The devil wore white: Luis Posada Carriles and Ladies in White go out on a limb in Miami with Gloria Estefan

Posada Carriles at yesterday's march in Miami (March 25, 2010) Photo: Reuters

Posada Carriles and the Ladies in White, “Friends Forever” - español

By José Pertierra

Translation: Machetera

Only in Miami. Despite the seventy-three outstanding first-degree murder charges against him related to the mid-air explosion of a Cubana Airlines passenger jet, Luis Posada Carriles has not been extradited to Venezuela nor has he been indicted in the United States for these crimes.  He wanders unleashed and un-vaccinated along Calle Ocho in Miami, marching alongside Gloria Estefan in support of the so-called Ladies in White.

His support of the “ladies” ought not to surprise us.  There is an important link between Posada and these “ladies.”  The link is called Santiago Alvarez Fernández-Magriña.  It’s a well established fact, admitted even by the “ladies” themselves that their organization receives $1,500 a month from Rescate Jurídico [Legal Rescue] in Miami.  Posada and the “ladies” share the same godfather.

The president of Rescate Jurídico is no more and no less than Santiago Alvarez Fernández-Magriña.  An extremely close friend and Luis Posada Carriles’ financial sponsor, Alvarez was the person who brought Posada to the United States on his boat, the Santrina, according to documents from the U.S. District Attorney’s office.  A few weeks later, he organized the famous and shameful press conference for Posada Carriles who had up until that point been “hidden” in Miami.  Alvarez is also the same person who got one of his people to place two bombs in the Tropicana nightclub in Havana.  This conversation was recorded and exposed on Cuban television.

It’s evident that the terrorist history of this sinister person did not stop the “ladies” from involving themselves in this game and receiving money salted with Cuban blood.  In the United States, receiving money from a terrorist organization is a felony that carries a harsh punishment.  I suppose the same is true in Cuba.  Nevertheless, until now, the only sanction that these “ladies” have received is repudiation from Cubans in the street.  The Cuban government has shown itself to be extremely tolerant, even providing police protection.

Here’s a suggestion for Posada Carriles.  If he really wants to march in support of Santiago Alvarez Fernández-Magriña’s “ladies,” he ought to go to Havana to do it.  As Calle 13 would say, “I dare you!”

Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the author and translator are cited.

Posada Carriles at yesterday's march in Miami (March 25, 2010) Photo: Reuters

Posada Carriles at yesterday's march in Miami (March 25, 2010) Photo: Reuters

Rafael Cancel Miranda writes in defense of Cuba

Rafael Cancel Miranda, a giant in the Puerto Rican independence struggle, a man who spent 25 years in prison in the United States following an attack on the U.S. Congress meant to call attention to that struggle, has a few suggestions for Guillermo Fariñas, the latest Cuban hunger striker.  In an interview some years ago, he spoke more about the attack at the U.S. Capitol and explained the significance of the Cuban he mentions here too: Saturnino.

“For me, Cuba is Saturnino, a black man who worked with me. When he saw me eating bread with quail for lunch, he took me to his house. He lived in total poverty but his mother gave me a sandwich from the larder. He was called Saturnino, and that for me, is Cuba.”

The Truth is On the Side of the Cuban Revolution and it Shall Prevail – español

Compañero José Estevez

Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples

Havana, Cuba

Jose, my brother.

Of course it is with the greatest of honor and a sense of justice that I am signing the Declaration in Defense of Cuba to counter the hypocritical and cynical campaign by the Yankees and the European Union.  With what moral authority can these plunderers of humanity speak of human rights?  It’s beyond cynical that those who have never bothered themselves about the deaths by starvation of thousands of children who would have liked very much to have something to eat, should suddenly and in a very orchestrated way pretend to be so worried about someone on a “fast.”

This “fasting” gentleman – who I understand is black and is also said to be a psychologist (if so, it is thanks to the Revolution) – has no idea how his race was treated by those who today claim to be so concerned for his health.  I was surprised enough to hear about this psychologist because I lived in Cuba under [Cuban presidents] Prío Socarrás and the bloodthirsty Batista and I never knew of any black psychologists.  I remember that when the legal and illegal mafias were predominant in Cuba, there were clubs where black people were prohibited from entering and places where they were not even allowed to approach, such as the house belonging to the DuPonts.  To be precise, those that organized those clubs were of the same mentality as those who today claim to be worried about the health of the “faster.”  I also remember the poverty of my brother, the black man named Saturnino, who worked alongside me repairing streets in Havana.

Seeing as this “faster” is of the noble black race, I’d like to suggest to him that he make a “fast” in favor of the liberation of a group of his black brothers from the Black Liberation Army and the Black Panthers, who’ve spent more than thirty-five years behind bars in Yankee prisons for having fought for the rights of their race.  Here are their names:

Abdulla Majad

Sekou Odinga

Dr. Mutulu Shakur

Jalil Muntaquim

Robert Seth Hayes

Sundiata Acoli

Also having spent more than three decades in prison are compañero Herman Bell and the spiritual leader of the Native Americans (the originals) Leonard Peltier, as well as the Puerto Ricans Carlos Alberto Torres and Oscar López Rivera.

As well, the “faster” might honor the four compañeros of the Black Liberation Army who died while incarcerated: Kuwasi Balagoon, Bashir Hameed, Albert Nuh Washington, Teddy Jah Heath.  And he might also remember his brother, the black journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has spent years on death row.

Of course, the imperialist and oligarchic press will not mention him, and as we say amongst ourselves, they’ll look the other way; they’ll shut their mouths, just as they remained silent about our Five Cuban antiterrorist brothers, as they’ve remained silent about the rape of Colombian girls by Yankee soldiers, as they’ve said nothing about Haitian women marching to protest the abuses committed against them – including rape – by the Yankee soldiers.  Well…they’re black women and dressed in the garments of poverty.

The truth is with the Cuban Revolution and it shall prevail.  The fakers will fall in their own trap.

Well, my brother José, I began to write these lines to you some three days ago, but my father in law fell ill and you know what the deal is with healthcare in Puerto Rico.  The first thing they ask you is not where it hurts, but how you’re going to pay and go on from there.  You can’t believe how many people die because they can’t pay.

Onward, forever!

With a warm Caribbean embrrace,

Rafael Cancel Miranda

Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the author and translator are cited.

Understanding the difference between pobreza and miseria

After the rain in Haiti - Photo: Ramon Espinosa/AP

Just back from Cuba where he attended the launch of the Spanish translation of his book, “A People’s History of Science: Miners, Midwives and ‘Low Mechanicks’” at the Havana International Book Fair, Cliff Conner posted a brief note about his visit at the CubaNews listserve.  (The other People’s History guy, Howard Zinn, called Conner’s book “a delightfully refreshing new look at the history of science” and judging from the standing room only reception Conner received in Cuba, I’m guessing it’s likely well worth the read.)  At any rate, Conner’s note apparently stirred up a hornet’s nest of outrage from a couple of ex-Cubans, who it seems responded with the usual tired diatribe about “dissidents,” defectors, etcetera.

How U.S. soldiers helped Haiti prepare for the rain - Photo: Seth Robson, Stars & Stripes

Conner’s response is gracious, far more gracious than I would have been, but then this blog is called Machetera for a reason.  I asked for permission to re-post his letter here because I think it is well worth having as a reference, especially for those who’d like to make a case about the Cuban revolution failing to address poverty in Cuba.

People like for instance, Darsi Ferrer, the State Department’s new “Cuban dissident” poster child, who aside from his interest in secondhand cement, is also an aspiring filmmaker.  Really, I’d rather not call even more attention to this guy but his film, co-produced with help from CANF and some German and Czech “NGO’s” (the Czechs, always the Czechs) would make you laugh if it were not so deadly serious.  Darsi, dressed in a white doctor’s coat, with a stethoscope draped around his neck – in case you forgot he was a doctor – complains to the camera in all seriousness about the “miseria” everywhere in Cuba, caused by inadequate housing and lack of common medicines.  He does this monologue without ever breathing a word about the blockade, while his wife paws through grocery bags full of clothing straight off the boat from Miami (was that a magenta thong or brassiere near the end?), doling out pieces one by one to their very ordinary and quite healthy looking Cuban neighbors.  The film begins and returns to shots of people collecting water from pipes coming out of a wall, as though this is something terribly shocking, and you have to think that it is tragic really that Ferrer couldn’t go do a medical mission in Haiti so he could learn how people get their water there.  The whole production is scored with haunting music from the Holocaust genre in case you still didn’t get the point, and I’m sure it plays very well in drawing rooms on Capitol Hill but it’s junk.  Pure, expensive, U.S. bought and paid for junk.

Here’s Conner:

*     *     *    *

A few weeks ago CubaNews published a report I wrote of a visit in February to the Havana International Book Fair, in which I offered some observations about what I had seen in Cuba. I received (via some friends I had sent the report to) a set of thoughtful comments on it from a couple of Cuban ex-pats. I thought their commentary was worth a reply, so I wrote one; it is appended below. (The names of the people I addressed it to and the names of the Cuban ex-pats have been changed because I do not have their permission to use them.)

Hi Rhonda and George,

Greetings from Mexico City.

Thanks for sending me Jaime and Alejandro’s comments on my “report” from Cuba.  Yes, I did find them very interesting and worthwhile, although I am quite sure that they and I would have to “agree to disagree” about a number of things regarding their former homeland. I will try to respond to what they wrote point-by-point, and will ask you to kindly pass this on to them.

Marush and I entirely agree with them about the tackiness of the Tropicana show, but I described it the way I did because I didn’t want to seem like a cultural snob. Besides, on a certain level, if you suspend your critical judgment, it can still be quite enjoyable. I also agree that the renovation process going on in Habana Vieja is better described as “restoration” than “reconstruction.”

I certainly don’t think of all Cubans living in the United States as ultra-right-wing fanatics. I do think that an ultra-right element dominated the first generation of post-revolutionary refugees, and still has a lot of political clout, but it seems that the younger generation (which apparently includes Jaime and Alejandro) is not nearly as politically homogeneous as their elders.

Although I wrote my report in a somewhat neutral voice, I am in fact a strong partisan of the Cuban economic system in contrast to the system that afflicts our country and most of the rest of the world. I adopted the neutral tone because in the context of the current (abysmally uninformed) American political discourse, even that will seem shockingly pro-Cuba to most of the people I sent it to. I wasn’t trying to be deceptive; I simply didn’t intend it to be an ideological manifesto.

U.S. State Department’s latest prefab Cuban “dissident:” Darsi Ferrer

This morning the U.S. State Department revealed its latest pawn in the overthrow game it’s playing with Cuba: Darsi Ferrer, a Cuban doctor currently under arrest in Cuba, to whom it granted Honorable Mention in its 2009 Freedom Defenders award sweepstakes.  A few questions come to mind.  Who won First Prize?  Second?  Third?  Is this sweepstakes the State Department’s best kept secret, only pulled out for public display when Washington worries that the media buzz is starting to dry up on its prefabricated Cuban dissidence campaign or the hunger strike recruitment is flagging?

The story put out by the anti-Cuba lobby on Ferrer is that he was arrested for possessing a couple of bags of stolen cement but that this is a cover for the real reason for his arrest, which has more to do with his “dissident” activities.  I have no idea what Ferrer was actually charged with but I’m guessing that dissidence isn’t a reason for arrest in Cuba either…treason is, however.  Atilio Boron explains:

Dissidents or Traitors? – en español

Atilio A. Boron

Translation: Machetera

The “free press’ in Europe and the Americas – the one that lied shamelessly about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or described the putschist regime of Micheletti in Honduras as “interim” – has redoubled its ferocious campaign against Cuba. As a result, it’s important to distinguish between the true reason for it, and the pretext.  The first, which establishes the global framework for this campaign, is the imperial counter-offensive launched near the end of the Bush administration, and whose most resounding example was the reactivation and mobilization of the Fourth Fleet. Contrary to the predictions of certain gullible people, this policy, dictated by the military-industrial complex, was not merely continued but reinforced by the recent treaty signed by Obama and Colombia’s President Uribe, through which the United States is to be granted the use of at least seven military bases in Colombian territory, diplomatic immunity for all U.S. personnel affected by these operations, license to bring in or remove any kind of cargo without authorities in the host country being able to register what’s coming in or going out, and the right of U.S. expeditionary forces to enter or leave Colombia using any kind of i.d. card whatsoever attesting to their identity.  As if all that were not enough, Washington’s policy of recognizing the “legality and legitimacy” of the coup d’etat government in Honduras and the subsequent fraudulent elections is yet one more example of the perverse continuity that links policies implemented by the White House, regardless of the skin color of its principal occupant.  And in this general imperial counter-offensive, the attack and destabilization of Cuba plays an extremely important role.

Deconstructing Foreign Policy’s interview with Ann Louise Bardach

Gossip and Speculation Pinch-Hitting for Intelligence

Flip flops & stonewashed jeans?

By Machetera

Ann Louise Bardach’s Without Fidel magically appeared under my Christmas tree and I’ve been meaning ever since to write a review.  The problem is that book reviews tend to go on the very back burner around here (as poor Jefferson Morley can attest).  In any case, I was suddenly reminded of the book again with the Bardach interview just published by Foreign Policy Magazine.  FP calls Without Fidel “the authoritative book on Cuba under Raúl” which implies that Bardach is moving in on the ex-CIA agent Brian Latell’s turf.  Unlike Bardach, Latell shows no evidence of ever actually having visited Cuba, but has managed nevertheless to capture a certain corner of the Cuba myth and speculation franchise.  Bardach now finds herself in a similar position; blocked for years (by her own admission) from obtaining a Cuban press visa and declining (by her own account) an invitation to play on the Cuban team, she is forced to rely on a grab bag of second-hand sources, spiced with a healthy measure of personal memory and opinion, to serve up the kind of speculative stew that FP editors devour.