Translations 677
Death Over the Factories of Death
Death Over the Death Factories
War industries, U.S. priorities for economic reopening in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, as Pentagon budget continues to rise madly.
August 10, 2020
By Juana Carrasco Martín
juana@juventudrebelde.cu
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
It could be the agricultural implement factories, but that is not the case. They should increase protective measures for workers in the meatpacking industries, for employees in supermarkets, or for agricultural workers, but that is not their intention either.
There isn’t even an equal standard for health-care workers, and Blacks and Latinos are infected with the new coronavirus three times more than their white counterparts, according to a New York Times analysis of the records of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The study also found that minority workers were 20 percent more likely than white workers to care for suspected or confirmed Covid-positive patients. The rate rose to 30 percent specifically for Black workers. In addition, they also reported inadequate or reused protective equipment (PPE) at a rate 50 percent higher than that reported by white workers. For Latinos, the rate was twice that of white workers.
Although the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is not over, and, on the contrary, there is a resurgence of infections in those states that prematurely relaxed or lifted restrictions on social or physical distancing – to be more precise – those that set about economic movement brought, in not a few cases, a priority that projects good times for… the Pentagon and the war industry.
U.S. military personnel, seen outside the overflow hospital at the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan last month. The Pentagon has issued interim guidance advising caution pursuing recruits who have been hospitalized previously with COVID-19.
Nor is Eisenhower taken into account
The reality surpasses logic in the Trump administration. Making money continues to be the interest and not the care of people’s lives. That is why national security is being relieved, leaving aside a total battle against the enemy SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and continuing to bet on a war, or all the necessary ones, anywhere in the world against a supposed enemy that allows them to manufacture bombs and war equipment of all kinds.
When the numbers of infected and dead in the United States are terrifying -4,941,796 people infested, so probably this Sunday it will reach five million-, Congress has already discussed the Pentagon’s budget. We remember that independent Senator Bernie Sanders, published an opinion in The Guardian, in which he presented a true picture, a warning and a call:
“At this unprecedented moment in America’s history–a terrible pandemic, an economic crisis, people marching across the country to end systemic racism and police brutality, growing inequality of income and wealth, and an unstable president in the White House–now is the time to bring people together to fundamentally alter our national priorities and rethink the very fabric of American society.
The fact is that they approved $740 billion in spending and ignored Sanders’ proposal to cut 10 percent and target it to meet the needs of the most disadvantaged in the U.S. population, which would have been $74 billion for housing, education and health care, essentially. And the Vermont senator cited a Republican hero, General Dwight Eisenhower, who said in 1953 “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired means, in the final sense, a theft from those who are hungry and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its workers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The current situation is much more critical: a quarter of the U.S. population is living from paycheck to paycheck, and now from the pandemic subsidy check, which in July has not yet been approved by Congress; between 22 and 40 million fear eviction for not being able to pay the rent, 40 million also live in poverty, and 87 million lack adequate health insurance.
Sanders is not the only one busy with waste. California Democratic Representative Ro Khanna is proposing that money for the “modernization” of intercontinental ballistic missiles go to research on the anti-Covid vaccine. California Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee is calling for a $350 billion cut in the war budget.
Even Eisenhower could not change the military-industrial complex of which he warned, and even less do Sanders, Khanna and Lee, although they appeal to the emergency caused by the new coronavirus, when the President of the country, Donald Trump, daily minimizes the magnitude and lethality of the pandemic and only takes advantage of it to lead the situation in order to be re-elected next November.
Among his most recent manipulative expressions are assuring that children “are practically immune” to COVID-19, and almost assuring that they will have a life-saving vaccine by November 3 – election day – because he is pushing it with all his might, even though he says it is not to win at the polls, he wants to save lives?
Trump, who has long sought exclusivity on potential vaccines, announced in May that the huge task of delivering the vaccine will be in the hands of the military in conjunction with the CDC. At the time he said it would be at the end of the year, but the circumstances surrounding the election campaign, which are not in his favor, have led him to make the hasty declaration that in November he has the salvation of the world in his hands?
The military and COVID-19
There is a reality, in these dramatic times and when the number one enemy should be the pandemic. The Department of Defense is not accountable for its expenditures, while its contractors are making huge profits, as always, under the cover of a circumstance long highlighted by critics of the system. The main recipients of war industries’ contributions to their respective election campaigns are the members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.
To make matters worse, the new coronavirus has served to compensate arms manufacturers for alleged losses in profits as well. For example, General Electric, which has laid off 25 percent of its workforce, received $20 million to expand its development of “advanced manufacturing techniques,” and Spirit Aerosystems received $80 million to expand its domestic manufacturing after laying off 900 workers.
Some analysts warn that military expenditures could be reduced if the billions spent on the new Cold War with China were not available; if the Pentagon’s requests to buy the controversial and clearly imperfect F-35 fighter planes from Lockheed Martin were not met; or on Trump’s new warrior invention, the Space Force.
Included in the waste is General Dynamics Electric Boat’s $126 billion nuclear submarine program, the new Ford class aircraft carrier built by Huntington Ingalls for $13.2 billion, and its launch system that remains unlaunched but earns a profit for General Atomics. By the way, Bloomberg reported that the ship’s toilets are frequently clogged and can only be cleaned with specialized acids that cost about $400,000 per flush…).
The clogging is greater in those Pentagon priorities, when it becomes known from a June article in Tom Distpach, that in February 2018, the Government Accountability Office, which to some extent oversees federal spending, warned that the Defense Department’s health care system lacked the capacity to handle routine needs, let alone wartime emergencies, and within the ever-increasing military budget, military health care has grown next to nothing.
The 41,361 individuals linked to the Department of Defense, both military and civilian employees, infected with COVID-19, and in a staff mostly in the 18-24 age range we have not found the recognized number of deaths, will they be the humane and disposable part of that budget “oversight”?
The Black Vice Presidency
ajiacomix
The Black Vice Presidency
By Margarita A. Alarcón Perea
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
The news flooded the nets yesterday like flies to mangoes.
Finally, the presumed candidate for the presidency of the United States for the party that is not Trump’s, Joe Biden, announced his running mate. Senator Kamala Harris. All the media spent the whole day talking about it, as they should. Senator Harris has a lot of prestige within the Senate of that country, and she comes from a long progressive family and personal history. She is a woman more than ready to lead the nation even just as Vice President. It is a step toward much-needed normalcy, and an interesting turn in domestic politics within the United States. Biden could have gone a little more to the right with Susan Rice, with whom he worked during the Obama years, but no, he went more to the left. Evidently something is going on among the young, millennial people who warn the former Vice President that if they want to win, they better please them.
But this is for another paper. Today I want to be more direct and clarify something that I think is necessary. Yesterday, in the midst of the excitement about the nomination, the big media in that country stated, in one way or another, that for “the first time in the history of the United States” there was a black woman nominated for the vice presidency of the country.
Wrong, and wrong.
The first Black woman nominated for the Vice Presidency of the United States of America was Angela Davis, and she was twice in the presidential race. The first in 1980 and the second in 1984. The first African-American woman nominated for the presidential race was Charlene Mitchell in 1968.
By late afternoon the mainstream media had corrected the mistake and the announcement was “The first African-American woman nominated for the Vice Presidency by one of the nation’s major parties.¨ That was good and it needed to be done and it was done.
Now, in the 1960s a poster was printed by Alfredo Rostgaard known to many or all as The Rose and the Thorn where the graphic artist draws the song by Luis Eduardo Aute in honor of the Cuban Revolution. That rose grows beautiful always, or at least it tries to, and the thorn is always seen as the enemy of the fierce and brutal North that threatens us. Why then, have I not seen anything in the national media about this? Why hasn’t the national press done “the individual study” and simply follow the rhyme of “the thorn”? I know it’s not as easy as going into Google and typing in “Black Vice President of the United States”, I know because I did it and what I get is Kamala Harris and the infamy that she is the first. There we see “the thorn”. What is unforgivable is that “the rose” accepts it without any more or less.
Senator Kamala Harris, she deserves credit without question. The history of that nation, the history of the left in that nation and other Black women deserve it; the history of this nation, “the rose”, deserves it too. Angela deserves it.
NOTE: Here is the poster, El Corno Emplumado:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/344736546481598019/
Graphic Opinion: Coleros and Resellers
Graphic Opinion: Coleros and Resellers
By José Alberto Rodríguez Ávila
August 4, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Cartoon: José Alberto Rodríguez/ Cubadebate.
In times of need and shortage, of crisis not only in Cuba but globally, the waiting line as an occupation is the easy alternative for some on the island. Not only to stand on line: then resell at higher prices (with appreciable profit) to others who do work and don’t have the free time that “coleros” do.
Cimex Closes Ranks Against Coleros
Cimex Closes Ranks Against Coleros, Resales and Hoarding
By Yaditza del Sol González
August 3, 2020
The Cimex Corporation has designed a series of supervision and control measures to confront resellers and hoarders, among which is the provision of supervisors to commercial units with sale of products that generate hoarding behaviors
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
From hand to hand, like a chain, prices are multiplied to the benefit of some and to the detriment of others. Photo: Osval
There have been many warning calls on the subject because, when it comes to coleros, resellers and hoarders, we are in the presence of a problem that affects almost all of us and undermines the efforts that the country is making to guarantee the population basic items, in the midst of a complex economic situation.
It is almost always the same faces, which repeat over and over again in the waiting lines, and end up buying three or four times what should have been a single purchase, and then reselling that merchandise at an exorbitant price. Then there are those who mark and sell the shifts and shamelessly profit from the need of others.
The subject even takes on other nuances, if we talk about those who go directly to the sales floor or warehouse, without waiting, and avail themselves of dissimilar items -frequently the most demanded items such as food and toiletries- and pay at the checkout without there being any regulation of their purchase. Of course, this is always done in complicity with some staff of the establishment itself.
Other examples and situations could be used in this way, but in the end the bill is the same: it is an illegal activity, which must be stopped without any passivity. However, for this to happen, it is not enough just for the population to denounce it, it is also necessary for the forces of law and order to act, and above all, for the shops and businesses where these events take place.
For this purpose, the Cimex Corporation has designed a series of supervision and control measures to confront resellers and hoarders, among which is the provision of supervisors to commercial units with sale of products that generate hoarding behaviors.
Likewise, it was determined to apply integral controls to branches and territorial complexes with demands and complaints from the population, as well as the training of personnel working directly in commercial units and administrative areas, according to information published by Cimex i\on its Facebook account.
On the other hand, it is forbidden in retail marketing to reserve shifts and goods in sales and warehouse floors for customers, to sell goods outside the established hours in the units, to disclose any information about the products in the warehouse and the internal working procedures, and to receive goods without the corresponding invoices.
Failure to apply price circulars in a timely manner, selling items to customers with blank properties and warranties and without the presentation of an identity card, and the purchase by workers of products in the commercial units where they work are also part of the prohibitions applied.
LETTERS: Unedited machine translation
José Luis said:
1
4 August 2020
03:02:47
As a Cuban, a patriot and a revolutionary, I say the following: we continue to beat around the bush. These measures are more of the same. They will not solve anything as long as the macabre mechanism of the colors is perfectly greased for years. Colero-store-warehouses-retailers. Everyone communicates, calls each other on the phone, receives commissions and a long list well known by the people and the authorities themselves. What do I propose? In view of the current situation, so serious that the country is going through from the economic point of view, with a coronavirus, blockade, etc., cholero, store workers, etc., that their participation in these acts of CORRUPTION, which has no other name because of its profound damage to the social fabric, to the people, be proven, sanctions of more than 10,000 Cuban pesos and/or a minimum of 2 years in prison, WITH INTERNATION. It is over.
LICF responded:
August 6th, 2020
09:10:50
I am a salaried worker, although with a decent salary, I never go to a line because everything is sold during working hours. And my 73-year-old mother, although apparently strong, where I detected diabetes a few years ago, sometimes goes to the queues. By necessity not by choice I agree with you: (Colero-store-stores-retailers) you have to act, but he lacked that all the staff of the store or establishment also wet with the mojito. That is, with the dividends. But I do not agree with the statement: “they say they are going to kill everyone who drinks aguardiente, it is a good thing that they are going to leave Cuba without people”. If I ever hear that phrase or a similar one, I should think that many of those coleros have no work relationship and therefore live off that commission, then I would better say or advise the country’s top management to place them all in agriculture, whether they are coleros of working age, salesmen and storekeepers, and why not managers and administrators who allow this, that and the other. As there will be food in Cuba if this is implemented. I believe that work in agriculture will teach them and give them a chance to claim their rights.
Mila said:
2
4 August 2020
05:23:50
Have you already forgotten about e-commerce? In the midst of the resurgence that is emerging e-commerce is no longer mentioned and no longer exists, on the platform tuenvio and there is never anything and in the delivery of Havana 1 month ago the stores do not open, those who can not make endless queues and resolved to buy by that route can no longer do so. Can anyone explain what is happening?
jrosell said:
3
4 August 2020
06:52:38
It should also analyze the delays in dispatching the products, prioritize the sale of the most demanded, enable the largest number of boxes to speed up the dispatches, comply with the schedules for the start of work, speed up the dispatches from the stores to the points of sale, give priority and follow up the use of the POS by the administrations, eliminate the request for the identity card to make the payment by card (these have the personal data in the banks), look for alternatives so that the queues are not so many hours under the sun, among others.
augusto said:
4
4 August 2020
08:12:28
These are the real culprits of the misery that our people are suffering, the sluts and resellers, by giving them a hard blow we will solve all the problems.
José Manuel Alcalde Lanuza answered:
August 6th, 2020
08:06:21
The basic problem is scarcity. If there were no shortage, there would be no resellers. They are an effect, not the cause.
Lina answered:
August 7, 2020
02:54:20
They are the guilty ones, besides the workers of the store who warn them about the products and keep the goods for them.
Oscar Ramos Isla said:
5
4 August 2020
08:22:07
The control does not depend on the situation caused by the coronavirus or any other abnormality. The control is permanent because that is where the quality of the services and the gratitude of the customers are obtained.
Oscar Ramos Isla said:
6
4 August 2020
08:31:05
Technologies can be the perfect ally for resellers not to take advantage of the needs of the Cuban people.
LICF responded:
August 6, 2020
09:32:24
Identity card in hand national database means interconnected between them and a software programmed for when a citizen buys here today tomorrow in another store wherever it is within our island the system will give him denied until the next 1, 2 or 3 months depending on their acquisition also in that database can be implemented the number of supply book to which they belong and according to the amount of consumers would be the amount of product to purchase. Think that I am not eternal and perhaps one day I will be infarmed with so many irregularities in the system.
Anabel-pinar said:
7
4 August 2020
08:56:37
It’s about time! Here in Pinar del Rio until mid-June we used the supply notebook to control the purchase of products, and the truth is that it had a 99% acceptance rate, since we entered phase 1 and eliminated that way it has been a chaos, the coleros have their stores, they do not move to others and even if you arrive early you will always be above 100. It is incredible how many times you ask some worker for the products that are expected to see if you are interested and “they never know” ahhhhh look for the first ones in the queue that even prices know; these measures are very good, I just think that they should be changing the supervisors because in the long run… They can fall into the same vicious circle. They need to uproot this and design tougher measures and laws against them.
ANA said:
8
4 August 2020
08:57:03
Good morning, this topic makes me feel important in the effort that the country is making in the economic plan, on the other hand, I work until 6 pm in Havana, where there is a regular store known as “Los Frailes”, IT HAPPENS THAT THE MERCHANDISE ARRIVES, AFTER 2 HOURS, IF HE UNDERSTANDS THAT DAY THE CHARACTER WHO GIVES THE TICKETS, HE DOES OR NOT, THIS CAUSES THAT AFTER 2 HOURS THERE WAS GATHERED WHAT IS MOST VALUABLE AND SHINES FROM THE OLD HAVANA, THIS IS ALLOWED BY THE STAFF OF THAT DISASTROUS STORE, WHICH MAKES HOARDING A DIARY IN THOSE CHARACTERS. IT IS THE MANAGEMENT OF THE STORE, THE GOVERNMENT OF HAVANA, AND THE POLICE WHO ONLY SHOW UP IF SOMEONE CALLS, WHO IS GIVING THE POSSIBILITY THAT THESE UNFORTUNATE EVENTS OCCUR.
arelys hernandez alaonso said:
9
4 August 2020
09:04:04
Good morning I think it would be good to publish a phone number to call to inform the place that this is happening. It is the only way to end with these who do not work because most do not work live from it.
Elizabeth Cruz said:
10
4 August 2020
09:07:32
I’m not a Cimex worker, but I have a doubt: if workers can’t buy in the store where they work, how can they manage to acquire the products they need so much, if they stay all day working?
Leanny said:
11
4 August 2020
09:11:08
Very good measures that could facilitate access to products in these stores and in others to the ordinary people. But I would like to give 1 observation, because the chain insists in affecting its workers, as it is possible that a worker cannot buy in his work place the products that he needs for his house (I insist for his house, without hoarding or another type of corruption action) that for me is to throw away the couch, I believe that it would be beneficial for its workers who many times work in unsatisfactory conditions, lack of air conditioning in shops that are designed to work with them and they are only informed que¨ there is no budget for reparaciones¨, many times there is a lack of workers to cover the staff, they have carried out their functions in the middle of a pandemic without being provided with means of protection or at least not in the necessary quantities, etc. , because prohibiting them from buying (regulated) what they need (or they are not citizens of this country of ours). Greetings.
jrosell said:
12
4 August 2020
09:29:15
They should also close ranks with store administrations to improve treatment, improve salaries, be more efficient, educate and use technology to speed up payments and queues.
mili said:
13
4 August 2020
09:48:37
Really the coleros and resellers are a worse pandemic than the covid. But we allow it, because in a queue everyone knows who is for what from the dispatcher to the policeman guarding the queue and we let them in. Cuba is a unique country in many things from the health and education benefits, etc. to the coleros and resellers, which we know are a plague for which there is no insept for the moment. And as a unique country we have to act, we are the only country that has a supply card, why don’t we use it? Among the people around me at work, my neighbors, in the streets, everybody is asking for it, because not now that this pandemic has affected the whole world, since before, since always, the one who works is at a total disadvantage with the one who does not work, the one who goes out to work from Monday to Friday at 6 or 7 in the morning and comes back at 5 or 6 in the afternoon, how does he stock up on what is necessary? But now that everything is supplied by the snacks, it is a problem with no solution, because you have to be on the street and to buy a simple soap or detergent package of which you can not do without sometimes sadly you have to resort to resellers, because the one who does not work has all the time to make the queue, in my modest opinion if we normalize the products of first need, where are they going to resell? Let us not deceive ourselves that in this beautiful country which I love and will always defend, everything is known and everything is possible.
Lad said:
14
4 August 2020
09:54:57
Very good measures. But I think the measure that workers cannot buy where they work is exaggerated. That should stimulate a lot the work taking into account that they don’t have good salaries unlike many people think. To that you add that most of them work 3 days and rest one. Seriously, that day is going to be spent looking for supplies. The most responsible for the store workers to hoard are the managers and salesmen who allow them to do so. Those who think otherwise do not know how a store works. Pq when the manager is right there is no invention.
Rodolfo Rodriguez said:
15
4 August 2020
10:01:05
At last there is a plan from the state side to control the illicit business, which as they say also happens inside the store with the conspiracy of the employees. On the other hand, in Holguin, village brigades have been formed to fight the coleros. The coleros from inside and outside are nothing but vile criminals who take advantage of the situation of shortage that the people suffer and create chaos. They are enemies of the people and as such they must be treated with the maximum rigor of the law and above all those from within.
JOSE CARLOS GARCIA JACOMINO said:
16
4 August 2020
10:47:10
NOW THEY NEED TO COMPLY… THEY SHOULD HAVE DONE THAT MONTHS AGO.
Zulema said:
17
4 August 2020
10:46:51
I thought all that was forbidden since many years ago!
hgm He answered:
August 4, 2020
15:27:36
Of course it is long suspended, in fact it is in the regulations of the cimex, as the supervisors do that work systematically, it is not new
Georgina said:
18
4 August 2020
10:58:45
All this is very good and it’s time to finish with what is doing so much damage to the town, I want to take this opportunity to highlight the work of the organizers of the queue of The Rock, on Sunday I went at 6 and 15 and they were already giving shifts, I took the 51 and went home, returned at 9, began a little late 9 and 25 and at 10 and 5 I went with my package of breast seemed incredible to see those young people as they had everything under control, No fuss, no muss, no mess, everyone in place with their nasobuco and everything super fast, but in Gy 25 you can’t buy anything there, those who organize favor the mess because (at the entrance of the store, far from where you make the queue) accumulate elderly people, Others who say they have treatment for cancer or that they are operated on, in short, another line that causes displeasure and encourages those who have no scruples to slip in and make fun of other old people who get up early and mark their lines, there is always a riot and even the police do not keep their distance and pray, I say this so that they take into account and take measures as in other places, They also treat the people badly when they complain and on one occasion a black woman who supposedly organizes told a lady that she had asked for something to drink a cup of chlorine, hopefully they will put young people like those of La Roca in that place, the neighbors and population that we cannot buy in spite of living in front of it we will be grateful.
Elena said:
19
4 August 2020
10:59:17
I believe that we must continue to close ranks, because it is difficult to end the evil from the roots, now for example they have taken over Tuenvío.cu, it is simply impossible to access the network, only a small group of chosen people can do it.
Angel Rodolfo Diaz Cadalso said:
20
4 August 2020
11:09:40
The streets belong to the revolutionaries, the country belongs to the true Cubans and we cannot allow unscrupulous elements to pretend to profit from the needs of the population. If anything can be done in Cuba, it is to fight in an organized way all the germs that attempt against the social welfare. We are an organized people, with a single party and a government with its ear to the ground supported by all the revolutionaries who number in the millions. The unity of our people makes us invincible. We will resist and we will win. We are Cuba, we are continuity. Always until victory.
Our Women
Our Women
In keeping with these times, more than 130,000 women have joined the urban agriculture movement and the medical brigades that have gone out to fight the pandemic in other nations, 61% of whom are women.
By Yenia Silva Correa
August 5, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Rodríguez Robleda, José Raúl
From economic and productive work, continuation of the work to support the fight against the pandemic and stops to pay homage and recognition, the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) is promoting a group of activities to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the organization, which will take place on August 23.
With strict adherence to the health measures required by the complex epidemiological situation caused by COVID-19, it was reported this Tuesday, through a press conference, that the program on the occasion of the event will have the communities as its setting.
Teresa Amarelle Boué, Secretary General of the organization and member of the Political Bureau, reminded [everyone] that the main challenge that the new coronavirus represents today does not diminish the protagonist [leading role, wl] of Cuban women in the other challenges they lead. These include “maintaining what has been conquered in terms of gender equality, that there are no setbacks in the midst of the new forms of economic management that the country is promoting, the situation of the aging population and how to perfect the protocols of action to confront gender violence in our country.”
JOY AT NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS
Excited, after the news of being the vanguard of the country, the FMC of Santiago de Cuba dedicated to the FMC’s founder, Vilma Espín, the condition received.
“We could not go to Segundo Frente, to pay her any other tribute than this one, obtained in the midst of the current complexity”, declared Elena Castillo Rodríguez, provincial secretary.
In addition to the leading role played on the health front, she highlighted the massive incorporation of food production in agriculture and on industrial estates, the demand for discipline in public spaces, the active promotion of electricity saving, and the implementation of more than a hundred training programs for women who are not working.
George Stinney, Condemned
George Stinney, the Boy Condemned to the Electric Chair
George Junius Stinney Jr. was convicted in March 1944 of the murder of the two girls, ages 11 and 8, in a speedy trial by a jury of white men. George was executed in the electric chair on June 16 of that year.
By Raúl Antonio Capote | internacionales@granma.cu
August 4, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
George Junius Stinney Jr: was convicted in March 1944 for the murder of two girls aged 11 and eight Photo: ABC
A boy looks scared into the camera of the Clarendon police photographer. After long hours of brutal interrogation, he had just confessed to a crime he had not commit.
Whoever pressed the shutter of the camera captured the pure image of fear and innocence; George Stinney’s police photo is not just any photo.
Stinney was a boy from Alcolu, Clarendon, a small town in South Carolina. His life was the life, you might say, of an African-American boy in that region.
George was tending the family’s cows with his sister Amie that day when two white girls, Mary Emma Thames and Betty June Binnicker, approached them to ask about some medicinal plants they were looking for. George and Amie did not know the plants, so the girls went on their way.
Hours after the meeting, the girls’ parents, concerned, went out to look for them. George offered to help when they passed by his family’s farm and told the parents about the conversation he had with the girls.
The bodies of the girls were found near a Missionary Baptist church, showed signs of sexual abuse and had been killed using a 25 kg wood.
The police arrested George and took him in for questioning, in a process that involved many irregularities, physical abuse and psychological torture. The child was not represented by any lawyer and was not allowed the company of his parents, despite being a minor, he was only 14 years old.
They said that he had confessed to the crime, but no evidence of the confession was ever produced, it was the word of the police against that of the black child. His sister–witnessing that Stinney had been with her all afternoon, so she could not commit the crime–was threatened and harassed, so she had to flee the area in the face of the real possibility of being lynched, as some villagers had promised to do.
George Junius Stinney Jr. was convicted in March 1944 of the murder of the two girls, aged 11 and 8, in a speedy trial by a jury of white people. George was executed in the electric chair on June 16 of that year.
In 2014 the case was reviewed and justice ruled that the boy had not received a fair trial and he was found not guilty. The problem is that this verdict came 70 years too late.
No Export Industry Without Design
We Cannot Conceive of an Export Industry Without Design
By Liudmila Peña Herrera
Cuban journalist. Graduated in Journalism from the Universidad de Oriente, in Santiago de Cuba. She works for the weekly Ahora, in Holguín province.
and
Ivette Leyva García
Journalist and communicator. Editor of La Tiza, Revista Cubana de Diseño, and contributor to Cubadebate.
July 29, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Leonel Amador, during the presentation of one of his books. With him Gisela Herrero, head of the National Design Office. Photo: ONDi.cu
With all the experience and prestige gained by a broad and multifaceted work in the field of light industry over more than six decades of work, chemical engineer Leonel Amador Perez, today an advisor to the Minister of Industries, is an authoritative and proactive voice in the attempt to insert Cuban design in the quality standards of national productions.
A perfumer by profession, Leonel Amador became involved from a very young age – at just 16 – in the fascinating world of fragrances. He himself defines the year 1958 as a determining moment in the destiny that would follow after entering the Rancho Boyeros Technical-Industrial School.
“At that time, the advertising of the big soap companies on the radio and television was very appealing to me. That’s why I chose the specialty of Soap and Perfumery”, remembers who began his professional history in the aerosol filler, in Havana, where they produced the sprays for various cosmetics, perfumes, shaving foams of different brands and many hair products.
His experience in this sector would be enriched in the Burjois Perfumery, producer of Chanel No. 5; then, in the recently created Empresa Consolidada de Jabonería y Perfumería, and later in the Laboratory of Development and Production of bouquets, currently Suchel Fragancia, of which he was one of the founders and its first director, at the age of 23. If such merits still seem insufficient, he is endorsed by having been director of design at the Ministry of Light Industry and winner of the National Honorary Design and Design Management Award, both granted by ONDi.
So many distinctions do not spoil his humility. In the way he conducts himself with his colleagues, there is not the slightest hint of the egocentrism that usually originates such entertainments; on the contrary, in his slow speech and in the frank and clear dialogue, like the essence of one of his perfumes – Alicia, inspired by Prima Ballerina Assoluta -, one can guess the peasant roots of which he assures he is proud.
His tenacity in work and the energy he gives to that passion, make him “jump” to the laboratory from time to time, to compose some fragrance (the last ones were S Hojas de Tabaco Verde, Súcheli Flores Blancas and Insaciable). For him, talking about the challenges and the need to incorporate design solutions into the daily life of a country that is destined to promote productive chains is an obligation, but also a pleasure.
What policies have been developed within the Ministry of Industries to contribute to the productive linkages that, according to the economic authorities, the country needs so much?
-This is an expeditious way for economic actors involved in a production chain to obtain benefits. Logically, the development of one activity drives that of the others and, strategically, it is beneficial and very effective. This policy, within the Ministry of Industries, is not new, since it was born with the Revolution itself and the ideas implemented by Che, who conceived the Cuban industrial development through the productive chains. That is, if we were going to produce coffee, then we would develop the production of the sack and, for that, we would have to produce the fiber, for which purpose the agricultural crops of the kenaf were planted. Today, the policy and programs of industrial development until 2030 take into account these productive chains.
How do you assess the degree of insertion of Cuban design in those chains?
-The insertion of design in the productive chains is vital, although in some processes it is not given the importance it deserves, even when, strategically, it is essential.
“Today, the quality systems that are implemented throughout the industrial plant are based on the evaluation and validation of the design, not only to have a well-assembled quality management system, but also to avoid defective products that do not meet the needs for which they were created. For this reason, design, both industrial and visual communication, plays a very important role in the development of production and in the levels of satisfaction that products and services must achieve.
“We still need to promote it more, because it is not at the center of the company’s management development, even though there are some who have understood the importance of design management, to the point that today they are successful entities in their product development policies.
“It may be that those working in the industry are not always aware of the importance of design, but neither does ONDi and designers have to wait until they are. I believe they should play a more active role in demonstrating the opportunities offered by design as a tool for achieving higher rates of product competitiveness. We cannot conceive of an export industry if it does not have good design. And this is within the policies that the ministry is developing.
“At the moment, we are working on various aspects of the issue. For example, along with the industrial development policy, there is the packaging policy and the design policy; all this so that there is a guiding document in the country that can show us the way to achieve greater efficiency and competitiveness in the product range through design”.
How could designers play a more proactive role in raising awareness of the importance of design?
-There is no one who knows more about the importance of design than the designer himself. We need to get rid of the complaint a little. We need to talk, convince and show more what can be achieved. We must not allow valuable projects to be drawn up and then archived. We have to fight to get these good projects into production.
“Design work must be seen from the industrial management itself, but that is achieved by educating and demonstrating. We developed an experience 25 years ago, at the end of the nineties, with a diploma in management of this activity, at the Instituto Superior de Diseño (ISDi). Thanks to this action of improvement, a group of industry leaders, including me, who was then a vice-minister, prepared ourselves in the most important aspects related to design. Because of those relationships I had with ONDi, I also participated in international events, always presenting papers on the color-smell relationship in the design of packaging for the cosmetics industry and on experiences in design management.
“We also promoted, in coordination with ONDi and ISDi, the experimental reorientation of higher level graduates. It was not a question of improvising designers, but of enriching with these tools professionals who, with a knowledge base such as industrial engineers, chemists, textiles…, could influence, from the industry, design management.
“I owe a lot to the designers I met during the 23 years that I attended to the activity at the ministry level. José “Pepe” Cuendias was a brother…
(Our interviewee briefly interrupts the dialogue. He is moved by the memory of the former director of ONDi and rector of ISDi for so many years. Before our eyes, he is no longer, for a few minutes, the advisor; now we see him in the skin of the friend. He breathes, and continues).
“My relationship with him, in the framework of work, was very close. We planned the training activities together with the staff of the institute. I was also nourished by boys I had known since they were students: Pedrito (Pedro García-Espinosa), Sergito (Sergio Peña Martínez), Giselita (Gisela Herrero García), Carmita (Carmen Gómez Pozo)… There were very talented designers in the industry itself, from whom I learned, like Rafael de León -National Design Award in 2005-, a costume designer for Tropicana and for Vanessa’s trunks, who is very well known internationally”.
How do you assess, from your work experiences, the industry-design relationships over the years?
-In the seventies of the last century, there was a Design Department in the Ministry of Light Industry, whose creation I defended a lot because there was a similar one in the Ministry of Industries of Che. In 1980 the ONDi was created, and the relations between both institutions led to the emergence of design centres in the 1990s, by branches: clothing, footwear, furniture. It was then that, as Vice-Minister, I started to attend to the activity.
“The fact that later the presence of design in industry has been blurred is due to an essentially economic factor. For there to be design there has to be production, and today access to the market for national products is limited by financial problems. We must therefore ensure that part of the solution to this situation is design as a tool. At present, the linkage of the tourism sector and the furniture industry is a positive example. It is satisfying to see the furniture in hotels such as Paseo del Prado, for example; anyone would think that it is not Cuban, and yes, it is manufactured in an industry that is part of that productive chain that we are called upon to promote.
“When you think about how this chain is carried out, you have to take into account that furniture means wood, varnishes, nails, screws, upholstery materials, the clothes of the factory workers, their shoes… Let’s analyze how many things are derived and we will see that it is a big chain in which design plays a fundamental role”.
At present, the linkage of the tourism sector and the furniture industry is a positive example. Image: ONDi.cu.
In his speech to the National Assembly of People’s Power in December 2019, President Miguel Díaz-Canel posed the challenge of “conquering the greatest possible prosperity”, even in the midst of the economic war we are facing. How can we accompany this objective from industry, from design, in the medium term?
-For me, Cuban industry is committed to be better, to overcome every day, and it will achieve it by working more efficiently and effectively, developing the products that Cubans want and deserve. In that challenge, design is an essential tool, because with it we can adapt the product to the needs of the population in an optimal way.
“Likewise, ONDi must use all its experience and knowledge to help raise awareness among industry specialists and to definitively materialize the use of design in each work, product or service that will be made available to our public.
“It must never be forgotten that if you do not have a design that is competitive with the international average, it will be very difficult to export. To achieve this, you must have stable quality and be very punctual with design solutions”.
In July 2020, ONDi celebrated its 40th anniversary. What idea or message would you like to convey to your collective, who are committed to making Cuba a country of good design?
-We must continue to maintain our professional commitment as we have done up to now, and even more. I know the spirit of work of the office, the battle of its designers who radiate a willingness to help in everything they have been asked to do. I just want to invite you to continue to be an example of that passion for design. That needs to be multiplied.
Of Parents…
Of Parents…
By Dixie Edith
Cuban journalist and professor at the Communications Department of the University of Havana. On Twitter @Dixiedith
June 19, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Many parents, more and more, are wondering if it is worth keeping their hands tied in the face of the hard work that tradition has destined them to do. Photo: Amanda Terrero.
Fernando wanted to be a father. When he looked at his four-year-old son, he wanted to be a father. I met him a little less than five years ago on a bumpy inter-provincial flight. From the beginning of an endless wait, I was surprised to see the way the young man related to his little boy. He explained the causes of the plane’s delay as if they were bedtime stories, played with wooden blocks, fed him with infinite patience and then improvised a bed for him between several seats. The child, restless to the point of exhaustion, rested his head on his lap at every turn.
When the blessed flying device finally appeared, Fernando and I ended up sitting together and, for the sake of the Caribbean DNA that flows in us, I served as a handkerchief for tears during the short journey to the East. In just a few months, the young man, born in Bayamo, had been divorced, a promising job offer was placed under his nose in Havana, and he was immersed in a tough legal battle over the shared custody of his son. Without eating or drinking, the little boy had become a cursed chess piece between a mother, still upset by a separation she neither sought nor wanted, and a father claiming his rights.
A family court ruled months later in favor of Fernando. The last time we spoke, however, he told me that, at the gates of every holiday period, the pitched battle over whether he could bring the child to the capital began again. This is because the mother lives looking for pretexts to prevent it. Especially now that he has a new family and a baby a few months-old baby. But “Carlitos loves his little sister,” he said proudly.
When the world was worried about the arrival of the new millennium and the technological blackout that it would produce, the academic world spoke of a phenomenon that specialists called “crisis of masculinity”. This was a reflection on the break-up of patriarchal traditions, where the most traditional roles were being blurred and mixed up hand-in-hand, above all, with a re-evaluation of fatherhood.
The feminist movements had already explained to exhaustion that all this distribution of social functions that are assumed to be natural are not so natural. They are culturally-constructed and can, therefore, be changed. On the other hand, men like Fernando came to the conclusion, by different means, that one is not “less of a man” for not complying with a good part of the requirements that tradition assigns to them.
The North American journalist Susan Faludi illustrated the mentioned crisis with symptoms common to many of her fellow countrymen: increase of stress and signs of anguish, demonstrated in depression, suicides and violent behaviors; the strong demand for plastic surgeries by men, more and more accepted; steroid abuse and their own Viagra sales.
In developed Europe, the debates went through quite similar paths. It’s globalization, isn’t it? And in Latin America, although the patriarchy was still championing its respect, the much-vaunted crisis was also a topic of discussion. For Chilean sociologist Elvira Chadwick, the main change came from the fact that “men went from being the only providers to having to share that role with women who go out to work just like them. Women, who are increasingly incorporated into the world of work, are now not only work colleagues, but also often bosses. This, together with the usual competitiveness of modern societies, caused, according to Chadwick, a “man on the verge of a nervous breakdown”.
Twenty years later, things are more or less on the same wavelength, with the aggravating factor that a conservative and very fundamentalist wave is threatening to swallow us whole. The internet is full of voices calling for a return to the “original family”. Make no mistake about it, this axiom is not just about opposing equal marriage and the right to adopt babies by same-sex couples. It is also about putting women back in the kitchen and men back in the public eye. It is about rescuing those outdated arguments that there is “only one mother” and any [cone can be a] father’. Arguments that would not help Fernando to win his battles.
Specialists in family themes agree that we are experiencing moments of change where models of progress coexist with others of regression. Although daily life shows that, inside, in many houses one still lives “the old-fashioned way” when it comes to roles, points of light illuminate the paths of parenthood. Relationships within the homes are changing and although the transformation is slow, today we can see everything: families where change is a fact and others that have not yet tried to break with the old patriarchal tradition. In the midst of these hurricane winds, many parents, more and more, are asking themselves if it is worthwhile to keep their hands tied in front of the hard work that tradition has destined them to do.
I have had the privilege of meeting many of them. From the cradle. I was educated by two “luxury” people, one biological and the other who arrived later, by the work and grace of reconstituted families. After almost half a century, coexistence is mixed with genes and I no longer recognize differences. As if this were not enough, I share my daily life with men, who are far away from the generation, and who practice paternity very seriously and with pride: Ariel, of course; but also Mario Jorge, Toni, Paquito, Juan Antonio, Santiago and Juan Carlos; or, much younger, Armando, David, Regis, Abdiel, Miguel Ernesto, Jorge… the list is not so short.
But changing the way of thinking of a whole society requires coherence and clear messages. How many obstacles still exist in maternity hospitals for new parents to participate in the birth on an equal footing with their partners? How many custody disputes after a divorce end up almost automatically favoring the mother, without thinking that the potential Ferdinand, counterparts to the conflict, are not always the bad guys in the movie? How many bosses unhesitatingly accept a man’s request for permission to care for his little newborn?
Sergio, one of those fabulous parents I’ve come to know, complained a lot about the bad times that accompanied the arrival of his first child. Not only was he prevented from being present at the birth. He spent most of the time postponing that women’s issue and the times he tried to inquire, get involved, participate… doctors and nurses treated him with that kind of indifferent condescension: Don’t be nervous, everything will be fine, but you have to be patient.
That longed-for transit of customs, of traditions, must go smoothly. It cannot happen that the same society that pressures men, on the one hand, to assume paternity in a conscious way, underestimates them on the other hand. While spaces such as the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) are talking about responsible fatherhood these days and UNICEF calls for “being fathers from the beginning”, others, social and institutional, are sending contradictory signals, even in the best of cases. And it can happen, simply, that a man jumps over his prejudices, assumes half of the daily burdens at home, and one morning, when he arrives at the children’s cirdulo as every day, she throws a bucket of cold water on him: “Dad, tell mom that tomorrow there is a parents’ meeting”. A parents’ meeting?
Palo Alto, an Unreleased Monk Album
Palo Alto, an Unreleased Album by Thelonious Monk Will be Presented on July 31
The musician is considered one of the revolutionaries and geniuses of post-World War II jazz music.
By Ricardo Alonso Venereo
July 29, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Album cover Photo: Taken from the Internet
Palo Alto, an unreleased album by American jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk (Rock Mounty, 1920 – Weehawken, 1982) will be presented next July 31, on digital platforms, 52 years after his songs were actually recorded in a concert that the artist gave in 1968 in a high school in the city of Palo Alto, California, which at the time, helped “temporarily unite a city divided by racism.”
Coincidentally, the release of the album, which under the label ¡Impulse! Universal Music, will also be released on CD and vinyl. (The latter in a special edition that will include a replica of the original poster and handheld program.). It had been scheduled to be released before the current epidemiological situation in the world. It serves to show us today how identical some things are to 1968, the year of the assassination of Black leader Martin Luther King and when racial conflicts between whites and Blacks stirred up American society at the time.
“With Palo Alto, Monk’s music once again becomes balm for a wounded society that resists understanding that we all vibrate to the same beat and rhythm,” says the important Californian cultural promoter Danny Scher, This album is largely due to the current atmosphere in that country as a result of the death of the African-American George Floyd.
“The performance is one of the best recordings I’ve ever heard of Thelonious,” said T.S. Monk, son of the star, after listening to the recording that,15 years ago ,Danny Scher found, and which he put in his hands through saxophonist Jimmy Heath. He was one of the greats of the be-bop era, after he finished producing an unreleased album by Monk and Coltrane at Carnegie Hall in 2005.
The pianist with tenor saxophone Charlie Rouse, one of the members of his quartet Photo: Taken from the Internet
Although it is acknowledged that Monk’s best performances have always been live, it is also stated that there are numerous documented concerts and tours of the pianist, which are of great value and this recording is an example of this. Here the band really sounds very relaxed and inspired, but also because this era of Monk in concert is not particularly documented, which makes this album the last official live performance of Monk’s classic quartet with Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales and Ben Riley.
It is claimed that when this concert took place the group had just recorded the legendary album Underground and the band’s days were about to come to an end, but in 1968 they were still sounding full of life, starting with Charlie Rouse, who plays superb solos in this concert. Gales and Riley also shine with their own light. And, of course, Monk, who among other pearls leaves here a version of Don’t Blame Me, truly anthological.
Other themes collected in Palo Alto are Don’t Blame Me and Ruby My Dear; the dynamic and lively Well You Needn’t, at 13 minutes and with solos by all the components or the abrupt end with Rudy Vallée’s classic: I Love You (Sweetheart of All My Dreams).
The magnificent human story behind this album, only 47 minutes long, is profusely detailed in the excellent notes signed by Monk’s biographer, Robin G. Kelley.
Thelonious Monk is considered one of the revolutionaries and geniuses of post-World War II jazz music.
Weddings and quinces in Camagüey
Weddings and quinceañeras in Camagüey
In Camagüey, it seemed that quinceañeras and couples planning to get married would have to give up the celebration of their dreams in this fateful year…
By Yahily Hernández Porto
July 23, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
This couple was the first to be married after the threat of COVID-19 in Camagüey. Author: Yahily Hernández Porto Published: 23/07/2020 | 12:12 pm
CAMAGÜEY: Both were close in their professions, but they never stopped their routines to get close to each other. An occasional greeting was their only relationship at the Agramontine military hospital.
But since the beginning of the year, their concern brought their lives closer, because the pandemic that had just emerged in the Asian giant was taking away their sleep, as it did for thousands of Cubans.
Last March, when Covid-19 entered Cuba, their paths intertwined as they worked in the red areas of the hospital and made a decision that surprised many people.
“After experiencing that life can escape without fulfilling some dreams, we decided to get married as soon as the bio-security measures allowed it,” Ana María Nápoles Salas, 26, a stomatologist by profession, comfided to JR.
The emblematic Palacio de los Matrimonios in Camagüey celebrated its first post-pandemic wedding.
Just last July 7th JR witnessed the first post-pandemic wedding in this city, in the colonial Palace of Marriages. While the bride was talking to this reporter, the general surgeon, Major Germán Antonio Guilarte León, 36, took the opportunity to give her a mischievous surprise kiss.
THE QUINCEAÑERAS GET READY
With the same impetus as this couple, several teenage girls from Agramonte take up their dreams again and project the rescue of their Quinceañera, which they saw interrupted with fear and frustration: the parties and the traditional photographs were postponed due to the pandemic, but since the second phase many have returned to the beautiful palace or are taking turns in private homes dedicated to this celebration.
Quinceañera Yadianis Beltrán did not hesitate to resume her celebration.
“I always knew that when it all happened I’d have my party. Now I’m doing my hair to look good in the photos,” said a smiling Yadianis Beltrán Gutiérrez, who had to settle for a family meal on April 28.
In the contract office of the beautiful institution in Camagüey, several girls, along with their parents, wait for their turn to renew the date, Others are just looking for information to choose from, because there are many options in the City of Tinajones, where even quinceañeras from other provinces arrive to eternalize memories.
Jennifer Yadisley Cabreja González and Yarenmis Mendoza Flores are waiting in line to celebrate their Quinceañera on July 31st and August 29th, respectively.
The former said to this newspaper that “despite the activities suspended during the pandemic, there is no problem with work shifts”, and Yarenmis was relieved by her “luck with her birthday”, and showed solidarity with the girls who served in the midst of social isolation.
Such is the story told by Katia Faife Dorca, mother of the teenager Yuliagnis Zaldívar, who had to postpone the big family reunion, scheduled for May 4, and is currently reorganizing it so that loved ones who are abroad can attend, when everything is back to normal: “It is a comfort to know that everyone will have their chance without setbacks,” said this mother.
According to Isabel María Abad Mena, administrator of the Palacio de los Matrimonios, when the institution closed last March all weddings and quinceañera and birthday celebrations already reserved were suspended, in addition to those planned for April, May and June.
To the happiness of many, the multiple services of the Palace are now available and interested families may hire them, provided they are presented at least one month in advance.
Young Yaremnis Mendoza is happy because her contract is secured for August.
“Several biosecurity measures have been implemented that must be strictly adhered to within the center, but none of them affect the quality of what’s available and the well-being of those who come to celebrate their big day,” she insisted.
She stressed that contracts with clients from other provinces, including those outside the country, will be carried out as long as the measures taken at each stage and in each region allow it. “That’s why now in our palace we only accept clients from Matanzas to Guantánamo, the rest of the West will have to wait”.
Abbot Mena pointed out that the capital reparations in the founding house was not interrupted during the pandemic period. At present, for the sake of quality and variety of the photographs, several exterior locations of the mansion have been added, where a natural, original and distinctive scenery is projected to embellish not only the portraits, but also the formal act and the toast.
THE PRIVATE SECTOR OPENS ITS DOORS
In addition to the Palace of the Married Couples in Camagüey, other family businesses that carry out this activity with creative passion are favored by the recovery of these festive services. This was corroborated by JR’s visit to some very popular and well-established private establishments located in the historic center of Agramonte.
At number 69 Avellaneda Street is the house Ilusión Estudio, which closed its services in March, despite having several weddings and fifteen celebrations scheduled. Its owners, Yuleidy Cabrera and Anuar Rodríguez, even canceled the quinceañera of their own daughter, Viviana, who was looking forward to celebrating on May 17th.
The Ilusión Estudio family returns to normal after their daughter canceled her quinceañera.
“Our daughter understood the moment in which the country and the world were living. Now we are restoring services according to the conditions and possibilities of each family that chooses us,” explained Yuleidy.
Equally demanding were the owners of the Iris V/S Alex studio, one of the oldest in Camagüey, at 586 Pobre Street: “My father-in-law, Jesús Peña, started the photography business in the 1980s, and he assures us that he had never experienced anything like this before. We have been disciplined with the measures and now we are restarting the services to satisfy the clientele according to the resources we have,” said Iriannis.
The Iris V/S Alex studio house also opens its doors to the public. Photos: Yahily Hernández Porto
During the months of confinement, both she and her husband Alex dedicated themselves entirely to “spoiling” the family. Now they are creating conditions for the reopening of their small business, like so many entrepreneurs in the non-State sector in Camagüey, who are gradually opening their doors to the public, eager to celebrate their anniversaries… and life is preserved despite the tense situation.
You must be logged in to post a comment.