Extremely dangerous situation in Ukraine
Extremely dangerous situation in Ukraine
The territory of Ukraine is in an extremely dangerous situation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, explaining that the army acts as terrorists because they install multiple rocket launchers in Kiev and Kharkov under the advice of foreign experts.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Russian military presence in Ukraine. Photo: AP
The territory of Ukraine is in an extremely dangerous situation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called it, explaining that the military acts as terrorists because they install multiple rocket launchers in Kyiv and Kharkiv under the advice of foreign experts.
At this juncture, Vladimir Putin urged the Ukrainian military: “Do not allow neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists to use your children, wives and old people as human shields, to take power into their hands. It seems that it will be easier to come to an agreement with you than with this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis who lodged in Kyiv and took the entire Ukrainian people hostage,” Russia Today quoted him as saying.
The head of state noted that the main fighting of the Russian Army is conducted, “not against regular units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but against nationalist formations, which, as is known, bear direct responsibility for the genocide in Donbass and the blood of civilian citizens of the people’s republics.”
He highlighted information that neo-Nazis are deploying heavy weapons in central areas of large cities, including Kyiv and Kharkiv, to provoke return fire from the Russian military against residential neighborhoods. “They act in the same way as terrorists all over the world: they hide behind people in the hope of blaming Russia for casualties among the civilian population,” Putin said.
Pope Francis visited the Russian Embassy to the Vatican to meet with the head of the diplomatic mission, Alexander Avdeev, to discuss the situation in Ukraine. The pontiff assured them that he is closely observing the development of events in Ukraine and expressed his concern about the escalation after the start of the military operation ordered on Thursday by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Likewise, the presidents of Russia and China, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, held a telephone conversation to discuss the Ukrainian crisis in a constructive and friendly atmosphere.
Xi stressed that he respects Russia’s actions in the crisis in the neighboring country and showed the coincidence of the positions of the two countries on the main issues of the international agenda, the Kremlin says in its statements.
Sanctions against Russia
The Council of Europe suspends Russia’s membership amid its military operation in Ukraine, a measure proposed by Poland and Ukraine that won the consensus of 42 of the committee’s 47 members.
Leaders of European Union countries agreed at an emergency summit to impose new economic sanctions against Moscow following the start of the military operation launched by Russia to defend Donbas.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that this second package of sanctions by the bloc will affect 70% of the banking market and Russia’s major state-owned enterprises, including those in the defense sector.
RT also highlighted the words of UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who warned that London will continue to take action until the Russian economy is impaired and the integrity of Ukrainian territory is restored. “We will not rest until the Russian economy has been degraded and Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity have been restored,” the head of British diplomacy said.
Sputnik also noted the measures taken by Poland, which closed its airspace to Russian aircraft, while Switzerland banned financial transactions with 363 Russian individuals and four legal entities.
For his part, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused NATO and the European Union of supporting Kiev in recent weeks, when it decided to seize by force the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic, in order to destroy the Minsk agreements. “The West fully supports the Kyiv regime in its efforts to sabotage and in the end destroy the Minsk Agreements,” Sputnik quoted Sputnik as saying.
However, no country in the transatlantic alliance wants to get involved in a war with Russia, according to statements by French Defense Minister Florence Parly and reminded that the Eurasian nation is a nuclear power.
MINREX: For international peace and security
Call for the preservation of international peace and security
Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Author: MINREX | internet@granma.cu
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The United States’ endeavor to impose NATO’s progressive expansion towards the borders of the Russian Federation constitutes a threat to the national security of the Russian Federation and to regional and international peace.
The U.S. Government has for weeks been threatening Russia and manipulating the international community about the dangers of an “imminent massive invasion” of Ukraine. It has supplied weapons and military technology, deployed troops in several countries in the region, applied unilateral and unjust sanctions, and threatened other reprisals. At the same time, it has unleashed an anti-Russian propaganda campaign.
Cuba has previously warned about the danger of this policy.
On February 22, 2014, the then President of the Councils of State and Ministers, Army General Raul Castro Ruz, warned, “Right now, alarming events are taking place in Ukraine. The intervention of Western powers must cease (…). It should not be ignored that these events could have very serious consequences for international peace and security”.
Years later, on September 26, 2018, before the United Nations General Assembly, the President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, warned that, “The continued expansion of NATO towards the borders with Russia causes serious dangers, aggravated by the imposition of arbitrary sanctions that we reject.
We call on the United States and NATO to seriously and realistically address the well-founded demands for security guarantees from the Russian Federation, which has the right to defend itself.
Cuba advocates a diplomatic solution through constructive and respectful dialogue.
We call for the preservation of international peace and security.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba
Havana, 22 February 2022
The Truth About Batista
The Truth About Batista
He was a pawn who implemented the policies for the region, advised by his mentors. His masters provided him with solid material support and military advice.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Page from Bohemia magazine, January 11, 1959 issue. Granma Archive
Lie, lie and lie some more. This is the line of the anti-Cuban media in South Florida, when dealing with the subject of the Island, in terms of current affairs, but also of the past.
For years, television networks, radio stations, websites and newspapers based there have, among their discursive guidelines -although the matrix has intensified notably during the last few weeks-, the vindication of the bloodthirsty tyrant Fulgencio Batista.
Throughout January and February 2022, there was a congestion of articles, comments and interviews with relatives of the dictator or alleged experts on his “legacy”. What has been said in such spaces about this terrifying character in Cuba’s history is so absurd and mendacious that it borders on delirium.
Any saint’s life would be dwarfed by such an avalanche of falsehoods aimed at ennobling the abject figure. But to really know who Fulgencio Batista was, it is not even necessary to go to “the history written by the communists”. The truth can even be found in the Western media, books and statements by high-ranking officials in Washington.
In 1952, this gentleman established the bloodiest and most corrupt dictatorship ever known in Cuba, with only the precedent of Gerardo Machado’s satrapy in terms of a criminal record.
Known for his previous work at the helm of the country, both because of his past as a coup leader and his pro-Washington fervors -demonstrated since his alliance with Ambassador Sumner Welles in 1933-, the 1952 uprising had the full backing of the U.S. Government.
He was a pawn who implemented the policies for the region, advised by his mentors. His masters gave him solid material backing and military advice, similar to what they did, years later, with the Pinochet misrule in Chile, after the coup against Salvador Allende.
U.S. investments would reach one billion dollars in Cuba throughout his term of office. The visits of then Vice President Richard Nixon and Allan Dulles, director of the CIA, in 1955, served to strengthen the empire’s economic and ideological programs on the island.
Dulles told the tyrant of his government’s concern about communist activity in Cuba, in response to which the dictator inaugurated, in a few weeks, the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities (the dreaded BRAC).
The “creature”, together with the no less dreadful Military Intelligence Service (SIM), the National Police and the Army, turned the country into a police state, in whose vortex people lived in permanent anxiety and where political disaffection was punished with death, without half measures.
Meanwhile, the U.S. mafia turned the night and gambling business into another empire in Cuba, called “the brothel of America”, a subject on which valuable research has been published.
Everyone in the north, bandits included, Batista had a free bar here. Thus, he sponsored the great assassins of Latin American history (Conrado Carratalá, Pilar García, the Salas Cañizares brothers -Rafael, Juan and José María- and Esteban Ventura Novo) and cohorts of criminals to defend his sinister political structure.
They were “men of base instincts, born criminals, beasts carrying all the ancestral atavisms dressed in human form”, to put it in Fidel’s words, who put the nation on edge and, especially, its youth, who died with their eyes gouged out, without nails, their testicles burst or raped, in barracks, ditches, wastelands, rivers, seas.
In his reign of “blood and plunder” -terms used by journalist Enrique de la Osa-, corruption surpassed all historical standards of a nation already expert in the matter. Batista, by himself, raised his presidential salary from 26,400 to 144,000 dollars, even higher than that of U.S. President Truman, whose salary was around 100,000 dollars.
However, a large part of the Cuban population was unemployed, while the majority of the peasants lived in huts with guano roofs [guano is the excrement of seabirds and bats] and dirt floors, with no sanitary services or running water. Meanwhile, 90% had no electricity.
As the French professor, Salim Lamrani states in his essay 50 truths about the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in Cuba, the English economist Dudley Seers wrote that the situation in 1958 was intolerable: “in the countryside, social conditions were appalling. About a third of the nation lived in squalor (…) living in barracks, usually without electricity or latrines, victims of parasitic diseases and did not benefit from a health service.
“They were denied education (their children went to school for a year at the most). The situation of the precarious, installed in temporary shacks on collective lands, was particularly difficult (…). A significant proportion of the urban population was also very miserable”.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., personal advisor to President John F. Kennedy, wrote: “I loved Havana and was horrified by the way this lovely city was unfortunately transformed into a great casino and whorehouse for American businessmen (…). One wondered how Cubans – seeing this reality – could regard the U.S. in any other way than with hatred”.
This was the Cuba of misery, blood and terror imposed by Batista, the “beatific” president they now want to sell us from Florida. Just the thought of such a past redoubles our strength in the struggle to never go back to such a desolate scenario.
Ukraine and the spark of Donbass
Ukraine and the spark of Donbass
In a tweet, the member of the Political Bureau and Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, wrote: “We strongly reject the propagandistic and communicational hysteria unleashed by the U.S. government against Russia and we firmly oppose the expansion of NATO to the borders of that brother country”.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Russia estimates that more than 40 000 refugees from Donbas are already on its territory. Photo: Sputnik
The last week – that of the Russian “invasion” of Ukraine, fabricated by Washington – ended, and with it even the Russian military maneuvers, scheduled in advance, began the timeline for the return home of those involved.
Both the President of the United States, Joe Biden, as well as the highest exponents of NATO and some European rulers or subordinates were left wanting the shots to ring out and insisted on new lies on the same subject, but now more towards the inside of Ukraine than in the foreign environment.
The Kyiv government, used as “bait” for Russia to “take the bait” of the West and provoke a war, seems to be disappointed by so many lies and manipulation of those who have promised it NATO membership and the guarantee of its security in the face of a possible reaction from Moscow.
However, with these actions, the only thing they have caused Ukraine is a substantial economic loss that already exceeds $3 billion, without counting the bills that will be passed on later for the “aid” in weapons of all kinds that they are providing it with. But where are the shots and the supposed casualties caused by the Russian invasion? Where did the tanks and artillery that Washington announced would reach Kyiv come in.
Then they remembered a key piece in this puzzle: the separatist republics of Donbass with their territories of Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR), in Ukraine, became, overnight, the spark of a new provocation against Moscow.
Kyiv, with its army, is staging a montage that cannot be sustained, but which already this weekend left some civilians dead and more than 40,000 people of Russian origin were forced to cross the border and take refuge in the Russian region of Rostov.
In view of the heated warlike mood, both Russia and Belarus, which had already ended their joint military maneuvers, have decided to prolong them. Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin described the current scenario as “a strong smell of gunpowder” in the region, with the possibility of “Europe being pushed into a war”, as several neighboring countries are accumulating more advanced weapons, according to RT.
He also reiterated that the goal of the Russian and Belarusian maneuvers remains the same: “to ensure an adequate response and de-escalation of the enemies’ military preparations.”
In the meantime, the spark in Donbas may become, with the help of the West and the mainstream press at its service, a detonator that will make what Russia and the international community want to avoid – a war – a reality.
Carlos Lazo: I embraced Max Lesnik
Carlos Lazo: I embraced Max Lesnik knowing that he is a precursor of these #PuentesDeAmor.
I return to deliver my column to Carlos Lazo. Now with a more than deserved tribute to Max Lesnik, the legendary revolutionary of a thousand anecdotes who, from Cuba, in the United States and other corners of the world has written stories full of patriotism and humanism. Lazo, the president of Bridges of Love portrays him masterfully. HONOR TO WHOM HONOR IS DUE
By Carlos Rafael Dieguez
February 02, 2022
Photos by Michell Casanova
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Max Lesnik is one of my heroes. A good Cuban, a good father, a good husband, a good friend. The other day I met him again in the Miami Caravan, raising his voice against the blockade. So old and yet so young, Max! I felt that his smile bore the accumulated joy of many decades, the same as when he was just a young boy and participated in the student struggles at the University of Havana against Batista’s tyranny.
He hugged me and I felt again the great pride of sharing History, in capital letters and alive. In his eyes, I perceived the same stoicism, the same rebelliousness and transparency that he showed in 1960, when he left Cuba because he disagreed with the direction the Revolution was taking. Max has always been an honest man, without mincing his words.
Many years after that departure, his friend Fidel Castro would ask him, “Why did you leave?”. Max replied. “I didn’t like that Cuba was aligned with the Soviet Union.”
It is a privilege to be able to thank a man like him, a 90-year-old giant who is still in battle, coherent. The same Max who founded Réplica magazine in Miami. The “man of the two Havanas” -the “small” one in Miami and the big one on the island. The same Max who, in the United States, survived numerous terrorist attacks in an attempt to assassinate him, silence his message and overthrow his struggle. In him, always the same obsession: Cuba, Cuba, Cuba! Then and now.
This Sunday I embraced the founder of the Alianza Martiana. Decades ago, in the United States, Max Lesnik and others founded that organization of diverse women and men. Since then, they dreamed of “a better relationship between the U.S. government and the peoples of Our America”. They opposed the blockade. In the Alianza, no one is rejected or discriminated against for reasons of creed, “race or political philosophy”. I embraced him knowing that he is a precursor of these #PuentesDeAmor through which we travel today and in which Max goes, ahead, removing weeds, opening possibilities, bringing Cubans together.
Max radiates that light carried by those who never stop fighting.
Carlos Lazo
February 2, 2022
Cuba: zero tolerance for drug trafficking
Cuba: zero tolerance for global drug trafficking threat
Permanent vigilance and timely response by specialized forces made it possible to dismantle a criminal network organized by Cubans from Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
While the world is plunged into the devastating pandemic of COVID-19, hundreds of new and increasingly dangerous synthetic drugs are invading every corner of the planet, adding to the abuse of marijuana, cocaine and heroin, which affect almost 300 million people.
The main market on the planet, the United States, has the highest number of deaths from drug overdoses in its history, with more than 100,000 deaths between April 2020 and the same month in 2021, most of them due to the so-called opioid epidemic, which increased lethality by 28.5%.
Illicit drug trafficking and consumption continue to be a serious global phenomenon that threatens international security and from which no country can escape, due to the complex and sophisticated networks of the lucrative drug trafficking business (more than $600 billion in annual profits), the omnipresence of the mafias, the use of maritime and air corridors, ways of operating and inserting themselves into the dynamics of world trade, and allying with other forms of international organized crime.
The effects of international trafficking continued to impact Cuba in 2021, from the complex regional framework, its incidence in the Caribbean, the existence of routes close to our territory and the arrival of packages dragged by sea currents (recalos), which represented the largest volume of seized drugs and a potential danger for the articulation of internal trafficking. Attempts to smuggle or introduce drugs across maritime and air borders were also confronted; marijuana crops were dismantled and internal trafficking activities were neutralized.
The persistence and intentionality of Cuban and foreign emigrants to organize drug operations with the support of Cuban citizens was noted, for which they rearranged and diversified their actions, using unaccompanied loads, postal shipments and the use of speedboats.
One of the most dangerous trends of the year was the combination of human trafficking operations with attempts to smuggle drugs into the country using speedboats and other vessels, in line with the changes generated by international crime.
Likewise, 18 sightings of suspicious means that violated the airspace and eight vessels in alleged illicit operations were detected, all of which evidences an increase in the threats in the maritime and air environment of the Cuban archipelago.
These challenges demanded a redoubling of surveillance, persecution and coordinated confrontation between the bodies of the Ministry of the Interior (Minint), the General Customs of the Republic, other participating agencies and the people.
A YEAR OF INTENSE CONFRONTATION
According to information provided by MININT, as a result of the confrontation in 2021, Cuba seized a total of 4 162.23 kilograms (kg) of drugs, mostly marijuana; captured five naval means involved in drug trafficking operations and confiscated goods and sums of money due to these illicit activities.
The largest amount of drugs – it was revealed – was seized in the 295 drug seizures, higher than the 153 in 2020, and with a total of 2,338.64 kg of drugs seized in those events. Other high volumes were captured during the seizure of the aforementioned vessels.
As for the air border, 21 international drug trafficking operations were neutralized at the José Martí International Airport in the capital, in which 67.59 kg of these substances were seized and 41 people, including foreigners and nationals, were arrested.
In the fight against the cultivation of marijuana, 97 plantations were discovered, in which 32,868 plants and 48,521 seeds were seized. Meanwhile, 121 acts of internal trafficking were neutralized, with 165.63 kg of marijuana.
CHECKMATE AT SEA
The permanent surveillance and timely response of the specialized forces made it possible to dismantle a criminal network organized by Cubans from Mexico, with a support base in Panama, Costa Rica and Cuba, with the intention of smuggling marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines, using passengers, cargo and speedboats in combined human and drug trafficking operations. As a result of this operation, 26 individuals were arrested, 303.37 kg of drugs were seized, and a speedboat was captured.
In addition, two other vessels linked to combined human and drug trafficking operations directed to Cuba from Mexico, the U.S. and Jamaica were neutralized and seized, in which significant amounts of marijuana and synthetic cannabinoids were seized.
In addition, two other speedboats were captured with six Bahamian crew members on board, who were seized with 1,291.82 kg of marijuana, and who were linked to operations not directed to Cuba.
The results of 2021 confirm the political will of the Cuban government to continuously strengthen the fight against the serious global scourge of drug trafficking and the prevention of drug abuse, and to prevent the use of airspace and territorial sea by international drug traffickers, with their lethal cargo destined for the main consumer markets, or to try to penetrate the country.
The big swindle
The big swindle
There is a tendency to publish arbitrary and manipulated exchange rates in the media financed from abroad, as well as false information, which has been denied by our media and on institutional sites.
January 26, 2022 23:01:05 PM
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Screenshot
Could someone tell us how many daily transactions are made in Cuba to buy pesos with MLC cards? Of course not, it is CUP data that banks keep secret. Maybe tell us the number of people who, in parks, living rooms of their homes, or wherever they consider appropriate, exchange CUP in cash for dollars? Of course, it is not possible to know this either.
And then, how do you believe those media that claim to know the exchange rate of the dollar, the euro, or the MLC in the street? Are these gentlemen hackers capable of spying on the phones of Cubans? Are they fortune tellers or telepaths? Did they buy a crystal ball that tells them?
Do you know what a self-fulfilling prophecy is? Let me explain: it is a prediction that, once made, is in itself the cause of its coming true. I mean, inflation certainly exists, the exchange rate on the street is different from the official one, but it is not the one that certain sites offer as true either. It becomes real thanks to the fact that many people believe them and take them as such.
How do these gentlemen arrive at the number: they simply place it with their hand. They say that they calculate it based on trends in certain WhatsApp groups, which in turn are taken from Revolico groups, which in turn… That is, Pancho says, Maria says, Pedro says, Songo says: the one who gave it to Borondongo, the one who gave it to Bernabé.
It turns out that our economy grew by 2% in 2021.Since November, the borders were opened, tourism started, the pandemic fell to bearable levels, the so-called mules return, and as a consequence of this, which means greater availability of foreign currency and products in the street, the exchange rate does not decrease, as it is to be expected, but rather it becomes violently more expensive.
How there are people getting rich thanks to such a trick. The next move was already a foregone conclusion. For a week the supposed exchange rates were manipulated until they reached spectacular numbers, and then, suddenly, by other means, the lie was circulated -by falsifying the official Gazette- that soon our banks would begin to sell a limited amount of foreign currency to the population.
Can anyone still not see the scam? It is easy to illustrate. Since I am confident that a significant number of people trust me, I say that the exchange rate is, let us say, at 105. Then, given a supposed government announcement, I claim that the rate is going down, and so I take the opportunity to buy dollars at a much lower price. With a simple deception operation, bingo, I fill my pockets. I will never lose because, if this trap does not work, I can always buy more in local currency, where, paradoxically, prices maintain a certain stability, and some even decrease.
I uploaded a post on Facebook with this topic -which was shared in several groups, and also on other social networks-, and there I said: “Now academics and other “experts” will come to justify and show the existence of these alleged rates as a scientific truth”. And I was not wrong. Someone immediately came out to refute me, and to say that a certain colleague of theirs, with a copious curriculum vitae, received an award for having invented a novel method to calculate exchange rates based on Revolico’s sales.
Really, more than 200 years after Gauss, Bayes or Laplace? And what was the name of the thesis? A magic formula for the calculation of prices, based on a population sample of speculators on Revolico? Surely the calculation of this “scientist” would be accompanied by a warning letterhead: “Estimates, I owe you the size and segmentation of the sample, variance and standard deviation, confidence intervals and other elements of seriousness and predictive good faith, because I really do not know the definitive prices agreed “privately”, nor how many products the speculators sold or if they ever sold any”.
We have every genius…! But let’s not stop at the idea that this hoax is intended to obtain illegal profits; behind it lie more sinister intentions. For example, in Venezuela, they used the same modus operandi to destroy the exchange value of the bolivar. They created a site called Dolar Today, based in the United States, which manipulated the rates upwards every day. Thus, together with other economic blockade measures, they succeeded in inducing galloping inflation in that country. From morning to afternoon, in just three or four hours, prices rose extraordinarily: something impossible to explain with sound logic.
Of course, conditions in Venezuela are different from those in Cuba: 95% of the retail trade there -as well as the foreign trade that feeds it- is in private hands. It is not surprising then that we have seen such “geniuses” many times trying to show the “advantages” of privatizing foreign trade for our economy. This is the strategic link they need to change.
In any case, these are illegal practices that generate uncertainty and violate international norms; but respect for legality has never been a virtue that accompanies U.S. governments when they insist on destroying countries that do not bow to their designs.
Have you ever wondered who finances those sites that supposedly inform you of how the MLC is doing today? Do you believe in the goodness of the same people who blockade us and prevent a father from sending remittances to his children, or a son to his mother, from their territory?
Certainly, our country is going through difficult times. To overcome them and reactivate the economy, it is necessary to control the pandemic, and in this -thanks to our vaccines created by true scientists- we have taken solid steps forward.
There is no other solution than to generate goods and services with our own efforts: something that can be achieved with dedication and responsibility in all areas.
IN CONTEXT
There is a tendency to publish arbitrary and manipulated exchange rates in the media financed from abroad, as well as false information, which has been denied by our media and in institutional sites.
It is noted that they intend to establish the same logic of the so-called Dolar Today in Venezuela, inducing an exchange rate that generates an inflationary stampede, by involving part of the commerce and the private sector, which take these exchange rates as a reference.
In Europe there are also antecedents of this practice. The date of September 16, 1992 is known as Black Wednesday, due to the collapse of the pound sterling, which became one of the main reasons why the United Kingdom was unable to adopt the euro. The event ultimately forced Britain to exit the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. The crash of the pound created immense wealth for investors such as George Soros. It also caused tremendous turmoil in Britain’s political landscape. The reason is that they were spending taxpayers’ money in an attempt to keep the pound afloat.
In the case of Cuba, they are also looking for a way to irritate and capitalize on the popular displeasure caused by inflation, in the midst of a scenario of shortages also motivated by the impact of the persecution of the blockade and the crisis derived from the pandemic, in order to generate scenarios of destabilization.
The Cuban Project
The Cuban Project
By Agustín Lage Dávila
25 January 2022
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
We are approaching January 28 and we have to talk about José Martí. He lived and died for a project of a country that did not yet exist in his time. But millions followed him, and fell in love with that project, because great historical projects, even if they are formulated by exceptional leaders, are viable only when they synthesize the aspirations of many human beings.
This is what he himself said in an article published in the newspaper Patria in April 1892: “What a group covets, falls. What a people wants, endures”.
And in that shared project, Cuban national consciousness was formed: it emerged from decades of war in the 19th century, in a population of just over a million inhabitants, occupied by tens of thousands of enemy soldiers. It made annexation to the United States impossible. It forced the repeal of the Platt Amendment. It resisted, in the first half of the 20th century, 60 years of American ideological and cultural pressure, and thereafter, another 60 years of economic warfare, military hostility and ideological subversion. And it faced the challenge derived from the disappearance of the European socialist camp. So what are we Cubans who have been the protagonists of all this?
Let’s start by saying what we “are not”. We are not a nationality united by common ethnic roots, nor by religious confessions: Here there is “an ajiaco” of everything, as Don Fernando Ortiz said. Nor are we defined by an exclusive language: we have the language used by the largest number of countries in the world. We are not a closed economic space: we have always had an open economy. We do have our own culture that makes us proud, but it is not a closed culture either, it shares roots with many other cultures from several continents.
So what is it that identifies and unites us? We are essentially a nationality with ethical roots, united around a special sensitivity for social justice. We are Cubans because we share a set of moral values and a project of human coexistence.
This is what Martí also wrote when he called for the necessary war in the Manifesto of Montecristi: “…when a warrior of independence falls on Cuban soil…he falls for the greater good of man (and) the confirmation of the moral republic in America…”
The 1959 revolution reinforced in Cubans that fusion between nationality and social justice, now synthesized in Fidel’s thought and in the concrete achievements of these last 60 years, which showed us in deeds what the people always knew: that social justice is possible.
Total literacy and schooling, free education and health for all, full-coverage social security, full employment, elimination of racial discrimination, equality and development of women, universalization of culture and university education, home ownership, scientific development; these are truths that must be said and repeated, because we are so accustomed to these achievements that sometimes we forget how advanced they are and how much they contradict the dominant ideology of today’s savage capitalism.
The permanent defense of national sovereignty has allowed us to build our own political, social and economic alternative. Revolutions do not crystallize and become irreversible immediately when they denounce the social preconditions that need to be changed, not even when they formulate noble ideas and strategic projections. Revolutions become lasting and creative when they succeed in building the alternative. In Cuba we did it.
National sovereignty is the safeguard of our project of society, of our own concepts of justice and human coexistence, as they have emerged from our own history.
Photo: Alejandro Azcuy Domínguez
Martí’s project of the nation was born in opposition to the one that was simultaneously emerging in the United States, based on ambition and competition among people.
This is what he wrote in his “Notebook No. 1”: “Our life does not resemble theirs, nor should it in many points. American laws have given the North a high degree of prosperity and have also raised it to the highest degree of corruption. They have monetized it to make it prosperous. Prosperity at such a cost be damned!”
169 years have passed since Martí’s birth, but the essential battlefields of ideas are still there.
The ideas about how we want our lives to be are now synthesized in the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba. It was approved with 86.85% of the votes. There it is “what a people wants”, what Martí predicted is what endures.
Does it have enemies? Of course, it does. The “Cuba Project” always had them, here and abroad. In his time, Martí himself had to fight battles of ideas against autonomists and annexationists. But today those enemies are few, and they lack legitimacy before the people.
Cubans have all the right in the world to fight for “what a people wants” and to defend it from its enemies, both here and abroad.
Are there different opinions in Cuba on the concrete ways to conduct the “Cuba Project”? That is another matter. Of course, there are such opinions, and it is good that they exist. Discussing them will allow us to perfect the project, adjust it to the new times, and make its building more solid, but without ever damaging the foundations.
Human beings are moral entities, not only biological or economic, and we embrace collective projects, beyond individual projects. For those who stop thinking and acting (there are some) based on an idea of the future, the present collapses and empties of content. The truth is, although the usual cynics and skeptics do not understand it, that people fall in love with projects, even in the midst of the harsh realities of the present.
Martí’s project was the project of thousands of young mambises. Fidel’s project was the project of thousands of young rebels, before and after the triumph of 1959. The project of the nation that our Constitution enunciates is and will be the collective project of millions of young Cubans today.
This is described in Article 1: “Cuba is a socialist state of law and social justice, democratic, independent and sovereign, organized with all and for the good of all as a unitary and indivisible republic, founded on the work, dignity, humanism and ethics of its citizens, for the enjoyment of freedom, equity, equality and individual and collective prosperity”.
On January 28, in a few days, it is time to evoke the founding ideas of our nationality and our project of society, and to reinforce the broad consensus we have on the need to defend them and make them endure.
We will return the following day to the discussions on what needs to be changed to achieve this.
The man of two Havanas reinvents himself
The man of the two Havana’s reinvents himself
By Jorge Gómez Barata
January 7, 2022
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
At 91 years of age, Max Lesnik (b.1930), is the living Cuban, akin to the revolutionary process, with the longest career and political experience. Active in politics for 77 years, almost all of them accompanying Fidel Castro whom he met in 1948, with whom he was a militant in the youth of the Orthodox Party and whose slogan of armed struggle he joined in 1957, Max reinvents himself as an asset of Cuban foreign policy.
When the Revolution triumphed in 1959, Max returned to journalism and soon differences with the process arose due to reservations about the prominence of the leaders of the Popular Socialist Party (Communist) and the alliance with the Soviet Union, options he did not share. In 1961 he went into exile in the United States, where he was arrested.
In Miami, Max did what he had done all his life: politics, with the difference that instead of allying himself with the counterrevolution, he continued to fight, now not only the Batista hangovers, but also U.S. policy against Cuba. To that end, he created his own radio program and founded the magazine “Replica”.
In 1976, summoned by Fidel, he returned to Cuba, renewing political and emotional ties. political and emotional ties.
Taking advantage of his access to then-President James Carter, he participated in the promotion of the dialogue with the Cuban community abroad. In the promotion of the dialogue with emigrants in 1978 headed by Fidel Castro, and given his relations with Fidel Castro, and given his relations with the Catholic hierarchy, he influenced the rapprochement with the Church and State and participated in the visit of Pope John Paul II to the island in 1998, who received him in Havana in a private audience in Havana.
“The man of two Havanas”, as his daughter, filmmaker Vivian Lesnik, baptized him, Vivian Lesnik, in a film of the same name, is an asset to Cuban foreign policy.
Max is, after Fidel Castro, the man linked to the process who survived the most attacks, about ten. His work has not met the same fate. The magazine Réplica, started in 1968, was closed in 1989 in the midst of a terrorist wave against it. An attempt was made to re-publish it again in 2000 but there were no resources or support to sustain it, something that may be happening with the Alianza Martiana, virtually the only surviving organization of what was the political base of the progressive Cuban community abroad.
Seemingly recovered from three major losses: Fidel, Eusebio Leal and Mirian, Max rises to his feet and, in reinventing himself, makes three suggestions associated with the dispute with the United States.
Last December 29, Max recalled his wedding with Mirian in 1955. Among the witnesses were some of Cuba’s liberal elite at the time: Raúl Chibas, Millo Ochoa, Roberto Agramonte, Miguel Angel Quevedo, Pelayo Cuervo Quevedo, Álvaro Barba, Raúl Rivero, José Manuel Gutiérrez Gutiérrez Planas and José Antonio Echevarría. The great absentee was his friend Fidel Castro, who was in exile in Mexico, with whom he met the day after the ceremony. Though it was not his intention, Max presents credentials to those who know him little.
1-According to Max, social networks report the existence of a high number of detainees in Cuba as a result of the “Guarimbas” who are in jail due to the United States, from whom they expect support. In a way, Max recalls the history of the defeated invaders in the Bay of Pigs who were exchanged for food. Max believes that there can be a formula and quotes an old saying: “What is equal is not a trap. a deal is a deal and any agreement is preferable to a lawsuit”.
2-Because it is highly unlikely that U.S. policy toward Cuba will change in the immediate future, he believes that: “The best thing the Cuban government can do is to turn the page in terms of waiting for the U.S. to give up its ambitions. There should be no illusions. Cuba must continue on its own path with its own efforts. It is better to walk alone than to be badly accompanied by a powerful and ambitious neighbor, who is still bent on its imperial dreams”.
3-Max tells me that Ben Rhodes, a former advisor to President Obama, prominent in the reestablishment of relations with Cuba, described Biden’s policy towards the island as clumsy and “Trumpist”, which nobody expected from the vice president of that country. Although senior officials at the time disagreed with Biden’s Cuba policy, they remain silent as they wait for Obama to cast the first stone. Max believes that in this regard it would be necessary and the former president should be encouraged to speak out on current Cuba policy. Let Obama speak! Who’s going to bell the cat?
A mutual friend with whom I discussed the suggestions told me: “El Duende (a pseudonym that they say conceals Max’s identity) is on a tight leash…”. The same thing would have been said, I replied, if someone had suggested that that in 1978 Fidel would hold a dialogue with emigrants and as a result would free thousands of political prisoners… Neither would I have believed that El Duende, would talk privately with the pope. Because I enjoy his friendship and have collaborated in some of his projects, one day I will ask him: What did you talk about?
Imaginative Cuban politics and Max Lesnik are not predictable. Something is up to something. See you there.
Boric’s challenge
Boric’s challenge
“Boric, without a doubt, is a moderate leftist; he belongs to that “new left”, whose maximum referents at the international level are Podemos (United We Can) and Syriza”, argues Medina Neira, member of the Communist Party of Chile.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Twitter/Gabriel Boric
“Brother, what happened that Sunday was remarkable. The humblest arriving on foot to vote for the corporate boycott of locomotion. Of course, this is not the socialist revolution, but it is a scenario where we can build a more democratic society that allows better conditions, not only for life, but to grow politically, organize and move towards a society with a more revolutionary status. It is up to us to take a gamble for that, or fascism will articulate itself to win”.
This is how a Chilean friend of mine sums up what, for him, as for many Latin Americans, is a political victory. And I do not doubt it. Defeating an ultra-right-winger like Kast, heir to the remnants of Pinochettism, with a conservative discourse, will always be a victory in spite of? And I say “in spite of”, because you can add any regret you consider, although there are many in my opinion.
That several of the world’s main media refer to the “leftist candidate” or “leftist” to talk about Boric is not surprising. The president-elect contains a discourse of social changes for the benefit of disadvantaged sectors, even with quotes from Allende; but that discourse, we already know, has its limits.
The Chilean Tito Medina Neira, community and popular leader, commented to me: “Boric, in his victory speech, paraphrased Allende. Then he stopped in front of his bust in the Government Palace and honored him. We could notice that he makes an assessment of the tremendous significance that the Popular Unity government had in Chile in terms of democratic and economic measures, and although his party (Convergencia Social, member of Frente Amplio) declares itself committed to the achievement of a socialist, democratic, libertarian and feminist society, its praxis many times coincides more with social democracy than with the socialist Revolution of “empanada and red wine” that Allende proposed”.
***
The left in Latin America has had many faces and many voices, not always anti-imperialist, not always anti-colonialist, not always emancipatory. It would not be the first time that we see a “left” that does not revolutionize the status quo, that does not strengthen workers’ control over the means of production, that forgets the burdens caused by capitalism in this region, that makes up the enormous existing inequality gaps and that ends up making pacts with the bourgeoisie, when they put the noose around its neck, to the detriment of public policies and continental unity.
This is a very Latin American script, often repeated in recent years: The left wins, yes, and then loses to an antagonistic political project; when the same voters are disappointed with the behavior of their leaders, the back-and-forth, the lukewarmness and inability to solve the problems in the face of the pressures of conservatives on progressive ideas. Is Boric a progressive?
“Boric, without a doubt, is of the moderate left; he belongs to that “new left”, whose maximum referents at the international level are Unidas Podemos [Spain] and Syriza [Greece]”, argues Medina Neira, also a member of the Communist Party of Chile.
The Revolutionary Communist Organization of Chile has expressed: “The pact for peace and the new Constitution is the strategy of the bourgeoisie, as a class, to demobilize the people in struggle and install a process of relegitimization of the order by means of the constituent assembly, and with it the institutionalization in the bourgeois framework of popular demands”.
In view of this, it is worth asking: To what extent is Boric an instrument of the same bourgeoisie to extinguish the demands of the population? To what extent will he be able to escape from that powerful bourgeoisie that controls Chilean politics? Will he represent the poor Chilean who went on foot to the ballot box, the exploited Chilean who cannot go to university, the displaced Indians, the elderly who demand better pensions, the children who work in the mines, although this was the sector that gave him the victory?
Boric is a young man who was able to study in a university and think about the changes that others of his generation have not been able to, because they were busy looking for a living to eat and without the possibility of studying. As one of the faces that emerged from the student protests of 2009 and 2011, and the strikes of 2019, to his commitment must be added others in which he must fulfill his role, as he faces the neoliberal right and Chilean fascism that pushes for greater private control over the means of production, and almost no action by the State.
Is Boric up to the task of the position he holds, and does he understand the magnitude of the political relations that are woven around him?
“It is not within my interests (to be President), I lack a lot of experience, have a lot to learn, of knowledge of the State”, he acknowledged some time before the election. The absence of popular leaders capable of confronting the right-wing pushed him to assume a candidacy that today has evolved to the role of president of a representative country in the region. Boric’s challenge is great, and he will only respond, with actions, if he is prepared to assume it.
***
The Movimiento Vientos de Pueblo expressed: “It must be made clear that reformism and social democracy are neither an alternative nor an ally to fight the enemy, the same that has been positioned even by new non-traditional bourgeois fractions, as neoliberalism. Nor to generate a real transformation of the bases of society”.
Many consider that the vote for Boric, more than a vote for his proposals, is a rejection of Kast’s proposals, which, in the same way, is a victory for reason. But this is the risk of the electoral model that makes a leap to the right and another to the left. Countries are settled between different projects that, when they come to power, end up destroying everything built by the previous government.
***
“Hope overcame fear”, was Boric’s victory phrase. Tito Medina comments that there is a fascist boom in Chile today. “Fascism is still a latent danger, which has been able to grow and sustain itself in the most economically and politically backward layers, as defined by Fidel in that dialogue with Allende in 1971. The hope is to carry out the Government Program to eradicate neoliberalism”.
Boric is 35 years old. He feels differently, but he cannot dare to forget. Like those of his generation, he did not experience firsthand the consequences of the Pinochet military dictatorship imposed by the U.S., but he knows the history. He has just entered a game where many pawns have fallen and where there are unpunished kings.
Perhaps that is why he points to Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua as countries that “violate human rights”, something that coincides with the political agenda of the United States, and becomes the discourse of the misnamed “new left”.
He recently accused Venezuela of [being] a “failed experience”, using as an argument the six million emigrants, to which the former Ecuadorian President, Rafael Correa, responded: “Have you forgotten the criminal blockade of Venezuela? Venezuela is prevented from selling its oil! How many Chileans would be in the “diaspora” if they were prevented from selling copper to Chile? It is like finding a drowned man in chains and saying that he died because he could not swim”.
Does Boric not know of the thousands of murders, disappearances, tortures, in the neoliberal crusades of the continent? How many more would be if Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua were to fall before a hegemonic, imperial and anti-democratic power that wants to subjugate our peoples? What does it mean to be of that “new left”? A “left” not so radical in its decolonizing thinking and that flirts with the bourgeoisie and the interests of the empire?
The mainstream media rush in their semiotic war and speak today of a new left in Latin America or of a “democratic left” when referring to Gabriel Boric, something that sets off alarms if we take into account the model of democracy they venerate, where Cuba is demonized and Colombia rewarded, in spite of the hundreds of assassinations of social leaders every year. We should ask ourselves why the hegemonic press has decided, almost in its entirety, to view Boric’s victory so favorably.
***
Does the Communist Party of Chile support the new president?
“Although with Boric there have been differences, especially during the rebellion of 2019, we assumed the commitment to work for his candidacy in pursuit of the fulfillment of the Government Program -explains Medina Neira-. That is what the communists and, above all, the other parties of Chile Digno, expect: that the Government Program is fulfilled and that the political prisoners of the October Rebellion of 2019 are granted freedom”.
Boric’s challenge is in being a new left, it is true, a left that Latin America needs: a left that does not protect social repressions to progressive thought; that does not isolate, nor marginalize, nor criminalize anti-colonialist and anti-capitalist struggles, that fully believes in popular power for the resolution of conflicts, that empowers women, Indians and blacks; that supports the lgbtiq+ community, that believes in a sustainable ecological order without the exploitation of big capital on the resources of the people.
The challenge is to be a left that finds in Latin American unity an emancipatory force against colonialism of a new kind, that does not yield to bourgeois pressure or money, that promotes public policies for the benefit of the majority to begin to realize that hope that today takes the banner against fear, that does not adopt interfering positions with other peoples and much less plays the game to U.S. governments in their damaging campaigns against our identity and our self-determination.
Boric’s challenge is to be the left that he claims to be.
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