it stop advocating the “dictatorship of the proletariat”? What is its role, as the “superior leading political force of society and the State,” which “facilitates the simultaneous action of the generations that are the protagonists of the Revolution,” in a democratic socialism?
 

First Congress of the PCC. Held at the Karl Marx Theater in Havana, December 17-22, 1975. Photo: Archive

The political culture that originated this Party -on its way to its VIII Congress in a few days- does not come mainly from the Bolshevik tradition, or from the Long March of the Chinese peasants against the Japanese and the Kuomingtang, but above all from the two main Cuban revolutions, one organized in New York and Tampa, to fight for independence, and the second arising from the insurrection against Machado and fought in the streets of Havana in the 1930s. In dealing with the strategic problem of alliances and their difficult framework, this revolutionary political culture contested the type of domination established by the U.S. and its allies on the island, different from that of a decadent empire, submerged in deep and semi-feudal backwardness, as in Russia and China.
 
As it is known, the culture of the Cuban left was influenced by legacies as diverse as the Mexican and Russian revolutions, varieties of socialisms, communisms, anarchisms, European and American social movements, Latin American and Caribbean radical nationalisms, whose complete inventory does not fit among the iconic images that preside over the commemorative events. However, the political practices of José Martí and Antonio Guiteras, more than any other, were the main artery of that culture. It was not built from the proletariat or the worker-peasant alliance, but on a subject identified as “the people,” that is, a specific set of groups, social strata and very mixed traditions of struggle. Also, from a practice of national liberation, through armed struggle to overthrow a dictatorship, and to advance, from power, a program of reforms aimed at changing an unjust and dependent social order.

Antonio Guiteras. Photo: Bohemia Magazine

The extent to which these reforms would unleash a conflict, which, in a few months, escalated to the level of a bloody civil war, with the active belligerence of the United States, was not foreseen in the platforms of any of the revolutionary organizations, and perhaps not even in the most intimate dreams of their leaders, who would end up coming together as one, 30 months after the triumph.
 
On the way, and so early that it was almost natural, there was the illegalization of those parties that collaborated with the dictatorship’s elections in 1958. Above all, there was the deactivation of a Congress where the established political parties competed for positions through elections that were suspended indefinitely, without anyone seeming to care much at the time, and which deprived them of their basic functions in the previous political system.

Surprising as it may seem today, those parties, including the Autenticos and the Ortodoxos, opposed to the dictatorship, were left on the sidelines, while people went out to do politics in the streets. Most of those people could not remember when exactly they ceased to exist.

 
The de facto suppression of the established armed forces, and their replacement by the Rebel Army that had defeated them on the battlefield, gave way, from the first months of 1959, to the merger of the commands and troops of all the political organizations that fought the dictatorship. In addition to bringing those organizations together in the same military structure, two and a half years before they were merged into a single political body, this replacement of the army produced a transcendental change in the actual functioning of the old state.

Nothing less than the armed forces, that backbone of the old regime, would be uninstalled, to put it in the jargon in fashion today. No wonder Fidel Castro, who was neither the president nor yet the Prime Minister, was from the beginning the Commander-in-Chief of those newly installed forces, made up of “the uniformed people,” as his head of state liked to say, a smiling Camilo Cienfuegos, who at 27 was not, however, the youngest guerrilla commander.

 
I have always been intrigued by the line that separates, according to some textbooks, the “agrarian and anti-imperialist” period of the Revolution and the “socialist.” I say this precisely because all that radical transformation in the functioning of political power noted above, including that of the parties, occurred even before the Agrarian Reform Law of May 1959 triggered conflict with the Cuban and American upper class, even when the Revolution had almost unanimous support, except for the Batista supporters who had fled to Miami and the Dominican Republic.

How the structure of power and the prevailing social order in Cuba in the 1950s could have admitted an “agrarian and anti-imperialist revolution” without it entering from the beginning into the radicality of a real social revolution only makes sense for the codes of that Marxism-Leninism, and in the hypothetical revolutionary scenarios that the Comintern manuals enunciated.    

 
Numerous authors have investigated the Cuban left before 1959, and some of its main problems, differences and conflicts. To narrate it as a well-tuned band, or to simplify it in a straight line connecting the first Cuban Marxists with the Communist Party of 1965 does not help to understand anything of our history. When it comes to political movements, their main interaction was not expressed in the ideological contents of their speeches, but in their concrete political strategies.
 
For example, when Fidel Castro, before the Granma [landing], characterized the 26th of July Movement as “the revolutionary apparatus of Chibasism,” he was not distinguishing it so much from the Communists, but above all from the Ortodoxo party, politically “impotent and divided into a thousand pieces,” incapable of fighting against the dictatorship.
 
To illustrate with another example, what separated Joven Cuba (JC), the organization founded by Guiteras in 1935, and the Communist Party of the time, was not adherence to a socialist goal. “In order for the organic organization of Cuba as a nation to achieve stability, it is necessary that the Cuban State be structured in accordance with the postulates of Socialism,” begins the JC Program.

The difference at the outset, when adopting an insurrectional strategy, was concrete political action, which predetermined the type of power at the head of the revolution from the beginning. When it clarified that socialism is reached “by successive preparatory stages,” of which that Program only outlined the first, it was assigning to the “stages” a completely different meaning from those established by the Comintern.

 
So, to characterize Guiterismo as “revolutionary-democratic” or just “anti-imperialist,” and not as the strategy that opened the road to the socialist revolution in Cuba, through the revolutionary movement that overthrew the Batista dictatorship and initiated the revolution in a continuous manner, illustrates that difference and its meaning. It is not something as simple as different “means” for the same “ends,” but a whole strategic conception of making revolution. 
 
Considering these differences, among the revolutionary organizations and within each one, is not aimed at retrospectively blaming any of them for their mistakes, lack of vision or schematism at the time, but to understand our history as different from a fairy tale or a horror movie, as Tyrians and Trojans are accustomed to characterize it. Among other things, because it also allows us to appreciate the merit of a policy of dialogue that contributed to bringing together very divergent currents, which were deeply suspicious of each other.
 
Reducing the socialist revolution to the leading role of a party or an ideology does not help to explain its complexities and problems. To imagine that the restoration of the unfulfilled promises of the 1940 Constitution, or any other program of laws or legal constructs created by the organizations that opposed the dictatorship, as if they were the script of the process would be to believe that the circumstances in which the radical social and political changes proper to a social revolution occur are enclosed in a plan of reforms, however important they may be. In any case, the revolution had already manifested itself as a political power even before the first major economic reform had been adopted, by being able to impose itself on the vested interests in the established political order.
 
The differences within the Cuban left were not limited, of course, to the ways to reach government or take power. If, before 1959, the Ortodoxo Youth even inscribed the word socialism on its banners, and if the program of the old Communist Party, renamed the Popular Socialist Party, could have been confused today with social democracy, these affinities did not necessarily prepare them for coexistence. Quite the opposite turned out to be the case.    
 
Of course, there were Stalinists in this story almost from the beginning. In fact, they were there before the revolutionary parties decided to unite, and not just collaborate. Although sectarianisms were not limited to a single organization, the one that provoked the crisis within the first unitary political organization, the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (ORI in Spanish), was the one brought about by a group of Stalinists who were suspicious of all revolutionaries who were not old communists. In spite of the fact that the PSP warned, in its self-critical VIII Assembly of August 1960, that “the joint action of the organizations is the guarantee of unity and the advance of the Revolution,” the ORI, constituted only two months after Playa Girón, were run aground by sectarianism almost from their foundation.  
 
Finally, as is known, what contributed decisively to uniting the various organizations and their respective internal political currents was not precisely the deliberate, voluntary and conscious adoption of a Leninist model. Beyond the intelligence within the revolutionary leadership, and the coupling of a policy of negotiated unity, the main impact was the siege of a formidable counterrevolution, backed and tutored by the US. The siege of its enemies pushed more for unification in a single party than for a shared ideology among the revolutionary ranks.
 
If you reread the above, you can understand that when parties like the PSP agreed to dissolve, in the summer of 1961, and declared that “we merge today in the integrated revolutionary forces, on the march towards the construction of the United Party of the Socialist Revolution of Cuba, “they were not entering the Walhalla of perfect harmony or the frozen realm of totalitarianism, as characterized by Tyrians and Trojans, but in a process of change towards a new political system, different from Stalinism and Maoism, and which was not then and later free of contradictions, divergences and even conflicts.
 
Not having a critical history of that political system and its complexities leaves a vacuum, which is often filled with doctrinal packages, of one sign and another. Both of them are closer, by the way, to the schemes of the Comintern than to political sociology. This convergence is crystal clear when, for example, when some regular contributors to the Spanish daily, El País state that “it was not in January 1959, but in April 1961, when the construction of Cuban totalitarianism had at hand all its necessary elements.”

From this perspective, the social conflict was not brought about by interests and factors of power, but by ideology, and cultural representations, such as those of an enemy “that had to be national and foreign at the same time, a monster in which the evil of the empire and the vileness of the traitors could merge.” This parallelism between apparently exclusive visions, brought together in an approach that replaces historical analysis with literary phrases, and the logic of a social revolution by what philosophers call a teleology (of good or evil) confers a curious code of kinship, not at all by accident. 

 
To deal with plurality within the ranks of that Party; to lead the transformation of the political system, not only as a subject, but also as an object of change; to be a mirror of society and its problems; to look inside and be inspired by that original political culture, seem to be requirements of the historical moment, and of the reconstruction of its meaning. How to do it, at the height of today’s Cuba, requires both realism and imagination.
 

***

To be continued

Cuba condemns Israeli attacks

4 years ago Translations

Cuba condemns Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people

The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, condemned “the flagrant violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people” and demanded the immediate cessation of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Author: Granma| internet@granma.cu
May 15, 2021 02:05:47 am

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

Israel’s indiscriminate shelling of the Palestinian population in Gaza has so far resulted in the deaths of 31 children. Photo: Getty Images

The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, condemned “the flagrant violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people” and demanded the immediate cessation of Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip.

“The Zionist barbarism and the mantle of impunity that the U.S. spreads over those crimes with its support to the Israeli regime insult the world,” the Cuban leader said on his Twitter account.

In this regard, the island’s Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, on the same social network, also demanded an end to the Israeli massacre. “The UN Security Council should act and prevent it,” he stressed.

Likewise, the International Relations Commission of the National Assembly of People’s Power (ANPP) of our country issued a statement in which it strongly condemns Israel’s indiscriminate bombings against the Palestinian population in Gaza, which have caused, so far, the death of at least 122 people, including 31 children, in addition to hundreds of wounded and extensive material damage.

The text demands, once again, the immediate cessation of the acts of violence of the Israeli army against the defenseless Palestinian people and the expansionist and colonizing policies of the State of Israel. It also denounces the continued support of the U.S. government for the crimes committed by Israeli forces.

The ANPP called on the international community to act urgently and decisively to force the State of Israel to put an end to its crimes. The Cuban parliament emphasized the urgent need to reach a comprehensive, just and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People’s Trade Treaty also regretted and condemned the attacks by the Zionist regime.

 

The Palestinian catastrophe of 1948

4 years ago Granma,

The Palestinian catastrophe of 1948

Every May 15 is commemorated the Day of the Nakba, or catastrophe, in Palestine, the date on which around 800,000 Palestinian civilians were expelled after the occupation of their lands and homes in 1948. Only one day had passed since the proclamation of the State of Israel in the Palestinian territory and it was already showing its expansionist and usurping nature.

Author: Jorge Mazón Rodríguez | internet@granma.cu

May 15, 2021 02:05:11 AM

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

Every May 15 is commemorated the Day of the Nakba, or catastrophe, in Palestine, the date on which around 800,000 Palestinian civilians were expelled after the occupation of their lands and homes in 1948. Only one day had passed since the proclamation of the State of Israel in the Palestinian territory and it was already showing its expansionist and usurping nature.

The partition of Palestine, approved by the UN in November 1947, precipitated the events that had been unfolding for some time. Long before, Theodor Herzl had outlined the foundations of Zionism and the future Jewish state. The British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, had expressed to Baron Rothschild his government’s support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in the region of Palestine; and the Zionists who had gradually settled in Palestine, supported by the international Jewish oligarchy, had taken advantage of Britain’s “neglect” as the mandated power in the region to organize themselves politically and militarily.

Once the cessation of the British mandate over Palestine was announced, coexistence between the Arab and Jewish communities became very tense and confrontations began in the face of the advance of the Zionist project and the refusal of the Palestinians to cede their territories. At this point, what historians call “programmed ethnic cleansing” was implemented, a deliberate policy aimed at displacing the Palestinian Arabs in order to insert the Jewish immigrants who were beginning to arrive en masse.

Yosef Weitz, director of the Land and Forestry Department of the Jewish National Fund and architect of the acquisition of land for the Jewish community in Palestine, gave ideological foundation to the expulsion policy: “It must be clear to us that there is no place for the two peoples in this country (…). We will not achieve our goal of being an independent people as long as there are Arabs in this small country. The only solution is a Palestine, at least Western Palestine (west of the Jordan River) without Arabs (…). The only way to achieve this is to move the Arabs from here to neighboring countries, to move them all; there must not be a village or a tribe left. Only in this way will the country be able to absorb millions of our own brothers. There is no other solution (…)”.

One of the most notorious acts of Zionist gang violence was the massacre perpetrated in Deir Yassin, where 254 Palestinian Arabs were brutally murdered. A former Israeli military governor of Jerusalem described it as follows: “(…) units of the Etzel and Stern gangs jointly organized, without provocation, a deliberate attack on the Arab village of Deir Yassin on the western edge of Jerusalem. There was no reason to justify the attack. It was a quiet village, which had denied entry to volunteer Arab units from across the border and had not been involved in any attacks on Jewish areas. The dissident groups chose it for strictly political reasons. It was a deliberate act of terrorism (…)”.

According to the final report of the United Nations Economic Survey Mission for the Middle East in 1949, the number of Palestinian refugees resulting from the violence and war following the proclamation of Israel as a state, amounted to 726,000, which constituted half of the indigenous population of that region. Since then, the West Bank alone, including East Jerusalem, Gaza, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, has counted more than 5.7 million Palestinian refugees, who now face the impact of the pandemic as one of the most vulnerable populations.

After 73 years of constant threats, attacks and the Zionist attempt to deprive the Palestinians of their rights, the principles of the Palestinian cause remain unchanged, as does Cuba’s support for the return of the refugees and the two-state solution, which involves the realization of the right of the Arab people to self-determination and access to a free, independent and sovereign state, with its capital in East Jerusalem, and framed within the borders prior to the Israeli occupation of 1967.

Let this Nakba Day therefore serve to vindicate the right of the Palestinian refugee population to return to their country and their homes, and to demand the cessation of the Zionist regime’s attacks on Gaza, where civilians, distributed at a rate of 4,167 inhabitants per square kilometer, are the ones who suffer the most in each attack.

No Democracy Without Sovereignty

4 years ago Manuel E. Yepe, ,

You Can’t Have Democracy Without Sovereignty

By Manuel E. Yepe
April 16, 2021

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann. 


In Latin America, the U.S. control of the media euphemistically identifies as “return to democracy” or “democratic opening”, the return to civilian hands of the governments of those countries that were subjected to bloody military dictatorships promoted by the United States in the last five decades of the last 20th century.

It must be recognized that, technically, this has been a great achievement of imperialist propaganda because the outgoing military dictatorships had been imposed by the United States when the peoples could no longer stand the reigning order and a period of rebellion for independence was on the horizon.

The peoples were not then rebelling against idyllic democracies as one might think now when one speaks of a “return to democracy” but against the humiliating subordination to the dictates of Washington which had put an end to their patriotic dreams of independence.

The triumph of the socialist and pro-independence revolution in Cuba stimulated the hope that the objective of feeling that they were the owners of their sovereignty was viable.

In reality, except in glorious historical moments -which as a rule were cruelly repressed- what existed in these lands before the barracks imposed their order on the oligarchies, were sad caricatures of democracy. They were, in truth, semi-colonial enclaves headed by oligarchs servile to the United States that the empire itself replaced by military tyrannies when it saw its interests in a given country endangered.

On a regional scale, the strategy outlined by the U.S. power elite was based on the consideration that the oligarchies were not in a position to stop the generalized popular struggle that was then approaching. This was due to the worn-out political model designed in the image and likeness of the U.S. and imposed as the only democratic and acceptable one in the hemisphere.

Those traditional parties without any popular base and burdened by corruption and banditry, which were the protagonists of the model, had nothing to do with a true democratic system.

The Latin American majorities wanted the return of civilians to government. The bloody military dictatorships only had the support of the small segment of society that fattened its coffers in the conditions of security and impunity provided by the repression of workers, students and intellectuals.

But the laboring majorities cannot see a “return” to democracy in the return to the situation of lack of opportunities for education, decent work and medical care or the continuity of poverty, marginality, violence, corruption, forced emigration and so many other ills. In any case, the positive aspect has been the opportunity to resume the civic struggles truncated by the military coups.

It is impossible to speak of democracy in countries where the organizations that are part of the Intelligence Community led by the Director of National Intelligence, who reports directly to the President of the United States, operate with impunity in defense of interests alien to those of the country. The CIA, the DEA and other known intelligence, espionage and counter-espionage bodies; where embassies, consulates and other U.S. offices openly pay followers, recruit mercenaries and corrupt officials and politicians.

If Latin America could show a panorama of progress, freedom and justice prior to the takeover of governments by the barracks, it would be possible to speak of a return to democracy. But nothing could be further from the truth.

The true democracy is the one that is yet to come, the one that will mean, for the Latin American nations as a whole, their second and definitive independence.

In fact, this popular democracy has already begun to arrive and the countries of the continent that are marching in the vanguard along this route are those that today face the most powerful media campaigns of discredit, demonization, intrigues and threats.

To those who advance cautiously, they apply the subtle methods of “soft” diplomacy in order to remove them from the leading contingent, although without renouncing the crude method of the military coup when the door remains ajar and the circumstances are propitious, as happened in the shameful case of Honduras.

Latin America has lived under the neoliberal sign of capitalism for almost four decades, has reaped very little economic and social development, and many vices and apocamientos that have stagnated with respect to the rest of the world, making this region the most unequal on the planet.

The “representative democracy” imposed by the empire is false, is not rational, promotes differences, widens the gap between rich and poor, encourages wars, disunity and discrimination based on race, creed, ethnicity and gender.

In Latin America, democracy must be preceded by independence and the unity of internal anti-imperialist forces.

Latin America needs a democracy of solidarity based on equality and friendship among its nations, not on competition and greed.

 

Manuel E. Yepe

Manuel Yepe Menéndez (Havana 1936), since 1954 was an insurrectional fighter in Havana as a member of the 26th of July Youth Brigades at the University of Havana. He worked in the reproduction and distribution of Fidel Castro’s defense plea “La historia me absolverá” (History will absolve me). In 1958 he edited the clandestine magazine of the M-26-7 ACCIÓN, which was published weekly in Havana and identified itself as the Organ of the Cuban Youth. He has a degree in Law, Economics Management and Social Sciences. He has served as Protocol Director at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cuban Ambassador to Romania. He was General Director of Prensa Latina news agency; Vice President of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT); Director of the Guerrillero de Pinar del Río newspaper, and National Director (founder in Cuba) of the UNDP TIPS project. From 2000 to date he has been a member of the Secretariat of the Cuban Movement for Peace. He was a commentator on international issues for the daily newspapers POR ESTO! (2008-June 2020). August 2020

Malicious Interests Against Cuba in the USA

4 years ago Juventud Rebelde,

JuvReb

Malicious interests behind U.S. campaign against Cuba denounced

No study provides scientific evidence that there were radiofrequency waves of high intensity in areas where diplomats were located, stresses Johana Tablada, deputy director-general of the U.S. Directorate of the Cuban Foreign Ministry (MINREX).

Author:

Juventud Rebelde |digital@juventudrebelde.cu

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

Tablada said that the group of experts from Cuba that investigated this issue explained why the thesis put forward most recently is an unlikely hypothesis Author: MINREX Published: 12/05/2021 | 08:49 am

Malicious interests are behind the campaign on the alleged Havana Syndrome, Johana Tablada, deputy director-general of the U.S. Directorate of the Cuban Foreign Ministry denounced today.

No report or study published in the United States, Cuba or the world provides scientific evidence that there were radiofrequency waves of great intensity in the area where the diplomats who reported health symptoms were located, said the official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX).

The only ones who won with this story are the members of a minority and reactionary group of politicians desperate and willing to resort to any means to try to impose and perpetuate the course of confrontation, lies and injustice in Washington’s policy against the Cuban people and the Americans themselves, she said.

Tablada maintained that the group of experts from Cuba that investigated this issue stated and explained why the thesis exposed most recently is an unlikely hypothesis, and certainly not a proven fact as the media and unidentified sources try to fix in people’s imagination.

She added that the Cuban Academy of Sciences disagreed on this possibility which she described as speculation presented as one more hypothesis, not supported by arguments in the body of the published report of the U.S. Academies of Sciences. The Americans themselves cannot assure what is the cause of the reported symptoms and the absence of information requested to the Washington government is critical, which limited their study.

The diplomat reiterated that the Academy of Sciences and the team of Cuban experts reject the politicization of the issue and recently reiterated the call for collaboration between both countries to solve the matter and establish the truth.

Tablada stressed that up to now the most concrete and factual thing we have seen is that symptoms were reported with such a diversity that even the State Department doctors explained, as well as the Cuban scientists, that so many elements cannot be attributed to a common cause.

The official recalled that the unfounded accusation against her country of the attacks served as a pretext for the withdrawal of most of the staff of the United States Embassy in Havana, in 2017, coupled with an unprecedented sequence of actions of hostility and setbacks in relations between the two countries and peoples.

She said that after the change of administration in the White House we are facing a new cycle of articles and leaks on the alleged existence of attacks, a word not used by official spokespersons of the Washington government in their most recent statements, according to PL. She pointed out that the common denominator of this set of publications is political speculation, manipulation and absence of primary sources and the misleading reference that assumes and presents as a true fact an alleged syndrome that was not proven by science.

The Deputy Director-General of the US Directorate of MINREX pointed out that there is no such thing as the Havana Syndrome outside of propaganda, but we live in a world, she stressed, in which perceptions matter more than realities.

She said that the investigations of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Ministry of the Interior (Minint) of Cuba were serious and conclusive in ruling out the existence of ultrasonic or infrasonic sonic attacks.

Tablada stressed that Cuba has not questioned the existence of health symptoms, has investigated the issue from the police, medical and scientific spheres and has made many attempts and calls to cooperate by delivering information of its investigations to the U.S. government.

The diplomat concluded that the main victim of this whole saga seems to be again the truth. The measures taken on the basis of unconfirmed speculation have not been reversed and the suffering they have caused to the Cuban people, families and bilateral and people-to-people relations has only been aggravated, she said.

Recently, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that agencies and departments across the federal government are working to address “unexplained health incidents” that are sometimes reported by different agencies and did not occur in one place.

Marco Rubio, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, insist on the so-called Havana Syndrome despite Cuba’s denial, supported by scientific studies, which categorically distances itself from such actions.

The CIA and hatred in the social networks

4 years ago Granma

 
The CIA and hatred as a weapon in social networks

No one who, in the networks, opposes the patterns defended by their paymasters, escapes the fury of the salaried haters. For this purpose, the CIA’s cash register has no limits, nor does the low morality and the dastardly ethics of its mercenaries.

Author: Raúl Antonio Capote | internacionales@granma.cu

May 4, 2021 23:05:02 PM

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

The Political Action Group (GAP), which is part of the Special Activities Center, a division of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), carries out, among other missions, analyses based on Big Data, processes profiles of subjects of interest and draws up action plans that are sent to the Internet Task Force, in charge of executing them.

Through Big Data, information is obtained that can be used for subversive work, it allows to better organize the forces to mobilize them in the fulfillment of a certain objective and, above all, through the micro-segmentation of the public, they manage, in a particular and specific way, the concerns of each neighborhood, of each family, of each person.

Enemy analysts can build models capable of predicting hidden attributes, including political preferences, sexual orientation, how much you trust the people you relate to, how strong those relationships are, all thanks to the information that users themselves upload to the networks.

In February 2018, following orientations of former President Donald Trump, the so-called Internet Task Force for Cuba or Internet Task Force for Subversion in Cuba was created, subordinated to the gap, which is the same as the CIA.

It is in charge of hiring the so-called netcenters, who execute the campaigns against Cuba, through the recruitment of specialists who, in turn, gather around them dozens of cyber-sicarii. They also have the mission of coordinating the actions of counterrevolutionary platforms and media, and of searching for collaborators on the island, among other tasks.

In cyberspace there is also a sordid specimen, feared by many, the hater. The term, imported from English, refers to those people who are dedicated to harass others through social networks.

They use their victims’ physical characteristics, sexual orientation, race, ideology or religion to carry out their harassment. They use the pain, fears and insecurities of those who take their claims seriously.

Some act out of fun, resentment or envy, but there are others who are true mercenaries, people hired to conduct smear campaigns or character assassinations. That is why they are called cybersicarii.

Character, civic or reputational assassination, as it is also named in the psychological warfare manuals of several intelligence agencies and organizations in the world, is part of the methods used by the US special services to destroy the adversaries of the empire.

The cyber-assassassin seeks to make the person subjected to the aggression feel helpless, think that he is not in control of the situation, wear himself out in useless defenses, become exhausted and try to isolate himself, to get as far away as possible from his harassers. The purpose is to make the victim try to justify herself publicly, and self-censure, which does not necessarily put an end to the attack, and may even intensify it.

They use repeated sending of offensive and insulting messages, highly intimidating, to a given individual, including threats of harm that make the person fear for their own safety; circulate rumors about someone, to break their reputation; manipulate digital materials, photos, recorded conversations, emails, steal passwords to impersonate identity; circulate fake news and cruel “gossip” about their victims; perform economic blackmail… Nothing, no matter how dehumanizing, stops the cia’s hired hands.

When multiple harassers participate in the act of cyberbullying, the action is called mobbing, and is part of the strategy against Cuban Internet users, especially public figures. Hundreds of trolls, digital hitmen, cyber-mercenaries, all trained and paid by the CIA, participate in the attacks, which are perfectly planned and scripted in the U.S. psychological warfare laboratories working for the Task Force.

Revolutionary leaders, journalists, artists, musicians, personalities from different areas of the social, cultural and political life of the country have been subjected to intense attacks of this type.

No one who, in the networks, opposes the bosses who defend their paymasters, escapes the fury of the salaried haters. To this end, the CIA’s cash register has no limits, nor does the low morals and dastardly ethics of its mercenaries.

The CIA and hatred as a weapon

4 years ago Granma, , , ,

 
The CIA and hatred as a weapon in the social networks

No one who, in the networks, opposes the patterns defended by their paymasters, escapes the fury of the salaried haters. For this purpose, the CIA’s cash register has no limits, nor does the low morality and the dastardly ethics of its mercenaries.

Author: Raúl Antonio Capote | internacionales@granma.cu
May 4, 2021 23:05:02 PM

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

The Political Action Group (GAP), which is part of the Special Activities Center, a division of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), carries out, among other missions, analyses based on Big Data, processes profiles of subjects of interest and draws up action plans that are sent to the Internet Task Force, in charge of executing them.

Through Big Data, information is obtained that can be used for subversive work, it allows them to better organize the forces to mobilize them in the fulfillment of a certain objective. Above all, through the micro-segmentation of the public, they manage, in a particular and specific way, the concerns of each neighborhood, of each family, of each person.

Enemy analysts can build models capable of predicting hidden attributes, including political preferences, sexual orientation, how much you trust the people you relate to, how strong those relationships are, all thanks to the information that users themselves upload to the networks.

In February 2018, following orientations of former President Donald Trump, the so-called Internet Task Force for Cuba or Internet Task Force for Subversion in Cuba was created, subordinated to the gap, which is the same as the CIA.

It is in charge of hiring the so-called netcenters, who execute the campaigns against Cuba, through the recruitment of specialists who, in turn, gather around them dozens of cyber-criminals. They also have the mission of coordinating the actions of counterrevolutionary platforms and media, and of searching for collaborators on the island, among other tasks.

In cyberspace, there is also a sordid specimen, feared by many, the hater. The term, imported from English, refers to those people who are dedicated to harass others through social networks.

They use their victims’ physical characteristics, sexual orientation, race, ideology or religion to carry out their harassment. They use the pain, fear and insecurities of those who take their claims seriously.

Some act out of fun, resentment or envy, but there are others who are true mercenaries, people hired to conduct smear campaigns or character assassinations. That is why they are called cybercriminals.

Character, civic or reputational assassination, as it is also named in the psychological warfare manuals of several intelligence agencies and organizations in the world, is part of the methods used by the US special services to destroy the adversaries of the empire.

The cyber-assassassin seeks to make the person subjected to the aggression feel helpless, think that they are not in control of the situation, wear themselves out in useless defenses, become exhausted and try to isolate themselves, to get as far away as possible from their harassers. The purpose is to make the victim try to justify themselves publicly, and self-censure, which does not necessarily put an end to the attack, and may even intensify it.

They use repeated sending of offensive and insulting messages, highly intimidating, to a given individual, including threats of harm that make the person fear for their own safety; circulate rumors about someone, to break their reputation; manipulate digital materials, photos, recorded conversations, emails, steal passwords to impersonate identity; circulate fake news and cruel “gossip” about their victims; perform economic blackmail… Nothing, no matter how dehumanizing, stops the CIA’s hired hands.

When multiple harassers participate in the act of cyberbullying, the action is called mobbing, and is part of the strategy against Cuban Internet users, especially public figures. Hundreds of trolls, digital hitmen, cyber-mercenaries, all trained and paid by the CIA, participate in the attacks, which are perfectly planned and scripted in the U.S. psychological warfare laboratories working for the Task Force.

Revolutionary leaders, journalists, artists, musicians, personalities from different areas of the social, cultural and political life of the country have been subjected to intense attacks of this type.

No one who, in the networks, opposes the bosses who defend their paymasters, escapes the fury of the salaried haters. To this end, the CIA’s cash register has no limits, nor does the low morals and dastardly ethics of its mercenaries.

 

Virtudes’ Rolling Kitchen

4 years ago Translations

Virtudes’ Rolling Kitchen

Parque Central Hotel installs modern food truck in the very heart of Old Havana

By Dariel Pradas
April 3, 2021

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews

Text and photos: DARIEL PRADAS

Many people are already talking about the news -and also the dishes- of a food truck next to the Parque Central Hotel, on Virtudes Street, in the municipality of Old Havana.

Every day, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., a truck with the best retro style of the 1940s parks at that address. Its menu of chicken, pork, hamburgers and other fast-food variants attracts a clientele that, without queue or matazón [slaughter?], comes to taste the culinary standards deduced from the Iberostar chain and its five-star plus “inn”.

The offer also provides a free home delivery service and, although some people find its price onerous in general, others find it economical in comparison with gastronomic businesses in the self-employed sector.

A food truck is basically a vehicle capable of offering any type of menu in streets, squares, fairs and, in essence, open places: a sort of mobile kitchen.

In recent years, this practice has become so popular around the world that filming TV programs in such trucks, complete with chefs, aprons and gourmet terminations, has become commonplace.

It is said that the food truck on Virtudes Street is the first of its kind in Cuba; however, Jose Luis Ayala, deputy general manager of the Parque Central Hotel, says that the Melia Habana inaugurated one before, only that it focused on cocktails, not food. The Comodoro and Cohiba hotels also have similar vehicles.

The food truck menu at the Parque Central hotel consists mainly of fast food offerings.

In the 1980s, Ayala says, trucks with the same purpose of the food truck used to appear at several Havana events, but without the specialization and technologies of their current relatives: with their griddles, fryers, microwaves, scrubbers, their own electric plants, water recycling systems, policies that establish the exclusive use of biodegradable materials…

“It’s not just selling food for the sake of selling, but doing so with an image that identifies the hotel, is attractive and complies with the relevant ecological standards,” argues the assistant manager.

Sales in pesos are also important

The idea of the food truck in Cuba came from the then president of Cubanacán, Yamily Aldama, now deputy minister of Tourism. The goal was, according to Ayala, “to boost domestic sales, and then, to bring the hotel product closer to the towns and places where the summer events took place.”

In 2019, summer fairs began to be organized with the participation of hotel gastronomy. Parque Central repeated these experiences in Virtudes Street, La Piragua and other locations.

“We saw that it was a business opportunity, with a sustainable income, and that the service was recognized by customers, both by residents and local tourists who were passing through the city,” says the deputy director, who discussed a thesis in 1991 on the influence of Cuban food on tourism.

To perform this service in outdoor areas, most of the time tents were rented. A food truck would be, for its ease of movement and aesthetic appeal, a much more viable option. Once the investment was approved by the joint venture Amanecer Holding S.A., the owner of Parque Central (Iberostar is the administrator), the truck was imported and arrived in Cuba at the height of covid-19, at the end of 2020.

The food truck service complies with established sanitary protocols to counteract the spread of the coronavirus.

“The level of tourism has dropped a lot. It was very good for us to have this type of service, because right now, in the stage we are in of the pandemic, we can’t have that influx of foreign tourists,” Ayala admits. “So, we link the offer with the local market segment. As for prices, we can’t say they are cheap, nor very high. We did a study and looked for a balance between the quality of the offer and the price: something that the customer would accept.”

Although the food truck is by far not the hotel’s main business, “it helps to cover the salary expenses we have to pay to keep the hotel open. In addition, we link a large part of the hotel’s workers to the truck”.

Yoinys Pérez, sous chef at Parque Central, thinks that the food truck concept is a very good idea: “We are happy, above all, because we have work. With this we were able to incorporate workers who were at home, at 60 percent (earning that proportion of their usual salary)”.

With his 13 years of experience at the hotel, this specialist found it a little hard to adapt to the small dimensions of the truck, with the heat of the fryer close and constant.

“Sometimes I miss my old kitchen. It’s not the same to prepare a dish to order, where we have a restaurant that is five forks, with all kinds of dishes, products, finishes, sauces… they are dishes that take another kind of treatment,” he sighs suddenly.

“You miss… you miss that adrenaline. On the go, it comes out! Everything by time: starter, main course, dessert. It’s another kind of service, in which the client enjoys the hotel more and the chef innovates and feels more fulfilled.”

Nevertheless, Yoinys has come to appreciate his work in the food truck. For example, he enjoys pleasing local customers, who have a different palate than the foreign tourists he usually serves: “It’s different, but even much better. First, because they speak our language. Second, they have the same tastes as us. It’s what I know how to eat. What my children eat.

Restaurant on wheels

“I am a lover of gastronomy and an advocate of typical Cuban dishes,” says José Luis Ayala, assistant general manager of the Parque Central Hotel.

 

The food truck is here to stay. In the words of general manager Jorge Sáez Parra, “it allows you to adapt to the new reality one hundred percent. It is a service in which you are in the open air. People pass by, take it and eat it wherever they want. It is the same as Iberostar’s Covid protocols. It guarantees gastronomy in a safe way”.

Moreover, after the current pandemic crisis, such a truck will have even more repercussions, perhaps in the context of thawing, starting with fairs and concerts all over Havana.

“The essence of the food truck is to bring the offer closer to the points where there is demand for an agile service and food that does not need to be very specific, but attractive”, says the Spanish director, “It gives you flexibility: like a restaurant on wheels so that you go to where the customers are, not that the customers come to you. That’s its appeal.