Granma 214
U.S. people send syringes to Cuba
U.S. people send syringes to save, while their government seeks to sow chaos in Cuba (+Video)
Just when the U.S. movement of solidarity with Cuba announces the shipment of six million syringes for vaccination against COVID-19, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) shouts to the four winds that now, in order for the counterrevolution to access its last two million destined for subversion, it must adapt its “proposals” to what happened after July 11.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The Cuba Solidarity Movement in the United States presented the Cuban Embassy in the United States with a certificate of the donation. Photo: Cuban Embassy in the United States
The paradoxes of imperialism are beyond absurd. Just when the U.S. Cuba Solidarity Movement announces the shipment of six million syringes for vaccination against COVID-19, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is shouting from the rooftops that now, in order for the counterrevolution to have access to its last two million destined for subversion, it must adapt its “proposals” to what happened after July 11.
They seek to fuel the confrontation, the division among Cubans, and the many lies that circulate against Cuba in the main media platforms of the world, but, above all, in the social networks.
That is the reason why now, a little more than a week after that Sunday of riots, the USAID – a public face of the CIA – discloses that it will not change its objectives with respect to the island, and that, in addition, those requesting funding must design their proposals taking into account the current political situation, Cuba Money Project published.
Last June 30, USAID announced that it would finance with up to two million dollars projects that “encourage” democracy and human rights in Cuba, one of the most obvious U.S. interventionist strategies around the world, and historically used against the Cuban Revolution.
Meanwhile, since last Saturday, July 17, around two million syringes have already arrived at the Cuban port of Mariel from the Cuba solidarity movement in the United States. This is an act of love organized by Global Health Partners and with the participation of Cuban Americans and Americans, who will continue to collect funds to also send medicines, including antibiotics, painkillers, contraceptives and vitamins.
The kidnapping of Elián González
The kidnapping of Elián González and the Battle of Ideas that achieved his return.
He was returned to Cuba under the guardianship of his father seven months after his kidnapping, after the mobilization of the entire Cuban people and a long judicial process, in violation of international law and U.S. laws, since both legislations recognize that jurisdiction over these cases belongs only to the courts of the child’s country of origin.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
“For Elián, the best book ever written for a child…”, this is how Fidel began the dedication of the copy of The Golden Age that he gave him, on July 14, 2000, in the first meeting they had 20 years ago, after the long battle for the return of the little boy to his homeland. Photo: Granma Archive
Twenty-one years have passed since the return to the homeland, on June 28, 2000, of that six-year-old boy kidnapped in Miami by distant relatives in collusion with the Cuban-American mafia, after losing his mother in the shipwreck of a boat that was trying to reach the U.S. coasts, as a consequence of the irregular migration encouraged by the Cuban Adjustment Act.
He was returned to Cuba under the guardianship of his father seven months after his kidnapping, after the mobilization of all the people of Cuba and a long judicial process, in violation of international law and U.S. laws themselves, since both legislations recognize that the jurisdiction over these cases belongs only to the courts of the country of origin.
Elián González, 20 years after Cuba’s colossal battle for his return
Elián González Brotons was just a six-year-old pionero when, on November 22, 1999, his mother tried to smuggle him out of Cuba. The shipwreck of the boat in which they were traveling caused the death of 11 of the occupants except for Elián and two others. The boy, clinging to a tire, was rescued by fishermen and taken to U.S. territory, where he became, after the just demands of his father, the center of the battle of an entire people during seven months for his return.
Upon arrival in Florida, the child was placed in the care of Lázaro González, his paternal great-uncle living in Miami, who soon after, in open complicity with the anti-Cuban mafia, opposed any attempt to return him to Cuba.
Elián’s father, Juan Miguel González, was unaware of his son’s departure from Cuba and immediately requested his repatriation, an act that was supported by the Cuban Government and all its people.
In spite of the opposition of Elián’s distant relatives to his return to his country, on January 5, 2000, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) of the United States recognized Juan Miguel’s parental rights over his son.
The decision was endorsed by U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and President William Clinton, and the child was scheduled to be returned by January 14. But relatives and anti-Cuban groups in Miami appealed the decision and took the case to the U.S. courts.
On January 21, Elián’s grandmothers traveled to the United States to look for their grandson. Five days later, after multiple steps, they were able to see him, but only for a few hours, and they had to return alone to Cuba.
Faced with the silence of the U.S. authorities, on December 5, young people from the Technical Youth Brigades (BTJ) protested in front of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana (SINA), against the child’s detention.
The action was the prelude to what would later turn out to be a wave of mass demonstrations, including marches of hundreds of thousands of people -the Marches of the Combatant People-, combative Open Tribunals in different cities of the country and the beginning of the Battle of Ideas.
On December 23, 1999, in front of a group of children who guarded the U.S. Interests Section in Havana on the occasion of the march for the child Elián González, in the José Antonio Echeverría social circle, the Commander in Chief, Fidel Castro, said: “What is beginning today is the second stage of the battle of the masses that we have been waging since Sunday, December 5. It has been and is a battle of ideas, of national and international public opinion, of legal, ethical and human principles, between Cuba and the empire, which in our Homeland is supported by one of the largest and most combative mobilizations that has taken place throughout our history”.
What the SINA officials could not foresee at that time is that this would be the most prolonged and massive popular movement, of those that had taken place since January 1st, 1959, up to the present day.
Elian’s father, Juan Miguel González, traveled to Washington on April 6, but it was not until 16 days later that he was reunited with his son after a federal operation rescued the boy from the kidnappers. The maneuvers reached the Atlanta Court, which in two instances rejected demands for political asylum for Elián, but not an injunction preventing his return.
On Monday, June 26, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court, in just two days, settled a case that had lasted more than seven months and denied all legal remedies to the abductors. On June 28, 2000, the boy and his father returned to Cuba.
“I feel happy in Cuba, that the result of that struggle led by the Cubans to which the American people and many personalities joined, led by Fidel, gave me the possibility to grow up here, to know him, to be his friend and it is my greatest pride,” Elián said on May 12, 2016.
In July 2010, Elián made public statements in which he thanked the people of Cuba and the United States for having achieved his release and supported his father Juan Miguel at all times; he also declared he did not to hold a grudge against his Miami relatives, protagonists of the kidnapping.
On December 6, 2018, the then President of the Councils of State and Ministers of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, congratulated Elián through his Twitter account on his 25th birthday, and recalled that the battle for his freedom, led by Fidel, showed how many challenges can be overcome together.
His hometown awarded, on December 29, 2019, the young industrial engineer Elián González the title of Illustrious Son of Cárdenas, conferred during the provincial act of Matanzas for the 61st anniversary of the Triumph of the Revolution. The title of Illustrious Son given to the already militant of the Union of Young Communists coincided with the 20th anniversary of the emergence of the Battle of Ideas.
Related information
Youth is the present and future of Cuba, says Elián González
Elián González: “Young people are not the future, they are the present”.
Special program The Battle for Elián
Orlando Borrego, on the arduous road
Orlando Borrego, on the arduous road of the Revolution
This Saturday, June 26th, Rebel Army Captain Orlando Borrego Díaz died in Havana, at the age of 85, due to problems associated with the COVID-19.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
This Saturday, June 26th, Rebel Army Captain Orlando Borrego Díaz died in Havana, at the age of 85, due to problems associated with the COVID-19.
Borrego was born in Holguin, on March 3, 1936. From a very young age he began his revolutionary activities. In October 1958 he joined Column No.8 Ciro Redondo, under the command of Commander Ernesto Guevara, in the Escambray.
After the triumph of the Revolution he occupied various responsibilities as Chief of the Military Economic Board of the La Cabaña Regiment (1959) and of the Industrialization Department of INRA (1959-1960), as First Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Industries (1961-1964) and then as Minister of the Sugar Industry (1964-1968). He also served as advisor to the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers (1973-1980) and as an economic advisor to the Che Guevara Chair of the University of Havana, as well as to the Minister of Transportation. He was also a close collaborator of Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara.
Orlando Borrego graduated with a degree in Economics from the University of Havana, and in 1980 he obtained the Scientific Degree of Doctor in Economic Sciences at the Institute of Economics and Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
He was the author of several books, among them: El desarrollo de la Industria Azucarera en Cuba (1965), La ciencia de dirección, antecedentes y enfoques actuales (1987), El Che en el socialismo (1989), El Che del siglo XXI (1997) and Che, el camino del fuego (2001).
For his successful service to the Revolution he received numerous decorations and awards. His body was cremated.
Anne Frank describes enduring pain
Anne Frank describes enduring pain
Forced to walk on tiptoe, deprived of the outside world, longing for air and freedom, sharing with others that loneliness that persists even when accompanied, confident that the end would be “good,” Anne Frank lived her last two years.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Cover of the book
Forced to walk on tiptoe, deprived of the outside world, longing for air and freedom, sharing with others that loneliness that persists even when accompanied, trusting that the end would be “good”, that is how Anne Frank lived her last two years.
She went from being the talkative 13-year-old schoolgirl who was always “the first to play jokes, the eternal joker,” to feeling “conscious of being a woman of moral strength and courage.”
She, whirlwind and din, independent, flirtatious, interested in the history and mythology of Greece and Rome, should be remembered not only for the causes that brought death upon her, but for the vitality with which she faced them, certain that, at the end of that terrible struggle, she would be recognized as other people and not only as a Jewess.
“I want to go on living, even after my death. That is why I am grateful to God who, since my birth, gave me the possibility (…) of expressing everything that happens in me. When I write I forget everything, my sorrow disappears and my courage is reborn. But – and this is the main question – will I ever be able to write something lasting, will I ever be able to be a journalist or a writer?”
No wonder then that, that night of March 28, 1944 while listening to the radio, all eyes around her turned to her and her diary seemed “taken by storm,” after hearing Minister Bolkestein say that at the end of the war letters and memoirs concerning that time would be collected. “Fix yourself a novel about the annex published by me! Wouldn’t that be interesting, wouldn’t it?” she left initialed in her notes on the evening.
Thanks to the memoirs she so skillfully recorded in her diary, humanity has been able to know how those eight Jews who clandestinely lived in the annex of a warehouse in Holland ate, slept, talked and spent their days, terrified by the constant bombing and the fierce fear of being “discovered and shot” by the Gestapo, all this while half the world was sinking into hunger, misery and death unleashed by the Second World War.
In Kitty – as she called “the very first surprise” she received on June 12, 1942, on her thirteenth birthday – she found someone to whom she could confide without reserve everything she was unable to express, not even to her parents and sister. Overwhelmed by family conflicts, those of adolescence and those caused by confinement, war and the feeling of being besieged, Anne gave no respite to her pen and diary, the basis of her truncated yearnings to have fun, ride a bicycle, go to school, dance, whistle, have a place in the world and work for her fellow humans.
There, amid the suffocation of confinement, she found love in Peter, the son of the family with whom the Franks shared the annex. “Every time he looks at me with those eyes (…) a little flame seems to light up in me”. Anne understood in the midst of all the horror that “he who is happy can make others happy. Whoever loses neither courage nor confidence, will never perish from misery”.
She, like so many other Jews, died in a concentration camp, just one month before it was liberated. Today, when the world is plunged in hatred and conflicts, the firmness of spirit is the best tribute to that young woman murdered by human monstrosity.
Secretariat of PCC Central Committee
Secretariat of the Central Committee, at the forefront in the direction of the Party’s work.
With full presence in the political, economic and social life of the country, the members of the Secretariat professionally deal with the daily activities of the Party, for which they control, in their sphere of action, and with the help of the auxiliary structure of the Central Committee, the work of the institutions and agencies of the State and the Government.
Author: Yudy Castro Morales | yudy@granma.cu
27 May 2021 01:05:20
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The intense days of debates that took place during the 8th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba outlined the ideas, concepts and guidelines that will guide today and in the future the work of the organization at all levels.
To continue strengthening the performance of the Party in the political-ideological work, to raise the combativeness and exemplarity of the militants and cadres, and to intensify the control, demand and participation of the people to promote the economic and social development of the country, are among the priorities that demand greater commitment from the organization, in order to consolidate and improve what has been achieved.
The Secretariat of the Central Committee is immersed in this challenging scenario, which calls for dynamizing the functioning of the Party, deepening its link with the masses and adapting its higher and intermediate leadership structures to the current and future responsibilities.
Integrated today by six comrades with a wide trajectory in the ranks of the organization, this is the organism elected by the Plenary of the Central Committee which, subordinated to the Political Bureau, assists it in the direction of the daily work of the Party.
In this endeavor, the Secretariat is in charge of organizing and ensuring the fulfillment of the agreements and resolutions of the Congress, the national conferences, the plenary sessions of the Central Committee and the meetings of the Political Bureau.
It is also responsible for the way in which the Party relates with the Young Communist League (UJC), the organs and agencies of the State and the Government and the social and mass organizations; at the same time it orients and controls the application of the Party’s policy regarding the ideological, economic and social activity of the country.
Its functions also include directing the functioning of the auxiliary structure of the Central Committee and, in turn, preparing draft directives or other documents to be submitted to the consideration of the plenary sessions and meetings of the Political Bureau.
Guiding and controlling the activity of the intermediate leadership bodies, in the fulfillment of the decisions of the congresses, conferences and the Political Bureau, as well as carrying out the daily practice of the Party’s international relations, also distinguish the work of the Secretariat.
In close coordination with the National Defense and Security Commission, this body contributes to the orientation and control of matters related to defense, state security and the internal order of the country.
Its competencies include, meanwhile, the implementation of the cadre policy of the Party and the ujc, as well as the control of the same in the mass and social organizations, the organs, agencies and entities of the State and the Government.
In accordance with its responsibilities regarding the internal functioning of the Party, the Secretariat also analyzes and adopts the pertinent decisions on income, deactivations and sanctions that fall within its competence.
With full presence in the political, economic and social life of the country, the members of the Secretariat professionally deal with the daily activities of the Party, for which they control, in their sphere of action, and with the help of the auxiliary structure of the Central Committee, the work of the institutions and agencies of the State and the Government, and, at the same time, evaluate the situation and prospects of the sectors they serve and propose to the leadership of the Party the appropriate measures.
Cuba at the Baseball Pre-Olympics
Cuba at the Baseball Pre-Olympics: Frustration, Hysteria and Hatred, Three Strikes that Strike Out Attacks on Cuba
Today begins the pre-Olympic baseball tournament of the Americas, in which the Cuban team, starting at 1:00 p.m., will face its Venezuelan counterpart in West Palm Beach, Florida. However, a group that is not even remotely a majority, intends to continue playing and, of course, losing, the war. To do so, they resort to violence and, logically, to lies. The target of their attacks are the Cuban baseball players.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Today begins the pre-Olympic baseball tournament of the Americas, in which the Cuban team, starting at 1:00 p.m., will face its Venezuelan counterpart in West Palm Beach, Florida. However, a group that is not even remotely a majority, intends to continue playing and, of course, losing, the war. To do so, they resort to violence and, logically, to lies. The target of their attacks are the Cuban baseball players.
Protected, organized and directed by Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, and summoned by the cheap spokesman of that leadership, Alexander Otaola, the members of that segment have organized to meet at the baseball park. There, according to Otaola himself, they will protest against the presence of representatives of the “totalitarian” government of the island. In order to guarantee their presence, the legislator even allocated resources for the purchase of tickets.
It was reported that the security of the stadium, whose responsibility falls on Scott himself, would allow the pronouncement by means of offensive posters and the throwing of objects on the field against the players. Even the attack phrases, which out of respect will not be published in the pages of this newspaper, contain obscene words. As if that were not enough, they also announced that they would attack the bus on which the athletes were being transported.
The rules of the Olympic Charter, and this is a tournament under the Olympic umbrella, since it is about the qualifying for the next Games in Tokyo, obliges the hosts to guarantee the normal development of the competition. This includes the safety of each of the participants. In other words, the U.S. authorities, both sporting and governmental, are responsible for what happens to any player.
It is not new to proceed in U.S. territory for our sports embassies. Today it is the frustrated Otaola and his bosses, losers as always, in the face of the virility of the Cuban people and their overwhelming support for the continuity of the Revolution and its successes. These are despite the blockade, more than 240 measures of an alienated president, which the current president has not even touched, and the pandemic. “Poor little ones”, how they have yet to suffer.
Next June 10 will be the 55th anniversary of the Declaration of Cerro Pelado, the name of the ship that carried the athletes to the Central American and Caribbean Games in San Juan, in colonized Puerto Rico. That text expressed the willingness of the delegation to participate, even if they had to swim there. Before, in Jamaica-1962, in a similar event, also in a baseball stadium, Sabina Park, provocateurs like those of today threw chairs and sticks against the members of the delegation, who defended themselves, causing their aggressors to flee. In 1963, in the Pan American Games in Sao Paulo, the plane carrying the athletes was not allowed to touch the airport runway, and the then-president of Inder, José Llanusa Gobels, told the pilot who landed that “we came to compete, it is our right”.
In Indianapolis-1987, the Pan American event found the same hostile environment in several of the scenarios, as in 1999, in Winnipeg, where they even authorized a newspaper, plus a radio station, to whip and incite the desertion of our delegation.
In contrast, never has a U.S. athlete, a member of their delegations or a journalist been assaulted in Cuba, neither physically nor morally. None has been insulted. In March 1999, the Baltimore Orioles baseball team was here, and its players, such as Charles Johnson, known by the fans for his presence in the 1991 Pan American Games, when he hit a decisive home run, was applauded. We gave an earlier ovation to Jim Abbott, that excellent pitcher who was missing a hand, which was not an impediment to his exceptionally. The same applied to his teammates Robin Ventura, Joe Carter or Greg Olson.
It was precisely, in the multisport meeting of America, in 1991, at the dawn of the special period, that Cuba offered US TV to broadcast the Games free of charge.
In Havana, in March 2016, the president of the United States himself attended, in a full stadium, the match between Tampa Bay and Cuba. He was received with utmost respect for his country’s anthem, its flag and his high investiture. There is not a single outrage or slander from the sports press to U.S. athletes. US Baseball players have been received in the bilateral tops and, later, these same people have admired their results in the major leagues, as in the recent cases of Maikel Conforto or Carlos Rodon, the latter author of a zero hit zero runs in this major league season, which was praised by the national sports chronicle.
It has never occurred to anyone that, because of political or ideological differences or because of a criminal blockade, ordered to starve, the work of the governments of the United States, that a baseball player should be booed or mistreated. The same for its President, who sat, with his family, behind home plate at the Latinoamericano sports stadium, a place where the daughter of the legendary Jackie Robinson, received, on behalf of her father, the prolonged applause of tribute to the first Black player in MLB.
Those who today seek to attack and repudiate the Cuba team in Florida have recognized, as they themselves published in social networks, that the issue is political, and it does not matter that they are athletes, artists, journalists or doctors, that they are not government officials. They, like their bosses, do not act against governmental structures, they act against the people, because that, people, are the ball players, whom Otaola, disrespectfully, called hairy rats.
By the way, the players who are looking for their Olympic ticket are clear that their mission there is to play baseball and give a good show to the crowd and to many of their followers who will go to support them. They seek they want the victory of their country, like those who this weekend spoke out against the blockade in several U.S. cities.
For the haters, even if they do not understand a thing, we leave them two messages in the voices of Martin Luther King, Jr., pastor of the Baptist Church, and José Martí. The Cuban-born Martí said: “Nothing a man does debases him more than to allow himself to stoop so low as to hate someone”. And the most universal of Cubans portrayed them: “The barbarians who entrust everything to force and violence, build nothing, because their seeds are of hatred”.
The Palestinian catastrophe of 1948
The Palestinian catastrophe of 1948
Every May 15 is commemorated the Day of the Nakba, or catastrophe, in Palestine, the date on which around 800,000 Palestinian civilians were expelled after the occupation of their lands and homes in 1948. Only one day had passed since the proclamation of the State of Israel in the Palestinian territory and it was already showing its expansionist and usurping nature.
Author: Jorge Mazón Rodríguez | internet@granma.cu
May 15, 2021 02:05:11 AM
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Every May 15 is commemorated the Day of the Nakba, or catastrophe, in Palestine, the date on which around 800,000 Palestinian civilians were expelled after the occupation of their lands and homes in 1948. Only one day had passed since the proclamation of the State of Israel in the Palestinian territory and it was already showing its expansionist and usurping nature.
The partition of Palestine, approved by the UN in November 1947, precipitated the events that had been unfolding for some time. Long before, Theodor Herzl had outlined the foundations of Zionism and the future Jewish state. The British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, had expressed to Baron Rothschild his government’s support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in the region of Palestine; and the Zionists who had gradually settled in Palestine, supported by the international Jewish oligarchy, had taken advantage of Britain’s “neglect” as the mandated power in the region to organize themselves politically and militarily.
Once the cessation of the British mandate over Palestine was announced, coexistence between the Arab and Jewish communities became very tense and confrontations began in the face of the advance of the Zionist project and the refusal of the Palestinians to cede their territories. At this point, what historians call “programmed ethnic cleansing” was implemented, a deliberate policy aimed at displacing the Palestinian Arabs in order to insert the Jewish immigrants who were beginning to arrive en masse.
Yosef Weitz, director of the Land and Forestry Department of the Jewish National Fund and architect of the acquisition of land for the Jewish community in Palestine, gave ideological foundation to the expulsion policy: “It must be clear to us that there is no place for the two peoples in this country (…). We will not achieve our goal of being an independent people as long as there are Arabs in this small country. The only solution is a Palestine, at least Western Palestine (west of the Jordan River) without Arabs (…). The only way to achieve this is to move the Arabs from here to neighboring countries, to move them all; there must not be a village or a tribe left. Only in this way will the country be able to absorb millions of our own brothers. There is no other solution (…)”.
One of the most notorious acts of Zionist gang violence was the massacre perpetrated in Deir Yassin, where 254 Palestinian Arabs were brutally murdered. A former Israeli military governor of Jerusalem described it as follows: “(…) units of the Etzel and Stern gangs jointly organized, without provocation, a deliberate attack on the Arab village of Deir Yassin on the western edge of Jerusalem. There was no reason to justify the attack. It was a quiet village, which had denied entry to volunteer Arab units from across the border and had not been involved in any attacks on Jewish areas. The dissident groups chose it for strictly political reasons. It was a deliberate act of terrorism (…)”.
According to the final report of the United Nations Economic Survey Mission for the Middle East in 1949, the number of Palestinian refugees resulting from the violence and war following the proclamation of Israel as a state, amounted to 726,000, which constituted half of the indigenous population of that region. Since then, the West Bank alone, including East Jerusalem, Gaza, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, has counted more than 5.7 million Palestinian refugees, who now face the impact of the pandemic as one of the most vulnerable populations.
After 73 years of constant threats, attacks and the Zionist attempt to deprive the Palestinians of their rights, the principles of the Palestinian cause remain unchanged, as does Cuba’s support for the return of the refugees and the two-state solution, which involves the realization of the right of the Arab people to self-determination and access to a free, independent and sovereign state, with its capital in East Jerusalem, and framed within the borders prior to the Israeli occupation of 1967.
Let this Nakba Day therefore serve to vindicate the right of the Palestinian refugee population to return to their country and their homes, and to demand the cessation of the Zionist regime’s attacks on Gaza, where civilians, distributed at a rate of 4,167 inhabitants per square kilometer, are the ones who suffer the most in each attack.
For March 8 (and beyond)
For March 8 (and beyond)
In what way and where, by whom and with what effects do we construct the image of what a woman is? Better yet, in what way are the limits of what is considered – at a given moment in a particular society – possible for a woman to be and to project?
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
A friend of mine posts on her Facebook wall a comment in which she regrets what she considers to be an example of insufficient diversity in the images that, on the television screen, were used to present (and represent) Cuban women in the celebration of March 8. My friend is black, with a deeply dark skin tone.
Here’s a topic, I say to myself, and then I remember that years ago I wrote an article for the newspaper Juventud Rebelde about the transformations that -in terms of beauty standards- had taken place in the country since the years of my childhood.
The article focused on the perceptions and meanings of black people’s hair and hairstyle and, on this basis, proposed assessments in which racism and freedom, the hidden mechanisms of domination and the battles of the subjects in search of their real emancipation were confronted.
After that I wrote two other articles, which were not published at the time:. The first aimed to analyze the connections between obesity, beauty and social control; the other took as its motif the case of a woman in England who had announced on her personal website that she would stop shaving her legs and who – from then on – began to receive dozens (eventually hundreds) of denigrating messages, some of which contained threats to her physical integrity.
How and where, by whom and with what effects do we construct the image of what a woman is? Better yet, in what way are the limits of what is considered – at a given moment in a particular society – possible for a woman to be and project? What participation do we have, even those of us who are willing to swear that we are not part of the process, in the infinite number of actions through which this “ideal” of what is supposedly feminine is molded?
This inevitably leads us to understand (and propose for debate) not only the responsibility in the production, distribution, control and consumption of images, but to lead us to a point where we are forced to ask ourselves: What have we done or do? What role do we play in the various forms and scenarios in which actions of micro-oppression of women are manifested?
Another friend tells me about the time when, at the exact moment of wearing a new dress for a night out she was looking forward to, she discovered -just as she arrived at the place- that the rush had made her mix up the ornaments and that she had put on two different earrings. She doesn’t know how much she taught me and I learned from her response when, contemplating her face in the mirror of a bathroom on-site, she said to herself: “it doesn’t matter: you are the fashion”.
I admire that way of not obeying the dictates of a codified norm, which pretends to define what you are in a perverse game, where visuality is supposed to make transparent the moral condition of the person and even her history itself. I admire that inner strength and will to self-affirmation.
A third friend uses her menstrual emissions, exactly that which, in a more evident way, transmits the “weakness” or “flaw” of the woman, to create -with that intimately personal matter- works of art. As in the previous example, the logic that presides over the action is that of the search for and expression of the most absolute freedom.
What is a woman, where is she, what are her limits, how is she represented/presented?
The face perfectly aligned with the Hellenic beauty patterns or the very dark skin accompanied by thick lips and a wide and flattened nose; the youthful figure that communicates agility and the other that moves with effort due to age; the straight hair, the implants, the straightening under the effect of keratin, the hair in the form of “afro”, in the so-called “carreritas” or in long and powerful “drelos”; the thin or overabundant, obese contour; the gesture of a dapper style or with a wider arc in the movement of the hands; the image of a “traditional” femininity (in which ideals of “fragility”, “delicacy” and “sensuality” prevail) or the reverse of the “masculinized” female, which is usually attributed to the lesbian; with tattoos, “piercings”, hair dyed in unusual colors (green, blue, orange): it’s all women.
Peasant women, highly skilled professionals, housewives, workers in an industry or construction site, we need images of the most extraordinary diversity possible to “refresh” our images and approach women, ask questions, get closer to their struggles, offer them solidarity and push together with them the limits of presence, representation and participation in new worlds.
And that is what a Revolution is: a new world.
I end with a personal story. A few years ago my children Kenneth, Karen and I got tattoos. On that occasion the one that my wife dreams of for herself was left pending: the Elvish word for FREE.
Tomasito, Between Books and Battles
Tomasito between books and battles
Tomás Fernández Robaina will receive the Distinction for National Culture today
Author: Pedro de la Hoz | pedro@granma.cu
March 4, 2021 23:03:32 PM
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
One fine day, looking for proximity between home and work, Tomás Fernández Robaina left behind his job as an accountant in a light industry establishment and joined the José Martí National Library. That was not a simple job exchange, but a radical change of life, because it was the beginning of the parallel takeoff of a substantive work in Cuban bibliography, and in the historical research related to the African legacy in national culture and the fight against discrimination because of skin color.
On the verge of 80 years of existence, five and a half decades of which he has spent at the prestigious cultural institution, Tomasito inspires respect and admiration for the impetus and passion he puts into every intellectual endeavor.
Those qualities nurtured the construction of one of his exemplary contributions to the field of island librarianship: the General Index of Periodicals. It was the result,” he recalled, “of an analysis of the indexes that had traditionally been prepared in the Library after the Revolution. As Salvador Bueno’s assistant, looking for information for the work I had to do in view of the popular literacy campaign, I realized that finding information was not very easy, because it was necessary to register a large number of directories. There were so many indexes that had been compiled that we really had to find a new way. I envisioned the project in two ways: to consolidate all the contents of the indexes that had already been compiled, and to begin to compile a repository that would include the contents of all the periodicals that were emerging”.
Having been the compiler of the Bibliografía de estudios afroamericanos (1969) and the Bibliografía de temas afrocubanos (1986) allowed researchers, professors, students and readers in general to have valuable tools of knowledge, and in his personal case, to confront sources that would be extremely useful for monographs and essays.
In 1990, one of his most far-reaching and impactful works, El negro en Cuba 1902-1958, was published. Although the author modestly stated that he was limiting himself to offering notes for the history of the struggle against racial discrimination, the documentation provided and the judgments derived from it, as well as the punctual record of the milestones, turn this essay into an essential reading.
Tomasito’s publications also include Hablen paleros y santeros, Recuerdos secretos de dos mujeres públicas, Cuba: personalidades en el debate racial and Identidad afrocubana: cultura y nacionalidad.
A member of the Cuban Association of Librarians (Ascubi) and of the Association of Writers of UNEAC-he is one of the most resolute activists of the José Antonio Aponte Commission-, Tomasito maintains, as a currency, to share what he has, to stimulate the spiritual growth of the new generations and never stop fighting to complete the work of social justice of the Revolution, especially with regard to the conquest of the fullest equality.
Lies, foul language and unimportant things
THOUGHT
Lies, foul language and unimportant things (+Video)
When Trump won the elections for the U.S. presidency in November 2016, Diario de Cuba was among the media outlets that broadcast a video where several Cuban “opponents” show their euphoria over that “resounding victory”
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Illustration: Cubainformación
On the same day that the declarations of Presidents Raul Castro and Barack Obama were made public, announcing a path towards normalization between the United States and the uncomfortable neighbor located 90 miles from the Florida peninsula, the website Diario de Cuba published false news about the [supposed] sinking, by the Cuban government, of a ship in the bay of Matanzas.
Dozens of people who were emigrating to the U.S. were supposed to have died. In the midst of the announcement made by both presidents, the main information of that day, the “news” of Diario de Cuba passed without pain or glory to the history of falsehoods fabricated by a publication that, since its origin, has received several million dollars from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) for propaganda against the Cuban government.
The NED’s web page contains these figures, and the most recent one, published there, establishes the allocation for 2019 at $600,000. The nefarious role of the NED is not communist propaganda, even the not at all leftist newspaper The New York Times has established its condition as a screen for the CIA and its involvement in the financing of coups d’état in dozens of countries.
When Trump won the elections for the U.S. presidency in November 2016, Diario de Cuba was among the media that disseminated a video where several Cuban “opponents” show their euphoria for that “resounding victory”. Their words are eloquent:
(Trump) The man we need to get out of this whole situation (in Cuba).
We dragged all the communists with us.
In Cuba, almost all the people who suffer the consequences of the regime are happy (with Trump’s victory).
Women have suffered a lot during these two years of the reestablishment of relations between the U.S. and Cuba.
Obama, you are finally leaving.
It was very frustrating to see how the Obama administration was allowing the regime to gain space and leave the Cuban people and their demands aside.
We cannot do it alone (decide Cuba’s fate).
President Obama’s legacy regarding Cuba is not positive.
With the election of Trump, hopes are reborn in those who had lost them.
(With) the arrival of Trump to the White House we can rescue that ally we always had in the struggle for freedom in Cuba.
There is a magnificent juncture for all democratic actors in the region to have a unique triumph, which is to finally and totally overthrow the military dictatorship of the Castro brothers.
Now we have to work with those political actors who are thinking about a real democratization of Cuba.
Mario Díaz Balart, Carlos Curbelo, Marco Rubio, Ileana Ros, kisses, I love you all, gentlemen.
Congratulations from the bottom of my heart, and I say it with total joy, to the Cuban-American congressmen who are doing so much for the freedom of the Cuban people, I love you, I love you all so that you know and continue as you are going.
Such a background of the media, represented by one who wielded a cell phone in the face of the head of the Cuban Ministry of Culture, is a thing of no importance. Together with the correspondent, is shouting in his support someone who, against what he calls “pacification”. He has published in his social networks the need for a more economic blockade and a military intervention against Cuba. This is something that should not fail to be taken into account, because, more important is the way in which the Minister prevented the one paid by the NED from fulfilling his task: to weaken the Cuban position in any process of changing U.S. policy towards Havana, something Diario de Cuba has not ceased to advocate.
Those who say that a minister does not act like that in other countries are right. True: it is the police who “dialogues” -with clubs and water jets- against anyone who protests. Ultimately, it would be an escort who would undiplomatically put an end to any object unexpectedly placed in front of authority.
What would happen if the provocateur is paid by an agency historically associated with the efforts of a foreign government to change the current order in that country? One does not have to be very imaginative to imagine it, especially when every year journalists are murdered in double digits in the “democracies” around us.
That the libertarian correspondent insults, with all the repertoire of foul words in the Spanish language, the Minister that the private media system financed from abroad against Cuba has tried to lynch in the media, is not important either, much less if we take into account that, for this type of behavior, more than one rapper was sentenced to jail where Diario de Cuba has its headquarters: democratic Spain.
It is not very original either. The authorship of the insults belongs to another person who, in the 2016 video we mentioned before, was happy about the triumph of Trump and the anti-Cuban congressmen in Florida, exhibiting the emblem of the mercenary brigade 2506, defeated in Playa Girón, and requesting a tough hand with Cuba, precisely the one who expressed the tolerant phrase “We dragged all the communists”.
The correspondent of another media paid from the United States (ADN Cuba) acknowledges having received between $150 and $200 dollars for reporting from the Ministry of Culture on January 27, another unimportant thing.
This is who defends the model of free, democratic and independent press that Cuba must implement, nothing more: the yellow journalism that puts the superfluous in the foreground and hides the essential. Why be its unwitting victims, or worse, its accomplices, when what is really being demanded is not freedom of expression, but freedom for insults and lies turned into a business with foreign money?
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