What Would Che Say?

What Would Che Say?
By GUY TREBAY
Published: July 27, 2011

OF beautiful people Cuba has many. Any visitor to the island or its
satellite country, Miami, knows that.

CUBA'S GLITTERATI Above, Roselyn Mereno Pérez and Alejandro Castro Soto
del Valle, Fidel Castro's son. Center, Che Guevara's son, Camilo, being
interviewed. Top, Cuban night life. The photos are from "Habana Libre."

But a classless Communist regime officially has no tolerance for
privileged classes, social elites, specially anointed Beautiful People.
And so even as the country moves inexorably toward the political
metamorphosis that is widely predicted after the death of Fidel Castro,
an image persists of a Cuba whose citizens drive vintage cars, wear
faded clothes and generally inhabit the anachronistic bubble depicted in
"Buena Vista Social Club."

There is another Cuba, of course. There is always another Cuba, if
writers like Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, the author of the irresistibly bawdy
"Dirty Havana Trilogy," can be credited. Certainly there is another
Havana, the unabashedly modish and glamorous one populated by artists,
models, filmmakers and writers that the photographer Michael Dweck first
stumbled upon during a visit in 2009.

"My first night there, I met somebody who invited me to a party," said
Mr. Dweck, a former advertising executive and now a photographer, whose
book "The End," about Montauk's surf scene, became a cult object, with
copies now going for as much as $3,000.

Mr. Dweck had no clear idea whom or what kind of scene he would find at
the party. "I expected all the crumbling buildings and used cars, the
usual clichés," he said.

As luck would have it, this chance introduction led him directly to the
center of an exceptional group, one of the farándulas, or cliques, that
characterize a certain sector of social life on the island, this one
dominated by members of what Mr. Dweck calls the "privileged creative
class."

Returning to the island eight times, Mr. Dweck set about documenting
these so-called new Cubans, a group of "very elegant and sophisticated
and talented people" who, as it happened, included characters like
Alejandro Castro Soto del Valle and Camilo Guevara, whose last names
might ring a bell.

Mr. Dweck's resulting book, "Habana Libre" (Damiani editore), can be
ordered this month. "I don't think they'd ever been photographed before"
for a publication outside Cuba, he said, referring respectively to the
photographer and the artist sons of Fidel and Che.

Somehow, perhaps not so mysteriously, the farándula Mr. Dweck stumbled
upon has unusual access to capitalist toys and tools like iPhones,
BlackBerries and Google. Its members stage regular fashion shows and
cocktail parties. It transmits news of coming events with text messages
using the code PMM (for "Por un Mundo Mejor," or, essentially, "For a
Better World"). It maintains an appearance about as fashionable as the
one that you might expect to find across the Straits of Florida in Miami
Beach, despite the reality that in Havana there are no stores. "This
will be the next generation," Mr. Dweck said. "When Cuba opens up, in a
year or two."

While the more intriguing pictures in a book shot in Mr. Dweck's
unchallenging soft-focus black-and-white style ("I didn't want to do
documentary," he said. "National Geographic can do that") are those
depicting the sons of revolutionaries disporting themselves with models
and smoking fat cigars, gotcha shots are not the sole surprise.

"Ultimately, the book is a narrative of this privileged class," Mr.
Dweck said. In its pretty, almost hapless way, the book depicts a
curious warp in a great historical arc. Can it be that the end point of
a violent revolution fomented to create a classless society is a crop of
tropical Zoolanders and privileged "It" girls? The question, though not
on the agenda of "Habana Libre," threads through it all the same.

"Cuba has economic poverty, not human poverty," Viviana Limpias, deputy
representative of Unicef in Cuba, says in one of the interviews featured
in "Habana Libre," drawing a distinction that smacks of an earlier Cuba,
the prerevolutionary one.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/fashion/habana-libre-looks-at-cubas-boldface-names.html?_r=1

Nearly 30 Groups Have Been Authorized To Bring Tourists To Cuba

Nearly 30 Groups Have Been Authorized To Bring Tourists To Cuba
Robert Johnson | Jul. 27, 2011, 9:06 AM

With a clock counting down the number of days minutes, and hours until
their first tour begins, Insight Cuba, will be the first organization to
bring general American tourists to Cuba in more than seven years.

According to The Miami Herald, Cuba Insight will be the first of nearly
30 groups approved by the Treasury Department to bring tourists to
America's neighbor to the east.

Cuban-Americans and others with a Cuban visa have been able to travel to
the communist island since 2003 when president Bush repealed a Clinton
policy allowing more open travel, but for everyone else this is a trip
they've had to wait until now to make.

There are no shortage of people lining up to make the trip.

http://www.businessinsider.com/cuba-travel-2011-7

Cuba: A Pretend Paradise

Cuba: A Pretend Paradise
RIKKI RATLIFF, QMI Agency
Updated: Thursday, July 28, 2011 2:06:52 EDT AM

Cuba has become Canada's beloved vacation destination and unofficial
11th province.

Nobody travels more to Cuba than Canadians — about 600,000 of us head
there every year. With affordable non-stop flights and unbeatable
all-inclusive packages, even middle-class families can afford to play in
paradise.

But beyond the shoreline, the oasis turns mirage.

As we casually sip our mojitos and work on our tans, dissident
journalists are silenced and jailed every day for speaking out against
Castro's island "utopia."

Popular Cuban author and blogger, Yoani Sanchez, is the most recent
victim to endure Castro's silent treatment.

Her crime? Publishing a tell-all book that dispels the fantasy of Cuba
as a model for socialized government. Her shipment of books from the
publisher were seized by the government and never made it into the country.

For her practice of free speech, she is also prohibited from leaving Cuba.

Through telephone interviews and her blog site, Generation Y, she
manages to find ways to loosen the invisible chains of communism that
bind her.

Others like Sanchez convicted of dissidence are sentenced anywhere from
five to 25 years in prison — many of them locked up with violent
criminals, subject to the worst possible treatment. All this is
happening just miles from our sheltered sandy resorts.

For the adventurous traveler who dares to enter into the "real Havana,"
the charming portrait belies the truth, as no local will ever speak of
the reality of their circumstances.

Despite his failing health, Castro's grip on public perception remains
as powerful as ever.

Jimmy Escobar is an author, frequent visitor to Cuba since the '90s, and
a major supporter of the Cuban people.

"Loyalists to the government are planted within the tourism industry,"
Escobar warned over the phone. "The regime would never allow any worker
in contact with vacationing Canadians to speak ill of the government."

If we were to sanction every destination that violates basic human
rights, we'd be left with few options. However, how is Canada — a
country that considers itself a human rights leader on the world stage —
able to reconcile propping up a government through tourism, which jails
its non-violent critics?

Sure we do a necessary dance with China, one of the greatest offenders
of human rights, but the billions of dollars in trade is the easy
justification.

But how necessary are Varadero vacations?

While thousands of Canadians save up their hard-earned paycheques to get
into Cuba, thousands more Cubans risk their lives to flee on float
vessels to freedom; many are turned away by U.S. officials in the
Caribbean Sea, countless others drown.

The irony that our beloved vacation spot is a hell they're trying to
escape is one that cannot be ignored.

Previous talks of bringing Turks and Caicos into the Canadian fold as
the 11th province sound inviting. But why not start a real revolution —
and welcome in the warm island of Cuba?

That way we wouldn't have to continue to duck under our beach umbrellas
at abuses we would never tolerate here at home — all because of the lure
of some cheap sunshine and a good cigar.

— Ratliff is senior producer of The Source with Ezra Levant on Sun News
Network

http://www.torontosun.com/2011/07/28/cuba-a-pretend-paradise

Kerry lifts hold on cash promoting Cuba democracy

Posted on Wednesday, 07.27.11

Kerry lifts hold on cash promoting Cuba democracy
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- A senior U.S. senator says the Obama administration has
agreed to review its democracy promotion programs in communist Cuba.

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts had been blocking $20 million in
funding for the programs. Frederick Jones, who is Kerry's spokesman,
says Kerry on Wednesday lifted his hold. But the funds still face a hold
from fellow Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Jones has said the State Department and USAID have agreed to report
results of their review to lawmakers.

Kerry has said he was seeking to ensure the effectiveness of the program
to promote human rights and basic freedoms. Established in 1996, the
Cuba Program has been beset with reports that some grantees misused
funds and the government provided little oversight.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the chairman of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee who was born in Havana and fled with her parents
following the Cuban Revolution, praised Kerry and expressed
disappointment with Leahy.

"The people of Cuba certainly don't deserve to be victims of this type
of political wrangling or manipulation," Ros Lehtinen said. "Each day
this hold remains is another day that those seeking freedom and
democracy on the island are denied the critical assistance these
programs would provide."

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/07/27/2333917/kerry-lifts-hold-on-cash-promoting.html

Taking Our Reality / Fernando Dámaso

Taking Our Reality / Fernando Dámaso
Fernando Dámaso, Translator: Unstated

The use of a disqualifying language against political opponents has been
a fairly widespread practice, though in general certain limits of public
responsibility and established decency are respected. There are also
laws that penalize defamation, due to which, whomever raises a question
about a person must support it with evidence and proof. So it works, at
least, in most democratic countries.

During the years of the Batista dictatorship, those who did not agree
with his politics were classified as opponents. Except in times when
censorship was established, they had the means to express their
opinions. They were not detained or imprisoned, and also participated
actively in the national debate. Those opponents who opted for violence
as a form of struggle, planting bombs and firecrackers and carrying out
attacks and sabotage, were labeled as subversives or communists. The
word terrorist was not yet fashionable. If caught, they were repressed
by bloody or judicial methods. In the latter case, they had available to
them defense counsel and fair trials. There are many examples.

Beginning in 1959, those who did not accept the new regime or disagreed
with some of its postulates, were labeled counterrevolutionaries. Tossed
into this sack were both those who acted peacefully as well those who
opted for violence. Soon he put his hand in the dictionary and began to
apply, festively, every kind of dis-qualifier: worms, stateless,
traitors, mercenaries, lumpen, slag, employees of the empire, and so on.
This method continues to today and has increased. Applied for years,
with no possibility to respond, (all media and controls belong to the
state), citizens have been so manipulated that they react by inertia,
without the use of reason, forgetting in many cases that it even exists.

Denigrating and discrediting those who think differently and, moreover,
those who dare to express it, only shows weakness, no matter how much
the statements multiply in strength. The problems of Cuba must be
revolved by Cubans (all Cubans, both inside and out of the country) but
for that, we can not be expected to maintain the historical monologue,
where only those who govern us think they possess the absolute truth.
The continuous failures have shown the opposite. It requires honest and
respectful dialogue.

However, dialogue requires there be a willingness in the parties
interested in it. to maintain the sectarian and exclusionary position of
the past five decades, claiming that those who think for themselves are
taking orders from the empire is not serious. The reality is otherwise:
every day citizens are increasingly questioning their plight and raising
the need for real changes in the interest of the nation, not of an
ideology or a party. Coping with them peacefully, with the participation
of all, as recommended by José Martí, is intelligent.

April 8 2011

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=11073

Populism, One More Current / Fernando Dámaso

Populism, One More Current / Fernando Dámaso
Fernando Dámaso, Translator: Unstated

Latin America, historically, has moved like a raft floating in the
ocean: forward or backward depending on the ebb and flow of the tide. In
the early twentieth century it was carried away by the rising
nationalism, believing that isolating itself from the world and closing
in on itself, it would be able to better solve its problems. That
failing, it opted for strong and autocratic governments: the
dictatorships with messianic leaders. Each country exalted a dictator,
some for decades, establishing a right of inheritance.

Then, that too failing and tired of patriarchs, it was the turn of the
guerrillas, and an epidemic of beards and olive green uniforms covered
the continent and the pages of newspapers and magazines. Guerrilla
commanders organized in all countries, and commanders and others
appeared, by one method or another, aspiring to the violent seizure of
power.

Failing en masse, many annihilated, those that survived decided to try
legality, converting themselves into political parties or totally
immersing themselves in the drug trade. Then came the time of democratic
presidents and neoliberalism and the Chicago School, at which the
governments of Latin American map with some stability and periods of
civic peace.

Then populist current burst on the scene, which has tried to spread like
bird flu, but populism has no future, gripped in his own verbiage and
contradictions, unable to really solve the economic problems of nations
where it has been tried. What will the new wave be which will move the
ailing American raft? We do not know. But it would not be wrong to say
that until they decide to find land and settle in it, devoting their
crew to serious and responsible work, the only proven long-lasting
wealth creator, and leave off being carried by the movement of the
waves, they will not find the progress or happiness.

April 5 2011

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=11070

The Real Employees / Fernando Dámaso

The Real Employees / Fernando Dámaso
Fernando Dámaso, Translator: Unstated

One of the accusations most used by the authorities to disqualify and
discredit their political opponents, or simply citizens who think
differently, is to label them "employees of the empire." The accusation
has its media effect and many honest people accept it as the absolute
truth and even repeat it against some of their neighbors, acquaintances
and even family members, without questioning its supposed veracity. From
so much repetition over so many years, it has become obvious: Those who
do not think like the establishment must be paid by someone for it.

I am not going to sanctify a priori all the disaffected, nor put their
hands to the fire, defending their moral and civic purity, but as in
every social or political group, in the vineyard of the Lord there is
everything (even infiltrated agents). Life has shown it every day, and
every day proved it. There must be, above all, realists!

Let's get to the heart of the matter: those who serve the regime in
various jobs. In this country, like everything else, all the
communication media belong to the State and, therefore, those who work
in them are, whether they accept it or not, employees of the regime. In
this category are the journalists, broadcasters, program hosts,
commentators, director, producers, technicians, consultants, etc., both
in radio and in television, as well as in the so-called flat press. This
means that, if they don't follow the orders of their boss, they can run
into problems and even become "available" (a synonym for "unemployed")
and lose, in addition to their salaries, some of the incentives provided
for good behavior (hard currency, vacations at the beach, gas for their
cars, foreign travel, etc.). This is well-known fact. Something similar
happens in the privileged study centers (for example at the University
of Computer Sciences), where if the professors and students don't carry
out the assigned computer tasks, they risk being thrown out.

A few wise words: Who, then, are the real employees? It is a shame to
listen to the employees of the regime repeat insults and diatribes
against other Cubans who, unlike them, are, in fact, employed by no one,
as if they weren't following their own conscience.

A lie has such short legs that the truth always catches up. At some
point, sooner rather than later, our deluded people will discover for
themselves the manipulation they've been the subjected to over many
years, and demand an accounting from those responsible. They should
think about it!

March 27 2011

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=11063