Meneo de culo periodístico

Juan Abreu

Bueno, mi querido Jordi, para empezar Cuba no es un país socialista, es una dictadura militar. De ti esperaba otra cosa, francamente. Así que unos por allí te dijeron que hasta 1990 sí claro la construcción del Socialismo, pero ahora peor. ¿En serio? ¿Qué es esto, un cursillo rápido de historia de Cuba para idiotas? Datos, hechos, estadísticas. ¿Recuerdas? De eso va el periodismo. En fin. Aunque ahora pienso que tal vez todo sea una broma de la que se me escapa el sentido. Una pieza cómica, una bufonada. ¿Aperitivo cubano? Por San Fidel. Batista dictador, bien, pero el otro qué, ¿presidente?

“La diferencia básica para los cubanos es que los sueldos en los primeros treinta años de la Revolución alcanzaba para cubrir las necesidades básicas: la educación era libre y universal”. ¿De dónde has sacado eso? Me gustaría saberlo porque me pasé los primeros veintiocho años de mi vida en ese paraíso donde el sueldo del mes te alcanzaba apenas para comer una semana la porquería de la Libreta de racionamiento, que por cierto era obligatoria y universal. Dímelo a mí que pasé los primeros veintiocho años de mi vida hambriento y trabajando en el campo y sirviendo como esclavo en los cañaverales para pagar mi educación libre y universal. ¿Cómo puedes soltar esas tonterías, esas falsedades como si hablaras de verdades comprobadas?

Pero. Espera. Creo que ya sé por qué. Porque estás hablando de Cuba y cuando los periodistas europeos hablan de Cuba no hay que guardar ningún respeto por la verdad, ya vale con el meneo de culo periodístico, la musiquita folklórica y el qué rico es el cubata.

Santocielo. Hoy ha sido un día triste para mí. ¡Tú también!

Executive Editor of NYT Picks Cuba as Vacation Spot

breitbart

By Warner Todd Huston 

www.nydailynews.com

In a long article bemoaning the fact that the new CEO of the New York Times likes to keep his eye on the newsroom, an interesting anecdote reveals executive editor Jill Abramson has a special vacation destination when she wants to unwind: Cuba.

Former BBC head Mark Thompson was hired in September of 2012 to take over as the CEO of the New York Times, but when he finally began to execute his duties, the paper's editors and writers found that he was making a habit of hanging around the newsroom. This was not to their liking.

"The Times’ reporters and editors, eager to hold on to the protocols of a legacy media world, hold quasi-religious views about the sanctity of the newsroom against the influence of business concerns," the article in New York Magazine notes. "The mere presence of a corporate suit among the journalists was like a belch in a cathedral nave."

The article is an amusing illustration of the "uneasiness" between the editors and journalists of the paper of record and their new overseer, who has taken the non-traditional tact of keeping his thumb directly on the denizens of the newsroom instead of observing the usual hands-off role most executive "suits" had obeyed in years past.

But one bit of info is telling. Executive editor Jill Abramson finds one of the most oppressive countries in the world to be a fitting vacation spot.

Deep in the story we find this passage (emphasis added):

In February, when the staff held farewell parties for two popular veteran (and, by Times standards, expensive) editors, Jon Landman and Jim Roberts, who had been encouraged to take buyouts, Abramson left on a trip to Cuba with her sister. "I remember at one point Jill announcing she was leaving on this vacation because she was exhausted by all the tension of the buyout," says a colleague. "Oh, I'm sorry, it was even harder for the people who were leaving."

So, here we learn that the executive editor of what is purported to be the premier American newspaper, the New York Times, thinks the oppresive Communist utopia of Cuba is the best place to unwind.

Raul Castro's Incivility [Washington Post Editorial Board]

capitolhillcubans

From The Washington Post's Editorial Board:

Raul Castro’s empty talk on civility in Cuba

President Raul Castro of Cuba delivered a speech to the National Assembly last month in which he lamented the demise of Cuban culture and civility. He railed against bad behavior, from building houses without permits to shouting and swearing in the streets, from dodging bus fares to painting grafitti. “Living in society entails, in the first place, accepting rules that preserve respect for decency and the rights of others,” he declared.

The rights of others? Civility? Seven days after Mr. Castro spoke these words, the civil society group Ladies in White went on a march for freedom and human rights in Matanzas province. They’ve done this before, on other Sundays, in other towns. A group of Cuban government supporters forcefully cut off the march and proceeded to beat and harass the members of the group, which was founded by the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of 75 political prisoners who were jailed in a crackdown a decade ago. The attack was just the latest harassment and intimidation of Cuban dissidents.

The kind of civility that is recognized all over the world as basic dignity — the freedom to speak and associate, to choose one’s leaders, to live without fearing a regime’s security services — is not on Mr. Castro’s mind. His regime continues to threaten and persecute those who dare challenge its legitimacy.

One of the most passionate dissidents in Cuba until his death last year was Oswaldo Payá, champion of a campaign to advance democracy with a national referendum. On July 22, 2012, he died in a car wreck along with Harold Cepero, the leader of the youth wing of Mr. Payá’s Christian Liberation Movement. The driver of the car in which they were riding was Ángel Carromero, a young Spanish politician who was visiting Cuba. Mr. Carromero told us in March that the car was rammed from behind by a vehicle which carried government license plates, after which he lost control of the vehicle.

Mr. Carromero has now raised fresh questions about the car wreck in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, suggesting that Mr. Payáand Mr. Cepero may have been alive when they were brought to a local hospital and only died later, perhaps at the hands of a state that did not wish them well. He has no hard evidence, but suspicions linger. The family of Mr. Payá was never given an autopsy report.

The most significant unanswered questions are: Who rammed the car on a wide and flat road that day? And why? Mr. Carromero’s latest comments reinforce the need for a thorough investigation. We were heartened to see that the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, last week raised with the Cuban foreign minister the need for a credible investigation into Mr. Payá’s death. A similar demand came from the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Menendez (D-N.J.). Perhaps it is too much to suggest that Mr. Castro might allow a genuine investigation into these tragic deaths, no matter where it leads. That would be truly civil.

The North Korea I wasn't meant to see

By Paula Hancocks

Read on CNN.com >>

La entrevista más divertida a Fidel: “Raúl no es comunista”

Gracias a Jorge Ferrer

Leer en eltonodelavoz >>

Cuba: Civility, schmivility | Fausta

Fausta's Blog

The NYTimes has an opinion article, For Cuba, a Harsh Self-Assessment that deplores the decline in “gentility and respect”, echoing Raul Castro’s “get off my lawn” speech of two weeks ago. The article doesn’t question Raul’s premise,

“I have the bitter sensation that we are a society that is ever better educated, but not necessarily more enlightened,” Mr. Castro said.

Ever better educated? You mean like the doctors sent to Brazil and the Jamaican nurses, which were rejected because they don’t meet basic job requirements?

All through the article, the message is that the golden age of Communism brought free healthcare and education back when “a state salary was enough to live on without needing to pilfer.” Of course, Fidel Castro himself repeated incessantly that under him, Cubans are “the most cultured people in the world,” even the prostitutes, while redoing the excellent, definitive Don Quijote de la Mancha 4th Centenary edition by the Real Academia Española. Fidel had Hugo Chavez abridge it, remove the essay “Una novela para el siglo XXI” by long-time foe Mario Vargas Llosa, and replaced that essay with a short preface by José Saramago, a much friendlier Communist. The Communist regime can’t have “the most cultured people in the world” exposed to an essay which essence is that Don Quijote’s a free men’s novel.

Blame the Americans? Oh yeah,

Cuba sets great store by its cultural prestige. After the 1959 revolution, the government set out to purge the decadence that made Havana a magnet for Americans, among others. The state started a national literacy campaign, offered free education to all and established rigorous sports, ballet and music programs.

Because, you know, the Americans are the ones attracted to the decadence. Unlike, of course, the Canadian and Spanish pervs who go today to Havana for the sex trade.

The article posts a photo of shirtless men slaughtering a pig on a sidewalk, under the most unsanitary conditions,

with the caption (emphasis added)

A pig being slaughtered in a tourist area of old Havana is seen as a sign of a loss of civility.

when in fact it is emblematic of the decay of Cuban culture under Communism. Carlos Erie, who lived in Cuba and remembers, lets it rip,

Proof positive of the ignorance and prejudice that govern the thinking of those who write and publish such poison is evident in the photo above. The caption under the photo is the one used by the NYT. Notice, please, that slaughtering a pig on the street is merely “seen” as a “sign” of loss of civility. It’s not really a loss, but is merely “seen” as such by some Cubans. And, notice, that the act itself is not “seen” as a loss of civility, but as a mere “sign” — which means, of course, that it’s not just the behavior that is open to interpretation, but also the act of passing judgment on it. Notice, too, that the slaughtering is described as taking place in a “tourist” area of Old Havana. One must assume that it would be perfectly alright in some other area where tourists don’t dare to go, and that this is something Cubans have been doing for centuries in their own benighted slums. It is also assumed that this is somehow normal for Cubans: to go shirtless in “tourist” areas. Savages.

The Times will never disappoint you . . . if all you expect them to do is echo Raul’s propaganda.

Dos campeones, Fidel Castro y un campeón del periodismo

Diario de Cuba

Jorge Enrique Lage/

Muhammad Alí y Fidel Castro, La Habana, 1996. (EMILIANOTHIBAUT.COM)

En 1996 Muhammad Alí le hizo una breve visita a Fidel Castro. El excampeón de los pesos pesados, con más de una década de Parkinson en sus jubilados puños, llegaba a Cuba como parte de una misión humanitaria que traía suministros médicos para los desabastecidos hospitales de la capital. Lo acompañaban, entre otros, su cuarta esposa y varios representantes de medios de prensa norteamericanos.

En esa comitiva estaba Gay Talese, encargado de cubrir el viaje de Alí para The Nation. "Alí en La Habana", la crónica resultante —rechazada por The Nation y otras revistas, y publicada después en Esquire—, se cuenta entre las mejores piezas del célebre periodista newyorkino, y es sin duda una de las lecturas más jugosas del volumen El silencio del héroe, recopilación de varios trabajos suyos sobre figuras del deporte que ha lanzado recientemente la editorial Alfaguara.

Uno de los anfitriones de Muhammad en aquella visita a la Isla fue, por supuesto, Teófilo Stevenson, quien ya había sido huésped de Alí durante su estancia en Estados Unidos el año anterior. El cronista se apresura a señalar que buena parte del prestigio oficial de Stevenson se debe a que nunca cedió a las ofertas millonarias del boxeo profesional (querían que retara al propio Alí y, en lugar de eso, se harían amigos), nunca bajó el protector de la cabeza ante el dólar yanqui.

"Aunque dista de parecer necesitado" —observa Gay Talese—. "Vive entre sus compatriotas como un encumbrado pavo real cubano, ocupando altas posiciones en los programas deportivos del gobierno y atrayendo suficiente atención de las mujeres de la isla como para haber recolectado cuatro esposas hasta la fecha."

Los dos campeones, con sus respectivas cuartas esposas y el resto del cortejo, parten del Hotel Nacional en un bus climatizado, atraviesan la Plaza de La Revolución y un rato después están en presencia de Fidel Castro. El mayor peso pesado de la Isla abraza a Muhammad y, por medio de la intérprete, le comunica la alegría que siente al verlo y lo agradecido que está por su visita.

Pero Alí no responde, no dice absolutamente nada. Ni en ese momento ni después: Alí va a permanecer callado e inescrutable durante todo el encuentro. Le cuesta hablar con claridad, y por eso se limita a mirar al anfitrión en jefe sin pestañear, con una sonrisa amable pero congelada tras la máscara del Parkinson.

La imagen que transmite Fidel, en cambio, es pura lozanía. Pero a Talese le da la impresión de que su barba pertenece a otra persona y otra época: "Los mechones blancos se mezclan con los negros descoloridos y le cuelgan por el frente del uniforme como un sudario viejo, curtidos y resecos. Es la barba del monte. Castro se la soba todo el tiempo, como si tratara de resucitar la vitalidad de su fibra".

Las épocas pasadas, la vitalidad irrecuperable de aquellos montes, de los viejos cuadriláteros. Fidel recibe como obsequio un retrato ampliado, enmarcado y dedicado. Muhammad Alí en compañía de Malcolm X, Harlem, 1963.

"Cuando la imagen fue captada Castro llevaba cuatro años dirigiendo Cuba" —rememora Gay Talese—. "En 1959 había derrotado al dictador apoyado por Estados Unidos, Fulgencio Batista, remontando una posición de mayor desventaja que la de Alí en su ulterior victoria contra el supuestamente invencible Sonny Liston."

En los años cincuenta, cuando Fidel encabezaba una guerrilla, Alí era todavía "un simple amateur", dice el cronista. Y prosigue entre las cuerdas paralelas: "Pero ya entrados los sesenta, él y Castro compartirían el escenario mundial como dos personajes enfrentados al establishment estadounidense; y ahora, en el ocaso de sus vidas, se conocen por vez primera: Alí callado y Castro aislado".

Ante el silencio a todas luces incómodo de su invitado (sobre todo si esas luces son los flashes de las cámaras), Fidel se vuelve hacia Stevenson. Amaga un golpe a modo de saludo y le pregunta por la joven que lo acompaña.

La esposa de Stevenson se adelanta con un tono de reproche medio-en-broma-medio-en-serio, dosificación típica en esos protocolos: "¿No te acuerdas de mí? ¡Cargaste a mi hijo en tus brazos antes de que cumpliera un año!"

Fidel trata de hacer memoria y pregunta si eso fue en un partido voleibol. Stevenson le dice que no: aquella era su anterior mujer, la médica. (La mujer actual es abogada; las dos primeras, según el regocijado recuento de Talese, bailarina e ingeniera respectivamente.) Rápidamente, Fidel le sugiere a su campeón: "Deberían llevar el nombre puesto".

El ambiente se va relajando y de pronto el puño de Alí empieza a moverse lentamente hacia la mandíbula de Fidel. Risas y aplausos en el salón. Fidel le pide asesoría a Stevenson y este termina simulando un combate con Alí. En cámara lenta, sin tocarse. La pelea que nunca fue, es ahora un intercambio de ganchos en el vacío, una pantomima de sparring. Con Fidel Castro de espectador —y, quién lo duda, entrenador— en primera fila.

(Otro tipo de público es Gay Talese. Es curioso cómo en este relato, con un personaje mudo, imposible de entrevistar, el autor ha optado por diluirse o invisibilizarse en el fondo del ruido cortesano. Y narra desde allí, una voz ubicua que no solo explora los límites entre periodismo y literatura —esa franja borrosa que es su cinturón de maestro de la non-fiction—, sino también la frontera entre lo que se dice y lo que se calla, el murmullo que satura el silencio.)

Más adelante, ante los micrófonos y el comentarista de la CBS, Fidel habla de Alí "como si Alí no estuviera presente". Y es que no está del todo presente. Es capaz de mantenerse inmutable incluso cuando Stevenson se le acerca al oído y le dice: "Muhammad, Muhammad, why you no speak?". En aquella reunión, el musulmán negro tenía otra idea de lo que era expresarse.

Un rato después de la pantomima, la siguiente actuación es un número que combina prestidigitación y Parkinson. Las risas y los aplausos vuelven a estallar en la sala cuando Alí levanta su tembloroso puño izquierdo: "Pero en lugar de asumir una pose de boxeador, empieza a sacar por la parte de arriba del puño, lentamente y con delicadeza teatral, la punta de un pañuelo de seda rojo".

A continuación hace desaparecer el pañuelo. Según Talese, es este el momento de la noche en que Fidel muestra mayor entusiasmo. Alí le enseña el truco: tenía escondido en la mano un pulgar de goma color carne, en donde introduce su propio pulgar después de apretujar el pañuelo dentro.

La crónica registra también los diálogos más o menos informales de la velada. El small talk donde suelen colarse cosas no tan pequeñas.

Fidel conversa con la pareja de Stevenson, se interesa por el peso actual de aquel niño que tuvo en brazos. El padre informa orgulloso que la madre le sigue dando el pecho, y que el niño a veces se confunde y cree que el pecho de él es el seno de ella. Entonces Fidel estira la mano y toca: no un pecho o un seno, sino el abdomen del boxeador.

"—¿Cuánto pesas?"

"—Ciento ocho kilos, más o menos."

"—Diecisiete más que yo —le dice Castro, pero en tono de queja—. Como muy poco. Las dietas que me recomiendan nunca son adecuadas. Ingiero unas mil quinientas calorías, menos de veinte gramos de proteína, menos que eso."

Fidel le pregunta a la esposa de Muhammad si hace mucho frío en Michigan. Stevenson interviene para recordarle que él estuvo en Michigan el año pasado. Fidel dice que en aquel momento él también estaba en Estados Unidos, en la ONU, pero su viaje estaba limitado a cinco días y no lo dejaron salir de Nueva York. Stevenson, que estuvo allá diecinueve días, se ofrece a mostrarle un video de su viaje.

A los diecisiete kilos se suman ahora dos semanas y un video. Se impone hacer una aclaración sobre el asunto del peso.

"—Cuando estuviste en Estados Unidos —le pregunta incisivamente Castro—, ¿fuiste con tu mujer, la abogada?"

"Stevenson se pone tenso. Dirige la vista a la mujer. Ella desvía la mirada."

"—No —responde en voz baja—. Fui solo."

Luego Fidel sigue interrogando a la esposa de Alí sobre su vida (a estas alturas Muhammad se ha quedado dormido, como para hacer más ostensible su ausencia, pero Stevenson debe recibir el último round). Cuando ella confiesa tener dieciséis años menos que su esposo, Fidel se vuelve hacia la joven abogada y la compadece por tener un marido veinte años mayor.

"—¡Comandante! —tercia Stevenson—. ¡Estoy en forma! ¡El deporte te mantiene sano! ¡El deporte añade años a tu vida y vida a tus años!"

(El tiempo iba a demostrar que los otros dos estaban en mejor forma que él. Incluso enfermos. Y la segunda parte del eslogan, la vida que el deporte agrega a los años, se ve seriamente cuestionada a lo largo de las páginas de El silencio del héroe. Es el eslogan de un amateur.)

Los dos excampeones se han casado cuatro veces, sus actuales cónyugues son mucho más jóvenes que ellos, pero a juicio del árbitro que gobierna el país la diferencia es concluyente. Si antes Fidel sugirió a Stevenson que le colgara a cada pareja su nombre, ahora le sugiere a la última de ellas que como su marido nunca ha podido sentar cabeza, "la cárcel sería un buen lugar para él".

Todos se ríen, por supuesto. Y con esta mención de la cárcel en tono de broma ya se acerca el final del encuentro. Las risas despiertan a Muhammad y el grupo comienza a retirarse. En el apretón de manos de la despedida, Fidel se da cuenta de que tiene consigo el pulgar de goma. Intenta devolverlo, pero el fotógrafo del visitante (el mismo que le tomó la foto con Malcolm X) lo detiene explicándole: "No, no. Alí quiere que usted se lo quede".

¿Y si hubiera sido ese pulgar falso, y no el retrato épico de antiguas luchas raciales, el verdadero regalo? Tal vez Muhammad Alí, sin mover un músculo del rostro, le estaba diciendo algo a su amigo en aquella noche de invierno de 1996.

Cuelga los guantes y busca un pañuelo de seda.

El espectáculo cambió. Ahora te toca hacer magia.

Habría que preguntarle a Gay Talese, pero es casi seguro que en el bus de regreso al hotel el campeón se volvió a quedar dormido. Me lo imagino sonriendo con los ojos cerrados.

Muhammad, Muhammad, why you no speak?

WSJ: Havana in Black and White

NewsWatchStation1

capitolhillcubans

By Mary Anastasia O'Grady in The Wall Street Journal:

Havana in Black and White

Dissident Berta Soler takes a big risk by telling the truth about racism and repression in Cuba.

After an 11-hour police interrogation in 2011, Berta Soler, one of the founding members of the Cuban dissident group known as the Ladies in White, was given an ultimatum.

During an interview at the Journal's offices last week, Ms. Soler told me that the ministry of interior official who escorted her home said "Laura [Pollán, another founding member of the group] and I had to leave the country—because without us there would be no Ladies in White." Ms. Soler said she responded by telling the official that "the ones who have to leave are the Castros."

Cubans have been put against a wall and shot for less, but Ms. Soler's courage could not have been news to the regime. For seven years, beginning in 2003, the Ladies, dressed in white from head to toe, had attended Sunday Mass together at St. Rita's Church in Havana and then silently filed through the streets to demand that their political-prisoner relatives be freed.

The group was regularly set upon by Castro agents and clawed, punched and kicked. But they never retreated, even when the regime upped the ante by dragging them onto buses, driving them far from home and dropping them off to find their own way back.

By 2010, cellphone photos of the brutality embarrassed the dictatorship enough internationally that it began deporting the prisoners with their immediate families to Spain. It was classic Castro: For more than a half-century, strong dissident leaders who couldn't be broken have been killed or exiled.

Laura Pollán's husband, Héctor Maseda, and Ms. Soler's husband, Ángel Moya, were among a small number of prisoners of conscience who refused to leave. Eventually Castro paroled them, but the Ladies did not disband. Instead they began to work for the release of all political prisoners and for human rights.

The group was growing in numbers and expanding across the island on that day in 2011 when Ms. Soler was told to get out of Cuba. Seventeen days later, on Oct. 14, 2011, Pollán died mysteriously in a Havana hospital, surrounded by state security agents.

Ms. Soler's friend had reportedly been in good health only weeks earlier when, as she describes it, Castro enforcers attacked Pollán, bit and scratched her arm, and ran a handkerchief over the open wounds. Whether that was a way to introduce something into her bloodstream we may never know. But a week later Pollán came down with chills and vomiting and on Oct. 7 when she was admitted to the hospital, she suffered from shortness of breath.

Ms. Soler claims that Pollán might have been given oxygen but instead was "intubated and doped" and "seven days later we lost Laura." As I reported at the time, there was no autopsy and Pollán's body was quickly cremated.

Raúl Castro may have thought that the Ladies would soon fade away. He thought wrong. Ms. Soler says that the death of her friend and the equally suspicious death of dissident leader Oswaldo Payá in July 2012—supposedly in a car accident in which witnesses did not report a crash—has energized the movement.

Now Ms. Soler is taking advantage of the dictatorship's new travel policy—that for the first time in a half-century allows Cubans to take trips abroad—to ask the international community for "moral and spiritual support" for the Cuban people in their struggle against the dictatorship.

She wants the world to know of Castro's racism. Blacks, she says, are grossly underrepresented in the universities and overrepresented in prisons. "The beggars in Cuba are black, not white. The marginalized are blacks, not whites." She adds: "They tell me 'Negra, what are you doing? You have a lot to thank the revolution for!'"

Repression is on the rise, and in the absence of international condemnation the regime feels free to administer publicly the beatings the Ladies in White endure in order to show who's boss. The regime used to send women only to attack the Ladies but now they send men as well. They punch the Ladies with the clear intent to hurt them. They sometimes break bones.

Ms. Soler says that these attackers "never have been neighbors" spontaneously defending the glorious revolution. They are professionals working for the Interior Ministry or civilians who obey the regime in order to keep their jobs or their place in university classrooms. Ms. Soler says that for the past two years many of "the same faces" have consistently shown up to attack the group. The woman who bit Laura Pollan is well known by the Ladies because she is a regular on the goon squad and works for the ministry.

It is chilling to think what might happen to the politically incorrect Ms. Soler when she returns to Cuba, which is what makes her trip to Rome this week so crucial. She has asked to see Pope Francis. If he agrees, the visit might protect her. Without it, and in the absence of other influential international voices coming to her defense, her fate is less certain.

Washington Post: en Cuba le pierden el miedo al régimen

Washington Post

La junta editorial del capitalino diario The Washington Post publica este jueves un editorial relacionado con la visita de Yoani Sánchez a Estados Unidos, la situación de las libertades individuales en Cuba y la muerte de Oswaldo Payá y Harold Cepero en la isla el pasado año.

En el mismo se dice que “Yoani Sánchez habla sobre los "medios alternativos de comunicación" en Cuba, habla con autoridad”, pues “su blog Generación Y se ha convertido en un faro de la democracia y la libertad en la isla, donde los medios de comunicación se sigue manteniendo en el férreo control del régimen de Castro”. Recuerda el editorial las dificultades para hacer el blog desde Cuba, pues el “el acceso a Internet es irregular”, pero que esos medios alternativos “lidien con la información que el gobierno quiere suprimir” y fue por esos medios alternativos que los cubanos supieron de la muerte de los dos opositores.

Sobre la visita de Sánchez a Washington esta semana, y el encuentro con la junta editora del diario, afirman que ella manifestó “que los cubanos perciben de que "el gobierno parece estar escondiendo algo" acerca de la muerte de Payá y Cepero y que se ha producido una "manipulación de los hechos”. Para el rotativo “las sospechas son fundadas” y recuerdan las declaraciones de Ángel Carromero, a ese diario recientemente donde afirmó que “el automóvil que conducía y en el que viajaban Payá y Cepero, fue golpeado por detrás por un vehículo con placas del gobierno cubano y que fue amenazado e intimidado por las autoridades en un intento de encubrimiento”.

Una investigación independiente e internacional debe llevarse a cabo, dijo Yoani Sánchez al diario, y tiene que hacerse “lo antes posible, antes de que el gobierno se las arregle para borrar hasta la última  evidencia”. También informan del pedido del senador Bill Nelson, demócrata por la Florida, quien envió una misiva al secretario general de la ONU Ban Ki-moon, pidiéndole que nombre un panel para que investigue la muerte del opositor cubano, pues asegura que “todos merecemos conocer la verdad”.

El editorial insiste en que “la verdad no es muy respetada por Fidel y Raúl Castro” y pone el ejemplo de la Primavera Negra, cuando 75 disidentes, periodistas independientes y activistas de derechos humanos fueron encarcelados y la ofensiva contra el Proyecto Varela en el 2002. La autora de Generación Y recordó al diario “que tal arbitrariedad es característica de autoritarismo. "Es difícil pensar como un represor, si usted nunca ha sido", dijo. "Ellos tienen su propia lógica. Uno de los elementos más paralizantes de la represión cubana es su carácter ilógico”.

“En Cuba se ha visto últimamente algunas reformas económicas y liberalizaciones, uno de ellos dejó a Yoani Sánchez viajar libremente al extranjero por primera vez. Pero ella nos dijo que el verdadero cambio en la Cuba de hoy no es de arriba, sino desde abajo”, culmina el editorial; y citando a la bloguera afirman que “la gente está perdiendo el miedo, pasando del silencio a la apertura, de tener una máscara a mostrar su verdadero rostro en público”. Para The Washington Post Yoani Sánchez se sitúa en la vanguardia de este cambio, aunque todavía hay un largo camino aún por recorrer, pues las autoridades en la Isla aún no ha renunciado al dominio absoluto sobre las libertades individuales.

Sobre el impacto de Telesur en Cuba

Progreso Habana

A nod to Cuba, but not to Castro

Boston Globe/ Eduardo J. Santaella

I do not doubt that the Feb. 9 editorial on Cuba and Fidel Castro is well intended (“Cuba’s reforms pave way for new US policy, too”). But it only covers one side of the picture. The editorial seems to forget Castro is a criminal who has imposed an iron rule in Cuba for more than 50 years. Many thousands of innocent people have been imprisoned or killed, and the economy of this beautiful island has been destroyed.

Further, Castro has constantly attempted to export his communist revolution to other countries, such as Venezuela. Castro’s first attempts were thwarted, but recently, under Hugo Chavez, Venezuela is short of becoming a Cuban colony. Through Chavez, Castro also has his hands in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, and is developing dangerous ties with Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. 

This should worry the United States, but apparently there are still people who support the opening of relations with Castro. I say yes to Cuba, but no to Castro.

NBC: After a century without it, Cuba now scrambling to contain cholera

nbcnews

Roberto Leon

Arismael Nieto's job is to pour a diluted bleach solution over the hands of every commuter at this Havana bus station, and make sure everyone steps on a cloth soaked with the solution to clean the bottom of their shoes.

By Mary Murray, Producer, NBC News

Camilo, my 7-year old grandson in Cuba, has never been shy about asking for presents – especially when he knows I’m heading to Havana from that big shopping mall 90 miles away. His usual list includes a massive bag of M&M peanut candy, additions to what’s become a pretty pricey collection of Schleich resin animals, and goofy gags second-grade boys find funny, such as hand buzzers or that classic snake-in-a-can. When Camilo got on the phone with me last weekend, he only rattled off one item.

“Aba,” (that’s what he calls me–short for "abuela", which is "grandma" in Spanish), “bring me soap.”

“Soap? You want soap?” I repeated, convinced I must have heard him wrong.

“Si”, he insisted. “Jabon!”

Now he has me worried that I need to make an emergency supply-run for detergent, shampoo, dishwashing soap and other basics. The last time soap was in short supply in Cuba was in the 1990s but, if this kid is asking for soap, the situation must be dire. He’s about as germaphobe as your average stray puppy. Like a lot of little boys, he needs to be reminded that taking a shower means actually standing under the water.

Camilo, however, didn’t want just any soap. He was looking for what he calls “the soap that melts.” He wanted me to bring him an alcohol-based instant hand sanitizer.

Then he made it clear why. “Aba, there’s cholera here,” he said.

As it turns out, Camilo had spilled the beans a full 72 hours before the Cuban Health Ministry issued a formal communiqué on what had been rumored since the start of the year -- cholera had surfaced in the city of Havana, home to 2.2 million people.

The announcement explained that 51 new cases of cholera had been diagnosed in the Cuban capital along with a spike in the number of people suffering from "diarrheal diseases." The ministry made no mention of any fatalities. The public was being advised to be more careful with personal hygiene, boil all drinking water or use purification drops and thoroughly wash all fruits and vegetables, but to stay assured that Cuba’s massive public health machine was implementing preventive measures meant to “contain” and “eradicate” the disease.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, cholera is a bacterial infection in the intestine that can range from mild to severe. In the latter case, an infected person will experience “dehydration and shock" that, if left untreated, can lead to death "within hours.” The CDC estimates that every year there are up to 5 million cases and more than 100,000 deaths from cholera worldwide.

In most cases, the disease takes about a week to run its course, and during that time, warns the CDC, cholera is highly contagious. Spread hand to mouth, the bacteria is usually found in water or food sources contaminated by an infected person’s feces.

ContaminationA single food vendor at a baseball game appears to be the cause of the Havana outbreak. In early January, apparently, contaminated sandwiches or soda were sold during a packed game in the city’s main sports arena, the Latin American Stadium, located in a neighborhood called Cerro.

"That's why people from different parts of the city tested positive for cholera at the same time,” said a medical source, not authorized to speak on the record but who claims to have first-hand knowledge of the findings from the epidemiological task force assigned to trace the origins of the outbreak.

Roberto Leon

Officials from Cuba's Health and Epidemiology department inspected this pizza parlor located not too far from where the outbreak started in Havana and closed it down.

At Wednesday's nighttime game between Havana's beloved Industriales and last year's national champs, Los Tigres de Ciego de Avila, hawkers should have been making a killing on what had been one of the season's most sought-after tickets. Instead, 80 percent of the seats remained empty. Those die-hard fans who did show up were not allowed into the stadium until they sterilized their shoes and hands. Benches were wiped down with a disinfectant, and the floors hosed down with the same 0.5 percent bleach solution. And there was nothing to munch on during the three-and-a-half-hour game. All food stands have been temporarily shut down.

The same goes for many mom-and-pop cafeterias across the capital. "Last week, officials from Health and Epidemiology inspected our place and then they closed us down," said one owner of a pizza parlor not too far from where the outbreak started. "They said it's to stop the spread of cholera but no one’s saying how long we have to stay closed." His only consolation is that this month he doesn’t have to pay taxes or his monthly licensing fee.

Upset about his loss of income, he is also irked by the fact that some state-run food establishments passed the inspections, so they are being allowed to stay open. Many though are only authorized to sell bottled water, canned drinks and commercially packaged food.

Arismael Nieto usually changes the light bulbs and fixes broken chairs at Havana’s Bus Terminal. For the last two weeks, he’s been drafted on the city’s anti-cholera campaign. He stands by the one door opened at the station and his job is to pour a diluted bleach solution over the hands of every commuter, and make sure everyone steps on a cloth soaked with the solution to clean the bottom of their shoes. No one gets on a bus or leaves the building without Nieto’s OK.

Now, picture this procedure happening at every school from kindergarten to college, every public building, factory, lunch room, hospital, health clinic, department store, train depot and movie theater.

Chlorine a "necessary inconvenience"
Over the summer, two people who live in the Havana neighborhood of Fontanar thought they had the flu but tested positive for cholera. It was believed that they were exposed on the bus ride from eastern Cuba, an area of the country that had an outbreak earlier last year. In late August, Cuba revealed that cholera had killed three people and infected 417 in Granma province, some 450 miles east of Havana.

Roberto Leon

Signs such as this one are posted everywhere in Havana, alerting people to go to the hospital as soon as they experience any of the symptoms of cholera.

Cuba’s cholera treatment protocol has doctors knocking on doors and testing anyone with possible cholera symptoms. A positive test means an automatic trip to one of the city hospitals for a more comprehensive test. While most suspected cases go to Havana’s Tropical Medicine Institute, known by its initials IPK, a pediatric hospital and a maternity hospital have also been designated to admit cholera cases. In addition, the protocol mandated that all of Havana’s 85 neighborhood health clinics set aside a room with ventilation and a closed door as a place to quarantine suspected cholera cases until an ambulance arrives to transport the patient to the hospital.

Once hospitalized, a comprehensive history is taken that focuses on identifying all the people the patient has come in contact with over the past weeks. Health workers are dispatched to locate those persons to test them for cholera and administer a free prophylactic dose of doxycycline.

Although none of the guidelines cited by the CDC recommend using antibiotics for cholera prevention, the Cuban Health Ministry believes otherwise. Hundreds of thousands of Doxycycline tablets, apparently readied in warehouses for just such an emergency, were distributed to hospitals and health clinics one morning earlier this week—another sign that Cuba is well-prepared to tackle this outbreak.

Are people complaining? You bet. They hate the chlorine smell. They say the solution stings but many would agree with Angela Linares, a nurse raising a 13-year old daughter alone, who said: “It’s a necessary inconvenience.”

“No one wants cholera, especially since we know so little about this disease,” she said.

Linares was right. Until last year, the last reported cholera outbreak in Cuba was recorded almost a century ago.

Upon learning this fact, I became even more baffled that my 7-year-old grandson mentioned cholera days before the government admitted the outbreak.

As it turns out, his primary school had been put on alert early last week, and the kids learned about the intestinal bug and prevention at a school assembly. Community physicians were dispatched to all of the city’s 650 schools to not only give a crash course on cholera but hand out soap to every classroom.

Still, it wasn’t until after the Health Ministry’s warning that Cuban state media began running public service announcements -- considerably behind the curve of Havana's second graders.

Fox on Castro's reforms

Chinese Officials Pledge to Loosen Controls Over Embattled Newspaper

SPEAKING OUT: A man wearing a mask with words “Silent” holds a banner reading: “Let's chase our dreams together, go Southern Weekly newspaper” during a protest outside the headquarters of the newspaper in Guangzhou, Guangdong province on Monday. Photo: AP

nytimes

By EDWARD WONG and JONATHAN ANSFIELD

GUANGZHOU, China — Propaganda officials in the southern province of Guangdong have agreed to loosen some controls over an embattled newspaper whose struggle against censorship has galvanized free-speech advocates across China, according to journalists at the newspaper.

The agreement was part of a compromise in which reporters and editors who had said they would strike continued to work to put out the newspaper, Southern Weekend, also known as Southern Weekly, which is published on Thursdays. It is an iconic liberal publication that has regularly challenged Communist Party officials and policies but has come under tighter control in recent years, particularly since the summer.

In Beijing, talk of another newsroom in crisis emerged on Wednesday as reporters at Beijing News, a newspaper co-founded by the parent company of Southern Weekend, said propaganda officials forced the newspaper, against the judgment of its publisher and top editors, to run an editorial attacking Southern Weekend. Some journalists broke down in tears in the newsroom, according to various accounts, and the publisher, Dai Zigeng, threatened to resign, but was still in his job as of Wednesday night.

The deal in Guangzhou, the provincial capital, appeared to bring a tentative peace to a newsroom in turmoil, though journalists said they would have to see whether provincial officials followed through with their promises. The journalists appeared to back down from their demands that the top provincial propaganda official, Tuo Zhen, leave his post. Newspaper employees have accused Mr. Tuo of putting in place much stricter censorship rules since he began his job in May; in particular, they said he had a hand in the rewriting of a New Year’s editorial last week that was supposed to have been a call for enforcement of constitutional rights but ended up being more of a paean to the current system. It is unclear what role Mr. Tuo played in the changes, which ignited the call last weekend among some journalists to carry out a strike.

Journalists at Southern Weekend said that under rules imposed by Mr. Tuo, propaganda officials regularly reviewed the content of the paper before it went to print and vetted reporting topics proposed by journalists. Those rules are supposed to be abolished under the new agreement.

Zeng Li, a veteran journalist who reviews articles in-house at Southern Weekend to guard against riling the censors, said, “Now things are calming down.”

“To publish a good paper is the hope of both the leaders and the staff,” he added.

Hu Chunhua, the new party chief of Guangdong, China’s most liberal province, helped mediate the settlement, which took shape late Tuesday, journalists said. The clash over censorship is the first big test for Mr. Hu, 49, who is considered one of the party’s rising stars and a candidate to be the leader of China in a decade.

The battle at Southern Weekend also poses a challenge for the central authorities. Xi Jinping, the new party chief, made a trip to Guangdong late last year to stress the need to further open the economy. Analysts have wondered whether he might also call for greater political freedoms. Mr. Xi has made remarks, though, that underscore the need for China to remain true to its socialist roots.

Central propaganda officials appear to have taken a tough line on the censorship issue by demanding this week that the biggest news Web sites and some important publications print a scathing editorial criticizing Southern Weekend that was originally published by Global Times, a populist newspaper, and widely derided by Chinese journalists. The order to run the editorial led to the crisis at Beijing News on Tuesday night.

One journalist described the scene in the office in a blog post: “Some people look sad; some burst into tears; some shout that they are going to quit; some look serious.”

The post continued: “We don’t want to kneel down, but our knees have been shattered. We are kneeling down this one time while gnashing our teeth.”

More on  nytimes >>

Rare China demo protests censorship

Kyodo News via AP

A protester holds aloft a banner that shows freedom of speech near the headquarters of Southern Weekly newspaper in Guangzhou, Guangdong province on Monday., Jan. 7, 2013. A dispute over censorship at the Chinese newspaper known for its edgy reporting became a political challenge for China's new leadership as protesters called for democratic reforms.

By NBC News staff and wire services

GUANGZHOU, China -- Scores of supporters of one of China's most liberal newspapers demonstrated outside its headquarters on Monday in a rare protest against censorship, backing an unusual strike by journalists against interference by the provincial propaganda chief. 

The protest in Guangzhou, capital of southern Guangdong province, came amid an escalating standoff between the government and the people over press freedom. It is also an early test of Communist Party Chief Xi Jinping's commitment to reform. 

Negotiations between journalists and officials, whom the protesters held responsible for replacing a New Year's letter to readers that called for a constitutional government with another piece lauding the party's achievements, continued into the night, a senior journalist who asked not to be named told NBC News.

Keep reading on nbcnews >>

Foxnews still sleeping: Sign of progress in Cuba?

The way we left Cuba

By Brin-Jonathan Butler, The Rumpus

I came to Havana to film a documentary about a local boxer -- and found a country trapped in an Orwellian nightmar.

This piece originally appeared on The Rumpus.

The plane began its descent over the last 90 haunting miles of sea that divides Cuba from the United States, a sea that might be the largest graveyard in the world. Out my window the sunset glazed over the surface of the ocean and glinted off the slits and nicks of wave-creases like fresh wounds. Up and down the plane I heard the slap of blinders yanked down over the windows while the rest of us eagerly took in the view. It’s this last homestretch that always fleshes out the tourists from the locals on flights to the island.

There are plenty of tragic and inspiring choices, but the most obvious legacy Castro will leave behind is the broken family.

As the plane touched down at Jose Marti Airport I still wasn’t sure I would be allowed to enter Cuba in the first place. I had spent my last trip a few months earlier conducting illegal interviews with the country’s most famous boxing champions, men who had turned down millions and were only willing to discuss it if I paid them under the table. Of course there was no official way to have these interviews given the sensitivity of the topic. The state security had started following me after the first interview. All the Cubans I was working with couldn’t understand why we weren’t being arrested. But we kept going until we landed every interview on my wish list. Then it was just a matter of getting that material out.

While I probably should have quit while I was ahead, my purpose this time around was to knock on the door of one of the most politically radioactive residences in the country—the wife of Guillermo Rigondeux, a 30-year-old two-time Olympic boxing champion, branded by Fidel Castro as a Judas and traitor to the Cuban people. I was there to track down the family of one of the most notorious defectors in Cuban history.

Since Rigondeaux had escaped on a smuggler’s boat (venture humanitarianism between Cuba and Cancun has thrived enormously the last few years) and become a permanent exile, his family had been living under 24-hour surveillance and nearly house arrest. Cuban state security doesn’t fuck around. As attractive an analogy it might be for any foreigner to view Rigondeaux as a kind of Orpheus, a highly charged defector forever abandoning his life, nobody is in any hurry to have a camera and a microphone placed in the face of Eurydice to discuss the matter. The official state version of events is quite sufficient, muchas gracias. Bienvenido a Cuba!

Everyone on the island knows that at Castro’s first trial, when he was asked to confess who was intellectually responsible for his attack against Batista, he proclaimed it was none other than “a poet.” But whether Cuba’s Comandante likes it or not, his country is poetry of a different order, something like 1984 penned by Charles Dickens.

The first African slaves were brought to the island as far back as 1520, a measure taken after the Spanish were in need of replenishing the native Indian population (300,000 at the time Columbus first encountered them) they had wiped out through a combination of genocide, disease and brutal labor. Many Indians were so desperate to escape the calamity of their lives under Spanish rule that they attempted suicide by trying to choke on dirt. This concern ceased after the Spanish warned of severe punitive measures on the family members of suicides.

One of the most famously brave Indian chiefs, Hatuey, captured, tied to a stake and about to be set ablaze, was offered conversion by the Spanish if he accepted Jesus. Hatuey asked the religious man holding the flame if indeed any Christians were in heaven. He was assured there were. Hatuey replied that he would rather burn and be sent to hell than ever again encounter people as cruel as the Spanish.

When Columbus first saw Cuba in 1492 he described it as “the most beautiful land human eyes have ever seen.” He asked the first local he could find if he had arrived on an island, and was assured that he had, but that it was infinite.

I’ve never been able to get the wrapping paper off trying to imagine the expression on the face of the man who told Columbus that.

“Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope!/Where is thy market now?” -J.M.W. Turner

Almost 300 years later, on November 29, 1782, the events depicted in Joseph M. W. Turner’s famous painting, The Slave Ship, unfolded. First known as the Zong Affair, and decades later as The Zong Massacre, the story goes something like this: With a business disaster looming—slaves were dying at more than the usual rate—Captain Collingwood ordered some of the Zong’s human cargo—122 shackled African men, women and children—thrown overboard into the shark infested waters of the Caribbean. Another 10 slaves threw themselves overboard in a display of defiance at the inhumanity.

These 132 deaths left the captain with high hopes of filing his insurance claim: lost-at-sea slaves would be insured, dead-on-arrival slaves would not.

At the trial for insurance fraud, England’s Solicitor General stated:

“What is this claim that human people have been thrown overboard? This is a case of chattels or goods. Blacks are goods and property; it is madness to accuse these well-serving honorable men of murder… The case is the same as if wood had been thrown overboard.”

In 2009, 228 years after the Zong disposed of its cargo in the Caribbean, another boat carrying human beings—who’d also been bought and sold on the market place—sped under cover of night across the same Caribbean waters. This time the boat was headed for Mexico, where a ransom masquerading as a fee was to be paid for the lives of the men, women and children being transported. Three of the occupants on the smuggler’s boat were elite Cuban boxers. One of those boxers was Guillermo Rigondeaux. Despite over 400 fights inside a ring against the greatest boxers in the world, Rigondeaux would describe this journey, with immense reluctance, as the most traumatic event of his life.

“There may be no entrapped pool of human talent left on earth with the dollar value of Cuban athletes.”

-Michael Lewis

Cuba-Glaring Contradictions and Revisionist History

capitolhillcubans

Former New York Times foreign correspondent Joel Brinklley has penned an opinion column in Politico critical of U.S. policy towards Cuba, but full of contradictions and historical revisionism.

The first contradiction is Brinkley himself, who has written various columns about Burma, its repression and concerns that the U.S. doesn't jump the gun embracing the Burmese dictatorship simply because Aung Sun Suu Kyi is now free.

Yet, not a single concern about Castro's brutal dictatorship, the plight of Cuba's pro-democracy movement and the sharp rise in repression in Cuba.

Brinkley did, however, pick up on the second contradiction, which is worth noting:

"Looking at the embargo today (Cuba calls it “the blockade”), its principal accomplishment is that “it has given Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro the perfect scapegoat on which it can blame all their problems,” argued Ted Henken, a fervent Cuba expert at Baruch College in New York.

Ted Piccone [of The Brookings Institution] said most Cubans aren’t buying that argument. “The average Cuban is not blaming the U.S.” he said. “I’ve seen polling on this. They’re blaming the system.”

We don't usually agree with Piccone, but he's absolutely right on this point.

As an aside, what is a "fervent" Cuba expert?

Perhaps it is a realization that many of these Cuba "experts" are in essence "advocates" for their views, which is perfectly fine, but to be labeled an "expert" insinuates a certain non-bias that is fictitious.

Finally, a glaring piece of historical revisionism (or negationism):

Some Cuba experts argue that allowing American tourists to visit Cuba for the first time since 1960 might bring the beginnings of substantial change by fostering greater prosperity. They point to China, a passive agrarian society until the government opened the economy, pulling millions of Chinese out of poverty. Suddenly, these newly prosperous people began standing up to their government, demanding greater freedom and opportunities. The same could be true for Cuba, Henken said.

Did we miss something?

China remains one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world.

To the contrary, U.S. policy and business interests have helped turn China from an agrarian society into the most lucrative dictatorship in history, whereby the U.S. and Western nations are now too afraid to criticize the horrible abuses that take place due to potential financial repercussions.

Meanwhile, in the process, the Chinese regime has nearly systematically wiped-out (through imprisonments and murder) a thriving pro-democracy movement, which seemed unstoppable in the 1980s and early 1990s.

And the world remained silent.

Is that what we want for Cuba?

Please take a moment to read this column we penned last year in The New York Times on this very issue entitled, "Freedom First or Business First?."

Shit Box: Colaboradores y agentes de influencia

emprendedores.blogs

despues los escrupulosos se irritan cuando uno senala la labor overseas de los colaboradores y agentes de influencia del regimen castrista.

la sra. Sarah Stephens [Director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas and its Freedom to Travel Campaign, which fights for the rights of all U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba; es decir una que vive de los taxpayers money], una habitual de The Huffington Post, publicaba ayer el impacto en las politicas norteamericanas hacia cuba ante la posible designacion de kerry y hagel como secretarios de estado y de defensa respectivamente, para que al dia siguiente radio habana cuba por intermedio de un tal pedro otero, lo reproduzca en espanol como  una opinión inteligente.

el pajaro se conoce por la cagada decian nuestros "war heroes".

Richard Engel and NBC News team freed from captors in Syria

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