"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Showing posts with label Communist Party Congress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Communist Party Congress. Show all posts
News bosses same as the old bosses: Dictatorship remains the same*
The Seventh Communist Party Congress in Cuba was as eventful as the previous one. Big news item from the Associated Press: Fidel Castro who is about to turn 90 says that he may die soon. The AP's journalism is auto-censored in order for the dictatorship to maintain their news bureau on the island and like in North Korea crosses the line of journalistic ethics on occasion to stay there. Nevertheless, reporting that a 90 year old may die soon as news is a bit of a stretch.
However it did not end there.
Raul Castro, age 84, was "re-elected" with 100% of the vote by the communist party as the First Secretary along with fellow regime hardlinerJose Ramon Machado Ventura (age 85) as Second Secretary. The rest of the line up, unsurprisingly, was all too familiar.
The international press also thinks it newsworthy that the Castro regime is attacking President Obama's visit to Cuba as "an attack on the foundation of our history, our culture and our symbols." Predictable and only newsworthy to someone not paying attention. President Obama has bent over backwards to bury the Cold War and the White House has even uninvited Cuban jazz great Paquito D'Rivera, a critic of the Castro dictatorship from playing The White House on International Jazz Day on April 30th so as perhaps not to offend the Cuban dictatorship.
What is newsworthy and what Capitol Hill Cubans has observed in this coverage is the difference in reaction by the press to attacks on the George W. Bush administration compared to the Barack H. Obama administration by the Castro regime.
When Castro attacked Bush, critics said "failed" policy gave regime excuse. When Castro attacks Obama, it's 'cos policy is "success". #Cuba
What I said five years ago, in anticipation of the Sixth Communist Party Congress in Cuba is equally relevant today and explains the Castro regime's so-called "reforms":
If there is one lesson over the past 52 years it is that political
considerations have priority over economic considerations in order to
preserve the regime. When it is convenient to decentralize in order to
survive the regime will do that as it did in the early 1990s and as it
appears to be doing today. At the same time when things improve and
regime survival depends on the re-centralization of economic control at
the expense of economic growth as was the case in the late 1990s and
through the 2000s they will do that as well, but the important
consideration is that the Cuban people are tired of this regime and want
change.
New York, April 20, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by a string of recent arrests of journalists from the Havana-based news outlet Centro de Información Hablemos Press, preventing them from reporting on the Communist Party Congress held in Havana this week. CPJ called on the Cuban government to cease its persistent harassment of independent journalists and allow them to report freely.
In the past three weeks, at least 10 correspondents from Hablemos Press, known for its reporting on human rights and opposition activities, have been detained in police stations, put under house arrest or threatened with arrest. One journalist, Enyor Díaz Allen, was assaulted by government supporters and then held by police for four days. The arrests coincide with the Sixth Communist Party Congress, the first in 14 years, which began in Havana on Saturday.
"This spike in short-term arrests of journalists during the Communist Party Congress is evidence of the Cuban government's unchanged attitude toward the independent press, despite the releases of imprisoned journalists in recent months," said Carlos Lauría, CPJ's senior program coordinator for the Americas. "We call on Cuban officials to stop detaining and harassing journalists."
Despite the landmark release this month of Alberto Santiago Du Bouchet Hernández, the last journalist jailed in Cuba, CPJ and local human rights organizations have observed an increase in instances of low-intensity persecution--short-term detentions, house arrests, smear campaigns, and intimidation--of members of Cuba's independent press.
Hablemos Press director Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez told CPJ in an interview Tuesday that the timing of the arrests was obvious. "The regime is afraid that there will be a popular uprising during the Party Congress and wants to prevent journalists from reporting on what's going on," Guerra said.
According to CPJ research, 10 journalists from Hablemos Press have faced arrest and intimidation in the past three weeks:
--Guantánamo correspondent Enyor Díaz Allen, 28, was arrested Friday, along with pro-democracy activist Yoandris Beltrán Gamboa, and held until Tuesday afternoon, Díaz told CPJ. As he was walking Friday evening, two unidentified men approached Díaz shouting pro-Castro slogans and attacked him. Díaz defended himself but sustained a fractured arm and wounds requiring stitches on his head. About 20 minutes into the attack, police agents arrived and broke up the fight. The police took Díaz to the hospital. After Díaz's wounds were treated, state security agents took him to the Parque 24 police station and held him for four days. Díaz was charged with minor assault, and his attackers walked free, Guerra said.
Díaz has reported on police abuses, education issues, and opposition activities in Guantánamo province and is also a member of the youth democracy movement. According to Guerra, a common tactic used by Cuban authorities to intimidate critics is have government supporters attack dissidents who are later arrested. Díaz told CPJ that he believes the attack was related to his reporting.
--Raúl Arias Márquez and Elier Muir Ávila, correspondents in Morón and Ciego de Ávila provinces, were detained and threatened on April 5 and again on April 6 by police and state security agents at Márquez's home, where the journalists frequently meet. Both have been working for Hablemos Press for about two months and had reported on a student brawl that left two dead.
--On March 31, Hablemos Press correspondent Idalberto Acuña Carabeo was arrested at his home in Havana by state security agents demanding he hand over photos he took while covering a labor protest hours before. When Acuña refused to comply, he was taken to a local police station, interrogated and threatened for 24 hours, Hablemos Press reported.
--Luis Roberto Arcia Rodríguez, Hablemos Press correspondent in Mayabeque province, was put under house arrest in his home in San Jose de las Lajas on April 16 and held there for 12 hours to prevent him from traveling to Havana to meet with other journalists during the communist congress, Guerra said. According to Guerra, eight state security and police agents prevented the reporter from leaving his home.
--Sandra Guerra Pérez, Hablemos Press correspondent in Melena del Sur, was put under house arrest by more than 20 police and security agents on April 16 who blocked her from leaving her house until the evening of April 18. She had been reporting on a series of sugar cane field fires in the area as well as on the conversion of abandoned schools in the countryside to prisons. According to Roberto Guerra, the house arrest was intended to keep Sandra Guerra from traveling to Havana during the Party Congress.
--On April 15, two state security agents appeared at Hablemos Press's headquarters in central Havana and warned four journalists including Roberto Guerra that they would be arrested if they left their homes during the Party Congress. Guerra was also warned that he could face imprisonment for the videos that he has posted on Hablemos Press's Web site that show victims of official repression.
The late leftist Argentine writer Julio Cortázar made an interesting observation in his book Around the Day in Eighty Worlds: "All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate."
This party congress will re-arrange some of the window dressing of the dictatorship in the economic order to preserve its brutal nature but it also serves another important function and that is to create distraction and buy time. The first demonstration of this is that the discussion of internal party issues and leadership renewal will not be discussed until the end of 2012 at a National Conference of the Cuban Communist Party. The party congress will only address economic issues. There are a number of factors for the timing but will touch on three and focus on the third:
The main export out of Cuba is nickel and has suffered a fall in prices combined with rising food prices internationally and an inefficient state-run economy that has forced the dictatorship to cut imports over the past two years. In September of 2010 Raul Castro announced plans to lay off one million state employees.
Unwelcome, for the dictatorship, increased international scrutiny on human rights in Cuba following the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, the hunger strike by Guillermo Fariñas Hernández and the brutalization of the Ladies in White raised the profile of Cuba's nonviolent democratic opposition movement.
Cuban youth are unhappy, disillusioned and want change.
The regime has sought through their official bloggers and through their government daily Juventud Rebelde as highlighted in its November 13, 2010 article titled "Las líneas del futuro" [The Lines of the future] in which Cuban youth are called to participate and that their opinions and contributions will be greatly appreciated in the rich debate. ( Is it possible that the title also offers an ironic look into the future with the continuing long lines of the past?)
As mentioned earlier the last party congress was over 13 years ago and this presents an opportunity to divide the youth between those who having lived through the process and have no illusions and those undergoing it for the first time that will participate in the gatherings leading up to the congress with the illusion that it will make a difference.
Children born under the dictatorship old enough to remember the previous party congress have a different perspective and through cyberspace are expressing themselves. For example Yoani Sanchez, old enough to remember her first political activities as a young pioneer in the 1970s shouting insults at President Carter has written thoughtful essays on the subject of the congress on her blog Generation Y.
The Draft Guidelines for the Communist Party’s VI Congress is a good exercise to sharpen our senses, a model example to evaluate the practice of speaking without speaking, which is what state discourse is here.
Its more than thirty pages of text contain only economic proposals, more appropriate for the Ministry of Finance than for the compass of a political party. It’s true that it lacks the language of the barricade, resolving everything based on slogans, but it suffers from being a sugar-coated list of what could be done if the system really worked. For those who think my skepticism is exaggerated, take a look at the points from past congresses and check to see how many of them really came to pass.
Claudia Cadelo wrote in her blog Octavo Cerco (The Eighth Circle) in her December 8, 2010 essay What Changes?:
With great effort I’ve managed to read the eleven pages of “The Transformations Required in the Public Health System.” I have the impression that if we took out all the ideological apologies -- such as, “the direction of our glorious Party,” or this one, “the immense historic responsibility we have for the future of the fatherland” -- the text would only be three pages. Sadly, the ability to synthesize has never been a virtue of those who govern us.
To make matters worse, in the meat of it there’s not much there, other than a shifting and rearranging of equipment and personnel from here to there, the well-known and prioritized “internationalist” work, and a strange insinuation that there is a surplus of doctors -- I say it’s strange because it’s true but I didn’t expect them to say it.
In another blog entry titled These Peculiar Guidelines, less than a month later on January 10, 2011 Claudia writes:
But people are tired. People stopped recognizing socialism, even in books, long ago, because the history of the Revolution seems too much like the history of a 19th century capitalist monopoly. In parliament no one has been classified as “unqualified” or “unreliable” (as they have been on the layoff lists), and not one delegate to the National Assembly has been laid off under the concept of inflated payrolls. It is in the neighborhoods where 500,000 CDR members are going to be left “unoccupied.” So the spirit of the meeting is tense; even the poster announcing it reminds us: “Attendance will be taken.”
Although there is an attempt to strictly control the content of these meetings people are beginning to lose their fear and are frustrated. Later in the same essay Claudia describes what she has heard concerning the tension at this gathering:
My friends tell me (the meeting in my neighborhood hasn’t happened yet) that things got hot. One retiree said it was time to see young people leading the country, another said he was tired of discussing planning and reforms that never changed anything, a lady announced she is retiring because as long as they aren’t talking about raising wages they can’t count on her, and the Party member murmured, ending the meeting, which would be the last time the core would be called together. Raul Castro’s government has reached out to a people who are tired and skeptical, and bored with seeing the same movie over and over.
He cleared his throat before explaining why they were meeting, in the sober drama that is rarely seen anymore. In his hands he held, like a script, the blue booklet with the guidelines for the Sixth Communist Party Congress, and behind the table those present included municipal and provincial officials. Before yielding the floor, he stressed that they should stick to what was written on these pages and only discuss economics. He stressed this last word to emphasize it, to ensure that they didn’t claim their right to “free association” or demand that they be allowed “to freely enter and leave the country.” E-CO-NO-MICS, he stressed again, widening his eyes and raising his eyebrows to emphasize it again, while staring directly at the most troublesome employees.
Later on in the same essay Yoani Sanchez describes the aftermath of the meetings and its significance for the April congress:
The next day the workplace had returned to its routine. A mechanic who had been sitting very close to the president no longer remembered a single one of the guidelines. The girl from the warehouse summed up the discussion of the previous afternoon for her friends with a simple, “Ah… more of the same.” And the manager’s chauffeur skeptically shrugged his shoulders when a colleague asked what had happened. Many experienced that day as sample of what will happen in the Conference Center next April, a sneak preview of the Cuban Communist Party Congress. In just a few months they will see the same staging unfold on their TV screens, but this time it was they themselves who were the actors, raising their hands in unanimity before the stern gaze of the director.
In the case of the Castro regime over the past 52 years the ability to engage frequently in profound distractions has opened the door to its own survival. Unfortunately, Cuba observers all too often have followed Cortázar's advice and allowed themselves to be distracted when unable to concentrate. The same phenomenon was also seen among Kremlinologists who never saw the collapse of the Soviet Union as a possibility.
If there is one lesson over the past 52 years it is that political considerations have priority over economic considerations in order to preserve the regime. When it is convenient to decentralize in order to survive the regime will do that as it did in the early 1990s and as it appears to be doing today. At the same time when things improve and regime survival depends on the re-centralization of economic control at the expense of economic growth as was the case in the late 1990s and through the 2000s they will do that as well, but the important consideration is that the Cuban people are tired of this regime and want change.
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