Cashews: The Forbidden Fruit of the Socialist Paradise
The furrow extends to infinity before our eyes. We would not, that day either, complete our quota, but who cared? At that school in the countryside we engaged in an exercise widely practiced throughout the country: pretending to work. When the teachers were watching we bent our backs and feigned pulling up the weeds that surrounded the spindly tobacco plants. If they left, we returned to the horizontal position to talk about our principal adolescent obsession which–surprise!–was not sex, but food.
That morning, the irrigation machine was standing in the middle of the field and looked like a wide-winged albatross stuck under the sun. My friends and I climbed into the empty cab and touched the lever, the buttons, the steering mechanism. We jumped on the patched seat and fantasized that we could “take a walk” with this piece of screeching metal and soak all the students with its hose. We laughed in anticipation but not a single drop came from the long hoses extending on either side. However, while snooping here and there we came across a can with some rare fruits. They were shaped like a pepper, but the color ranged from yellow to a deep orange and a seed hung from each one. Urban youth, trapped between the scarcities of rationing and the collapse of agriculture, there was no way we knew that this was a “cashew.”
We sunk our teeth into them immediately. Sweet and soft but later, when our mouths started to dry up, we thought we’d been poisoned. Horrified, we ran screaming. The teacher’s laughter lasted long minutes. When the astringent sensation passed, we were left with the desire to again bite that texture already captured in peasants’ songs, mentioned by our grandparents and painted by brushes of the previous century. I was impressed with that fruit prohibited by our socialist paradise. Almost twenty years would pass before I would encounter it again.
Mayo 28th, 2011 at 13:31
romilio, what you said is true. There are many deluded people in the world, and most of what Stella said is nonsense. The one thing that is true, that MacGyver attitude in Cuba, is the result of desperation, not an admiration for the TV show. One sees the same “ingenuity” among the poorest slum-dwellers in India. And those in Cuba who do have hard currency coming in waste no time in abandoning their MacGyvers.
As for Cuban doctors, I know Americans who packed in everything to live in a tent in very unsafe conditions in Haiti and are still there after almost dying through disease or violence there. Unlike their Cuban counterparts, they don’t have much protection, they won’t get any car or cash in return, they don’t steal, and their families are not being held hostage.
Mayo 23rd, 2011 at 16:54
Stella, you have said some true facts about Cuba, but this comment “The mainstream media has you hoodwinked. The Beeb, Miami Herald, WSJ, CNN – whatever news profiteer you prefer, they’d have you believe Cubans are cowed, afraid to criticize the powers that be and not willing (or able) to speak truth to that power.”, really shows that you don’t know the Cuban reality or you are being paid by Castro; you cannot openly criticize the Cuban government or its leaders, especially Fidel, every Cuban knows that, saying the opposite is a big lie or just ignorance.
Mayo 23rd, 2011 at 16:36
Interesting, I have eaten cashew nuts here in the US, but didn’t know until today that is not an actual nut, but a “marañón” seed, because different than the author I never had a chance to meet one “in person” during my 29 years living in Cuba. Perhaps someday I can sink my teeth in one of those to see if it is true that squeezes your mouth.
Mayo 23rd, 2011 at 16:27
Interesante, he comido “cashew” nueces aqui en los EEUU; pero no supe hasta hoy que no es una nuez sino la semilla del marañón porque a diferencia del autor nunca pude ver un marañón en “persona” durante los 29 años que pase en Cuba. Tal vez algun dia puede morder un marañón para ver como es eso de que aprieta la boca.
Mayo 17th, 2011 at 20:42
Albert @58. I copy dissidents because they are the best at complaining and doing nothing.
Mayo 17th, 2011 at 20:22
@#56
So the best u can do is copy, sad state girl … smart enough to complain but a follower at best for solutions. No wonder the caliber of ur comments.
Mayo 17th, 2011 at 08:12
Yoani writes about cashews, and yesterday I learned Cuba will dispatch doctors to Guinea-Bissau (or already has?), where cashews happen to be the principal crop, the main source of foreign exchange …
Once hailed as a potential model for African development, Guinea-Bissau is now one of the poorest countries in the world.
It has a massive foreign debt and an economy which relies heavily on foreign aid.
Compounding this, the country experienced a bitter civil war in the late 1990s in which thousands were killed, wounded and displaced.
Guinea-Bissau is also a major hub for cocaine smuggled from Latin America to Europe. Several senior military figures are alleged to be involved in the trafficking of narcotics, prompting fears that the drugs trade could further destabilise an already volatile country.
Mayo 13th, 2011 at 23:11
albert: I contribute to the society by the way of constant complaining, same way as dissidents do.
Mayo 13th, 2011 at 15:21
@#54
still waiting for the answer to the questions I asked u on post# 52 …
Mayo 12th, 2011 at 22:30
Kirkland, I like this song. “El manisero”. Promoting good life Cubans had before revolution.
Mayo 12th, 2011 at 22:07
@Cuba Libre @10
Cacahuate is also known as Mani and the person who sell it, is called manisero (peanut vendor) The origin of the word Cacahuate is Nahuatl (mostly in Mexico) and the origin of the word Mani is Taino (mostly in Cuba). Both words are known and used in most Spanish-speaking world. The newspaper that contained peanuts you bought, surely had a cone shape, well this is known as a Cucurucho de Mani (peanut cone)
You can find a little more about peanuts here in this blog. Go to Home and type this on the search bar “The Little Pioneer and the President” Very Interesting. You can go on youtube and listen the song Manisero Beautiful Song One of the best.
Mayo 11th, 2011 at 09:26
@#51
so, since u know so much about entitlements … where do u work, what do u contribute to ur society? in between taking the time to make a fool of urself in front of millions of readers ? I agree #50 u are lazy.
Mayo 10th, 2011 at 21:47
To live of entitlements one must work first, not play with the irrigation machine, talk about food and eat cashews.
Mayo 10th, 2011 at 20:42
@#49
u sound like lazy, somehow living of entitlements, u know so much of this “not working & lots of talking” it makes me wonder the varacity of ur statements …
Mayo 9th, 2011 at 21:09
Well. Mandy Marcelo, I don’t know. Socialist with greater GDP can not be done. Castro was trying for last 60 years. People of Cuba wouldn’t stop talking about food and how oppressed they are. And they want money before they do the work, so they never got the work done.
Capitalist is good. If worker or farmer doesn’t shut-up and gets to work, he’ll gets kick in the butt, and is on the street jobless, where other jobless wait in line, to take his place on the job. When workers demand more pay, than they move factory to China, where people are less greedy.
As to Poland, I do not know. They are hopeless. They complain and talk to much, and drink a lot, and more they drink the more they complain.
Mayo 9th, 2011 at 17:23
Komar, I believe that you are confusing laissez-faire capitalism with democracy. They are not mutually inclusive.
What would be your ideal Poland? Would you prefer that it were communist and capitalist, like China? Or socialist with a greater GDP? I am sincerely interested in what you would prefer to see happen in Poland, and if there is a country that you think is an ideal situation for you.
And I *do* lament the lack of products made in North America. So I am with you, there.
Mayo 8th, 2011 at 23:22
Love Cuba, the lack of domestically grown food on Cuba is doing of Castro, but people who suppose to grow it. Read this blog again, Yoani Sánchez wrote that instead working in the field, the were talking about food. She wrote: “We would not, that day either, complete our quota, but who cared?”. Well, if she didn’t care than other workers didn’t either. So,, tell me my friend, why should I care. I tell even more. In Poland 95% farming land always was in private hands and there was not enough of food. As long as they got their food, they didn’t care too. Now, after socialism, Poland imports most of it’s food and farmers are upset, that nobody wants to buy their’s. Now they will have to lower prices and become poor again.
Mayo 8th, 2011 at 22:41
Komar, getting back to your earlier post, if Cuba gets democracy and freedom, at least Cubans will be able to taste cashews again. As well as some of that brown rice that somehow Fidel manages to get a hold of.
The idea of socialism was to sacrifice freedom and democracy for a good meal, but as we both know, the opposite is usually what happened. Cubans sacrificed everything for nothing.
Mayo 8th, 2011 at 17:36
Democracy is just another word for anarchy, Everybody complains how hard is life. Life is hard everywhere. Everywhere You look there is no democracy. Not in military, not at work and not even in Catholic Church. Soldiers do not elect their commanders, workers in factories don’t elect their bosses. Even Christians do not elect their Pope or bishops. Look at smallest social organization, that is family. Head of the family does not ask rest of the members what they want but gets them what they need. Makes sure that there is food and roof over head. If he asked the children they would vote for a bicycle instead for shoes and coat for the winter. Imagine how far would You get if passengers on the plane voted where plane has to fly? By buying airfare You agree that pilot is the boss. Democracy ruined ancient Rome and is ruining modern democracies. Here we can look at USA. Since Ronald Reagan allowed manufacturing to move outside the country, mostly to communist China, trade deficit grows by billions of Dollars every month, which is as much as much is the whole Cuban economy. Look around Your house and pick something. Made in China, isn’t it? Every time You buy something part of the money You pay for it goes to communist China. Federal Reserve instead of counting income is printing more money, probably on imported paper and with imported ink. The same goes for Poland. Since Walesa and Solidarity victory over socialist government, factories are closed and happy unemployed workers spend, whatever money left, on goods made by unhappy employed Chinese workers, who must wake up every morning and go to work.
I must say that USA and Poland are on the way to freedom, for as in the song by Janis Joplin, “FREEDOM” is another word for “NOTHING LEFT TO LOOSE”.
Mayo 8th, 2011 at 16:34
ANONIMO and CAPIRO: it is the common behavior, what you can always expect, from a memeber of de cuban “policia politica”, de sargent Stella. She has no argument to jostifay the repression ageinst thous who faight for a free press and free speach in Cuba today. Then, they tray the only way they know well: At HOMINEM, or killing the massenger bay incarceration or worse. STELLA (31): The cuban people is seek of leftist histeria, please, all that “buena gente” need is Freedom and HELP. And even more, look to me that the hole mininig of your’s 31 is a real HOOEY (NONSENSE), because, there is no way to explain a DICTATORSHIP in Latinamerica without showing a phatetic, like (mosquitamuerta’s) face, specially if you are traing to excuse the cuban sioeconomic “ECATOMBE”, with that of USA financial embargo. Yucas, boniatos and malangas were aboundant in Cuba. Did you know me’am?
Your’s is a grimy “pataleta” sargent ESTELLA, and olso the comments in this blog are making you sound to “guera” or ‘empachada’. The real intelect it’s far from left or right, then, in holding a dictatorship discourse against DEMOCRACY, you will be sense as a “cavernicola”, no matter what. Rememer, be patience, the freedom por the cuban people “ya viene llegando”. If you are a mother a wish you a happy mother’s day and to all the cuban modhers, with all my hard.
Mayo 8th, 2011 at 13:26
ANOTHER DISIDENT MURDERED BY THE CASTROFACIST! BUT HE/WE WILL GET JUSTICE SOMEDAY SOON!REUTERS CANADA: Cuban opposition says police killed dissident-Sun May 8, 2011-By Marc Frank
HAVANA (Reuters) - A Cuban dissident died on Saturday after he was beaten by police following a protest last week in the city of Santa Clara, fellow government opponents charged on Sunday.
They said former political prisoner Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia, 46, was taken to a hospital following the incident on Thursday and never recovered.
The government has not yet confirmed or denied the report.
Soto was a member of a little known opposition group in Santa Clara and had served 12 years behind bars as a political prisoner, prominent opposition blogger Yoani Sanchez said in a message on Twitter.
He was said to have had a heart problem and other health issues, but Elizardo Sanchez of the independent Cuban Commission of Human Rights said the beating provoked his death.
“There is no question that there is a relation between cause and effect, between the beating he received on Thursday at the hands of the police and his death,” Sanchez told Reuters.
Soto was to be buried on Sunday afternoon in Santa Clara, where local dissidents reported a heavy presence of security forces, Yoani Sanchez said on Twitter.
Elizardo Sanchez demanded that there be an open investigation of the case and said police were becoming increasingly brutal in their handling of dissent.
Soto’s death follows that of imprisoned dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo last year, which touched off an international firestorm of criticism over Cuba’s repression of dissent.
Zapata, who was 42 and serving a 36-year sentence for various convictions, died on February 23, 2010 after an 85-day hunger strike over demands for better prison conditions.
Three months later, President Raul Castro met with Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega and agreed to release 52 political prisoners in an accord made public in July.
Since then more than a hundred prisoners have been let go, most into exile in Spain.
Havana says that dissidents are mercenaries organized and funded by its longtime foe, the United States.
(Editing by Jeff Franks and Vicki Allen)
http://ca.reuters.com/article/.....PE20110508
Mayo 7th, 2011 at 21:18
YOUTUBE: Revolucion Fidel Castro 1 de 6 -documentary about torture by the Castro regime (spanish with english sub-titles)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....dded#at=19
“The torture of Castro” is a documentary by Cayman Productions under the direction of Luis Garcia, Pedro Corzo production and coordination of Francisco Lorenzo. Reveal details of torture by the political forces of the tyranny of Fidel and Raul Castro in the voices of the victims and protagonists.
If Cuba and Venezuela were the paradise you preach. There would be no need for repression. I myself do not write in this space because to me or you or me is if the government is left, right or center. What I want is justice, security, education, health, prosperity, democracy and peace. But without reason these anti-social use violence.
No civilization has triumphed with so vile and retrograde approach. All have fallen into the most inefficient and degrading treatment failure. Cuba by stubbornness and ineptitude of a dictator murderer, and Chavez has an impressive wealth of petrodollars, strong leadership and effective support of the people, a formidable repressive apparatus, and further consolidation of power in modern Venezuelan history not has been able to lead a decent governance. That is a fact.
Mayo 7th, 2011 at 20:17
Komar, I actually like your points about the horrible healthcare system we have in the USA. Everyone should be covered in my book. We are not there in universal health care but I think we will in the future.
Mayo 7th, 2011 at 20:01
@#31
I don’t think it is was or will be journalism; cheap? I guess it takes one to know the other … The FREE expression of ideas comes w/a price, at times is answered w/insults but always made apparent by the arrogance of the fool that authors it.
As always, keep in mind that this blogg is read by millons, so the foolishness is seen by all …
Mayo 7th, 2011 at 19:56
@#26 - It’s tongue in cheek, and correction on this sentence: the cacahouette seller would likely* be executed.
Mayo 7th, 2011 at 18:33
To Cuba Libre: this is not cheap journalism blog. Internet in Cuba is very expensive and that’s why Cuban blogers can’t afford to buy peanuts or other nuts. As to Humberto Capiro’s post about people freezing do death in Cuban hospitals, that’s the truth. In Florida old people live happy lives in nursing homes, some of witch are run by Cuban people, and only sometimes they die of neglect or drug overdose or not enough drugs, but I must say that nobody freezes to death in Florida. In My country most people buy “Health Insurance” for as little as several hundred to several thousand of dollars a month, which is very cheap for most very rich people. The “Heath Insurance” is a new word for “Protection Money” people had to pay to Al Capone thugs in gangster era Chicago, for not breaking their knee caps. So, You all see, if one pays protection money to insurance company, than one has privilege to see a doctor or even die neglected in nursing home.
Mayo 7th, 2011 at 15:05
THE ECONOMIST: Corruption in Cuba-The cleanup continues -May 6th 2011
CUBA’S recent crackdown on corruption has just claimed its most prominent victim. On May 5th Granma, the state newspaper, announced that a court had given a 20-year sentence in absentia to Max Marambio, a Chilean businessman and sometime close friend of Fidel Castro. Mr Marambio made a fortune through a stake in Rio Zaza, which has long held a near-monopoly selling fruit juice and long-life milk on the island. The report did not spell out the specifics of the conviction, but said said that Mr Marambio and Alejandro Roca Iglesias, the former food minister, had caused “considerable damage to the nation’s economy” and “impaired the ethical behaviour of various officials and subordinate workers”.
Mr Marambio was once the chief bodyguard for Salvador Allende, Chile’s socialist president. He accepted Fidel Castro’s invitation to take refuge in Cuba after Allende was toppled and died in a 1973 coup. The two men got on. In the 1990s he reinvented himself as a businessman, and was one of the first individuals allowed to form a joint enterprise with the Cuban government.
In 2006 Mr Castro fell ill and handed the country’s day-to-day leadership to his brother Raúl. Two years later Raúl formally became president, and promptly began attacking Cuba’s endemic corruption. In 2009 he started sending officials to inspect the books at the country’s state companies. Soon several executives—all of whom supposedly earn a state salary of around $20 a month—were jailed or placed under house arrest. Rogelio Acevedo, who fought alongside the Castro brothers in the 1959 revolution and was thought to be incorruptible, was sacked as head of the aviation regulator following allegations that he had leased the state airline’s planes off the books, and that millions of dollars in cash were found at his home. Pedro Álvarez, who for many years headed the government agency that buys food from the United States, fled the island before an investigation against him was completed, and is currently believed to be living in Florida. The former CEO of the national cigar producer and several of its senior executives are in prison.
Despite Mr Marambio’s ties to the elder Mr Castro, his turn was bound to come. The government accused Rio Zaza of bribing staff and ministry officials, taking a lax attitude towards theft and overcharging the Cuban government for payments to its suppliers—some owned by Mr Marambio. He has not been seen on the island since 2009, and refused to comply with the government’s order for him to return last year, telling a Chilean radio station that “there’s a new government in power made up of people with few ethics and scruples” and that he was “being persecuted by a bunch of thugs”. He did not send a lawyer to represent him at the trial. The Cuban authorities instead provided him with one of their own, making the verdict a foregone conclusion.
For the president, an even harder task than rooting out corruption may be replacing the crooked officials he ousts. So far, Mr Castro has mainly drawn on his former colleagues in the Cuban army. GAE.SA, a holding company that functions as the military’s business arm, has been a prime beneficiary, and is now thought to control around 40% of the country’s economy. Its president, Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja—who is also Raúl Castro’s son-in-law—was appointed to the Communist Party’s Central Committee at the recent party congress. Whereas Fidel Castro would occasionally trust somewhat maverick businessmen, General Raúl Castro is sticking to what he knows.
http://www.economist.com/blogs.....ption_cuba
Mayo 7th, 2011 at 13:59
Cuba Libre! So glad you like my work! Will continue to do my thing since I have you as a fan!
GREAT ARTICLE! I SEE A SLOW BUT MORE PLURALISTIC EFFORT BY HAVANA TIMES!
HAVANA TIMES: Criminalization of the Internet in Cuba -May 7, 2011 |
The Cuban state and government have deployed a mass media campaign to politically criminalize the Internet. The argument is that it is part of one of the strategies for political intervention by the United States into Cuban affairs.
Once again the logical fallacy is being applied, according to which there exist only two political positions in the country: leftist anti-imperialism of the socialist brand (though actually statist nationalism) and the extreme right position that favors annexation by the US.
Based on the ideology of the false dilemma, they’ve constructed a performance in counterpoint between the well-known dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez and a blogger defending the regime (an angelical nationalist blond). According to the line of the media campaign, these two sides represent the political positions of Cuban cyberspace. The “good guy,” of course, they define as the angelical blogger upholding the regime.
Nevertheless, we know that the Cuban political situation is much more diverse and complex than that presented by this false dilemma. For example, there exist online spaces such as Havana Times, where the diversity of opinions goes beyond ravenous annexationism and cheap nationalism.
HT is a vehicle, in my very personal opinion, of a common interest for generating democratic consensuses on the principal problems that affect our country. Free of the doctrinal complicities of the Cuban regime and with no ties to financial contracts of the empires to the north, its bloggers hold diverse political opinions when it comes time to formulate and publish their ideas.
I personally know social democrats, anarchists and communists of the old guard (to borrow from the old phraseology) to only mention three classic molds. Nevertheless, I don’t fail to recognize that political positions exist that are not included in the debates presented by Havana Times.
Therefore, how can one define from the ideology of the false dilemma the diverse lines of Havana Times? This is an indispensable question around which plenty of debate could be generated.
In any case, the new government offensive against debate in cyberspace, that some of us Cubans have access to, is worrisome. It is an orthodox assault by the regime that is taking advantage of the difficult international situation to settle some of its old accounts before an international opinion dizzied in the face of war.
In the present political conjuncture we need the unity of all of us Cuban bloggers who don’t accept the reductionist duality promoted today under the ideological fallacy of the false dilemma. Prior to any authoritarian assault against the new socio-virtual networks, we must consolidate our forums for debate.
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=43076
Mayo 7th, 2011 at 10:45
***
#22–Excellent post! Thank you, Humberto.
***
John Bibb
***
Mayo 7th, 2011 at 09:21
pretty soon this won`t be called the Generacion Y blog, it will be called cheap journalism blog.
Mayo 7th, 2011 at 03:40
#29 much of this is very dated info. Do any of you who live on this site have any 21stC experience of travelling to Cuba?
Mayo 6th, 2011 at 23:19
I THINK “Macrobiotics” is code for LITTLE PENIS!!
HUFFINGTON POST: Macrobiotics in Cuba? Only for El Comandante FIDEL-Yoani Sanchez.- 05/6/2011
Every day the information is more easily filtered from the closed official archives to those alternative networks where the news networks run without brakes. It escapes in floods — and not only in WikiLeaks — these well-kept secrets and jealously guarded data. This avalanche of revelations has us believing that in Cuba we are living in a time of liberalization but not in the experimental style for the Spanish at the end of the seventies.
Ours, rather, is well fed on these previously hidden details of our national history, drawing on passages silenced by the press. One of the most shocking revelations of recent times occurred in January 2010 and was associated with the death-by starvation and cold of at least 26 patients in the Havana psychiatric hospital. Around 300 photos taken during their autopsies escaped the controls and passed into the hands of citizens, showing the state of deterioration and maltreatment they’d been exposed to in life.
We never knew for sure who took this sequence of images in the Institute of Legal Medicine, nor how, in a few weeks, thousands of citizens viewed those emaciated corpses, with their contusions and neglect. Only after we had entered through forbidden paths, did the television make a brief announcement about the deaths.
A restless camera had also filmed, two years earlier, the discussion between a university student in computer science and the president of the parliament. Mr. Ricardo Alarcon could only reply to the young man’s incisive questions with certain unfortunate phrases, a nervous wringing of the hands, and some slogans.
The resulting video spread like wildfire and that high cheekboned face, with the firmly stated questions, became a kind of popular leader for daring to say publicly what so many remain silent about. In addition to evidence of social discontent, the spread of those recorded minutes corroborated something very important: the efficacy of the clandestine channels of communication to divulge the forbidden. And we saw an effective way to jump over the censorship.
After that incident, the flood of information intensified, the network to spontaneously spread the news strengthened, and state monopoly on information seemed to yield before the force of citizens. So that our liberalization didn’t come, as in the Spanish case, in the form of bikinis or risqué films, but it has arrived in the little bellies of USB flash memories and in the thin surfaces of CDs and DVDs.
The latest example of the inability to keep something far from prying eyes has been the publication of the Fidel Castro’s macrobiotic diet. Designed and supervised by a leading institution specializing in nutrition, the select menu passed to the public arena in all its details.
The list includes everything from seaweed brought from Japan to brown rice harvested with zero pesticides or fertilizers. In a country where the greatest question people ask every day is “what will I eat today?” this discovery came as a bucket of cold water.
Beyond the outrageous cost of such an exclusive diet, what has most upset those on the Island is that such excesses are committed under the mask of discourse or militant austerity and discipline. On the other hand, it has unleashed a veritable witch hunt, on the part of those in charge of information security at the scientific center, to determine those responsible for the leak of the Maximum Leader’s menu. Analyzing what happened is like watching a bag full of water begin to be punctured by small holes, until it is entirely emptied.
The leaks can destroy a system that has relied too long on secrecy. The Palace whispers can no longer be contained, the corruption scandals, the ousted officials, all pass within hours to the public realm. It is not as if 11 million Cubans believe that the Commander in Chief eats the same that each of them receive on the ration market quota, but the enormous difference between what is on their plates and that of another has left them bewildered.
In a country strangled by the financial crisis, the dual currency and low productivity, docking a ship laden with macrobiotic products arriving from Italy, in order to keep one man alive, leads to a lot of talk. It’s like a leap into the abyss, as most Cubans have no idea what organic farming, pesticide-free vegetables, much less first press olive oil are. The schizophrenic duality between what is said from the dais and what happens behind the doors of senior officials is overwhelming.
It is also a relief, however, to know that nothing remains hidden behind the curtains, and that we will not have to wait decades for the declassification of the what is hidden today. Each day the time gap between what happens and when we learn about it is shorter, every week that passes it is harder to hide information.
Perhaps right now a white-bearded old man is lifting a spoon of natural couscous to his mouth, taking as well a small portion of delicately-flavored sushi. He thinks he is alone but an eager crowd looks on. Each ounce that he lifts to his mouth is known in advance, every detail he has hidden in the past will also be known.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....58397.html
Mayo 6th, 2011 at 23:18
The mainstream media has you hoodwinked. The Beeb, Miami Herald, WSJ, CNN – whatever news profiteer you prefer, they’d have you believe Cubans are cowed, afraid to criticize the powers that be and not willing (or able) to speak truth to that power.
Those who’ve been here know that’s a whole bunch of hooey, another of those myths perpetuated to fit an antiquated paradigm and forward a political and commercial agenda. While media control and social coercion once ruled in Cuba and self-censorship was synonymous with self-preservation, that was then.
These days, Cubans and Habaneros (my specialty) especially, criticize a blue streak and are learning slowly, surely, to speak truth to power through neighborhood and national debates, blogs, publications like Temas and La Calle del Medio, as well as TV shows like Libre Acceso. Sitting here in Havana, trust me when I tell you: the evolution of the revolution is happening folks, whether They like it or not. And people are talking about it.
But there’s one thing Cubans won’t say still. From Abbottabad to Boyeros, Port-au-Prince to Perico, I’ve never heard a Cuban say “can’t.” Simply put, there’s no can’t in Cuba. What more, it’s what has kept the dream alive all these years (see note 1).
In a recent PBS special on Cuban healthcare, an executive at Havana’s Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Center credited the US blockade for Cuba’s ingenuity saying, “it created the challenge for us to try and solve our own problems.” And this is undeniably true in the biotech sector, an industry where patents and inputs controlled by the USA forces Cubans to forge their own solutions – so successfully that today Cuban vaccines, cancer therapies, and generic drugs are among the country’s largest export earners today (see note 2).
In my mind though, the Cuban “can-do” attitude isn’t just due to the blockade; it’s in their blood. Consider José Martí, who organized, fundraised and fought for Cuban independence, only to be shot dead two days into the fracas. Or Fidel Castro’s failed attack on the Moncada Barracks which landed the survivors in jail, not to mention the even more disastrous (and fatal) fight after the Granma landed when only a dozen of 82 survived. As I said, “can’t” isn’t in the Cuban vernacular.
Bay of Pigs?
Yes we can!
Missile Crisis?
Yes we can!
Special Period?
Yes we can (eventually)!
Cubans can invent (and overcome, it seems) anything. Here we call this the ability to ‘resolver.’ These folks can resolve anything and even my mom has taken to saying: ‘It’s Cuba. It can be resolved’ every time I regale her with a new problem or gripe. She doesn’t realize both my husband and I are shitty resolvers.
Not so the guajiro who brought electricity to the clutch of one-room wooden houses in his remote mountain village of Guantánamo by inventing La Cuchufleta. Made from scrap metal and a bicycle wheel, this ingenious contraption sits in a bend in the river where the water flows fast and produces enough juice to power the bare bulbs and sole TV in that previously dark and silent burg.
Then there are the ‘Yank tanks,’ those Detroit dowagers nearly as old as Fidel that are kept together and running with duct tape, wires, and anything else that helps ‘resolver‘ – including a Flintstones vitamin bottle for brake fluid.
McGyver’s got nothing on the Cubans.
One of my favorite Cuban inventions is the rikimbili (see note 3), a motorized bicycle which has grown increasingly rare in Havana unfortunately. They come in different shapes and levels of sophistication, but when you see a bike putt-putt-putting along Calle 100 with a soda bottle strapped to the frame, piss yellow ‘brillante‘ sloshing around inside, you’ve sighted a rikimbili.
Cuban medical missions serving in scores of countries from East Timor to Mali, Bolivia to Botswana couldn’t survive without this inventive ingenuity. I’ve seen it firsthand. In Pakistan, where Cubans were freezing their cojones off during six months of disaster relief, I watched as family doctors constructed a tube of interlocking water bottles from their tent to a trench out back so they could pee without going out into the frigid Kashmir night. My bunkmates, las doctoras, weren’t so fortunate.
In post-quake Haiti, I held a girl’s hand (her only body part not in a cast) as a Cuban orthopedic surgeon adjusted her “traction” – a rope and cinder block invention rigged up at the foot of her bed in the overflowing, fly-infested ward.
Not everything Cubans invent is good however. Recently, a friend was buying veggies at the agro when he spotted a stand piled high with puré. Sold in re-purposed 1.5 liter bottles, this tomato paste is a staple of the Cuban kitchen and an efficient way to dispatch with past-their-prime tomatoes besides. As my amigo spoke to the vendor, he noticed huge sacks of carrots and squash behind the stand. In a wordless exchange (something else Cubans have elevated to an art form) he raised an eyebrow at the sacks and she responded, wordlessly, by pointing her pursed lips in the direction of the bottles. My friend couldn’t figure how the orange root vegetables could be transformed into the bright red paste until he consulted the radio bemba (grapevine): the color was obtained by adding a dash of pulverized brick. Apocryphal? Perhaps. This is Cuba after all.
Good or not so, keep an eye open in Cuba and you’ll discover inventions everywhere. Even after all these years, I’m still learning the extent of ingenuity powering this country. Just last week I was stopped dead in my tracks with a new way to resolver: the 3-legged chair. No stool this, we’re talking a 3-legged chair propped just so.
‘What will they think of next?’ I wondered.
I came across my answer a couple of blocks later: a 2-legged chair, propped against a tree, upon which was seated a none-too-slim parking attendant.
In Cuba, ¡sí, se puede!
Notes
1. The other factor that has kept it alive is the solidarity Cubans extend to each other. Consider this from a blog post listing What Cuban Friends Are Like: “A friend sends you a card and flowers when you’re in the hospital. A Cuban friend stays at the hospital, sitting in a rocking chair at your bedside.”
2. The blockade of Cuba, which is known as a “genocidal policy” here, prevents the island from obtaining badly-needed pharmaceutical products like Sevoflurane (Abbott Laboratories), a general anesthesia for children. Things like this – preventing kids from having anesthetic for imperceptible political gain – gets my Irish way up. It also prevents normal readers like you from traveling to Cuba.
3. There’s a special prize for any reader who can enlighten me as to the origin of this word.
http://hereishavana.wordpress......-wont-say/
Mayo 6th, 2011 at 22:37
DONT MESS WITH THE CIBERGUENS@ LITTLE BOY/GIRL KOMAR!
Komar said - ” I live in free country, USA. For my government prohibits me from going to Cuba, for my own good, of course. As a free man I can go anywhere I want, except Cuba. I can go to Afghanistan, where I can get my ass shoot off, but not to Cuba.”
All US Citizens need to have a license even if they go through a third country.
Licenses allowing persons from the U.S. to spend money in Cuba are granted to certain classes of people for particular purposes.
A general license does not require paperwork and may apply to the following:
Professional journalists on assignment in Cuba
Full-time professionals conducting academic research or attending professional conferences
Persons on official government business
A specific license requires paperwork and State Department approval on case-by-case basis. You may be approved for a specific license if you fall into a certain class of persons. Note that a specific license may be granted to an institution (i.e. university, church) under whose auspices an individual may then travel without applying separately to the State department, or a specific license may be applied for and granted to an individual. Some of the classes of persons who may be granted a specific license are:
Persons visiting immediate family in Cuba
Full-time graduate students conducting academic research to be counted toward a graduate degree
Undergraduate or graduate students participating in a study abroad program of at least 10 weeks in length
Professors/teachers employed at a US institution travelling to Cuba to teach
Persons engaging in religious activities
Freelance journalists
Persons engaging in humanitarian projects
Persons engaging in non-profit cultural exhibitions
You cannot travel to Cuba for purposes of tourism. However, even U.S. citizens whose primary interest is tourism can get authorization to travel under the auspices of a program whose activities are sufficiently religious, educational, cultural, or otherwise exempt to qualify for a license. It is even possible for an individual with a credible background in, say, freelance journalism or academics, to craft a “mission” for their visit which successfully gets them a permit. Further details and forms are available from the U.S. Dept. of State [2].
[edit] Without a license
Many U.S. citizens instead travel without a license, doing so by way of other countries (many of which have routine flights to and from Cuba) to escape detection. Such countries include the Bahamas, Canada and Mexico. The Bahamas and Canada U.S. Customs Pre-Clearance facilities at many of their airports.
[edit] Via the Bahamas
From Nassau, Cubana [3] offers flights to Havana daily, except on Saturdays. Bahamasair offers flights on Thursday and Sunday. This is the cheapest and quickest route flying direct to Havana, especially for those living in the South Florida area.
[edit] Via Canada
A common practice for U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba via Canada is a two-leg flight: a flight booking for a flight to (and from) Canada and then a separate booking for the flight to (and from) Cuba. The two legs must be booked separately, as airlines such as Air Canada prohibit the booking of U.S. origin passengers to Cuba. Alternately, one could drive or be driven across the border and dropped off in a Canadian city, and proceed to depart from there. This is more easily done for people near Detroit or New York, as non-stop flights to Havana depart from either Montreal or Toronto.
[edit] Via Mexico
Mexico is considered safer and is probably the most popular. However, it still carries some risk: If one travels from Mexico, to Cuba (which won’t stamp your passport), and then back to Mexico, he will have two Mexican entry stamps; having two consecutive Mexican entry stamps could raise suspicions if your passport is checked carefully. If you decide to re-enter Mexico from Cuba, you may be able to convince the Mexican immigration officer not to stamp your passport a second time. A small bribe (perhaps $20) may increase the chances of success. However, according to other travelers’ reports on message boards, this strategy depends on luck. The Mexican immigration officers have been known to reject the bribe and stamp the passport a second time (not to mention the fact that you would be breaking the laws of two countries in a single trip!) Additionally, you could try to use a birth certificate + US ID to enter Mexico the second time (this is allowed under Mexican law for US citizens). If so you will only have one stamp on your passport. Another safe bet would be to purchase an open-jaw ticket (Cancun-Havana and then Havana-Guatemala city, for example). Mexico doesn’t stamp passports on exit, and in that case it would look like in your passport that you flew from Cancun to Guatemala City (or whatever city is your final destination out of Havana).
Cancun is one of the easier gateways, with several different airlines offering daily flights to Havana. Although it may be slightly worrisome to show up not knowing what to expect, if you arrive earlier in the day it’s usually possible to walk up to one of the airline counters and buy an onward ticket for same day travel, as flights on this route are rarely full. Try Cubana. Mexicana also has daily flights to Cuba.
U.S. citizens also travel via countries without U.S. customs stations (Guatemala, Venezuela, Panama, Cayman Islands, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Haiti, etc.) to reduce the likelihood of being caught. A substantial number simply take their chances, hoping they will not be questioned. U.S. citizens are advised by Cuban travel agents not to bring back anything identifiably Cuban (including tickets and receipts) before re-entering the country.
By boat
There are no regular ferries or boats to Cuba from foreign ports, although some cruise liners do visit. Yachters are expected to anchor at the public marinas. Also, most ports are closed and tourists are not permitted to walk around them. Private vessels may enter at Marina Hemingway in Havana or Marina Acua in Varadero. Entry requires a U.S. passport, but there are no visa requirements. Your passport will not be stamped by Cuban authorities unless you request it. You will likely be intercepted upon your return to America and fined $5000, although this is just a formality. You will not be expected to actually pay this fine nor have there been any repercussions or attempts to collect. The only attempt to prosecute was the case of Peter Goldsmith v. United States. This case was dismissed with prejudice in late 2004 in the Miami District Court.
WILL POST LINK LATER! SYSTEM IS NOT ACCEPTING POST WITH IT!
Mayo 6th, 2011 at 22:17
Well Komar, the Communist Party Members can “Komer” quite well (excuse the pun) THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE “EMBARGO”! MORE TO COME!
What is the current level of Cuba’s agricultural trade? What products?
In 2006 Cuba was the 33rd largest market for U.S. agricultural exports, ranking ahead of countries like Morocco, Brazil, Sweden and Denmark.
U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba have grown significantly since trade was authorized in 2000. The United States now is Cuba’s largest supplier of agricultural products, supplying approximately 96 percent of Cuba’s rice imports and 70 percent of their poultry meat imports. U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba peaked at $384 million in 2004 and dropped to $328 million by 2006. The European Union (EU) is the second largest supplier of agricultural products to Cuba, followed by Brazil, Argentina, and Canada. Cuba imports about $1 billion in agricultural products overall.
Basic food products and commodities such as rice, wheat, poultry, corn, soybeans, and soybean products have dominated U.S. sales to Cuba. Although minimal seafood is exported to Cuba, U.S. wood product exports to Cuba now exceed $7 million.
U.S. dairy exports in 2006 were $13 million, down more than 50 percent from 2005. U.S. poultry exports dropped from $58 million in 2005 to $45 million in 2006.
U.S. processed food product exports for Cuba’s growing tourism industry lags far behind exports of these products from competing countries. Major competitors include Argentina, Brazil, the EU, New Zealand, Canada and China.
WILL POST LINK LATER! SYSTEM IS NOT ACCEPTING POST WITH IT!
Mayo 6th, 2011 at 21:35
To Humberto Capiro: I didn’t wound-up in Havana. I live in free country, USA. For my government prohibits me from going to Cuba, for my own good, of course. As a free man I can go anywhere I want, except Cuba. I can go to Afghanistan, where I can get my ass shoot off, but not to Cuba. So I never went to Cuba. As to democratic i free Poland I can tell You this: two years ago my mother broke the leg on the street. Ambulance took her to hospital. My brother had to bring her bed sheets, blanket and some other sleeping stuff. Imagine what kind of germs people bring to hospitals with that stuff. So You see, I’m not trying to tell You that Cuba is good. See, free and democratic Poland is just as bad. The only difference is that Poland is free and Cuba not. Poland can trade with anybody and Cuba not. Thanks to patriotic Cuban people in Florida, my government set trade embargo on Cuba, so they have nobody to trade with, except with North Korea.
Mayo 6th, 2011 at 18:14
@#25
do u read what u write? or are u joking?
Mayo 6th, 2011 at 14:29
@#10 - A fantastic story, Cuba libre. The cacahouette seller works off the grid, making money for himself and the Cuban government cannot do anything about it. I love that he gave away a Che peso. If only el Che were alive to see it; the cacahouette seller would like be executed.
Mayo 6th, 2011 at 12:19
Komar said - “Now there is couple of filthy wealthy, whole bunch of poor and few in the middle. Medical care and education is for sale, that is, You can get as much of it, as much You can buy. Not for free anymore, so the poor learned how to live without it. As to fresh food, I saw store keeper cutting off dry ends, and washing off, with soap, mold of the old sausages so he can sell them as fresh.”
KOMAR! ARE YOU SURE YOU DID NOT GET LOST AND WOUND UP IN HAVANA? SURE SOUNDS EXACLTY WHAT CUBA IS LIKE!
In one Cuban hospital, patients had to bring their own light bulbs. In another, the staff used “a primitive manual vacuum” on a woman who had miscarried. In others, Cuban patients pay bribes to obtain better treatment.
Those and other observations by an unidentified nurse assigned to the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana were included in a dispatch sent by the mission in January 2008 and made public this month by WikiLeaks.
Titled “Cuban healthcare: Aquí Nada es Facil” — Nothing here is easy — the cable offers a withering assessment by the nurse, officially a Foreign Service Health Practitioner, or FSHP, who already had lived in Cuba for 2 ½ years.
Viewing cable 08HAVANA103, CUBAN HEALTHCARE: “AQUI NADA ES FACIL”- CLICK LINK BELOW FOR ORGININAL WIKILEAK DOCUMENT
http://www.wikileaks.ch/cable/.....NA103.html
Mayo 6th, 2011 at 12:05
Love Cuba. When I left Poland in 1981 everybody there was equally poor, but had access to medical care and decent education. Now there is couple of filthy wealthy, whole bunch of poor and few in the middle. Medical care and education is for sale, that is, You can get as much of it, as much You can buy. Not for free anymore, so the poor learned how to live without it. As to fresh food, I saw store keeper cutting off dry ends, and washing off, with soap, mold of the old sausages so he can sell them as fresh.
Mayo 5th, 2011 at 23:02
Osama bin Laden was the mastermind of a terrorist network that, amongst other outrages, hijacked two airplanes and flew them into the Twin Towers in New York in 2001, killing 2752 victims. He spent the last nine and a half years in hiding, latterly in Pakistan. To some Islamic extremists he was a hero.
Luis Posada Carriles was the head of an anti-Cuban terrorist network that, amongst other outrages, planted a bomb on a Cuban airline flight from Venezuela in 1976, killing 73 people. Despite attempts by both Cuba and Venezuela to extradite him for that crime, he remains at freedom in the USA., where he is a hero to some extremists in Miami.
USA armed forces tracked bin Laden down to his hideout in Pakistan and, without even informing the Pakistani Government of their plans, murdered him. Despite myself shedding no tears for his demise, US triumphalism, as demonstrated on our TV screens in the hours and days after bin Laden’s death, is not a pretty sight.
Can anybody imagine the US Government reaction if Cuban special agents were to track down Posada Carriles in Miami and kill him? At the very least there would be attempts to apply further economic sanctions against Cuba. It’s not hard to imagine the episode being used as an excuse to launch bombing raids on the island or even an invasion.
Mayo 5th, 2011 at 19:39
HUFFINGTON POST: Yoani Sánchez Forbidden by Cuba to Collect Her Award; CEPOS Freedom Prize Presented in Absentia -Posted: 05/ 5/11
COPENHAGEN — Tonight, Yoani Sánchez — the world-renowned Cuban blogger and philologist — will be honored here with the inaugural Freedom Award, in the amount of $50,000, by the independent Danish think tank, CEPOS. Human rights defenders, members of the Danish parliament, prominent Cuban exiles, and members of the international media will be in attendance at the ceremony.
But there’s one oddity: Yoani will not be there.
Yoani is in an enormous prison — the island of Cuba — forbidden to leave her country to accept the award.
I was at the Royal Palace in Holland on December 17, 2010, when Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands presented Yoani with the Prince Claus Award for her role as a “leading figure in the use of social networking technologies to breach imposed frontiers in Cuba.” Again, Yoani was not there. The hall where the ceremony took place was cold and the chill was unbearable in the silence when her nonattendance was noted. Instead, a video of Yoani, filmed in Havana and smuggled out of Cuba by one of my colleagues at the Oslo Freedom Forum, was played in her absence.
Through her blog, Yoani provides a window into the brutal reality of life in Cuba. Her elegant and astute criticism of the totalitarian state earned her the 2008 Ortega y Gasset Prize for Journalism and the 2009 Maria Moors Cabot Prize. She was named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2008, and was selected as a 2010 World Press Freedom Hero by the International Press Institute.
CEPOS could not have selected a more deserving individual to receive this prize. (Full disclosure: I nominated her on the basis of her courageous work.) Yoani is an extraordinary woman who has repeatedly overcome great obstacles and risked serious consequences to make her voice heard, as she struggles against a dictatorship that systematically represses freedom of expression. Yoani has been beaten and kidnapped by plainclothes state security agents for her work.
She lives every day in a world where ordinary citizens cannot invite their friends over, or hold any kind of meeting, for fear of being accused of subversion. Cubans cannot even host something as innocuous as a book club. Few of them even own books — leading to the creation of underground “independent” libraries which risk prosecution and prison for such a subversive acts as owning a copy of a banned novel or history book.
Cuba’s woes are routinely attributed to the U.S. trade embargo. But anyone visiting Cuba can buy Chilean wines, Spanish ham, French cheese, and Italian pasta. Visitors can also find American goods exempt from the trade ban (which applies to U.S. companies). The embargo is an ongoing propaganda weapon — wielded by the Castro regime and by its international ideological allies–used to blame everything that happens in Cuba on an external enemy, rather than the true source of its misery: the 52-year dictatorship that has ruled the island with an iron fist and wants to maintain power at all costs.
When I was last in Cuba, I was appalled by the level of poverty: overcrowded houses jury-rigged with makeshift additional floors a mere three feet in height, teenagers selling themselves for sex because their ration books are grossly inadequate, malnourished children in the streets with swollen bellies. The list goes on.
Anyone who doubts the misery of life for Cuba should visit Havana, talk to the local population, tour a hospital (a real one — not those reserved for foreigners), and witness the ghastly horror that is the much vaunted Cuban health care system.
Cuba is a place where you cannot own your own home; you cannot move without permission from the government; property rights do not exist (your stuff isn’t yours); you aren’t allowed to switch jobs without government permission; and most jarring: you cannot leave the country without the government’s authorization. I draw the line between the free and unfree world if you cannot vote with your feet and get out. Those who try often end up drowning after days on a raft in the ocean.
Those who wish to see a disparity between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, should visit the areas where the overwhelming majority of the population lives and then take a taxi to the neighborhoods where the Castros and their henchmen live. It is a contrast that few anti-poverty activists can even fathom. Even more shocking is the material dissimilarity between rural areas and Havana.
The reason the Castro brothers are still the wardens of eight million people and the owners of everything on that island is because democratic societies — like Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Norway, France, and Italy — treat Cuba as a member of a happy family of nations, rather than treating Cuba’s rulers like they do the criminals that run North Korea, Burma, or Sudan.
Cuba’s totalitarianism would not survive without the support of the world’s democracies. If those same governments gave their support to outspoken and independent voices like Yoani Sánchez, Cuba would be on the road from serfdom to freedom. For now, civil societies like CEPOS serve the cause of liberty by shining a light in the darkness.
Thor Halvorssen is president of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation and founder and CEO of the Oslo Freedom Forum. Follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....57294.html
Mayo 5th, 2011 at 18:53
Komar, I don’t know about Poland. But in the USA, Canada, England, and most of Western Europe, pesticide-free fresh produce is abundant. The situation in Cuba is much worse, and Yoani won’t be missing anything if she gets American style food choices.
Mayo 5th, 2011 at 18:38
P.R.I. Program “THE WORLD”:Cuban blogger gets government’s attention-May 5,
Cuba’s blogosphere is relatively small and its most famous practitioner is Yoani Sacnhez. She says her blog “Generation Y” is not an act of dissent. It is more like a daily diary to describe what it is like to live in Cuba. Sanchez has been subjected to many government restrictions since she started blogging, including a ban on foreign travel. The World’s Carol Hills has more.
An excerpt from the Yoani Sanchez’s book “Havana Real”
“Given a ration card at birth, and entering adolescence during Cuba’s “Special Period,” my thoughts are obsessed with food. I have to control myself not to let my desires run away with me, or to show the naked hunger that I see in the faces of my friends. I look at them heading to the market with their plastic shopping bags, often returning with them just as empty as when they left. I, too, have a shopping bag, but I keep it folded in my pocket, so I don’t look like I’ve been devoured by the machinery of the waiting line, the search for food, the gossip about whether the chicken has arrived at the market. . . In the end, I have the same obsession with getting food, but I try not to show it too much.”
CLICK LINK BELOW TO HEAR ENTIRE PROGRAM AND THEN DOWLOAD MP3 TO HEAR OUR FLACA!
http://www.theworld.org/2011/0.....attention/
Mayo 5th, 2011 at 17:01
When I left Socialist Paradise in Poland, life there was hard. Coffee was hard to find, but if You got it, it was fresh. Meat was rationed, but it was fresh and good quality, fruits only in growing season, but ripe and sweat. When I went back, last year, there is plenty of coffee, but it is old and stale. The meat is everywhere, but is old and spiked with chemicals. Fruits are year around, but, either green and sour, or ripe and rotten from laing on store shelves for so long. One of the first that I learned in America,.is to be very careful for what I ask for, for I may get it.
Mayo 5th, 2011 at 13:44
GLOBAL POST: Cuba: catching kleptocrats-As soon as the government eases up its controls, company managers tend to start cooking the books.-Nick Miroff-May 5, 2011 06:36
HAVANA, Cuba — “Centralization” has become a bad word in the Cuban lexicon lately, blamed by President Raul Castro as the source of the island’s enervating bureaucracy and economic stagnation.
As part of his economic reform push, Castro wants to give more independence to Cuba’s state companies and local governments, freeing them from the need to obtain Havana’s permission for every little decision and expenditure.
But a series of corruption scandals among Cuban executives in recent months has been a reminder as to how the island’s state-run economy got so centralized in the first place. As soon as the government eases up its controls, company managers steeped in graft tend to get even greedier.
Nearly a dozen executives from Cuba’s Habanos S.A. tobacco company are now in police custody, suspected of taking bribes and kickbacks on millions worth of premium Cuban cigars, The Economist reported last week.
It was hardly the worst recent case of Cuban managers appropriating “social property” as their own. Rogelio Acevedo, the country’s former top aviation official, was arrested last year for allegedly running a side business that chartered jets of the national airline, Cubana de Aviacion, for outrageous personal profit. There are also new reports this week that executives in the country’s lucrative nickel-processing industry are in custody and facing corruption charges.
The wave of arrests is no fluke. Castro created a special Comptroller General’s Office in 2009 to audit and investigate state companies, and it’s unknown how many crooked administrators have been snared since then. The closer scrutiny is a key part of Castro’s plan to give Cuban managers more administrative leeway in order to make their state-run business more profitable, while also adding new layers of oversight.
In his speech to open last month’s Communist Party Congress in Havana — the first major event of its kind in 14 years — Castro described Cuban administrators as frozen with inertia and unable to make decisions on their own.
“The lesson taught by practical experience is that an excessive centralization inhibits the development of initiatives in the society and in the entire production line, where the cadres got used to having everything decided ‘at the top’ and thus ceased feeling responsible for the outcome of the entities they headed,” Castro said.
Still, it’s not hard to imagine the temptations faced by Cuba’s captains of socialist industry. While working long hours for miniscule pay, they are expected to uphold the ideals of self-sacrifice and austerity, yet their lifestyles and business relationships require them to wine and dine with fantastically wealthy capitalist counterparts. Many have tens of millions of government dollars under their management, despite drawing salaries that — at least officially — amount to not much more than the average Cuban wage of $20 a month.
The rise and fall of top Cuban executive Pedro Alvarez is a case in point, and one of the more embarrassing ones for the Cuban government. As the longtime head of the state food import agency, Alimport, Alvarez arranged billions’ worth of bulk food purchases abroad, much of it from the United States under a special exemption to the Cuban embargo.
For the U.S. farmers and agricultural executives who did business with Cuba, Alvarez was the face of the Castro government. In 2008, he negotiated the purchase of $711 million worth of U.S. foodstuffs, an all-time high.
Only now Alvarez is reportedly living in Tampa, after fleeing Cuba in December amid rumors he’d skimmed a personal fortune from the food deals. According to Miami news accounts, Alvarez left the island by sneaking through the Havana airport dressed as a woman.
Historically, the Cuban government has promoted military officers to executive positions at state companies in part to discourage corruption, but they have hardly been immune to the temptations of high-volume commerce.
Acevedo, the disgraced aviation official, was a Cuban army general who fought as a guerrilla soldier under the original icon of Cuban workplace rectitude, Ernesto “Che” Guevara. And Cuba’s most notorious corruption case came in 1989 with the stunning trial of top military commander Gen. Arnoldo Ochoa, who was convicted of treason and sent to the firing squad for his role in a drug-trafficking scheme.
On balance, Cuba tends to rank relatively low on corruption indices in comparison to other countries in the region, rated 69 out of 178 nations evaluated last year by Transparency International. Among Latin American states, only Chile, Uruguay and Costa Rica ranked better.
Still, kickbacks and “commissions” are standard practice among Cuban executives who make bulk purchases abroad on behalf of the government. They then stash the money in foreign bank accounts or with relatives abroad.
Cuba’s Comptroller General Office’s is currently engaged in an audit of 750 state companies, sending 3,000 investigators to look into “all sectors, all organizations and territories” and evaluate “discipline, legality and economic control,” Comptroller General Gladys Bejerano announced on state television last month. So more managers may fall in the coming weeks.
Mayo 5th, 2011 at 13:17
LATIN AMERICAN NEWS DISPATCH: American Professor Prohibited From Returning to Cuba-May 5, 2011 |
An American professor studying blogging and micro-businesses in Cuba says he was told by Cuban government officials that he cannot return to the island nation where his research is based.
Ted Henken, chair of the Department of Black and Hispanic Studies for Baruch College at the City University of New York, describes in his blog “El Yuma” how he was monitored by government agents while conducting interviews with over 40 Cuban bloggers of diverse political ideologies from April 15-27. Upon his departure from José Martí International Airport, Henken says he was detained and interrogated by airport officials before being told that he had just concluded his last trip to Cuba and was not welcome to return.
Henken, who has made more than fifteen trips to Cuba since 1997 and published numerous articles on Cuban culture and politics, says that he traveled to Cuba using a tourist visa and didn’t obtain permission from the Cuban government to conduct interviews. Academic researchers conducting investigations in Cuba can be granted general licenses from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which most recently amended restrictions regulating travel to Cuba in January 2011. However, researchers must also secure a specific visa from the Cuban government, a process that Henken says would have led to “endless bureaucratic obstacles”.
“A long time ago, I realized that if you really want to achieve something in Cuba, it is better to ask for forgiveness afterward than permission beforehand,” Henken wrote in his blog. He did, however, obtain consent from all of his interview subjects to publish their words and photographs, and regularly updated his blog with observations from his twelve-day research trip.
Henken believes that his research in Cuba drew particular attention because he made an effort to reach out to bloggers like Yoani Sánchez who have been vilified on Cuban state-run television for their critical examination of life under the Castro government. Henken says he sought discussion with blogging communities that showcased a variety of political perspectives, including Bloggers Cuba, La Joven Cuba, Havana Times and Voces Cubanas. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Cuba has the lowest rate of Internet access in the Americas, with private Internet access largely restricted by law.
“Only a small fraction of the population is permitted to use the Internet at home, with the vast majority required to use state-controlled access points with identity checks, heavy surveillance, and restrictions on access to non-Cuban sites,” according to the CPJ.
The Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C. could not be reached for comment on Henken’s case
Mayo 5th, 2011 at 13:01
FYI, Dumbir ElDorado, I left the Iron Curtain just before it came down.
Mayo 5th, 2011 at 05:10
Well it is so nice in capitalist Romania now that our friend Igor emigrated ASAP.
Mayo 4th, 2011 at 23:47
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE: Voice of the Resistance -Dr. Óscar Biscet, in Cuba’s prisons for twelve years, speaks
‘I need to get to work,” says Dr. Óscar Elías Biscet. Are you familiar with him? He is perhaps the foremost Cuban democracy activist, a symbol of the general resistance to the Castro dictatorship. Has he been neglecting his work? Not exactly. For the past twelve years, essentially, he has been in prison, suffering the things that the regime’s prisoners have always suffered. George W. Bush gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007. The recipient could not accept it in person, of course. But he has now been released from prison. The day, so long hoped for, by so many of us, was March 11. I spoke to him three weeks after.
Biscet was born in 1961 and has a wife, Elsa Morejón Hernández, and two children, Winnie and Yan. The children have been in the United States for several years; Elsa, like her husband, is in Cuba. Biscet obtained his degree in internal medicine in 1985. A few years later, he embarked on human-rights activism. In 1994, he was charged with “dangerousness,” a very common charge. It means that the individual in question will not submit meekly to dictatorial rule. In 1997, Biscet established the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights (“Lawton” being the name of the Havana neighborhood in which he lived). The organization, of course, is banned. In 1998, he spoke out strongly against abortion, particularly late-term abortion: In his work as a doctor, he saw ghastly things. The authorities responded harshly to his protest.
After being detained repeatedly — 26 times — Biscet was arrested in 1999 and thrown in prison for three years. He was released on Oct. 31, 2002, and had 36 days outside of prison. During this time, he worked on his “Democratic Principles for Cuba” and a civic project called “Club for Friends of Human Rights.” He was again arrested on Dec. 6, 2002, and underwent his ordeal until last March 11.
CLICK LINK BELOW FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE
http://www.nationalreview.com/.....ger?page=1
Mayo 4th, 2011 at 22:47
THE PROPAGANDIST EDITORIAL: Cuban Blogger Wins Freedom Prize. Forbidden To Leave Cuba To Accept It
Yet another reason to wonder aloud why so many free Westerners choose a repressive communist gulag as their vacation destination: the Cuban government will not allow Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez to travel to Denmark to pick up an award for promoting freedom and human rights.
Sánchez was denied permission by the Cuban government to travel to Denmark and collect the CEPOS Freedom Award — a $50,000 prize that she was granted by the independent Danish think tank, CEPOS — at the official award ceremony tomorrow night in Copenhagen. Sánchez, author of the world-renowned blog Generación Y and a speaker at the 2010 Oslo Freedom Forum, was nominated for the award by HRF president Thor Halvorssen, who will give the keynote speech at the ceremony in Copenhagen.
“The CEPOS Freedom Award is granted to individuals who demonstrate a principled and steadfast commitment to the values and ideas of individual freedom and basic human rights. Through her blog, which is available in 21 languages, Sánchez exposes the harsh reality of life for everyday Cubans,” said Halvorssen.
Sánchez’s outspoken criticism of the Cuban dictatorship earned her the 2008 Ortega y Gasset Prize for Journalism and the 2009 Maria Moors Cabot Prize. She was named one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2008, and was selected as a 2010 World Press Freedom Hero by the International Press Institute. On December 17, 2010, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands awarded Sánchez the Prince Claus Fund Award for her role as a “leading figure in the use of social networking technologies to breach imposed frontiers in Cuba.” Sánchez was denied permission to be present at that ceremony.
“Cuba’s totalitarian dictatorship—with its billions of dollars, guns, secret police, soldiers, tanks, planes, and network of horrible prisons—is so afraid of being exposed that it must keep Yoani Sánchez trapped in Cuba rather than allowing her to speak her mind abroad. All she has are a few books, a blog, and an indomitable will to write about her experience and clamor for her individual rights. Ultimately, her ideas will win,” said Halvorssen.
http://propagandistmag.com/201.....-accept-it
The Propagandist magazine is for political junkies, thinking conservatives and the anti-fascist left. Our political commentary is often earnest, sometimes quirky, occasionally satirical and always provocative.
Mayo 4th, 2011 at 22:28
Cuba Libre, Why does it not surprise me that a mass-murdering coward is your hero?
Mayo 4th, 2011 at 21:55
Freedom House Condemns Cuba’s Restrictions Against Human Rights Defender -WashingtonMay 4, 2011
Freedom House condemns the Cuban government’s refusal to allow activist and blogger Yoani Sanchez to travel to Copenhagen, Denmark to collect the Danish Center for Political Studies (CEPOS) Freedom Award and calls upon the Cuban government to respect the right to free movement of all its citizens.
Ms. Sanchez, author of the world-renowned blog, Generacion Y, was awarded the prize in November 2010 and is invited to attend the official ceremony on May 5, 2011. She was nominated for the inaugural $50,000 prize by the president of the Human Rights Foundation, Thor Halvorssen. Although the Cuban government has denied her permission to travel abroad 15 times in 4 years, including the opportunity to attend the 2010 Oslo Freedom Forum in Norway, she continues to apply for the exit visa necessary for Cuban citizens to travel.
“Yoani Sanchez’s inability to travel freely to and from her own country is a glaring example of the control and oppression that the Cuban government exercises over its citizens,” said David J. Kramer, executive director of Freedom House. “Ms. Sanchez has dedicated her life to fighting for the freedoms of Cuban citizens, and this recent decision represents little more than a futile attempt by the Cuban government to hide its shameful human rights record from the international community.”
Freedom House applauds CEPOS in selecting Ms. Sanchez to receive this award, and strongly supports her efforts to freely express her thoughts and opinions through her writing and activism.
“Yoani Sanchez represents the best in human rights defenders. Despite efforts by the Cuban government to silence her voice, she relentlessly protests against the lack of freedoms that she and other Cubans endure on a daily basis,” continued Kramer. “Freedom House stands in solidarity with her, and with all other activists who speak out against abuses to demand support for basic human and civil rights.”
Freedom House consistently places Cuba among the world’s worst regimes. Cuba is ranked Not Free in Freedom in the World 2011, Freedom House’s annual survey of political rights and civil liberties, and in Freedom of the Press 2011. The island nation also received the third-lowest ranking in Freedom on the Net, a study of Internet freedom in 37 countries released in 2011.
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?.....mp;h=79e78
Mayo 4th, 2011 at 18:42
When I visited Remedios 2 years ago, as soon as we got off the bus, I saw this man waving rolled newspapers in his hands crying out a strange word. The closer I got, i understood he was crying out “cacaouettes”. Curious I came closer to him and peaked to see what was inside the rolled newspaper. Roasted peanuts. He was pleased when I bought some off him. Imagine that. He is willing to sell what is so hard for him to come upon on, so that he could make some extra money. I admired the man for doing something to better his situation instead of feeling pity for himself. After that he offered me a 3 pesos bill with my hero Che Guevara on it. Of coursed I jumped to the occasion. I know I got ripped off on the deal, but seeing the satisfaction on the man`s face was rewarding enough for me. Now I have a piece oc Cuban history that I can treasure.
Mayo 4th, 2011 at 16:40
$he pea-blend coffee is back … after investing a tonne of money still not able to produce sufficient coffee even when the conditions for producing quality coffe in Cuba are almost perfect … talk about forbidden fruit …
Mayo 4th, 2011 at 08:21
Love Cuba,
Unfortunately Romania took a wrong turn soon after the dictator was killed. For 6 year socialists stayed in power using stalinist methods. The only positive change was a capitalist market and the right to leave the country.
Mayo 4th, 2011 at 00:01
THAT IS GREAT NEWS! JUST LIKE THE NEWS ABOUT THE COFFEE AND CHICK PEA COMBO FOR THE CUBAN PEOPLE TO “SWALLOW” ! I DONT THINK 2 + 2 =4 ON THIS ONE! BLA BLA BLA!!
Cuba survives global recession without tourism rebates
Cuba has been able to overcome the global recession in tourism without resorting to price drops, Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero said in the keynote speech of the FITCuba tourism fair in Havana.
Amid the recession, the island logged in a 4-percent visitor growth in 2010. This high season, which just concluded, brought a record 10-percent rise in visitors. The tourism ministry has not published any revenue figures recently.
“In less than 10 years, Cuba turned into the third-largest tourist destination in the insular Caribbean,” Marrero said. “This is despite not counting on the main source market, the United States.”
Despite the crisis, Cuba never “resorts to sacrificing prices as a solution to the ups and downs of the market,” he said.
In a reversal from 2009, when total tourism revenues dropped more than 10 percent — despite rising visitor numbers — revenues were up 3.9 percent during the first half of 2010. Arguing that the number of visitors to the island had continued to rise slightly during the crisis years of 2008 and 2009, Cuban officials last year urged tour operators in Canada and Mexico to maintain prices.
Even so, travel information Website Frommers reported last fall that Canadian tour operators were offering pre-season Cuba packages at prices that were “cheaper than ever.” “While weeklong air-and-land packages to some all-inclusive resorts in Cancun and elsewhere have risen to the $800s and $900s, similar vacations in Cuban resorts have plunged to the $500s and below,” Frommers wrote in October. Partly due to new construction, hotel occupancy plummeted to 51 percent at the end of the first half of 2010, the last period for which official statistics are available. This was down from 55.6 percent in the same period of 2009.
One strength that could be promoted more is Cuba’s relative security, the minister said. There is no drug trafficking, crime rates are low, and there are no children begging in the streets, he said.
He also said his ministry is seeking to develop domestic tourism in luxury hotels.
http://www.cubastandard.com/20.....m-rebates/
Mayo 3rd, 2011 at 20:06
@#5
Humberto humberto … u know what good is … by do I miss chicharros … :-(
Mayo 3rd, 2011 at 19:06
Love Cuba! What about “Café sans lait pero con Chícharos”!!
Mayo 3rd, 2011 at 19:00
Igor, have you been back to Romania lately? How do you find it now?
Good music Humberto, and great desert idea.
I think Starbucks will actually steal the recipe for the Cuban brew, probably a market out there among Che t-shirt wearers. Maybe we can call it Cafe au Che?
Mayo 3rd, 2011 at 18:48
I DONT THINK THERE WILL BE A STARBUCKS IN CUBA IN THE NEAR FUTURE! OR MAYBE STARBUCKS WILL “STEAL” THIS RECIPE!! NO CASHEWS AND NO REAL COFFEE! THAT IS PARADISE!
THE WASHINGTON POST: Cuba’s bitter brew: Officials announce return of coffee mixed with peas in savings measure
HAVANA — Cubans’ morning joe will be a little more bitter and a little less potent as the island returns to mixing coffee with roasted peas in a cost-saving move.
The blend is being distributed beginning this month for domestic consumption, the Interior Commerce Ministry said Tuesday in an announcement published by Communist Party newspaper Granma. The change apparently will not affect coffee for export, for sale in pricier stores or in establishments catering to tourists.
The message also said authorities are eliminating the coffee ration for Cubans ages 0 to 6. Up until now, coffee had been allocated by number of people in a household as a way to support families.
The measure was first brought up in December by President Raul Castro, who said Cuba was paying $47 million a year on imports to meet local coffee consumption in the java-loving nation.
Like rum and cigars, coffee is an iconic product in Cuba. In the early 1960s, annual production reached 60,000 tons and Cuba was a net exporter. But last month, state-run coffee company Cubacafe director Antonio Aleman said that while the country has spent $9.5 million to modernize production in the past five years, meager harvests are falling short of annual demand of 18,000 tons of beans.
Prodigious consumers of highly sweetened java, Cubans are no strangers to coffee cut with peas, which was long the norm. When they started getting the pure stuff in 2005, some even complained that it tasted funny.
“I like it better with peas,” street sweeper Juan Hernandez Pedroso said as he sat on a curb Tuesday, taking a break during the afternoon Havana heat. “I don’t know, maybe it’s because it’s what I’m used to.”
Fans and foes alike agree that there’s no mistaking the difference.
Coffee with peas isn’t as foamy when it boils, and the end result is a strong-tasting, less caffeinated brew, said Froilan Valido, an unemployed gas bill collector.
“It’s much, much more bitter than pure coffee, which is smoother,” Valido said. “But many people here are accustomed to it. The habit makes the monk.”
Local cafes were still selling supplies of pure coffee Tuesday, and it was not clear exactly when the pea blend would be on shelves. The ministry did not specify what ratio officials have in mind for the mixture.
Tuesday’s announcement in Granma noted that the price of coffee rose 69 percent in the last year from $1,740 to $2,904 per ton, while peas are going for just $390 a ton.
“Faced with this economic reality, it has been determined to fix a price of 4 pesos ($0.17) for a 115-gram (4-ounce) bag of mixed coffee to support the amounts that will continue to be delivered as normal to the people,” it read.
That’s a price cut; the same bag used to cost 5 pesos.
“I prefer natural coffee,” Jose Hernandez said as he waited his turn at a popular coffee counter. “But we all understand that it’s a necessity. Hopefully it’s temporary.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....story.html
Mayo 3rd, 2011 at 18:34
Maranon is an unusual fruit. Its seed, the cashew nut, grows on top of it in a thick, rubbery shell. Don’t try to bite open the shell; it’s very bitter. Cashews must be roasted before they can be eaten; they are poisonous when raw. people will try to sell you home-masted cashews. The ripe fruit can be eaten or made into a refresco (shakes) or fermented into wine. The dried fruit is like a cross between a prune and a fig and is sold in supermarkets. You can make a quick and elegant dessert with half a dried maranon topped with a dollop of cream cheese and a cashew.
YOUTUBE: Roberto Torres - Como Me Gusta El Marañon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8kd0jt1F1k
Mayo 3rd, 2011 at 17:25
YEAH, I totally get it. Back in the 80’s there it was the same for the Socialist Paradise called Romania. We craved oranges and bananas. With oranges we used to get lucky once or twice around the month of December but bananas were a different story. It was reserved for the familis of top rank Communist officials