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Houdini and Doyle
Houdini and Doyle
Among the criminal and detective series to which Multivision has accustomed us at night, a rare advert snuck in: Houdini & Doyle
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Internet
Among the crime and detective series to which Multivision has accustomed us at night, a rare advert has crept in: Houdini & Doyle. What did the famous escapist, precursor of David Copperfield’s truculence, have to do with the creator of Sherlock Holmes? How much truth and how much imagination is there in the approach to the cases developed throughout the ten chapters conceived by David Shore, Dr. House’s own, in the service of the 2016 British-Canadian co-production?
The truth was that, in real life, Harry Houdini (Budapest, 1874-Detroit, 1926) and Arthur Conan Doyle (Edinburgh, 1859-Crowborough, 1930), met, dealt with and made enemies. The bond and the antagonism had a certain basis. The writer who applied with tenacity and contumacity the deductive method became fanatical about occultism. meanwhile, the magician who made an epoch in Europe and the United States by untying chains, overcoming immersions and weaving optical illusions, disbelieved in spiritualism and appealed to reason to explain complex phenomena. So much so that he publicly denounced the medium who sold him an alleged message sent by his mother from the beyond: the text, headed by a Christian cross, was written in impeccable English. The magician’s mother was ignorant of that language, spoke in Yiddish, and professed Judaism.
Again and again, in each chapter of the series, the two confront each other in the effort to decipher mysteries and misunderstandings come to light. There is no progression in their views, for when Doyle (Stephen Mangan) seems to fail, and Houdini (Michael Weston) is stubborn, the case is solved by plausible, though sophisticated, explanations that leave a margin of doubt for Houdini to admit the possibility of supernatural intervention, and Doyle, more defeated than convinced, becomes more like Holmes than himself.
Shore and the Canadian scriptwriter David Titcher, known among us for the series The Librarians, got their hands on a third character, Detective Stratton (Rebecca Liddiard), the first woman with that degree in the English police force, a fact that was never sufficiently taken advantage of -it would have been an interesting feminist note- and ended up paling in the face of the antagonists’ clashes.
Neither by polishing the epochal reconstruction to the last detail, nor by mixing ingredients from the gothic novel and the psychological thriller, nor by putting into the plot, to the cannon, real characters, such as the inventor Thomas Alva Edison and Bram Stoker, the creator of Dracula, managed to hold the artistic breath of the series, which was canceled at the end of the first and only season. Critics recalled the counterpoint between Houdini and Doyle as a washed-up version of the debates between Mulder and Scully in the X-Files.
The Bravery of the Bravos
The Bravery of the Bravos
The event was chaired by Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba (Minrex), and Alpidio Alonso Grau, Minister of Culture (Mincult), who personally presented the award.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Ariel Ley Royero/ACN
If bravery is a quality to face each step in life with courage, it is abundant in the political and artistic career of Estela and Ernesto Bravo. She, a North American, he, an Argentine, supportive, internationalists and Cubans by conviction since they decided to share dreams and destiny in the homeland of Marti and Fidel.
The Distinction for National Culture awarded to both of them last Saturday honors their passionate contributions to art and their permanent commitment to the ethical values and ideals of justice advocated by revolutionary Cuba.
Culture Minister Alpidio Alonso presented the award to the Bravo couple in a ceremony attended by Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, a member of the Party’s Political Bureau and Minister of Foreign Affairs, during which the poet Nancy Morejón gave the words of praise.
Estela’s contribution to the documentary screen as a director, always assisted by Ernesto as a scriptwriter, consultant and coordinator in the tasks of production, stands out among the most lucid and penetrating in the cinema of the last four decades, starting with the 1980 release of Los que se fueron [Those Who Left].
With a catalog of more than 30 works of diverse footage, a substantial part of the Bravos’ filmography bears witness to events related to Cuban migration to the United States and the traumatic human and family cost of the hostility of that country’s rulers towards Cuba.
It is worth looking at the Latin American and Caribbean context of the time of the dictatorships and the US interventions in the region.
But, without a doubt, the most endearing productions of Estela and Ernesto are those that have had the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution in the forefront. Fidel, the untold story is revealed as one of the most complete portraits of the Commander in Chief’s personality.
Cuba: Pilgrimage to San Lázaro
Cuba: Pilgrimage to San Lázaro
December 17, 2012
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Yeniel Zamole crawled five kilometers with a cement block chained to one foot to thank St. Lazarus for her daughter’s health, while other believers on Monday asked Cuba’s most revered saint to intercede for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
“I make this promise because of the devotion of my daughter, who walked here again thanks to Saint Lazarus,” said Zamole, a 25-year-old ceramist who paid a promise to a miraculous being venerated by Catholics and Santeros (worshippers of African origin), in a communist country that until 1992 was officially atheist, before becoming a layman.
Every December 17, hundreds of thousands of Cubans come to the Sanctuary of Saint Lazarus in El Rincón, 30 kilometers southwest of Havana, to venerate the person whom Catholics identify with Saint Lazarus the Bishop and the Santeros with Babalú Ayé.
Visited by Pope John Paul II during his historic trip in January 1998, this small chapel is, together with a leper colony, the main place of devotion to this deity of popular creation, in a pilgrimage in which prayers are mixed with reggaeton, bread with piglet, rum and cigars.
The five kilometer walk from the town of Santiago de las Vegas to the Sanctuary is completed by many dressed in jute or purple clothing. Dozens of faithful are martyred during the way and enter the temple exhausted, crawling, kneeling, rolling or doing somersaults.
Yeniel Zamole dragged a block of cement, others carried rocks, shackles or even a piece of rail. One man rolled down the road with two lighted candles held in place by his toes.
The walk, which started on Sunday, took place under heavy police protection, in a fair atmosphere – as in previous years – with stalls selling criollo food and loud music, which was mixed with sales of flowers, candles and plaster statuettes of St. Lazarus of different sizes.
Once in the temple, the believers and payers of promises deposited their offerings to the saint and prayed, while the public renewed itself incessantly.
“My baby girl, when she was born, looked very serious. I made a promise to him (Saint Lazarus) that if my little girl never went to a hospital again, I would come every year that I could come,” Yaniset Avila, who came with her daughter, who is now 11 years old, told AFP.
“I’m here because my daughter was seriously ill three years ago and she’s fine now. I made a promise for 10 years,” Jorge, who makes and sells candy in La Lisa, a western Havana suburb, told AFP.
This year, some of the faithful had a new reason to pray to Saint Lazarus: the health of the president of Venezuela, Cuba’s main political ally and business partner, who underwent surgery last Tuesday for the fourth time for cancer in Havana.
“Chavez is the best, he is very good, he is a good president,” Patricia Ascui Martinez, an old lady from the western province of Pinar del Rio who lit candles and prayed before a small picture of the president that another pilgrim pasted on a wall inside the Shrine, told AFP.
Olivia Valle, another woman from Pinar del Rio who prayed to the photo of the Venezuelan leader, expressed: “He is very human, he worries about everyone, we are asking for him in the prayers we make”.
“I pray for Chávez, poor thing, that Saint Lazarus may help him. I wish him much health, he is good, I am not a fool, he is good”, indicated María Caridad González, from the central province of Villa Clara.
On the economic level, there are neighbors of El Rincón who took advantage of the massive influx of people to earn some money selling flowers or food, but some complained that the sales were not very good.
“The sales are weak, because there are many vendors,” said Walnier Pérez Morales, who sold sunflowers and strange roses outside his house.
“The devotion to Saint Lazarus is still the same, but (the authorities) gave many sales licenses this year,” he lamented.
(With information from Noticias24)
Dr. Salvador Capote on Biden vs. Trump
Biden vs. Trump
By Dr. Salvador Capote
October 14, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Trump and Biden pursue the same goal: to liquidate the Cuban Revolution. Trump embodies the hard line that is expressed in economic, commercial and financial suffocation, without ruling out the military option. Biden is on “Track 2”, the track of cultural and media penetration, of corrupting USAID and NED money, of diversionism, consumerism, and siren calls. Cuba can face both challenges, since it is very possibly the most politically aware people in the world.
It is the people of Martí and Fidel, whose courage and capacity to resist have been proven a thousand times over. But to face the line of the hawks in Washington would cost a lot of blood, in fact it has already cost a lot in the suffering of the Cuban people because of the blockade.
Facing the Obama line, represented by Biden for now, is in the long run the most subtle and dangerous, but we Cubans are aware of the danger and we know how to face it.
With the Biden administration, we could breathe and, if they take their knee off our neck, in a very short time we will demonstrate that to achieve the well-being and happiness of human beings there is no other option than socialism.
Ralph Gonsalves Wins Fifth Term
Ralph Gonsalves Wins Fifth Election in St. Vincent and the Grenadines
By Caribe, Elections, Ralph Gonsalves, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
November 6, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves
The citizens of St. Vincent and the Grenadines elected Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves to a fifth consecutive term in Thursday’s general elections, according to preliminary figures released in Kingstown, the capital.
According to these figures, the United Labor Party (ULP) achieved a major victory by winning nine of the 15 seats in Parliament, compared to the eight it controlled until now.
Godwin Friday’s opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) lost one seat and took the remaining six.
In declaring himself the winner in the elections, Gonsalves affirmed that the population adopted “our progressive agenda for the future” and rejected “the policy of hate, backwardness and colonialism.
He also stressed the need for the unity of the country to address the challenges of development.
For the elections, this regional body sent a group of six observers, led by Anthonyson King, a member of the electoral commission of Antigua and Barbuda.
Voter registration for the election was 89,119 persons over the age of 18 out of a total population of 110,000.
Those subject to quarantine because of COVID-19 were also able to cast their vote. The consultation took place under a pandemic prevention protocol.
The country is one of the few in the world that has not recorded any deaths from the disease and only 75 cases, 70 of them recovered, since the beginning of the health crisis in March, while CARICOM as a whole reports some 45,000 confirmed cases and just over 1,000 deaths.
St. Vincent and the Grenadines is among the 10 smallest countries in the world and this month it holds the presidency of the United Nations Security Council, a position it holds from last January until December 2021.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez today congratulated St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves and the United Labor Party (ULP) on their election victory.
In his Twitter account, the Foreign Minister highlighted the relations of friendship and cooperation between both nations, on which he expressed the will to continue advancing in their development.
(With information from Prensa Latina)
Ten Notes on the “Cuban vote” in Florida
Ten Notes on the “Cuban vote” in Florida
By Rosa Miriam Elizalde, Daniel González
Rosa Miriam Elizalde is a Cuban journalist. First Vice President of UPEC and Vice President of FELAP. She is a Doctor in Communication Sciences and author or co-author of the books “Antes de que se me Olvidar”, “Jineteros en La Habana”, “Clic Internet” and “Chávez Nuestro”, among others. She has received the “Juan Gualberto Gómez” National Journalism Award on several occasions. Founder of Cubadebate and its Chief Editor until January 2017. She is a columnist for La Jornada, Mexico.
On twitter: @elizalderosa
November 6, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
In Miami, this van circulated this Thursday with a sign asking to turn Cuba into the 51st state of the USA. Photo: Twitter.
Two-thirds of Florida counties voted for Donald Trump, as did a good portion of Latin American Americans, with a record turnout in this election. In the United States, Mexicans represent by far the largest percentage of Latino voters (almost 60% of the electorate), 14% of those who come from Puerto Rico and, in third place, Cubans with 5%. Why then the overvaluation of this last group?
No one doubts that Donald Trump’s disinformation campaign worked in the émigré community from our country, but as far as the final figures on voters go, the “Cuban vote” should be taken with a grain of salt. Here are a few quick notes on the subject.
1.-There are no definitive figures for the “Cuban vote” or for any other community. Counts are underway in the country. According to the American Community Survey 2014-2018, 697,785 Cubans were registered in Florida in 2016. Of these, 367,233 declared themselves in favor of the Republican Party; 180,227 for the Democratic Party, and 150,325 other political affiliations. Finally, four years ago, 564,938 voted. Between 52 and 54% voted for Trump and between 41 and 47% for Clinton. Both NBC News and Fox News estimated a Cuban participation rate in these elections of 58%, a level similar to that of 2016.
2.-The “Cuban vote” in Miami-Dade gave a majority to the Republican candidate, as in the previous election. However, this did not prevent the election of a Democratic mayor – the first woman to hold that office in the county – despite the fact that the other candidate was a Cuban and a Republican, Steve Bovo, and more signs as he was the son of a member of the failed Brigade 2506 that invaded Cuba in 1961.
3 – This Wednesday, The New York Times acknowledged that Florida lived in a climate of unprecedented misinformation, especially in the Spanish-language media and in the local social networks. The McCarthyite hysteria reached such a level of alienation that Joseph Biden was accused of being a com munist, a socialist and even of practicing witchcraft. Nevertheless, the Democratic Party won Miami Dade County with more than a 7-point lead over his opponent.
4.-The “Cuban vote” is not a monolith. One million were born on the island and at least another million are descended from Cubans, but have lived all their lives in Florida. They all identify themselves as such in the national census. In those two groups there are American citizens and others who are not, some speak only English and others only Spanish, have registered to vote or not, are Republicans, Democrats or Independents, and have direct family in Cuba or not.
5 – Michel Bustamante, an academic from Florida International University, maintains that the Cuban community is much more complicated than it has been described in the middle of the electoral contest. He speaks of a “cognitive dissonance”, notable in the Cuban communities of Hialeah and Miami. Many send remittances to their families or travel regularly to the island, but also express support for Trump’s sanctions.
6.-The relationship with Cuba is not the main issue that defines the vote of a Cuban resident in the United States and it has not even been among the main motivations for going to vote. According to data from the Latino Decisions survey, the main concerns of Florida’s Hispanics are the pandemic (52%), employment and the economy (44%) and health care costs (28%). Other analysts have perceived that, even for those most receptive to the administration’s anti-Cuban rhetoric, the fear of the Covid was greater than the hatred for the Havana government.
7. There is no single “Cuban vote,” nor can a similar statement be made about any immigrant community in the United States, whether larger or smaller than the Cuban one. The emergence of the term and its permanence in time has to do with the state policy applied against Cuba for 60 years, which is totally different from any other articulated towards the rest of the nations of the world. Cuban emigration in the United States is a by-product of that policy.
Not for nothing did Bustamante say this Wednesday in a tweet: “The White House has established an alliance of convenience with the local Republican machine that once opposed Trump in the 2016 primaries, but since then has helped him fan the flames of anti-socialist attacks to a despicable and unprecedented level.
8.-There is no “Mexican vote” even though it is geographically concentrated in territories that one day changed sovereignty. There is no “Soviet vote” or “Chinese vote”, despite the fact that the Cold War translated into enormous hostility towards the former USSR and China, which originated the respective migratory flows of those nations.
9.The “Cuban vote” is politically conditioned. Like any significant social group, among Cuban Americans there was a sector that was dedicated to local politics and the rest to survival. Since the 1980 elections, a relationship of convenience was generated between the Republican Party and a Cuban-American elite that negotiated space and access within the US system of government, in exchange for a quota of votes. Both Republicans and Democrats have courted the Cuban community since then, but only in Florida. A not inconsiderable group of Cubans resides in the New Jersey-NY area and yet there is no recurring talk of the “Cuban vote.”
10.- In many US states the results of the vote are decided by a marginal amount of votes. Any group with a similar identity that expresses itself in favor of one or another candidate at the polls can make a difference, as we are seeing right now in the dispute over Georgia or Pennsylvania to decide the next president of that country. Cubans have run again and again as a bloc, to continue to benefit from federal funds, as do Puerto Ricans or Haitians living in Florida, for example.
As many analysts have pointed out these days, rather than reducing the complexity of this scenario to a stereotype, it would be necessary to assess the extent to which one or another campaign team has understood the changes that have taken place among Cuban-Americans and to what extent both Republicans and Democrats are betting on the real possibility of attracting supporters in that community.
The historical truth is that since 1980 the Republicans have invaded, conquered and established themselves in the Cuban-American media, while the Democrats have made furtive attempts in a field they consider alien and in which they have renounced a permanent presence.
Part of the Democrats’ weakness is that their main leaders share or coexist with the state policy of confrontation with Cuba, either through pressure or through a “democratizing” approach. The local South Florida Democrats repeat virtually the same messages of hostility against Cuba as their fellow Republicans, posturing as tough as the Republicans are, and end up ignoring and alienating those new generations of Cubans who are the vast majority and who neither aspire nor need to succeed from the funds of the programs associated with “regime change.”
In the elections that have just concluded, the Democrats saw their initial advantage over the Republicans in Florida gradually disappear. Among the first explanations was the performance of the supposed “Cuban vote.” In reality, the votes Biden lacked were the result of the absence of support from other groups and minorities.
Democrats and Republicans may or may not choose to continue to cultivate the fiction of the “Cuban vote,” they may or may not continue to fund the federal programs that court them, but the truth is that time and again there will be a conflicting relationship between the foreign policy interests of the United States as a country and the electoral games at one point in that country’s geography.
In focusing on that tiny vote, in national terms, both parties are unaware of the position of large sectors of American voters who favor the most normalized relationship possible with Cuba and who have specific interests in business, science, culture, academic relations, health, and other sectors.
Behind Washington’s immobility with its unilateral sanctions on Cuba for more than 60 years, behind the power lent to Florida’s machinery of hate, calculation and despotism, old anti-communist rhetoric and the usual failure are mixed. We will see how the votes look when the final numbers are known – by the way, journalist John Kruzel of The Hill has denounced the fact that a significant number of votes were lost in the south of the state. Before crowing so much about the “Cuban vote,” let’s wait for the end of this stormy election recount that has turned the United States into a banana republic and Donald Trump into the most pathetic autocrat in that country’s history.
MAS Strengthens its Majority
MAS Strengthens its Majority in Bolivian Parliament
The second Bolivian political force will be the Citizens’ Community Alliance, of former President Carlos Mesa.
By Redacción Digital | internet@granma.cu
October 24, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Taken from the Internet
With 97 percent of the officially counted election records, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) consolidated its majority in the Bolivian Legislative Assembly on Friday, reported Telesur, by securing 21 senators and 78 deputies.
The Plurinational Electoral Body (OEP) of Bolivia reported this Thursday that the MAS, of President-elect Luis Arce, obtained 78 of the 130 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, while in the Senate it obtained 21 of the 36 seats.
The Citizen Community Alliance (CC), of former president Carlos Mesa, obtained 35 deputies and 11 senators, to become the second political force of the South American country.
Meanwhile, the Creemos movement, led by former presidential candidate Luis Fernando Camacho, will have four legislators in the upper house and 17 deputies.
With this composition, the Movement Towards Socialism will be able to approve laws and make parliamentary decisions, without having to build political alliances with the opposition.
However, it will have to build agreements with CC and Creemos to designate authorities, approve judgments of responsibilities and even propose constitutional changes, since this requires the approval of two thirds of the Legislative Assembly.
Among those who must be appointed with a two-thirds majority are the ombudsman, the attorney general and the comptroller general.
This Friday, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) officially declared Luis Arce, of MAS, to be the president-elect, who obtained 55.10 percent of the valid votes cast in the general elections of 18 October.
In second place was Comunidad Ciudadana, with 28.92 percent; and in third place, Creemos with 13.82 percent of the votes.
The Bolivian Refoundation is Back
The Bolivian Refoundation is Back
The overwhelming absolute majority obtained by the MAS duo spoke loud and clear, and inhibited the possibility of another coup. The Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) also dominated the votes for the House and Senate
Published: Monday 19 October 2020 | 08:22:21 pm.
By Marina Menendez Quintero
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Luis Arce (center) celebrates overwhelming electoral victory Author: AFP Posted: 10/19/2020 | 08:12 pm
Bolivia gave itself the necessary vote to defeat the coup d’état and not leave any gaps that would make another manipulation possible: 52.4 percent of the votes awarded to Luis Arce, compared to 31.5 percent attributed to Carlos Mesa, constitute a forceful absolute majority in favor of MAS that demolishes the calculations of all the polls, according to which the Movement Towards Socialism won “tightly” with a little more than ten percent of the votes, or it was going to a second round definitively.
The Bolivian refoundation is back and that round is now irreversible, although the slow official count by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal has not yet produced results.
The results of the exit polls, made known shortly after midnight on Sunday, are of such weight that they were recognized, half an hour after they were made public, by the usurper Jeanine Áñez herself, when she congratulated the winning couple through a brief message on Twitter and ended the tension of a thick calm.
This was a step – it must be recognized – in favor of a guaranteed stability, first, by the masses of patient and firm voters who waited in long lines to vote, without yielding to the provocations of an armed and police corps that guarded the schools with long weapons after a week, accusing the followers of the MAS of fraud in advance, and feeding the false possibility of a popular uprising that would give them the excuse for repression and violence, as a way of overturning an overwhelming victory of the left, like this one.
Áñez’s statement buried the possibility of that other feared blow and against which the declarations of the TSE, that had previously suspended the usual system of quick counting by which tendencies are offered on the same election night, weighed heavily, with which the population was left in suspense.
After the fourth press conference given by the incumbent Salvador Romero early in the night and his repeated testimony that the day had been exemplary, it was impossible to question the polls that the Jubilee center had carried out, and whose results were later published by Ciesmori -she affirms that she has the backing and credit of the authorities- through the official television channel Unitel.
It was in this way that those who remained “inside” the social networks, met at the stroke of midnight of the unofficial but already unobjectionable triumph, celebrated with modesty in a brief meeting of the MAS candidates and some of its leaders while, from his refuge in Buenos Aires, its leader, Evo Morales, commemorated in the same way an event that he considered “historic, unprecedented and unique in the world”.
“One year after the coup, we recovered political power democratically with the consciousness and patience of the people,” he added.
Sober and without fanfare, Arce also thanked the people in La Paz and ratified his commitment to work and govern for all Bolivians.
“We are going to recover the country’s economy. We have the obligation to redirect our process of change without hate, learning and overcoming our mistakes,” added the former Minister of Economy, who analysts consider the architect of the good performance of the national economy during the mandates of the MAS, when that area registered a sustained growth unique in Latin America that averaged an annual GDP of eight percent.
In 12 months, Áñez’s dismantling management now leaves a Gross Domestic Product that must contract more than six percent this year, in the midst of the worst economic crisis in 40 years. Even taking into account the damage caused by the poorly managed Covid-19 pandemic -another ballast of Jeanine- this picture expresses the mismanagement of a spurious mandate that “governed” for big capital.
However, beyond the well-earned prestige of Arce and his unquestionable gift of agglutinating, Sunday’s vote breathes the conviction of an electorate that, for the most part, has given its support not exactly to a figure, but to a project whose achievements were clearer the more aggressive was the work of destroying them led by Áñez.
Such a conviction, expressed so massively and firmly in spite of so many elements against it – let us remember the previous persecution and demonization of MAS to the point of opening judicial cases against its cadres including Evo – leaves with a sticky nose those who, once again, when looking at Latin America revive the denied assertions of Francis Fukuyama in the 1990s, when he announced “the end of history”.
The lesson must have been taken by the OAS headliner himself, an acolyte of Donald Trump who orchestrated the coup last year, and an enemy of the most puerile progressivism. With less capacity for resignation than Áñez, Luis Almagro waited for Monday morning to arrive to take the bitter pill.
“The people of Bolivia have expressed themselves at the polls. We congratulate @LuchoXBolivia and @LaramaDavid wishing them success in their future endeavors,” he wrote on Twitter. “I am sure that from democracy they will know how to forge a bright future for their country.
Contestant Carlos Mesa also had to embrace the inevitable, considering that the difference was too great for there to be any change. “It is an outcome that we accept,” he said.
A pending issue and of no small consequence will be the reaction of the armed forces, which in an artful way supported the revolt against Morales last year?
But the Latin American and Caribbean reversion, thought out and raised from the centers of power, has suffered another defeat. After the return of Peronism to the Argentine government, the return of Masismo indicates that, as much as it still has to perfect itself and learn, the model that takes man as the center as an alternative to that other system that breathes at the rhythm that the market inhales and exhales has not failed.
On the contrary, the neo-liberal execution shows today its shortcomings in the repeated popular mobilizations that are shaking countries like Colombia and Chile.
The Bolivian masses have shown that despite the injustice and the dirty war, the possibility of changing the status quo remains open if there is clarity, consciousness and the ability to resist.
Horizontal Victory
The exit polls carried out by the Jubilee Foundation and the Ciesmori company show a victory for MAS in both chambers of the National Assembly.
According to their counts, the MAS would obtain 19 seats in the Senate out of the 36 it has, while two seats would be in dispute between that political force and the Citizens’ Community (CC) in Potosi and Santa Cruz, reported Telesur.
According to Jubilee information, MAS won five of the country’s nine departments: La Paz, Cochabamba, Potosí, Oruro and Pando, while Carlos Mesa’s Citizen Community won in Chuquisaca, Beni and Tarija. Finally, Creemos’s candidacy, led by Luis Fernando Camacho (who won 14 percent of the votes in the presidential race), would be the winner in Santa Cruz.
Greetings from the left
Politicians from the Latin American and Caribbean left immediately spoke out on the social network Twitter:
Congratulations to #MAS, which has recovered at the polls the power that was usurped by the oligarchy, with the complicity of the #OAS and the imperial guide. #Cuba shares joy for the triumph of #LuisArce. The Bolivarian ideal is reborn. (Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, Cuban President)
I congratulate the Bolivian people for having restored democracy. Congratulations to Luis Arce and my friend Evo Morales who after a difficult year can see the popular vote respected. (Luiz Lula da Silva, former Brazilian President)
Congratulations to Lucho Arce and David Choquehuanca who, together with Evo, built a great popular triumph in Bolivia. The happy Patria Grande. (Cristina Fernández, Vice President of Argentina)
Great Victory! The Bolivian people, united and conscious, defeated with votes the coup d’état that they gave to our brother Evo. Congratulations to President-elect Luis Arce, Vice President David Choquehuanca and our Indian Chief of the South @evoespueblo. Jallalla Bolivia! (Nicolás Maduro, President of Venezuela)
United States declines, China progresses
United States declines, China progresses
By Hedelberto López Blanch
October 14, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
After the economic-social debacle represented by the expansion of the Covid-19 pandemic through almost all the nations of the world, the People’s Republic of China, where the virus was detected for the first time, has managed to raise its economy while that of the United States continues to fall.
The specialists assure that this great difference between the two main economic powers of the world is due to the fact that China, from the first moments, took the pertinent measures to control the disease, in contrast to the United States whose President Donald Trump dismissed the seriousness of the virus.
The North American retreat has been occurring since the last decade and it increased with the appearance of the coronavirus, fundamentally due to the laziness of its officials to face it.
Several data point out the weaknesses of the American giant because despite being a power with very important resources and capabilities for the welfare of most of its inhabitants, their real wage today is lower than 40 years ago.
Under that premise, the average employee must work twice as many years as three decades ago to pay the price of a small apartment.
The level of inequality has progressively worsened among the population with stagnation of real wages compared to the cost of living. Almost 50 million people are below the poverty line and 36% of Americans lack the health insurance that gives them access to specialized health care.
In the last decade, suicides increased 24% and at the same time life expectancy decreased to only 76.10 years. In Cuba, a developing country economically and financially blockaded by Washington, that rate is 78.2 years.
Recently the Department of Commerce reported that the country’s economy contracted in the second quarter of 2020 at the fastest rate in its history and represents the biggest debacle since World War II.
According to the Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) declined at a rate of 32.9 percent in the second quarter of 2020 due to the disastrous effects of the pandemic. In the first quarter, it was minus 5 percent.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimated a 7.3% drop in US GDP for 2020, a figure that could be altered if the coronavirus wave is sustained or increased.
Meanwhile, China emerges as the powerhouse that will end the year of the pandemic with positive economic growth. If in the first quarter its GDP was at minus 6.8%, in the second quarter it grew by 3.2%, exceeding all analysts’ forecasts.
The National Statistics Office of the Asian giant indicated that “in the second quarter growth went from negative to positive”, in a context of economic recovery after the stagnation caused by the coronavirus and that “the market outlook is generally good”.
In nominal terms, China’s total wealth in the first half of the year stood at 45.66 trillion yuan ($6.53 billion).
For the Beijing government, the health policy adopted throughout the nation has been fundamental, through which it has been able to control covid-19, even in asymptomatic people.
Since August 16, no local infections have been recorded and only imported cases have been detected, people who immediately go into a 14-day quarantine.
Of course, this way of stopping the proliferation of the disease contrasts with those applied in the United States and other Western nations. A free health-care policy has been essential to achieving this.
The IHS Markit agency reported that exports represented 20% of the global total between April and June, seven percentage points more than in the same period in 2019, and also applied the alternative of increasing domestic consumption among its large population.
The Asian giant’s recovery has been influenced by the rapid digital transformation of its economy, which was growing strongly before the pandemic, and which accelerated with it.
In 2018 it already represented 34.8% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a percentage that grew year after year above the growth of the Product.
Zhang Jun, dean of Fudan University’s School of Economics and director of China’s Center for Economic Studies, explained that families, unable to leave their homes, adopted applications such as JD.com, Meituan, Eleme and Pinduoduo for daily product purchases.
The companies took advantage of digital tools, from communication platforms such as Enterprise WeChat and DingTalk to electronic contracts, to keep their businesses running.
The end result has been that China is on its way to an economic revival, while in the United States there is still no light at the end of the tunnel.
Robert Mapplethorpe’s Orchids
Robert Mapplethorpe’s “Orchids”
Our sexuality, no matter what, can only be judged in its beauty, by our own way of assuming it respecting the other.
By Ernesto Estévez Rams | internet@granma.cu
September 13, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Robert Mapplethorpe
For all the scandal they caused, in life and in death, Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs, his collection of orchid and lily photos would pass, on a first reading, as almost virgin works. They are not.
Mapplethorpe was a New York photographer who died in 1989 of AIDS. By the time of his death, his photographic work was famous, particularly the black-and-white portraits he took of famous people, including a few Hollywood celebrities, throughout his career.
Robert was a homosexual, a condition which, far from being hidden, he incorporated into his work, to the shock of censorship and to the extent of provoking notoriety. But to say it that way does not do justice to the place the photographer gave to sexuality in his life. Exploring what he considered the individual limits of erotic pleasure, Robert not only exposed his sexuality at its fullest, but also vindicated the dominance that each person should exercise over it to the extent of their own fulfillment.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, when AIDS was already advanced, he summarized the meaning of his most sexually explicit photos, saying that forcing people to do things they don’t want to do is not erotic. Consistency also implied the daring to look beyond the conventional, as long as it was “people looking for a simultaneous orgasm.”
Mapplerthorpe’s work is a continuous cry of an unsuccessful search of the self, in the images that he managed to capture of others. In that sense, through some of his photos, the spectator transforms his condition of observer to that of observed. What happens in all of them is that it is almost impossible not to react to them. In many cases, it makes our subconscious uncomfortable, as it accepts beautifully what the indoctrinated conscious insists on rejecting. A colleague photographer, anonymously, confessed to a chronicler that Robert’s erotic work would not have been acceptable if it had been about heterosexual relationships. He is probably right, such is the prejudice.
The Perfect Moment collection, which displayed explicit photos of high sexual content (of all kinds), was censored as pornography by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington. The controversy reached such prominence that even members of the U.S. Congress spoke out about the use of public funds to promote art. In 1990, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati was sued for the exhibition of the collection, which was labeled obscene. The gallery was acquitted, along with its director Dennis Barrie. This was the first time that an art gallery was sued for the contents of an exhibition.
In 1998, a book displaying the Mapplethorpe photos was confiscated by the police in England. A University of Central England student, writing a thesis, took the text to a local store to have copies made of some photographs. The shopkeeper, alarmed by the photos he saw, called the police, who did not believe to was art. The university was required, as a condition for the return of the book, that certain pages of the book be hidden. After six months of back and forth, the book was finally returned without censorship.
The well-known writer, musician and playwright Patti Smith was a Mapplethorpe partner , whom she met in a bookstore in the mid-1960s. The relationship was as deep as it was torrid because, by that time, Robert was still dealing with his sexual identity. Despite their separation as a couple, they remained friends all their lives, and she called him one of the most important people in her life.
In 1969, Patty and Robert moved to the Chelsea Hotel, next door to the El Quijote restaurant. As Craig Brown describesit, when Patti entered the restaurant, “the scene was absurdly typical of the era, with musicians and bottles of tequila scattered in equal proportions. Jimi Hendrix is there with a large sombrero, perched on a table at the end. To his right, Grace Slick and the rest of Jefferson Airplane, sitting around another table. To his left, Janis Joplins in a conspiracy with her musicians”.
It was Bobby Neuwirth, a friend of Bob Dylan’s, who introduced Patti to Janis. He told the singer, “This is the poet Patti Smith. From that moment until Joplins’ death, she called her friend, the poet.
From Porgy and Bess is the famous Summertime aria, whose lyrics are by DuBose Heyward and music by George Gershwin. They were taken out of the original opera, and performed by the most diverse artists over the years. There are said to be more than 25,000 recordings of the song, beginning with its first commercial success in 1936, in the voice of Billie Holiday.
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong have their version of Summertime, with a memorable trumpet introduction, followed by the irruption of Ella’s voice alternating with Louis’. Can it get any better? Perhaps not, but in 1976 Ray Charles performed it with Cleo Laine at a transcendent height, and Miles Davis (ah, Miles) played it in an instrumental version that was true to his Midas status: everything he played he turned into jazz.
In another vein, Peter Gabriel, with a captivating harmonica introduction by Larry Adler, gave us a Summertime with a guttural voice to break us like a pencil, and Sting, in 1991, did his thing with the Dutch orchestra of the 21st century.
But, in spite of all the excellence of those interpretations, I am left, if I have to choose, with the incomparable Janis Joplin, the voice of several generations who came with the flower boy and opposition to the Vietnam War, along with the breaking of the sexual norms of the 1960s.
How beautiful you are Janis. / You sang as if they were confessions. / It doesn’t matter if the songs were of others, / you made them a testimony of your sins.
Janis Joplin was born in Texas in 1943 and was abused by other students at school as a freak. She was obese and had very bad acne, and was yelled at for doing horrible things, including racially-motivated offenses for getting along with Black people. Her shelters were reading, painting and music. While at the University of Texas, the campus newspaper referred to her as a brave woman, unafraid to distinguish herself from others by the way she dressed, contrary to the conventions of the time, her love of music and her habit of going barefoot.
No one managed the discursive capacity of the scream as she did, / no one managed the body language as she did, / hers was the method brought to the song. The James Dean / of that world she assumed until she broke it / like him: at the wheel of different cars. / All that and more happened before the crows descended / and turned the whole landscape into a firework display.
On one occasion, Janis was crying inconsolably, because a flirt of the night had left with another woman. Dressed in magenta and pink, wearing a kind of scarf with purple feathers, depressed by her failure, she said to Pattyi, “This always happens to me, partner. Another lonely night”. Patti accompanies Janis to her room and listens to her tell of her unhappiness over and over again. As a consolation, Patti confesses that she has written a song for her and sings it to her to encourage her. In an explosion of depressed joy, Janis jumps from the song “That’s My Song,” she screams, as she arranges her scarf in front of the mirror. Two months later she was dying of a drug overdose.
I don’t know if Robert Mapplethorpe ever photographed Janis Joplin directly, but I can’t wait to see her in the magenta, pink and purple orchids that I can guess behind her photos, even in the gray ones. The photographer’s orchids transcend innocence to become what is perhaps his most aggressive break.
Far from the shocking direct message against conventionality, those photos where the flowers end up being pure eroticism. They express a transcendent, and in a certain way fulminating, apprehension of something beautifully ungraspable. They shout to us that our sexuality, no matter what, can only be judged in its beauty, by our own way of assuming it respecting the other.
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