FARC Money Laundering in Cuba / Juan Juan Almeida

On May 26, 2013 in Havana’s convention center it was announced that the parties involved in peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla group had reached an agreement on agrarian issues, the first of five to be negotiated.

Land and its use has been a not insignificant factor and one of the fundamental causes of a conflict that has claimed many lives. According to the document the accord should in theory bring about the much hoped-for beginning of a new series of changes in the rural and agrarian situation in Colombia.

The announcement of the agreement was applauded and witnessed by representatives from Cuba and Norway, which serve as the guarantor countries, as well as Venezuela and Chile, which act as observers. What is unusual in all of this is that none of the parties involved in the peace process has confirmed that any of the basic issues has been definitively resolved. “Nothing has been agreed to until everything has been agreed to” is another way of saying that “nothing is agreed to.”

With this discreet semantic manipulation, thus ended the ninth in a series of conversations which will resume tomorrow, June 11, to discuss other critical issues such as the FARC’s participation in Colombia’s political life. It is a clever way to rechristen this band of eccentric misfits and iconoclasts, who want to be viewed as having become real partners in peace and admired luminaries trying to avoid going to prison (which is where they belong) by signing an accord which will allow them to enter Congress.

Ultimately, there is always something that must be sacrificed. I understand that, when one negotiates and struggles to secure mutual benefits and results conducive to national harmony, it is often advantageous to allow certain illegitimate values to triumph over some ethical, moral and even democratic principles.

The Cuban delegation understood this well. Inspired by the old fable about kissing a frog, it decided to bet on the miraculous possibility that these obscene guajacones (guerrilla outlaws) might become beautiful princesses, honorable officials, effective parliamentarians or grand heads of state.

The government in Havana was tripping over itself to not only to sell itself as a defender of regional peace, but also to try to profit from some democratic voices calling for a swift solution to the prolonged conflict. Lastly and most importantly, however, it wanted to make a lot of money.

Yes, you read that right: a lot of money. A significant part of the two million dollars that the FARC raised carrying out “nomological and nomothetical” operations such as kidnapping and drug trafficking is now safely hidden away and is reporting good returns. It was washed, rinsed and well ironed through the purchase of modern equipment and sophisticated instrumentation for humanitarian use in Cuban hospitals such as CIMEQ* and the Cira García Clinic.* It has also been invested as part of the Cuban contribution to joint ventures that the island maintains with industrial consortia and large hotel chains headquartered inside and outside Cuba.

Unlike Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, French aviator and author of the book The Little Prince, what is essential to the revolutionary government is not invisible to the eye; it is cash.

Translator’s note: CIMEQ is a hospital that treats high-ranking government officials and military officers, their families and foreign dignitaries. Patients at the Cira García Clinic, which caters to foreign health tourists, are overwhelmingly from overseas. Its most sought-after service is plastic surgery.

13 June 2013

The General on His Birthday

During his term in office General Raul Castro has raised doubts and caused confusion. It seems ridiculous to think that a politician, whoever he might be, does not want to fix his country, but to hold onto power. Another oddity is that he wants to but cannot hold back the hands of time in order to forestall the arrival of a future that will inevitably arrive. Or that he prefers to promote illusory (and illusionistic) stimulus measures which in turn stimulate the old “save what you can” mentality and popular discontent.

Today, June 3, was his eighty-first birthday, which he has the strange habit of wanting to celebrate with his family. At this point I am not sure if the series of reforms the general has undertaken since he was crowned President of Cuba should be categorized as a success or a failure.

It would be unfair to deny his efforts at removing obstacles to the state by eliminating a large part of the unproductive state workforce. His measures in this regard, however, were aimed at generating publicity. Actual decentralization has been insignificant. They were intended to strengthen certain market forces. More importantly, they were aimed at transferring key decision making authority to friends and family members whom he considered “honest,” an effort that was conveniently thwarted by “discreet” loyalists.

For a long time the octogenarian soldier has deceived us by repeating like a parrot the claim that businesses run by the armed forces ministry were better organized and more productive, that militarizing the business sector would clean up an indifferent workforce and reduce corruption.

Such an enormous lie could not yield results. It was only an account transfer, a restructuring of power. On the Cuban asteroid many people know that military-run businesses, while listed on the payroll of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and run from the top down, do not operate based on reality – not in a social context much less in a physical one.

Do they generate benefits and produce goods and services? Yes, but only as a result of blind obedience (or exploitation or abuse or whatever you want to call it) from soldiers and recruits who work day after day without pay.

Economic production, with its many redundancies, barely covers its own production costs. As a result the militarization of the already disastrous spider web of Cuban businesses has caused the country to ascend structurally and economically to stratospheric levels of incomparable incompetence.

It is obvious that the General is no economist or anything else but a sadist, crook, manipulator and perfectionist. This simple reason explains why he controls the press, knowing they are not really journalists but historians, the cornerstones of glasnost.

It was Raul who, without renouncing intimidation as a means of repression, allowed explicit and growing criticism as means of catharsis and a way to encourage people to openly examine problems in order to correct them. Fair enough, but I do not know if talking about them is enough to correct them. Catharsis can relieve spiritual pain, but it does not change a system.

Many want to use complicate theories to explain why Raul tried this. Some have come to call it “Basic Thrust,” a reference to his relaxation of the old emigration law. This is why today we can embrace so many opponents, non-conformists and dissidents, who can now leave Cuba and return with demonstrable ease.

It is not a puzzle. The answer is so simple that my grandmother used to repeat it to me as a child: “The best place to corral a tree so that it does not feel like a prisoner is in a forest.
10 June 2013

Forgiveness or Justice

The Ladies in White under attack by State Security and their mob

The dictators and their henchmen, as a rule, are extravagant, autocratic, narcissistic, hypochondriac, provocative, enigmatic and disturbing individuals. Because of this, and more, anyone who grew up in any of the links in the chain of a dictatorial regime, shares a psychosocial trauma that is difficult to cure.

Government violence starts to weaken the welfare state with the constant exercise of its own virtuosity to impose terror and creates uncertainty under the umbrella of authority. This validates the power and leaves citizens without any real possibility of using an internal or external entity to defend their rights. It is called — according to some scholars – legal helplessness.

Scientifically it has been shown that this damage affects all people regardless of social class to which each individual belongs. And it affects not only the psychological and family level, but also damnifies cultural and educational development.

I do not believe in left nor right; but that all dictatorships possess as their only ideology the practice of supremacy, and imposition of their rule to the extent that society ends up adopting passivity, submission and resignation as a natural phenomenon.

Totalitarianism, with absolute certainty is sexist, the  rules legally and reigns over the woman by whatever means.

I think many know the repeated humiliation of Cuba’s Ladies in White. But there is so much more; for example, Cuba’s psychiatric hospitals are stuffed with very descriptive records of horrific sexual assault by the authority, which not confronted legally, damages not only the body memory of each female victim, but also the shock becomes irreparable, and is extended to the children.

Countless women who have been affected in their individuality, in their environment, in their family, social and ethical surroundings. Hate, in these cases (without referring to the many mothers who have lost children in the sea), is a sensible and even necessary emotion.

Compelling reason forces me to believe that in order to discuss the future of Cuba and its transition, we should first be self-sufficient and unburden ourselves of the disguise, and with it, the desire to please.

I don’t know about others, but to me, I respect the view of those who are anxious to figure out how to outline a common moral discourse that encourages citizen exaltation; it sounds naive, false, ridiculous and even childish tome to hear them speak of Forgiveness as if this were an elegant, civilized and pragmatic response to State violence.

I wonder how could Forgiveness, by itself — if it could — not be the starting point for another period of violence, or how this same absolution could achieve the reconciliation of a society that for years seen their children confronted like bands of enemies.

I have read, and lately I hear with reiterated frequency, several formulas and examples, but I only trust two old tools that have historically proven to be more reliable than revenge, and more effective than tolerance: The law and justice.

1 June 2013

My Relationship with Antonio Castro

On 19 October 202 AD, the Roman general Scipio Africanus defeated Hannibal in the Battle of Zama, near Carthage. It has nothing to do with it, but on the same date, but much later, born in Cuba was Dr. Antonio Castro Soto del Valle, the brand new golf champion, the fourth of five sons born to the union of the former dictator and Fidel Castro with Castro Soto del Valle (a woman whom I respect for her exceptional performance of her role as mother).

Let me clarify, I say that it is exceptional because one warm winter night, at the end of 2004, when the power of MININT and the frenzy of Raul was falling on me, Antonio approached me wife, took a two dollar bill from his wallet and looking into her eyes said, “They say it brings good luck; take it, you’re going to need it. Raul tried to do away with me; but my mother is alive, JJ’s isn’t.”

My relationship with Antonio was always affable, distant, and sincere, nothing more. His marriages, wives and children is not an issue here.

As a child — according to the bodyguards — Tony was shy, obsessive, curious and capricious; but his history teacher during the time he studied at La Lenin High School described him as a fickle student, not too neat, who didn’t wear his last name easily and suffered repeated identity crises and depression.Perhaps this frustration became a counterweight of advance and then deployment.

It’s worth pointing out that with the halo of mystery and security, a constant in his life during his student years, his teachers were active members of the general directorate of MININT personal security cross-dressing as teachers, who marked extensive gaps in the cognitive and instructive processes of the young Castro Soto del Valle.

When, under his father’s orders, they broke the shell of secretiveness, Antonia, eager to socialize, was rediscovered and emerged to the ordinary world with three attractive adjectives: famous, right and powerful; in other words, a potent magnet of attraction. What many are asking is why, not being the oldest, nor the youngest, nor the last, nor the preferred, it is he who is “without equal.”

Of course, the stereotype of beauty is influential: Antonio is blond, handsome, rich in stature and exaggerated in ego. It’s the manly image of any lead actor. And he’s famous as a good doctor.

Educated like a king, and fascinated by monarchies, he is a sophisticated mortal who has charm, elegance and good taste. Friendly when he wants to be and overwhelming when contradicted.

But the key to his success lies in the art of seduction. He knows well that his last name, more than an icon, is a commercial trademark and he handles masterfully and in detail his personal marketing.

His immodesty and glamor are undoubtedly his strongest attraction; he enjoys being different but repulses those who flatter him, he has temporary sensitivity for ordinary Cubans (whom, logically, he will inherit as subjects), those whose only property is their ID cards.

Tony is a cool guy, who born in half disaffection assume that, even though born in power, all human beings are like our environment and as such we should be understood.

23 May 2013

The Numbers that Cuba Shelves

According to the newspaper Granma, Cuba is among the 16 countries that have already reached the goal set by the World Food Summit in 1996, halving the number of undernourished people in every country of the world before 2015.

It is sad that Mr. José Graziano da Silva, director general of the United Nations Organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO, for its acronym in English), asserts that the credit has been possible thanks to the priority given by the Cuban government to guaranteeing its people’s right to food and the policies implemented to achieve this objective.

Nonsense, but explainable. It’s hard to see beyond the growth with its perfection that aims to show a government that distorts all its data and knows that for the vast majority of international organizations, the world is reduced to numbers. We are numbers and calculations; very dangerous arithmetic that some Cuban officials handle with excellence. My country is a place of impunity reigned over by an impeccable combination of politics and prostitution.

I don’t want to go overboard citing old familiar tactics used by the Cuban government to lobby and win votes in the different international level forums. It makes no difference if it’s the CDR, FMC, UNICEF, FAO, HRC, EU, UNDP, OEI, CARICOM … Every acronym is handled the same, national or international. When there are funds, nothing will be impossible because in island politics you just have to wait and what is won is lost and what is lost is won.

In the mid ’90s, a young neonatologist who worked in the Ramón González Coro OB-GYN Hospital in Havana Vedado, formerly the Sacred Heart clinic, was among the many selected to be part of a commission that would study what then was a TOP SECRET investigation.

Hiding a smile, and trying not to show her immense gratitude for such reliability, the talented doctor went to work. And counting on the full support of the Council of State itself, she thought that telling the truth would be the seed of what with great passion she called “My Revolution.”

The hurried exploration found that the Cuban infant born underweight, which later resulted in a considerable and irreversible decrease in size of the Cuban child, which even scientifically established standards considered “alarming.”

For this study, which lasted some time, this multidisciplinary team compiled a spreadsheet which took into account variables such as maternal age, health status assessment to detect pregnancy, treatment with nutritional supplements, weight gain in pregnancy , history of curettage, etc.. All these data were extracted from the records of pregnant women in doctors’ offices, and in the various departments of statistics for each local polyclinic.

The final report revealed that the factors associated with the preterm birth of many Cuban infants weighing under 2,500 grams, are inadequate nutrition of the future mother (this represented the highest percentage of cases studied), anemia during pregnancy and an inadequate time between births.

Since then, and as appropriate, the results were altered and the real results were shelved under lock and key. And my friend, who left medicine and has dedicated herself to painting, says that facial hair is not the only thing that connects Cuban officials with the Taliban.

21 May 2013

Behind a Kilo of Meat in Cuba

A few days ago I read that within the vast and complicated machinery of the Cuban Ministry of the Food Industry (MINAL), the meat company nationwide scored higher sales volume during the past fiscal year.

It surprised me, in that ministry there are several companies with more administrative staff than workers; but happy or alarmed was my “to be or not to be.”

The official press lies a little, although regularly, and as an established norm avoids part of reality. So I thought that this note would be published with the only objective of cleaning the stench of corruption that the wave of investigations and arrests that led the former head of this industry, Alejandro Francisco Roca Iglesia, to prison, along with his vice minister, Celio Hernandez and so many other officials. Especially knowing that, although the new minister of the branch is Dr. Maria del Carmen Concepcion Gonzalez, the one who has the upper hand in such a necessary institution in the foolish and never well-thought of engineering specialist in the applied chemistry of human nutrition, Deborah Castro Espín.

Anyway, the irony is liberating and as the old sailor’s saying goes, “When the dolphins leap the storm is coming.” I continued to keep my intellectual apathy busy and communicated with Havana using the overly expensive invention patented in 1876 by the British speech therapist Alexander Graham Bell.

“The Union of the Flesh” — and I quote almost verbatim someone who asked not to be revealed — “is the company that within this large conglomerate sold more last year. Supported, of course, by the Food Corporation SA (a mysterious Cuban capital private entity).

“Meat consumption grew, and both entities were responsible for producing and marketing meat products, plus all their derivatives.”

So far everything was going well, the scandalous is the rest. For a long time is hasn’t been profitable to produce a kilo of meat in Cuba, taking into account feed prices, the costs of caring for the animal, veterinary care and fuel. With all this an expensive product reaches Cuban processors. But the Cuban government didn’t calculate, or foresee the tangible increase, it has had since last year, in private restaurants (the paladares) and for that reason the MINAL was forced to innovative solutions to meet the pressing demand.

“We had no response,” my interlocutor told me stealthily, “and the ‘higher ups’ ordered ground beef to be mixed with small amounts of horse meat and texturized soy, to maintain an acceptable level of nutrition and not affect the typical cherry-red color of the fresh meat.

How dreadful, the Cuban officials lost respect and restraint; they gained irresponsibility, shamelessness and perversion. The fraud here is not in the mixing of the meat, if it’s not misleading or not properly informed.

It should be clarified that from the middle of 2012 to date, ground beef, selling at the price of steak priced in CUC, and that tourists and nationals enjoy, is fit for human consumption, but it is not ground beef. Indeed, in Cuba it’s never what it seems.

13 May 2013

My Brides in White / Juan Juan Almeida

Just three days ago, I was at the Miami airport, I did not want to miss the arrival of Berta Soler to this city. Discrete and humble, there they were, sitting in a corner, a small group of those women who from their immensity, some time ago I named “My Brides in White”; then I remembered a Sunday morning, under that strong and indiscreet sun on 5th Avenue in Havana, and revealed before my eyes a perfect formation, which out of ignorance I thought was a convention of santeros.

A total misconception, they were women dressed in white with a flower in their hands. I stopped to watch, and a a fifty-something guy in a beige guayabera, his face distorted by shock and emotion, approached and slapped the hood of my car, and showing his G2 cars ordered me, with unusual kindness, “Get out of here, those are the Ladies in White.” I continued my slow march, determined to know who were those women.

Days later I learned that the same group of women were protesting near Revolution Square, just where I had demonstrated considering it to be the marketplace of Cubans, and that one of them (Berta Soler), was planning not to leave there until she could see her husband, detained and sick. But of course, the police and paramilitary forces evicted them using the always repugnant help of kicks and shoves.

By then, I knew they weren’t just a curiosity, it was a duty, a feeling, I approached the women who demand the release of their families, their loved ones, every Sunday, who even today now manage to upset the complacency of Cuban dictators. Who dares to love so much?

The first time I saw, in the distance, a stout brunette with braids, and a blonde with a sunhat, who turned out to be the angel who, when everything was dark, God placed in my path and whose earthly name was Laura Pollán.

Suddenly a “Down with the Castro brothers” interrupted my memories, it was the deep and serious voice of an ebony become woman, of a lady who for her tenderness and simplicity it is impossible for some to believe that she is an open book. Her smile is a hook; and her courage rhymes with beauty, but not with fakery.

For a second I feared to approach her, I thought of time and its ravages and that she wouldn’t remember me; but no, I was wrong, despite her world travels, and I received many signs of affection from Berta, still a soldier of hope, armed with her helplessness. Practical, rational, obstinate, direct, strong, good-natured, happy, loyal, charismatic and sweet, she is an excellent friend, a perfect fusion of defects and virtues, an authentic Cuban. This simple woman of indomitable spirit; with no pretension to power, practicing love for those who find no mercy. She is a human being immune to this fever of stardom that both swarms and atrophies.

I hugged and kissed the same woman who one Sunday, dressed in white, after attending Mass at Santa Rita Church in Havana, and marching down 5th Avenue, I met sitting on one of the old benches still zealously guarded in Gandhi Park in Miramar, that beautiful Havana neighborhood that resists continuing to be anchored to the era of the thaw.

1 May 2013