En nombre de Adriana...

En nombre de Adriana Pérez O´Conor, la esposa de Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, y en el de más de 4 millones de federadas cubanas, que como ella no pueden entender este nuevo ensañamiento vengativo, feroz, del Departamento de Estado, que precisamente el día en que cumplían 21 años de casados y por décima vez, acaba de denegarle la solicitud de visado para encontrarse con su esposo, derecho reconocido a toda persona encarcelada en ese país, para ver a sus familiares todos los meses; en nombre de la razón y la dignidad humanas, llamamos a las mujeres del mundo.
Les pedimos que compartan con nosotras el reclamo y la denuncia de este nuevo atentado a la justicia, este acto de extrema violencia, de inaudita crueldad que se hace contra una mujer, por el solo hecho de ser cubana y de tratarse de la esposa de un héroe, un consecuente luchador por la tranquilidad, la seguridad y la felicidad de su pueblo.
En septiembre se cumplirán once años del permanente estado de angustia en que Adriana vive, sometida a un verdadero proceso de tortura física y afectiva, como si con ello se pretendiera destruir sus esperanzas y sentimientos. Una cubana que en ningún lugar del mundo, ni en su país, ni en los Estados Unidos, ha cometido delito alguno.
Su vida transcurre en medio de la tristeza, recibiendo un castigo por un crimen que nunca cometió. Como si fuera poco tanto sufrimiento, ahora ha sido perversamente acusada, nada más y nada menos que por la Secretaria de Estado de la potencia económica y militar más poderosa de la Tierra, como una persona que "amenaza a la estabilidad y seguridad nacional de los Estados Unidos".
Adriana todavía no puede convencerse de tamaña falacia jurídica, más inadmisible aun cuando tal criterio procede de una mujer, Hillary Clinton, considerada además como una destacada jurista. Supuestamente, con su nivel intelectual y político, debía ser capaz de sensibilizarse por humanas situaciones, como las de una esposa que durante más de diez años le ha sido negado el derecho de ver a su compañero en la vida, de intercambiar con él, de apoyarlo en las difíciles circunstancias que atraviesa, de compartir el cariño y el amor que mutuamente se profesan.
Las mujeres cubanas estamos con Adriana, y no renunciaremos a esta batalla para que pueda reencontrarse con Gerardo y para esperar juntas su pronto retorno a la Patria. Por ello nuevamente apelamos a las mujeres del mundo, especialmente a las norteamericanas, desde las más sencillas esposas, hermanas, hijas, hasta las grandes funcionarias de los más altos niveles del país, a revertir esta absurda e inhumana negativa de visa. Solo demandamos el respeto a los derechos de Adriana, solo pedimos que se escuche su voz, y la de sus hermanas cubanas, que claman por el imperio de la justicia y la razón.

Federación de Mujeres Cubanas



AGAINST THE CURRENT/Cockroft -
Cuba: The Transition to Socialistm
— James D. Cockcroft
IN HIS JANUARY,2009 speech commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the triumph ofthe Cuban Revolution, President Raúl Castro, known popularly as Raúl, repeatedFidel’s oft-quoted 2005 speech to University of Havana students: “This nationcan self-destruct… those who can’t destroy it are them [the U.S. imperialists];we, yes, we can destroy it and it would be our fault.”
Raúl reminded “tomorrow’s leaders” that they must not forget that “this is theRevolution of the humble, for the humble, and by the humble” and that leaders’militancy “impedes their destroying the party.” He warned of the dangers posedby U.S. imperialism, saying that future leaders must not “become soft with thesiren songs of the enemy” and must “remain conscious that, in its essence, [theenemy] will never cease to be aggressive, domineering and treacherous.”(1)
Nonetheless, Raúl is open to dialogue with the Obama government so long asCuba’s national sovereignty is respected. He has offered to exchange allimprisoned Cuban (US-funded) “dissidents” for the “Cuban 5” — five Cubanpatriots unjustly imprisoned in 1998 for having infiltrated Florida-basedterrorist groups to protect Cuba from terrorist acts like the bombing of aHavana hotel that took the life of an Italian tourist in 1997.
Self-confessed CIA-trained terrorist Luis Posada Carriles — who masterminded thehotel bombing and the 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner en route to Cubafrom Venezuela that killed all 73 people aboard — walks free in Miami while theCuba 5 remain in prison. Ten and a half years after their imprisonment, two oftheir wives are still denied U.S. visas to visit them.
Obama’s defense of the 47-year-old U.S. trade embargo “to press for democraticreforms” is unacceptable to Cuba and the rest of Latin America. That embargo andU.S.-sponsored acts of terrorism, including biological warfare, have cost Cuba$100 billion, killed 3,478 people, and maimed 2,099. Nor has Obama renounced the“Commission for a Free Cuba” reports of 2004 and 2006 calling for the overthrowof the Cuban government. In 2008 the U.S. government budgeted $47 million todestroy the Revolution.
For Cubans, major goals in the early 21st century of their fifty-year-oldprocess of transition to new forms and practices of revolutionary socialisminclude the following publicly proclaimed ones:
• streamline ministries consistent with constitutionally secured socialism(2)and reduce excessive, inefficient bureaucracy
• overcome economic/social problems deriving from the heightened classdifferences of the 1990s when former Soviet bloc trade collapsed
• eliminate the “double currency system” introduced in the 1990s of a nationalpeso one-twenty-fourth the value of a convertible peso (roughly equal to a euro)and the consequent black market and deformation of wage and price systems(3)
• defend national sovereignty, fortify national unity, and consolidate andexpand Cuban acts of international solidarity
• facilitate family visits from the United States and trips abroad for Cubans
• reform the PCC (Cuban Communist Party) at its Sixth National Congress in late2009, there being no pre-established models of socialism (the Fourth and FifthParty Congresses in 1991 and 1997 also introduced reforms).State Restructuring and Streamlining
In his address to the newly elected National Assembly of People’s Power onFebruary 24, 2008, Raúl issued one of his frequent calls for meetings of tradeunions, student federations, women’s groups, municipal councils, and otherorganizations to draw up lists of popular demands to help create a more“functional structure with fewer agencies under the Central State Administrationand a better distribution of their duties.”
Earlier, in September-October 2007, in a typical Cuban way, more than 5 millionof Cuba’s 11.5 million people attended such meetings and offered more than amillion concrete proposals. On March 3, 2009, after another year of massmeetings (interrupted in late 2008 by three devastating hurricanes doingunprecedented economic damage to housing and crops), the Council of Stateannounced a state restructuring.
There were “movements of cadres” and nine new ministers took office in two fewerministries (owing to the mergers of the Foreign Trade and Foreign Investmentministries and the Food and Fishing ministries). The changes were meant to beginto tackle some of society’s problems by reducing the number of bureaucrats andstreamlining ministries and agencies involved with economic planning.
Almost all the new ministers were promotions from within the administration, andmany came from a relatively younger generation who since the 1990s had beenassuming leadership positions. Three were women, one of whom was of peasantorigin.
One new minister and one key cadre change were drawn from the military.Brigadier General Salvador Pardo Cruz became Minister of the Iron, Steel andHeavy Machinery Industry, one of many economic areas with strong input from theFAR (Revolutionary Armed Forces). Major General José Amado Ricardo Guerrareplaced Council of Ministers secretary Carlos Lage Dávila.
Two prominent revolutionaries agreeing to step down were Lage and ForeignMinister Felipe Pérez Roque. Both had served long terms and acknowledged theyhad made “errors.”
Lage, a doctor, had been credited for helping to pull Cuba out of the early1990s’ negative economic growth by introducing market reforms, joint ventureswith foreign capital, and small-scale capitalistic businesses. Prior to hisstint as foreign minister, Pérez Roque had served as an aide to Fidel.
Both men had furthered Cuba’s economic integration with the rest of LatinAmerica. Much of the foreign press interpreted their removals as some kind of“split” between Raúl and Fidel. This caused Fidel to write a strongly worded“reflection” in which he said that he was consulted even though it was notnecessary “since I gave up the prerogatives of power a while ago” and that the“sweet nectar of power…awoke ambitions in them that led them to play out adisgraceful role. The external enemy built up their hopes with them.”
Fidel later explained in an interview with the respected Argentine sociologistAtilio Borón that he wrote those words to “cut at its root the gossip about aconflict between the men of Fidel and those of Raúl. I could not by my silencelend credence to such foolishness.”(4)
As of mid-March, there were no officially released specifics about what “errors”Lage and Pérez Roque had committed and how those might affect future decisionmaking on the economy and foreign relations. This left many questions stillunanswered.Defensive Military
Foreign analysts of Cuba sometimes suspect the FAR under Raúl Castro of beingtoo influential. When shorn of its state funding during the economic crisis ofthe early 1990s, the FAR became self-financing through its generally efficiententerprises.
Cuba’s is a defensive military, not an offensive one. It has an expensivedefense system of sophisticated weaponry and “thousands of kilometers oftunnels,” based on the theory that “to avoid a war is the same as to win awar.”(5) In addition, the FAR is well integrated with civil society.
Over the past 50 years, millions of men and women, in Raúl’s words, “have beenworkers, students, soldiers, or simultaneously all three things whencircumstance so often have demanded it.”(6) Recent military exercises trained430,000 combatants of Cuba’s more than one million militia and reserves, andthis does not include the countless Committees for the Defense of the Revolutionand resistance networks that make it “impossible to attack Cuba withoutannihilating its people in arms.”(7)
“Our Army is the people!” proclaimed Fidel Castro in 1959. Indeed, 50 yearslater Cuba’s remains a people’s army, not a separate professional one, andconsists principally of the younger generation. All fit males do militaryservice from age 16 to 19, and women often join the military as well.
Three million Cubans are under 20. Almost all families have been involved at onepoint or another with the FAR, even though its numbers have become smaller overthe years. Cubans are proud of their relatives who fought in Angola to help endapartheid in South Africa. Likewise, they are grateful to military personnel whohave saved lives during hurricanes or other disasters.
They appreciate the FAR for the educational work it conducts for its troops andlocal communities, as well as for its help in reforestation, the sugar harvest,developing mountain communities, and growing not only the soldiers’ food butfood for the population.(8)Debating “Changes Within Socialism”
Public debates have become more widespread and nuanced ever since 2007 when thecall went out for more candid criticisms and open debates. Based on interviews Ihave conducted with several party members and leaders, the PCC has differentpoints of view within it.
Part of the technocratic sector favors economic reforms resembling those ofChina or Vietnam. Some, though by no means all, old-timers and bureaucrats areresistant to change. But growing numbers of members, like civil society as awhole, look for ways to achieve a less “verticalist,” more decentralized andparticipatory Cuban socialism without jeopardizing national unity andsovereignty.
Judging from the Cuban media and countless personal conversations, Cubans ofvarious generations, especially among those under 45, yearn for radical changes“within socialism” (since only socialism can conserve the Revolution and itssocial gains).
Some want to attack problems of alienation and emphasize the ideas and exampleof Che Guevara. Most want to conquer poverty, reduce class differences,introduce more innovativeness with more direct workers’ or community control andless top-down politics, in brief, a transition to new forms of socialistdemocracy while oxygenating existing ones.(9)
Several economic reforms are already well underway. Two examples indicate thedynamism of the current transition. The limit on wages a worker can earn hasbeen removed as part of the effort to increase production and reduce workerabsenteeism. An agrarian reform has begun, permitting development of publiclands by private farmers, usually cooperatives at the request of thoseparticipating, with price supports for farmers’ crops to reduce food imports andmake productive unused tillable land that is to remain state-owned.
Yet new complications loom on the horizon, including a potentially sizeableinflux of money from families visiting from the United States, thus widening thegulf between the “new rich” and the rest of society.
So far Cuba, arguably the world’s only surviving socialist system but one withproblems typical of small Caribbean island societies, has managed to escape thetragedies wracking its neighbors and accomplish revolutionary changes ofconsiderable magnitude. Its sui generis socialism has generated a highlyeducated, creative populace that can boast of several internationally recognizedgains in free housing, public education and health, as well as in science,sports, culture and environmentalism.
This is a socialism that is always evolving and self-correcting, as in the 1980srectification campaigns against Soviet-style Stalinist influences; the “SpecialPeriod” following the decline in trade with the Soviet bloc in the 1990s; or thesuccessful “Energy Revolution.”(10)
The Cuban Revolution has deep historical roots that permeate Cuban culture. Ithas always been a complex process based on realities like foreign aggression bythe United States. It continues its transition toward an internationalistsocialism based on Cuban practices and values developed since the earliest daysof slave revolts and the struggle for national independence, social justice,freedom, and equality.
Its guiding ideas are ones of “la ética” and “amor” — the struggle to create aunified ethical foundation marked by human solidarity and love for the other.That is why Cuban household names include historic figures like Hatuey,Céspedes, Maceo, Martí and Mella.(11)
Key to the Revolution’s successes has been its internationalism. Martí, Fidel,Raúl and Che, like Leon Trotsky, always insisted that no revolution couldsurvive if limited to only one country. Cuba’s renowned internationalism is alsohistorically embedded in popular culture, marked by names like Máximo Gómez andChe Guevara.(12)
The poet-revolutionary soldier José Martí in the 1880s and 1890s proclaimed thestruggle against imperialism and called for Latin American unity to confront it.Envisioning a utopia grounded on ethical principles, Martí insisted that“Patriotism is Humanity” and “Patriotism is nothing more than love.”
Martí forged a single unified political party that he realized, together witharmed struggle, was necessary for achieving revolutionary goals. It is thisheritage that continues to guide Cuba’s transition today.
During the 1990s economic hard times, instead of turning inward, Cuba expandedits internationalism, sending more doctors, teachers, and other professionals toneedy countries, a generous move that — together with the Revolution’s ethicalgrounding — helped save the island’s socialism.
In 2004, together with Venezuela, Cuba launched ALBA — Bolivarian Alternativefor Latin America and the Caribbean — a trade model of human solidarity. Today,ALBA is spreading vigorously throughout the region while the world’s capitalismsstruggle in a state of semi-collapse.Notes
1. Raúl Castro, Fiftieth Anniversary Address, Santiago de Cuba, Jan. 1, 2009.back to text
2. In 2002, the National Assembly of People’s Power amended the Constitutionto make the socialist system ‘’irrevocable, and capitalism will never returnagain to Cuba.’’ Eight million Cubans signed a petition for the change.back to text
3. One leading Cuban economist told me in March 2009 that unifying the twocurrencies is a very complex economic/social matter that will proceed onlygradually at best in light of the world economic crisis and its impact on Cuba(e.g., world prices for Cuba’s main mineral export, nickel, have plummeted).back to text
4. Atilio Borón, “Una reunión en primera persona con Fidel,” Página 12,March 14, 2009, author’s translation. For Fidel’s reflection, see posting onFidel Castro News site, March 4, 2009, http://fidel-castro-news.newslib.com/.back to text
5. Raúl Castro, interview by Cuban journalist Talía González Pérez, Dec. 31,2008, author’s translation fromhttp://www.cnctv.cubasi.cu/noticia.php?idn=12659. The tunnels store majormilitary equipment, from tanks to planes, but no boats.back to text
6. See footnote 1.back to text
7. Luis Britto García, “Cuba Revolucionaria,” Tribuna Popular, Dec. 28, 2008,author’s translation,http://luisbrittogarcia.blogspot.com/2008/12/cuba-revolucionaria.html.back to text
8. For more, see Susan Hurlich, “Three Celebrations,” People’s Voice, 15:1,2007, 7 & 10.back to text
9. One demand involves gay and transvestite rights. Raúl’s daughter MarielaCastro Espín, a professional sexologist, has advocated legislation to reform theFamily Code to grant homosexual couples the same rights as heterosexual ones.According to Castro Espín, even though society is more open to homosexuals thanin the past, a broad educational campaign is needed. The PCC has homosexuals inits membership. Mariela plans to propose in the Sixth Congress of the PCC thatthis de facto acceptance be made explicit and mandatory in party statutes.back to text
10. Cuba is a world class power in biotechnology and cancer research. Itscultural vibrancy in all the arts and critical thought is notable. The WorldWildlife Fund has named Cuba as the world’s most advanced country inecologically sound and sustainable development. The organic farming advances ofthe “Special Period” and the renewable energy and energy conservation policiesof the “Energy Revolution,” launched in the 1990s but ratcheted up in 2006,contributed to this advance. Because of the devastation of the 2008 hurricanes,however, and despite economic growth rates of 8-11% in recent years, the“Special Period” still exists.back to text
11. Revolutionaries who fought for these ideals. Hatuey was an Indianchieftain burned at the stake by the Spanish “conquerors.” Carlos Manuel deCéspedes proclaimed Cuba’s independence from Spain and an end to slavery,October 10, 1868, starting “the Thirty Years War.” Antonio Maceo, an Afro-Cuban,was the main guerrilla commander in the war. José Martí died in 1895 fightingthe same war that went on to defeat the Spaniards before the 1898 U.S. invasiontied an “independent” Cuba to U.S. capitalist interests. Julio Antonio Mella,assassinated in 1929, was a founder and leader of the University Students’Federation and the Communist Party who rejected “servile copies of revolutionsmade by other men” and defended “human beings who act following their ownthoughts and by their own understanding, not by the reasoning of foreignthoughts.” The triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 finalized the strugglefor national sovereignty.back to text
12. Gómez was an Afro-Dominican who became the main general leading theindependence fighters. Guevara was born in Argentina, became a key leader andthinker of the Cuban Revolution, fought in Africa, and in 1967 was murdered onU.S. orders after his capture in Bolivia.back to text
ATC 141, July/August 2009