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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The Unreported Tragedy of Cuba’s Repressive Communist Regime

Cuba—to listen to, watch or read some of the media—is a place that has remained unbowed in the face of impoverishment by the U.S. embargo. Lately what you hear is that it is attempting to make bold reforms not just in the economy, but socially as well (it just allowed gays to marry!) The people still dance.

Only that the reality of Cuba bears little resemblance to the plucky little island narrative. Cuba’s penury has nothing to do with the U.S. decision not to trade with the communist island, but with the fact that the island is communist in the first place. If communism produced misery in Europe and Asia (where one half of Germany and Korea stagnated under repression while the capitalist halves of those countries thrived in economic and political freedom) why would the result be different in the Caribbean?

Communism is a human tragedy, enslaving the soul while failing to produce enough goods for the people trudging under it. Communist countries are large prisons; the borders must be closed lest the people escape. And within that hell there are smaller circles where the repression is intensified. It’s the Gulag, the re-education camp or, in Cuba’s case today, public beatings by government mobs for who speak up their minds.

One would think a journalist would want report on that, especially when—as is the case in Cuba today—the people have finally decided to risk it all and take to the streets to voice their opposition. Reality, however, is again otherwise.

In Cuba today there’s a growing and vibrant protestor movement, headed by a group of women called Las Damas de Blanco (The Ladies in White). Originally organized by the wives of political prisoners, it has now galvanized others to lose their fear and voice their anti-communist sentiments in public.

Their acts are dignified.  They march to Mass on Sunday bearing flowers; sometimes they stand in squares and chant slogans or meet in each other’s houses.

The repression that Cuba’s communist regime has unleashed against these poor ladies is anything but dignified. They have been seized by government goons bused in for the occasion, pushed, scratched and beaten. In one case, in the city of Santiago de Cuba, these ladies were stripped to their waist and dragged through the streets.  In another instance they were bitten. The founder of the movement, 63-year-old Laura Pollan, died last month and her remains were returned to her family only after she was cremated..

We understand—though it still rankles—why journalists posted in Havana are reluctant file stories or broadcast on these events or on the overall mind-numbing reality of communism. If they do, they will be put on the next plane out (a fate any Cuban would relish, of course). As blogger Yoani Sanchez—a rare Cuban allowed to speak her mind, with only the occasional beating—posted last month at Foreign Policy:

“The dilemma of foreign correspondents — popularly called ‘foreign collaborators’ — is whether to make concessions in reporting in order to stay in the country, or to narrate the reality and face expulsion. The major international media want to be here when the long-awaited ‘zero day’ arrives — the day the Castro regime finally makes its exit from history. For years, journalists have worked to keep their positions so they will be here to file their reports with two pages of photos, testimonies from emotional people, and reports of colored flags flapping all over the place.

“But the elusive day has been postponed time and again. Meanwhile, the same news agencies that reported on the events of Tahrir Square or the fighting in Libya downplay the impacts of specific events in Cuba or simply keep quiet to preserve their permission to reside in the country. This gag is most dramatic among those foreign journalists with family on the island, whom they would have to leave or uproot if their accreditation were revoked. The grim officials of the CPI understand well the delicate strings of emotional blackmail and play them over and over again.”

It’s unfair to single out the press, however. The Obama Administration has failed, too, to bring the plight of Cubans to the forefront, even during the current wave of repression against the Ladies in White.

Two reasons are given for the soft approach. President Obama may not want to complicate the case of Alan Gross, a Marylander Cuba has taken hostage. Gross was sent to Cuba in 2009 by the U.S. Agency for International Development to set up internet connectivity for Cuba’s dwindling Jewish community.  He was arrested in December of 2009 and has been sentenced to 15 years for the crime of bringing satellite phones and laptops into Cuba. President Obama also wants to reach out to the Castro brothers.

We at The Heritage Foundation agree with Churchill and Reagan that tyranny cannot be appeased. We have a proud record of standing up to communism, including its Caribbean variety, an effort led by decades by such giants as Lee Edward, the chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

That’s why next week, on Tuesday, Nov. 15, we will have two events on these subjects; the first devoted to Cuba and the second to communism.

At the first event, at 10 am, we will feature a key note address by Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., FLA), the Chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as a panel on the latest from Cuba.

In the second event, which follows at 11 am, we’ll look back at the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the USSR, Cuba’s former patron, in a panel featuring Heritage experts and the distinguished scholar of the Soviet Union, Professor Richard Pipes.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was a tremendous victory, but the survival of the Castro regime, and the rising tide of authoritarianism in Russia, should remind us that not all the achievements of 1991 are secure. So in addition to celebrating the return of freedom to Eastern Europe, we’ll look at how the lessons and concerns of two decades ago are relevant to today.

By Mike Gonzalez

Source:  The Foundry

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Freedom House study reveals optimism in Cuba about economic reforms

The Freedom House report on Cuba released today finds that Cubans see real economic change there, and more Cubans now would rather work for themselves than hold once-prized state jobs.

When Raul Castro announced radical changes to the economic structure of communist Cuba, the country was in a semi-daze.

Many Cubans were excited about the prospects of economic change, particularly opening access to self-employment. But, as state jobs were slashed, many were also worried about going it alone after a lifetime of stable, if paltry, government salaries and subsidies.

But a new Freedom House survey released today shows a radical change in perceptions. Forty-one percent of Cubans say the country is making progress, compared to only 15 percent who felt optimistic about the country’s future when Freedom House last conducted field research in December 2010. In fact, today more Cubans say they would prefer to work for themselves than for the government, the survey shows.

Less than a year ago, Cubans were “very skeptical about change. They doubted real change would happen,” says Daniel Calingaert, deputy director of programs at Freedom House and co-author of the study. This survey was carried out in June, after reforms were implemented formally at the Sixth Communist Party Congress in April. And now, Mr. Calingaert says, Cubans see “change is real.”

This economic opening is the “most significant positive change to have taken place in Cuba since communism was introduced half a century ago,” the new survey concludes.

At first glance, Cuban optimism could be a good sign for the Castro government. But it could also pose additional challenges. Cubans who have tasted economic freedom say they want more, and a bit of stability has also allowed them the luxury to think beyond the day-to-day economics of feeding a family. “It’s opening people to new possibilities,” says Calingaert. “There is more interest in individual freedoms.”

Indeed, one of the more surprising findings is that, when asked what reforms they most wanted, Cubans said increased freedom of expression and the freedom to travel (28 percent). This is a radical change from the most recent study, when economic reform topped the wish list of respondents.

The Cuban government has a long way to go on the freedom front. Most Cubans continue to get their news from the government. The poll showed that only 40 percent of Cubans surveyed knew what happened to Egypt’s leaders, while only 36 percent knew how the revolution in Tunisia ignited.

Here are some of the survey’s specific major findings:

• 79 percent say they have noted visible change in the past six months in Cuba, including more self-employed on the streets.
   
• 63 percent of respondents favor the reforms introduced under Raul Castro. The report quotes an ice-cream vendor: “Imagine, I can make more money selling ice cream than I ever did as an accountant for the government.”
   
• 49 percent say that it is better to work for themselves, compared to 44 percent who say a government job is better.

That is not to say that Cubans aren’t wary of changes ahead of them. For example, the field research culled commentary from Cubans voicing concern about unsteady incomes, having enough funds to start their own businesses – especially those without family in the US to help – and growing resentment among less successful entrepreneurs.

“The changes are causing a sense of insecurity and resentment among some Cubans, as might be expected in a country where citizens were almost entirely dependent on government for their material needs and had no experience of market competition,” the report says. “Such insecurity and resentment accompanied the shift from communism to market economies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. While the insecurity and resentment presents a challenge for reform in Cuba, it is also a reflection of how profound are the changes that are currently underway.”

By Sara Miller Llana

Source: CSMonitor

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Cubans Escaping Castro's Economic "Reforms"

Cubans continue to "vote" against the Cuban regime

The number of Cubans intercepted at sea trying to reach the coast of Florida more than doubled in the last fiscal year according to figures released by the Department of Homeland Security. In the previous fiscal year, 422 Cubans were intercepted at sea by the Coast Guard, while in the fiscal year 2011 (which just ended on September 30th), 1,000 Cubans were caught. Moreover, the number of Cubans who actually reached the U.S. shore increased by 70%, from 409 in fiscal year 2010 to 696 in fiscal year 2011. This is the first rise in illegal Cuban immigration by sea in 3 years according to authorities.

This is yet another sign that the much heralded economic “reforms” announced by Havana aren’t working. The massive layoffs of hundreds of thousands of public employees undertaken by the government of Raúl Castro were meant to be absorbed by Cuba’s almost non-existent private sector. The Communist regime tried to ease the pressure by allowing private employment in 178 economic activities, such as masseurs, clowns, shoemakers, locksmiths, and gardeners. However, as I warned over a year ago, it capped the number of permits for these private activities at 250,000 while also penalizing the new entrepreneurs with stiff tax rates. It doesn’t take a Nobel Prize winner in economics to realize that Cuba’s nascent private sector wouldn’t be able to make room for all of the newly unemployed. What then for these people?

Earlier this year I talked to an official from the U.S. Interest Section in Havana who told me that we shouldn’t be surprised if we see a steady increase of Cubans trying to escape the island towards the United States. Faced with a dilapidated economy, hundreds of thousands of unemployed, and growing social unrest, the Castro regime wouldn’t hesitate in letting more Cubans use the “escape valve” of emigration. We might be seeing the first signs of this.

by Juan Carlos Hidalgo

Source: Cato@ Liberty

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Why we're not seeing a "Cuban Autumn"

A dissident signs the letter "L" for the Spanish word "libertad" or freedom as he is detained by police during a procession celebrating Cuba's patron saint in Havana, Cuba, Thursday Sept. 8, 2011. (AP Photo/Javier Galeano).

Dissidents took heart at the successes of the Arab Spring, but pro-democracy protests aren't gaining traction.

The uprisings that have rocked the Middle East this year appear to be inspiring a new wave of protests on this island.

But while the Arab Spring is still in full effect in many countries, opponents of the Castro government have gained little momentum for a "Cuban Autumn."

In recent weeks, anti-government activists have staged several public demonstrations in Havana and eastern Cuba. News and video clips of the events were posted on social-networking sites and broadcast on Miami television channels.

They show small groups of activists banging cookware, chanting anti-Castro slogans and "Freedom!" until police and state-security agents arrive to whisk them away.

In some of the videos, larger crowds of Cubans stand around watching the protesters, but they do not join in.

The incidents come after a period of relative calm that followed the Castro government's move last year to release scores of imprisoned political prisoners, with the Catholic Church playing a mediating role. The amnesty briefly ameliorated criticisms by Western governments and human-rights groups of Cuba's one-party socialist system and its treatment of non-violent dissenters.

Now activists are once more testing Raul Castro's tolerance for public protest -- and whether the tactics used by tweeting insurgents in the Middle East could spread anti-government sentiment here.

So far: not so much.

One disadvantage often cited by Cuban activists is that they operate at a significant technology deficit. The island is one of the least-connected countries in the world, and though many young people have mobile phones, most lack access to Facebook, Twitter and video-sharing sites because of internet restrictions and scarce bandwidth.

Anti-Castro activists on the island are also viewed suspiciously or with outright hostility by many Cubans, even those who have lost faith in Cuba's socialist model. State media broadcasts frequently show them meeting with U.S. diplomatic officials, depicting them as "counterrevolutionaries," "mercenaries" and "opportunists" who are out to make a buck or get political asylum abroad.

Many others here remain committed to Cuba's system and its revolutionary ideals, even as the free health care, education and other benefits the government provides continue to diminish.

But dissidents also say Cuban authorities are escalating their attacks to intimidate others from joining their pro-democracy efforts. In August, police violence against peaceful protesters reached its highest level in recent years, according to the Havana-based Cuban Commission on Human Rights and Reconciliation, an anti-Castro group that the tracks political arrests and detentions. Nearly twice as many activists have been detained so far this year compared to the same period in 2010, the group said, including 130 short-term detentions over the weekend.

The Cuban government has challenged those charges, accusing the group of padding its lists with fake names.

Castro opponents do not claim the Cuban government stoops to the type of methods that have been used by regimes in the Arab world, where activists are raped, tortured and murdered, and where protests are commonly met by volleys of police gunfire.

But state-security officials can plainly be seen coordinating counter-protests by government loyalists, who often surround dissidents and shout epithets at them for hours on end, sometimes accosting them physically. Security agents typically stand between the two sides to keep things from getting too rough.

When Cubans protest in public spontaneously, as some of the recent videos show, police quickly swoop in to arrest the demonstrators and haul them away, though the activists are often released several hours later.

Cuba's Catholic church, which played a central role in securing the release of more than 100 jailed activists over the past year, issued a carefully worded statement last week that condemned violence against "defenseless" people.

But Church spokesman Orlando Marquez also said in the statement that the Cuban government told the church "no one at the national level" had ordered attacks on protesters.

Cuban state television has aired footage of the protests, claiming the incidents were part of a "media campaign" against the island. It called the demonstrations acts of "public disorder" that were organized by U.S.-supported "mercenaries" and planned in coordination with American officials.

"The goal is to create a climate of tension that will justify aggressions against Cuba," the report said.

While Cuba's economy continues to struggle, there has not been the kind of broader unrest on the island that sparked street protests during the post-Soviet crisis of the 1990s.

Raul Castro has eased state control over the economy since taking over for his older brother in 2006, allowing for new private businesses and pending reforms that would permit Cubans to buy and sell homes and cars for the first time in half a century.

Castro has also encouraged Cubans to vent their frustrations -- within limits -- through established channels like workplace forums and neighborhood meetings. Criticizing state institutions and government bureaucracy is no longer taboo, but organized opposition and public protests -- like the recent demonstrations -- remain out of bounds.

Since most of the dissidents freed over the past year opted to leave Cuba for Spain as part of an arrangement with the Madrid government, the latest rounds of protests may also be an effort by activists to remain visible, particularly to supporters abroad.

Cuba's most famous online anti-government activist, Yoani Sanchez, sends out cascades of tweets from her mobile phone, including information about protests. Her blog, Generation Y, is no longer blocked on the island by the government, but many young Cubans who manage to get online aren't necessarily inclined to use their precious bytes on political sites.

A high-speed undersea data link to Venezuela completed this summer with much fanfare is supposed to come online in the next few months, increasing Cuba's bandwidth by a factor of 3,000. Its debut has been repeatedly delayed, adding to perceptions that Cuban authorities are wary of its power, even though they have already announced it will not be used to deliver private internet access to Cuban homes.

U.S. officials appear to view communication technology as the key to sparking political change on the island. In a leaked 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable that recently surfaced, the top American official in Havana, Jonathan Farrar, urged the lifting of restrictions on software downloads in Cuba, where Microsoft and other American companies have blocked access to comply with anti-terrorism statutes. Such restrictions, Farrar argued, work "directly against U.S. goals to advance people-to-people interaction."

Bringing more technology, wrote Farrar at the time, could "help facilitate Iran-style democratic ferment in Cuba."

By Nick Miroff

Source: GlobalPost

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Cuba's Liberation at Hand

The liberation of Cuba has begun.  Not by invasion, but from within.  Communism has failed, and the people of Cuba are demanding freedom.  Including the revolutionary right to buy and own their own homes.

Fifty-two years ago, Fidel Castro, posing as a reformer, seized power in a revolution promising "change," social justice and a redistribution of wealth.  He attacked the rich, the owners, the employers.  He was celebrated in leftist circles around the world as a herald of a new and better society.  His 1960 visit to New York set off waves of joy and adulation.

When Castro plastered the walls of Havana with the slogan, "Socialism or Death," most Cuban employers fled, often with only the clothes on their backs.  Factories, farms, businesses, homes, cars with tail fins—all left behind, all confiscated by the state.  Private property was abolished.  All would be equal.  Cubans who stayed realized how equally poor they all quickly became.

For longer than most Americans have been alive, Castro and his Communist elite have controlled every aspect of every Cuban's life.  They turned one of the most beautiful countries on Earth, "The Pearl of the Antilles," blessed with fertile soil, abundant water and numerous natural resources, and inhabited by some of the happiest, most fun-loving people in the world, into one big gray poor gulag.

Since the Castro revolution, the Free World has surged ahead, producing a higher standard of living for more people than any period in human history.  Wealth in free countries was not "spread around," it was created and multiplied, causing what Jack Kennedy called a rising tide to lift all boats.  Many thousands of Cubans, fleeing Castro's tyranny, have prospered in freedom in the U.S. and other countries.

Modern communications have made it inevitable that despite state censorship, Cubans increasingly recognize the failure of communism, that confiscation has not produced "fairness" and that the state-run economy has not produced prosperity. They recognize and demand change.  The kind of change that toppled the failed Communist states all over Europe.  The kind of change that is bringing prosperity to China.

Fidel nearly died in a botched operation by Cuban doctors (remember Michael Moore's praise of the Cuban state-run medical system?) and had to call in a Spanish doctor from a private clinic in Madrid to save his life.  Ditto Hugo Chavez.  His cancer was treated in Cuba, but by private doctors from Spain.  Cubans saw and reacted.  "Socialism or Death" for the common folk, but free-market doctors for the Communist elite.

The everyday Cuban has long depended on an illegal black market to survive.  Doctors drive cabs, engineers fix 1950s cars, illegal restaurants spring up in a cook's living room, money changes hands so someone can illegally get a better apartment, college grads wait tables at the few tourist hotels allowed by the regime.  People get by doing what they have to do.

In the last few years, Cuba has allowed more foreign investment, primarily to develop tourism, but more recently to exploit offshore oil deposits in the Gulf of Mexico that Americans have been forbidden to touch.  More Cubans are coming into contact with foreigners.  More jobs are being created by foreign investment. 

Cubans want more.  The Castro regime is on the defensive.  Self-employment rules have been loosened in the last year and cell phone ownership is increasing.  Buying and selling cars will soon be allowed.  The dam is cracking, the river of freedom will be restored. 

Starting at the end of this year, the regime has promised that Cubans can buy and own their own homes.

Private property is the cornerstone of capitalism.  It's the talk of Havana.  After making the promise and raising expectations, the regime is widely predicted to hem in private ownership with regulation and taxation.  New owners might be limited to one home or apartment, forbidden to resell for a number of years, and be required to live there full-time.

Nonetheless, in a country where all the land and buildings are owned by the Castro State, the restoration of the concept of private property ownership is a big (Biden) deal.

A (freer) market in housing faces challenges created by 60 years of communism.  Private classified ads, for example, are forbidden.  How do you let buyers or renters know you want to sell or rent?  Brokers, cell phones and pads in hand, comb the streets of Havana listing availabilities and preparing to put buyers and sellers, renters and landlords, together.  Wait until they get the Internet!

The government-owned housing stock is a wreck, with too many people jammed into small, deteriorating units.  There is no construction industry, no materials industry.  As in other collapsing socialist states, such industries will spring up to meet demand if the regime allows it.  They will allow it because the Cubans will demand it.

Financing the recreation of a freer property market is the easy part. 

Those prosperous Cubans who fled Cuba already legally pump more than $1 billion a year into the Cuban economy (and black market) through remittances to family members.  Cubans from Miami, hearing of the potential for private ownership, have already staked out their favorite homes, farms and apartments to buy either directly or through family members.

Defenders of the Castro regime, especially the Left in the U.S., criticize the new reforms.  "Experts" fear, says the Los Angeles Times, a re-stratified society, the reemergence of the haves/have notes divide, the horror of "gentrification."  Yup, freedom and opportunity could be a downer.

For the people of Cuba, these reforms are but a taste of the life they yearn for, the life of hope and opportunity they see people enjoying in other countries, a life forbidden to them by the Castro regime for all these years.

What must the average Cuban, who has experienced not a "lost decade" but a lost lifetime, think of the U.S., the beacon of freedom and prosperity, turning now to national health care, government confiscation of private property, our President demonizing wealth creators and employers as the evil "rich."  Making the same mistakes, falling for the same propaganda that has enslaved Castro's Cuba.

Pay attention to Cuba.  Know its history under Castro.  Or be condemned to repeat that history here.

by Roger Hedgecock 

Source: Human Events 

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In Cuba, capitalism thrives on Craigslist-like sites

Even as the Cuban president, Raúl Castro, fumes over stumbling blocks placed by his own party bureaucracy to economic reforms, the internet is beginning to remove them one by one.

Castro appears to be meeting resistance from communist diehards – or more likely old-fashioned stick-in-the-muds – to his proposals that would allow private ownership in homes and cars, for example on the Communist island.

That simply is not a problem for a handful of internet sites that are, in effect, putting the reforms into practice.
One site, www.sepermuta.com, has been operating for some years, apparently from a base in Miami, and seems to be tolerated by the Cuban government. The site is based on the “permuta”, or “swap”, system.

All housing in Cuba is state-owned but swaps are allowed, as long as no money is exchanged. It has been an open secret for years in Havana, however, that often large sums have changed hands under the permuta system.

By allowing home ownership, Castro’s reforms will in effect legalise the black market in housing. But sepermuta.com has been quoting prices for years.

When beyondbrics checked out sepermuta.com, several of its features were unavailable because of “database errors”, whatever they might be. But some users’ comments were interesting.

One woman wrote that it was a wonderful site and “something I never imagined that ever existed in Cuba”. Where might she have been all those years?

Another pointed to the reality of any internet project in Cuba: access to the population is very restricted. “It’s really difficult to find someone where I work who has internet access and lets people like me get into the site,” wrote one.

Yet another reflected the absence, through unfamiliarity, of market tools that are normal in other countries but not in Cuba. “In Cuba we don’t seems to understand that ads for apartments should specify their size in floor space,” one cybernaut wrote.

“There are ads with five-bedroom apartments that turn out to have only 100 square meters. These must be just cubby holes, not bedrooms,” he or she snorted. “And there are other apartments of 200 square meters with only two bedrooms. Now that is really spacious but you wouldn’t know the difference from the ads.”
However, sepermuta.com is tame by compared with www.revolico.com, the market leader in every sense of the word. In Cuban Spanish a “revolico” is a bit of a mess. The anonymous organisers of the website admit that it is a mess, “but an organized mess”.

Revolico, which is also based in Miami and has frequently been blocked in Cuba, offers a market in everything from homes, cars, casual sexual encounters, language classes … you name it.

Most of what is on offer is not legal – not yet anyway – though some is tolerated. A photo of a $30 a night apartment on offer to foreigners in central Havana gives a glimpse of a comfortable lifestyle not shared by the Cubans whose rather spartan homes that a beyondbrics correspondent visited on his last trip to the island.
Meanwhile, Raúl Castro appears to be exasperated at the internal opposition to his reforms. In a televised speech on Monday, after days of confabs with party and government leaders, he berated the “psychological barrier to change that is created by inertia”.

And he added: “Not for the first time, I’d say that our worst enemy isn’t imperialism, much less those who get paid within Cuba by the imperialists to do their work for them. The worst enemy is failing to correct our very own errors.”

Maybe Castro could click on a couple of links to see how it’s done. Or maybe he already has.

by Ron Buchanan

Source: beyondbrics

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Cell phones and the cost of living in Cuba

Courtesy of Omar Santana.

When I first came to Cuba in 1995, cell phone service was so scarce that, after a meeting in which an official had flashed a cell phone from the podium, I turned to Abel Prieto, then the president of the writer’s union, and asked if he had one too.

“Oh, no,” he said, “I’m not high enough to be part of the celucracia.”

The cellucracy!

In later years, of course, Abel became the minister of culture and acquired a pocketful of cells, and I began to know people – rarely connected with government – who had one too. But the stories behind their cells were always complicated and strange.

The reason was that Cuba did not allow its citizens to legally own cell phones until 2008. That’s right, 2008 – 45 years after its invention, Cubans finally got a chance to own a cell.

Prior to that, to have a cell phone meant you were either very high in or very important to the government, or you had an European or Canadian connection – a foreigner willing to get a phone and cell service in her name and let you use it. It was an exclusive club, and pulling a cell out in public elicited envy, awe, and not a little bit of fear.

After 2008, though, cell phones have become ubiquitous. The lowliest delivery boy has one attached to his belt. That is not, of course, in and of itself surprising. Like in so much of the Third World, cell service in Cuba doesn’t require the wait for a land line, which can be months or even years. If you have the right kind of apparatus, you can sign up for service on the same day.

But what is curious is the chasm between the cost of cellular service and the official Cuban monthly salary.

You see, after you pay the $30 CUCs – Cuba’s convertible peso, which is at about 0.87 per U.S. dollar – to establish a cell line, you need to buy phone cards to charge the phones at approximately 45 centavos a minute, or about 50 US cents.

This means that cell phone usage in Cuba isn’t casual. It’s about location, or getting someone to drop a key from a higher floor to open a lobby door, or to ask someone to get to a landline for a real conversation. Cell phones, of course, also facilitate texts, which has been a boon for dissidents and their responders, both groups which have taken to Twitter like an addiction.

But how, you might ask, can a Cuban earning between $15 and $20 USD a month pay such a steeply priced cell service? The answer is that, at least officially, they can’t.

And this is where the Cuban government, regardless of its staunch public posture against corruption (especially under Raul Castro), colludes with and counts on the country’s rich black market. Because, really, otherwise how can a Cuban earning $15-$20 USD a month have cell service that ends up being twice that?

Cell service is one of the many things that, prior to Raul, had been illegal but not uncommon for Cubans. In fact, many of his so-called reforms have been merely bringing into legality what had become common illegal practice: among other things, access for Cuban citizens to hotels, access to car rentals, access to DVD rental of foreign films, access to markets for individual farmers and artisans, and the ability to run a legal business, especially in sales or personal services.

In the case of the cell service, the government assumes its citizens are getting their funds from abroad or through illegal means. As a friend of mine explained, it’s Cuba’s version of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: The government agrees not to question source of income so long as the citizen agrees to pay the exorbitant fee.

Added my friend: “It’s not exactly like we have a choice anyway.”

by Achy Obejas

 

Source: WBEZ

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Cuba: united opposition launches a new political platform

Still divided, the Cuban opposition presented to the press on Wednesday a new political platform called “The Way of the People”, presented by some as a project of “democratic transition” and by others as simply a “common position” .

More than fourty opposition leaders and former political prisoners of various currents and trends have endorsed this document proposes a “national dialogue”, “new laws”, a “referendum”, and remains open to new members.

Developed by Oswaldo Paya, leader of the Christian Liberation Movement and Sakharov Prize 2002 of the European Parliament, the document proposes to “establish a genuine national dialogue and to initiate an inclusive process of change.”

Among the signatories are the best-known opponents: Guillermo Fariñas, Sakharov Prize 2010 and led dozens of hunger strikes, Laura Pollan, leader of the Ladies in White, a group of wives and relatives of political prisoners-, liberal economist Martha Beatriz Roque, the Social Democrat Manuel Cuesta Morua or Elizardo Sanchez, the leader of the Cuban Commission of Human Rights, tolerated by the authorities.

Former political prisoners as Felix Navarro, Angel Moya, Guido Sigler and José Daniel Ferrer also among the signatories of the platform.

“The document was drafted by the signatories, and I am sure it is viable and necessary because the message is for all the people of Cuba,” he told AFP Oswaldo Paya.

In a “basic proposal”, the document calls for new legal provisions guaranteeing freedom of speech, press, association, worship, internal and external migration, and the right of citizens to run for public office.

Opponents also offer “a referendum for the people to decide sovereignly changes” constitutional and legal and paves the way for “citizen participation on this journey of change.”

Similarly, the signatories want the organization to “a national dialogue and free elections for all public office and for a Constituent Assembly.”

“More than a political project, I think it is mainly to express the will to establish a common position in specific circumstances,” he told AFP Manuel Cuesta Morua.

For Elizardo Sanchez, the document “provides a set of ideas that open a field for reflection, but it is not a proposal for a transition.” “This is a positive contribution to think the time of transition when it comes,” he added.

In half a century of communist rule in Cuba, opponents, considered by authorities as “mercenaries” in the pay of the United States have developed various projects and proposals for transition, all gone unheeded.

The best known, the “Varela Project”, named after a 19th century priest-independence, also developed and supported by Oswaldo Paya, was as a petition for a referendum on popular initiative. Presented to Parliament in 2002, the project has been buried by the assembly that wrote into the constitution the character “irrevocable” of socialism in Cuba.

The Cuban authorities, under the presidency of Raul Castro has launched in the spring a series of economic reforms designed to prevent the bankruptcy of a system modeled on the Soviet Union of the seventies, do not listen to proposals from dissidents and highlight the changes are also aimed at strengthening the system.

by Sandeep

Source: PISQA 

The whole document (in Spanish)

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Cuba to allow foreigners, migrants to buy and sell homes

"For Sale"

The Cuban government is to allow private individuals, including foreign residents and Cubans who moved abroad, to buy and sell homes and cars by the end of the year, the Communist Party daily Granma said Friday.

The Council of Ministers made the decision last weekend, as it sought to build on the economic recommendations made by the recent Communist Party Congress.

'The agreements that were made by the Congress will not be shelved away,' Cuban President Raul Castro was quoted in Granma as saying to government officials.

Castro has long insisted on the need for economic reform in communist Cuba, particularly to strengthen the private sector. He sees this as the best way to overcome the serious financial difficulties that currently affect the country.

Cubans who live on the island and foreigners with permanent residence within its borders will now be allowed to buy, sell, exchange or donate homes.

'It will be possible to transfer to partners, ex partners and relatives to a fourth degree of kinship the homes belonging to Cuban individuals who leave the country for good, as long as they have permanently lived with the owner for five years,' the report said.

The new policy, according to Granma, seeks among others 'to contribute to solving the home-deficit problem' in Cuba.

Source: M&C

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Raul Castro completes the octogenarian club to rejuvenate Cuban leadership

Cuban President Raul Castro turned 80 on Friday, vowing to rejuvenate the country's aging leadership and its sagging economy.
 
No official events took place as he joins Cuba's club of octogenarians, which already boasts his brother Fidel Castro, 84, and his second in charge, Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, who is 80.

At a recent summit of the Communist Party, Castro said one of his last duties as head of government would be to pave the way for successors.

“Today we face the consequences of not having a reserve of adequately prepared substitutes, with the experience and maturity to assume the new and complex work of leading the party, the state and the government,” he said.

But on Thursday when seeing off former Brazilian president Lula da Silva, Raúl insisted it was a shame he could not retire because he was less than half way through the first of two possible five-year terms, thus hinting he would stand again for the presidency in 2013.

If he were to retire his presumed successors are of the same generation -- vice-president Jose Ramon Machado is also 80, and close confidant Ramiro Valdes is 79.

However in a radical break from the past, Castro has paved the way for more private enterprise, encouraging Cubans to open small businesses and pay taxes on their endeavors.

Cubans have bought more than 200,000 licenses allowing them to go into business for themselves since last October. At the same time, Castro announced massive layoffs in the state sector that will eventually mean the elimination of more than 1 million jobs.

Reform has reached agriculture where families are allowed to farm their plots and sell directly to consumers at market prices. Cuba with ample farmland to feed its population is desperate to cut its imported food bill, mostly from the US and Brazil and which is two billion US dollars per annum.

In that line of action the scheme of free lunches for almost everybody has been gradually abolished and will be limited to the really needy.

Even when there were no plans to mark Raul 80th birthday on Friday, officials anticipated that a grand celebrations is programmed for his elder brother Fidel's 85th in August. Former president Lula da Silva was in Cuba where he met with both Castro brothers, Raul and Fidel, to visit the construction of the Mariel port, 43 kilometres west of Havana. The port restructuring was subsided with a US$ 300 million credit line awarded during Lula da Silva’s term. Lula reported to be “happy” with his trip and his meeting with the Castros.

Source: MercoPress

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Communist jalopy creeps to capitalism

The "good" old times are over long time ago.

The communist utopia that Fidel Castro hoped to bring to Cuba with the revolution he led more than 50 years ago has, from all indications, collapsed into a stifling stasis for everyday Cubans.

Most live in the same abode from birth to death, and struggle to maintain either rickety cars imported from the Soviet Union more than two decades ago, or 1950s-era jalopies that, on these shores, would be wheeled out at classic car shows. Few new products or ideas enter Cuba, thanks in part to America's long-running economic embargo, and few Cubans ever see the world beyond their island thanks to Byzantine travel restrictions.

Anyone who is waiting on the edge of their seat for the regime to fall should probably lean back and get comfortable - a popular uprising like those that brought down totalitarian governments from East Germany to Egypt doesn't appear to be in the offing. But there are some indications that Cuba's rulers are opening the door, a tiny bit, to some economic reforms.

A Communist Party gathering in April approved new guidelines that would allow Cubans to buy and sell houses and cars on a limited basis, let private farmers use state land and, possibly, let cooperatives bypass the maze of state bureaucracy and send their products straight to consumers.

While it's barely American-style, go-go capitalism, it's at least a start. Like a stubborn music buff who refuses to part with his eight-track tapes, Cuba is one of the few remaining communist regimes in the world, and the day when it also crumbles seems an inevitability. One can't help believing that we could help hasten its demise by lifting the economic embargo that has been in effect since the Kennedy administration.

Exposure to other cultures and ways of life has proven to be the undoing of other iron-fisted regimes before, and that's why your garden-variety dictator is reluctant to see satellite dishes sprout up on the sides of those drab apartment buildings that seem to be the hallmark of totalitarian societies. As the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once pointed out, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."

Source: Observer Reporter

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AP Report on Cuba's May Day Reads Mostly Like Castro Propaganda Piece

Where are the changes? Photo Courtesy of Gonzalo Obes.

The guess here is Associated Press writers Peter Orsi and Andrea Rodriguez believe their May Day dispatch from Cuba represents an example of objectivity and insightful analysis. Anyone with knowledge of how a country under the iron grip of a five-decade Communist dictatorship really operates would beg to differ.

The AP pair leaves readers with the impression that although Cubans are impatient to learn the details of the economic changes the government has passed but not revealed, they are generally supportive of whatever improvements might occur -- as if anyone in the island nation is really free to speak their mind.

Readers might be able to determine for themselves that a decidedly unfree situation exists, but Orsi and Rodriguez ignored a Radio Marti report (translated here by Google's translator, and probably more accurately here by Babalu Blog) that the government launched a wave of repression in advance of May Day to ensure that there would be no disruption of its planned events. The AP pair only needed to cite the report without endorsing it; that they wouldn't even do this betrays either ignorance or a willingness to let readers believe completely unsupported assertions about potential improvement in a country that is the third most economically repressive regime on earth according to the Heritage Foundation's 2011 Index of Economic Freedom. Of the countries evaluated, only Zimbabwe and North Korea were worse.

Here are selected paragraphs from Orsi's and Rodriguez's report (numbered tags are mine):

Cubans mark May Day, await details of change

Hundreds of thousands of Cubans marched through Havana and other cities on Sunday to mark May Day in a demonstration touted as a vast show of support for economic changes recently approved by the Communist Party - even though the people holding placards and shouting slogans haven't seen the details yet. [1]

Nearly two weeks after the party endorsed President Raul Castro's bet to fix the island's broken economy through limited free-market reforms, the government has not released specifics of the 311-point guidelines, or said when it will do so.

The parade, always a big event on the communist-run island, has nevertheless been touted by the official party newspaper, Granma, as "the best chance for Cuban workers to ratify ... their backing for the accords." [2]

... Still, many in Havana said they were impatient to see the actual details of the changes.

"I would like to know what the guidelines have that's new, because so far it seems to be a lot of noise and nothing concrete," said Manuel Pedrosi, 56, who was just a small boy when Fidel and Raul Castro's revolution succeeded in 1959. "But if we've waited 50 years, we can wait a little longer."

The economic measures approved unanimously and en bloc at a party summit April 19 include potential blockbusters that would open a door in the island's tightly controlled economic system, such as legalizing the buying and selling of private property and providing bank credit to finance small businesses. [3]

... While Cubans have generally welcomed the economic overhaul, some expressed impatience with the lack of clarity. Some say they are anxious to go into business for themselves or buy a home big enough to accommodate their family, but are waiting to see the ground rules.

Others are nervous about plans - shelved for the time being - to lay off hundreds of thousands of state workers, and to gradually phase out the ration book, which provides Cubans with a basic basket of food at greatly subsidized prices. [4]

"This can't wait. Everyone is going to benefit in one way or another because there will be a little more freedom to do as you like with what's yours," said Yordanka Rodriguez, a 45-year-old Havana resident. "We just have to see what the terms are like. Until that happens, it's hard to judge accurately." [5]

Notes:

• [1] -- Omitted, as reported by Radio Marti: The government planned to "transport thousands of Cubans to the "Plaza of the Revoution" to celebrate the International Day of Workers." It would appear that the people aren't sufficiently fired up about the situation to come out and "celebrate" without "encouragement."
• [2] -- So that's how it works. The government buses in "celebrants," and, voila (or, in Spanish, "como si por magia, or "as if by magic), their presence represents endorsement of laws they know nothing about.
• [3] -- Given that they haven't seen it, it's interesting that the AP reporters seem to be able to describe what's in it. If they can't, they should have written that "the economic measures ... potentially include blockbusters" instead of claiming that they "include potential blockbusters." As to private property, Orsi himself reported on April 27 that "(Raul Castro) drew a line in the Caribbean sand as to which reforms should remain, telling party luminaries that he had rejected dozens of suggested reforms that would have allowed the concentration of property in private hands." I would welcome an explanation from Mr. Orsi as to how one can "buy and sell" private property without "accumulating" it.
• [4] -- Context, guys. An item posted by Bush administration Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez notes that, "Today, the average Cuban lives on $20 a month and relies on government ration cards" (calling this "living" is a stretch).
• [5] -- This strained quote is the final paragraph of the report. Unless he is a party insider, Mr. Yordanko Rodriguez can't possibly know that "everyone is going to benefit" or "that there will be a little more freedom." But despite the lack of any evidence, less experienced readers will come away from the AP report believing that this is the case.

Interesting. That last point echoes the reporting about Obamacare just over a year ago.

By Tom Blumer

Source: NewsBusters

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Cuba: Bloggers Reflect on Reforms at Communist Party Congress

The sixth congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), which was held in Havana from April 16 - 19, may have marked a major turning point for the Cuban economic system, and for Cuban society at large.

As detailed by the BBC, party members approved measures to institute term limits for top party and government leaders, legalize home ownership and sales, and restructure state salaries so that they will be determined in part by the amount and quality of labor performed by workers.

While many US and European news organizations viewed the changes as a great stride towards a market economy, with headlines like “Havana frees up markets—with a caveat” (The Miami Herald) and “Raúl Castro apuesta por reformar la economía y el Partido Comunista en el VI Congreso” [es] [“Raúl Castro is committed to reforming the economy and the Communist Party at the VI Congress”] (El Pais), the rhetoric of the congress itself demonstrated a commitment to strengthening and modernizing, but not marketizing, Cuban socialism.

Bloggers in Cuba, and those who follow Cuba from other parts of the world, offered a diverse range of reactions.

Deisy Francis Mexidor, author of Kimbombo que resbala [es], asked various Cubans for their opinions on the proposed changes. Many were enthusiastic about the ideas proposed, but concerned about how they would be implemented. A journalism student interviewed by Mexidor commented that,

"[La] cuestión es cómo se logrará mantener el socialismo como proyecto sin caer en la economía de mercado.

The question is how we’ll be able to maintain the socialist project without becoming a market economy.

Another interviewee, the manager of a state-owned business, remarked,

"[D]ebemos ser capaces de lograr una mayor productividad, de bajar los gastos y hacer las cosas con mayor eficiencia, de lo contrario no se puede hablar de elevar salarios.

We should be able to achieve greater productivity, to lower production costs, and to do things with greater efficiency—if we can’t do this, we cannot talk about raising salaries."

Pedazos de la isla [es] interviewed various bloggers and journalists who are known for their criticism of the government, including Laritza Diversent, of Las leyes de Laritza [es]. Diversent noted that while some Cubans closely followed and opined on the Congress, many were ambivalent about the outcome because of the lack of progress in years past.

"Desde mi punto de vista el Congreso fue totalmente intranscendente, porque una cosa es lo que hablen ahí, y otra cosa es la que se haga. […] No hay una restructuración del partido o una restructuración democrática.

Pero nada de esto tiene ningún tipo de importancia entre los ciudadanos dentro de Cuba. No tiene ninguna importancia como yo creo que tiene afuera de Cuba. Por supuesto, es porque muy pocos cubanos le interesa la política, o no la entienden, precisamente por estos “va y bienes” de que hoy deciden algo, mañana deciden otra cosa, y entonces vuelven a cambiar. Por toda esta inseguridad nosotros no le hacemos ningún tipo de caso a ese Congreso.

From my point of view, the Congress was totally insignificant, because what they say is one thing, but what they do is another. There is no restructuring of the Party, nor is there democratic restructuring.

But none of this is important for the citizens of Cuba. It has no importance in comparison to the importance it has outside of Cuba. And this is precisely because very few Cubans are interested in politics, or they simply do not understand it. And they feel this way because of the “back and forth” of the government, while one day it says one thing, tomorrow it’ll say another, and so on. Because of this insecurity, we do not pay any attention to this Congress."

In the most radical change brought by the Congress, Raúl Castro himself proposed that top-level positions be limited to two, five-year terms. He emphasized the need for current leaders to encourage and educate younger politicians who would ultimately form the next generation of government on the island, and lamented the party’s inability to do this in the past. Contrary to this rhetoric, the party has elected the now 80 year-old Jose Machado Ventura, former party secretary and an original member of the July 26th Brigade, to the vice presidential seat that was left empty when Raúl took leadership of the country in 2008.

The irony of this choice has been criticized by Cubans on various sides of the political spectrum. Blogger Rogelio Díaz, author of Bubusopía [es] criticized the government’s inability to move forward, in spite of the consensus that this will be the only way for the original revolutionaries to build a sustainable legacy.

"[Lo] más preocupante es que [el liderazgo] todavia está en manos de los mismos sujetos estancadores de todo lo bueno y dinámico y prometedor y renovador y revolucionario de etapas anteriores.

The most worrisome part is that leadership is still in the hands of the same, now stagnating, originators of the great and dynamic and promising and innovative and revolutionary developments of past eras."

Octavo Cerco’s Claudia Cadelo [es] expressed a similar sentiment, writing that the implementation of the economic and political reforms agreed upon by the Congress could only move forward with new leadership in place.

"[Raúl] sabe, tiene que saberlo, que sus promesas sólo se cumplirán cuando él ya no esté en el Comité Central, cuando ya no sea el Primer Secretario de ningún partido, cuando verdaderamente una nueva ola de cargos públicos asuma los poderes.

[Raúl] knows, he has to know, that his promises will be fulfilled only when he is no longer on the Central Committee, when he is no longer First Secretary of any party, when a truly new wave of public officials assume power."

Ellery Roberts Biddle

Source: Global Voices

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Acts of bravado hardly the panacea for failed states

Mugabe and Castro, two losers in power for decades.

Lots of my friends studied in Cuba. When they returned after four years on the Caribbean Island they waxed lyrical about the great revolutionary Fidel Castro. None of them had anything bad to say about him. One of my greatest wishes therefore was to meet this great icon before he or I died. Now because of his poor health this might not be possible or even necessary!

It has become clear in the past few months that my friends had been allowed to see, or had not been inquisitive enough to discover, what was really happening in Cuba. They were beneficiaries of Castro’s magnanimity and our own government encouraged a view of the island that was beyond reproach.

But I had my own fears. A few years ago the high-profile defection of two Cuban doctors working in Zimbabwe had awakened in the minds of even the least sceptical that “everything was but what it was not”.

Last September Castro confirmed in his own words that his economic model no longer worked even for Cuba.

He told Jeffrey Goldberg, a writer for the Atlantic Monthly magazine that “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.”

Even in that statement Castro was being economic with the truth. Soviet-style socialism never worked for Cuba in the 50 years that he was forcing it upon his country.

A week ago Castro’s party, the Communist Party of Cuba, was meeting to discuss a raft of reforms that would, it was hoped, transform the country into a modern state and, more importantly, save the moribund party.

That meeting coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs.

On April 17 1961 about 1 300 exiles, armed with US weapons, landed at the Bay of Pigs on the southern coast of Cuba. Hoping to find support from the local population, they intended to cross the island to Havana.

It was evident from the first hours of fighting that the exiles were likely to lose.

President JF Kennedy had the option of using the US Air Force against the Cubans but decided against it. Consequently, the invasion was stopped by Castro’s army.

By the time the fighting ended on April 19, 90 exiles had been killed and the rest had been taken as prisoners. The invasion made Castro wary of the US. He was convinced that the Americans would try to take over the island again. From the Bay of Pigs on, Castro had an increased fear of a US incursion on Cuban soil.

This was a heroic moment for Cuba for successfully defending its sovereignty but it also defined how Cuba was to operate in the next half century.

Because of the paranoia that resulted from the Bay of Pigs episode Cuba has been defined by little acts of bravado that brought economic stasis.

In the interview with Goldberg Castro even criticised his own actions during another little act of bravado, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when he urged the Soviet Union to launch nuclear weapons against the United States, telling Goldberg “it wasn’t worth it at all”.

How many other acts of the Communist Party of Cuba were not worth it at all? Sports boycotts, for example, were they worth it? And these were many.

For political reasons, Cuba boycotted the 2002 Central American and Caribbean Games in San Salvador, El Salvador. In 1987, Cuba did not compete at the Women’s World Junior Volleyball Championships in Seoul (South Korea). The reason: there were no diplomatic relations between Cuba and South Korea.

For political reasons, Cuba did not send a baseball team to the 27th Baseball World Cup in South Korea in 1982. Cuba boycotted the 1988 Olympic Games in South Korea.

Cuba sent only seven athletes to the 2007 World University Games in Thailand, heeding Fidel Castro’s fears about future defections. But the 1991 Pan American Games were held in Havana in which 39 countries participated. It is reported the Games were a huge source of pride for Castro.

Castro has been replaced as the leader of the Communist Party by his younger brother Raul who is trying to lead reforms, the major hitch though is that Raul himself is 79 years old and his vice José Ramón Machado Ventura, is an 80-year-old veteran of the revolution.

What this means is that although Raul is urging both political and economic reform, Cuba will for a while longer remain in the clutches of the same leadership that has failed to move it forward in the past 50 years.

One factor that stands out is that among Raul’s proposed reforms is not the opening of political space to other political parties. His major reform is that presidential terms would be limited to two five-year terms. This will not personally affect him for it will allow him to remain at the helm until 2018 when he will be 86.

A Cuban independent economist is quoted saying that term limits won’t “resolve our essential problem, which is the monopoly on power by a group whose policies have failed for 50 years.”

But Raul does not see this; he wants to stick with the same geriatric leadership instead of inviting competing opinion:
“Today, we are faced with the consequences of not having a reserve of well-trained replacements with sufficient experience and maturity to undertake the new and complex leadership responsibilities in the Party, the State and the Government,” he said at his party congress.

What is clear from the Cuban fiasco is that eventually it is not the little acts of bravado that will stand a country in good stead on the world stage but its cultural software. By cultural software I refer to a country’s exploits in the arts, in sport and in initiatives that encourage national and world peace.

South Africa, for example, has taken its place on the world stage because of the efforts of liberation icon Nelson Mandela, when he was still able to bring peace to the world after he reunited his own people who had just emerged from apartheid. The leaders that followed him are also engaged in peace-building initiatives on the African continent. But also importantly, its hosting of the Rugby World Cup and the Fifa World Cup have made it a giant on the world stage.

In Zimbabwe Zanu PF’s little acts of bravado have not moved the country forward. Gukurahundi, Murambatsvina, chaotic land reform, pulling out of the Commonwealth and alienating the country from the West have already brought untold suffering on the common people.

When will President Mugabe meet his Damascus moment and ask himself: “Is his model working for us anymore?”

By Nevanji Madanhire

Source: The Standard

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Viva la revolucion? Cuba to remove sugar subsidies

In another measure designed to reduce the state’s control of the economy and promote private enterprise, the Communist government of Cuba announced it will liberalize the sale of sugar, after subsidizing its price for decades.

According to Juventud Rebelde, the state-controlled newspaper, sugar will "gradually" be sold in shops and supermarkets where it can fetch a higher price.

"The liberalized sale of sugar, both in its refined and raw variety, is an expected and necessary decision, above all for the successful development of the self-employed sector," Juventud Rebelde stated.

In addition, the price of imported rice will climb by more than 40 percent.

Phasing out of food price subsidies will relieve the burden of the cash-poor government. (Ironically, governments in several Arab nations, including Jordan, are increasing such subsidies to appease their people).

President Raul Castro (Fidel’s brother) has ushered in a series of sweeping economic changes since last summer, including the layoff of 1-million public sector workers and liberalization of rules governing small businesses and self-employment. As a result, thousands of Cubans have applied for licenses to establish their own businesses.

From: IB Times

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The Tunisian Revolution As Seen By Cuba

Game over for Ali. Who's next?

The Tunisian Revolution did not echo only in the Arab world, but also in Latin America. After the fall of the former Tunisian President Ben Ali, the Mexican paper "La Mañana" wrote that this was a "clear message to the other authoritarian leaders in the world: a dictator fell and sooner or later the other dictators will also follow the same fate. The op-ed stresses that regimes such as the one in La Havana are now feeling uncertain, and anxious that similar protests could also explode in their countries. Cuban dissidents, too, see many similarities, especially between the Castro regime, in power for more the fifty years, and the dictatorship in Tunisia, which for 23 years had been pillaging the country.

In Tunisia, as in Cuba, there are more than a million exiled people, and a frustrated youth with high-education, but no employment. In Tunisia, there are pockets of real poverty, particularly in the interior regions, such as Sidi Bouzid and Kasserine, where the revolt started. The unemployment rate is 14.7%, for a population of ten and a half million. Further, salaries for manual labor are unbearably low: having a job does not always avoid having a miserable life.

In Cuba, with a population similar to Tunisia's -- around 11 million, -- an administrative chaos reigns. Even though, as the Associated Press reports, unemployment is minuscule -- it has not risen above 3% in eight years -- the official data ignore "thousands of Cubans who are not looking for jobs that pay monthly salaries worth only $20 a month on average."

Tunisia was a police state, as Cuba still is. During Ben Ali's regime, policemen in plain clothes and network of spies were everywhere. Outside a supermarket in Tunis, you could even see a shoeshine pull out a big walkie-talkie, like those in use with the police, and talk to somebody clearly not his wife. After a while, in Tunisia, you are under the impression that Big Brother is always watching you.

In Cuba, it is the same. As reported on the State Department website: "Cuba is a totalitarian police state which relies on repressive methods to maintain control. These methods include intense physical and electronic surveillance of both Cuban citizens and foreign visitors."

Further, in Tunisia, as in any dictatorship, public order was implemented with force -- all too often excessive force - without taking into account torture practices used behind closed doors and in prisons, as many witnesses have recounted during the last few days. Once, you could even seen a beggar without legs being harshly taken away, and the person who accompanied him being repeatedly punched in the head. Such unnecessary violence was a standard practice.

In Cuba, Human Rights Watch reports, conditions in prisons are inhuman, and political prisoners suffer additional degrading treatment and torture. The dissident website Cubanet writes that "day and night, the screams of tormented women [in prison] in panic and desperation who cry for God's mercy fall upon the deaf ears of prison authorities. They are confined to narrow cells with no sunlight called 'drawers' that have cement beds, a hole on the ground for their bodily needs, and are infested with a multitude of rodents, roaches, and other insects".

Tunisia, like Cuba, was also a country with no freedom of press. One of the main dailies, in French, La Presse, contained only a list of presidential activities and praise and applauses for the regime's personalities. Even the foreign press was kept under control. There was also the problem of corruption -- that does not exempt the Socialist Cuba. In Tunisia, not only there was a rampant corruption from the members of the government-for-life, but even the President's family was one of the main actors in robbing the country. The President's wife, Leila Trabelsi, fled Tunisia after having taken 1.5 tons of gold from the Central Bank; and her family had been borrowing money from the bank at an interest of 0.25 per thousand (not per cent, which would already be negligible, but per thousand).

The only difference from Cuba is that Tunisia was considered by many Western governments as a "moderate" country, seen as a buttress against Islamism. Although Ben Ali himself used religion to give credibility to his regime, under his dictatorship Islamism grew as it represented the only real and strong opposition. Cuba instead lives under an embargo.

In the meantime, while the Tunisians are still fighting for their freedoms, hoping that the future will not be uncertain, in Cuba the opponents to the regime write that the "Jasmine Revolution" has renewed their hopes.

This new hope is why the Cuban government pretends that almost nothing has happened in Tunisia: it fears similar protests. The media outlet, Diario de Cuba, writes that every year Ben Ali would send messages to La Havana to congratulate it for the anniversary of its triumphant Revolución. Even this year, in the midst of the protests, on January 6, Ben Ali expressed his desire to serve the interests of these two friendly countries. However, "there was not even one line in the Cuban press on the fall of the 'friend' Ben Ali. And until now, we could not enjoy one of those farsighted 'reflections'[1] by Fidel Castro illustrating the subject. What a pity!"

[1] Op-eds that the Cuban leader writes almost weekly, under the title Reflexiones de Fidel

by Anna Mahjar-Barducci

From: Hudson New York

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Cuban Catholic magazine says no reason to fear "new rich"

HAVANA – The magazine of the Cuban Catholic Church believes that the creation of wealth and the rise of a “new rich” class as a result of economic reforms being promoted on the communist-ruled island should be accepted by society without fear, though it does represent a “challenge.”

The Web site Palabra Nueva published Friday an article by its editor, Orlando Marquez, which under the title “Without Fear of Riches” reflects on some possible consequences of expanding private employment and replacing egalitarianism with an equality of opportunities.

“The creation of wealth and the coming of the ‘new rich’ could bring the challenge of a different ethical and legal order, but widespread poverty is no less of a challenge or danger to our society,” Marquez says.

Society will be more secure when citizens achieve a standard of living consonant with their abilities and ambitions, while doing no harm to others, he says.

“To procure a wealthier country with honesty and transparency is a necessity in this world. If the conditions and resources are there, aspiring to anything less is a sign of pitiful mediocrity,” the article says.

“We might see some Cubans who are richer and others who are poorer, at least until the waters reach their level. And what a paradox, the difference could be diminished by socializing wealth by means of a tax policy that makes those who have the most contribute to those with the least,” it says.

The adjective “rich” in Cuba has taken on an “unmerited negative significance,” according to Orlando Marquez, who says that “evil is neither in wealth nor in poverty but in the way we live with these realities and in the honesty and goodness of our lives, whether rich or poor.”

The director of Palabra Nueva appears convinced that the “inevitable and difficult” adjustments being undertaken in Cuba could take the country on a better road, and warns that in the future even more reforms may be required.

“Maybe we will need new rules or further updating of the economic model, and it is very probable that we will also need a new, modernized political class driven by a healthy national pride, observing a just rule of law and without fear of wealth,” the article says.

The Raul Castro government has undertaken a plan of adjustments designed to “modernize the socialist economic model” in order to overcome the crisis that has afflicted the island for decades.

The most important measures consist of expanding private employment, the elimination of 500,000 jobs in the public sector this year, and the elimination of “unnecessary” subsidies, among others. EFE

From: Latin American Herald Tribune

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