Acuse de recibo: Seremos como El Che?

El mundo, sí, es un pañuelo. 

It is indeed a small world. 

I thought readers might like to take a peak at this brief e-mail exchange between me and Joshua, a "year 12 student" (which I think is the equivalent of a high school senior and not a 12-year old) from Australia. 

* * *

On Jul 19, 2012, at 11:06 PM, Joshua wrote:

Hello, I am a year 12 student in Queensland, Australia. I am currently doing my final assessment on a biography about Che Guevara. I have to present a Oral speech presentation about Che Guevara, using a biography as a basis. I have to present information about how Che Guevara was an agent of change in history, how he affected historical events and what historical opinions on him say.

The book I chose as my basis for this oral is the Che Guevara book in the Critical Lives series published by Alpha Books. I was wondering if you would be able to assist me with any information about Che Guevara. Such as what your opinion on him is, why you wrote in the book about him and any other information that could assist me in my assessment.

Any help you could provide would be much appreciated.

Yours Sincerly, Joshua

* * *

Joshua,

Wow!  It is quite enterprising of you to reach out to me as part of your project.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna is certainly a complicated and controversial figure even now 45 years after his death. To assess the impact of his life is difficult since he had so many different stages and phases. Another difficulty in assessing his life is that he tends to be either turned into a hero, saint, and martyr by his fans on the one hand; or a villain, terrorist, and murderer by his detractors on the other.

I myself am more of a detractor than a fan of his, but I can and do recognize his important contribution to Latin American political history and especially to anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist resistance around the world.

To be brief, I'd say that his most important positive contribution was to recognize, denounce, and confront the abuses of capitalism and U.S. imperialism; and to become a symbol across the world for others who fight for national self determination and social justice.

On the negative side, I'd say that his ideological rigidity, intolerance of dissent, and utopian messianism turned out to be a disastrous recipe both for Cuba and for the other countries and movements where his ideas were put into practice.

While his vision and example of the "new (altruistic and socialist) man" was inspiring to many, when applied on a national scale in Cuba it led to economic collapse, divisive and almost religious orthodoxy and sectarianism, and perhaps worst of all increasing alienation and cynicism (instead of inspiration and hope) on the part of new generations of children and grandchildren of the revolution.

It is quite instructive that the economic reforms currently being slowly put into place in Cuba today under the leadership of Raul Castro are the very antithesis of Guevara's ideas of revolutionary consciousness, voluntary labor, moral incentives, and the new man.

While Che, Fidel, and "socialism" are often celebrated as revolutionary, socialist "saints" today in Cuba (and even used to justify the need for an "updating" of Cuba's economic model), even the Cuban government has come to recognize that their economic ideas have been unworkable at best and ruinous at worst.

They still teach Cuban school children to shout "Viva Fidel!" (long live Fidel) and "Seremos como El Che!" (we'll be like Che), but almost everyone recognizes the irony and contradiction between these patriotic slogans that celebrate an idealized, defiant past and the "brave new world" that Cuba faces today.

Sandra Ramos - Seremos como el Che (1993)

I hope this helps and feel free to let me know if you have any follow up questions.

Sincerely,

Ted Henken

revolution not televised - BronXuseum - July 20, 5 p.m.

Open House at the BronXueum 

Tonight, July 20 

5:00 - 8:00 p.m.

Sandra Ramos, Seremos Como el Ché (1993) 
Chalcography

REVOLUTION NOT TELEVISED

July 19 – October 7, 2012

Inspired by Gil Scott-Heron's famous song-poem from 1970 that detected a wave of cultural changes imperceptible to the mainstream, "revolution not televised" features works by contemporary Cuban artists.

Featured artists include: José Bedia, Tania Bruguera, Los Carpinteros, Carlos Garaicoa, Ana Mendieta, Sandra Ramos, and Esterio Segura Mora, among others.

Odds and Ends: Contemporary Art, Film, and Books on Cuba...

Around town and out in cyber-space...

• Two Cuban art exhibitions are set to kick off soon in New York City.  First, there is "Two Citizens of Utopia," a joint exhibition of work by Ibrahim Miranda and Douglas Pérez at The 8th Floor.  The invitation only opening is on Tuesday, July 10, and the show opens to the general public this Wednesday, July 11 and runs through October, 2012.  
• This is followed by "Revolution, Not Televised," an exhibition of 35 works of contemporary Cuban art spanning over 40 years that will open on July 19 at the Bronx Museum and run through October 7.

• For the documentary lovers out there, I recommend that you check out the fascinating and unique film catalogue at Americas Media Initiative / Cuba Media Project.  While at LASA in San Francisco I picked up a sampling of their documentaries on Cuba and have been impressed with the quality, originality, and independence of the work so far.  They have a really good and quite brave film on censorship in Cuba entitled "Zone of Silence" (Zona de Silencio, in Spanish with English subtitles) directed by Karel Ducasse - who will be in the U.S. in October on a director's tour, showing his film and doing Q & A's (perhaps you or your institution want to co-sponsor his visit?).  The film features interviews with filmmaker Fernendo Pérez, writer Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, musician Frank Delgado, playwright Anton Arrufat, and film critic Gustavo Arcos, among others.  
• AMI also distributes a solid film on "Race" (Raza, also with English subtitles) directed by Eric M. Corvalán Pellé featuring an interview with Esteban Morales among many others.  
• Finally, they distribute a four-volume series of the collected shorts of Cuba's TV Serrana, which function like little but powerful windows into life as lived today in the mountains of eastern Cuba.

• Finally, for those of you still looking for some books to fill out your summer reading list, I am just winding down teaching a pair of summer classes in which I have really learned a lot.  The first class, "The Sociology of the Internet," included the following four books (all are highly recommended - but my favorite was the first one by Wu): The Master Switch by Tim Wu; The Social Media Reader, edited by Michael Mandiberg; The Net Delusion but Evgeny Morozov; and The Consent of the Networked by Rebecca MacKinnon.  You'll learn about everything from information empires to network neutrality; from the "long tail" to crowdsourcing; from F(l)oss to social surplus; and from networked authoritarianism to cyber-utopianism!  You can probably tell that I've been busy writing my final exams! Let's hope my students read my blog.

• I also taught a class in "Cuban Culture and Society" where we read Samuel Farber's new book, "Cuba since the Revolution of 1959: A Critical Assessment."  While the title is a bit overly academic and uninspiring, the book itself is a comprehensively researched, up-to-date, and quite devastating assessment of the last 53 years of the revolution in power.  In fact, the book should be called "a devastating assessment," not a "critical" one, although it is both critical in its analysis and devastating in its conclusions and recommendations (from the left).  The book starts with two chapters on politics (domestic and international) and two on economics (development policy and labor policy), but I really enjoyed the later chapters on Afro-Cubans (Ch. 5), gender politics and sexuality (Ch. 6), and especially an amazingly fair and comprehensive final chapter entitled, "Dissidents and Critics - from Right to Left" (Ch. 7).  The book concludes with a hard-hitting reflection aimed primarily at progressive supporters of (and apologists for) the regime on the many ways that the Cuban systems falls well short of being a "socialist democracy."  It also has a useful and incisive epilogue where Farber critiques the direction and scope of Raul's economic reforms to date.  Whereas other critics often argue that the reforms "do not go far enough," Farber says that they are going "in the wrong direction."  Instead, he recommends "worker self-management, equality, and a democratization of the Cuban political system and society as a whole." 
• For those without the time to read his entire book, Havana Times features an article by Farber that came out just yesterday up on its website entitled, "The Implications of Worker Self-Management" (en Español).  HT also profiled Farber's new book (Esp) in December and followed that up with a useful series of posts each of which boils down the essence of each of his chapters.

LJC, the Orwellian "memory hole," & Google cache

In my previous post, I reported on the unfortunate closure of the pro-revolution blog La Joven Cuba.

In the two days since they posted their surprising "taking a rest" message on Friday morning, the Cuban blogosphere has lit up with speculation about what went down in Matanzas.

As is her habit, Cuban blogger Yasmin Portales Machado has a witty and incisive post up at Havana Times giving her "take" on the "take down."  (Spanish version here).  Her comments of solidarity with LJC are especially important given that both she and her husband Rogelio have had at least one public spat with the boys at LJC in the past.

It was my own speculation that LJC's "rest" is the fallout from their increasingly critical tone in some of their posts.  Likely the last straw for ever-vigilant big brother was a particularly harsh post on May 28, 2012, by Roberto G. Peralo.  In it he zeroed in on the government's delay in granting open access to broadband on the island.

However, if you go to the LJC blog now, you WILL NOT find the offending post.  Instead you will get this message.  Entering the Orwellian world of the "memory hole," the message reads:

"Lo sentimos, pero no podemos encontrar lo que estás buscando. 

Quizás la búsqueda te ayudará" 

(We're sorry, but we cannot find what you're looking for.  

Perhaps the search will help you).

This graphic has been borrowed from the blog Acerca de Cuba by Josep Calvet.

Even the self-described "progressive" US-based news site Progreso Weekly / Progreso Semanal - which had just begun to syndicate and translate Peralo's posts from LJC - seems to have removed the original article from its site.  Wow!  It seems that the PCC has some real PULL!  

Luckily for us, the blog "La Chiringa de Cuba" has kept its reproduction of Peralo's original post up at its site.

At the same time, it seems that neither Orwell, nor the PCC, nor Progreso Semanal ever thought of Google cache - where old or "disappeared" webpages don't die or even fade away, but are stored forever for easy recovery!  Going there we can still read the offending post (which generated an amazing 261 comments by June 3).  It is entitled: 

"Los incumplimientos a lo acordado en la conferencia del PCC" 

(What has not been complied with from the agreements 

of the Conference of the Cuban Communist Party).

This is the graphic, appropriately and quite prophetically entitled, 

"Prensa Muda" (mute press) that accompanied Peralo's original post.

What follows are a series of screen shots of the cached file.  But first, let me translate a few key passages from Roberto's prescient post:

"The concerns of a young Cuban about agreements from the PCC Conference that have not been complied with...

It's been four months since that meeting and the facts demonstrate to me that all that effort and example of participation and democracy have been pure formalism...

"It's been more than a year since we got the news that the fiber optic cable had been installed, at a cost to the Cuban people of $70M, promising to increase our transmission capacity 3,000 percent.  But today we only have more restrictions [on Internet access], more limitations to connect, and no information about what happened [to the cable]." 

UPDATE: La Joven Cuba takes a "rest"

Harold Cárdenas, Roberto Peralo, and Osmany Sánchez (Tatu) the co-founders of the collective blog La Joven Cuba stand proudly before a billboard celebrating the Union of Young Communists (UJC) featuring Julio Antonio Mella, Camilo Cienfuegos, and Che Guevara.

* * *

UPDATE: Thanx to a reader for sending me the original link to the "disappeared" May 28 LJC post that I mention below.  If you click on that previous link:

http://lajovencuba.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/los-incumplimientos-a-lo-acordado-en-la-conferencia-del-pcc/

you enter the world of the Orwellian "memory hole," and get the following message: 

"Lo sentimos, pero no podemos encontrar lo que estás buscando. Quizás la búsqueda te ayudará" (We're sorry, but we cannot find what you're looking for.  Perhaps the search will help you).

However, neither Orwell nor the PCC seem to have ever thought of Google cache - where old webpages don't die or even fade away, but are stored for easy recovery!  

Going there we can still read the offending and now "disappeared" post (which generated an amazing 261 comments by June 3) entitled:

"Los incumplimientos a lo acordado en la conferencia del PCC" 

(What has not been complied with from the agreements of 

the Conference of the Cuban Communist Party).

* * *

Upon waking up this morning but even before getting out of bed and dragging a comb across my increasingly hairless head, I checked my iPhone and saw a message there from a friend and fellow Cuban blogósfera watcher.

He asked if I had checked the latest surprising post left in BOLD and ALL CAPS at the proudly revolutionary blog, La Joven Cuba, published out of Matanzas by three young professors and grad students there, Harold, Roberto, and Osmany (pictured above).

The post is entitled: "La Joven Cuba se toma un descanso" (La Joven Cuba takes a rest).

This cryptic header is followed by an even more cryptic message that reads:

"POR MUCHOS MOTIVOS NOS ES MUY DIFÍCIL MANTENER UN BLOG TAN COMPLEJO COMO LA JOVEN CUBA. NOS TOMAREMOS UN DESCANSO. ESPERAMOS PODER CONTINUAR EN UN FUTURO."

(FOR MANY REASONS IT IS VERY DIFFICULT FOR US TO MAINTAIN SO COMPLEX A BLOG AS LA JOVEN CUBA.  WE WILL TAKE A REST.  WE HOPE TO CONTINUE IN THE FUTURE).

El Yuma at a peso paladar en Matanzas in April, 2011 with Roberto and Harold.

While I never agreed politically with much of what these guys posted at LJC, the open, honest way they treated me when I visited and interviewed them in Matanzas in April of 2011, convinced me that they were a genuinely spontaneous (that is grass-roots, not astro-turf) pro-revolution blogging effort of three young people who wanted to defend the revolution on-line.

(See here, here, here, and here, for their own comments about our meeting).

As Elaine Díaz likes to say, it is possible to be spontaneously pro-revolution out of choice, but as we are learning, that sure ain't easy.


No es fácil.

In the aftermath of my visit, and after I was told in no uncertain terms not to return to Cuba by two state security agents upon my departure at the airport last April, the folks at LJC vehemently denied being 'oficialista' and stated plainly in their blog:

"La Joven Cuba enjoys total freedom to do what it does. This is a fact and will continue. The day that this changes, we will end our existence as La Joven Cuba." 

Perhaps that day has finally come.

Here is their entire statement as posted on La Joven Cuba by Roberto in May, 2011 (the translation is mine):

"La Joven Cuba is not an official blog, we defend the good things about the Revolution and criticize the things we think are negative, that go against and affect the country we dream of and want to build. The Blog was created through our own initiative and desires. We did not ask permission from anyone. We do not clear what we publish with anyone. La Joven Cuba enjoys total freedom to do what it does. This is a fact and will continue. The day that this changes, we will end our existence as La Joven Cuba.
-Roberto G. Peralo, La Joven Cuba, “Reflections on a controversial meeting,” May 5, 2011.

The Cuban regime has never been able to tolerate independently organized and operated citizen projects (even proudly and self-described "revolutionary" ones such as LJC) that it didn't eventually and totally control.

Initial toleration, eventually leads either to open repression or silent but sure co-optation.  In this case, it seems that these three guys made the tough but principled decision to "temporarily" close down their project in order to preserve their independence and prevent being taken over by the "apparatus."

Some say China is an example of perfect "networked authoritarianism" (see Rebecca MacKinnon for more on this term) where the C.P. (Communist Party) has figured out how utilize the PC (personal computer) and the Internet to actually strengthen government control.  I am one of those who thinks that Cuba is delaying granting greater access to broadband until it can learn how to roll it out in "locked-down" Chinese style.  For now, however, perhaps such an arrangement in Cuba has proven impossible and what many had assumed was a cosy relationship between LJC and Cuba's own C.P. is not so cosy after all.

All this is even more interesting given the fact that just a few weeks ago on May 28, 2012, Roberto Peralo harshly criticized the government for its delay in granting open access to broadband. Perhaps this closure is related to that harshly worded criticism - especially since I have been unable to locate that post on their blog again (can anyone find it?).

Then, there's the other fascinating fact that Mariela Castro attended and praised the "Blogazo por Cuba" event organized by LJC in Matanzas in late April intended for a group of "blogueros en revolución."  She even went so far as to say on Twitter at the time that groups like LJC have shown that the "the best journalism done in Cuba today is in the blogosphere, as Cuban as the palm trees."

‏@CastroEspinM - "El mejor ‪#periodismo‬ que se hace en ‪#Cuba‬ hoy está en esta blogosfera, tan cubano como las palmas, ‪#Norelys‬ ‪#BlogazoxCuba‬ @BlogazoxCuba."

Maybe Mariela should keep such praise to herself - I mean she even told U.S. audiences during her recent American tour that she would vote for Obama if she could.  I'm sure Obama wasn't pleased.

What follows is my own profile of LJC, written last year for Nueva Sociedad and later updated, translated into English, and published in ASCE's Cuba in Transition:

When I visited the founders of La Joven Cuba (LJC) in Matanzas in late April, 2011, they received me with cordiality and good humor. During our very frank and respectful four-hour conversation and mutual interview on my visit to Matanzas, I noted in the founders of LJC both a curiosity and capacity for dialogue and a fervent conviction in their own identity as “young revolutionaries.” In essence, theirs is a project that defends the revolution, socialism, and Cuba’s national sovereignty, while at the same time attacking many self-described “alt-bloggers” such as Yoani Sánchez and Miriam Celaya (of Voces Cubanas) frequently and fervently. The site’s creators are three graduate students and professors at the University of Matanzas (Harold Cárdenas Lema, Roberto Peralo, and Osmany “Tatu” Sánchez—the last of whom I was not able to meet).


Founded in April 2010 with the conscious purpose of not only “defending the Revolution but also [of facilitating] an internal debate about its present and future,” the site aimed to give a different take on what its creators saw as the “unjust manipulation of the facts about the Internet in Cuba” both in the international press and on popular dissident blogs. Still, in a post from April 4, 2011, commemorating the blog’s first anniversary, Cárdenas, Peralo, and Sánchez admit that they have been at a clear disadvantage in trying to defend the revolution when: “Each time something new appears that could be seen as a potential threat (in this case the Internet), the response is prohibition and limitation instead of its utilization in our favor. Recently, this view has changed for the good and La Joven Cuba is proof of this.”


Apart from these three administrators, the site often incorporates posts by some of their undergraduate students at the University and by a handful of foreign collaborators including the Spaniard Josep Calvet and the Cuban-American Max Lesnik. To its detriment, LJC’s blogroll long referenced only the most staunchly official, pro-regime blogs and news sources. In response to their request for suggestions about improvements to their site that would help them be taken more seriously as independent bloggers, I advised them that they could be more diverse in their links to other blogs and not simply highlight the most pro-regime sites with which they sympathize. In the six months since our meeting, their set of links has expanded only very slightly to include a few more moderate voices, but none that could be classified as “outside” the revolution (or much less “against” it). The irony inherent in the fact that this section of their site is labeled “alternative blogs” seems to be lost on them. However, they would likely argue that their blog, as well as the many fiercely pro-regime blogs referenced on their site, are indeed “alternatives” to highly popular and deeply critical blogs such as Generación Y, which to them highlight only the most negative aspects of Cuban reality and purport to speak for an entire “generation,” their generation.


In contrast to their blogroll, one of the richest sections of LJC is the normally diverse, respectful, and extensive chain of comments which quickly appear after each of their posts. Often growing to more than 50 entries, these exchanges sometimes become real debates that extend far beyond the content of the original post and include a group of quite faithful and tenacious visitors. In my interview with Cárdenas and Peralo, I learned that a majority of their visitors are Cuban exiles, some of whom even claim to be former “freedom fighting” members of hard-line exile groups like Alpha-66 (Cárdenas and Peralo would likely call them former “terrorists”). In fact, statistics published on the portal indicate that of the 107,000 total unique visitors to the site in its 18 months of existence, the largest number are from the United States (23,533 or 22% of the total), followed by Mexico (15,288 or 14%), and Spain (9,975 or 9%). Thus, while Generación Y and Voces Cubanas are often criticized for having no following in Cuba and catering to an exclusively international audience, LJC — like Havana Times and Bloggers Cuba — also has far more international than domestic readers. LJC has only received 5,078 unique visitors from within Cuba, ranking seventh and comprising just 5% of the total.


The majority of visitors clearly do not share the pro-government orientation of the blog’s administrators, often openly and eloquently critiquing their arguments. However, they leave comments on a regular basis engaging with the authors of each post in a respectful tone and a spirit of free debate. “It is with this spirit,” argue the administrators, “that we will continue promoting debate (not arguments) and we will accept here all who are interested in the future of Cuba regardless of their ideology.” As with the other bloggers described above, the administrators of LJC say that they do not censor comments but do moderate them in order to screen out intolerant, aggressive, and insulting language. They have even blocked some frequent early visitors from leaving new comments with the justification that they did not stay on topic or take seriously others’ point of view.


While there was only very limited dialogue among these four blogging enterprises between 2007 and 2010, since my late-April 2011 visit to Cuba and the publication of my interview about the Cuban blogosphere with Luis Manuel García at CubaEncuentro in late-May 2011, there has been quite an explosion of debate between them. This “bloggers’ polemic” has often been quite heated but just as often has exposed clear signs of solidarity among some of these independent “internauts.” In either case, this ongoing polemic has revealed a hunger and capacity for serious debate, as well as a variety of competing arguments and positions vis-à-vis the role of the Internet and blogs in Cuba.


One such fascinating and unprecedented debate began in March 2011, prior to my visit, and continues today. It is between LJC and Regina Coyula, a former state security agent who is now the author of the blog La Mala Letra (which is linked to the Voces Cubanas portal). On her own blog, Coyula labels each new post in this exchange “LML en LJC,” with the latest entry (the 18th) on October 19, 2011 [NB: this number reached 28 in February, 2012] focusing on the proper role of the intellectual within a revolutionary society. Soon after the exchange began, Coyula described her approach with these words:


“Not too long ago I began visiting a blog run out of the University of Matanzas. I was drawn to it because even though we see reality from different angles, I thought we could build a space for a respectful and sound debate, [something] sorely needed in Cuban society. [...] Someone asked me why would I want to draw attention to a blog that would not do the same for me.


‘You have a good point,’ I said, ‘but that difference is very important to me. I can talk about them without having to consult with anyone else first.’”

Havana's paladars grow five-fold in less than two years, says Trabajadores

My thanx to Phil Peters for sending me a link to an article in yesterday's Trabajadores newspaper entitled, "Paladares, tendencia creciente" (private home restaurants, a growing trend).

When I finished my dissertation back in 2002, which focused on self-employment and particularly on Cuba's paladares, I titled it "Condemned to Informality," with the assumption that I would never see such a headline in a Cuban newspaper.

However, as the article reports, since October of 2010 when the government announced its "new rules" for self-employment, there has been a near doubling of the number of registered micro-enterprises and entrepreneurs (now totaling 387,200), with the number of paladares in Havana increasing FIVE FOLD! between then and the end of May, 2012.

The article reports that there are now 376 such private home-based restaurants in the City of Havana (under the very bureaucratic socialist label: "los elaboradores-vendedores de alimentos y bebidas que prestan servicio gastronómico por cuenta propia") up from just 74 in 2010.

While the paladar trend is important, it is a somewhat elite phenomenon that operates with economies of scale not available to many Cubans.  Even more noteworthy is the growth of a number of other kinds of food service operation - as any visitor to Havana in the last two years can attest.

Food service enterprises that do home-based catering ("al detalle") or roving street sales have topped 10,900 in Havana, while little street corner and sidewalk cafes and cafeterias (known to Cubans as "puntos fijos") have grown to 2,567.  Many of these private ventures have come to replace the state-run workers' canteens that have been closing across the island.

Raul talks a lot about the need to change the rigid mentality that understood entrepreneurship as the equivalent to exploitation and theft (installed in the minds of many party faithful over decades by his elder brother).  Trabajadores seems to have gotten the memo.

The article describes the paladares as "excellent restaurants" which, together with the other private food services in Havana, "have become consolidated after their operators have made important investments and even done market research."  The article goes on to celebrate these private operators for their provision of "a notable variety of supply and an elevated quality of service."

The article even hints that locals and international tourists alike can turn to these restaurants as a compliment to Cuba's state-run restaurants.

***

For anyone planning such a visit to Cuba in near future, take a look at my very own "Notes from the Underground," a guide to Havana that I wrote and updated regularly between 2000 and 2006.  It includes a lengthly listing of both paladares and bed & breakfasts.  I have not found the time to update it yet after my trip to the island in April, 2011, but it will give you a brief version of the fascinating history (up to 2006) of the paladar - when it was still largely an "underground" phenomenon.

Of course, the history of the paladar post-2006 is still being written.  Let's hope Raul's legacy can at least partially absolve Fidel of his own history!

How the US keeps Cuba offline, Nick Miroff, Global Post

How the US keeps Cuba offline

Washington has its wires tangled: It promises Cuba free data, but blocks access to the internet's coolest tools.

Nick Miroff, Global PostJune 27, 2012

HAVANA, Cuba — Fear not, web-deprived Cubans. The US government has a new plan to breach the firewall of communist censorship and let free data flow through.

First though, it needs to block your access to some really cool software.

That was the scrambled message of the past week. First, Cubans found themselves barred from using Google Analytics — a free, web-traffic analysis tool — by the US trade embargo. A few days later, they learned that American officials are spending millions on new programs to boost "the free and decentralized flow of information" to the island.

A reminder, once more, that the Great Software Maker of the North giveth, and also taketh away.

Festival CLIC and Voces 15

Download PDF of VOCES 15 NOW!

Starting at 9:00 a.m. today, Thursday, June 21, and running for the next three days, there is a unique, independent "future of technology" event taking place in Havana called Festival CLIC.

Co-sponsored by Estado de SATS, Academia Blogger, and EBE (a Spanish blogging collective), the event is described in great detail (in English) here.  Yoani Sanchez also pushes back against Cuba Debate's lies and propaganda about the Festival.

(Interestingly, she's not alone in calling CubaDebate out on its Faux News.  Both Dmitri Prieto and Rogelio Diaz take on Cuba Debate for their unfounded attack against Havana Times in the same article they attack the Festival.)

In the afternoon of the opening day following a special panel on digital magazines and web portals in Cuba, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo and his motley crew will present the 15th edition of the free-lance digital magazine VOCES.

OLPL's crew is even more motley than usual this time around given the fact that he recruited El Yuma to co-edit this particular edition with him (partly explaining my web silence over the past month)!  It is dedicated to new media and technologies looking to the role they will play in Cuba in the future.

It's also intended to go beyond the sometimes provincial, navel-gazing tendency of Cubans, and Cuba-watchers like myself, by addressing ICT issues mas allá de Cuba insular.  You'll decide if we succeeded...

Of mercenaries and Marielas...

First an apology. I last posted here on May 20, exactly one month ago.

A thousand blog ideas have filled my head in that too long a time between posts but, being so busy, I always told myself that I would wait to post when I had more time to "develop" the idea more fully.  Then when I would sit down to write, either the original idea was gone or its time and relevance had passed.

I should just accept that a blog is more of a "perpetual beta" and not a forum for polished, perfect essays.

Then there is the impact of my constant Tweeting on the frequency of my blog posting.  I don't know how Yoani does it but her obsessive and always entertaining and informative Tweets do not seem to subtract from her eloquent and constant blog posts...  Too bad I can't say the same for myself.

But since I have a day job that pays my rent and puts food on the table, I tend to use my Tweets as a shortcut to get the hot stuff into cyberspace and then never get around to blogging...

So, readers beware and be ready: I resolve to post more, but more briefly in the coming months.

***

As a first foray into brevity (yeah, right!), I'll give my quick take on LASA 2012, San Francisco here.

LASA is always a marathon and when the city it's in is seductive as is the case with San Fran, I have been known to abscond on most of the panels to see the sights.  This time around, however, my fiancé joined me at the end of the conference and we stayed in the city for a few extra days to walk up and down some of those hills!

This gave me the excuse to be quite disciplined for a change and spend 3+ days filled with panels, receptions, workshops, debates, a brief Q&A with Mariela Castro, and even a public exchange with none other than author and head of the Cuban Writers and Artists Union (UNEAC), Miguel Barnet.

I got to Mariela Castro's talk early and sat in the front row directly facing the podium.  While I was disappointed by the great silence in her talk about issues of tolerance and inclusion beyond those affecting the LGBT community, I must admit that I was impressed with her intelligence, radicalism (that's meant to be a compliment), and professional, focused scope and tone.

I recorded her presentation and will embed it here when I figure out how to put audio on my blog. (I can do video with a YouTube embed but can anyone help me with an audio file?)

I asked her the first question, focusing on her recent Tweet from March where she indicated that the Cuban blogosphere was much better than the Cuba press at reflecting the complexities and many colors of Cuba's diverse reality.  I simply asked, given her comment and her highlighting a number of LGBT themed blogs in her presentation, which blogs she reads regularly and would recommend.  Unfortunately, she really didn't answer the question other than to say that she's no expert on Cuban blogs but that she was impressed with the young bloggers she had met the previous month in Matanzas at the "Blogazo por Cuba" event there.

Later I kicked myself for wasting my opportunity with such a softball question.  I should have asked this:

"Obama just 'came out' publicly in support of gay marriage.  Do you know if the President of Cuba is also in favor of legalizing same sex marriage in his country?"

To that I could have added this follow up:

"Most gains in the US for LGBT rights have come from independent groups agitating the powers that be for respect and recognition.  In Cuba, you lead this fight from within a government institution.  What freedoms to organize are there and what movements exist in Cuba that advocate for LGBT rights outside of state institutions and even outside of socialism or the revolution."

Alas, I chickened out on this one.  (But not the next one as you will see...).

Later that same evening, the LASA Cuba section held its meeting, which as a member in good standing, I attended.

The meeting began with a petition being passed around about the Cuban 5.

Then, the BIG issue that consumed the better part of an hour or more was addressed.  While Mariela had been granted a visa (provoking howls of protest from hard right Cuban-American politicos), another 10 Cuban participants (out of a huge Cuban delegation 75-strong) had been inexplicably denied theirs.  This seemed particularly arbitrary and the result of a cynical and cowardly political calculation since the majority of those denied this time around regularly travel to the US for academic purposes (such as Carlos Alzugaray, Rafael Hernandez, and Esteban Morales).  I even had Carlos give a very rich and contentious guest lecture in my Cuba class at Baruch in the fall semester, 2011.

There were 10 empty chairs lined up in the front of the auditorium with the name of one of "the 10" on each of them.

The Cuba section had previously circulated a petition via e-mail denouncing the denials of these visas, which I had signed with conviction - but also with a bit of hesitation since it failed to mention the fact that the Cuban government also, and more systematically, controls and frequently denies Cubans the right to travel abroad.

As the petition made the rounds, a long line of speakers, almost all of them other "Yumas" like myself (well not exactly like me as it turned out) took the mic and proceeded to heap righteous scorn on the US State Department.

While I had signed onto the petition, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the almost gratuitous blindness and hypocrisy with which these speakers invoked the violation of our "right to hear the voices of the Cuban people" and the "denial of our rights to work with our Cuban colleagues."

When I could no longer bear this willful partiality and almost comical parody of a meeting of the Communist Party, I took my turn at the mic, knowing I would be "hablando de la soga en la casa del ahorcado" (bringing up the rope in the house of the condemned), as the phrase goes.

I began by agreeing with the basic principle that the previous speakers had defended, indicating that my own students had greatly benefitted from hearing and rigorously debating with Carlos Alzugaray when he visited our class the previous semester.  I also reminded my colleagues that the full name of the Cuba Section of LASA is the "Scholarly Relations with Cuba" Section, something we should promote and defend on principle and impartially.

However, I parted company with the previous speakers when I pointed out that if we were going to defend the principle of academic exchange and criticize the unjustifiable political manipulation of that exchange then we must do so consistently when either (or any) government, including the Cuban government, violates it.

Then I dropped the proverbial bomb.

Since I was acutely aware of two specific cases where Cubans I have worked with in an academic, professional capacity had been denied exit permits, I mentioned this fact loudly and clearly.  The Cuban economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe and blogger Yoani Sanchez had both been invited to participate in previous LASA conferences, but both were denied permission to leave the island by the Cuban government.

To wit, I pointed out that it is one thing for a foreign government to deny you permission to enter their country, but quite another for your own government to prevent you from exiting!

I could feel the oxygen rush out of the room as everyone did a collective inhale in response to my impertinence.

Almost immediately, even before I could get back to my seat, Miguel Barnet, who had been seated next to Mariela Castro (translating my remarks to her as I spoke), jumped to his feet, took the mic, and declared in no uncertain terms that:

"It is unacceptable that we grant the same rights deserved by academics to such mercenaries!"

It went downhill from there, with a parade of "Yumas" (but not like me!) agreeing with Barnet that, in essence, not all Cubans are created equal and deserving of the same rights.

Oy vey!

***

For other versions of and reactions to these events, you can go first and foremost to CafeFuerte, to which I gave an interview following the event.  The usually sharp and balanced Cuba Central Blog also gave a summary of the event, but managed to completely skip over my "unfortunate" if brave remarks.

Yoani Sanchez discussed the issue in a powerful blog post, "The Cuban Intelligentcia: Hide or Debate?"  Haroldo Dilla also wrote eloquently about it at Havana Times, as did both Chepe - who asked Barnet with moxie: Who is the Mercenary? - and his wife Miriam Leiva.

Here's the Place to Be Tomorrow: Cuban Economy Colloquium, Bildner Center

Bildner Center Colloquium: 

Economic Transformation in Cuba 

MONDAY, MAY 21, 2012 

8:45 AM – 6:00 p.m. 

The Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue (@ 34th Street) 

After 2008, the newly installed presidency of Raúl Castro launched several initiatives to revamp the highly centralized form of socialism for which Cuba had been known. Though Cuba's Actualización draws from other experiences of socialist reform, it appears to be a distinctive approach. The Cuba Project/Bildner Center colloquium puts the new approach in perspective and provides an update on the evolving policies and the structural and institutional changes in progress in 2012. The colloquium closes with a review of policy and research implications.

*Registration is required.
*This event has been designed for academics, Cuba specialists, and related professionals.

Preliminary Program (Subject to change)

Registration: 8:45 AM - 9:05 AM

Session #1: Cuban Updates on Actualización
9:05 AM to 11:35 AM, Room 9206/07
Cuentapropismo y ajuste estructural; Microfinanzas en Cuba; Non-state Enterprises in Cuba: Current Situation and Prospects; Impacto de los lineamientos de la política económica y social en la producción de alimentos

Session # 2: Strategic Initiatives: Agriculture
11:45 AM to 1:00 PM, Room 9206/07
Measuring Cuba's Agricultural Transformations: Preliminary Findings; U.S. Food and Agricultural Exports to Cuba - Uncertain times Ahead

Session # 3: Revamping Socialism: Perspectives and Prospects 
2:00 PM to 3:55 PM, Room 9206/07
Actualización in Perspective; Cuban Restructuring: The Economic Risks; Prospects in a Changing Geo-Economic Environment

Roundtable on Implications and Future Agenda
4:15 PM to 5:45 PM, Room 9206-07

Closing Remarks

Invited speakers from the University of Havana: Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva; Pavel Vidal; Armando Nova; Camila Piñeiro Harnecker.

Invited speakers from Europe, the United States and Puerto Rico: Emily Morris; Bill Messina; Archibald R. M. Ritter; Mario González Corzo; Mauricio Font.

While some of our panelists will present in Spanish, each panel/session will have Powerpoint outlines in English as well as one presentation in English (with the possible exception of the Panel 1).

Moreover, the Q&A will be in both English and Spanish. 

PLEASE RESERVE by sending an e-mail to bildner@gc.cuny.edu

©2012 Bildner Center | The Graduate Center - CUNY | New York, NY