Cuba condemns Israeli attacks
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
Men’s things… and women’s…
Men’s things… and women’s…
Masterfully conducted by Doctor in Historical Sciences Julio César González Pagés and directed by Yolanda Cabrales, a new proposal of Cubavisión channel has already put on the table two topics that generate a range of opinions: machismo and feminism.
Author: Aracelys Bedevia
Digital |digital@juventudrebelde.cu…
March 9, 2021
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Julio César González Pagés (right) with Yonnier Angulo, who is in charge of the Men in Tangles section. Autor: Juventud Rebelde Publicado: 09/03/2021 | 09:16 pm
The enigma of femininity has made men of all times cavillers. [quibblers] —Sigmund Freud
One more step forward in the effort to build a more humane society, a victory for those of us who work and dream for a better world, represents the program Cosas de hombres [Men’s Things] which has been broadcast every Monday for the past two weeks at 10:15 p.m. on Cubavisión channel.
Masterfully conducted by Doctor in Historical Sciences Julio César González Pagés and directed by Yolanda Cabrales, the new proposal has already put on the table two topics that generate plurality of criteria: machismo and feminism. What is it? Are we or are we not?
The guests represent a wide range of professions and activities that relate male behaviors in different social spheres. Víctor Fowler (writer), Rochy Ameneiro (singer), Omar Franco (actor), David Blanco (singer), Norma Vasallo (university professor), Andrea Doimeadiós (actress) and Marilyn Solaya (filmmaker) have spoken with Pagés so far; all of them very committed to the struggle for egalitarian spaces where men and women have the same opportunities and are valued as human beings, regardless of sex.
In Men’s Things there will be, from the scientific area, research, communication and teaching, Félix Julio Alfonso, Patricia Arés, Clotilde Proveyer, Yulexis Almeida, Tania de Armas, Yonnier Angulo, Jesús Muñoz Machín, Andrei Hernández and Francisco Cruz. Alberto Roque, Lisandra Chaveco, Yohanka Rodney, Yosvel Hernández, Oni Acosta, Enmanuel George, Arlin Rodríguez and Neida Peñalver will also be present, said Julio César González Pagés to Sexo Sentido.
Edesio Alejandro, Cristian Alejandro, Maykel Blanco, Israel Rojas, Jan Cruz, Luis Franco, Jorge Luis Robaina (Karamba), Juan Carlos Rivero (Moncada), Ernesto Blanco, Adrián Berazaín and Raúl Torres will accompany the debate with music, acting and direction. The list includes Rodrigo García, Tony Ávila, Alberto Corona, Denis Ramos, Jorge Martínez, Maysel Bello, Lizette Vila, Marcos Herrera and Sebastián Milo. Representing the athletes will be multi medalist Victor Moya, in the high jump.
Dr. Pagés, leader of the Ibero-American and African Network of Masculinities (RIAM) and author of more than a dozen titles (Macho, varón, masculino and Por andar vestida de hombre, among others), says that “the idea came up in 2013 during a visit of director Yolanda Cabrales to my house.
“She had directed Ecos de mujer and wanted to create a space where men were the protagonists. In 2020 Rafael Pérez Insua, director of Cubavisión, called on us to rethink the project. With COVID-19 we had to look for alternatives. The original idea underwent changes, but gained nuances for discussion.”
-How much time will you be on screen and what other topics will you be discussing?
-We will discuss health, paternity, sexuality, violence… There will be 13 segments with a duration of 27 minutes, divided into four parts , with three guests and a section called Tangled Men, which is coordinated by Yonnier Angulo and addresses the impact of social networks on contemporary life and masculinities.
-We talk a lot about violence against women and very little about violence against men. Don’t you think that machismo is one of the reasons why this violence is invisible?
-One of the big obstacles is that women’s demands have been resisted by men who do not see them as a priority. A change of vision from hegemonic masculinities is to give them the prominent place in the effort to end inequalities in order to achieve a more equitable society.
“Revolutionary experiences have taught us that the inequalities suffered by women do not end with the end of capitalism, because there are men who are still interested in maintaining the subordination of women.
“Understanding the issue is complicated when a sector suggests that these demands can divert us from more urgent or important objectives at the national level or consider them sectoral demands, and believe that we can create the bonds of solidarity necessary to transform society without questioning male supremacy.
“More than defending men, it is about knowing [mens’] vulnerabilities and prioritizing an agenda that deconstructs the myths of [male] supremacy. We must first and foremost learn to be full humans in order to live in harmony and not be the source of so much violence and destruction.”
-Is it a good time for a program of this kind?
-Yes, it comes at an excellent time of changes in Cuban society. Laws related to our masculinities are being passed and it is important to be prepared for this. There is a great need to educate the population on the various questions related to masculinities and to offer ways to unlearn toxic macho values.
Show me your hair
Show me your hair, and I’ll tell you who you are?
The story aims to bring us closer to the life of Sarah Breedlove (who later became C.J. Walker when she remarried publicist Charles Walker and took his name for the business), the first African-American woman to achieve the status of a millionaire in the United States.
Author:
José Luis Estrada Betancourt |estrada@juventudrebelde.cu
March 8, 2021
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Madam C.J. Walker. Autor: MagaZinema Publicado: 08/03/2021 | 10:44 pm
I couldn’t help but think of my mother as soon as I started watching Madam C. J. Walker: Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker, the miniseries released by Netflix in 2020 and now broadcast by Cubavisión on Saturdays at around 9:15 p.m. And not only because the extraordinary actress Octavia Spencer brings my Juana to mind, but because the story she stars in and for which she was nominated for Emmy awards, brought me back to those years of my childhood in which so many times I found the mistress of my days girdled with a hot comb to smooth her hair soaked in fat smelly grease.
It frightened me that I had to try, by fire, to make them find her beautiful, sliding that red-hot iron through the bundle of strong and unruly hair that she inherited from our ancestors, to leave them shiny and straight. I preferred to leave so as not to witness a possible accident, an alternative that did not disappear when it was the turn of the curling iron and the curl began to bend in a more permanent way with a chemical treatment that does not even spare the scalp.
I didn’t even wonder then what would be wrong with natural hair. It seemed to me the most common thing in the world that some people wanted to “advance the breed”, or that, before inquiring about their health, they were concerned with finding out how the newborn had turned out: It is evident that I was not ready to understand then that the centuries of slavery, of colonialism, imposed a Eurocentrism that later capitalism and imperialism were in charge of accentuating, to the point that this racist concept, which is so discriminatory, is so impregnated in my mind, that I was not ready to understand then that the centuries of slavery, of colonialism, imposed a Eurocentrism that later capitalism and imperialism were in charge of accentuating, to the point that this racist concept, discriminatory, is so impregnated in us (still today) that it can be common that in many spaces what does not comply with the “white beauty” is taken as dirty, unkempt, inappropriate, unprofessional, and is associated with poverty and marginality.
Undoubtedly, the theory of the existence of human races (over time up to 63 were classified, although Cuba must have surpassed that figure with so many mulattoes, mulatos blanconazos, jabaos, capirros, Indians…) was a great “invention” for those who sought to establish their social and cultural supremacy. The truth is that, although scientifically it has been destroyed, the direct derivative of this concept: racism, has not disappeared at all.
Madam C. J. Walker: A Self-Made Woman, a story that aims to bring us closer to the life of Sarah Breedlove (who later became C.J. Walker when she remarried publicist Charles Walker and took his name for her business), the first African-American woman to achieve the status of millionaire in the United States, could speak more forcefully about all of this, but does not.
However, viewers should not think that they will get to know much about this revered figure by African Americans with the four 45-minute chapters that Netflix offers us, because suddenly we will find her as a notable businesswoman and philanthropist when in a scene filmed in broad daylight, we discover her dressed in beautiful blue, as if she were dressed for an Oscar award ceremony, protecting herself from the sun, strolling outside her mansion where she will be noticed by her neighbor Rockefeller.
Blair Underwood as Charles Walker.
“To whom God gave it…”, those who think I’m envious are probably thinking right now. It’s just that no divine force must have given her anything, but she certainly had to fight very hard to be able to create an empire in the cosmetics industry with hair products. How did a black woman, who came into the world in 1867, on a cotton plantation in Louisiana, orphaned at the age of seven, more than poor, without any education, a domestic servant who lost her knuckles washing, manage to impose herself in a United States living in full racial segregation, in that lamentable period (1877-1950) when more than 4,400 African-Americans were victims of terrible lynchings? How was she able to achieve this, subjected to men, as women were in the early years of the 20th century, and despised for her sex and her skin?
We will not know it from the series Madam C. J. Walker... It will remain as a pending task to approach in depth the existence of this totally unknown woman (at least for me). In this production, such historical context is just a postcard in the background. Of course, we will be moved by the image of some being hanging in a tree, but the story of the protagonist played by Spencer will move along other paths.
It begins when the beautiful Addie Munroe (Carmen Ejogo), a mulatto whose white genes gave her a long and abundant mane, is shown before Sarah with the “crecepelo”, a product that will not only solve her hair loss problems, but will also give her back, above all, her self-esteem. Seeing that it works, the future tycoon, excited, will propose to her savior to let her participate in the sale, but the first one, who in a “rapture of kindness” provided it, was not willing to give that miracle to darker people with bad hair. Just what writer Alice Walker (The Color Purple) calls “colorism” to describe that other expression of “internal” racism.
You don’t have to be too imaginative to know how the script will develop in the future: Sarah and Addie, who will give her one setback after another, will become bitter enemies, although those who are familiar with Madam C. J. Walker’s biography assure that this is one of the many licenses taken by the authors of the scripts, in order to provide the ingredients that would make the melodrama move forward in the right direction.
In fact, if one is to go by the events presented to us from the novel On Her Own Ground, by A’Lelia Bundles, on which this biopic is based, Madam C. J. Walker, rather than the enormous injustices that African-Americans had to face in the early 20th century, was made more difficult by Addie (who, let’s face it, ended up stealing her invention, which she miraculously copied and obtained) and the men around her – such as Charles Walker (Blair Underwood), the husband jealous of his wife’s success; and John (J. Alphonse Nicholson), the ungrateful husband of her daughter, Leila Walker (Tiffany Haddish). She becomes betrayed, even by some of the very women to whom she gave support and work…. Nothing, the series seems to reinforce the popular saying that there is no worse wedge than the wedge of one’s own stick.
In any case, the undeniable fact is that with her efforts Madam C. J. Walker overcame poverty, humiliation, discrimination, classist and sexist prejudices… to rise as a true exponent of the American dream and to honor the title of this dramatization that was released in March, just two months before George Floyd ended up dead under the knee of ex-cop Derek Chauvin.
For me, Madam C. J. Walker: A Self-Made Woman stands out, above all, for the superb performance of Octavia Spencer (who also serves as executive producer), ever so believable, ever so convincing. Yes, Spencer is an actress of the highest caliber. She reminded us again this Sunday thanks to the film Hidden Figures, which was put on by Arte 7. We saw her, as splendid as her two other co-stars (Taraji P. Henson and Janelle Monáe), also with her hair ironed, chemically straightened or in wigs, because that’s what is generally expected of black actresses and models on TV or in the movies. As beautiful as diversity is! But it is difficult to overthrow what has been coined for so many years in the sociocultural field.
Cuba in the Third Millenium
Memoria
Electoral processes and political elites.
Cuba in the Third Millennium
By Domingo Amuchastegui
April 2005
Number 194
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
The regime that Fidel Castro has headed for 44 years, suggests we make a careful study of the electoral processes and political elites, as one object of study, among many other topics. A general opinion is that Cuba does not have elections or competitive elections and, consequently, lacks democracy; another – no less general and repetitive – is to understand and project an image of power in Cuba absolutely centered around the figure of Fidel Castro, with no one else who is relevant or important.
The latter point has followed a certain and more recent corollary that grants the physical presence of Fidel Castro with magical powers, conditioning what could happen later or not, in terms of regime changes, transition, succession or continuity. Consequently, the special obsessive attention that exists regarding his health status, his fainting spells, incoherence and poor functioning of other vital signs.
The present analysis proposes to study these two dimensions – elections and political elite – to, first, review, both with a critical view, summarize the most outstanding features of the four decades of the Cuban regime, that is to say, the features the author considers that marked important high points for the current projection of these two dimensions. In second place, and through a discussion of the last elections held in Cuba between October 2002 and February of 2003, to analyze the behavior of both at the dawn of the third millennium.
Antecedents
In March of 1959, speaking in a mass event in the former Presidential Palace, Fidel Castro, when referring to the holding of elections in the near future, received a resounding rejection of such an idea from the hundreds of thousands of participants. As a personal witness and participant of the event, this did not seem prepared or manipulated but an accumulated reaction on which Fidel Castro was sure of obtaining such a result. The political or legal terms of this rejection were never defined and, thus, that NO to elections announced in the public plaza served as – there are many others that go beyond this analysis that also served these ends – one of the legitimate public features of the revolutionary regime, a situation that lasted from 1959 to 1976, the date when Popular Power was implanted and formed.
From 1976 until 1992, with a constitution approved and adopted – according to official statistics – with a 100 % of the voters, general elections have been held every six years. In the first, the PCC suggested to its militants who to vote for a total of six that were in the ballots with their biographies for the information on the candidates. On the one hand, the number of candidates has been reduced to two. Regarding the inference that the PCC directed its militants for whom to cast their direct vote, was rejected for the following elections.
From 1976 until 1992, with the adoption of an approved constitution – according to official statistics – general elections have been held every six years, with almost 100 percent of voters. In the first, the PCC instructed its militants to vote for one or several candidates for a total of six of those appearing on the ballots that included the biographies of the candidates as information for the voters. On the one side, the number of nominees has been reduced to two. As for the procedure of the PCC directly indicating to its militants who to vote for, this practice was abolished for the future elections. Although the PCC does not propose or formally or publicly launch the names of the candidates, all the voters in the neighborhood assemblies of each administrative division knew that the over-whelming majority of cases, the names proposed as candidates had the blessing of the Party, although they were not necessarily militants.
What is known as the National Assembly of Popular Power (ANPP) or Cuban parliament was made up of two groups. One, designated through deliberation or ratification of the Politburo in representation of the positions or posts that the Party and Government considered important for running the country and that they should be represented in the ANPP (a little over 50 percent). These designated, generally appeared also as elected in the different administrative divisions where the majority did not necessarily live in the areas nor was it their true residence. The second group, made up of the delegates of the provincial assemblies, usually previously chosen and accepted by the provincial and national instances of the party and, as national delegates, no additional voting was necessary because they had already been voted for in their administrative division – or according to what was promoted at the time – by indirect election while the Politburo, on the one hand, and the provincial assemblies, on the other, functioned as a kind of Electoral College or Great Elector with supreme powers.
By June of 1992 and under the impact of the internal crisis that occurred after the external events of 1989-1991, among the limited reforms that were made then, was the approval of a new electoral law (Reformed Electoral Law No. 78, 20/10/92) that introduced significant variations. The most important change was that all deputies proposed for the ANPP (609 members today) had to be elected or voted for individually and by more than 50% of the votes cast. In other words, although the mechanism of designation of the candidates to represent both groups (50-50) in the National Assembly, and with the situation that both groups now had to be elected on a personal bases, ended the procedure of indirect elections and an end to the monolithic image by making the election more individual and requiring 50% of the votes. This opened up a diversity of spaces for negative or punishment votes and, around the issue, the most diverse forms of political mobilization and transmission of messages and challenges to the regime. For the latter, these threats did not go unnoticed and formed part of the foreseen risks and part of the limited reforms then taken up.
During these decades, the historical political elite – the leading nucleus and pillars of the of the insurrection and revolutionary regime after 1959 – were drying up for several reasons (repeated failures, abuse of power, repeated incapacities, corruption, bureaucratization, disproportionate intolerance, regional conflicts, personality clashes, loss of charisma and others) until reaching the reduced numbers to their minimum expression of what it is today.
However, during this process of depletion, the Cuban leadership noticed and recreated, with some success, the generational substitution, that is, the process of a systematic promotion of young persons throughout the entire structure of power and all of civilian power on which the power resides.
At this point, tendencies never before seen appeared publicly. First, the V Congress of the Young Communist Union (UJC) in 1998 and under the direction of Roberto Robaina, gave free reign to criticisms of policies and old leaders that was applauded by all: the generation responsible for so many errors, was not able to assume and solve with the necessary criticism the errors of the past. This was only possible by part of the new generation.
In a more conciliatory tone, but with the same demolishing charge of criticism, the discussion of a document appears in 1990, known as the Call of the Party to the IV Congress and whose writing and debate were promoted by the then twosome Raul Castro-Carlos Aldana. In the document there was full acknowledgement of the generational problem, although not in the critical terms of the V Congress of the UJC. Instead, it analyzed the existence of three groups of three different generations: the one that made and defended the revolution since the beginning or the historical generation; the intermediate generation that was in their 40s at the time (today bordering their 50s); and the third or younger generation from which the cadres and leading figures were gleaned – clearly, the new political elite – of a current and future substitutive group of the historical elite. This latter, with still certain exceptions, has no longer become the main source from which new figures appeared to occupy new posts or changeovers.
The exile began to be aware of these tendencies with the adequate scientific rigor during the latter decade of the 20th century, by the multidisciplinary team of the Florida International University (FIU) in its first study about the transition in Cuba. The changes in the Cuban leadership during that same decade, widely confirmed the preliminary documented analysis of the FIU team.
The team offered more proof during the second half of that same decade. In 1996, during the only military parade of the past 20 years, the Brigade General that headed it was in no way related to the historical elite, either by age, family ties or any others. We were confronting a new generation of military chiefs, a key component of the new elites. A year later, the V Congress of the PCC served to offer new proof of the tendency that confirmed a deep transformation in the composition of the political elite of the Cuban regime.
Elections
After 26 years of electoral processes, the last elections took place between October 2002 and February of 2003. The repeated objections are well-known and more than well known but, currently, the result today has continued to be the same: the voters overwhelmingly endorsed the options presented to them by the regime. Some reading and new proposals must be reflected upon to refresh this approximation and the analysis of this phenomenon. Our contribution today leads in that direction and the latest elections offer an excellent opportunity.
Let us start by saying that, after 10 years of a reformed electoral law – as described above – no political current of dissidence or internal opposition has been able to structure an effective mobilization for a negative or punishment vote; nor by the exile nor, much less, an agreement between both forces. There can be differences in interpretation but the fact is one: this has not been achieved; no one can coherently propose it and for almost all it seems unimportant.
The Cuban regime is interested in the electoral process as restructured because it has an important instrument of internal and external legitimization. It has amply exhibited and divulged the figures obtained because they developed a crushing support thanks to the many mechanisms used to promote almost total assistance to the ballot boxes. But let us not forget the following: what happens in the voting stations where the voter use their rights, ballot in hand, without any control has not become, until now, a recourse of unrest, much less of an opposition. Regarding the claim of altered statistics or major frauds, direct observation demonstrates, simply, that this has not been necessary and, consequently, nor have the recurring publicity claims concerning the data.
Voting, regardless of thousands of restrictions, is important. Just let us recall when the individual and secret vote was installed in the IV Congress of the PCC, there were delegates who did not support Fidel and Raul Castro, a few, but there were and there were several members of the Politburo who got laughable numbers while members of the Central Committee won more votes. This sent a clear message with many implications.
The strangest things is that, this time, during the course of the last elections, without being called for nor guided, an important sector of the population, one way or another, decided not to support the candidacy of the regime. Let us study the data of the municipalities that are more important and representative, to some extent.
The term representative, avoiding unnecessary debates, is applied because in the municipalities the voters know the candidates perfectly well; he or she is a neighbor, they have the same problems, interact, buy in the same grocery shop or buy the same things, under the table, from the same vendor, go to the same doctor or policlinic and, therefore, know each other perfectly well and this has an influence on how they cast their vote and is, thereby, defined as representative in opposition to the majority of those designated of whom there is not this direct knowledge or interaction.
Let us go now to a careful study of the data of the last municipal elections:
Registered voters Did not vote Blank ballots Spoiled ballots
8 352 948 4.25% 2.78% 2.54%
The total percentage was 9,57. Rounding the number, almost 850 thousand persons that could suggest the figure was around the million mark.
Here, two points should be remembered that influence the makeup of the final negative or punishment votes. One is an estimate or suggestion that among those 850 thousand are included, in some manner, those who have explicitly asked to participate in the visa system to go to the U.S. that are approximately half a million.
The other point to remember is that the electoral vote does not include the emigration that still hold their Cuban citizenship and also recall – a no lesser important issue – that within the ANPP there were deputies who came out for the adoption of double citizenship with obvious direct implications for the election process, a motion that was disapproved.
Regarding the data mentioned above, it is important to examine certain hypotheses. The first is that the data of the negative or punishment vote has not been the product of a strategy or tactic of the organized opposition, much less from the exile, as called by some historians. A second is that the most important documents presented by the opposition, the Payá Sardinas and Cuesta Morúa, after months of propaganda merely received, respectively a little over ten thousand. This hypothesis is only to observe the enormous schisms existing between the very modest numbers for both projects and the almost million negative and punishment votes of the last elections. This schism demonstrates how far the organized or dissident opposition and exile are able to guide, mobilize and coherently capture those thousands of hundreds.
Another important hypothesis, is that the almost million votes may, also, reflect the vote of the almost half a million who seek to leave the country. If this is the case, the importance or transcendence of almost a million becomes relative and loses potentiality. This also ratifies that one of the main causes to explain the weakness of the exile and the internal opposition has been, and continues to be, what could be typified as a pattern of evasion; that the greater part of the strongest dissatisfied do not come together in answering terms nor feeds the forces of opposition but is only interested in leaving the country and once out, they lose political activity.
The last hypothesis about these figures is to study the possibility that regime can or not assume political changes and local and territorial improvements that would allow them, eventually, to stop and revert the tendency of these votes.
For both – the regime and the opposition – these hypotheses should make up, in good measure, their protagonist potential.
When, on January 19, 2003, the candidates to deputy – chosen among the mass of delegates voted for in the municipalities – were submitted to popular vote – the general or national election or ratification of the designated – little over 91 percent, or, almost 9 percent rejected, one way or another, to ratify the candidacy to deputy. The variation in the municipalities and national wide was scarcely 1 percent. The difference to the previous electoral processes where the government could exhibit figures of 95 and 98 percent, this time the figures went from 90 to 91 percent.
These figures had never occurred previously and the public admission was no less unusual. A simple arithmetic progression – and this is another important hypothesis – could create, in a period of six years, numerical proportions that would completely and definitively demolish the monolithic image of the past, consolidate the image of a sufficiently numerous and broad sector that could not be hidden, denied and politically and legally continue to be ignored in terms of its own constitutional and legal framework.
All this could seem unimportant for many here and that others ignore or keep quiet about, but it had an enormous political impact in the Cuban power structure. While many leaders of the PCC and government considered the results to be satisfactory – considering the extreme economic and social tensions of the period –, for Fidel Castro the results were hardly admissible. He immediately called meetings to examine the results in detail and abundant criticisms and warnings were levied against provincial leaders with the highest numbers of what could clearly be identified as negative or punishment votes. Later changes of these leaders suggest a clear connection between these and the statistics of the mentioned elections.
Curiously, several of the provinces with the most alarming results were those exposed to foreign investments and tourism such as Havana (13,45 percent), Matanzas (10.20 percent) and Holguín (9.31 percent), while the provinces of La Habana, Pinar del Río, Cienfuegos and several eastern provinces were noteworthy for the low index of negative or punishment votes. This phenomenon reminds us, once again, of the imperative need of territorializing the socio-political studies of the Cuban reality because it becomes more evident that a linear reading of the patterns of social and political conduct is not possible nor of mentioning a people that do not demand their representation in absolute and linear terms.
The statistics, again, suggest the need to pay attention to two questions of special importance. They are, first the need to test and analyze the patterns of voting that offer some significant territorial variations by province and, secondly, that in the majority of the cases mentioned there may be a clear coincidence with the highest indexes of punishment votes in the three territories (provinces) with a higher degree of foreign investment and tourism, a question that can be an important reference to the endless debate about the pros and cons of the embargo and tourism.
It is also worth noting how another important chink appeared in punishment that also was not used this time: there were no significant individualized votes in any case and the vote was in favor or against in block, with the government slogan of a unified vote or vote for the whole list of candidates, either way, the massive selectivity to individualize and penalize the most conspicuous cases prevailed.
It should be remembered that the slogan A United Vote or A Vote for All occurred after the reform of the electoral law and its objective was, and continues to be, that the fragmentation of votes or individual votes for some and not others could indicate that many candidates would not have the sufficient votes, mostly those designated from the central power. It may be either a problem in the second round but a mechanism of punishment that could be used in many ways and that up to now has not been proposed nor employed in any way. The government was deeply concerned when it observed, through the surveys made after the electoral vote, how many of the interviewees were inclined in favor of voting for some and not others; in other words, with a possibility of having a differential or selective vote in the case of the designated persons. The solution – maintained till now – was to prepare a very strong propaganda in favor of the United Vote. Many useful experiences can be understood this way with interesting results, an issue completely ignored by the internal opposition and the exile.
The elite
The first studies of a decade ago already clearly indicated an important social and political rise among the intermediate and younger generations. The tendency in this last decade continued to win ground and spread towards new categories of activities and posts in which this new elite grew significantly.
This began to cover several sectors of the scenario of civil society, the PCC and the government, that today it totally covers.
Let us observe these categories and posts:
a) At the level of the Politburo, young persons of the so-called intermediate generation, such as Carlos Lage, Abel Prieto, Yadira García, Roberto Robaina, Juan C. Robinson, Pedro Sáez and Jorge L. Sierra, currently between the ages of 43 and 53; in other words born between 1951 and 1961.
b) At the level of first secretaries of the PCC in all the provinces with ages ranging from 32 and 50.
c) At the level of the Council of Ministers, the changes have been greater. The ministers of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade, Finance and Prices, Accountancy, Transportation, SIME, Public Health and Assistant to the President, are in the hands of persons under the age of 40 while the Judiciary, General District Attorney, Culture, Agriculture, Industry, Fishing and the Team of Coordination and Support of the Commander in Chief are in the hands of the intermediate generation, between 45 and 53 years of age.
d) The election of 2002-2003 was equally revealing and marks notable promotions in relation to 1992-1993. Of the 14 946 delegates voted for at the administrative level, a total of 6 652 are under 40 and 4 847 are between 41 and 50, a figure that surpasses with a wide margin, two thirds of the delegates. At the same time the promotion of women was 3 493 for 35,96 percent representing an 8 percent in increase in relation to the previous election.
e) Another significant variation in relation to the first 12 years of elections is the actual proportion of deputies with university degrees and higher mid level education that already reaches 99,1 percent. Among the leaders of the intermediate and younger generations, the predominating professional profile is engineering.
f) In the make up of the new elites, a component not less notable and especially sensitive for the Cuban reality is the racial factor. The subject was strongly debated during the 1980s, particularly during the III Congress of the PCC where there was a prolonged discussion of the subject. Last decade and what there is of the current one, the blacks and mestizos have registered an important increase. This controversial subject finds in the Cuban leadership two positions. One is of Fidel Castro who, publicly, has touched on the subject from a Marti point of view – that the definition of the human being covers all and that this, white, black or female is recognized and advances according to its merits in a society that opens up all the opportunities to the individual person. The position of Raul Castro, repeatedly, has been to refer explicitly to the presence of the problem, to call it by its name, in relation to opportunities, social mobility and progress and the need to have more presence, stable and numerous, of black and mestizo representation in all the structures of power and where the FAR is the best example. The promotion of officers to majors, colonels and brigade generals during these last ten years, has been the highest of all times. In the ANPP with 609 deputies, 67,16 percent are white while 32,8 percent are black and mestizo, a figure that represents an increase of 4,55 percent.
g) The generational succession within the FAR is, for obvious reasons, of critical importance. In the first place, it should be remembered that higher officials with combat experience should continue until 2015, including a numerous group of brigade generals who received ascension during the past decade and who represent the intermediate generation. Those representing the younger generations such as majors and colonels come from the ranks of the camilitos, the military schools founded during the 1960s where pre-cadets are formed and who will later join the ranks of the military academies of the FAR. The camilitos move on to those institutions between the ages of 16 and 17.
Regarding the formation of this new elite, their present and future role in FAR and the rest of the power structure of the country, Raul Castro declared during the latter part of 2001 that: “men and women who will occupy, in the future, important responsibilities in defense as well in the rest of the spheres of the country, including the maximal leadership of the nation, are not waiting to arrive, they are among us … in the case of the FAR there are already camilitos who are generals or colonels at the head of important combat units and the majority of the key posts of the higher command.”
Thus, the old generations in the process of exhaustion and extinction, those names that are historical, have prepared for a wide process of generational substitution of power but, also, by doing so, have promoted the format of a new elite.
Conclusions
The election results of 2002-2003 clearly demonstrate how the Cuban election mechanism, since the reform of 1992, could be an important tool to reflect a variety of national, territorial and local dissatisfactions.
Neither the Cuban opposition or dissidents, nor the exiles – unless playing into the hands of the regime or if it manipulates the statistics – has proposed or formulated serious studies in this field. From these extremes, it is impossible to experiment and test the potential for such a mechanism for the political struggle.
The figures of 2002-2003 seem to offer a wide volume for a different activism and potentially more effective than any considered up to now and its message does have a tremendous impact on the structure of power as was proven this time. Opposition and exile are enormously apart to be able to take advantage of this power and use this resource.
The diseased obsession to continue the absolutism, even today, of the power in Cuba around the figures of Fidel and Raul, is unnatural, prevents seeing and understanding the great transformations that have occurred within in terms of figures who represent the elite who are completely new, whose social, cultural, technological, psychological and political components are, also, completely new and who the opposition and exile will have to deal with in the coming decades.
And I say coming decades, not as a lapse, but because the subjective position that perceives a downfall, ipso facto, upon the disappearance or death of Fidel, I invite you to reread the words of Raul Castro: “the new generations or elite are already an important part of power and tomorrow will control all power and they are responsible for its restructuring, redesigning and reorientation These will be the new elites, in relation to their experience and vital interests, are the ones who will have rethink their own formulas of continuity and change. It would be naïve to imagine that if they were invited to hand over power they would do so submissively. This is not the way the game will end. At least, this is the scenario of the events and not the wished that seem to outshine with more force.”
In the meantime, the exile will die biologically and politically. Young people, blacks and mestizos who left the Island and who have become politically active in recent years are only some exceptions while the young persons of the second generation in exile separate themselves from effective activism, In the great majority. A generational substitutions and elites as has happened in Cuba and that continues to be produced has no equivalence neither from here nor among the opposition and the Cuban dissidence.
The author is a professor at the University of Miami.
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