Cuba's smoke-and-mirror reforms

The Castro regime's announcement that for the first time Cuban citizens will be able to buy and sell their own homes has spurred an outpouring of irrational exuberance that real change is finally coming to the island-prison of Dr. Castro. "To say that it's huge is an understatement," one interested observer told the New York Times. "This is the foundation, this is how you build capitalism, by allowing the free trade of property."

Another told Reuters, "The ability to sell houses means instant capital formation for Cuban families ... It is a big sign of the government letting go." Still another writes in the Christian Science Monitor that these are "incredibly meaningful changes."

Such optimism is ill-founded. In fact, it is indicative only of one of two things: either it betrays a brazen political objective (Time magazine: "Why the U.S. Should Drop the Embargo and Prop Up Cuban Homeowners") or it demonstrates just how low the bar of expectation has been placed for what the Cuban people need and deserve that we must celebrate mere crumbs tossed their way by the Castro dictatorship.

Indeed, sweep away the hype and all you see are daunting hurdles as to how this announcement will change in any way the regime's suffocating control of the Cuban population. The new order restricts people to "ownership" of one permanent residence and one vacation home (as if the average Cuban is in any position to own a second home); all transactions must be approved by the State; no explanation is given on how you grant titles to homes that either have been confiscated from their rightful owners, have been swapped multiple times in the underground economy, or which house multiple families because of the severe shortage of available housing; the construction industry remains state-controlled; and the regime itself admits this order reflects no backsliding on the preeminence of the State in controlling the country's economic and political systems.

Beyond these challenges, however, is the fundamental fact that you cannot conjure private property rights, let alone the free trade in property, out of thin air. Those rights exist only where they are rooted in a credible, impartial, and transparent legal superstructure that can protect one's property, settle disputes, and guarantee transactions against the predations of the State. Anything less is a rigged game where the State is the dealer.

This is how the State Department's annual Human Rights Report characterizes Cuba's judicial system: "While the constitution recognizes the independence of the judiciary, the judiciary is subordinate to the imperatives of the socialist state. The National Assembly appoints all judges and can remove them at any time. Through the National Assembly, the state exerted near-total influence over the courts and their rulings ... Civil courts, like all courts in the country, lack an independent or impartial judiciary as well as effective procedural guarantees."


Translation: Cubans' ability to "own" property, trade, or leverage their property to build capital will continue to exist at the sufferance of the State. And what the State giveth, the State can taketh away. The bottom line is that, ultimately, all Cubans will really own is a piece of paper that says they own something.

Rather than empowering individual Cubans, the regime's goal in allowing the open trade of houses is to hopefully siphon more Cuban American money into the island's perennially bankrupt economy. With average Cubans on the island too poor to buy or improve their dilapidated dwellings, their hope is relatives in Miami and elsewhere will remit even more cash to the island attempting to improve their relations' situation. Indeed, the cynicism of relying on Cuban exiles to support the Cuban economy has never bothered the Castro brothers in the slightest.

The Castro regime recognizes the increasing unrest among the repressed and impoverished Cuban people for fundamental change, but they are capable only of prescribing more painkillers rather than the radical surgery that is needed to restore the nation's health. Pretending to devolve more autonomy in individuals' lives is just one more cruelty inflicted on the Cuban people over five decades of dictatorship, a cruelty made worse by the cheerleading from abroad.

By José R. Cárdenas
Source: FP Blog

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Venezuela: The Final Handover?

The Cuban regime has access to the Venezuelans’ identity data. (Photo: Cubamatinal)

It has been denounced time and again that the Hugo Chávez administration has been handing over strategic areas and areas of national security to the despotic Cuban regime.

The Barrio Adentro Mission gave it the excuse to penetrate the country’s shanty districts with health workers, who have also been engaged in indoctrinating the population, the same as the contingent of Cuban sports “instructors” have been doing country.

The interference of Cuban officials in any and all sensitive decision-making areas is common knowledge in military circles.

It is a fact that the System of Registries and Public Notaries is under Cuban control: today, no one in Venezuela moves a paper relating to any property or personal data without Cuba knowing about it.

There are even fears that the submarine communications cable between Cuba and Venezuela will violate the confidentiality of people’s telephonic and electronic communications even more than they are violated at present.

Now, as though all that Cuban control were not sufficiently intolerable, Sunday’s El Nacional revealed just how far the handing over of Venezuelans’ identity data to the dictatorial State of Cuba has apparently gone.

According to the report in El Nacional, the Cuban state-owned company Albet Ingeniería y Sistemas, the same company that was in charge of Venezuela’s electronic passports, “won” the contract for modernizing the National Identification system, which is worth an estimated $170 million.

This contract has several aspects that need to be looked at carefully:

1. The secrecy surrounding the contract: a country’s sovereignty depends to a large extent on its national identity system, which means that everything to do with handling that system should and must be absolutely transparent and be made public.



2. The high cost: Albet Ingeniería y Sistemas subcontracted the multinational Gemalto, headquartered in Mexico. This will make the Venezuelan electronic identity cards one of the most expensive cards with biometric identification technology acquired by countries in Latin America.



3. But the most serious aspect of all is that the national identity data of the Venezuelan population is being handed over to a foreign power. According to El Nacional, all the software and security guidelines of the identification system will be controlled by Cuba, who will keep “the originals of the source codes (the codes that describe the functioning of the software and allow changes to be made) of the developed computer applications for as long as the technical support period lasts.” To make matters worse, “the Venezuelan party may not have access to the source codes to make changes or adjustments to the developed computer applications for as long as the contract is in force or the technical support period lasts, except when the Cuban party expressly states its agreement to this action.”

Now that Chávez is even governing from Cuba, what else is needed in order to finally hand over Venezuela to Castro?

Source: Latin American HT

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Churches Help Cubans through Economic Transition

Evangelical church in Havana, Cuba.

The aging revolutionaries who have controlled Cuba for the past 50 years, haven't trained younger leaders to take their place.

That became evident at the long-awaited Communist Party Congress in April, when 79-year old Raul Castro was named the party's first secretary, and the number two spot went to an 80-year-old.

A feeble Fidel Castro, 84, made a surprise appearance. This was the first time in the Congress' history that he wasn't included on the powerful central committee.

That post went to his brother Raul, who admitted that Cuba has a succession problem. Raul Castro made a surprise recommendation of term limits for politicians -- including himself.

"We have reached the conclusion that it is recommendable to limit to a maximum of two five-year consecutive terms all the state's fundamental political positions," he said.

But that's not the only problem that keeps Cuba among the poorest nations in the Americas.

The government employs eight out of every 10 Cuban workers, a dead weight the economy can't sustain.

Raul Castro knows the country has to shed its Communist baggage, but as the new party leader he made a pledge to the faithful.

"To defend, preserve, and continue to perfect socialism and never allow the return of the capitalist regime," he said.

"Cuba right now is in a state of great confusion between shifting from purely a Socialist Communist system to a quasi market system," said Teo Babun, leader of the Miami-based charity Echo Cuba.

"Not quite at the acceleration of China or Vietnam, and not knowing where they're going," Babun said. "But being very cautious not to let this whole thing get out of hand for them."

Last year, Raul promised to reduce the bloated government payroll by laying off half a million workers.

While the the massive government layoffs haven't happened, the uncertainty has left many Cubans on edge. Now, many evangelical churches are helping their members create their own jobs.

"What the more aggressive churches have been doing is allowing the individual members of the churches to partner with organizations outside of Cuba that will help them start small businesses and therefore become tithers, for example, to the churches and supporters of the social programs that the churches are running," Babun explained.

With the help of Echo Cuba, Cuban evangelicals have started more than 1,200 small businesses.

"We select Cubans within the churches that are entrepreneurial. We help them write a business plan, guide them in the process of how to start their business, and then bring them a 'business in a box,'" Babun said.

"Everything that they need to start a business is basically purchased outside of Cuba and brought to Cuba so that they can get things going," he said.

But the budding entrepreneurs first have to forget what the Communist government has taught them for the past 50 years.

"The Socialist model of Cuba, starting in 1959, [has] one head, everything coming down," Babun continued.

"They really don't understand how to meet together, how to create collaboration with each other, how to make decisions in a meeting format," he said. "All those things that we take for granted, they don't understand it."

If churches are to help members survive Cuba's economic crisis, they must learn the basics of a free market economy.

Once Christians start their own businesses, Babun said other freedoms may follow.

"The freedom to be able to operate not only in the marketplace, but also in their place of worship," he said. "Freely, without any kind of restriction from any form of government."

Stan Jeter

Source: CBN News

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Death Penalty for Internet in Cuba?

A ghost runs around Cuba: the Internet ghost. A month after the arrival of fiber optics from Venezuela to create a much faster information and telecommunications highway — some media outlets are predicting speeds three thousand percent faster — the government seems to be looking for excuses to justify why, once again, it will continue violating our most basic rights, preventing us from freely accessing information from our homes through Internet.



Until recently the government alleged it couldn’t open up Internet to the “entire population” because, as a result of the US Embargo, Cuba was accessing Internet via satellite (Wi-Fi), slowing down connection speeds. This argument has been heavily debated in diverse sectors who, in spite of not being experts, question why the country didn’t expand its contract with satellite providers and installed additional servers to diversify the possibilities and provide and widen the service offering to a larger number of users. Also, if connections are truly that slow, why not give us the possibility, just like foreigners living in the country, to pay for access in spite of its slowness? Why marginalize fellow compatriots?

It seems that the rationale of this elite — mostly “angry” (irritated and tense) — which prevents us from browsing the Web is to continue discriminating and dividing our society with its repeated practice of extortion and influence; and they use the access to the net as one of the perks they usually give grant to their hardcore followers who are employed in key positions or positions of interest for the power elite.

I share the idea of ending the U.S. “blockade” or embargo against Cuba, but I also want to end the mental blockade of those in power, who pretend to be more interested in “breaking the blockade” of independents — who dare to use our freedom of expression with “fists and pens” — and in violating the right to information of the Cuban people. Working so everyone enjoy the technological advances they enjoy and defending the access to these sources of information that is also part of our rights, as it is part of our culture and general knowledge, and enriches, complements, and consolidates the cognitive universe.

Since the announcement that we would be able to access broadband Internet, people on different television shows were optimistic about the possibility of providing the masses with that tool that frees them. They begun to expound on the importance of Internet in culture, as a research tool to find all sorts of information, as a tool for the development and diversification of economic projects, etc.

At the XIV Convention and International Fair of Informatics 2011 hosted this past February in Havana there was evidence of the natural social appetite, but apparently protests in Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries have sparked fear in the authoritarian Cuban oligarchy, and again, freedom was sentenced to death by shooting.

This is why it is becoming harder for them to support the argument of the benefits and justice of the Cuban political model, the respect of Cubans’ rights, and find themselves forced to put together television programs with the same old and abused arguments.

If the Internet is a poison, the best antidote against it is democracy, and the best antivirus to detect and discern any malicious code is culture, education, and freedom. Hence, the reiterated public assertion of government leaders stating that Cuba is the most educated and cultivated country in the world is a clear contradiction that no one understands.

If we are so smart, why can’t we access alternative information sources separate from the central state? Education and culture, to be true and not just propaganda, must be divorced from censure. Many of us wonder how can some have so much power and so much fear at the same time.

We know the government erected its flags over the pillars of health and education — both things currently in crisis — in the militarization of society and excessive and efficient (for them) control. It has been an easy feat without political parties, real unions — ones that answer to the needs of workers rather than administrators or the only political party — or an organized civil society looking for real solutions to their problems and capable of organizing and facing its challenges.

It has been a model disloyal to all ethical standards of governability. How easy it was ruling without alternatives to elect, more attractive political agendas to support, or even other points of view to listen to! How angry they must be for not being able to control the Internet they way they controlled the printed press, the radio, and the TV in the 60s! But modernity and technological advances are winning the battle, and every time they repeal any of the civil rights they, they become violators in the eyes of their own fellow countrymen.

There is no need for anyone to point at the facts: they are their own defense lawyers, but also their own prosecutors. The fact of the matter is that, as usual, they need to create the illusion of a plaza under siege to justify to their followers the reasons behind a new act of injustice. It is likely that the purpose is to condemn the Internet to life in prison without right to appeal. I hope I am wrong! but if the Cuban government is attempting to switch that light off, they might get away with it for some time, but I doubt they will be able to keep censorship forever.

Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado - Translating Cuba

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