Translations 483
Polarization and a repressive environment
United States:
Polarization and a repressive environment
By Fernando M. García Bielsa
December 23rd, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The latest incidents of police brutality and racist killings in many U.S. cities are not a recent phenomenon. They are long-standing events, stemming from the days of slavery and, as now, developing alongside the violence of paramilitary and white supremacist groups.
The warlike projection of the country and its having reached the point of being permanently involved in a series of wars in various confines, has permeated the psyche of thousands of people and is reflected in a growing militarization at the domestic level. In addition to police brutality, it is clearly expressed in the proliferation of violent groups, as well as in government agencies such as the prison system, the militarization of the border with Mexico, and violence against immigrants.
In addition to the violent and racist tradition with which the U.S. nation was formed and the impact of imperial militarism, there are also the social fractures, polarization, and growing inequalities that this society has shown in recent decades. There are tens and tens of millions of people inserted in a vicious circle of residential segregation in unsafe neighborhoods lacking basic services.
Let’s look at some background
Protests in New York against racism. Photo: The New York Times/Archive
The question of race and racism against Blacks has been a major factor in shaping American culture and policy from colonial times and the formation of the republic to the present. Much of national politics revolves around them. The historical and current location of African Americans is – in many ways – central to the country’s problems.
In turn, Black political movements and activism have historically been at the forefront of struggles for progressive change in the United States, a vast and diverse country where class and other movements have been co-opted or fragmented. This is influenced by historical reasons, immense institutional obstacles, as well as the dimensions of the country, the tensions arising from the multi-ethnic character of its population, and the growing weakness of the labor movement.
In the late 1960s and 1970s, so-called “communities of color” began to understand that society, as it existed, would never address their needs as they were perceived and felt. It was in this period that exploring their cultural heritage and building their own institutions became their greatest strength. The Black Power slogan had electrified Black communities across the country.
A dramatic transformation in the self-image of Black people began, in the context of one of the most effective social movements to date in the country, of racial pride, collective consciousness and community solidarity, with enormous repercussions in society as a whole.
After the impact of the great struggles and mobilizations of the Black civil rights movement, it became evident to sectors of power that the strength of such movements was being enhanced given the serious social problems in those communities. For this reason, since the 1960s, a whole series of government programs and assistance projects for the “development” of marginal areas and Black communities had been spreading.
Among the results of these programs was the strengthening of reformist groups and economic interests, as well as contributing in the long term to the formation of a whole layer of African American and Latino professionals and politicians with possibilities of access, public presence, and supposed representation of the interests of so-called ethnic minorities.
The Black bourgeoisie, including that which developed during the Obama administration, has continued to make false promises of inclusion. Except in the recent context in reaction to the wave of killings and police violence, organized political activism by African Americans has reached this stage after a long period of ebb.
Black groups have remained atomized, uncoordinated, focused on immediate economic and social concerns, and their energies have become diffuse, marked by the needs and life emergencies of their social bases, internal divisions, and the social polarization in their communities. External manipulations of all kinds do the rest.
The appearance of greater political influence by the Black population given the access of a few of their own to positions of some visibility has been misleading. Despite some advances in participation and representation, Blacks continue to fare worse than whites in having their political preferences and interests legislated.
The increase in class diversity that has taken place within these ‘communities’ and the nefarious role played by the Democratic Party in presenting itself as a champion of the underprivileged when in fact it is subject to the interests of the country’s financial elite, were felt.
A polarized and contentious society
Black Lives Matter mural on a street in Washington Photo: CNN.
The United States shows a growing number of very deep social divisions. Racism and the dangerous ideology of white supremacy is a serious obstacle to social cohesion, and is sometimes conducive to and at the root of serious outbreaks of violence. Demographic trends, some warn, suggest that the nation will not be sustainable in the long term unless marked inequalities between populations of diverse ethnic backgrounds are corrected.
Analyst Tim Wise said (on the Truthout website, March 2, 2012) that, in 25 or 30 years when non-whites will be half the population and the majority in several states, it will not be sustainable for the country to maintain that population as it is now. Blacks today are three times more likely to be in poverty than whites, twice as likely to be unemployed, with several times less assets and with an income less than the other half of the citizenry, and with nine years less life expectancy.
Behind that reality, repressive conceptions prevail. These are not only fed by overflowing militaristic mentalities or fears of ungovernability, but they are backed up by calculations of profit generation. These are derived from the so-called wars on drugs, mass incarceration in private prisons, outsourcing to private “security” agencies, and institutionalized repression against immigrants and marginalized populations.
The focus of repressive state activity is directed against Black groups and progressive organizations, which has led to the violation of civil liberties, the criminalization of social movements, increased surveillance and infiltration of Black, Latino and poor Muslim institutions and communities, including the deployment of undercover police, informants and intimidation in homes and public spaces.
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A woman protests in New York against the ban on Muslims in Trump. Photo: Stephanie Keith/ AFP.
Muslim communities in the country face an environment of growing intolerance and hostility since the September 11, 2001 attacks. State and local police forces gather information and spy on law-abiding Muslim citizens. They become targets of violence as an extension of racism and xenophobia to our day, virtually demanding submission and near abandonment of their cultural and identity expressions.
So far, anger and despair have replaced the organizational strength and momentum of the civil rights era.
Trapped in almost immovable racist structures
A woman affected by the tear gas launch during a protest in Boston in June. Within six nights, the agitation spread to every major city in the country and became a general protest against systemic racism in the United States. Photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters.
U.S. society is deeply fractured politically and across class, regional, economic, ethnic, religious, and cultural interests. Racial issues intersect with class differences and class oppression, and are often instrumentalized for political purposes. Levels of violence resurface; disparities are enormous. There are pockets of the population where people live in constant paranoia.
Even after the great rebellions against racism and the successes of the civil rights movement in the middle of the last century, including the partial dismantling of many of the legal structures that supported segregation, racial inequality remains a palpable fact. The racial chasm is widening and has not been altered by changes in government.
Racial prejudice in the United States has a strong negative impact on the lives of African Americans. It expresses itself in forms of discrimination in all areas and conditions of existence: segments of the population caught in a vicious circle of residential segregation, inferior opportunities for education or health services, marginality, increasing rates of incarceration, and discrimination in employment. Black workers receive 22% less than white workers in their wages, with the same levels of education and experience. The average income of African American households is just over half that of white households.
In most cities and urban areas of the country there are separate areas where the Black population resides,. This reflect the historical racial segregation that shaped the country and the policies created in the past to keep Black people out of certain neighborhoods. Many of these slums have high levels of poverty and face an intense and unwanted police presence.
In such an atmosphere and because of such deep-rooted prejudices, any activity, no matter how innocent, in which a Black man is involved generates suspicion, alarm and often danger to his life. Consider also that the rate of Black citizens in prison is five times that of white citizens. Despite being only 13% of the population they constitute 40% of all incarcerated men.
Highly peaceful neighborhoods coexist with others where violent death ravages the usually poor. Entire communities of Black, Latino, Muslim or Asian populations feel their communities are under increasing police occupation.
U.S. society has not been able to address the root causes of the outrage and anger that consume millions and are behind the recent powerful demonstrations against repression and racism. Neither politicians nor public institutions have established effective government programs to mitigate at least these gross inequalities, ultimately produced by the prevailing capitalist system.
On the other hand, what that society has done quite effectively is to divide and co-opt many of the struggles and organizing efforts that were going on in those communities.
The re-emergence of a “new Jim Crow,” that is, of a climate of brutal segregation, based on the mass imprisonment and repeated police killings of unarmed Black men, shows that the old systems of repressive control have increased in the present, always maintaining the dividing line of skin color.
In contrast, white hate groups, nationalists and racists, as well as their armed paramilitary branches, proliferate and carry out violent actions, often being overlooked or even in collusion with authorities in certain regions. Many of President Trump’s words and actions have seemed to encourage such groups.
All of this demagogic rhetoric, which has a fascist slant and is a mirror of the country’s war policies, encourages desperate sectors to organize themselves into militias to wage crusades of various kinds. It is a propitious environment when more than 300 million firearms, many of them of high caliber, are in the hands of the population, when a part of the hundreds of thousands of war veterans live with their frustrations, resentments and traumas of their war experiences.
In this context, hundreds and hundreds of right-wing armed militias throughout the country are operating, whose ideology and motivations are a combination of paranoia, fear and aggressive claims of their rights to carry firearms, receptiveness to elaborate conspiracy theories and extreme anti-government anger. Many claim that the country’s government has been subverted by conspirators and has become illegitimate, and therefore see themselves as patriotic by organizing themselves paramilitarily, confronting the authorities, and fomenting racial warfare.
An increasingly complex urban [and national] future
Stop killing us. Photo: Raul Roa/Daily Pilot
Many authorities, in conjunction with the media, continued to criminalize protests and progressive groups, going so far as to characterize minor actions as violent crimes and even “terrorism.
Raising alleged “security” interests, the so-called program to Counteract Violent Extremism (CVE) was begun under the Obama administration (2009-2017), that openly resembles the repression against radical groups and the COINTELPRO program of the 1960s and 1970s, and that was added to the actions deployed after the passage of the Patriot Act in October 2001 and other actions.
On the basis of sections of that law, federal agencies are able to make more and more inroads into areas of civil and personal life. The FBI, for example, can demand information such as telephone and computer records, credit and banking history, etc., without requiring court approval and without being subject to controls on the use that the feds make of such personal information.
Abuses and violations of the law often occur. Such is the case when attention is drawn to controversial sections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which allow for the conduct of mass spying on Americans communicating abroad. Recently the National Security Agency (NSA) has admitted to improperly collecting several hundred million phone calls from U.S. citizens.
According to William I. Robinson, a specialist on these issues, in his January 2018 article Global Police State, as war and state repression are privatized, the interests of a wide range of capitalist groups converge around a political, social, and ideological climate conducive to the generation and maintenance of social conflict.
For some time there have been signs that the government was anticipating the possible occurrence of serious civil problems and disturbances.
A video entitled “The Urban Future and its Emerging Complexity,” created by the U.S. Army to be used in the training of special forces, is revealing of the mentality and attitude in state entities regarding citizenship and the so-called “problems” that the government must be prepared to face through the use of martial law.
Already in 2008, a report from the Army Defense College stated that in the face of the possibility of a wave of widespread civilian violence within the country, the military establishment planned to “redirect its priorities under conditions of exemption to defend domestic order and the security of the people.
In its 44 pages, the report warned of the potential causes of such problems, which could include terrorist attacks, unanticipated economic collapse, loss of legal and political order, intentional domestic insurgency, health emergencies, and others. It also mentioned the possibility of a situation of widespread public outcry that would trigger dangerous situations and that would require additional powers to restore order.
In recent years, the U.S. state has radically expanded its punitive and surveillance capabilities. To limit protests, control dissent and popular opposition, as part of the well-known actions of the FBI and local police forces in previous decades, the system used administrative and legislative methods, espionage and covert infiltration, discrediting actions, massive “preventive” arrests, police attacks even against authorized peaceful protests, and so on.
The FBI’s budget for funding undercover agents, much of it within progressive organizations, rose from $1 million in 1977 to several tens of millions today.
People march with signs, protesting police violence and racial equality in Washington, USA, on September 5, 2020. Photo: Leah Millis / Reuters
See also:
In the United States, Black deaths are not a flaw in the system. They are the system.
The containment of the “popular wall”
The containment of the “popular wall”
Holguin authorities take action to combat price violations
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The population feels protected every time their rights as consumers are taken care of. Photo: Ariel Cecilio Lemus
Holguín: With the COVID-19 on the prowl, a large group of rogue traders, whom Mercury himself would classify as a bunch of profiteers, have raised the prices of agricultural products and various items. In the face of this, the population is crying out to stop the mistakes of those who only think of their own pockets.
Solicitous, as it should be in times where half-baked positions are not admitted, the authorities of this province deploy actions to curtail the excesses that hurt, above all, the lowest income compatriots.
To the hard and without pause
Among the abusers sanctioned in recent days is a worker at a point of sale of agricultural products in the ccs Manuel Angulo. He was operating in the area of El Coco, near the provincial capital, and did not have the Commercial Authorization. It had been withdrawn a month ago for breaking the prices, which he ignored once again. This time, the outcome was the confiscation, among other products, of about 240 pounds of pork, valued at 5,470 pesos. Thus, what was intended for profit ended up in the 8 de Marzo maternity home.
In this effort, the agents of the National Revolutionary Police acted legally and with no ostentation. Access to reports on their work reveals that recently, in only 48 hours, they faced 111 cases related to the excessive increase in prices. These people had in their possession 4.5 tons of agricultural products and other merchandise, including coffee and animal feed. As expected, some of the violators could not justify the origin of what they were offering.
Dionisia Milagros Portelles, who heads the province’s Integral Direction of Supervision, points out that the body of supervisors works intensely in all the municipalities, which is why, in December and the first week of January, upon finding severe alterations in prices, they levied more than 1,700 fines amounting to more than 719,000 pesos.
As we proceed with absolute respect for the law, in several cases the confiscation of the goods was the result. Thus, for example, several people in the municipality of Calixto Garcia failed in their attempt to continue spoliation of the fellow citizens through the high prices at which they sold children’s shoes, socks, women’s sandals, razors and other items.
The abusive vendors frown and even blaspheme, but the people go out to stock up appreciate and applaud this action. They have had the opportunity to access, without excessive expenses, food, fruit, vegetables, ham, and sheep and pig meat, among other foods.
Ramiro Andrés Hampton agrees with this way of stopping the rampages of the abusers and speculators.
The “harassment” of the good
Abnalie Rondón says that the work of the authorities facing the price changers will not be efficient without the collaboration of those affected. “We have to let them know that we are not willing to put up with them. And since they have reached such a point of arrogance, one cannot be afraid to denounce them. We have allowed them too much until now”.
And it is true that denouncing unscrupulous procedures that affect the community is a civic attitude that needs all the support of those responsible for putting things in order. Addressing this issue at a recent working meeting attended by the media, the first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party in Holguín, Ernesto Santiesteban Velázquez, said that it would be unforgivable not to act in a hurry when the population brings to the attention of the authorities acts that hurt it.
Not believing in the power of collective vigilance was the mistake of an individual who, these days, transported in the vehicle driving packages of razor blades and blister packs of various types of medicines, among them diclofenac sodium plus paracetamol, ibuprofen, amoxicillin, tadalafil, vitamins and metronidazole and nystatin eggs. It was intended to be profitable and will now be processed by their recipients.
The same thing happened to a citizen residing in a rural area of Banes. Along with salt packs, he was taken care of by five plastic fumigation backpacks with all the attachments.
Similarly, acts of speculation and hoarding that lead to outrages continue to find a retaining wall. A resident of the Miraflores neighborhood in Moa knows this well, who was engaged in the illegal sale of a wide range of clothing for children and adults, jewelry, perfumes, wipes, USB cables, hearing aids and even nasobucos.
Staff at the Citizen’s Portal, a digital site of the Provincial Government, assures us that through this communication channel, notifications about price violations by cart drivers and other self-employed workers are constantly arriving.
It is not to prohibit, but to control and order
In view of the irregularities found in points of sale belonging to cooperatives, the ANAP in Holguín has undertaken a thorough review of the matter. This is aimed, above all, at identifying the productive forms that have fallen into the harmful game of lending their legal personality to the profiteers. “It is not a question of erasing these points from the commercial scene, but of controlling them, so that they can fulfill their true function. We must take into account that they will play an important role in the food offers in the context created by the new policy of commercialization of agricultural products”, says Amaury Velázquez Zaldívar, president of ANAP in the province.
Along with the actions of the inspectorates, dialogue with self-employed workers is also expanding, a sector in which, unfortunately, the greatest number of violations have been reported. An example of this effort to walk the right path are the meetings held by officials from the Provincial Directorate of Labor and Social Security with those who sell in bazaars in the city of Holguín to explain, once again, the regulations to be taken into account.
In the provincial capital, most of the points of sale of agricultural products operated by self-employed people show a total lack of supply, since those in charge know about the verifications in progress. But when a potential customer approaches, an attentive “public servant” appears from the vicinity with the product offers he keeps hidden.
Intelligence and perseverance are required to maintain this confrontation. It cannot be overlooked that many ask themselves if this attack against opportunism will be something specific, when avoiding inflation has to be a constant in order to achieve order in the economic environment.
Indications from the President
We can no longer postpone what the people ordered at the last Party congresses. We need to implement everything that is pending without delay, shake up the business system, ensure order, and intelligently deal with rising prices.
We also called on the necessary private and cooperative sectors. We must banish the selfishness and exclusive pursuit of personal gain that drives some to fish in the troubled river of the needs of the majority, abusively raising prices.
This people, noble and hard-working, has survived all the imperial fences and abuses with an extraordinary dose of solidarity and generosity that is now an inseparable part of the national being. Selfishness is an attitude that will not prosper in our Homeland.
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UNEDITED TRANSLATION OF COMMENTS AT GRANMA WEB PAGE:
Very well by the authorities and Holguinero police but WHAT ABOUT HERE IN HAVANA? It seems that there are only exhortations from the bosses to the rogues to behave well, and if not, why don’t they publish the cases like in this article of what they do in Holguin?
lesther veloso santos said:
2
January 7, 2021
08:15:34
everyone looks at the prices of these people and the mistake that the Cuban government has made with the rise in food prices essentially and the urban transport that even if you earn your salary does not give you the bill you have to criticize yourself and correct yourself because the bill does not give and there we will see …..
josé julio said:
3
January 7, 2021
08:55:35
I think that we really have to take the necessary measures to stop this kind of actions, that far from helping our society what they do is to destroy & attempt against the implemented laws. Everything that is exposed in this journalistic work is very well. Yes, because for many years we have been burdened with this great problem & the evil really continues. Sometimes they even call the telephone number assigned to make any complaint of this nature & many times it is “eternally” busy or nobody attends to it.
Olaida said:
4
January 7, 2021
10:03:38
I think it is very good that prices are within the reach of citizens, but the quality of bread has not been resolved, pork does not appear, fruit is not on the market, food is very scarce and of poor quality, beans and rice are very scarce and of poor quality, medicines are still lacking and the pension that we receive the people who no longer work is not enough for us with the prices that are hit and reduced. We need products to feed ourselves, medicines. Water, electricity and other essential elements to live decently the few years we have left. What is published in the press is not a reflection of the reality we are living. People need to solve their needs for food, medicine, housing, water and light in order to be able to talk about and deal with politics and what is happening in other countries. There are many organizations and officials dedicated to solving the problems but the results are only partially and sporadically appreciated, there is no stability and guarantees for a normal and decent life for the elderly and life is running out.
Lachy1989 said:
5
January 7, 2021
10:15:44
Hopefully, they will be able to control the prices in all Cuba. The task is hard because all the barrow drivers are slowing down the change since in the end they want to continue making the most of it. In the end I hope that someday the pyramid will be really ordered because if everyone raises prices in the end it will be the same. The barber or handyman will continue to earn more than an engineer working for the state. The biggest problem that the order will have, apart from inflation, is the widespread corruption that exists today in our country.
Aimara Perez Rodriguez said:
6
January 7, 2021
10:36:44
In Holguín alone, I deployed those actions throughout Cuba, all the money that they increased for us is being taken by those people, the individuals.
Deisy said:
7
January 7, 2021
10:44:38
Good article, many of these things not only happen in the provincial capital in the municipalities but also mainly in the “public servants” merchandise It would be good to check also the ice cream, the Coppelia ice cream ball, the most delicious, most popular ice cream is at 5.00 CUP and the own account raised to 8.00, how do you understand this?
habanera said:
8
January 7, 2021
11:27:33
The same thing happens in Havana, in the park Fe del Valle in Boulevard de San Rafael there are the sellers with their tables depending everything that is sold in the stores of all x 1. But they these products increased the value how 5 times. An example a pqte of Sponge to scrub (Which there is nowhere) in all x 1 cuc, cost 1cuc or 25 mn; they have them each individual sponge costs 30.00 MN. Like other products you don’t see in the stores. It is an abuse that these merchants have to the people buy and resell. Be careful with them. Greetings
MAYRA PINAR said:
9
January 7, 2021
12:30:48
Hello, this price increase is very diabolical because here in Pinar del Rio, the sellers of household goods that are really resellers and do not count propistas because they acquire the goods from one hand to another the prices are hot, hot please who revises that nobody sees it the responsible authorities this where this, on the other hand the cafeterias neither to speak, the pizerias by the same style and I join to the commentary better they had not raised the salaries, anyway neither we have left to pay a ball of ice cream in the coopelia that neither quality has to five pesos.
angel said:
10
January 7, 2021
13:23:11
Here in Santiago de Cuba, also the rogue sellers and abusers are for the free, and the inspectors know where it is sold expensive
Donald Trump’s shameful legacy against Cuba
Donald Trump’s shameful legacy against Cuba
More than 200 measures reinforced the financial, commercial and economic blockade that accumulates six decades of a despicable and inhumane policy
Juana Carrasco Martín |Juana@juventudrebelde.cu
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Donald Trump’s shameful legacy against Cuba. Autor: Juventud Rebelde Published: 17/01/2021 | 12:51 am
Moving trucks leave the White House loaded with large boxes containing the occupying family’s belongings until January 19, evicted by the decision of U.S. voters and the Electoral College, no matter what the outgoing tenant Donald Trump did and did not do to stay in place.
No tricks, unsuccessful lawsuits about alleged fraud and even the seizure of Congress by its white supremacist fanatics, some armed, and willing to do anything, as the gallows erected in front of the Capitol pointed out. A Pew Research Center poll says that about 70 percent of Americans now disapprove of how he has done his job.
Trump takes his stuff, but leaves behind a legacy of worse stuff than anyone would want. I will not speak of the mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic; nor of the internal chaos in a nation more divided than ever before; nor of the discredit of his unilateral and unconsultative policies on the international stage.
I will limit myself to the adverse legacy of injustices, aggressions, revanchist measures, outrageous decisions on the human rights of a people, contained in their policy against Cuba.
The President who is now taking office, Joe Biden, is also carrying this burden, destined during the four-year term of office to please an anti-Cuban clique, which as of January 20 will be his neighbors in Miami, in exchange for their votes and whose aim is to destroy a nation, a people, a social, political and economic system that they viscerally hate.
Over the past few weeks, Mike Pompeo and other retreating officials have exaggerated anti-Cuban actions to multiply the damage and put obstacles in the way of any reversal. In a low and final blow he registered Cuba on the exclusive, sinister and politically motivated list of “countries sponsoring terrorism,” a deliberate lie that has earned the revulsion of various personalities and organizations worldwide.
The final straw came last Friday when the Treasury Department included the Cuban Ministry of the Interior and its head, Brigadier General Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas, on a list of those sanctioned for “persecuting or punishing dissidents”, meaning the salaried and discredited acolytes of San Isidro.
“The United States will continue to use all the tools at its disposal to address the terrible human rights situation in Cuba and elsewhere,” said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin.
Both measures against the clock add up to more than 230 approved against Cuba in four years of (dis)government, trying to dent and sink 62 years of resistance that serves as an example to the world and, what hurts them most, to a united nation moving against the tide.
A review, without going deeply into all the nooks and crannies of the operations from Washington to affect the economy of Cuba, allows us to define that the intensification of the blockade and the advertising of lies were centered on ruining the tourist industry, stopping Cuban medical collaboration and cooperation, closing family remittances, paralyzing investments by third parties, financing and trade of the world with and from the island.
The enforcement of all the evil instruments of the Helms-Burton Act was the tool used during these terrible 1461 days by Trump and his people, in which they reversed, or more appropriately, curtailed the policy of rapprochement inaugurated by Barack Obama when, on December 17, 2014, together with Army General Raul Castro, they announced the reestablishment of diplomatic relations, and in two years there were certain achievements of mutual benefit, in favor of a better neighborhood.
The undesirable legacy
Trump’s unseemly anti-Cuban dossier includes organizing, orienting and financing small groups to defame the Revolution and try to turn them into “the leaders” of a subversion that produces a change in the political model on the island. We have already seen how they have defended them…
But the story began early, not with this sin of an idiotic slander, but with aggressive prohibitions and sanctions, including collusion with other governments in the region to attack the Cuban economy and make it as worn out as possible, which in the last year joined the damage caused by the Covid-19.
He did everything possible to bring the situation up to his promise as a presidential candidate made in Miami to hard-line Cuban Americans, and to directors of the terrorist Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), in September 2016: to break relations with Cuba.
On June 16, 2017, in Miami, he signed the so-called Presidential National Security Memorandum on Strengthening U.S. Policy Toward Cuba. It restricted the travel of US citizens to the Caribbean country and also prohibited economic, commercial and financial transactions between US companies and Cuban companies linked to the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the intelligence and security services.
The ban on cruise ships that successfully traveled to Cuban ports was among the first restrictive measures. They reaffirmed the exorbitant fines on companies that violated the blockade – a practice reinforced by Obama – and strictly enforced the ban on the use of the dollar in Cuba’s international transactions.
By November 2017, Trump had completely changed the policy on U.S. travel to the Caribbean nation, which, with the easing of the previous administration’s blockade rules, allowed 12 categories of specific activities, although tourism remained prohibited.
As a result, the airlines began to shut down travel to Cuban airports, which had been resumed on August 31, 2016, after 55 years of isolation. Other bans followed. On December 10, 2019, the Trump administration ended the bridge established three years ago between the US and several provinces in Cuba by suspending regular flights to those destinations except for Havana.
In addition to being a coup de grace against family ties and the state tourism industry, the impact on small private businesses (transportation, the well-known palates, rental houses, artisans, and many other businesses) directly or indirectly linked to tourism was notable.
Since assuming the presidency of his country, Trump extended, year after year, the Law of Trade with the Enemy, a regulation that serves as the basis for the blockade laws, and maintained his authority to sanction through executive decrees.
By establishing sanctions against the Venezuelan oil sector, Trump was also establishing a measure to deprive Cuba of fuel with the intention of delivering a coup de grace in the midst of the terrible 2020, which together with the decision to re-impose the limit of up to ten percent on U.S. components for products that the island can import, points against any development sector.
The Trumpist push to impose limitations of all kinds was made despite the fact that U.S. legislators and various economic sectors rejected the restrictions, which hardened the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by Washington against Cuba, which also hurt sectors of the U.S. economy and the rejection of the blockade by a part of the Cuban migration wishing to have no obstacles of any kind to their family relations.
Perhaps one of the most monstrous actions linked Trump to equally aberrant rulers in our hemisphere. The accusations against Cuban medical cooperation justified countries like Brazil, Bolivia under the coup d’état and Ecuador, closing the doors to solidarity and also to the right to health of the most humble of their peoples by putting an end to the agreements that made possible the presence of hundreds or thousands of Cuban doctors, and put pressure on others to follow that inhumane path in the midst of the pandemic.
Trump definitely closed down spaces for dialogue and cooperation, and any possibility of advancing, as intended, toward a “civilized coexistence”.
This is, in short, the abusive legacy that Donald Trump leaves to Joe Biden.
“Living for the second time”
After nine days in a coma because of COVID-19:
“Living for a second time”
January 16, 2021
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
María Lourdes, Antonio and their son Sandir constitute a family and live in the Vedado. Photo: Facebook/Naturaleza Secreta
María Lourdes, Antonio and his son Sandir are a family and live in Vedado, in Havana. They keep in their memory the memory of a terrible fight against COVID-19. Months ago they received a friend from Malaga, Spain, at a time when no positive cases of SARS-CoV-2 had been reported in that city and through her they were infected.
María Lourdes, 64 years old, is hypertensive, has a slight heart failure and therefore it was feared that the disease in her case would manifest itself in a more aggressive way. However, it was Antonio -without any comorbidity- who experienced more evident symptoms. He stopped eating, had pains all over his body, fever, a lot of dry cough, numerous diarrheas, all of which led him to intensive care and nine days in a coma.
Doctors told his family to prepare for the worst. We share with you his testimony, which is part of the recently completed documentary Parallel Stories, which tells the stories of several people who were sick with COVID-19:
“The anguish, the suffering, the strongest tragedy was for the two of them, who were aware that I was in an extremely critical situation, and my younger children who were in Mexico and were totally desperate, totally unhinged. They made a huge chain of people so that they would have me in their prayers, in their hearts, that also helps.
I did not even know I was in the Naval Hospital, I believed that I was in a therapy room in a totally deserted place that was guarded by soldiers, the things I thought. I in front of me there was a tree that I imagined as a woman with many arms, who danced in front of me as if mocking and I closed my eyes and all those leaves became thousands and thousands of coronaviruses.
María Lourdes, wife of Antonio, convalescent of COVID-19. Photo: Facebook/Naturaleza Secreta
When I came to my senses in the midst of the gravity, that I came out of the coma, that they took away the intubation, the first thing I thought about is her (his wife) and that was for me the most critical moment, in which I think she had died. Because of her basic disease and heart problems, I thought I had lost her. She is the mother of my children, but she has been my partner for 46 years, the other half of my life. I cried in silence, I am a strong man, I consider myself an enthusiastic, fighting person, but I thought that I would never see again what sustains my life, because that is it, the wife, the children, the grandchildren fighting together for life. We think about everything, even about getting rid of the most intimate relationships that we can still have at our age, which are limited, but they are there.
I remember that once I was pricked in the groin, on this side, what I did see was that they were continuously giving me all kinds of medication, interferon, antibiotics, I don’t know how many, I’m not exaggerating, I think that every day they were 14, 15 times that they came to give me medication. When I came out of gravity, I had no smell, no palate, I still did not speak, it left me with a lung lesion, I was practically unable to walk for a month, I was able to climb the stairs of this house after a month, skin lesions, I could not sleep, sleep was disturbed.
I am a man of dreams, I had dreams before the pandemic and I still have them, in all aspects of life, the day I don’t have dreams is not worth living and there was a moment, I will tell you honestly, after you put it or not in the interview, when I thought that values had been lost, all of them: moral, spiritual, solidarity, to help your neighbor, to cooperate, to share your bread and your soul, and I have seen how the neighbors have come without you calling them, without you asking them anything, knocking on your door and sometimes without asking them anything they said: I brought you this, I threw away the garbage, I found you the food, what do you want? That spirit. The artisans who made 10 beds for a hospital, the cooperative that left with a food truck for an old people’s home, that spirit of solidarity that was there, that I thought was like baby teeth, that were falling out, because they didn’t have any calcium, and yet it was enough for this situation to happen, unfortunately, for that spirit to come out again with more strength than ever.
I felt as if those nurses, those doctors, the intensive care doctors at the Naval hospital were part of my family. That team of nurses, technicians, doctors, gave me the possibility of living for the second time.
Son of Antonio, convalescent of the COVID-19. Photo: Facebook/Naturaleza Secreta.
The team of nurses, technicians, doctors, gave me the possibility to live for the second time, said Antonio, convalescent of COVID-19. Photo: Facebook/Naturaleza Secreta.
Journalist Germán Piniella dies
Journalist and cultural critic Germán Piniella dies
By Yoandry Avila Guerra
January 9, 2021
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
The Union of Cuban Journalists laments the death, this January 9, of journalist, narrator, literary translator and music critic Germán Piniella. Among other Cuban serial publications, Piniella collaborated with the magazine Casa de las Américas, La Gaceta de Cuba, Bohemia, El Caimán Barbudo and La Jiribilla. He also served as associate editor of the bilingual magazine Progreso Semanal.
Among his works are the book of short stories Otra vez al camino (Editorial Pluma en Ristre, 1971), finalist for the David Award in 1969; Comiendo con Doña Lita (Art and Literature, 2010), a text written with his wife, psychologist Amelia Rodríguez, in which he approaches culinary culture, and the detective novel Un toque de melancolía (Ediciones Unión, 2013). Likewise, with Raúl Rivero, he was the author of Punto de partida (Pluma en Ristre, 1970), an anthology of young narrators and poets from the Island.
With a degree in Journalism from the University of Havana, Piniella also received a Master’s degree in Marketing and Business Management from the Escuela Superior de Estudios de Marketing de Madrid and a Master’s degree in Marketing and Communication from the University of Havana. For his work in the field of advertising, the Cuban Association of Social Communicators awarded him the Premio Espacio for his life’s work.
Upon learning of his death, Rafael Grillo, head of information for the cultural magazine El Caimán Barbudo, wrote in his personal profile on the social network Facebook: “Friend, Germán Piniella Sardiñas, more than goodbye a hasta siempre. To know you, to embrace your affection, even if it is a short term friendship, but very sincere, is unforgettable. Your passion, the enthusiasm to create, the way to face destiny without renouncing the enjoyment of life is a teaching that you leave me.
“And to your dear Amelia Rodriguez, adorable woman, with you and with everyone, I transmit my encouragement and my love. May that novel that you were working on and that I was able to read about, see the light, so that your light may continue. With “a touch of melancholy” we say goodbye to you Juliette Massip I…”
One Story, Multiple Readings
One Story, Multiple Readings
Published: Tuesday 12 January 2021 | 08:41:40 pm
When talking about the Middle Ages and Antiquity in Europe and its nearby territories, it seems that women were always subject to male power
Author: Mileyda Menéndez Dávila
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Viking culture promoted equity between men and women. Author: Taken from www.filo.news Published: 12/01/2021 | 07:57 pm
When talking about the Middle Ages and Antiquity in Europe and its nearby territories, it seems that women were always subject to male power, without the right to participate or manipulated in government debates, relegated to the role of feeding themselves, excluded from war, science or other basic functions for the human group to which they belonged.
This is what those who consider the concept of equity as a recent “invention” say, and how they describe matriarchy as a system of male slavery and humiliation.
Recent archaeological findings and new readings of ancient texts from a feminist perspective agree that, although misogyny and patriarchy were widespread in many regions with similar expressions, there were civilizations in which women lived alongside men and played important social roles.
Supposedly barbaric and backward cultures, such as that of the Vikings and the one that inhabited India before the Aryan invasions, left evidence of a respectful and even venerable treatment of women and people of non-binary gender in their beliefs, traditions and social structure.
Preserved manuscripts from those times and legends that have survived orally indicate that in addition to respecting the right of women to decide about their bodies and to choose partners of any caste, an infinite number of tribes and clans validated non-heterosexual practices (common among warriors and priestesses), and ambivalent gender identities, visible in graphic representations of everyday life and of their gods and goddesses, which also abounded.
Respectable evidence
In the case of the Vikings, the journal Economics and Human Biology published a study that correlates the nutritional health of the Scandinavian population between ten and 15 centuries ago with the social values that intended equity by gender and age.
Biochemical tests confirm, by the quality and development of the bones found in several settlements, that women were free and active, and from birth they ate at the same time as adult men, not at the end.
Many were trained for war, fishing and hunting, led groups and inherited positions and properties. The most revered were the Valkyries: large women who collected dying and dead bodies in battle to help them move, according to their traditions, into the eternal and sacred world they called Valhalla.
Those customs of the Nordic “savages” were a shock for the descendants of the Greco-Latin culture, who built palaces and roads, dominated the arts and agriculture, but in their cultured cities women had no right to study or own property, did not talk to other men and could be given away as servants by their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons.
The legislations of the current Nordic countries, heirs to the Viking culture, guarantee effective and palpable justice without gender discrimination, while many states born of the Judeo-Christian forge cling to a patriarchal hierarchy in homes and social spaces that has unleashed many wars and justified discrimination for hundreds of generations.
Other archaeological findings of the mid-twentieth century in well-preserved ancient cities, but hidden by nature, confirmed the respect for women as a source of life in the Indus civilization, without such deference to represent for men an economic or social disadvantage, as told in the book Tantra, the cult of the feminine, which we can provide to our readers by digital means.
That tradition of honoring the Mother as a social being (not only as a producer of labor) disappeared with the caste system imposed after the northern invasions, when girls and women became, along with the cattle, a resource to be exploited by the conquerors to survive in hostile terrain and to adapt genetically to the climate.
Also in pre-Columbian America and the original African societies there were stages and cultures in which women flourished alongside their male counterparts. As in other processes of conquest throughout the world, were the hosts “civilizing” which established the male hierarchy to control the lines of inheritance in the territories razed.
By (re)knowing these versions of common history, humanity is better able to write its present and place dignity as the essential value promoted by the Magna Carta of almost all nations.
Protecting Family Caregivers
The Other Side of Dependency:
Protecting Family Caregivers
Demographic aging is a phenomenon that poses multiple challenges at all levels, which are common to all societies
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Coronavirus, Ayestaran Street
Three-quarters of the elderly population in Cuba, who are in care, receive informal support, and it is the family that contributes most to this, and of these three quarters, 85% of the informal care is provided at home Photo: Ariel Cecilio Lemus
Demographic aging is a phenomenon that poses multiple challenges at all levels, which are common to all societies.
According to an article by the Center for Demographic Studies at the University of Havana, Cuba has been ranked, after Uruguay, as the country with the second-highest number of elderly people in Latin America and the Caribbean since 2015.
The statistics also reflect that in much of Europe, North America and in some Latin American countries, there is a considerable increase in the number of older people, even those over 85.
Added to this, is the number of people in a situation of disability, as well as the increase in the chronicity of illnesses, particularly neurodegenerative ones, factors that lead to an increase in the number of people dependent on care.
However, the analyses of the phenomenon of population aging have always weighed, more or less correctly, the approaches from the vantage point of those who receive care, and never, or almost never, “which is not the same, but it is the same”, from that of the caregivers.
The current legislation, according to Dr. Leonardo Pérez Gallardo, president of the Cuban Society of Civil and Family Law, of the National Union of Jurists of Cuba, does not contain any reference to the subject. Hence, this is probably one of the novel aspects to be incorporated in the new Family Code, which could be presented to the National Assembly of the People’s Power this year.
Afterward, there will be the popular consultation, discussion with the deputies and final approval, in a referendum, of the resulting text, as dictated by the Eleventh Transitory Provision of the Constitution.
OF CARE AND CAREGIVERS
Although dependency is not a new phenomenon, says Perez Gallardo, “the convergence of different factors such as demographic aging, increased life expectancy and changes in family structure, have led to it becoming a phenomenon that requires urgent and appropriate responses from political, technological, social, health, psychological, family, economic and, of course, legal.
The dependent person, he explains, requires assistance from others for a prolonged period, that is to say, it is not a question of attention for a passing illness, but it implies the need of assistance for those activities of the daily life. This care, constant and lasting, over a long period of time, has been called long-term care, and it involves the provision of assistance with progressive intensity.
Nor can it be lost sight of, in Pérez Gallardo’s opinion, that chronic illnesses and disabilities can be accompanied by functional and cognitive limitations that end up preventing people from enjoying an independent life.
In situations of this nature, family care generally takes on a more prominent role. The key, warns the professor at the University of Havana Law School, lies in the physical and emotional availability of a person to devote himself or herself regularly to the care of that family member, even to the point of giving up or reducing his or her productive or working capacity in order to satisfy the demands of the recipient of his or her services.
In Cuba, according to Dr. Leonardo Pérez, three-quarters of the elderly population in care receive informal support, and it is the family that contributes most to this. And of those three-quarters, 85% of informal care is provided at home.
INFORMAL CAREGIVERS PROTECTED?
Family caregivers, says the President of the Cuban Society of Civil and Family Law, are also called informal caregivers because, unlike professional caregivers, the former are engaged in care for a circumstantial reason, without specialized knowledge and without compensation.
Professional caregivers, on the other hand, are hired and receive financial compensation for their service. Informal caregivers, on the other hand, do so out of altruism, based on the moral duty they owe to their family members, who in many cases are their own parents.
Moral duty which, by the way, and as a lag in a patriarchal and androcentric society, is usually attributed to women, either as daughters, wives or sisters. It has even been assumed as “logical” that it is the children’s wives who take care of their in-laws, especially when they did not have female descendants.
Without a doubt, summarizes Pérez Gallardo, there are many and varied risks that the caregivers assume, because this activity implies, in the personal order, resignation to an adequate life. In the social order, it implies isolation and, in the professional order, loss of their productive capacity and even abandonment, total or partial, of their life project.
For this reason, he emphasizes, “it is necessary to regulate the rights of family caregivers so that the legal system can make them visible, based on the recognition of their autonomy and dignity, as well as the condemnation of any form of manifestation of family or gender violence against them.
“There is an urgent need for legislation that recognizes the right to their own care, to dedicate time to personal activities, to be treated with respect and to receive the due support of the rest of the family members. It is about protecting, from the Law, the other side of the care”.
The protection of caregivers, acknowledges the professor, “should not only be transversal in the field of public law, but also from the private law, capable of providing useful tools to compensate the asset imbalance associated with the performance of the work of caregiving.”
In the words of Pérez Gallardo, “it is necessary to focus on those people who, as caregivers, have been left socially and economically unprotected after the death of the care recipient. To this end, the rules of both family law and inheritance law can be important instruments.
“It would be worthwhile to think of alternatives that, without diminishing altruism, affection, solidarity, dedication and love, encourage care, compensate for silence, emotional and physical overload and facilitate an equitable and fair redistribution of the inheritance”.
In that sense, he points out, “the freedom to bequeath can be a useful alternative and within everyone’s reach. Nobody better than the one leaving [material resources] to compensate the efforts of the caregiver. And, in the absence of the exercise of the power to bequeath, it will be up to the legislator, as they see fit, to establish the best correlation between participation in the inheritance and care for that person in the twilight of life”.
The Chinese model, he suggests, “could be a mirror for the succession rules, from the establishment of more and more flexible rules in the legal succession, suitable to give an answer to the dissimilar social equations that this 21st century has been establishing, in pursuit of a distributive justice in favor of the caretakers”.
IN CONTEXT
The constitutional text, proclaimed on April 10, 2019, establishes in Chapter III Families, of Title v Rights, Duties and Guarantees that
The State, society and families, as far as each one is concerned, have the obligation to protect, assist and facilitate the conditions to satisfy the needs and raise the quality of life of the elderly. Likewise, to respect their self-determination, guarantee the full exercise of their rights, and promote their social integration and participation.
The State, society and families have the obligation to protect, promote and ensure the full exercise of the rights of persons in a situation of disability. The State creates the conditions required for their rehabilitation or the improvement of their quality of life, their personal autonomy, and their social inclusion and participation.
Colleague Albor Ruiz has died in Miami
Colleague Albor Ruiz has died in Miami,
notes of dismay from his friends
By: Carlos Rafael Dieguez
January 9, 2021
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Enny Pichardo Paz al Alma of this great master,
Albor Ruiz It is with the greatest sadness – and on behalf of friends and family near and far – that we share that our dear friend
Albor Ruiz
died Friday night at 10:27 pm at Homestead Hospital in Florida. His was a life rich with many adventures and deep commitments. She had turned 80 years old in November. 27. Details will follow, but please keep it in your thoughts and prayers. Rest in power dear Albor.
Diego Tejedor Cano
You have just given me a lot of grief. In a short time I could see that he was an exceptional human being. I feel like a brother who is leaving.
Carlos Davila is with Albor Ruiz
My friend Albor Ruiz passed away last night. I first met him in 1968-1969 at the University of Florida, and with all the ups and downs of life, I have remained close friends ever since. He leaves a legacy of great memories to many friends, a long list of opinion pieces in various New York newspapers (including Daily News, where he was a staff writer), and a book of poems: ′ ′ “In Case I Die Tomorrow. The book itself is an appropriate epitaph, but these lines (freely translated by me from the last poem in the book) capture its essence: ′ ′. In case I die tomorrow, I want to write this on the wall of dreams: Know all that I never had a Master, neither in New York, San Juan, Miami, nor Havana.” That independence and intransigence were both irritating and endearing. May his memory live on beyond our lives in the legacy he left us in his writings.
Romy Ar Sa
– I just read that the Cuban journalist Albor Ruiz has died and I have already finished sowing my heart into the ground this week. Albor was one of those people you admire even when you don’t agree with the man halfway. A complete being with a humanism that can be perceived from a long distance. He will always have my genuine respect and admiration. To his family my deepest sympathy.
Grace Berti
Dear Albor Ruiz
I met you in New York, through my co-workers at “Marazul”, the travel agency to Cuba, where you used to visit us and then we all went to have dinner at some bodegón with food from your homeland. All of us Cubans worked on the island, except one Uruguayan and I who remained on the periphery of meetings and conciliations, but very close in the friendship and enormous affection that we developed during those years. A journalist for the Daily News, always advocating for the rights of minorities, you arrived with a book as a gift when you knew I was returning to Argentina and which I still keep in my library: “The mountain is an immense green steppe”.
We met again on Facebook and there I met your poetry. Did you know that you were leaving and that’s why your last book is called “In case I die tomorrow”
Goodbye, adventurous, brave, coherent, beautiful person!
THE SUN BURNS THE AFTERNOON
The Sun burns the afternoon
beyond my window
and in my memory Havana,
regal in its poverty, it burns.
I ask God to keep her
as if I believed in Him,
always to my memories faithful.
I am who I always was,
what I lived, lives in me
a little bile, a little honey.
A.R.
Ivette Cortes feels disconsolate.
Albor Ruiz
My dear Friend! I just thought of you this morning upon awakening and although our paths haven’t crossed in many years, I thank God for Facebook. For it has kept us in touch through these many years. So very sad to hear the news of your passing. You were a great force in life and you shared your wisdom and opinions freely and loudly. They were always welcomed to my ears and in my heart. I will miss your news columns and your inspirational, animated comments, especially about politics! I would love to hear your thoughts about what’s going on right now. I am proud to call you my friend and I’m a better person for having known you. Rest In Peace my loving friend!
About this son of Cuba, from the City of Cardenas, Dr Julio Ruiz wrote on his Facebook wall
DEAR FRIENDS ALBOR PASSED AWAY AT 10:27 PM. MY DEEPEST CONDOLENCES TO HIS FAMILY. HE WILL BE REMEMBERED AND HIS ASHES RETURNED TO CUBA. EPD.
My friend and fellow wrestler Albor Ruiz has been admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) since this morning. He had to be operated on five times for a fall with three fractures he had in the nursing home where he lived. He was suffering from a debilitating muscle disease called myositis, an inflammation that weakens muscles. He was trying to transfer from the toilet to a wheelchair, and as he told me, “………” He was already in rehab recovering although according to his sister Enid, the last two days were not going so well. Today he woke up with a lack of oxygen, with difficulty breathing, he had to be intubated and taken to the Homestead Hospital which was the closest hospital. The PCR was negative twice, but he has a pneumonia that covers both lungs. His prognosis is severe.
Albor is one of those exceptional and unique beings, of the very few I have known in my life, Vicente Dopico, his friend, was another. I met him in the 70’s thanks to my friend Andrés Gómez. I got to know his parents when they lived in Miami Beach. He has a sense of humor like many of my generation, a mocker. I am not his oldest friend, but possibly the oldest of them.
My generation is a generation politicized by all our experiences of the 60’s, and although we are grown up, which sometimes we don’t realize, we haven’t changed that much in sixty years, except for the aches and pains.
I am not religious, but neither am I an atheist, agnostic is the word, as a doctor I am clear about where we come from and where we are going, without fear.
For those who have met him virtually through these FB pages, I can attest that FB does not do him justice.
In his will he asks that if he should die, his ashes be buried in Cuba. In the past, other comrades in struggle are buried in the pantheon of the exiled revolutionary patriots at the entrance to the Colon Cemetery. José Marti’s parents also lie there. We will try to fulfill their wishes
May God protect you.
Rafael Hernandez
Thank you, Julio. Death is a close presence, which accompanies us every day and can be expected in peace with oneself, especially when one has chosen a way to live and fight. It has always impressed me, in the midst of so much human misery, how you have remained true to yourselves, even in the moments when you did not have the understanding of this side. A tight hug for my Dawn on your journey.
Sixty-two years of building “heresy”
Sixty-two years of building “heresy”
Exactly five years, five months and five days after the actions of July 26, 1953, the Revolution finally came to power
Published: Thursday 07 January 2021 | 08:06:05 pm.
Author:
Elier Ramírez Cañedo | digital@juventudrebelde.cu
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
A cry for freedom that inaugurated a new stage of the struggle for independence in our country. Author: Alejandro Azcuy Published: 07/01/2021 | 07:06 pm
Why No Social Outbursts in Cuba?
FROM THE LEFT
Why are There No Social Outbursts in Cuba?
Despite the intense propaganda to which the US allocates tens of millions of dollars each year, the results are overwhelmingly favorable to the revolutionary leadership that Washington has been trying to overthrow for six decades
Author: Iroel Sánchez | internet@granma.cu
November 2, 2020 02:11:30
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Young people
Photo: Taken from Karla Santana’s Facebook profile
A Brazilian friend who, as a journalist, was in Cuba for a few days, told me of her amazement at how all the Cubans she spoke to know who Bolsonaro is, who Dilma is and who Lula is, which was not the case in other Latin American countries she had visited recently.
The exceptional interest with which Cubans follow international events is something very particular that often goes unnoticed by those of us who live on the island. The social upheavals in Haiti, Chile, Panama and Ecuador, the conflict of powers in Peru, the endless repressions and assassinations of social leaders in Honduras and Colombia, the inherited ungovernability that forced the Mexican government to release a drug trafficker, the unjust imprisonment suffered by the leader of the Brazilian left to prevent his safe electoral victory and the elections in Bolivia and the United States, or Washington’s constant aggressions against Venezuela, can be topics of conversation anywhere in Cuba, from a corner where dominoes are played to a university classroom.
Of course, these conversations do not avoid the serious difficulties that the Cuban economy is going through, against which every week new US government sanctions are announced, nor any of the deficiencies in services with which the citizenry clashes. In these, the impact of the economic blockade can be mixed with bureaucratic laziness and cause discomfort and dissatisfaction.
However, this mixture of economic warfare with internal shortcomings does not cause social upheavals, and when the system – single-party socialism – has been put to the test at the ballot box, as in the recent constitutional referendum. This is so, despite the intense propaganda to which the US spends tens of millions of dollars each year and a well-funded “Cuba Internet Task Force”. The results have been overwhelmingly favorable to the revolutionary leadership that Washington has been trying to overthrow for six decades.
The explanation for the dominant media machine is that the mix of “intense regime repression” and “Cuban relaxation” prevents an outbreak. But in the history of Cuba –from Weyler’s reconcentration to Machado’s dictatorship to Batista’s– no regime based on repression has ever managed to remain in charge of the country for a long time, despite a “relaxation” in which corruption was the dynamic of the functioning of politics and the economy at all levels.
On the contrary, if instead of February 2019, the electoral consultation were to take place now, in the midst of an intensified blockade, the percentage of approval would probably exceed that obtained then, and that would be the result, without a doubt, of the combination of three conjunctural and two structural factors.
Conjunctural factors:
-
The intensification of the U.S. government’s aggressiveness strengthens patriotic sentiment and national unity.
The political effectiveness of the Cuban government, convincingly explaining the relationship of shortages with the increase in aggression, and the way in which the strategy to confront the US sanctions seeks to lessen their impact on the daily life of the people.
-
The international situation with visible failure of neo-liberal policies and discrediting of the formulas of bourgeois democracy
Structural:
-
The massive political culture among Cubans, established for 60 years by Fidel Castro’s teaching, about the nature of imperialism and the project of social justice and national sovereignty of the Revolution.
-
The link between the revolutionary leadership and the people, continued by the leadership of Raúl and supported by Díaz-Canel, which has reinforced the perception that the government listens to the people and works for them.
-
No Latin American country, of those who right now repress social protest with gunshots and gases and/or openly violate the rules of formal democracy that they themselves defend, has been subjected to economic warfare, to multi-million dollar financing to create an artificial opposition and, much less, to permanent global media and academic lynching of their leaders and their political and social project.
But in spite of all that, it must be recognized that there are dissatisfied people in Cuba, and many of those dissatisfied people are going to Miami. The accumulation of almost six decades of migratory privileges, together with the development of educational capabilities and the state of health brought about by Cuban socialism, make them very competitive with respect to the rest of the non-native communities, but they do not make them freer. More than one million Cubans in the US suffer serious limitations in their relations with their families in Cuba thanks to Trump’s measures; however, there is no news that this causes significant protests there.
Nor do we read anywhere that this public absence of disagreement is attributed to corruption and the repressive practices, not at all democratic, that the ruling class on the island until 1959 seems to have implanted in Miami during its already long stay in that city. This is not to disregard the uplifting example offered by a system that today puts Donald Trump and Joe Biden in competition, in corruption and insults.