"These are the last caramels! Get 'em while you can!" shouted Olga -- we called her "La Guajira" -- in the dorms of our high school in the countryside. My bunkmate sold the food she got from Soviet technicians who bought them in stores that Cubans weren't allowed to enter. It was the last few months of 1990 and the community of Russian "comrades" who had meddled in the Cuban reality were starting to pack their bags.
Throughout the city many houses were left empty in the stampede of these foreign residents, while the black market they had fostered languished. That candy wrapped in rough paper was, for me, the first sign that the subsidies sent by the USSR would be abruptly curtailed. This harbinger of bad news presented itself to my teenage palate in the form a caramel that melted away for good.
Today, more than twenty years later, there are somewhat bitter indications of another material collapse. But this time the risk doesn't emanate from the Kremlin but from a much closer palace, the Miraflores in Caracas. Hugo Chavez has just left Cuba amid infinite speculation, and some alarming future scenarios are being woven around his health. The more than 100,000 barrels of oil we import from Venezuela might fade as fast as a caramel melts in the mouth, if the president of that country dies from the cancer that afflicts him.
In the streets of Havana the questions go beyond morbidity in medical terms, to become worrisome predictions of the future. A woman, her face soured by everyday life, tells another curtly, "If something happens to Chavez we're going to fall into another Special Period." The emphasis on each syllable reminds me of that teenager proclaiming the last sweets sent from the Soviet Union. The story is just as whimsical, sometimes it repeats itself coated in syrup... other times in vinegar.
We have had the painful opportunity to learn -- as a country -- the lesson of dependence; of promising ourselves that never again would the future of this Island hang on a foreign president or a foreign party. But in early 1999, when Hugo Chavez assumed power, it was clear that economic independence would be just a national fantasy, postponed again and again.
The unbalanced trade between Cuba and Venezuela has allowed the government of Raul Castro to avoid collapse, despite our country's inability to produce. The larger-than-life patient operated on in Havana stands as the main guarantee that Raul's reforms can maintain their timid steps forward and that he can remain in power. Seeing Chavez on television announcing his speedy recovery to the newspapers, is like giving a proof of life to the Castro regime.
When we read the smiling face of the Venezuelan president we are not hoping just to read a man's state of health, but also the political outlook of both countries. Thus, the official propaganda is eager to connect his supposed "victory" over the physical tumor, with the triumph of an entire ideological project.
The leaders maintained, the regimes subsidized, have the false illusion they can learn to live without their patrons. They profess that they will manage to walk on their own, once the support of the other ends. But in reality, during the long period of dependency, we have only learned to find a new source from which to nurse, a new partner to exploit.
Economic dysfunction cannot be repaired in the time it takes malignant cells to advance through an organism. A system where inefficiency has metastasized even to the production of potatoes, bricks and detergent, knows that every step taken alone is a step closer to the end. It is clear that Hugo Chavez came to Cuba to treat his physical illness because the guarantees of discretion about his condition are also guarantees of silence about the real state of our country.
So here we are again, in a situation we know well: the Berlin Wall falls, or cancer takes up residence in a man's body; glasnost takes the lid off seventy years of garbage, or a doctor is reckless with a patient; Soviet technicians pack their bags in Havana, or Cubans weigh their possessions in Venezuela; a young girl warns that caramels made in the USSR will soon run out, or a disillusioned woman talks to another about possible material collapse; a president sees how the map of a political block is breaking apart into various fragments, or fading leader stares in shock at the report of a CAT scan.
Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.
Translating Cuba is a compilation blog with Yoani and other Cuban bloggers in English.
Yoani's new book in English, Havana Real, can be ordered here.
Follow Yoani Sanchez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/yoanifromcuba
Just say what you want: Stop beating around the bush. Maybe a nice situation like Colombia, where your American friends have imposed a "democracy" to be proud of. Where dissidents have their stomachs cut out with machetes and rape is used ROUTINELY to terrify those from the lower classes who would organize.
Oh, you don't discuss those things. Too busy complaining that there is still free schooling in Cuba. Maybe if you get your way, the peasants will know to keep their mouths shut while you head off to meetings with your foreign funders, I mean friends.
Cuba is a fine country. At least it's better than the US. Which ain't saying much.
They export doctors to help people in poor countries and then the Wall Street Journal says that's bad.
Of course it's bad, if it's not uber-super-conglomerate-corporate-forprofit-medicine-cabal. Of course. The WSJ is always right.
Cubans choose their own candidates at open public meetings, and then vote to confirm or deny that choice in subsequent secret ballots. Which is why Cuba isn't run by rich guys and corporations.
It might help if you knew what you were talking about, doctora chiripa.
Sometimes the term de facto single-party state is used to describe a dominant-party system where laws or practices prevent the opposition from legally getting power.
Typically, single-party states hold the suppression of political factions, except as transitory issue oriented currents within the single party or permanent coalition as a self evident good.
The following list includes the countries that are legally constituted as single-party states as of 2012 and the name of the single party in power:
People's Republic of China (Communist Party of China leads the United Front); Hong Kong and Macau are excluded. (1949)
Cuba (Communist Party of Cuba) (1959)
Eritrea (People's Front for Democracy and Justice) (1993)
North Korea (Workers' Party of Korea leads the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland) (1948)
Laos (Lao People's Revolutionary Party leads the Lao Front for National Construction) (1975)
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (partially recognized state, Polisario Front) (1976))
Turkmenistan (Democratic Party of Turkmenistan) (1991)
Vietnam (Communist Party of Vietnam leads the Vietnamese Fatherland Front) (1976)
As Latin American unity proceeds, so will Cuban economic security. In three or four years, Cuba will have more oil that it knows what to do with. The alternative is US economic colonialism, which really is no option and what the revolution was all about in the first place.
As usual, Sánchez whines and complains, spuriously hanging Cuba's very survival on Hugo Chavez, but carefully offering no solution of her own.
CUBAN NATURAL RESOURCES:
Natural resources include cobalt, nickel, iron ore, copper, manganese, salt, timber, silica, and petroleum. At one time, the whole island was covered with forests and there are still many cedar (Cedrela odorata), chechem (Metopium brownei), mahogany (Swietenia mahagoni), and other valuable trees. Large areas were cleared to grow more sugarcane, and so few trees remained that timber had to be imported.
The most important Cuban mineral economic resource is nickel. Cuba has the second largest nickel reserves in the world after Russia.[4] Sherritt International, a Canadian energy company, operates a large nickel mining facility in Moa, Cuba. Another leading mineral resource is cobalt, a byproduct of nickel mining operations. Cuba ranks as the fifth largest producer of refined cobalt in the world.
Sugarcane was the most important part of the economy in Cuba's history, and is still grown on large areas. Extensive irrigation systems are developed in the south of Sancti SpÃritus Province. Tobacco, used for some of the world's best cigars, is grown especially in the Pinar del RÃo Province.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Cuba
For decades, Cuba has "exported" doctors, nurses and health technicians to earn diplomatic influence in poor countries and hard cash for its floundering economy. According to Cuba's official media, an estimated 38,544 Cuban health professionals were serving abroad in 2008, 17,697 of them doctors. (Cuba reports having 70,000 doctors in all.)
These "missionaries of the revolution" are well-received in host countries from Algeria to South Africa to Venezuela. Yet those who hail Cuba's generosity overlook the uglier aspects of Cuba's health diplomacy.
The regime stands accused of violating various international agreements such as the Trafficking in Persons Protocol and ILO Convention on the Protection of Wages because of the way these health-care providers are treated. In February, for example, seven Cuban doctors who formerly served in Venezuela and later defected filed a lawsuit in Florida federal court against Cuba, Venezuela and the Venezuelan state oil company for holding them in conditions akin to "modern slavery."
Cuban doctors go abroad because at home they earn a scant $22-$25 a month. When they work in other countries, they typically get a small stipend in local currency while their families back home receive their usual salary plus a payment in hard currency—from $50 to $325 per month.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE
http://www.weblogbahamas.com/blog_bahamas/2010/08/cubas-cash-for-doctors-program-a-business-of-modern-slavery.html
Just curious: what bank to Cuban doctors have to pay for their student loans?
I pay 10% of my gross income to a private bank, with my checks garnished before I receive them for a public college that used to be free. Will Yoani be happy when everyone in Cuba is in debt to a US bank for their education? Will they finally be free from the "slavery" of being educated to provide healthcare? Really. Tell us more.