Cuba 12

Internet dating in Cuba

5 months ago CubaDebate, Translations, , , , , , , , ,

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You made a match! Singles online… How to hook-up online in Cuba?

Translated by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

“Precious… can we talk?”, “What a beautiful photo”, an emoji or a simple “hello” (in the best of cases) are some of the pretexts to start a conversation in any application to meet people. That yes —and it is the most important thing— before you have to do “match” with that other user. In other words, mutual taste is mandatory in the package.

On the Internet, there are countless dating sites for singles who are faced with the extremely difficult decision of choosing between many providers. They then compare the different options based on certain parameters such as the number of registered members, cost and payment methods, chances of success, placement and features.

Although Tinder was launched in 2012, the world’s leading dating and encounter application, the app trend in Cuba would come years later. But not everything is rosy, since most of the popular platforms in the world and those with the most users are blocked on the island and to use them it is essential to enable a VPN, which hides the real location of the device.

The operation of most of these applications is simple with the aim of facilitating navigation by its users. You register, fill out a profile with photos and the data you want; then they locate people near you and present you with possible options. Then you swipe left or right to decide if a person catches your eye or not. When two users like each other they “match” and only then activate the possibility of chatting.

Both, Badoo,  Lovely, Yooppe and Cubamor are some of the app names available from Cuba. Registration is free in its standard version, except for the premium subscription that unlocks greater benefits such as exploring “the most coveted” or seeing unlimited profiles.

There are also some Telegram bots like Flirtur, which, with the same functioning of the applications where you look at photos and reject or accept according to your tastes, has its own chat, which in practice nobody uses, and the users who make a match exchange contact information to communicate through more everyday channels such as Telegram or WhatsApp itself.

Some applications have more advantages than others, for example, in Lovely, you have the option to verify your photo and you can see which of the people who like you have opted for this option or not. It is an effective method to verify that the person you are chatting with is at least who they say they are in their profile picture. 

In a daily search on Both, you can see up to 50 new people: in each load, the people who appeared the previous time are excluded, but profiles that you saw at a certain time can be repeated. In some of these applications you can choose what you are looking for according to your sexual orientation, but unfortunately not in others. 

According to a survey carried out based on participant observation, if you ask what people look for in applications to “flirt”, the majority of users say that they meet people and see what comes up. The 28 respondents say that so far they have not been successful in their search.

Cubacitas: From success to failure

Promotional image of Cubacitas. Photo: Cubacitas.

Although there are many Cubans registered in these applications, most are not specifically designed for the largest of the Antilles, with the exception of a few like Cubacitas.

In the first three months of its launch (September 9, 2019), it exceeded 37,000 registered users and it was only possible to download it through the official website. It was later placed on the Google Play Store, but it didn’t last long and ended up disappearing from the main Android app store. It has never been available for the iOS system.

Cubacitas has been inactive on social networks since January 2021, on its website it is no longer possible to find a link to download it. According to Raúl Reyes, its creator and CEO, it was difficult to maintain an application in which you invest money and time all the time and do not see the profits. “Paying to keep thousands of users on a server is expensive, and it doesn’t make sense.”

Cubacitas’ attempt was left there, like a chronicle of an announced failure.

Advantages and disadvantages of “hooking-up online”

While there are people who are looking for something quick, casual, momentary, or even casual sex, there are others who are on the app because they want to find a partner. That is one of the main disadvantages: they are all in the same place, and although in most of these apps you can clarify what you are looking for in your profile, this option is not always chosen or those who liked you, and they ignore the data.

On these platforms, there is an obsession with the superficial, the cult of beauty, and the filters in the photos. All with the goal of passing a visual test of others. Never better said that “the essential is invisible to the eye”; the important thing is those details that cannot be verified in an online cover letter.

There are people who become addicted to these platforms and their self-esteem depends on how many they pay attention to or how many times you “match”. Others create an “imaginary story” about who they really are, for fun or because it’s easier to come up with a new personality when you’re not satisfied with your own.

The term “ghosting ” comes into this scenario, which consists of the total disappearance of someone without explanations or apparent reasons. According to a study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health cited earlier in Cuba Joven [not Joven Cuba, wl], the victim often experiences feelings of helplessness and loneliness and feels a lower degree of satisfaction with life.

In addition to these more contemporary terms, harassment on the internet and scams are two of the main risks of using dating applications, which do not stop reflecting problems already present in our society, such as harassment for reasons of sex, but which take advantage of the anonymity that these networks and apps allow.

In short, you only know about that person that you have what they want on the other side of the chat. Add to that the access to data such as the location of users, their place of work, their name and contact information that makes them vulnerable to cyberbullying or even physical harassment. So a lot of tact.

Actually, the objective of these platforms is that you do not find a partner and that you try again and again. Unfortunately, this is how the market works and there are not a few who fall into the trap.

Despite all these disadvantages, with many precautions, expectations and the correct self-esteem, you can be one of those “lucky ones” who have found the love of your life in the dating apk.

The important thing is to be clear at all times what you want and how far you are willing to go.

Finding a match with the help of algorithms offers a certain guarantee of compatibility. In theory, applications of this nature are based on this operation. Love is chemistry, and those algorithms become weak as the person becomes more complicated and complex.

Staying alone in the virtual prevents the surprise factor generated by interpersonal encounters from being unleashed. Nothing can ever beat non-verbal communication through looks, gestures and touch itself. The chemical attraction between two people is not stopped by a thousand “matches”.

How to hook-up on the internet? Here are some tips based on a few weeks of research:

  • Know yourself well, know what you are looking for and how far you are willing to go
  • Post a striking and real profile photo
  • Do not provide personal data that may violate your security or link other social network accounts
  • Fill in the questionnaire with as many things as you like so you can find like-minded people
  • Use integrated messaging in dating applications and only when there is trust to do so through other platforms such as WhatsApp or Telegram
  • Reduce the number of conversations to those with which you really feel connected.
  • If you search carefully and attentively, you can find people who are on the same page as you.

                     THALÍA FUENTES PUEBLA

Thalia Fuentes Puebla

Cubadebate journalist. She graduated in Journalism from the Faculty of Communication of the University of Havana (2019). Contacts: thalyfuentes14@gmail.com. On Twitter: @ThalyFuentes

Head of the Department of Multimedia Production and Innovation of Cubadebate and the Roundtable. Graduated in Journalism in 2016 from the University of Holguín. Contact: edilberto@cubadebate.cu On Twitter: @edctamayo

Cuba in the foreign policy of the USA

5 months ago CubaDebate, Translations, , , , , , , ,

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Cuba in the foreign policy of the United States of America

By Carlos Fernández de Cossío
In this article: Blockade, Blockade against Cuba, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, Cuba, Politics, Foreign Policy, United States, Cuba-U.S. Relations, Cuba-U.S. Relations

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, Cuba’s deputy foreign minister. Photo: Cubaminrex.

Speech by the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba, Dr.C. Carlos Fernández de Cossío, during the twentieth edition of Conversations Cuba in the Foreign Policy of the United States of America, which is being held at the Higher Institute of International Relations (ISRI).

Ambassador Rogelio Sierra, rector of ISRI, thank you for hosting us; Doctor of Science José Ramón Cabañas, ambassador and director of CIPI; dear friends and participants:

On behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I thank you for the opportunity to participate in this event and to listen and learn from the deliberations.

I am also grateful for the opportunity to share the Ministry’s vision, particularly that of the U.S. Directorate General, in a forum that has a well-earned authority as a venue for academic and intellectual deliberation and analysis on Cuba-U.S. relations.

The theme selected for this year is: “U.S.-Cuba Relations in a New Global Scenario”.What I propose to do is to share our vision on the bilateral scenario in the year that is coming to an end.

The global scenario has certainly changed. The conflict in Europe has posed a new challenge for the international community. The tendency to try to divide the world in two, something Cuba warned about some years ago, seems to be gaining strength.

Important political changes have taken place in our region, which we assume with enthusiasm. Meanwhile, we continue to observe the persistent tendency to destabilize legitimate governments with the active participation of the OAS.

The scenario that has not experienced truly perceptible changes is that which characterizes relations between Cuba and the US.

We recognize that bilateral steps have been taken this year. Both governments have taken steps in that direction. These are not unilateral actions by one of the parties. I am going to refer to some of those steps that have taken place this year.

First, I am going to refer to migratory cooperation. It is natural that this is an area that carries weight since bilateral agreements have been in place for several decades. These are agreements that require review, updating and revision of how they are implemented. When I say review, I do not mean changing them, but examining them and having bilateral discussions on the occasion of those agreements.

But more important than that is that there is an irregular migratory phenomenon that affects both countries and this requires dialogue, communication and cooperation. Unfortunately, since a round of talks that took place in 2018, exchanges on migration between the two countries had been suspended, and there have been significant breaches of the agreements.

We had two talks this year: one in April, in Washington, D.C., and one in November, in Havana. They were productive talks in the sense that we confirmed the validity and importance of the agreements; we ratified the mutual political commitment to the fulfillment of the agreements; we identified areas that require greater attention, and we had the opportunity to analyze issues that are not properly reflected in the agreements, but have a great influence on the irregular migratory flow. There were no new agreements, nor did we have a total coincidence in what we discussed, but they were conversations that both parties identified as productive.

Also on the migration issue, in the fiscal year that ended on September 30, the U.S. government fulfilled for the first time since 2017 the commitment to grant 20,000 visas annually. This is something that had been unfulfilled since 2017. Most of those visas were granted and delivered in Guyana, but some began to be processed and delivered in Havana.

Already the U.S. Government announced that, in the first days of January, the totality of those services will return to its embassy in Havana.

In addition, we have had exchanges of experts on false documentation, for example. There have also been operational exchanges between the Cuban Coast Guard and the U.S. Coast Guard, in what has been a particularly difficult year in terms of irregular departures by sea. Cooperation has been maintained between both services for the interception on the high seas and the return to Cuba of those who are intercepted.

This year, we have already agreed to hold talks on law enforcement and compliance. There have also been exchanges on cooperation in dealing with oil spills, on health and there will be others on the environment.

This year, on the occasion of two disasters suffered by our country, there was an offer of humanitarian aid from the U.S. Government, without political conditions, which Cuba thanked and accepted. In the first case, it was on the occasion of the fire at the supertanker base in Matanzas: the U.S. Government immediately offered technical assistance and this led to telephone communications with regard to the fight against the fire. Later on, it offered material aid and Cuba was able to communicate what our priorities were in this regard. The U.S. Government finally offered 100 suits with protective equipment for firefighters, which will soon be delivered to the Cuban authorities.

On the occasion of Hurricane Ian in the province of Pinar del Río, the U.S. Government also offered material aid in the amount of two million dollars for the repair of roofs and houses, which should begin to arrive in January. In both cases, this aid was offered without political conditionalities and was gratefully accepted.

There has also been a greater degree of dialogue this year between the State Department, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other government agencies. These are all mutual steps of a bilateral nature that are of some importance and cannot be ignored.

But there are also developments in the opposite direction. For example, how can we explain the recent designation of Cuba as a country of special concern regarding religious freedom? It is a designation made without any real basis, with arguments that are dishonest, which is not unusual. One may ask: who do they want to please?

It can no longer be said, as we are sometimes alleged, that it is a question of political pressures in an election year since the elections are over. It has already been demonstrated that pretending to compete with the Republicans in the aggressiveness towards Cuba did not even win the Democrats a single vote in Florida. It is an action that one cannot explain what political motivation it has.

In May, the U.S. Government announced a group of measures. They were announced with what in the United States they call hype, a lot of fanfare. It is worthwhile to dwell on the measures announced.

The first of them is the commitment to allow again remittances to Cuba. That was in May and there is still no regular flow of remittances to Cuba. Secondly, is that the announcement was made without any commitment to dismantle the measures announced by the Trump administration to disrupt remittances. Thirdly, if there is to be a flow of remittances in the near future greater than what exists today, it will be due more to steps taken by Cuba than to actions taken by the U.S. government.

Another of the measures announced was to boost Internet penetration and interconnection in Cuba. We are forced to ask ourselves what is the coherence of this announcement when, by a decision of the U.S. Government, access to more than 200 private commercial websites is prohibited for Cubans. I am not referring to government websites, but private ones; among them, about 20 belong to Google. This refers to sites in the area of education, science and technology, health, art, culture and innovation.

What is the consistency of the Government when it announces that it is committed to the promotion of the Internet and at the same time prohibits by Government regulation that Cubans have access to these sites?

A few weeks ago it was announced that a U.S. Government Advisory Committee recommended rejecting a commercial operation that would connect a submarine Internet cable to Cuba. This forces us once again to ask ourselves what is the consistency of the U.S. Government when it announces its commitment to promote the Internet and at the same time cuts off Cuba’s access to the Internet.

It is possible that it is the same consistency that the U.S. Government has when it proclaims that its priority with respect to Cuba is the promotion of human rights and the well-being of the Cuban people.

Another of the measures announced was the possibility of commercial flights from the United States to different Cuban provinces. This has been fulfilled.

The measure of providing more facilities for travel in groups has also been fulfilled. Individual travel is still prohibited.

Another of the measures announced was to take actions to help the emerging private sector, which is one of the most inconsistent measures for several reasons.

In the first place, the existence of the economic blockade has a negative impact in absolute terms on any sector of the Cuban economy. The U.S. government may propose to establish exceptions, but that private entrepreneur is still going to encounter the effects of the blockade in his daily life. That is one inconsistency.

There is a second inconsistency: the promotion of the private or non-state sector in Cuba is part of the development of the Cuban economy. It began to be conceived some 12 years ago. We delayed in its design, implementation, and regulation, but it is our promotion.

However, the United States Government, and it does not hide saying it, intends to promote the private sector, not to help the development of the Cuban economy, not to improve the standard of living of the population, not to help a majority sector of the population, but it identifies it as an instrument of political subversion.

They dream of using it to erode the public sector, the Cuban State, and the public administration, on which education, health, citizen security, electricity and water services, the guarantee of social justice and the overcoming of economic and social differences depend. He makes no secret of his ambition to use this sector as a political weapon.

If exceptions to the blockade are introduced, with the dream of undermining the revolution, we will not oppose [them]. We are not going to oppose [them]. If this allows for greater prosperity of any sector of the Cuban economy, we are not going to put obstacles in its way. If it manages to devise exceptions that benefit some and continue to punish others, we will not try to prevent it either. But they are making a major mistake in political terms in trying to promote the private sector as a weapon to undermine the nature of Cuban society.

These actions announced in May are very limited, but as we said at the time, we do identify them in a positive direction, even if they are inconsistent in many cases. There is no doubt that they and the areas of cooperation I mentioned are a contrast to the last two years of the Trump administration and to 2021. This is part of what describes the bilateral relationship.

But to describe it seriously and objectively, in our opinion, we have to pay attention to two fundamental issues. In the first place: which are the areas to which the U.S. Government devotes more human resources, financial resources, and more working hours.

If one takes into account the number of officials working in the Treasury Department who are dedicated to enforcing the economic blockade, the number of US diplomats in many parts of the world who are dedicated to pursuing each and every one of Cuba’s financial transactions, the number of pronouncements made in the US Congress.

If one takes into account the impact on the Cuban economy and Cuban society, which is the second factor, on the daily life of each and every Cuban, the impact on Cuba’s relations with third countries, there can also be no doubt that the economic blockade continues to be the central and defining factor of the bilateral relationship, seconded -taking into account these factors- by political subversion, to which tens of millions of US taxpayer dollars are devoted every year. A government’s budget is supposed to reflect the government’s priorities.

On the basis of that analysis, of the application of the blockade and its impact today, it can be said with sufficient confidence that the current US government, that of Joseph Biden, is the one that has applied the blockade most aggressively and effectively of all those that the Cuban Revolution has known. It is the one that punishes the most, the one that harms the daily life of Cubans and the economy as a whole the most. Here I include all the Administrations since Eisenhower to date. That is what characterizes today the United States Government and its current policy towards Cuba. I insist the one that most aggressively and effectively applies the economic blockade.

Some will take this as a historical merit. In practice, he is applying with absolute and surprising loyalty, not only the blockade as it existed before but the policy of maximum economic pressure that was designed by his predecessor, Donald Trump.

One has reason to wonder what the president of the United States could have done or what he can do to fulfill, not only what he promised his constituents in 2020, but also to fulfill his stated priority of promoting human rights and caring for the welfare of the Cuban people.

The president, since taking over the White House, could have removed Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List. At the time it was taken, that measure had not even taken effect yet, since the days defined by law had not elapsed.

As soon as it was announced by the Trump administration, there was immediately a letter from several prominent U.S. congressmen, Democrats, questioning the decision. The U.S. Government knows the impact of this measure, it cannot be claimed to ignore it. A few weeks after the designation, 45 banks and financial institutions that had a long-standing relationship with Cuba severed their ties with our country.

This has an impact on our trade, on our possibilities of obtaining credits, on the ways to make payments. It is a devastating impact. And even today, by virtue of its presence on that list, Cuba is still encountering commercial and financial organizations that refuse to interact with it for fear of reprisals from the U.S. Government.

The U.S. Government knows that the arguments used were dishonest. The main argument was even already denounced by the current Colombian Government, but that does not seem to move a Government whose priority, apparently, is the welfare of the Cuban people.

The list to which Cuba does belong is the U.S. List of Terrorist Victims, which is not a short list, by the way.

The U.S. President may also have suspended the possibility of action in U.S. courts on claims brought under Title III of the Helms-Burton Act. This has a deterrent impact on our development purpose of attracting foreign capital.

This Government could have ceased the practice of pressuring African, Asian and Latin American governments to refuse medical cooperation from Cuba. I am referring to the pressures exerted two or three weeks ago, from governments telling us that “we have received a visit either from an envoy or from the US embassy, warning us that if we receive Cuban doctors, we will be engaging in slavery and human trafficking practices”.

This U.S. action, of course, seeks to prevent medical services for tens of thousands of people, which is what Cuban doctors do. It is known that in countries that are more developed than Cuba, or wealthier than Cuba, Cuba receives financial compensation for those services. This is totally legitimate, in accordance with United Nations resolutions on South-South cooperation and pronouncements by the G-77 and the NAM.

The objective is to discredit the Cuban Revolution and deprive Cuba of financial resources, necessary for the economy, for development. This is not consistent with a concern for the well-being of Cubans.

The U.S. president could have also done, and has not done, to put an end to punitive measures, threats and persecution of fuel exporting companies, transportation companies, port agencies, insurance and reinsurance agencies; all aimed at depriving Cuba of fuel supplies that our country requires to function.

Since mid-2019, this has had an extremely severe impact on the economy and the life of Cubans, not only because we have had to stop industries, reduce transportation, and have affected electricity services, but we are forced to pay premiums for the fuel we import on account of the risk assumed by whoever sells us oil or whoever transports it.

With this impact, explain to the Cuban population that the U.S. Government has the welfare of the Cuban people in mind.

The U.S. Government was able to abolish an absolutely arbitrary list of restricted entities, formed with dishonest arguments and with total superficiality. In some cases, they took Trip Advisor as a reference and saw the most popular places for U.S. visitors, and put them on the list. So, some of us here are banned from going to the Rum Museum, for example.

All these measures are aimed at cutting off the sources of income of the Cuban economy. That is how they were designed by the predecessor government and that is how they are applied, to deprive us of energy sources, of access to technology and to deprive us of attracting the capital required for the country’s development.

They all bear the fingerprint of Donald Trump and his administration. All of them were established with dishonest arguments that the current government no longer even takes the trouble to deny.

We know that the U.S. Government and some Americans do not like to hear about the economic blockade. Some present it as something in bad taste, as something old-fashioned or something anachronistic or something that does not contribute to dialogue.

But if you live here, how can you not talk about the blockade? Those who work every day to promote bilateral relations with the United States, how can they not talk about the blockade? The officials who every week have to decide how to allocate the scarce resources that the economy has to solve the needs of the population, how can they not talk about the blockade and think about the blockade constantly?

We know that in the United States it is common that racists do not want to talk about racism. I believe that there are even bills for legislation against education on racism. Those who enforce the blockade do not want people to talk about the blockade, which has an impact on everything: on the electrical service, on the availability of medicines and materials for medical services; on the ability to obtain inputs for food production; on transportation; on production; including the production of construction materials.

The U.S. Government cannot claim that it is unaware of this impact and that its conduct influences this impact.

For months now, the narrative is being promoted that it is incumbent upon Cuba to offer gestures; that steps have been taken by the Biden administration that have not been reciprocated; as if Cuba is in debt; when it is known that there is no action taken by the Cuban Government against the US Government, against any US organization, against any US individual, against the welfare of anyone in the United States. However, this narrative persists and they even send us messengers with this idea.

The current deplorable state of bilateral relations is not Cuba’s responsibility.

Cuba has not missed a single one of the commitments it made between 2015 and 2016. The U.S. government has destroyed the relationship.

Today’s reality is the result of a design that was conceived with total frankness by the government of Donald Trump, who, at least, had the honesty to proclaim what he intended to do.

Our government has said and reiterated with sufficient clarity that we are willing to move towards a respectful and constructive relationship with the United States. This is Cuba’s position and anyone who follows the statements made by our government or anyone who follows the actions of the Cuban government can verify it.

In spite of the natural distrust that the conduct of the United States in the last five years may generate, there is no real argument capable of casting doubt on Cuba’s disposition. In practice, we have been demonstrating it with the steps that have been taken this year.

Nor, of course, should there be any doubt that we are approaching this progress on the basis of absolute respect for our sovereignty.

The United States Government cannot pretend to treat Cuba as if it were part of its territory, or treat Cuba as if it were a colonial dominion, or treat Cuba as if it were an adversary defeated in a war. We are none of the three.

Within the territory of the United States there are states, I will give, for example, the state of Mississippi, where poverty is close to 20%, where there is malnutrition estimated at 15% of the population, where there are practices that deprive people of the right to vote. No one in the United States can imagine that, by virtue of these realities, the Federal Government would decide to apply a system of coercive measures against the population of the State of Mississippi, cut off its electricity, cut off its financial relations with the rest of the American Union, prohibit it from trading and prohibit the rest of the Americans from traveling there. But even if the federal government were to do so, Mississippi is within the United States, within the sovereign prerogatives of the federal government. Much to the chagrin of some Americans, Cuba is outside the territory of the United States.

More than half of the population of Puerto Rico is said to be leaving the country, and the economy of this Latin American sister nation is bankrupt. If the United States applies an economic blockade, it would be a crime and Puerto Rico is a colonial possession of the United States.

If the United States had applied an economic blockade against the German population after World War II, it would have been interpreted as a crime against the people of the country that was a defeated adversary in the war.

Cuba is none of the three. It is not within the United States, it is not a colony of the United States, and it is not an adversary that the United States has defeated.

This policy has no moral, legal and, of course, political explanation.

We are convinced that progress is beneficial for both countries and for both peoples. We are convinced that it is necessary. We are also convinced that it would be welcomed by the nations of the Americas and, furthermore, we are convinced that it is possible.

It requires, of course, political will and courage, as existed a few years ago.

Those conditions do not seem to exist today in the United States.

The bet, as President Díaz-Canel points out, continues to be to asphyxiate the Cuban economy, and to try to provoke social collapse and a political crisis in Cuba.

The United States has failed in that purpose, but it does not fail to cause enormous damage and makes us pay a high cost that is reflected in the economic depression of the country and that is also reflected in the extraordinary flows of Cuban migrants.

No one could be surprised by these flows.

It is an established truth that the economic depression in any country or region, the depression of living conditions, are factors that promote migration and that adverse conditions in any country can drive migration, due to natural disasters, wars when there are wars, famines, social instability, there may be insufficient economic policies. That happens anywhere in the world. It happens in the United States where there are cities that had two million inhabitants and today have less than 700,000.

What is unique to Cuba, what is a particular characteristic of our country is that there is an extraordinary foreign force promoting economic depression and thus driving migratory flows. This is what experts call the “push” effect.

We have discussed this with the U.S. Government. They know our point of view and our argumentation in that sense.

As we have said on more than one occasion, we will continue to build bridges with the U.S. society in all possible fields and we will try to continue promoting the most constructive and respectful relationship possible with the U.S. Government.

We will also continue in our efforts to ensure our economic sustainability, even in the prospect that the economic blockade will last for many years to come.

I wish you success in your deliberations and may they contribute to the common understanding and to the purpose that I believe we all share of bringing our two nations closer together.

Thank you very much.

MINREX on virtual “Democracy Summit”

1 year ago Granma, ,

 

A summit as unreal as the “democracy” it defends

Declaration by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Author: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba | internet@granma.cu
December 12, 2021 23:12:54 PM

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

The virtual summit convened by the U.S. government on December 9-10, with pre-recorded speeches of the invited guests and a totally manipulated agenda, was a demagogic exercise, with no benefit for the international community and without any proposal to solve the most pressing problems of the world we share.

As a political artifice, it only served to show the growing isolation, alienation and loss of influence of the most powerful nation on the planet. In a practical sense, the only apparent result is the commitment of $400 million to the political subversion of sovereign states in blatant violation of international law.

A few hours have passed since the end of the event and few are able to explain or remember what happened there.

The U.S. government missed the opportunity to convene an inclusive meeting, promoting cooperation and the search for solutions to any of the problems that most urgently and seriously impact the lives of the majority of the world’s population.

It did not have the will to join efforts to face hunger, malnutrition, poverty and growing inequalities, unhealthy conditions, migratory problems, drug trafficking, organized and cross-border crime, the arms race or climate change. It did not even conceive the idea of convening world leaders to discuss and articulate a concerted response to the COVID-19 pandemic and other communicable diseases. The fact is that the United States cannot provide solutions as long as its policies are an essential part of such serious problems.

With great demagogy, IT called the unreal meeting under the theme of “democracy”, which it assumed as the defense of capitalism and applicable only to governments that do not challenge the hegemonic authority of the United States. Such a fabrication clearly shows the true divisive purpose and the interest in diverting world attention from the serious problems facing U.S. society and the U.S. political system today.

A country where money outweighs the popular will of its citizens, where the free sale and irresponsible use of lethal weapons, intervention and interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states is promoted, where racism is systemic and war is the most lucrative business, has nothing to teach the international community.

As Cuba has been warning, the U.S. government is leading a dangerous campaign aimed at creating an international schism, dividing the planet and punishing countries that defend progressive projects or do not accept the models imposed by the United States.

To try to impose a single acceptable recipe for a political system on all countries is, in itself, profoundly anti-democratic. It is contrary to the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, signed in Havana by all the countries of our region, which establishes the commitment to fully respect the inalienable right of every State to choose its political, economic, social and cultural system, as an essential condition to ensure peaceful coexistence among nations.

This twisted vision is what leads them to act on the margins of the United Nations, where they suffer increasing isolation due to their repeated challenges to the principles of civilized coexistence, respect for multilateralism and the self-determination of peoples and sovereign equality among its Member States, concepts that today are unacceptable to the U.S. rulers.

More than 80 countries, including Cuba, were not invited, and this is not surprising, because we are a nation that for almost 63 years has successfully rejected the U.S. attempt to subjugate it and has effectively defended its inalienable right to self-determination. In a summit aimed at promoting capitalism, and the central and dominant role of the United States in its promotion, the presence of socialist Cuba should not be expected.

In the cooperation to find solutions to the serious problems of the world, the international community can always count on our support, on the constructive, active and supportive contribution of Cubans in the search for consensus, to unite wills, to enrich and benefit from diversity and to privilege what unites us instead of what separates us. The international trajectory of the last 60 years supports this affirmation.

The world demands peace, development, justice, solidarity, cooperation and mutual trust. It does not benefit from division, selectivity and unilateral impositions.

Díaz-Canel at Mexican Independence Day

1 year ago Granma, Translations, , ,

Díaz-Canel: “Among all the brothers that Our America has given us, Mexico counts, for many reasons, as one of the most dear to Cuba” (+Video)

Address by President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez at the civic-military parade on the occasion of the celebrations for the anniversary of the Grito de Dolores. Mexico, September 16, 2021

Author: Granma | internet@granma.cu
September 16, 2021 1:09:34 PM

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

Díaz-Canel recalled that “Mexico was the first country to recognize our armed struggle and to open its ports to ships flying the Lone Star flag”. Photo: Estudios Revolución

(Shorthand Versions – Office of the President of the Republic)

Dear Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President of the United Mexican States;

Distinguished guests;

Dear Mexico:

Thank you for the opportunity you give us to bring Cuba’s grateful embrace to your beautiful patriotic celebrations for that Grito de Dolores that aroused so much libertarian eagerness in our region more than 200 years ago.

Among all the brothers that Our America has given us, Mexico counts, for many reasons, as one of the most dear to Cuba.

That affection that unites our lands begins with the dazzle caused by its deep and diverse traces in the literature and history of America:

“How beautiful is the land inhabited by the brave Aztecs!” said the Cuban José María Heredia in the Teocalli of Cholula, opening a fascinating door to that Mundo Nuestro, much earlier than that of the terrible conquest that began centuries later, with unrestrained slaughter and destruction, the Spanish troops coming from Santiago de Cuba, under the command of Hernán Cortés.

But no one would tell us more about Mexico than José Martí. I quote excerpts from his memorable speech delivered at the evening in honor of this country at the Hispanic American Literary Society in 1891: “(…) today we gather to pay honor to the nation girded with palm trees and orange blossoms that raises, like a flourish of glory, to the blue sky, the free summits where the whistle of the railroad awakens, crowned with roses as yesterday, with the health of work on the cheek, the indomitable soul that sparkled in the embers in the ashes of Cuauhtémoc, never extinguished. We salute a people that melts, in the crucible of its own metal, the civilizations that were cast upon it to destroy it!”.

Later, referring to the significant date we commemorate today, Martí said: “Three hundred years later, a priest (…) summoned his village to war against the parents who denied the life of soul to their own children; it was the hour of the Sun, when the adobe huts of the poor Indians were shining through the mulberry trees; and never, although veiled a hundred times by blood, has the sun of Hidalgo stopped shining since then! They hung the heads of the heroes in iron cages; the heroes bit the dust, with a bullet in the heart; but on September 16 of every year, at dawn, the President of the Republic of Mexico cheers, before the people, the free homeland, waving the flag of Dolores”.

Due to its characteristics, the Mexican independence process, which began with the Grito de Dolores, led by Father Miguel Hidalgo on a day like today in 1810 and was consummated 11 years later with the entrance of the Trigarante Army in Mexico City. It had a notorious component of social and indigenous demands that differentiated it from other processes that typified the independence era. Its impact was, without a doubt, extraordinary in the libertarian and anti-colonialist struggle in our region and particularly in Cuba.

It gathered ancestral aspirations of entire peoples that inhabited the territory, not only in Mexico, but also in Central and South America and the Antilles. It vindicated all poor Creole sectors -white, black and mulatto- submerged in misery, hunger and exploitation, and opposed the slavery of the blacks.

The broad popular presence had a decisive influence in its radicalization and in the realization of important social and political demands, which constituted an immense inspiration and encouragement for our independence movement.

There are many notable Cubans who left their blood and their names in the history of Mexico. The Cuban solidarity in Mexico’s confrontation with the Texan invasions in 1835-1836 and the North American invasion of 1846-48 stands out, especially the generals Pedro Ampudia, Juan Valentín Amador, Jerónimo Cardona, Manuel Fernández Castrillón, Antonio Gaona, Pedro Lemus and Anastasio Parrodi.

In March 1854, Cubans Florencio Villareal and José María Pérez Hernández launched the historic Plan de Ayutla, which was decisive in the rupture of the Mexican army and society with the dictatorial government of General Santa Anna.

As confirmed by the prestigious researcher René González Barrios, several of those men held key positions in Mexican political-military life and were governors or military commanders in important places in the country.

Two of them, Major Generals Anastasio Parrodi and Pedro Ampudia Grimarest were Ministers of War and Navy in the government of Benito Juarez during the Reform War.

In the Congress, the Government, in exile or in the war at Juarez’s side there were always Cubans. Prominent compatriots such as General Domingo Goicuría y Cabrera, and poets Juan Clemente Zenea and Pedro Santacilia, who was his son-in-law, secretary and agent of the Republic of Cuba in Arms before the Mexican Government, praised his magnificent work.

In the war against the French, the brothers Manuel and Rafael de Quesada y Loynaz, general and colonel respectively, served the Mexican army; colonels Luis Eduardo del Cristo, Rafael Bobadilla and Francisco León Tamayo Viedman; doctor commander Rafael Argilagos Gimferrer and captain Félix Aguirre. All of them would return to Cuba at the beginning of the Ten Years’ War.

It was Mexico, then, the first country to recognize our armed struggle and to open its ports to ships flying the Lone Star flag. The Congress approved it, Juarez pronounced it and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, President of the Republic in Arms, thanked him in a memorable letter to his Mexican counterpart: “…[it is] highly satisfactory that Mexico has been the first Nation in America to have thus manifested its generous sympathies to the cause of independence and freedom of Cuba”.

One of the main tasks that Pedro Santacilia would then fulfill, with Juarez’s consent, was to send to Cuba a select group of Mexican soldiers to contribute to the formation and training of the nascent Liberation Army. Mexicans shone in the fields of Cuba and their prowess inspired the troops and all those who heard about them.

Once again, the Father of the Cuban Homeland left a record of that dedication in a letter to the “Benemérito de las Américas”. Céspedes wrote: “Some Mexican gentlemen have come here and have shed their generous blood on our soil and for our cause, and the whole country has shown its gratitude for their heroic action”.

Two of those brave Mexican soldiers, veterans of the Reform War and the battle against the French Empire, reached the rank of Brigadier General of the Cuban Liberation Army and were part of its main chiefs: José Inclán Risco and Gabriel González Galbán.

Dear friends:

Because of that endearing memory that we share, we are moved and inspired by these acts that revere history and we return again and again to each line written for Mexico by José Martí, who forever links our two nations in all his work, but especially in his letters to his great Mexican friend Manuel Mercado.

It is also to that soul friend to whom he leaves in an unfinished letter, his resounding political testament: the will consecrated to the objective of “preventing in time, with the independence of Cuba, the United States from spreading through the Antilles and falling, with that force more, on our lands of America”.

Years before, on his way to Veracruz, Martí wrote: “O beloved Mexico, O adored Mexico, I see the dangers that surround you, I hear the clamor of a son of yours who was not born of you! From the North, an avid neighbor is curdling (…) You will be ordered; you will understand; you will be guided; I will have died, O Mexico for defending and loving you!”.

Here died for the Revolution, the young communist Julio Antonio Mella, assassinated in a street of this same city where Ernesto Che Guevara and Fidel Castro Ruz would meet, years later, through his brother Raul.

It was here that the young people of the Centennial Generation trained and organized their expedition. Here they forged friendships and affections that still endure and were immortalized in a song that is like a hymn of those epic times: La Lupe, by Juan Almeida Bosque.

From that Mexican period, among many others, the names of María Antonia González, Antonio del Conde, El Cuate, key in the acquisition of the Granma yacht; Arsacio Venegas and Kid Medrano, professional wrestlers who gave physical training to the troops; Irma and Joaquina Vanegas, who offered their house as a camp, will remain forever in Cuban history.

The passage of Fidel and his companions through Mexico left a deep impression on the future Granma expeditionaries and an accumulation of legends everywhere that are still spoken of with admiration and respect.

We will never forget that, thanks to the support of many Mexican friends, the Granma yacht set sail from Tuxpan, Veracruz, on November 25, 1956. From that historic vessel, seven days later, on December 2, the newborn Rebel Army landed to liberate Cuba.

Nor do we forget that, just a few months after the historic triumph of the Revolution in 1959, General Lázaro Cárdenas visited us. His willingness to stand by our people after the mercenary invasion of Bay of Pigs in 1961 marked the character of our relations.

Faithful to its best traditions, Mexico was the only Latin American country that did not break off relations with revolutionary Cuba when we were expelled from the OAS by an imperial mandate.

Throughout the years, we have never broken what history has indissolubly united. Our two countries have honored their sovereign policies, regardless of the closeness or distance between governments. A very Mexican principle prevails: respect for the rights of others is peace.

There is unquestionable merit in those who have dedicated life and energy, heart and soul, to nurture that brotherhood with the tenderness of peoples. I pay tribute here to the sustained, invariable, passionate and firm solidarity that we always find in this land, which all Cubans must love as our own.

It was said by the Cuban Apostle, who also drew with his colorful prose a faithful portrait of this generous people when he declared: “As from the root of the land comes to the Mexican that character of his, shrewd and stately, attached to the country he adores, where through the double work of magnificent Nature and the brilliant touch of the legend and the epic, the order of the real and the romantic feeling come together in their rare measure”.

From those words until today, the common heritage built by an infinite list of prestigious intellectuals and artists of both nations has not ceased to grow. We are united by literature, cinema, visual arts, bolero and mambo.

It could be said that the significant cultural exchange between Mexico and Cuba reaches all manifestations of culture in its broadest meaning, inasmuch as it is no less influential the relationship in sports, especially, baseball and boxing, where the connection is so natural and deep that at times the exact origin of works and facts is lost and we must conclude that it comes from both.

Friends:

For these and other reasons, which do not fit in a necessarily brief speech, it is a great honor to participate in the military parade commemorating the beginning of the struggle for Mexico’s independence and to express our feelings before your Government and your people.

I do so conscious that it is a recognition of the historical ties and brotherhood existing between Mexico and Cuba, a genuine token of appreciation, affection and respect for which I am deeply grateful on behalf of my people.

The decision to invite us has an immeasurably greater value at a time when we are suffering the onslaught of a multi-dimensional war, with a criminal blockade, opportunistically intensified with more than 240 measures in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, which has such dramatic costs for everyone, but particularly for the less developed countries.

We are facing, in parallel, an aggressive campaign of hate, disinformation, manipulation and lies, mounted on the most diverse and influential digital platforms, which ignores all ethical limits.

Under the fire of that total war, Mexico’s solidarity with Cuba has awakened in our people a greater admiration and the deepest gratitude.

Allow me to tell you, dear President, that Cuba will always remember your expressions of support, your permanent demand for the lifting of the blockade and for the annual United Nations vote to be converted into concrete deeds, something that your country has fulfilled in an exemplary manner towards our people.

We are deeply grateful for the aid received in the form of medical supplies and food to alleviate the combined effects of the economic harassment and the pandemic.

Mexican sisters and brothers:

In the face of the complex epidemiological situation facing the world, solidarity and cooperation among our peoples takes on greater transcendence.

For this reason, our health professionals and technicians did not hesitate to accompany the Mexican people whenever necessary. And we will do it again whenever they need it.

We recognize the excellent work carried out by Mexico at the head of the pro tempore presidency of the Community of Latin American and the Caribbean States, a mechanism of genuine Latin American and Caribbean vocation aimed at defending the unity in the diversity of Our America against the neoliberal recolonization project that is trying to impose on us.

As Fidel expressed in an act of Cuban-Mexican friendship held on August 2, 1980: “We will not tolerate anything against Mexico! We will feel it as our own. We will know how to be faithful to the friendship forged by centuries of history and beautiful common principles!

Long live Mexico!

Long live the friendship between Cuba and Mexico! (Applause.)

Mexico was the only Latin American country that did not break relations with revolutionary Cuba when we were expelled from the OAS by an imperial mandate, said Díaz-Canel. Photo: Estudios Revolución

Parade for the 211th anniversary of the Grito de Independencia of Mexico. Photo: Estudios Revolución

The Seven Plagues of Cuba

1 year ago CubaDebate, Translations, ,

cuba-debate

Letter to a Cousin or, the Seven Plagues of Cuba

By René González Sehwerert. Hero of the Republic of Cuba. One of the five young revolutionaries who infiltrated terrorist groups that from the cradle of the anti-Cuban mafia, Miami, organize with impunity their criminal attacks against Cuban territory. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. His cause enjoyed enormous international solidarity. He returned to Cuba in 2013.

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

Cuban flag. Photo: Abel Padrón Padilla/ Cubadebate.

Dear cousin:

I am not going to deny to you that there is a clamor from many people -among whom I find myself- demanding solutions. Much less will I justify that someone lives like Carmelina while so many people sacrifice. The problem is that this is the norm all over the planet and nobody seems to care. It is enough for a people to make a revolution to overcome it and they are immediately hit by three plagues.

1- They beat it up, strangle it and attack it so that it cannot solve anything it set out to do.

2- They blame the government that has tried to do so for the shortcomings imposed by the strangler who assaults him.

3- As if that were not enough, they then attack the collective intelligence of the rest of the planet, magnifying everything bad that happens there, in the victimized space, as if the rest of the planet did not do worse every day, before the complicit silence of all.

I would like to read what Fernando Perez wrote. Maybe I have points of agreement with him, who is a person we all here -including the authorities- respect. It is obvious that we have to change many things. But has it not been a perversity to try to suffocate us for 62 years so that we change according to the convenience of those who imposed worse conditions on our parents, and today are imposing worse conditions today around the world? Is it not time to join the world clamor against this blockade that has been suffocating us for too long now, and whose only purpose is to make us surrender out of hunger and despair?

In the end, the dilemma boils down to this: Those who surrender and those who do not. I cannot judge the surrenderers.

Obviously, we have to defend ourselves from those who, in their surrender, also become our victimizers. Many victims have become victimizers throughout history. For example, the crimes of Zionism against Palestine. I am not aware whether or not there were police excesses during the riots that took place in the past days. It is likely that there were.

A peaceful, secure country, fighting calmly against all demons, was suddenly overwhelmed by a violence that is alien to it, imposed by interests that are also alien to it. You tell me that those young people, dressed in uniforms and shields, bats, helmets, etc, whom you describe as teenagers, waiting with a baton to stop the march -or the brown shirts?- break your soul.

I can understand you, but I can’t help wondering: What would they have made you believe if they were giants, with the same clothing and a baton, ready to break the souls of the demonstrators, as happens every day all over the planet? What would CNN in Spanish, or ABC, or El Comercio have told you? Ah, because the three plagues that you believe in are the three plagues that you believe in? Because, in addition to the three plagues I mentioned before, there is a fourth one: this assaulted, assaulted people, under a stranglehold that has tightened on a pandemic that has already tightened on the entire planet, is not even allowed to make a mistake.

Let’s take a look at the cost to the Cuban people of the upsurge of neo-fascism in the last four or five years:

-The brutal assault on the income of Cuba’s medical programs in Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia, denying us several billions in income and denying the elementary right to life to millions of Latin Americans, without anyone seeming to notice.

– The application of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, substantially reducing the country’s possibilities of doing business with the rest of the world.

-The bestial aggression against the Cuban family, by breaking their right to send remittances, before the silence of those who claim to clamor for the human rights of Cubans.

– More than 200 measures against the economy and finances of the country, announced publicly before the indifference of the defenders of human rights in Cuba, by the president of the United States of America.

All this was before the arrival of a fifth plague: COVID-19, and its devastating impact on the main economic sector of the island: tourism. But a sixth plague remains: to take advantage of the COVID to tighten the siege, to hinder or prevent the entry of medical supplies.

Do you dare to calculate the impact on the Cuban people, both in terms of billions and human suffering? But when it seems that we already have enough, that we could not bear another blow, the peak of the pandemic infestation occurs and from among those who have been applauding each one of those strangulation measures, displaying unheard-of cynicism and hypocrisy, a perfidious blow to the heart of none other than the people who have faced the COVID in an exemplary manner under aggression: The perverse label of SOSCuba.

And over that people now hangs the seventh plague: a “humanitarian corridor”, at the hand of the most devastating and aggressive war machine in history. Don’t Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria ring a bell? It is against this backdrop, meticulously and perversely built for years around the Cuban people, that suddenly the trumpets sound, calling for the slitting of throats, now through the social networks and the increasingly perverted means of incommunication. Cousin coñoñooo! Only that the wall of Nicolás Guillén is not that of Jericho.

The revolutionaries have indeed taken to the streets, but not to “confront the masses”. They are the masses. After the attempted coup -which is what it was, an attempt- they have come out with flags, with hymns and with ideas.

With those ideas we will have to look for solutions, self-criticize where necessary, listen to each other, attend better to the clamors of the people, broaden the spaces for participation, be more inclusive, break the inertia, attract and not exclude, build a more effective and less formal democracy. Because the society we want to build is not conceived to coexist with such levels of violence. That, cousin, we leave it to those who attack us, strangle us, attack us and then, when we have to defend ourselves, they criticize us. Come on, cousin.

A hug. I love you.

The symbolic assault against Cuba

2 years ago LaJornada,

The symbolic assault against Cuba

By José Ernesto Nováez Guerrero*
Sunday, May 30, 2021

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews

For decades, the big cartelized media have been practicing the permanent symbolic assassination of Cuba and its revolution. The great sin of the island, in the eyes of these hired assassins of the word, is and will be to try to build a social order different from the one that prevails in the contemporary world. Cuba’s main danger lies in its example.

The Cuban political process is rooted in a beautiful and complex symbiosis, where the ideals of sovereignty and social justice that make up the project of nationhood of the 19th century and that have in the figure of Martí one of their highest expressions, find their political form and definitive realization in the socialist practice emanating from the revolutionary triumph of January 1959.

The symbols that sustain the Cuban nation have a double revolutionary sense: the independence and liberal sense of the nineteenth century and the national and socialist sense of the twentieth century. Both senses complement each other. Between both revolutionary processes, as a nourishing bridge, stands the vital practice of figures like Mella, Villena, Guiteras, Fidel, etc. In their thought and action Cuba found its revolutionary reworking the project of a country that had been frustrated with the gringo invasion of 1898 and the subsequent political and economic subjection. These were a result of the penetration of the northern capitals and the treacherous Platt Amendment, which gave the powerful neighbor the right to intervene in the island whenever it considered it necessary.

In this double character of the symbols of the Cuban nation lies one of the spaces of dispute. Anti-communism rescues the symbols of the 19th century in what they are most liberal. It ignores that continuum of ethical aspirations that Cintio Vitier described so well in his book That Sun of the Moral World, which gives a unitary sense to the totality of Cuba’s revolutionary practice and aspirations.

But it also confronts the two Cubas, the one before and the one after 1959, presenting the former as the paradise of opulence that was only for a few and the latter as the image of destruction and ruins that it is not.

To construct this narrative, they appeal to actors of the counterrevolution that we could call traditional, but also to new operators, oriented to population sectors where the economic crisis, the emerging liberal ideology and certain errors committed in political practice have created moods that can be used as part of subversive agendas.

The work with young people, the sustained attack against culture and institutions, the greater awareness of historical dates and their symbolism demonstrate a more careful work at the time of constructing the narrative of subversion.

This symbolic assault counts, in the current Cuban scenario, on an important tool: social networks, mainly Facebook, where more than 70 percent of Cuban Internet users are currently located. This network, following clearly ideological matrixes, makes visible and reinforces certain contents while isolating others and arbitrarily blocking or closing accounts and contents that in any way reinforce the symbolic position of the Cuban revolution. This has been the case, for a long time, with information related to Cuban vaccine candidates or with the accounts of important news sites on the island, such as Cubadebate.

Behind all these processes of practical and symbolic subversion of the established order are the interests of big U.S. capital. Cuba represents a double challenge for imperialism: to have broken with its domination and to demonstrate that, in spite of the growing hostility, it is possible to advance in the construction of a more just society.

To wage the symbolic battle for the nation in these circumstances implies, above all, the clarity that building an alternative social project to capitalism requires a constant educational effort to make people understand and interact socially on a new logic. It is necessary, as Che Guevara pointed out, while building new relations of production, to form a new person, one where material stimulus and individualism are no longer the main engines of his social practice. It is a difficult task, but not impossible.

It is also necessary to understand the necessary process of renewing and visiting the symbols. These are not cold stone, but are the sap in which the projects of human beings are reflected, nourished and grow. Cubans are, like all peoples, a great mixture of past, present and future. Today the symbolic Cuba is as much Martí and Fidel, as the small bulbs of Soberana and Abdala.

* Cuban journalist, writer and researcher.

Twitter @novaezjose

Diaz-Canel speech to Ibero-American Summit

2 years ago Juventud Rebelde, Translations, , ,

JuvReb

In Cuba, science and innovation have been key factors in the development process and social justice objectives.

An inclusive Ibero-America, which takes into account the interests and development needs of all members of this Conference, can favor the advancement of our nations, stressed the President of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel.

Author:

Juventud Rebelde
|digital@juventudrebelde.cu

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

The legitimacy of a government emanates from the expressed and sovereign will of its people. Autor: Estudios Revolución Publicado: 21/04/2021 | 10:35 pm

Speech by Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, at the XXVII Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government, on April 21, 2021, “Year 63 of the Revolution”.

His Excellency Xavier Espot Zamora, Head of Government of the Principality of Andorra;

His Majesty Felipe VI;

Your Excellencies Heads of State and Government of Ibero-America and other heads of delegations; Your Excellency Rebeca Grynspan, Ibero-American Secretary-General:

Please receive cordial greetings on behalf of the Cuban people and Government.

The efforts of the Principality of Andorra to organize this Summit and to give continuity to the work of the Ibero-American Conference, in the period that is coming to an end, under the exceptional conditions imposed by COVID-19, must be acknowledged and thanked.

Our congratulations and support to the sister Dominican Republic, next Pro Tempore Secretariat.

Excellencies:

Cuba has experiences to show and attaches special relevance to the theme of this appointment: “Innovation for Sustainable Development-Objective 2030. Ibero-America facing the challenge of the Coronavirus”.

In barely a year, a devastating pandemic has worsened the living conditions of millions of human beings on the planet and caused the worst economic downturn in nine decades¹. In contrast, five years after its adoption, hardly any progress has been made in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

There is talk of the multiple crises generated by COVID-19, but some problems are dozens of years older.

Developing countries are burdened with the unbearable weight of a foreign debt that has already been paid a thousand times over, and some of them are also suffering the impact of unilateral coercive measures that violate international law and hinder their legitimate right to development.

Until a just, democratic and equitable international economic order can be established to address the root causes of inequalities and move towards the Sustainable Development Goals, these will remain a chimera for most of the world’s peoples.

Let us be honest. The current development paradigms cause poverty and exclusion of the majority due to their irrational patterns of production and consumption that, under the designs of the market, disdain the most valuable thing: human life and dignity.

An inclusive Ibero-America, which takes into account the interests and development needs of all the members of this Conference, can favor the progress of our nations.

Sustainable development demands political will, solidarity, cooperation, financial and technology transfers from developed countries and equitable access to these resources that takes into account accumulated inequalities.

The pandemic has laid bare an indisputable truth: health and social protection systems, education, science, technology and available material resources must be put at the service of all and not at the mercy of the narrow interests of a few. Regardless of ideologies, the State has a responsibility to assume in the use of resources associated with the life and well-being of citizens.

As I explained at the Ibero-American Summit in Veracruz in 2014, in Cuba, science and innovation have been key factors in the development process and social justice objectives. This premise, which is a fundamental part of the legacy of the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, has allowed us to face the current pandemic under the blockade.

A robust system of science and technological innovation with an advanced and efficient biotechnological and pharmaceutical industry, allied to the universal, free and quality health system, with highly specialized human resources, have made possible the Cuban response to the pandemic that seems to surprise some.

A little more than a year after the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in the country, we have five vaccine candidates, two of them, Soberana 02 and Abdala, in Phase III clinical trials and we hope to immunize the entire Cuban population before the end of 2021, with our own vaccines.

Our National Economic and Social Development Plan until 2030, aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, gives a leading role to innovation and scientific research.

The links between government structures and the knowledge and goods and services production sectors have been strengthened to promote innovation for economic and social development, with emphasis on local development.

Cuba has 229 Science, Technology and Innovation entities, of which 141 are Research Centers, 26 Scientific and Technological Services Centers, 61 Development and Innovation Units and a Science and Technology Park², and at the same time it is developing a Government Management System based on Science and Innovation.

The Government of the United States, in the midst of the pandemic, brutally tightened the economic, commercial and financial blockade, and financed and supported dangerous acts of violence and disrespect for the law to promote social and political instability in our country. The Cuban people have responded by redoubling their proverbial resistance to the blow of creativity.

The campaigns of the U.S. Government to discredit and boycott the medical cooperation that Cuba offers have not tarnished our vocation of solidarity and cooperation: 57 medical brigades of the Henry Reeve Contingent have contributed to confront the pandemic in 40 countries and territories. Many of the members of this Conference have appreciated the high altruism of Cuban health professionals.

Excellencies:

The legitimacy of a government emanates from the expressed and sovereign will of its people, not from the recognition of foreign powers. The Government presided over by the constitutional President Nicolás Maduro Moros must be respected.

It is unfair to blame the Venezuelan Government for the economic and social situation facing Venezuela, when the application of cruel unilateral coercive measures, planned and implemented by the United States accompanied by several of its allies, with the aim of causing suffering among the population, continues. These coercive measures promote emigration, a phenomenon about which some express great concern and could contribute to resolving its cause.

It would be useful and sincere to recognize that the U.S. design of intervention in Venezuela failed miserably and placed other countries that supported it in an untenable political and legal situation.

Those who claim to respect the will of the Venezuelan people and promote a political solution among Venezuelans should recognize that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is a sovereign state, cease meddling and act with respect for the United Nations Charter and the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.

Excellencies:

On behalf of the Cuban people, I am grateful for the traditional support of the Ibero-American community for the just demand to put an end to the blockade against Cuba, as well as the signs of rejection to the arbitrary and unilateral qualification of our country as a sponsor of terrorism, by the Government of the United States.

Cuba maintains unchanged its policy of solidarity and international cooperation for the benefit of our peoples, and will never renounce the construction of a sovereign, independent, socialist, democratic, prosperous and sustainable nation, always ready to share, as a human heritage, the results of our experiences based on Science and Innovation.

Thank you very much to all of you.

Taken from the Report: “The Inequality Virus”, published by OXFAM on January 25, 2021 and available at: https://www.oxfam.org/es/informes/el-virus-de-la-desigualdad
Data provided by Citma’s International Relations Department.

Support for Nobel Prize for Cuban Doctors

2 years ago CubaDebate, , , , , ,

cuba-debate

Lucía Topolansky: If I were on the Nobel committee, I would have no doubts about the award for Cuban doctors!

By Maribel Acosta Damas, Cuban journalist, specialized in Television. She is a professor at the Faculty of Journalism of the University of Havana and holds a Ph.D. in Communication Sciences.
 

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee.

Lucía Topolansky is the most voted senator in Uruguay. She was vice president of the Republic between September 2017 and February 2020, the first Uruguayan woman in that responsibility.

It is a symbol of the country, and not a fashion star. Guerrilla who was imprisoned, who escaped and was imprisoned again until the end of the dictatorship; tireless social fighter until today, empowered woman in the Frente Amplio government, companion in struggle and life since her youth of former Uruguayan president Pepe Mujica. Lucia is a simple woman, with straight words, a warm voice, an impressive chronological and affective memory; of life anecdotes, and plans, dreams and actions in her 76 years …

I met her years ago in Uruguay. Now the challenge was to interview her on WhatsApp. The dialogue flowed between the Havana neighborhood of La Víbora and La Chacra de Montevideo. Communications were excellent! A kind of plan A, B and C, as we are trained in Cuba, they gave us several copies of the recording, just in case … My son, a young music student put together a whole tech racket… he was still excited! And when the phone rang, she was on the other end of the line with her invariable River Plata accent:

Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee.

Lucia Topolansky-. Hi, how are you?

Maribel Acosta Damas-. How are you Lucia?

LT-. Very good. Here we are working a little at home, because as I am 76 years old, I still cannot participate myself to all the legislative activity.

MAD-. And is he in good health?

LT-. My health is perfect, what I try is to avoid getting infected with the pandemic …

MAD-. And how is Pepe?

LT-. El Pepe is phenomenal! The problem that he has, apart from his 86 years, is that he cannot be vaccinated due to a previous disease that he had, so those of us around us have to take great care not to infect him because he has no chance, even with the vaccine, and on the other hand, the vaccine will take a while to arrive …

Photo: Courtesy of the interviewee.

MAD-. And how do you feel on the farm, are you very bored, because you are used to active social life?

LT-. No, I never get bored at home because I live in the rural area of ​​Montevideo …

MAD-. … I was there with you in 2005…

LT-. Ah good!!! We here always have things to do. Now we have planted tomatoes, corn, sunflowers, we have chickens … There is always something to do here … The one who gets bored is because he is very clumsy … And later, with the computer, I work in the Parliament’s committees remotely, I do everything I can do with all those new zoom mechanisms that now exist and that … and I am following reality and we do some meetings in my house because we do them outdoors and from a distance, a few companions, but political activity is missed. We are now in the opposition and there are no demonstrations in the street, there is nothing. So it’s very, very difficult to keep up.

MAD-. And how are they handling the Covid issue in Uruguay?

LT-. From the health point of view, we have been quite good because our government left the current government with a very solid integrated national health system, which in Latin America is the one that invested the most in health with 9.5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product. That with a good computer platform that allowed telemedicine, helped a lot. We are also a country with little population.

Our biggest problem is the border with Brazil, which is where part of the pandemic and the people who came from abroad have come from. At the end of the year festivities, we had an increase in infections and now we are here in summer, that made the numbers of infections rise…

And what happened to the health system is that it lost the epidemiological thread. Now they are trying to take it up again and waiting to see if the world will deign to sell us a vaccine.That’s the reality. Derived from this, our biggest problem is not health, it is economic because there were many people who lost their jobs.

MAD-. In the midst of this complex scenario, you nominated Cuban doctors for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. How was this process?

LT-. We knew about the Cuban doctors program when it started. It caught our attention. We followed up. We saw what had happened in many African countries, in Pakistan and in other parts of the world. When in 2005 we won the government in Uruguay, the first delegation of Cuban doctors came here and there we met them live and direct. We met several delegations and they helped us to install an eye hospital because in Uruguay there is a quite aging population and one of the problems we have is cataracts. So the cataract operation was still not being done in Uruguay.

We were beginning to carry out health reform in the country; And the private ones charged a ridiculous amount, for each lens, for each operation! Then in an old hospital there was, the cataract operation was reformed and installed. The collaboration of the Cubans made it possible to perform almost 100,000 cataract operations and that was a marvel for the people who were practically blind, who had not met their grandson who had been born. That operation was called Operation Miracle. At the beginning, the operated ones traveled to Cuba but later the operation was done here, personnel were trained and that hospital is going very well.

MAD-. Does that hospital still exist providing ophthalmic services?

LT-. Yes, it still exists. The doubt we have now is that the opposition won the elections in 2019 and they do not have any sympathy for that service. We are going to fight for its defense, especially with the Retirees Association … And resuming the link with Cuban doctors, in our government, after Operation Milagro [Miracle], came the collaboration in prosthetics, uppers and lowers.

That was also wonderful because the possibility of being able to walk with a prosthetic leg changes people’s lives. Then we saw that this solidarity was a generous solidarity, because we were not in an extreme catastrophe as Pakistan could have been at the time with the earthquake, but it allowed us not only to set up these undertakings but also to train people and above all to solve the problem at a large number of Uruguayans. That for us is unforgettable! 

And when we found out that he was in this process for the Nobel, we did not hesitate! What’s more, Pepe told me that he also wanted to join, what happens is due to a matter of paperwork, he did not reach the formal part of the application but he did start talking about the issue and also supports that I know about that award. The greatest importance of that award is symbolic.

It is for the world to recognize that there may be people who collaborate out of solidarity, out of vocation. We also saw everything that Cuban doctors did in Brazil during Dilma Rousseff’s term and how in those remote places of the deepest Brazil, where there is no medicine, doctors appeared who began to care for people. It was like night and day! Unfortunately, The current government of Brazil backed down with that program, but I think that when solidarity is so generous there is no doubt that it deserves the Nobel.

MAD-. You have visited Cuba several times, right?

LT-. Yes. I have been to Cuba about three times. I got to know Cuba in 2000. It was a difficult  year. I was delighted because despite all the economic difficulties with this criminal blockade of more than 60 years, people were moving forward. Then I came back two more times and got to meet Fidel.

MAD-. How did you meet Fidel?

LT-. One of the times we went, Pepe was President of Uruguay. Fidel was already ill and we went to his house and he gave us a class on how to make sheep’s yogurt and the experiments he was doing. And the truth is that it was a pleasure to hear it. I had seen Fidel up close twice. In 1959 I was in the 3rd year of the Liceo and there were floods in Uruguay. The Cuban Revolution was just beginning and Fidel came to Uruguay; and with the one who was later the President of the Broad Front, General Líber Seregni, 

Fidel toured all the places of the floods and later participated in a political act in the town square. I was a girl from the Liceo and I went to listen to him because at that time we did not really know what the process of the Cuban Revolution was like. Many years later, in 1985, when the dictatorship was no longer in Uruguay and Dr. Julio María Sanguinetti ruled, he invited Fidel to come and I saw him for the second time but I had never had the opportunity to speak to him until I met him in Havana. It is one of those experiences that I had that you keep for the rest of your life.

MAD-. You have always been a defender of popular causes, of the paths of the poor, your link with the city of Montevideo and its causes … and the question always assails me, how does a woman of a bourgeois origin like yours have given herself to social justice causes?

LT-. Look … when I was at the Liceo, I started going with a social worker to do social work in the peripheral neighborhoods of Montevideo, which were very poor areas, especially of people who in those years emigrated from the countryside to the city in search of Job opportunities. And there I realized that there were several Uruguay with people with different conditions. Then I got to know the world of cane cutters, which was one of the most exploited sectors in the country. And so I realized that there were other realities that not everyone was talking about and that were not headlines. 

Those years were in turn of the rise of what was called the Church of the Third World, there were some in Uruguay of that line of work and we discussed a lot and there one began to become politicized, I was linked at the student level. We fought to make the bus ticket accessible to students and in this way I was getting closer to the political struggle.

What happened is that Uruguay until the end of the Korean War in the 1950s was quite good economically because the war favored commercial exchange prices and as the Colorado Party, ruling in that period, had a strong social democratic imprint, there was a certain margin of well-being and a series of interesting laws had been voted in favor of the workers such as the one known as the Law of the chair, so that people would not be standing for a long time in the workplace. 

Women had won the right to vote, the right to divorce of their own free will for the woman; and this meant that Uruguay had a sui generis situation in the Latin American context. But with the end of the war that ended, here came the crisis, which later generated the dictatorship. In those years there was a lot of struggle … The economic deterioration hit the people a lot and we joined that struggle. In 1964 Uruguay had done something remarkable: the People’s Congress, where it brought together trade unionists, students, academics, small and medium merchants, small and medium producers; to all progressive people. 

The discussion was, is there a possible Uruguay where we can live better? So we worked a government program. As a consequence of this, the unity of the Central Obrera was achieved in a single center, which was an enormous advance in the struggle. Afterward, the Broad Front was created. In other words, we found a formula to bring together all the forces of the left that allowed us to enter the government in 2004. We have just completed 50 years of that coalition and we hope to celebrate another 50 and more. This is how we were able to reach the government and generate changes in Uruguay, and it was within the framework of those changes that we were able to generate the programs with the support of Cuban doctors.

MAD-. Hasn’t so many years of struggle brought you frustrations or regrets?

LT-. Ayyyyy !!!! In fighting what you have to know is that when you fall you have to get up. The only fight that is lost is the one that is abandoned. We have that slogan and we have no intention of abandoning the fight because there is still a mountain of inequalities and equality is something that seems increasingly questioned in this world; the concentration of wealth in the world hits on equality and the rights of the people.

MAD- It’s true… I ask you then, do you consider yourself a feminist? He also defends the causes of women …

LT-. Look, there are tons of definitions of all kinds about feminism. I believe that what we should never forget is the class struggle. It is not just about women coming to government, political and leadership responsibilities. In some countries they put quota laws and others. However, there are women who will always be excluded due to a question of social class. So for me they are two struggles that go hand in hand; the class struggle and the feminist struggle. Not all definitions of feminism carry both  components. I think we must rescue a bit of a manifesto from the French Revolution, The Manifesto of Equals, which says: “Equal even under the roof of the home”, speaking of men and women. I go for that concept.

MAD-. And has it been like this for you at home with Pepe Mujica?

LT-. Jijiji… Yes. I have been lucky in my life in that section, but we still see many situations of domestic violence in the world. Now with the confinement due to the pandemic, more have appeared. There is still trafficking in women and girls, sexual abuse … that happens and in Uruguay too. Although in Uruguay we advanced early in many aspects – in 1910 the woman in Uruguay voted and for some years the termination of pregnancy was approved – we must always be vigilant and it does not only go through the quotas of parliamentary representation … I fight there for times with my gender colleagues …

MAD-. Lucia, why didn’t you have children?

LT-. Because I was always running in life! Hehehehehe !!!!! I was very young the first time I fell prey, I escaped; later I fell prey again and spent almost 13 years in jail and then the times of life led me to other paths. I dedicated myself to the militancy but that situation did not shock me. One makes choices in life and I embraced a cause that to this day I consider fair, I have continued with it with successes and errors and I think it is worth it. That was my life option.

MAD-. Speaking of options… what is your assessment of Cuba? How do you look at it?

LT-. I look at Cuba from many angles: José Martí represented Uruguay as Consul between 1884 and 1892, when he lived in the United States; to tell you a historical fact. When I was about 10 years old I had the opportunity to meet the Cuban dancer Alicia Alonso. She danced at that time, before the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, with the New York Ballet and they came to Uruguay. The tickets were very expensive but my grandmother decided that the three female granddaughters had to see that because it was wonderful. Then she got the tickets and told us, almost threatened us: “You guys take a good look at how that lady dances because you’re not going to see anything better in the world!” 

And I still have those images in my memory to this day! That was a tremendous contact with Cuba! Then there was a Cuban exile in Uruguay named Juana Callorda, She was a nurse and at night she took care of my other grandmother who was very old, and at night we would go to talk to her and she would tell us about Cuba, who Fulgencio Batista was and she told us a lot of things … Those were the indirect approaches that I was having … I am also an inveterate reader of Alejo Carpentier, that wonderful writer … and then I started reading about Cuba and I read the history of Cuba. 

And when Fidel starred in the assault on the Moncada Barracks in 1953, I found out because they talked about it here … but of course, it was a quite distant world for me in those years! And after 1959 that world came closer because it was in those years that I met Fidel and then in 1963 at the Meeting of the Alliance for Progress in Punta del Este in Uruguay, Che Guevara came to Cuba. He later came to Montevideo and gave a talk in the Paraninfo of the University. The presenter of that talk was Salvador Allende and I was there. 

We did not imagine that those two people; who presented Che and Che, were going to star in such important events in the history of Latin America! A Committee to support the Cuban Revolution was created. I was active there. I remember that we made a collection to buy a tractor and send a tractor to Cuba. I was following the process, reading, finding out about things … but it was almost just that I had the opportunity to get to know Cuba. I have always had that bond, I think it is a beautiful people, tremendously cultured, that has had to suffer more than 60 years of blockade… It is incredible because one reads things and cannot believe it !!!I know Nueva Trova and I would have liked to meet Haydée Santamaría … Cuba is a very valuable people that has been very cornered … One always hopes that it will end sometime …

MAD-. Do you think that the Cuban medical contingent Henry Reeve will receive the Nobel Peace Prize? Will they give it to them?

LT-. I would not know how to answer it because I do not know the composition of the Nobel committee well, but they would have to give it to them because I do not know another group of doctors from any other country that has had their attitude. I do not know. There are Médecins Sans Frontières organizations and others that are tremendously respectable, but I have never seen this deployment… If there is something left over for Cuba, it is doctors! 

But that obsession with education and health in Cuba brought these results. And they also had the generosity of not keeping it at the borders, they spread it out to the world, even in countries far away from the island. I recently read an account of some Argentine doctors who met Cuban doctors in Africa when they went to fight Ebola, when no one wanted to get close … In those years when Pepe and I met Fidel, He was worried about the impact of Zika in Africa… Look, all the things that happen can be debatable for and against, but hitting Cuba for the solidarity of medicine is impossible. If I were the Nobel tribunal, I would have no doubts about the award for Cuban doctors!

MAD-. In general in these times of pandemic we have had more time to think. You, who have been more at home, who have surely had more time to analyze your reality, how do you reevaluate your political project, now in the opposition?

LT-. I still believe in my political project. Of course, many times the historical circumstances change and one adjusts the forms but the essences are the same. As long as there is inequality in the world, as long as there are so many people without eating and so much food wasted in the world, as long as there is a painfully long list of injustices; one cannot sit idly by. That is why I believe in my people and in my struggle.

MAD-. In these times of pandemic, the words solidarity and generosity seem to have been redefined. What do you think?

LT-.  May the world learn from this shock! I think that from this shock we have to learn the meaning of solidarity and that there are things that cannot be commodities such as health and that we must respect nature. But I do not know if we will be up to reading the teachings of this time because the interests are incredibly powerful and with the networks, fake news etc … people get confused with colored balloons …

MAD-. How do you perceive the Latin American situation today?

LT-. The situation in Latin America is difficult but I never lose hope. I hope that the Chileans who are in the process of drawing up a new constitution, will finally put an end to everything that Pinochet left behind, and can move forward and make fundamental reforms that improve the living conditions of their people. I do not know what will happen in Peru, it is a waste country. Now we are expectant with Ecuador. I wish the best to the new Bolivian president Luis Arce and also to the Argentines who are struggling with a terrible economic heritage. 

Let’s hope that the Brazilian people realize that this gentleman they have as president is not recommended. I think we are fighting and I believe in the ability of Latin Americans to fight. What hurts me the most is that we have not managed to maintain integration organizations; integrate, fight together. I believe in the great homeland, in the dream of the liberators! In America everyone is on their own and it would seem that we are angry with each other. It hurts me. The role of the OAS has been a disaster, UNASUR undid it. Let’s hope CELAC can survive. I have more questions than answers. These are the challenges we have.

MAD-. Do you know that Cuba has four vaccine candidates finishing their clinical trials and the Cuban government as well as the island’s scientific community have declared their willingness to put these vaccines at the service of the whole world, especially Latin America?

LT-.  I knew they had a project called Soberana [Soveign]. I got some information on that. Unbelievably I got it through the BBC. I learned that test agreements were made with Iran. What I thought about that is that both Argentina and Mexico have vaccine production capacities and both are friendly governments of Cuba. After the investigations are done, large-scale productions are necessary. We in Uruguay have a significant number of scientists who have been working. We do not have the capacity to produce vaccines because the laboratories have closed them. Our scientists gave information about what Cuba was doing, what happens is that there is a lot of censorship at the level of the information world …

MAD-. We can send you information about Cuban vaccines. There is a lot of public information about this …

LT-. Yes. We are interested in having direct information on the countries. Knowing how far you have advanced because if there is something really important it is the exchange between scientists.

MAD-. I admire your work as a senator at this time … the work in the opposition must be very difficult when you have been a government for so long …

LT-. When I entered Parliament I was in the opposition. I worked for 5 years as an opposition in Parliament. After I worked the 15 years in our government and now I am back on this journey. Our fundamental role is to control that we do not go backwards in what we have advanced, to be able to put the needs of the people in the resonance box, which is Parliament. Now we are presenting fifteen laws that have to do with social projection, because they talk a lot about the fiscal deficit but they do not talk about the social deficit. 

Also, we are collecting signatures against a very nefarious law that had the votes to approve it and we are working to see if we can repeal it through the referendum mechanism. I have fought in many different circumstances, this is one more. This opposition situation hit the younger people more because there were comrades who were 10 or 15 years old when the Broad Front won and they don’t know any other government than ours. That has been rough for them, but for those of us who are old and have many scars in our history, we know with which oxen we have to plow … hahahahahahaha …

MAD-. How is your day and Pepe’s there on the farm in times of Covid?

LT-. Well, we have many agricultural activities, what’s more, we have collaborated with the popular pots, because there are neighborhoods where it was necessary to organize soup kitchens and popular pots. So you have to help supply them because the government provides very little, and with products from our farm and from our neighbors we always bring a pumpkin, vegetables, tomatoes, eggs … also that is a motivation that one has … And we also do the work for internet and reading, studying … 

We don’t waste time here … We also have three advantages: We do not have economic distress like many people who have had to go through this pandemic; second, here we have space and life. It’s not a tiny apartment where you’re locked up, is it ?! And besides, we have many years in prison, so we know what it is to be locked up !!! Hahahahahahaha !!!!!!Wherever you look at it, we have an advantage !!!

MAD-. Don’t you and Pepe fight with so much time together?

LT-. No, not at all, quite the opposite !!!! Hahahahahahaha… !!! We talk a lot… In the morning, Uruguayans drink mate, so that is a good time for conversation because mate makes sense when one takes it shared and on the road. Now inside the house there are no problems but when you go out they ask you not to share it because of the risk of contagion. That has been something hard for the Uruguayan and part of a culture and a feeling. 

Pepe and I get up early because we like the morning, the most beautiful time, less hot … And in the morning when Pepe and I drink mate, we talk a lot and then when we close the day we also talk … My house, along the entire trajectory of Pepe and me, it is a house where many people come. Now we have to regulate it a bit … some come to consult something, others to talk, others to take a photo … to the point that I call our house the Oracle of Delphi hahahahahahaha … despite the pandemic that has not stopped although there are fewer people who come from abroad, because normally everyone who comes to Uruguay passes through our house…

MAD-. What is the first thing you will do when the pandemic ends and you can go out?

LT-. To fully integrate myself into my parliamentary work as a first duty, and then continue with that plan of mobilizations, we have to hold a congress of our Broad Front … There are many things ahead !!!!!

MAD-. Do you think Pepe can give me an interview too?

LT-. Yes. We can combine it. There are no problems. We combine it and it is done. Sometimes during the day he has several conversations. The other day he was speaking with the President of Mexico. And then we try to make an agenda. This phone I’m talking about is from the companero who supports  us. It’s like a seven jobs because he runs errands for us, if we have to fix something at home he helps us hahahahahahaha… everything… you fix it with him who takes the agenda to Pepe… and that’s it !!!

MAD-. Thank you Lucia, for such a beautiful afternoon …

LT-. I want to give a hug to you and in your name, to all the Cuban people … do not let up, the fight pays and for Latin America we hope that better times will come!

(Taken from Cuba in summary )

Provocation in its Context

2 years ago Granma,

Provocation in its Context (+Video)

It is surprising how dates that have special significance in the collective imagination continue to be used to try to colonize our memory. There must be a limit to the lack of legality, responsibility and decorum with which some want to manage the affairs of the nation.

Author: Karima Oliva Bello | internet@granma.cu
February 1, 2021 01:02:44 AM

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

Photo: Ismael Batista Ramírez

The most recent events in front of the Ministry of Culture are not an expression of the violence of our State against young people with a critical stance, who want to dialogue, although this is how the anti-Revolutionary media present it. Instead, the events manifest the agenda of a group that, although it uses dialogue as a media façade, in reality assumes a frankly sabotaging attitude towards it. Dialogue, in this particular case, has not been the intention of the staging we have seen.

It is, rather, an unjustified siege of a Cuban institution (and its workers) that has created the conditions for dialogue to become viable. It is inscribed, with a markedly provocative character, within a dynamic of events that in recent times have been capitalized by known agents at the service of the outgoing U.S. government for the destabilization of the country, and the deployment of a coup d’état for political change in Cuba.

Two aspects are evidence of the opportunism with which the provocation was projected. In the first place, we are facing the most difficult moment since the pandemic began due to the number of daily infections, while the Cuban State is making commendable efforts to save lives, to create a vaccine that will allow us to be immunized as soon as possible and to carry forward, at the same time, a process of order that was necessary, but which creates a complex socio-economic context.

Secondly, these are acts of provocation that may further complicate the scenario of relations between Cuba and the United States, just at a time when a president has just taken office in the neighboring country who has declared his intention to review the current state of the aggressive policies of the previous administration, aimed at aggravating the economic blockade, genocidal violence perpetrated by the same people who pay some of the protagonists of the provocation we have just seen.

We invite you to weigh all these basic questions and to think about the violence that would be unleashed against our people if we were to allow the plans of those who wish to destabilize the country, assuming such irresponsible positions at a time like the present, to be carried out.

We are also facing facts that have an important symbolic connotation, we cannot ignore that they occurred on January 27, on the eve of another anniversary of the birth of our Apostle. It is surprising how dates that have special significance in the collective imagination continue to be used to try to colonize our memory. There must be a limit to the lack of legality, responsibility and decorum with which some want to manage the affairs of the nation.

Vaccination against selfishness and inequality

2 years ago CubaDebate, , , , , , , , , , , ,

cuba-debate

Vaccination against selfishness and inequality

By: Randy Alonso Falcón
January 27, 2021

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

“It will not be an exhausted and outdated world order that can save humanity and create the indispensable natural conditions for a dignified and decent life on the planet. (…) This is not an ideological question; it is already a question of life or death for the human species.”
Fidel Castro Ruz
Speech at the Open Tribune of the Revolution, held in San José de las Lajas
January 27, 2001

Solidarity and Justice are still words in disuse even when the catastrophe concerns us all, like a great universal Titanic. A tiny and sticky virus has moved fears, shaken societies and health systems, provoked countless reflections on today and the future, but it has not succeeded in making equity and love for others prosper.

This week will mark the 100 millionth person infected with COVID-19 in the world and already more than 2 million people have died.

“Every day the gap between the haves and have-nots grows. The pandemic has reminded us that health and economics are linked and that we are all in the same boat. The pandemic will not end until it ends everywhere,” said World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday.

The numbers bear incontrovertible witness to the expert’s assessment.

The privileged cure

Despite numerous calls from the UN and various world leaders to seek a global response to the pandemic and to facilitate and share access to a cure for the disease, narrow views and deaf ears predominate.

“Science is succeeding, but solidarity is failing,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres noted on January 15. Several vaccines are already available worldwide to tackle the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but access to them is as deeply unequal as the world we inhabit.

Some 66.33 million doses have been administered to date, 93% of which were delivered in just 15 countries: the US, China, UK, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Germany, India, Italy, Turkey, Spain, France and Russia, according to the data analysis platform Our World in Data, based on figures from Oxford University.

In all of sub-Saharan Africa, only 25 doses of vaccine could be administered in Guinea. Populous countries like Nigeria, with 200 million inhabitants, are waiting for the first dose.

The same scramble that took place at the beginning of the pandemic with lung ventilators, masks and protective suits is now being staged with vaccines: hoarding, overpricing and speculation. “An immoral race to the bottom,” as the WHO’s top executive described it.

The COVAX fund, created as a sort of global effort to make vaccines accessible to the poorest nations or those with limited resources, announced that in February it will begin to deliver the first doses (they first said that in January), but it recognizes that it has been limited by the lucrative agreements of various individual nations with the pharmaceutical companies that produce the anti-COVID vaccines.

Another handicap has been the high cost of the vaccines that have the most international approval so far. As Norwegian expert John-Arne Rottingen told The Guardian, “The difficulty is that we really only have widespread international approval for marketing two vaccines: the two mRNA vaccines. The challenge is that one, the Moderna vaccine is very expensive, and the other, the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, which was first available and is now being applied in Europe, is moderately expensive compared to others, and requires a super cold chain. The price and cold chain makes it not the ideal vaccines for a global vaccine.”

While nations like India and South Africa are calling on the WHO to campaign for pharmaceutical companies to relinquish intellectual property rights to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. That would allow other qualified manufacturers in the South to expand production of those antidotes; countries like the US, UK and Canada have opposed the initiative. Those three wealthy nations have purchased or reserved enough doses to inoculate their populations at least four times.

High-income countries account for 16% of the world’s population, but hold more than 60% of the vaccines purchased so far.


Rich countries account for the lion’s share of vaccine production. Graphic: The Guardian

Some forecasts put the total population of middle-income and poor countries that could be vaccinated this year at 27%. Duke University’s Center for Global Health Innovation estimates that there will not be enough vaccines to immunize the world’s population until at least 2023.

“The world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure, and the price of this failure will be paid in lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries,” Dr. Tedros regretfully sentenced.

The virus of inequality


“Vaccine nationalism” is the exact reflection of an unequal and unjust world in which a few remain the great beneficiaries of wealth, for which billions must make do with the leftovers.

It is the “inequality virus” that OXFAM denounces in its most recent report, in which it evidences that the current failed economic system “allows a super-rich elite to continue to accumulate wealth in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, while billions of people face great hardship to get by.”

While billionaires saw their fortunes increase between March and December 2020 by a total volume of $3.9 trillion-to amass an unimaginable $11.95 trillion-the poorest people on the planet will need “more than a decade to recover from the economic impacts of the crisis” accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Racial differences have also deepened. In the United States, the most powerful nation on the planet, if mortality rates were equal to those of the white population, nearly 22,000 Latinos and blacks would not have died from the coronavirus outbreak. In Brazil, people of African descent are 40% more likely to die from COVID than whites.

One of the conclusions of the Oxfam report is that “the pandemic is likely to increase inequality in a way never seen before”. The World Bank has warned that, in the current context, more than 100 million people could reach extreme poverty.

The 10 richest men in the world saw their net worth increase by $540 billion in the pandemic 2020 period. That list is topped by Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. It also includes luxury group LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, Bill Gates and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. According to Oxfam, the money hoarded by these potentates would be enough to prevent people from falling into poverty due to the effects of the virus and would also guarantee a vaccine for everyone on the planet.

Sunshine of the moral world

Among so much inequity and indifference, a small archipelago in the Caribbean, called Cuba, has been able to send thousands of doctors and nurses, in some 50 brigades of the “Henry Reeve” Internationalist Contingent, to more than thirty countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, to collaborate in the fight against the deadly disease.

Thousands of lives saved or recovered in a scenario of total complexity are the fruit of their solidarity work. The human and professional quality of these sons and daughters of the Cuban people overcomes the most diverse obstacles. It leaves a mark of affection, gratitude and example that is recognized by all those with whom they have shared and whom they have cared for.

That same country, with scarce economic resources but abundant in trained and educated talent, has been able to build an advanced biopharmaceutical industry, which is now preparing to produce 100 million doses of Soberana 02, one of the 4 vaccines on which its scientists are working. This would make it possible to immunize the entire Cuban population (it would be one of the first countries to achieve this) and to have more than 70 million doses available for other peoples of the South. There are already countries interested in acquiring it, such as Vietnam, Iran and Venezuela, Pakistan and India, the Director General of the Finlay Vaccine Institute recently announced.

Researchers from that institution are working with countries such as Italy and Canada to test the impact of the Soberana 01 vaccine on people who have already had COVID-19 and are convalescing, but are at risk of reinfection.

“We are not a multinational where (financial) return is the number one reason. We work the other way around, creating more health and return is a consequence, it is never going to be the priority,” Dr. Vicente Vérez, leader of the main vaccine research center in Cuba, explained to the press last week.

“Our world can only beat this virus one way: united,” the UN Secretary-General recently emphasized. Unfortunately, the vaccines of solidarity and justice have not been able to be applied in the rich world that dominates.

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