Tag Archives: Politics

THE POLITICS OF CUBAN TRANSFORMATION—WHAT SPACE FOR AUTHORITARIAN WITHDRAWAL?

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Arch Ritter

An excellent exploration of Cuba’s possible political furures was presented by Norwegian Political Scientist Vegard Bye at the 2012 ASCE Conference and has just been made available in the ASCE Conference  Proceedings for 2012. Excerpts from the Introduction are presented below. The full study, well worth a close reading, is here: WHAT SPACE FOR AUTHORITARIAN WITHDRAWAL?

By Vegard Bye

Cuba is in the process of undergoing significant— perhaps fundamental—economic reforms. Although the pace is not always very fast, and the direction is more characterized by zigzagging that by a straight line, there is little doubt that the state-dominated economy is about to give way to more non-state actors. In theory and ideology, the official line confirmed at the 2011 Party Congress is still that “plan”  and not “market” is the guiding principle. But in practice, plans drawn up by the state bureaucracy play a rapidly diminishing role in the “really existing  economy.” State bureaucrats, however, seem to be practicing considerable “civil disobedience” by dragging their feet in the implementation of reforms approved by the party leadership, as Raúl Castro himself

So far, the discussion of reforms in Cuba has almost exclusively focused on economic aspects. The VI Party Congress in April 2011 was exclusively dedicated to economic reform, or “updating [actualización] of the economic model,” which is the politically correct but not very adequate expression. The Party Congress, and the comprehensive debate within Cuban society leading up to it, led to quite significantly rising expectations about economic prospects in Cuba, both for the country as a whole and for individuals and families, although the confidence in the present  leadership’s capacity to solve Cuba’s deep problems seems to be rapidly falling.

………

This article is part of a research project with the objective of making an on-going assessment of the dynamics between economic and political transformations in Cuba by comparing these to theoretical and empirical literature on other transition experiences: democratic transitions in Latin America as well as Southern and Eastern Europe, the on-going struggle between democratic and authoritarian trends in the former USSR (and even some newly democratized Eastern European countries), and the authoritarian market transition taking place in China and Vietnam.

 The general hypothesis is that the economic reforms in Cuba are slowly moving the country from a totalitarian to a post-totalitarian society (referring to a typology developed by Linz & Stepan2), with potential for the emergence of an increasing although limited democratic space, but alternatively for the emergence of  a post-Castro authoritarian political-economic elite not least linked to the Armed Forces. Three alternative scenarios are developed to reflect these options. It is believed that the study of two transition processes (agricultural reform and the emerging entrepreneurship), understood within Cuba’s international context and with an additional view to the impact of a future oil economy, will offer a good indication as to which of these three scenarios will have more prominence in Cuba’s political development.

  Vegard Bye is a Norwegian political scientist, Associate Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, and Partner in the consulting company Scanteam. His work record includes senior positions with the UN and Norad (Norway’s Development Cooperation Agency), long experience as reporter and part-time university lecturer and thesis supervisor. He has written various books on Latin American topics, and has followed Cuba since working there with the UN in the late 1970s.

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Cubans on the Island and Cubans Around the World: We Are All Just Cubans, Period

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Arch Ritter

Yoani Sanchez

[Text read in an event at the Freedom Tower, Miami, Florida, 1 April 2013]

Years ago, when I left Cuba for the first time, I was in a train leaving from the city of Berlin heading north. A Berlin already reunified but preserving fragments of the ugly scar, that wall that had divided a nation. In the compartment of that train, while thinking about my father and grandfather — both engineers — who would have given anything to ride on this marvel of cars and a locomotive, I struck up a conversation with the young man sitting directly across from me.

After the first exchange of greetings, of mistreating the German language with “Guten Tag” and clarifying that “Ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch,” the man immediately asked me where I came from. So I replied with “Ich komme aus Kuba.”

As always happens after the phrase saying you come from the largest of the Antilles, the interlocutor tries to show how much he knows about our country. “Ah…. Cuba, yes, Varadero, rum, salsa music.” I even ran into a couple of cases where the only reference they seemed to have for our nation was the album “BuenaVista Social Club,” which in those years was rising in popularity on the charts.

But that young man on the Berlin train surprised me. Unlike others, he didn’t answer me with a tourist or music stereotype, he went much further. His question was, “You’re from Cuba? From the Cuba of Fidel or from the Cuba of Miami?”

My face turned red, I forgot all of the little German I knew, and I answered him in my best Central Havana Spanish. “Chico, I’m from the Cuba of José Martí.” That ended our brief conversation. But for the rest of the trip, and the rest of my life, that conversation stayed in my mind. I’ve asked myself many times what led that Berliner and so many other people in the world to see Cubans inside and outside the Island as two separate worlds, two irreconcilable worlds.

The answer to that question also runs through part of the work of my blog, Generation Y. How was it that they divided our nation? How was it that a government, a party, a man in power, claimed the right to decide who should claim our nationality and who should not?

The answers to these questions you know much better than I. You who have lived the pain of exile. You who, more often than not, left with only what you were wearing. You who said goodbye to families, many of whom you never saw again. You who have tried to preserve Cuba, one Cuba, indivisible, complete, in your minds and in your hearts.

But I’m still wondering, what happened? How did it happen that being defined as Cuban came to be something only granted based on ideology? Believe me, when you are born and raised with only one version of history, a mutilated and convenient version of history, you cannot answer that question.

Luckily, it’s possible to wake up from the indoctrination. It’s enough that one question every day, like corrosive acid, gets inside our heads. It’s enough to not settle for what they told us. Indoctrination is incompatible with doubt, brainwashing ends at the exact point when our brain starts to question the phrases it has heard. The process of awakening is slow, like an estrangement, as if suddenly the seams of reality begin to show.

That’s how everything started in my case. I was a run-of-the-mill Little Pioneer, you all know about that. Every day at my elementary school morning assembly I repeated that slogan, “Pioneers for Communism, we will be like Che.” Innumerable times I ran to a shelter with a gas mask under my arm, while my teachers assured me we were about to be attacked. I believed it. A child always believes what adults say.

But there were some things that didn’t fit. Every process of looking for the truth has its trigger, a single moment when a piece doesn’t fit, when something is not logical. And this absence of logic was outside of school, in my neighborhood and in my home. I couldn’t understand why, if those who left in the Mariel Boatlift were “enemies of the State,” my friends were so happy when one of those exiled relatives sent them food or clothing.

Why were those neighbors, who had been seen off by an act of repudiation in the Cayo Hueso tenement where I was born, the ones who supported the elderly mother who had been left behind? The elderly mother who gave a part of those packages to the same people who had thrown eggs and insults at her children. I didn’t understand it. And from this incomprehension, as painful as every birth, was born the person I am today.

So when that Berliner who had never been to Cuba tried to divide my nation, I jumped like a cat and stood up to him. And because of that, here I am today standing before you trying to make sure that no one, ever again, can divide us between one type of Cuban or another. We are going to need each other for a future Cuba and we need each other in the present Cuba. Without you our country would be incomplete, as if someone had amputated its limbs. We cannot allow them to continue to divide us.

Just like we are fighting to live in a country where we have the rights of free expression, free association, and so many others that have taken from us; we have to do everything — the possible and the impossible — so that you can recover the rights they have also taken from you. There is no you and us… there is only “us.” We will not allow them to continue separating us.

I am here because I don’t believe the history they told me. With so many other Cubans who grew up under a single official “truth,” we have woken up. We need to rebuild our nation. We can’t do it alone. Those present here — as you know well — have helped so many families on the Island put food on the table for their children. You have made your way in societies where you had to start from nothing. You have carried Cuba with you and you have cared for her. Help us to unify her, to tear down this wall that, unlike the one in Berlin, is not made of concrete or bricks, but of lies, silence, bad intentions.

In this Cuban so many of us dream of there will be no need to clarify what kind of Cuban we are. We will be just plain Cubans. Cubans, period. Cubans.Freedom Tower, Miami, Florida

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Cuban Politics : All Talk. The government fails to promote new leaders—even though hard times loom

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Arch Ritter

Jan 26th 2013 | HAVANA

Original Article here: Cuban politics : All Talk

The Gerontocracy

RAÚL CASTRO, Cuba’s 81-year-old president, has long said his country should have a younger leadership. During the island’s most recent Communist Party congress he proposed ten-year term limits for future presidents. Rather pointedly, given that his brother Fidel served for 49 years, he called Cuba’s failure to groom a new political generation “an embarrassment”.

But Raúl has done little to promote political renewal either. During that same congress, he chose two ageing party veterans to fill vice-presidential positions. Most senior officials are still “históricos”, who fought with the Castro brothers before the 1959 revolution—originally known for the vigorous youth of its leaders.

On February 24th Cuba’s National Assembly, its nearest equivalent to a parliament, will gather for its twice-yearly meeting. Its 612 delegates are expected to re-elect Raúl to another five-year term. His 86-year-old brother will already have been reconfirmed as a member of the Assembly.

But the meeting will also remind Cubans that some of the regime’s most familiar faces are leaving the stage. Ricardo Alarcón, the president of the Assembly for the past 20 years, will not attend—not because he is 75, but because of suspected tensions with Raúl. His assistant, Miguel Álvarez, was arrested last year and is being held on suspicion of corruption and spying. In 2008 a video of Mr Alarcón struggling in a question-and-answer session with students was leaked to the foreign press. His justification of Cuba’s travel restrictions—because more travel would lead to too many planes in the skies—was ridiculed.

Replacing Mr Alarcón might let Raúl pass symbolic power to the next generation. Possible candidates include Bruno Rodríguez, who was recently promoted to the politburo, and Marino Murillo, the economics chief. Both are in their 50s. But they may have reservations about being portrayed as future leaders. In 2009 two previous high-flyers were secretly recorded at a boozy barbecue mocking Fidel as doddery and out of touch, in a sting co-ordinated by state security. They were soon dismissed.

Any young hopefuls might prefer to wait and see how the regime handles what could be the island’s hardest test since 1991. Hugo Chávez, the Castros’ closest ally, has spent the past month in Havana receiving treatment for cancer, missing his own inauguration for a third six-year term as Venezuela’s president. Cuba now gets almost all the oil it needs from Venezuela, in exchange for sending doctors.

Even while treating Mr Chávez, the Cubans may be looking at back-up plans in case he or his subsidies fail to survive. During the past few years, representatives of oil-rich nations have been generously feted in Havana. Sonangol, Angola’s state oil company, is exploring for oil and gas near the island’s shores. Lavish homes in the capital have been reserved for Angolan officials. In November Cuba awarded a contract to invest in and manage sugar production, which has long been off-limits to foreigners, to Brazil’s Odebrecht. The firm is also part of an $800m project to build a container port at Mariel, just outside Havana, and is looking at making ethanol.

Most Cuban officials were already in charge during the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country’s previous benefactor. That led to harsh austerity. If it happens again, at least Cuban leaders can say they have seen it all before—and survived.

Asamblea Nacional December 2012

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Raul on a Roll; Anti-Reformers in Retreat!

Posted on January 21, 2013 by Arch Ritter

 

President Raul Castro, January 2013

By Arch Ritter

Migratory reform. New cooperatives legislation. Tax reform. Conversion of pseudo-cooperative “UBPCs” to more authentic cooperatives. Liberalized markets for housing and cars. Liberalized regulations and taxation for small enterprise. And perhaps more to come as some of the “Lineamients” recommendations get implemented.

President Raul is seems to be trying to escape from Fidel’s shadow and create his own legacy as he proceeds to reverse some of the most foolish of his brother’s policies. Indeed future history will not view Raul as his big brother’s sidekick and will evaluate him more positively.

Every successive Raulista  policy reform is a further condemnation of Fidel’s near-half century of personal rule in Cuba. No doubt Raul’s government would build a nice mausoleum for Fidel were he to die before Raul and Cuba’s media and speeches by Party members pour unanimous adulation on Fidel. But Fidel’s approach to the economy – not the polity – is being condemned by his own brother and by the Communist Party itself with every new reform measure.

Is anyone defending Fidel’s economic record?  One looks in vain for any critical analysis from the Fidelista conservative “left” in the press, the universities, or even in the world of the pro-government bloggers.  (Please let me know if I have missed this.)

Where are the defenders of Fidel’s approach to economic management?  They have fallen silent because Fidel, his economic team and his policy approach have been discredited.  Moreover, in Cuba’s one party system, Raul has all the means necessary to maintain unanimity and have the whole party and mass organization system move along with him. Interestingly enough, as far as I can determine, even the foreign Fidelista  “friends”, opportunists, sympathizers, and sycophants remain largely unanimous in abandoning Fidel’s economic approach and backing Raul’s reforms.

In contrast, those Cubans that want further and faster reforms are vocal and active – though their voices are muffled by the political controls over all the media, by the tight limits on the internet and by the monopolistic political system. However, the voices of independent analysts do get through via some academic and other publications and some blogs.

Will the reforms slow down? Will Cuban citizens be assuaged with the reforms that have now been introduced?  Will Cuban citizens continue to accept Fidel’s political system after having rejected much of his economic system?

Probably not.

Cubans must be asking themselves why they put up with so many of the economic stupidities of the Fidel regime for over 50 years. (Think of the nationalization of almost everything in the 1960s, the shutting down of almost all small enterprise, the 10 million tons, the “New Man,” the abolition of cost accounting – and accountants – in the 1960s, the shutting down of half the sugar sector in 2002.) They must also be asking themselves if the political system installed by Fidel is just as noxious and dysfunctional as the economic system.

Cuban citizens will not be assuaged. The economic reform movement will continue under and after Raul. Heightening popular expectations for reform will spread increasingly into political areas.

If only the United States would drop the embargo and remove the pretext of the regime for maintaining the one-party monopoly status quo, thereby permitting an acceleration of the democratizing process.

Fidel with President Kirschner of Argentina, January 2013

 

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Cuba en el siglo xxi : Escenarios actuales, cambios inevitables, futuros posibles

Posted on January 4, 2013 by Arch Ritter

Juan Antonio Blanco has contributed a thought-provokinh analysis to the recent  Nueva Sociedad (No 242, noviembre-diciembre de 2012) special issue on Cuba entitled Cuba se Mueve.

The complete essay is here: Blanco, Juan Antonio, Cuba en el Siglo XXI

“El régimen de gobernanza que ha dirigido Cuba por medio siglo ha quedado  inmerso en un desequilibrio sistémico al perder su anterior hábitat internacional, que lo sustentó durante la Guerra Fría.

Los cambios introducidos hasta ahora no han sido suficientes para lograr un nuevo equilibrio. Si se comprende esa realidad y se rectifica el rumbo, hay una Cuba mejor esperando a sus ciudadanos en el futuro. Pero si se insiste en «actualizar» un sistema agotado y carente de mecenazgos de la magnitud de los que obtuvo del bloque soviético, también es posible que aguarde en el horizonte una Cuba peor.”

Juan Antonio Blanco: doctor en Ciencias Históricas. Actualmente es analista político y director ejecutivo del Centro para Iniciativas hacia América Latina y el Caribe del Miami Dade College.

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Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation: Political Detentions Rose in 2012

Posted on January 4, 2013 by Arch Ritter

HAVANA | Thu Jan 3, 2013 10:38pm EST

Comisión Cubana de Derechos Humanos y Reconciliación Nacional  CCDHRN

The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation

HAVANA (Reuters) – Political detentions rose dramatically in Cuba in 2012 and will likely increase again in 2013 because of a lack of “real reforms” on the communist island, a Cuban human rights group said on Thursday.

The independent Cuban Commission of Human Rights said in its annual report there were 6,602 detentions of government opponents last year, compared to 4,123 in 2011 and 2,074 in 2010.

Elizardo Sanchez, head of the group, said the rise reflected growing discontent among Cubans and the government’s attempts to keep a lid on dissent.  “Dissatisfaction is increasing because of the general poverty and the lack of hope,” he told Reuters.

Cuban leaders counter that their opponents are largely the creation of the United States and others who provide money and other aid to help foment dissent against the government.

Havana also questions the validity of the commission’s numbers, which cannot be independently verified.

Under President Raul Castro, who succeeded older brother Fidel Castro nearly five years ago, Cuba has launched market-oriented economic reforms aimed at increasing productivity and prosperity while assuring the continuance of the island’s socialist system.

But Sanchez said the changes are small and have not improved human rights or living conditions on the Caribbean island, which he believes will lead to more dissent and detentions in 2013.  “This prediction is based on the refusal of the island government to introduce real reforms, especially regarding the system of laws,” he said.  “The regime continues perfecting and increasing the size of its powerful machinery of repression and propaganda,” he said.

Most of the detentions last only a matter of hours, but Sanchez said the number of Cubans going to prison for political reasons is on the rise, after most political prisoners were released in a government accord with the Catholic Church in July 2010.

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Nueva Sociedad: “Cuba Se Mueve”

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Arch Ritter

A special edition of Nueva Sociedad entitled, Cuba se mueve, has just appeared.  Nueva Sociedad is a project of the Frederich Ebert Foundation of Germany’s Social Democratic Movement. It is a pleasant surprise that the authors include contributors from inside Cuba such as Alzugaray, as well as outside Cuba including DBlanco, Dilla and Farber.

The Table of Contents is presented below with hyperlinks to the original essays.

NUEVA SOCIEDAD 242   Noviembre-Diciembre 2012

 Leonardo Padura Fuentes Eppur si muove en Cuba.

Elizabeth Dore Historia oral y vida cotidiana en Cuba.

Juan Antonio Blanco Cuba en el siglo XXI. Escenarios actuales, cambios inevitables, futuros posibles.

Haroldo Dilla Alfonso Las encrucijadas de la política migratoria cubana.

Juan Triana Cordoví Cuba: ¿de la «actualización» del modelo económico al desarrollo?

Alejandro de la Fuente «Tengo una raza oscura y discriminada». El movimiento afrocubano: hacia un programa consensuado.

Velia Cecilia Bobes Diáspora, ciudadanía y contactos transnacionales.

Samuel Farber La Iglesia y la izquierda crítica en Cuba.

Carlos Alzugaray Las (inexistentes) relaciones Cuba-Estados Unidos en tiempos de cambio.

 

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Cuba cracks down on dissidents on Rights Day

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Arch Ritter

By Juan O. Tamayo, from the Nuevo Herald, December 11, 2012

Original Article here: “Cuba cracks down…..”
Cuban police have detained more than 100 dissidents and put another 100 to 150 under house arrest in an island-wide crackdown to block any gatherings marking International Human Rights Day on Monday, according to government opponents.
Among those detained were about 80 members and supporters of the Ladies in White, including dozens who were reportedly carted off roughly during roundups in Havana and on their way to the Our Lady of Charity Basilica in the eastern town of El Cobre.
Security agents also sealed off several homes in eastern Cuba to avert gatherings of dissidents to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, said Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, head of the opposition Cuban Patriotic Union.
The U.S. government swiftly denounced the arrests, saying it was “deeply concerned by the Cuban government’s repeated use of arbitrary detention and violence to silence critics, disrupt peaceful assembly and intimidate independent civil society.”
“We call on the Cuban government to end” the arrests and violence “and we look forward to the day when all Cubans can freely express their ideas,” State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said Monday.
Cuban police and State Security agents usually round up scores of dissidents on or before Dec. 10 each year to keep them from staging any sort of events marking the day. The government critics are then released after a few hours or days.
About 45 Ladies in White and 10 supporters were arrested in Havana following their traditional march outside the Santa Rita church after Sunday mass, said Elizardo Sanchez Santa Cruz, head of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.
The women usually are allowed to go home without incident after the marches, but this weekend were harassed by government agents. When they sat down in protest, police dragged them roughly to three waiting buses, Sanchez said. Most were released by Sunday night.
Ferrer said another 34 Ladies in White and two young girls were detained, 16 of them “with violence,” over the weekend around eastern Cuba as they tried to make their way to El Cobre to pray for human rights. All had been freed as of noon Monday.
Police intercepted three more at the gates to the church on Sunday and tried to seize two others already inside, Ferrer told El Nuevo Herald by phone from his home in the nearby town of Palmarito de Cauto. But a priest in the church protected the women and drove them home after the mass.
The Ladies in White, founded by the wives, daughters and mothers of political prisoners, was awarded the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2005. They wear white clothes and carry pink gladiolas during their marches.
Another 20 male dissidents were taken into custody and held in police lockups around eastern Cuba over the weekend, Ferrer added. Four were confirmed to have been freed as of noon Monday but there was no word on the fate of the others.

Ladies in White

Sanchez added that police and state security agents also put between 100 and 150 dissidents under house arrest during the crackdown, but stressed that he was still receiving new reports of arrests and releases as of Monday evening.
A blog widely believed to be run by State Security agents, Yohandry’s Blog, claimed that police were forced to drag away the Havana Ladies in White before civilians nearby could give them a “forceful reply” for “failing to respect the pain of the Cuban people” over the health of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
Chávez announced Saturday that he was returning to Cuba for a fourth round of surgery related to his fight with cancer. He arrived Monday.
The opposition group Express Art for Freedom, meanwhile, announced a contest, open to island residents only, for the best Tweet regarding International Human Rights Day. The winner, who will pick from among a computer, a camera or a cellular telephone, will be announced after Dec. 23.
And in Spain, two Cuban groups marched to the Cuban embassy in Madrid on Sunday to protest the detentions and demand the release of Sonia Garros and Calixto Ramon Martinez, dissidents who have been jailed on the island for several weeks.

Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia

Elizardo Sanchez Santacruz

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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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