Tag Archives: Human Rights

Cuba’s Medical Diplomacy: Aid, State Profiteering and International Financial Backing

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Arch Ritter

BY MARIA C. WERLAU;  mariacwerlau@gmail.com

Haiti’s President Michel Martelly recently visited Cuba to sign cooperation agreements including in health. No doubt Haiti needs help to deliver needed healthcare, but these accords exploit Cuban workers and contribute to the continued oppression and impoverishment of the Cuban people.

Cuban Medical Worker, Haiti

Currently, around 700 Cuban health professionals are in Haiti. Cuba has similar government-to-government agreements with over 70 countries. These partnerships allow the Castro dictatorship to reap huge financial gains, avoid needed reform, and increase international influence to advance its agendas. Meanwhile, the export of scarce medical resources is causing a severe public health crisis in Cuba. Doctors and basic medical supplies are hard to find and facilities are falling apart.

When the earthquake struck, 344 Cuban health professionals were working throughout Haiti; more were immediately sent and deployed to the most remote areas. Cuba had long been receiving millions from international organizations and countries such as France and Japan for these services. Great need and corresponding international largesse became a golden opportunity. Just weeks after the disaster, Cuba was promoting a gigantic endeavor to build a new healthcare infrastructure for Haiti at an annual cost of $170 million, to be paid for by international donors. Cubans and Cuban-trained medical staff would run it at “half the international prices.”

Countless millions are now pouring into Cuba from the Pan American and World Health Organizations, dozens of NGOs, foundations, companies, and individuals from the United States, Canada, Spain, Belgium and others. Many governments have also donated — Venezuela $20 million to start, Brazil $80 million, Norway $2.5 million. The list of donations is undisclosed, but France, Australia, Japan, and other countries have apparently chipped in. The cost to Haiti is just a $300 monthly stipend to each Cuban health worker plus transportation and housing.

Haiti is just one very profitable subsidiary in Cuba’s global multi-billion dollar ¨humanitarian¨ enterprise. Most of its profits come off the backs of Cubans indentured as “collaborators.” Angola, for example, reportedly pays Cuba $60,000 annually per doctor; the doctor receives $2,940 (4.9 percent), at most. These service exports bring more than three times the earnings from tourism and far more than any other industry — $7.5 billion in 2010, the last year reported. Business is so good that in 2010 the Cuban government reduced an already decimated local health staff by 14 percent to send more abroad.

This unique brand of health diplomacy is only possible in a totalitarian state guaranteeing a steady pool of “exportable commodities.” Leaving Cuba without government authorization is punishable with years of prison; health professionals face the strictest travel restrictions. If they defect while abroad, their family, which must stay behind, cannot joint them for five years; issuing them academic or other records is forbidden.

The average monthly pay of a doctor in Cuba is around $25, barely guaranteeing survival. Abroad, they live off a bare-bones stipend from the host government. But, they receive from Cuba their usual peso salary and a bonus of $180-220 per month, plus are allowed to send home shipments of consumer goods. This paltry compensation package is enough for Cuban doctors to “volunteer” to be exploited abroad rather than at home.

The health workers are sent abroad for at least two years and often to far-flung areas under rudimentary, sometimes dangerous, conditions. In Venezuela, dozens have been killed or raped. Heavy workloads, surveillance, and many arbitrary restrictions add to their hardship.

In this clever scheme of modern slavery, Cuba is partnering with dozens of governments — including longstanding democracies such as Portugal and Uruguay — and receiving funds from reputable countries and international organizations. Ostensibly, the agreements violate the domestic legislation of many host countries and international accords including the Trafficking in Persons Protocol, several International Labor Organization conventions, and standards concerning the prohibition of “servitude” and “slavery.”

The Martelly agreements with Cuba should be made public. If they violate human rights’ standards, Haiti should manage the international aid independently to hire and compensate Cuban workers directly and invite their families to join them. Other countries should take note.

Maria Werlau is executive director of Cuba Archive, a non-profit human rights’ initiative based in Summit, New Jersey.

 

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“Euphoria” in Cuba as Raúl Castro Loosens Travel Policy

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Arch Ritter

By Juan O. Tamayo, Miami Herald, October 17, 2012

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/17/v-fullstory/3054779/euphoria-in-cuba-as-raul-castro.html#storylink=cpy

The Cuban government’s bombshell decision to drop the widely hated exit permits required for citizens travelling abroad has unleashed “euphoria” on the island as well as concerns abroad over a possible mass exodus.
A decree published Tuesday made it clear the communist government will continue to decide who can leave the island, as it has since Jan. 9, 1959. It repeatedly noted that any Cuban could be kept from travelling “when the proper authorities so decide.”
“But there is an incredible euphoria here because what 1 million or more people here really want is to leave” for good or just to visit relatives or friends abroad, dissident economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe said from Havana.
University of Miami professor Jaime Suchlicki warned of a “legal Mariel.” And a pro-Cuba activist urged Washington to avert a possibly massive increase in the number of Cubans arriving by ending its wet-foot, dry-foot policies and the Cuban Adjustment Act.
State Department spokesman William Ostick said Washington welcomed the changes because they favor human rights, but warned Cubans not to “risk their lives” crossing the Straits of Florida and noted that they still need visas to enter most nations.
“Now the question is where, where can we go to,” said Katarina Ponce, a recently laid off government secretary, trying to figure out if any countries do not require Cubans to obtain visas in advance of their arrival. “Russia? Cambodia? Any place.”
Havana blogger Yoani Sanchez, who has been denied exit permits more than 20 times, wrote on Tweeter that “The devil is in the details of the new migration law” and called the decree “gatopardista” — a situation where change is more apparent than real.
The new rules appear likely to allow more average Cubans — those without political or other issues pending with the government — to travel abroad more easily, stay out longer and return with fewer complications, costs and paperwork.
They also may help ease some of the social and financial pressures ballooning inside Cuba under Raúl Castro’s decisions to reform the economy by laying off nearly 1 million state employees and cutting subsidies to the food, health and education sectors.
More than 1 million Cubans now live abroad, mostly in the United States, and about 7,400 islanders without visas arrived in the United States in the one-year period that ended Sept. 30. All Cubans who step on U.S. soil can stay permanently.
The decree noted that as of Jan. 14, Cubans will no longer need the exit permits, which cost $150 in a country where the average monthly wage stands at $20. They also will not need letters of invitation from their foreign hosts, which cost $200 to process.
The changes also extend from 11 to 24 months the amount of time that Cubans can spend abroad before they are ruled to have officially migrated and lose benefits such as health care. Further extensions are possible.
But the government retains final say on who gets passports because U.S. migration policies that favor Cuban migrants “take away from us the human resources that are indispensable to the economic, social and scientific development of the country,” according to a report Tuesday in the Granma newspaper announcing the changes.
Supervisors must approve the issuance of passports to government and military officials, professionals, physicians and other medical personnel, top sports figures and others whose work is deemed “vital” to the state, according to the decree.
Passports also can be denied to any Cuban “when it is so determined by the appropriate authorities for other reasons of public interest,” the decree added, or when “reasons of defense and national security suggest it.”
“If that’s the way it is, then I have to believe that the government will be as arbitrary as always,” said Wilfredo Vallín, a Havana lawyer who heads the non-government Cuban Judicial Association.
Also barred from obtaining passports — whose price rose from about $60 to about $110 — are those who are subject to the military draft or have other unspecified “obligations” to the government.
“The government continues to regard migration not as a right of all Cubans but as a gift that it gives to people according to its own interests,” said Juan Antonio Blanco, a Florida International University professor who has studied Cuba’s migration regulations.
The decree also abolishes the reentry permit required for Cubans who live abroad and wish to visit the island, and extends the time they can visit from one month to at least three months per visit.
Not all will be welcomed back, however. Blocked are those who “organize, encourage or participate in hostile actions against the political, economic and social basis of the state,” and any others “when reasons of defense and national security call for it.”
Also on the don’t-come list, according to the decree, are those with criminal records for terrorism, money laundering or weapons smuggling, and those “linked to acts against humanity, human dignity (or) the collective health.”
“This continues the government effort to control the conduct of citizens inside and outside the island, through an opaque system that rewards and punishes at its own discretion,” said Blanco, a former analyst for the Communist Party’s Central Committee.
The migration reforms were the most anticipated of all the changes that Raúl Castro has been talking about and putting in place since he took over from older brother Fidel Castro, temporarily in 2006 and officially in 2008.
The exit permit was required in 1959 initially to block the escape of officials and supporters of the Batista government toppled by the Castro revolution just nine days before. The re-entry permit was required beginning in 1961, to try to control the return of radical Castro opponents.
But Raúl Castro told the nation’s legislature last year that Cuban migration policies needed an update because those leaving the country nowadays are “émigrés for economic reasons” rather than hostile exiles.
Suchlicki, head of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies at UM, on Tuesday reissued a column he wrote on May 3 warning that Castro was planning a mass exodus to relieve pressures inside Cuba. The column was titled, “Is Cuba planning a legal Mariel?”
John McAuliff, a New York activist who has long opposed the U.S. embargo on the island, also predicted that with more Cubans free to travel abroad, more will wind up in Mexico and Canada and will step across the U.S. border.
The Obama administration should therefore immediately end the wet-foot, dry-foot policy and the Cuban Adjustment Act, which allows any Cuban who sets foot on U.S. territory to stay permanently, and to remain, McAuliff wrote in an email.
Mauricio Claver Carone, executive director of the pro-embargo U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee in Washington, remained skeptical.
When Cubans start jamming foreign diplomatic missions in Havana in search of visas and come up empty handed, he said, the Castro government will tell them, “Well as you can see, other countries also don’t want you to travel.”
Even more skeptical was Blanco. “When all this blows over, the Cubans and the media will realize that not much has changed in the tight control system,” he said. “Stalin can continue to sleep in peace.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/17/v-fullstory/3054779/euphoria-in-cuba-as-raul-castro.html#storylink=cpy

 

 

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The Economic Implications for Cuba of Relaxing Restrictions on the Freedom of Movement

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Arch Ritter

By Arch Ritter, October 16, 2012

Cuba’s relaxation of its much-loathed travel regulations, to come into effect on January 14 2013,  is welcome news as it will improve the freedom of movement for Cuban citizens considerrably– one hopes .  It is certainly to be welcomed warmly.

The new policy abolishes the requirement to have a foreigner make an invitation and pay $224.00 (CDN in 2009) for an exit visa (non-refundable even if the permit is refused.) It also permits Cubans to remain outside the country for 24 months, extendable, rather than the current 11 months, without having their property in Cuba confiscated.

There are a number of unknowns in the new policy however.

  • Restrictions or controls apparently will remain on professionals . How broad these are is not clear.
  • Will the restrictions still apply to independent professionals such as pro-democracy critics such as Oscar Chepe or Yoani Sanchez?  Will they still require exit permits?  Will they then be free to return to Cuba?

Dimas Castellanos, Miriam Celaya, Reinaldo Escobar and Yoani Sanchez; Will Cuba’s Pro-Democracy Bloggers now be able to exit Cuba freely and – one hopes – to return freely as well?

 TheEconomic Consequences of the New Travel Regulatoions

 Increased Emigration?

Easier exit and 24 months – extendable – absence may lead to more emigration and the  loss of “human capital.”  Already annual net emigration is high, reaching 38,165 in 2010 (ONE 2011 Table 3.21). Those who emígrate are disproportionately better education and entrepreneurial and ready to face the challenges of starting over in a new country. Such population loss is especially onerous in view of Cuba’s declining population and the prospect of accelerated decline as an aging population becomes a dying population .

Or Decreased Emigration?

Greater freedom to exit and re-enter Cuba may in fact reduce emigration as Cubans in Cuba are able to leave more freely.

Perhaps increased numbers of Cubans will remain in Cuba if they are free to visit abroad for lengthy periods ot time and also to return.

For some Cubns such as musicians oir major league Cuban baseball players in the United States and Canada,  spending part of the year in the US but returning for some months to Cuba each year would be an ideal situation. Would some such professionals ultimately  return to live in Cuba part-time?

Declining or Increasing Revenues for the Government?

The Cuban Government will lose the revenues from the very high exit permit fees. (These were an extortionarte $ US 224.00 for each person in 2009 when I tried to invite two  Cubans, Miriam Celaya and Yoani Sanchex to visit Canada in a prívate capacity. The payments were non-refundable.)

But will increased foreign travel lead to higher government tariff revenues from the increased volumes of products imported by air passengers?

 Increased Remittance Payments from Migrants?

Will more Cubans leave Cuba to work abroad but support their families at home in Cuba and revisiting often? The result would then be increased inflows of hard currency to Cuba.

In summary, the economic implications of the relaxation of the travel restrictions are ambiguous and not yet clear – as is the detail of the legislation itself at this time.

However, the government perhaps is to be congratulated for renouncing some easy forms of hard currency income from the elimination of the exit permit fee and facing the risk of increased emigration.  Over time, the crass monetary aspects of the improvement in peoples’ freedom of movement should be more positive in terms of government revenues and National economic gains.

 Currency Inconvertibility and Monetary Dualism as Limits on Freedom of Movement

The most serious violation of the freedom of movement of Cuban citizens results from Cuba’s monetary and exchange rate system.  Cuba’s currency has been inconvertible for 50 years and the dual monetary and exchange rate system has prevailed for the last 20 years. Currency inconvertibility means that citizens can not routinely change their earnings for foreign currencies in order to travel freely. Instead, from 1961 to 1992 they have had to get permission from the Government to exchange their earnings in Moneda Nacional pesos into a foreign currency. This meant that for the average citizen travel was highly restricted unless one could find a foreign sponsor to pay the bills.

The economic powerlessness of most Cuban citizens was further intensified when the dual monetary system came into play in the early 1990s,. With the collapse of the value of the “old peso” (Moneda Nacional) vis-a-vis the US dollar (and then the convertible peso or “CUC”) the purchasing power of earnings in the official economy also collapsed.

At the exchange rate for Moneda Nacional to the US dollar at around 26 to 1, the average monthly income is somewhere around US$ 20.00. It is not easy to travel outside – or inside – Cuba independently with this level of income!

In sum, Cuba’s exchange rate and monetary systems impoverish Cuban citizens in terms of the international transferability of their earnings from work.

Only when Cuba establishes a normal exchange rate and monetary system will greater freedom of movement become a realistic possibility for the average Cuban citizen.

 

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BBC: “Cuba to End Exit Permits for Foreign Travel”

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Arch Ritter

From the British Broadcasting  Corporation, October 16, 2012

Original article here: Cuba to end exit permits for foreign travel

Cuba has announced it is removing the need for its citizens to obtain exit permits before travelling abroad.

State media said the move, to come into effect on 14 January next year, would “update” migration laws to reflect current and future circumstances.

Cubans currently have to go through a lengthy and expensive process to obtain a permit and dissidents are often denied one, correspondents say.

The move is the latest in a series of reforms under President Raul Castro.

Cubans who have permanent residency on the island will also be allowed to stay abroad for up to 24 months, instead of the current 11, without having to return to renew paperwork.

The BBC’s Sarah Rainsford, in Havana, says the exit permit process is hated by most Cubans so this reform, which was much anticipated, will be widely welcomed.

Cuba previously saw people attempting to leave the country as traitors or enemies of the revolution, says our correspondent, but official recognition is growing that many Cubans want to leave for economic reasons and that the country can benefit from the cash and knowledge they bring back with them.

Now all that Cubans will need to leave is a valid passport and a visa.

However, the new law still argues for the need to protect Cuba’s “human capital”, our correspondent adds, so highly-qualified professionals like doctors, will continue to face extra hurdles to travel.

Government critics are also likely to experience further difficulties, as passport updates can be denied for “reasons of public interest defined by the authorities”.

The restrictions have failed to prevent hundreds of thousands of Cubans emigrating illegally in the past few decades, many of them to the US where they have formed a strongly anti-Havana diaspora.

The US grants automatic residency to anyone who reaches it from Cuba.

Brink of war

For nearly half a century, Cuba was run as a command economy, with almost all activity controlled by the state. But under President Raul Castro, who took over from his ailing brother Fidel in 2008, it has gradually eased restrictions in many areas of politics, business and society. The latest reform comes on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war as the US and the Soviet Union nearly went to war over Soviet missiles placed on the island. But the crisis was resolved diplomatically when the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a US promise not to invade Cuba.

However the relationship between Cuba and the US remains hostile – they have no diplomatic relations and an American economic blockade of the era is still in effect.

Cuba has struggled economically since the collapse of the Soviet Union and now relies heavily on the support of the left-wing government of Venezuela.

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Foreign executives arrested in Cuba in 2011 await charges

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Arch Ritter

The original Reuters article is here:  Foreign executives arrested in Cuba in 2011 await charges

By Marc Frank; (Editing by Jeff Franks and Jackie Frank)

HAVANA | Tue Oct 9, 2012 2:59pm EDT

HAVANA (Reuters) – Executives of three foreign businesses shut in 2011 ostensibly for corrupt practices have been held by Cuban authorities for a year or more and still have not been charged with a crime, sources with knowledge of the cases said this week.

Their ongoing legal limbo has put a behind-the-scenes strain on Cuba’s relations with their home countries – Canada and Britain – where the legal process protects suspects from lengthy incarceration without charges, western diplomats told Reuters.

Police closed the Havana offices of the British investment and trading firm Coral Capital Group Ltd last October and arrested chief executive Amado Fakhre, a Lebanese-born British citizen.

A month earlier authorities shut down one of the most important Western trading companies in Cuba, Canada-based Tokmakjian Group, after doing the same in July 2011 to another Canadian trading firm, Tri-Star Caribbean.

Cuban authorities say the cases, which are part of a larger crackdown on corruption on the communist island, are being handled within the letter of Cuban law.

The local legal process does call for defendants to be informed of why they were arrested and sets out time limits for charges to be filed, but they can be waved indefinitely in “exceptional circumstances.”

Cy Tokmakjian, head of the Tokmakjian Group, and Sarkis Yacoubian, head of Tri-Star, were arrested and confined to comfortable safe houses when their businesses were closed, but earlier this year both were transferred to La Condesa, a prison for foreigners just outside Havana.

Cy Tokmakjian

Coral Capital’s Fakhre was recently transferred to a military hospital when he fell ill after months in prison.

His company’s chief operating officer, British citizen Stephen Purvis, was arrested in April and is in the Villa Marista prison run by state security, sources said.

A number of other foreigners and Cubans who worked for the companies remain free, but cannot leave the island because they are considered witnesses in the cases.

STILL UNDER INVESTIGATION

Asked at a Havana penal conference last week when charges might be filed against the businessmen, Cuban Attorney General Dario Delgado told Reuters the investigation had not concluded because of the complicated nature of the alleged crimes.

“The cases are in the investigative stage and still have not been presented to the court, but I can guarantee they are proceeding according to Cuban law,” he said.

“There isn’t the slightest reason for concern. These cases, which involve economic crimes, are very complicated. They do not involve, for example, traffic violations or a murder,” he said.

Cuban Comptroller General Gladys Bejerano told reporters at the same conference that the length of investigations depended on the behavior of those involved.

“When there is fraud, tricks and violations … false documents, false accounting … there is no transparency and the process becomes more complicated because a case must be documented with evidence before going to trial,” she said.

Western diplomats acknowledged that the cases were being handled within Cuban law, but said there was no due process by western standards.

Cuba’s judicial system has been widely criticized because all branches are controlled by the state and inevitably this leads to tension when foreign nationals are arrested.

“It is not just that they haven’t been charged. They can be questioned without a lawyer present and that lawyer would work for the state anyhow,” one diplomat said.

Under Cuban law a defendant must be represented by a Cuban public defender, though other lawyers can consult on the case, they said.

“There is regular, monthly counselor access and some contact with Cuban defense lawyers, but we certainly would like to see the process proceed more quickly and transparently,” another diplomat said.

Soon after taking over for his ailing brother Fidel in 2008, President Raul Castro established the comptroller general’s office with a seat on the ruling Council of State, even as Cuba began implementing market-oriented economic reforms.

The measure marked the start of the campaign to weed out corruption and reflected concern over graft that followed similar reforms in other communist countries, foreign and local experts said.

Since then, high-level corruption has been uncovered in one sector of the economy after another, from the cigar, nickel, and communications industries, to food processing and civil aviation.

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Cubans Watching Venezuelan and U.S. Elections; Their Own, Not So Much

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Arch Ritter

By Yoani Sanchez, from the Huffington Post, October 4, 2012.

The original article is here:  Cubans Watching Venezuelan and U.S. Elections; Their Own, Not So Much

Raul and Hugo

What does the voice of Henrique Capriles sound like? A neighbor asked me a few days ago. I didn’t know whether to tell him it was high-pitched or deep, soft or forceful, because the Cuban media is careful not to air it. Instead, we only have the opportunity to hear the agitated shouts of Hugo Chavez, the verbal attacks he throws at his young opponent.

A few days before the Venezuelan elections, our official press has closed ranks around the current occupant of the Miraflores Palace in Caracas. The television commentators assure us that there will be a landslide victory for the Socialist Party and celebrate in advance. But that’s just in front of the cameras; behind the cameras is nervousness, not certainty.

Raul Castro’s government has too much invested in the Venezuelan elections on October 7. Much more than with the dismemberment of the USSR and the conversion of the Eastern European countries. On that occasion, the loss of the Soviet subsidies and the political allies of the socialist bloc submerged the country into a profound material and diplomatic crisis. But within the country the control exercised by Fidel Catro’s regime had the strength — and stubbornness — to withstand the blow.

Today, more than two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, little remains of the fervor, the stubborn will, with which we faced what Fidel Castro called The Special Period, a crises presented to us as a necessary sacrifice, a test of ideological fortitude.

There are so many similarities and yet profound differences. The loss of the economic underpinnings from the Kremlin forced Fidel Castro to allow self-employment, the renting of houses, the development of farmers markets, foreign investment, and opening of the Island to international tourism and dollarization.

However, it was precisely the rise to power of Hugo Chavez in 1999 that was the key element to the walking back of these reforms. With a powerful and nearby partner lavishly giving us oil, why continue to deepen the process of relaxations that resulted in a loss of power.

Raul Castro, years later, would retake the path of economic openings that his brother had retracted. This time he would be supported by the Venezuelan subsidy, which has enabled him to implement the few changes slowly in a lukewarm fashion. Perhaps there was a moment when he believed that offering farmers the ability to lease land in usufruct, or expanding licenses for self-employment, would allow Cuba to take its first steps towards economic independence.

Or maybe he always knew that this type of dependency, once established, ends up becoming a chronic situation. More than a circumstance, the need for external subsidy is the core of the Castro regime, the direct result of its inability to successfully manage the national economy.

If, on Sunday, Venezuelans reelect Hugo Chavez as president, Raul’s regime will get some breathing room. But the great polarization in Simon Bolivar’s fatherland will make it more difficult to publicly sustain the maintenance of Cuba. It will no longer be the same.

On top of that, the obvious physical collapse or the expected death of Fidel Castro is an open secret throughout the whole country. His last brief and delirious “Reflections” column was published in the newspaper on June 19. Some say they are only waiting for the end of the Venezuelan elections to put an announcement date on his obituary.

The government in Havana is approaching complicated months. Venezuela’s will be the first in a cycle of three elections that will influence, to a greater or lesser extent, our national life. The presidential election in the United States follows immediately in the list of electoral processes that lie ahead. Mitt Romney has promised a heavy hand with the Cuban authorities, but Barack Obama can also be very caustic to the Cuban system if he deepens his policy of family, academic and cultural approaches.

The first five-year term of Raul Castro will end in February 2013. Few are betting that he’s thinking of retiring to make way for a younger figure. These elections, the third that await us in the coming months, are also the last in importance and in generating expectations. The process of nominating People’s Power delegates and installing them in the National Assembly has already begun, and this body will approve the nominations to the Council of State.

If the Venezuelan results will decide whether we are granted billions in subsidies, and our relationship with our powerful neighbor to the north is in play in those elections, the Cuban elections smell strongly of a play whose script is already written. We don’t even need surveys or voter polls. There is no possibility of a surprise.

Enrique Capriles

 

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Fidel’s “Revolutionary Collective Surveillance” Neighborhood Spies Create Social Violence and Hatred

Posted on September 28, 2012 by Arch Ritter

By Yoani Sanchez, Huffington Post, 09/28/2012

Originals article here: Fidel’s “Revolutionary Collective Surveillancw

The stew was cooked on firewood collected by some neighbors, the flags hung in the middle of the block and the shouts of Viva! went on past midnight. A ritual repeated with more or less enthusiasm every September 27 throughout the Island. The eve of the 52nd anniversary of the founding of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), the official media celebrate on its commemoration, a song intended to energize those who are a part of the organization with the most members in the entire country, and to dust off the old anecdotes of glory and power.

But beyond these formalities, which are repeated identically each year, we can perceive that the influence of the CDR in Cuban life is in a downward spiral. Gone are the days when we were all “CeDeRistas” and the acronym — with the figure of a man brandishing a machete — still shone brightly on the facades of some houses.

Amid the ongoing decline of its prominence, it’s worth asking if the committees have been a more of source of transmission of power to the citizenry, than a representation of us to the government. The facts leave little room for doubt. Since they were created in 1960, they have had an eminently ideological base, marked by informers. Fidel himself said it during the speech in which he announced their creation:

We are going to implement, against imperialist campaigns of aggression, a Revolutionary system of collective surveillance where everybody will know who lives on their block and what relations they have with the tyranny; and what they devote themselves to; who they meet with; what activities they are involved in.

These words from the Maximum Leader are now difficult to find reproduced in full on national websites and newspapers. In part because, despite the unconditional support for the Commander in Chief, the current editors of these spaces know very well that such language is totally out of sync with the 21st century.

That is, what seemed like an exalted Revolutionary speech delivered from the balcony of the Presidential Palace, in the light of today has all the hallmarks of partisan despotism, of the grossest authoritarianism. Big Brother announcing his plan. If those words excited exaltation at the beginning of the sixties… they now provoke in many a mixture of terror, disgust and embarrassment for the man who spoke them.

The “sweeter” side of the CDR is the one that’s always related in official reports, talk about a popular force dedicated to collecting raw material, helping in the vaccination of infants, promoting blood donations, and guarding neighborhoods against crime. Put like that it appears to be an apolitical neighborhood group ready to solve community problems.

Believe me, behind this facade of representation and solidarity is hidden a mechanism of surveillance and control. And I’m not speaking from the distance of my armchair or from the lack of knowledge of a tourist who spends two weeks in Havana.

I was one of those millions of Cuban children who stockpiled empty jars or cartons, cut the grass and handed out anti-mosquito products in the CDRs all over the country. I was also vaccinated against polio and even tasted some plate of stew or other during the fiestas of this organization.

In short, I grew up as a child of the CDR, although when I reached adulthood I refused to become a militant among its ranks. I lived all this and I don’t regret it, because now I can conscientiously say from the inside that all those beautiful moments are dwarfed by the abuse, the injustices, the accusations and control that these so-called committees have visited on me and millions of other Cubans.

I speak of the many young people who were not able to attend university in the years of the greatest ideological extremism because of a bad reference from the president of their CDR. It was enough during a reference check from a school or workplace for some CDRista to say that an individual was “not sufficiently combative” for them to not be accepted for a better job or a university slot.

It was precisely these neighborhood organizations who most forcefully organized the repudiation rallies carried out in 1980 against those Cubans who decided to emigrate through the port of Mariel in what came to be known on the other shore as the Mariel Boatlift. And today they are also the principal cauldron of the repressive acts against the Ladies in White and other dissidents.

They have never worked as a unifying or conciliatory force in society, but rather as a fundamental ingredient in the exacerbation of ideological polarization, social violence, and the creation of hatred.

I remember a young man who lived in my neighborhood of Cayo Hueso, who had long hair and listened to rock music. The president of the CDR made his life so difficult, accused him of so many atrocities simply for the fact of wanting to appear as who he was, that he finally ended up in prison for “pre-criminal dangerousness.” Today this intransigent — this one-time “Frikie” from my block — lives with his daughter in Connecticut, after having his life and reputation dragged through the mud like so many others.

I also know of several big traders in the black market who assumed some post in the committees to use as a cover for their illegal activities. So many who took on the role of “head of surveillance” and were simultaneously the biggest resellers of tobacco, gas, and food in the whole area.

With few exceptions, I did not know ethically commendable people who led a CDR. Rather they attracted those with the lowest human passions: envy before those who prospered a little more; resentment of someone who managed to create a harmonious family; grudges against those who received remittances from family abroad; dislike for everyone who honestly spoke their minds.

This deceitfulness, this absence of values and this accumulation of grievances, have been been one of the fundamental causes for the CDRs’ fall into disgrace.

Because people are tired of hiding their bags so the informing neighbor can’t see it from their balcony. People are tired of the worn out sign in front of their house with the figure with the threatening machete. People are tired of paying a membership fee to an organization that when you need it takes the side of the boss, the State, the Party.

People are tired of 52 anniversaries, one after another, like a stale and nightmarish deja vu. People are tired. And the way to express this exhaustion is with the lowest attendance at CDR meetings, failing to go on night watch to “patrol” the blocks, even avoiding tasting the stew — ever more bland — on the night of September 27.

If doubts remain about why people get tired, we have the words of Fidel Castro himself on that day in 1960, when he revealed from the first moment the objective of his grim creature: “We are going to establish a system of collective surveillance. We are going to establish a system of Revolutionary collective surveillance!”

 

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Espacio Laical: “Por un consenso para la democracia”

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Arch Ritter

A document entitled Towards a Concensus for Democracy” has just been published by Espacio Laical, a project of the Centro Cultural Padre Félix Varela of the Archdiocese  of Havana. The editor is Lenier Gonzalez.

The complete document is available here: Espacio Laical, Por un consenso para la democracia

Table of Contents

 – Cuba está viva. 6
– En torno a la democracia en Cuba. Por Roberto Veiga González 8
– ¿Es rentable ser libres? Por Julio César Guanche 14
– Hacia una democracia de los consensos. Por Roberto Veiga González 21
– Por un consenso para la democracia. Por Julio César Guanche 27
– Compartir la búsqueda de nuestro destino. Por Roberto
Veiga González 32
– Cuba hoy: compatibilidad entre cambios reales y el panorama constitucional. Por Monseñor Carlos Manuel de Céspedes 36
– Dossier sobre los desafíos constitucionales de la República de Cuba. Por Jorge I.  Domínguez, Julio A. Fernández Estrada, Dmitri Prieto Samsónov y Roberto Veiga González 47
– Fuerza por la unión, no unión por la fuerza. Por Mario Castillo 69
– Apuntes para una reforma del Poder Popular en Cuba. Por Roberto Veiga González 73
– Sobre la democracia y los partidos políticos: contribución a un debate impostergable. Por Armando Chaguaceda 80
– Dossier sobre la necesaria reforma al Partido Comunista de Cuba. Por Víctor Fowler, Orlando Márquez, Ovidio D’Angelo, Alexis Pestano, Arial Dacal y Lenier González 84

Lenier González

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Dissidents arrested at Paya funeral in Cuba

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Arch Ritter

Radio Netherlands Worldwide, July 24, 2012

Cuban police arrested dozens of dissidents Tuesday after the funeral of Oswaldo Paya, a political activist whose sudden death in a road accident triggered grief and suspicion, AFP reporters said. Those arrested included Guillermo Farinas, a leading rights activist, who was held for questioning by plainclothes police deployed outside the Havana church where Paya’s funeral was held.

At the Funeral of Oswaldo Paya

Farinas, known for hunger strikes that drew attention to the plight of political prisoners in Cuba, and about 50 others were stopped by police after emerging from the funeral mass shouting slogans against the government.

They were forced onto two buses that the church had provided to take people to the cemetery where Paya was to be buried.

Two of Paya’s children have questioned the official account of how their father was killed.

Authorities said Paya, 60, died along with another dissident, Harold Cepero Escalante, on Sunday when their rental car went off the road and struck a tree in southeastern Cuba.

Separately, a Spanish national who was driving the car in which Paya was killed was taken into custody by Cuban police for questioning after being released from a Havana hospital on Monday, a Spanish embassy source said.

The source said Angel Carromero Barrios, a 27-year-old activist with the youth wing of Spain’s ruling Popular Party, was being held in Bayamo, 744 kilometers (462 miles) southeast of Havana.

“He is still in Bayamo, in a detention center,” the source said.

A Swede, 27-year-old Jens Aron Modig, also was in the car at the time of the crash. He was treated at a local hospital and released. The Swedish embassy would not comment on his situation.

Paya, winner of the European Union’s Sakharov prize for human rights in 2002, is best known for confronting the Cuban parliament that year with a petition signed by 11,000 people demanding political change in Cuba.

Known as the “Varela Project,” the initiative was instrumental in opening debate in Cuba on the direction of a communist regime dominated for more than half a century by Fidel Castro and his brother Raul.

Paya was eulogized Tuesday by Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the archbishop of Havana and a key intermediary with Cuba’s ageing leadership, as a man whose political activism was rooted in his Christian faith.

“Oswaldo had a clear political vocation and, as a good Christian, this did not distance him from his faith or religious practice,” Ortega said.

“On the contrary, he always looked to his Christian faith as inspiration for his political options.”

His death brought a flood of reaction praising his courage and dedication to human rights.

Pope Benedict XVI extended condolences to Paya’s family in a statement that Ortega read at the funeral service.

In Chile, two lawmakers complained that they had been denied visas to attend Paya’s funeral. Senator Patricio Walker and congressman Juan Carlos Latorre, both members of Chile’s Christian Democratic party, had applied for the visas Monday at the Cuban consulate in Santiago.

“They had given me the visa, the truth is I was bit surprised,” Walker told reporters. “The consul called me and said that it was a mistake, that tourist visas could not be given to holders of diplomatic passports.”

 

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Canada Offers Condolences on Death of Cuban Activist

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Arch Ritter

 

July 24, 2012 – The Honourable Diane Ablonczy, Minister of State of Foreign Affairs (Americas and Consular Affairs), today issued the following statement on the death of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas:

“I was saddened to learn of the tragic death of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas.

“Mr. Payá dedicated his life to defending civil liberties and human rights, and he was one of Cuba’s most prominent voices for democratic change. He received the Sakharov Prize in 2002. In 2005, and again in 2011, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

“His commitment to dialogue and non-violence and his support for a vibrant civil society in which religious organizations play an important role stand out as a positive example for the continued development of democracy in Cuba. My thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of this tireless champion of freedom and democracy.”

– 30 –

For further information, media representatives may contact:

Gemma Collins
Director of Communications
Office of the Minister of State of Foreign Affairs (Americas and Consular Affairs)
613-944-1291

Foreign Affairs Media Relations Office
Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada
613-995-1874

 

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