Can I get an AMEN!? Felipe's Silence

End the Embargo, End Castro Regime's Excuse for All Its Failures

My favorite section of this masterful four paragraph double denunciation:

"The simple fact of choosing the word "embargo" or preferring the more fearsome "blockade" marks a quasi-ideological position. That issue has been so manipulated in the national press that the government doesn't recognize that among those who oppose the system are many who also oppose the United States trade restrictions on the island. The newspaper Granma assumes that those of us who demand a political opening applaud, ipso facto, the existence of the embargo. Hence, so many surprised faces when they hear our own arguments for lifting it as soon as possible; reasons that Felipe Perez Roque never said at the U.N. and that he only learned when he came to be the ousted foreign minister."

Cubans test official limits on criticism

http://www.thehour.com/story/513127/cubans-test-official-limits-on-criticism

PINAR DEL RIO, Cuba (Peter Orsi, AP) -- Pedro Pablo Oliva was the kind of model citizen the Cuban government wants to show the world.

Oliva proclaimed his loyalty to Fidel Castro's revolution, his support for its goal of social equality and his gratitude for cultural largesse that nurtured his development into an internationally celebrated painter and sculptor. He even did a turn as a delegate in the regional assembly of the western province of Pinar del Rio.

But when Oliva criticized harassment of dissidents and suggested there might be room for a party other than the Communists, he was abruptly expelled from the assembly, accused of counterrevolutionary behavior. He found himself with no choice but to shutter his home-based community workshop after the government withdrew its support.

Click here to continue reading:

http://www.thehour.com/story/513127/cubans-test-official-limits-on-criticism

Epitaph for a tyrant

The Deaths Of Dictators: 
Neither History Nor Their People Will Ever Absolve Them
Yoani Sánchez

Pull quote:
"I would have liked to see Muammar Gaddafi before a court, indicted for the crimes he committed against his country. I think the violent deaths of the satraps only gives them an aura of martyrdom they do not deserve."

Literature as an antidote to propaganda - Jose Manuel Prieto

North American Books I Read as a Child in Castro's Cuba
October 19, 2011

José Manuel Prieto, The Paris Review

Fabulous final two paragraphs:
"However, if my history of the American books I read as I child in Castro's Cuba explains anything, it's the power of literature to undo any stereotype, to annul even the most terrible accusatory campaigns and propagandistic platforms. Literature does more for the rapprochement of nations than thousands of well-intentioned speeches.

For me, literature was an antidote to propaganda—one that helped me gain a more human idea of the country presented as our main enemy, as always spying on us and ready to invade us. What image did I have, after all of these books, of Americans? They were obsessed in Faulkner, candidly provincial in Lewis, neurotic and scrawny in Salinger, brutally alone in Carver. A population—how to put it?—of humans, perfectly ordinary."

José Manuel Prieto is a New York–based novelist and translator. His latest novel, Rex, was published by Grove. He teaches literature at Seton Hall University.
Translated by Regina Galasso.

Change comes to Cuba - Freedom House report

Change Comes to Cuba: Citizens' Views on Reform after the Sixth Party Congress

Executive Summary
Economic reforms are causing visible changes and raising expectations in Cuba, a Freedom House survey found. Self-employment is becoming more widespread, and more Cubans now prefer to work independently than for the government. Many Cubans welcome the opportunities that self-employment brings, but others are skeptical or even resentful about the changes taking place in Cuba.

This survey is based on field research conducted in Cuba after the Sixth Communist Party Congress, which took place in April 2011. A team of researchers trained by Freedom House conducted 190 interviews with Cubans about their perceptions and experience of change, their expectations for the future, and their access to information. The interviews were conducted from June 1 to 22 in six provinces of the country.

The main findings of the survey are as follows:

Will The Real Terrorists Please Stand Up

'Will The Real Terrorists Please Stand Up' (2011, 82 minutes) is the latest of Saul Landau's documentaries about Cuba.  This one examines the case of the 'Cuban Five', intelligence agents sent to penetrate violent Cuban exile groups in Miami, who have been serving long prison sentences in the US.    

Archival footage as well as extensive interviews including both Cuban state security officials and Miami exiles provides an in-depth look at Miami-Washington-Havana politics in an attempt to explain the continued hostility of US administrations towards the island.   

This is the first public showing in the NYC Metro area.  Sponsored by Latin America Committee of Brooklyn For Peace. 

Thursday, October 27th, 6:30 p.m.
In the library of the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture     
Prospect Park West at 2nd St in Park Slope
#2 or #3 to Grand Army Plaza. 
Contributions greatly appreciated.

Unfinished Spaces: Cuba's (counter?) Revolutionary Art Schools

(Go here for full trailer.)

If you have never read the John Loomis' book, A Revolution of Forms, I highly recommend it.  (Loomis is pictured to the left at last night's opening).  It chronicles the birth and premature death of the cultural and architectural marvel of Cuba's National Schools of Art.

Readers are also alerted to Alma Guillermoprieto's fantastic memoir, Dancing with Cuba, which is set during the 6-months she spent teaching at one of the schools back in 1969.

Tonight here in NYC, I'm headed down to Tribeca Cinemas to see the new documentary, Unfinished Spaces, which is also about the Schools. Here's a blurb from the film's website:

Cuba's ambitious National Art Schools project, designed by three young artists in the wake of Castro's Revolution, is neglected, nearly forgotten, then ultimately rediscovered as a visionary architectural masterpiece.

In 1961, three young, visionary architects were commissioned by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara to create Cuba's National Art Schools on the grounds of a former golf course in Havana, Cuba. Construction of their radical designs began immediately and the school's first classes soon followed. Dancers, musicians and artists from all over the country reveled in the beauty of the schools, but as the dream of the Revolution quickly became a reality, construction was abruptly halted and the architects and their designs were deemed irrelevant in the prevailing political climate. Forty years later the schools are in use, but remain unfinished and decaying. Castro has invited the exiled architects back to finish their unrealized dream.

Unfinished Spaces features intimate footage of Fidel Castro, showing his devotion to creating a worldwide showcase for art, and it also documents the struggle and passion of three revolutionary artists.

Directed by Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray
2011 / HD / Color / 16:9 (1.78:1) / 86 min / Stereo

All the News that's Unfit to Print

Unfit  to  Print

How the Arab Spring made life even harder for foreign journalists in Cuba.

BY YOANI SÁNCHEZ | OCTOBER 17, 2011, Foreign Policy

How the new citizen journalism and cyber-activism is challenging the old journalism. 

"Opening the world's eyes to the real Cuba, after all, no longer requires a wire service dispatch; it can be done with a cell phone."

Entre «oficialistas» y «mercenarios» - Mas alla de las etiquetas en la blogosfera cubana

At long last, the digital version of the new edition of the journal Nueva Sociedad is now available.  You can go here to view, print or download PDFs of the various articles.

As I mentioned in a previous post two weeks ago, there is quite a rich variety of topics and countries covered in the issue under the central theme of "Politics and Cyber-Activism Today."

My own contribution to the issue is an article dedicated to describing the various branches of the blossoming Cuban blogosphere.  It is in Spanish and entitled:

Una cartografía de la blogósfera cubana. Entre «oficialistas» y «mercenarios»

Leetelo y deja tus criticas, comentarios y elogios aqui!

Keep reading for the abstract first in Spanish and then in English.  I also have links to PDFs of the other articles.

Pese al clima –por momentos agobiante– de polarización, en Cuba ha emergido una variedad de blogs y de blogueros que buscan sobreponerse a las dificultades políticas y materiales. Más allá de los adjetivos con que cada «bando» busca descalificar a los otros, en los últimos años la extensión de la blogósfera cubana ha sido capaz, no obstante, de construir algunos puentes y espacios que buscan salir de los «monólogos» tanto oficialistas como opositores. Todo ello en un contexto en el que tanto para el gobierno cubano como para el de Estados Unidos la web forma parte de una batalla política de mayores dimensiones.

Despite the at times oppressive climate of polarization, in Cuba a variety of blogs and bloggers have emerged which look to get over the political and material difficulties. Beyond the adjectives with which each «side» looks to disqualify the others, in recent years the extension of the Cuban blogosphere has been capable, however, of constructing some bridges and spaces which look to get out of the monologues, as much pro-government as opposition. All this in a context in which, as much for the Cuban government as for the United States, the web forms part of a political battle of larger dimensions.

The issues also includes the following provocative articles:

¿Hacia una política 2.0? Potencialidades y límites de la red de redes
RAUL TREJO DELARBRE

Mucho ciberactivismo... pocos votos. Antanas Mockus y el Partido Verde colombiano
OMAR RINCÓN

Las revueltas árabes en tiempos de transición digital. Mitos y realidades
YVES GONZALEZ-QUIJANO

Testimonio: ciberactivismo y medio ambiente. El caso de Greenpeace Argentina
HERNÁN P. NADAL

NUEVA SOCIEDAD en la web 2.0. Selección de entradas del blog NuSo
DAMIÁN PROFETA / JIMENA ZULUAGA / HORUS ESTÉFANO DÍAZ, COLECTIVO HONDURAS / MARCCELLA LOPES BERTE

Country for Old Men (No)

Coming soon from Foreign Policy magazine (but now up on its website).

Country for Old Men
A dissident reports from the ruins of the daddy state, where Papá Fidel is now just the patient-in-chief.
BY YOANI SÁNCHEZ | NOVEMBER 2011