Marc Frank, writing for Reuters, reports today that the Paris Club is looking to re-open negotiations with Cuba regarding its foreign debt, and mentions Cuba’s outstanding debt to Russia of 20 billion Soviet rubles as a stumbling block.

In 2001, when the Economist wrote about Cuba’s Soviet ruble debt, it pegged the value of that 20 billion debt at $690 million USD, while pointing out that in 1991, 20 billion rubles equaled $11.8 billion.  If you check the Russian ruble -> USD conversion rate today, you’ll find that a 20 billion Russian ruble debt is currently worth $662 million.  What will it be worth next year?  What was it worth in 1997?

According to this GWU hosted website, a TV set cost 1,200,000 rubles in Russia in 1997.  Simple math tells us that if this is true, in 1997, Cuba’s entire 20 billion Soviet ruble debt could have been satisfied with some 16,666 TV sets.  But then in 1998, with three zeros knocked off the new rubles, a new TV set cost only 1,200 rubles.  So Cuba, if it had paid in TV sets in 1998, would have needed to supply 16,666,666 of them to get free.

My point, and I imagine the point of Cuba’s central bankers is this: how and when do you decide what a vanished currency is really worth?  It’s not meant as a diversionary negotiating tactic – it’s a real question.  Some stories, including the previously mentioned Economist article suggest that “Cuban officials…say the country they borrowed from no longer exists, and that any debt should be offset against damage to the island’s economy caused by Russia’s failure to honour Soviet export contracts to Cuba.”

Perhaps.  It seems like a valid point.  But I’m guessing the real obstacle is the Soviet ruble valuation.  Frank writes that fully two thirds of the debt the Paris Club wants to discuss is wrapped up in the Soviet ruble question, a debt “that Russia now claims but Cuba does not recognise.”  But who does recognize a Soviet ruble?  An Argentinean austral? A Confederate dollar?

This highlights another, more serious problem with Frank’s story.

The Paris Club reported that Cuba owed its members $30.5 billion (19.0 billion pounds) at the close of 2010, but more than $20 billion of the debt was in old transferable Soviet rubles that Russia now claims but Cuba does not recognise.

Note how we’ve now moved from 20 billion unquantifiable Soviet rubles, to $20 billion DOLLARS in a mere keystroke.  To my knowledge, no-one has ever suggested that the 20 billion Soviet rubles should be pegged 1:1 to the US dollar.

Cuban “Ladies in White” Suspect Recently Deceased Leader of Embezzling $20,000

Jean-Guy Allard
Translation: Machetera

Rumors in Havana circulate at lightning speed.  Sources close to the “Ladies in White” [Damas de Blanco] reveal that upon taking charge of the mini-group and reviewing its finances, Berta Soler had the disagreeable surprise of learning that some $20,000 was missing from the organization which is openly funded by the United States.

The “Ladies” founder, Laura Pollán, died on October 14 at the Calixto Garcia Hospital, at the age of 63, victim of cardiac arrest “aggravated by diabetes, hypertension and dengue.”

The discovery of the group’s missing funds came about in a meeting where the 48 year old Soler, who’d acted as second in command until Pollán’s death, was confirmed as the new leader.  The rivalry between the two women who competed for favors from the U.S. diplomatic post in Havana (known as the U.S. Interests Section – USIS) was well known.

In addition to their confirmation of Soler as leader, the twenty odd women who make up the “Ladies in White” confirmed their foreign representatives, Yolanda Huerga, in the U.S., and Blanca Reyes Castañon, in Spain.

The “Ladies in White” are known outside Cuba for the demonstrations they hold two or three times a week near the Church of Santa Rita, in Havana’s Miramar neighborhood, and for holding gladiolas while they march down Fifth Avenue in the same neighborhood.

Each participant earns $30 at each march.  The bosses have a separate budget whose distribution is frequently the subject of internal disputes.

FINANCING MADE IN USA

Berta Soler, a microbiology technician who lives in the Alamar neighborhood just east of Havana, left her job at a Havana hospital in 2009 in order to dedicate herself full-time to the better paid work of Cuban government opponent.

The organization is miniscule according to its membership roster, but important for the scale of funding it receives from the U.S. government, through intermediaries.

One of the “Ladies” sponsors, with financing from Washington expressly for this purpose, is a U.S. Army veteran, Orlando Gutiérrez Boronat, who runs the Cuban Democratic Directorate [Directorio Democrático Cubano], an NGO that receives substantial USAID funding to carry out subversive activities in Cuba.  Gutiérrez Boronat is also a former member of the terrorist Organzation for the Liberation of Cuba [Organización para la Liberación de Cuba.]

Like the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, Gutiérrez Boronat is connected with the right-wing extremists from the ARENA party in El Salvador.

The money earmarked for the “Ladies” and other members of the opposition network fabricated by the USIS was “frozen” for a number of months in Washington in reaction to the various fraud scandals uncovered by the General Accounting Office (GAO), in which very well-known individuals from the Cuban-American mafia were involved.

A WEAK AND DIVIDED OPPOSITION

The former head of the SINA, Jonathan Farrar, became accidentally famous through a Wikileaks document dated April 15, 2009, in which he commented that the so-called dissidence in Cuba was “divided, dominated by individuals who don’t work well as a team” and people “who are more interested in asking for money than carrying out programs.”  He was quickly recalled by the State Department when these statements, which infuriated the anti-Castro mafia in Miami, came out in the press.

On May 19, 2008, Cuban authorities publicly denounced the dissident groups like the “Ladies in White” and others, who have received large sums of money from the confessed Cuban-American terrorist Santiago Álvarez.  The denunciation was made at a press conference where emails, videos and even monetary receipts were presented.

The proof presented was directly connected to the head of the USIS at the time, Michael Parmly, who performed as a mule for the money transfers.  The now deceased Laura Pollán was directly connected to the receipt of $2,400 dollars.

One of the points of that triangulation came from Royal Caribbean Cruises’ Bjørn Johansen, first officer on the ship Majesty of the Seas, who thanks to Brazilian researcher Fernando Morais, we now learn “based his testimony about the site of the shoot-down on a visual observation of the site where his own ship was – which he wrote down on a piece of paper – and not the electronic register that marked the ship’s location in the Florida Strait.”  Now you tell us.  Jean Guy Allard has more:

The Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) behind the main testimony against Gerardo Hernández Nordelo – español

By Jean-Guy Allard
Translation: Machetera

The main witness for the federal prosecution against the Cuban Gerardo Hernández Nordelo was the first officer on a U.S. cruise line whose owners contributed at least $25,000 to help create the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), and whose paramilitary wing organized, financed and promoted terrorist actions against Cuba.

Hernández, one of the five anti-terrorists arrested by the FBI while he was infiltrating Cuban American terrorist groups, was sentenced to two life sentences plus fifteen years in prison for a charge related to the downing of two light aircraft belonging to a counter-revolutionary organization in Miami that illegally flew over Cuban territory on February 24, 1996, despite warnings not to do so.

The Norwegian-American Bjørn Johansen, first officer on the cruise-ship Majesty of the Seas, belonging to Royal Caribbean Cruises, had Pete Whelpton as his second in command when the aerial incident occurred.  Whelpton was a CANF member and director of a so-called Commission for the Economic Development and Reconstruction of Cuba, well-known for its attacks on the island.

While Johansen met on various occasions with the FBI and agreed to collaborate with it, Whelpton was never investigated in relation to his political activities.

This information surfaced in an article in the latest edition of The Havana Reporter, an English language weekly published by Prensa Latina.  The Havana Reporter reported that Fernando Morais, an author of a book about the Cuban Five called The Last Soldiers of the Cold War, recently published in Brazil, commented on these facts at the book launch in Brazil.

In a series of articles published by The New York Times in 1995, the president of the Cuban American National Foundation at the time, José Francisco “Pepe” Hernández Calvo mentioned Royal Caribbean Cruises as one of 40 businesses who contributed $25,000 to create his organization.

This is the same “Pepe” Hernández who was opportunely saved in 1997 from facing charges in the saga of the La Esperanza yacht, intercepted in Puerto Rican waters on its way to carry out an assassination attempt against the Cuban leader Fidel Castro at Isla Margarita.  Hernández had provided a 50 caliber Barrett rifle to the murderous crew.

The most absurd part of the case against Gerardo Hernández and the rest of the Cuban Five occurred in May of 2001 when midway through the trial proceedings, the federal prosecutors admitted that there was insufficient proof against Hernández on the “third count” related to the aircraft, and requested that it be withdrawn because of the impossibility of obtaining a conviction.

The deliberately hostile Judge Joan Lenard refused to receive the request.  The prosecution then presented an extraordinary appeal to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, where the same request was rejected.  The jury, led by an employee of the U.S. federal government, oriented itself against the accused, most notably through its belief in the testimony from the Norwegian-American sailor.

In the case of Gerardo Hernández, the prosecution maintained that the aircraft had been downed in international waters.  The United States has repeatedly refused to turn over its satellite imagery from that date for fear of confirming the truth of the statements coming from Cuban authorities about the location of the incident.

The Cuban Five Must be Unconditionally Freed

Speech given by Ricardo Alarcón at the central event held at the Astral theatre in Havana during a day of solidarity for the Cuban Five, September 12, 2011.

Translation: Machetera

I will be brief in order for the artists present to raise their voices in solidarity with Gerardo, Ramón, Antonio, Fernando and René.

Today marks the completion of thirteen years of an injustice that has gone on far too long for the Cuban Five.  They have received the worst sentences and most cruel treatment, which among other things, has impeded their families from visiting them, and reached inhumane extremes with the prohibition against Adriana and Olga reuniting with Gerardo and René.  They have also been punished by the total silence imposed by a media tyranny which aims to extinguish the solidarity that they deserve and hide the larger truth: the Cuban Five are in prison for opposing the terrorists who are enemies of Cuba and its people.

On a day just like today, Washington had them arrested and tried in a fraudulent and extremely arbitrary proceeding, for one reason alone: to protect and support the anti-Cuban terrorism that was created by the United States half a century ago and which has always relied on its active support or complicit tolerance.

Very soon, the current rulers will have to deal with the dilemma of whether or not to continue the immoral cynicism of their predecessors.  On October 7th, René González Sehwerert will leave prison after having completed the very last minute of his unjust incarceration.

For René, this would open up a three year period of so called “supervised release” which constitutes a certain risk for him and an unjust additional punishment for him and his family.  But it also signifies a challenge for the Obama administration, which one would hope it will face with wisdom and common sense.  From that day forward, we will see one of the most revealing, and for that reason, one of the most silenced aspects of the sordid process to which our companions have been submitted.

I’ve said before that the case of the Cuban Five is irrefutable proof of Washington’s complicity with the terrorists.  Believe me, I wasn’t exaggerating.  It is proven in the trial record and other documents from the Miami trial.  The prosecution urged that the harshest and most exaggerated sentences be imposed, but furthermore, it insisted that for Washington there was something just as important as a maximum prison sentence.  This something, that they called “incapacitation,” consisted of taking measures so that after concluding their prison terms, none of the accused could ever be able to try do to anything to stop the terrorists or their plans.

In the sentence pronounced against René, this demand was expressed in these words:  “As a special additional condition of supervised release, the accused is prohibited from associating with or visiting specific places where individuals or groups such as terrorists, members of organizations advocating violence, and organized crime figures are known to be or frequent.”

This was proclaimed by a U.S. federal court in December of 2001, scarcely three months after the abominable terrorist act of September 11th, and it was made at the formal and express request of the farceurs who unleashed a so-called “war on terrorism,” based on illegality and lies, that has caused the death and suffering of countless innocent people all over the world.

While it launched this effort – as cruel as it was hypocritical – the Bush regime recognized that in South Florida there are individuals and terrorist groups, whose location and activities are known.  But instead of capturing them and putting them on trial, as was its duty, the regime shamelessly protected them and demanded that neither René nor anyone else bother them.

What will the current government do?  Asking that it cancel this sanction against René and dare to send its agents to arrest the known terrorists in the places where they are “known to be or frequent” might be too much.  The possibility remains, however, to avoid the problem by letting René return to Cuba now, to his home and his family.  If René is forced to remain in the United States one single day after October 7th, President Obama will have to choose which side he is on in the struggle against terrorism.

Washington ought to answer for other things.  The gross manipulation of the government’s supposed “proof” against Gerardo in order to accuse him of murder and later find itself obliged to acknowledge on May 30, 2001, that it was impossible to prove the accusation and ask for it to be withdrawn in what was called “an unprecedented action.”

The full dimension of the government’s conspiracy with the local media in Miami and with its fake “journalists” which it financed with federal money so they could lie and create an atmosphere of hatred against the Cuban Five, to convict them beforehand.  The satellite imagery that it has hidden for fifteen years because it shows that the incident of February 24, 1996 took place over Cuban territory and therefore Washington had no jurisdiction or legal basis whatsoever to accuse anyone of anything.  Its refusal to admit Gerardo’s Habeas Corpus petition or to grant him a hearing in which he might speak and where the government would have to openly discuss its false allegations.  What is Washington afraid of?

The official U.S. attitude is essentially one of coverup.  If the citizens of that country know little or nothing about the subject, they will not ask essential questions.  When they understand the truth, they will be able to persuade President Obama to do what he must: free the Cuban Five, each and every one, unconditionally.

Breaking this wall of silence therefore, is of the utmost importance.  We will attempt to do so by every means possible.  Let song, poetry and love puncture that wall.

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 source, author, and translator are cited.

“The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.” – Joseph Goebbels

Some years ago I accompanied a Cuban friend who needed to sign a document in front of a U.S. consular official at the U.S. Interests Section (USIS) in Havana.  Once past the waiting room where TV Martí plays to its small captive audience – the only one it can legitimately claim on the island – and back toward the section where such transactions take place, I noticed a couple of idle computer terminals.  I asked if I might go ahead and check my email while we waited.  The consular official narrowed his eyes at me.  “No,” he snapped.

That’s the nature of things when you’re a lowly U.S. citizen inside Fortress USA on Havana’s Malecon.  I very much doubt that if I’d submitted a list of questions for my president that they’d have made it past the circular file beyond the consular official’s glass window.  Maybe to my FBI file.  But they’d surely never have received the close attention paid the Grupo Prisa media creation in Havana, better known as Yoani Sánchez.

Yet, according to the latest leaked cables from Wikileaks, that is exactly how the Interests Section handled a list of seven questions it claimed to have received from the Grupo Prisa blogger.  USIS supplied the President of the United States (POTUS) an English translation of the questions, and then, it supplied his answers.  When the “interview” finally appeared in the Huffington Post and other outlets, Obama’s answers bore little difference from the ones created by USIS.

Example:

QUESTION #1. FOR YEARS, CUBA HAS BEEN A U.S. FOREIGN POLICY ISSUE AS WELL AS A DOMESTIC ONE, IN PARTICULAR BECAUSE OF THE LARGE CUBAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY. FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE, IN WHICH OF THE TWO CATEGORIES SHOULD THE CUBAN ISSUE FIT?

USIS Draft Response: All foreign policy issues involve domestic components to one degree or another, especially issues concerning countries like Cuba from which the United States has a large immigrant population…

POTUS Final Response: All foreign policy issues involve domestic components, especially issues concerning neighbors like Cuba from which the United States has a large immigrant population and with which we have a long history of relations…

For a normal blogger such a leaked cable ought to be the cause of at least a little bit of shame, perhaps even a mea culpa, especially if the “interview” had been widely used as a pillar of credibility in the blogger’s c.v.  Here’s a typical mention:

Yoani Sanchez is the only citizen in Cuba who has managed to interview a sitting U.S. president: Barack Obama. On November 2009, with seven questions and answers posted in her award-winning blog, Generation Y, she accomplished what the government and official press has failed to do for half a century: to dialogue one-on-one with the “leader of the free world,” the president of the country the Cuban regime considers its No. 1 enemy.

Here’s how the “Committee to Protect Journalists” ran with the story:

Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez was astounded this week by President Barack Obama’s decision to respond a written questionnaire Sánchez submitted to the White House. Still recovering from bruises left by a recent vicious attack by state security agents, she told CPJ from her home in Havana: “This is the best way to get better.”

To date, the Huffington Post, which features regular contributions from Sánchez and published the “interview” as “President Obama’s Answers to My Questions“ has not issued a correction.

We all know by now that Sánchez is no ordinary blogger and thus we see the tools of her creation on full display.  The same media that provided a platform and invented prizes for Sánchez in the first place steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the updated story.  “Never explain,” counsel the p.r. crisis experts at Grupo Prisa.  “Carry on as though nothing has happened.  Eventually the story will die on its own.”

I’ve heard the suggestion, that like the late great Nestor Baguer, Sánchez is a Cuban agent. How else to explain the claimed state security beating that left no marks?  She’s on record as anti-embargo, even if she is loathe to recognize it accurately, as a blockade.  Zoé Valdés, Manuel Pereira’s remora who now runs a profitable gusanería practice from Paris certainly believes she’s working for the other side, but in her case, you can’t rule out business competitor jealousy.  Regardless, speculating about secret agents is a longstanding Cuban pastime unrelated to political ideology, and the delightful thing about it is that the speculation is impossible to prove or disprove until the official unveiling.  In this case, I’m not a believer.

I saw Sánchez in Havana this summer.  She wasn’t seated behind a laptop at a hotel – maybe she has “people” for that nowadays.  No, she was simply buying something at a downtown cafe.  In CUC.  She was not as anorexic as we’ve been led to believe.  Perhaps membership has its privileges.  But what struck me most was not her physical appearance but her body language; the way she carried herself.  I’ve observed the same thing with certain B-List actors at Hollywood parties.  The avoidance of visual eye contact – I’m sure everyone here wants my autograph; fame is such a burden – the impatience of someone in a hurry – I have better places to be - the forced smile – no pictures please! – all too reminiscent of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  You don’t see it so much with A-listers who have less to prove, though surely some A-listers suffer from it too.  It’s more typical of the still-struggling outsider.  The long-term prognosis is poor.

But there is other, even more compelling evidence, especially in the wake of what we now know about the faked presidential interview.  Take this report, supplied by Sánchez’s BFF Ted Henken:

Yoani gulped down a glass of cold water and recounted the story of her visit to the ministry of health.

Seated in the waiting room of the anonymous grey office, Yoani noticed a uniformed man slyly approaching her.  When he was within earshot, he casually whispered the words, “Te leo” (I read you) before quickly disappearing from view.  Quite bemused with this unexpected treat, Yoani made her way into an inner office when her turn came.  Sitting across from a female office worker who was shuffling through her papers, she heard the question: “It says here that you are Yoani Sanchez?”  ”Yes, I am,” Yoani responded.  After a moment of silence, the worker quickly approved her paperwork and before handing the papers back to her, she murmured under her breath, “Te admiro” (I admire you).

Happily reeling now from these back-to-back signs of unexpected (but much appreciated) solidarity, Yoani made her way to the final check out counter noting that the attendant was headed toward the bathroom.  Noticing Yoani approach the woman began to return, but Yoani stopped her short saying that she could wait.  Disregarding Yoani’s protestations, the woman quickened her step and began jogging back to the counter.  With a wink and a nod, she explained: “The bathroom can wait, especially if it’s for una buena causa” (a good cause).

Speculate among yourselves if you like as to which of the characters in this tale are themselves Cuban agents.  And then, considering what we now know about the Obama interview and what we may remember about the total lack of evidence for the claimed Cuban security beating, ponder whether any of it is actually true.  Henken, as usual, swallows it hook, line and sinker, and then repeats it, but then, he’s either a total ingenue or has other motives.

Considering where he’s been spending time lately (Coral Gables), and who he’s been hanging with – Larry Press (who a reliable source says is funded by the same people who funded Alan Gross), Robert Guerra from Freedom House (please), and the terrorist Carlos Alberto Montaner, well, draw your own conclusions.  Dime con quién andas…  Just count yourself fortunate that unlike Henken’s students, you can choose your own reading material.  Sánchez is anything but locally grown, and a forced reading of her prose is not that different from a forced feeding of industrial kibble, washed down with Coca Cola.

Beautifully produced, comprehensive documentary about the economic enslavement of Greece and other peripheral economies.  Shot for 8,000 Euros, the Guardian’s Aditya Chakrabortty called it “the best film of Marxian economic analysis yet produced.” Check out especially the part about “odious debt” beginning around minute 34 or 35.  Select your choice of subtitles by selecting CC-Subtitles at the top of the screen at the beginning.  Available in German, Italian, Portuguese, English, French and Spanish as well as of course, the original Greek.  Bigger screen, better view, at the filmmakers’ site, here.

The village of Llallagua - Photo: Luis Chugar

Llallagua, A Mining Town in the Andes - español

By Victor Montoya

Translation: Elizabeth Gamble Miller

The indigenous people baptized these hills with the name for a root in the Quechua language, Llallagua, because the potato-like geological formations appeared to be a root of good fortune. There, Simón I. Patiño, one of the tycoons of Bolivian mining, found the richest layer of tin ore in the whole world at the end of the 19th century. From that time on Llallagua became the new Potosí, and Simón I. Patiño, who fought the boulders like a conquistador without a sword or armor, became the new King of Tin and, with Ford and Rockefeller, one of the few multimillionaires.

When I came to live in Llallagua, where everything is one rock on top of another, I didn’t know Patiño, and I didn’t see his wealth distributed among the hungry people of this land, except for his company’s modern machinery, which shredded the pieces of ore with the same intensity that it shredded the lungs of the miners. In Llallagua everything happened that happened everywhere: some hauled off the dough and others pocketed the silver. So, the fact of living the way I lived, in a house with no electricity, no drinkable water, no gas stove or glass in the windows let me understand that life is like a funnel, wide for some and narrow for others.

In that peripheral zone of Llallagua, where the houses look like the normal extension of the ground, my childhood took place with no other consolation than dreams and hopes. I lived the way inhabitants of the high plains of the altiplano live, on the slopes of rock and four thousand meters above the level of extreme misery. Nevertheless, I knew that the famous mines of the 20th century, just on the other side of this river, fed its wealth to the world in exchange for poverty.

Conscious that the tin ore which they were extracting from the heart of the mountain, and was petrifying their lungs with silicosis, was coming back to the nation in the form of arms and money, which the rich were using to perpetuate massacres and plot political coups, the miners with the most advanced revolutionary doctrine in hand set out belligerently to fight for better living conditions. These actions the powers in control took charge of countering and drowning in blood. The massacre of Uncía happened in 1923 and the massacre of San Juan in 1967; a tragic event that I experienced at close range and of which I still have a hair-raising memory. This happened the same year as Che’s guerrilla warfare in Nancahuazú; government spies made Isaac Camacho, the leader of the miners, disappear. I last saw him when he came to my house bundled up in a black coat, a cigarette in his mouth; that was just a few days before he was taken prisoner and disappeared.

If it is valid to suppose that environment is decisive in the formation of the character of an individual, then it is logical to conclude that mine is like the arid, rocky topography of the high plains. Understandably as a boy, even among friends, I always felt out of place, like a guest, made of stone; I was meager with words and suspicious of strangers. But this didn’t prevent my playing soccer on the field of rocks piled between rough, stone walls and the river, with our soccer ball made of rags, our feet mangled on sharp rocks. At nighttime, we gathered on this same ground and told tales of enchantment and ghosts. After the smaller children were taken to bed, the older ones, sitting around an oil lamp, went from ghost stories to dirty ones, and made a racket that echoed on the high riverbanks.

Sometimes the kids ganged up and we faced off in a battle with boys who lived on the street up from us. They came down and attacked us with slingshots whirring, while, protected by shields of tin, cardboard or wood, we resisted the onslaught with more anger than weapons. It was a fact that on this river, dry in summer and flooding in rainy season, more than one kid ran back to the breast of his family with his head split open by a rock.

In this town, where the streets and houses had been built without architectural precision, the first bastion of labor unionism was born and the dice thrown for the economic fortune of the country, until the government of Victor Paz Estenssoro issued decree #21,060 in 1985, forcing the mining families out on the street, moving fired miners to the cities as relocated.

Llallagua ceased to be the laboratory for the Bolivian revolution, and the Tío (the miners’ god of Good and Evil); lord and master of the miners and of the mineral riches, was left abandoned in the caverns. And what is worse, when someone lit a candle near boxes of dynamite that a shopkeeper had stored, at a distance several houses looked like a handful of flames climbing the hill, and they ceased to exist. The explosion, as a friend of mine coming through Sweden told me, had terrible consequences; the corrugated metal roofs flew through the air and left the walls standing in their original state, a gruesome fact that I didn’t want to accept. I felt as if part of my childhood was left hanging in the air.

With everything, this photograph captured by Michel Desjardins, and published in the book Bolivia, beskrivning av ett u-land (Bolivia, description of an undeveloped country), by Sven Erik Östling, has been sufficient reason to reflect on the tragedy of this mining town in the Andes, and to remember, with a strange love-hate sensation, the house of my childhood; the very one that through the ups and downs of fate and through the cursed explosion of dynamite that scattered it over the river, I won’t see or step into for the rest of my days.

Desolate houses in Llallagua - Photo: Luis Chugar

Mines in Llallagua - Photo: Luis Chugar

Victor Montoya is a writer, cultural journalist, and teacher. He was born in La Paz, Bolivia, on June 21, 1958. From early childhood he lived in the mining towns of Siglo XX and Llallagua, in the northern department of Potosí, where he learned about human suffering and took part in the miners’ struggle. In 1976, as a result of his political activities, he was persecuted, tortured, and jailed by the military dictatorship of Hugo Banzer Suárez. While imprisoned in the National Panopticon of San Pedro and the high-security prison of Chonchocoro-Viacha, he wrote his eyewitness book Huelga y represión [Strike and Repression]. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source (Tlaxcala), author, and translator are cited.

By Atilio Boron

Translation: Machetera

Perhaps it’s one of history’s surprises that the popular uprising surging through Spain today (and which is beginning to reverberate throughout the rest of Europe) was sparked on the 140th anniversary of the Paris Commune, a heroic moment in which the fundamental demand was also that of democracy.  But a democracy conceived as a government by, for, and of the people, and not as a regime serving corporate interests of the propertied classes while the people’s interests are inexorably subordinated to the imperative of business profits.

This is precisely the reason why the demands of the “indignant” resonate in a way that immediately brings to mind those women and men who, with weapons in hand, came out to defend the Paris Commune during those heroic days in 1871, culminating with the constitution of the first working class government in history, albeit one restricted to the confines of the city of Paris.  A government that lasted barely more than two months and was later smashed by the French army, with the open complicity and cooperation of Bismarck’s troops, which had just inflicted a humiliating defeat on the heirs of Napoleon’s armies.  The cruelty against the Parisians who’d dared to storm heaven’s gate and establish a true democracy was terrible: it’s estimated that more than 30,000 members of the Paris Commune were put to the sword, in summary executions without trial.  The Commune was drowned in a river of blood, and to atone for its “crimes” the National Assembly decided to build the Sacré Coeur cathedral on the most prominent hilltop in Paris, at Montmartre, with funds collected from public donations throughout France.  To honor the Parisians, only a tiny amount was collected from the martyred city.  Paris was defeated, but the Parisians were not brought to their knees.

The Commune did not believe in bourgeois institutions, viewing them as incurably deceitful, because it knew that this cumbersome framework of laws, norms and governmental agencies was solely concerned with consolidating the wealth and privileges of the dominant classes and with keeping the people under submission.  It demanded direct and participatory democracy and the repeal of “parliamentarism,” that vicious warping of politics turned into a black hole of thievery and all kinds of compromise and negotiation completely foreign to the wellbeing of the majority.   It demanded the simultaneous creation of a new political, executive and legislative order, based on universal suffrage (men and women treated equally, not as later occurred in democratic capitalism where “universal” referred exclusively to males) and with representatives who were directly accountable to – and removable by – their constituents.[1]  The members of the Commune wanted a real democracy, not a fictitious one, in which the representatives of the people such as those in a state bureaucracy would not enjoy any kind of privilege at all and would be paid the same wage as an average worker.  And other things, such as a lasting separation between church and state and universal free, secular and compulsory education for females and males alike.

Just a glance at the documents from the “indignant” of today is enough to show how surprisingly similar they are to the demands from the Commune and how very little capitalism’s policies have changed.  The young and not so young who have occupied some 150 plazas in Spain are not “apolitical,” or “anti-political,” as a certain press would have us believe, but people who are profoundly politicized.  They take the promise of democracy seriously, and this is the very reason that they rebel against the false democracy that sprang from the bowels of Francoism and was enshrined in the highly touted Moncloa Pact, paraded before Latin Americans as an act of exemplary democratic political engineering.  It is a democracy that those camped in the plazas denounce as a hoax, a sham that hides a persistent cruel dictatorship under its perfumed robes, a dictatorship that discharges the burden of the crisis unleashed by the capitalists on the shoulders of the workers.  What the “exemplary” Moncloa democracy proposes as a way of confronting the crisis is market despotism, the irreconciliable enemy of any democratic project: by facilitating worker layoffs, salary reductions, slashing labor rights, freezing pensions, and raising the retirement age, cutting public employment, health and education budgets, privatizing governmental businesses and programs and, to top it off, reducing taxes still further on the wealthy and businesses so that the excess money might be invested in new undertakings.[2]  Once again, the famous and endlessly refuted “trickle-down theory,” which takes people for idiots and does not take into account that if the rich have more money at their disposal it would take a miracle for them not to succumb to the temptation of the global financial casino instead of investing in the creation of new businesses that would generate new sources of employment.  Experience shows that the temptation is too great.

The response from false Spanish democracy – in reality, a sordid plutocracy that the young people in Spain want to overthrow and replace with a democracy worthy of the name – to the crisis provoked by the insatiable greed of the bourgeoisie is to deepen capitalism and reinforce neoliberal policies by applying IMF prescriptions until a society bled and drowned in despair and misery will accept a “neofascist solution” to reconstitute the lost order.  No change is possible within Spanish pseudo-democracy because its famous bipartisanship has proven, as in the United States, to be nothing more than the two faces of a single party: that of capital.  But now the collusion between the Spanish PSOE and the Partido Popular has run up against an unexpected obstacle: encouraged by the winds crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa, the young people – the main but not exclusive victims of the pillage – “have said ‘enough!’ and begun to move,” as Comandante Ernesto “Che” Guevara once said in his famous speech in 1964 before the U.N. General Assembly.

Now nothing in Spain will be the same again.  The disparaged political class seems to have reached the point of no return and the crisis of legitimacy within its pseudo-democracy has reached unfathomable depths; if Egyptians and Tunisians were able to rid themselves of their corrupt ruling cliques, why wouldn’t the “indignant” be able to do the same?  The obscene ethical incoherence of the true dean of the Spanish economy, the IMF, can only result in the irritation and mobilization of increasingly large numbers of citizens; citizens who are suffering from all kinds of cuts to their incomes and labor rights while the IMF bandits decide to award Dominique Strauss Kahn a severance payment of $250,000 because he stepped down ahead of time … for having been involved in the serious crime of sexual assault on a female African worker in a New York hotel!  In addition, he will enjoy a luxurious retirement that is denied to millions of Spanish and European citizens in Portugal, Greece, Ireland, and Iceland … And these are the people who say they know how to get the world out of the worst economic crisis in its history!  The “indignant” need not have read the Marxist classics because life has taught them that under capitalism there is no possible democracy and that capitalism is incurably antagonistic to democracy.  History has pronounced its unassailable verdict: more capitalism, less democracy, in the opulent and industrialized north as well as in the global South.  Life has also taught them that when they combine their efforts, organize and educate themselves in debating ideas in order to overcome the dumbing-down of the masses programmed by capitalism’s cultural industry, their strength is capable of paralyzing party bureaucracies and putting in check the pseudo-democracy with which they’ve been deceived.  If they continue in their struggle, they will also defeat the despotism of capital, and eventually, begin a new stage in history, not only in Spain but in the rest of Europe.  People throughout the entire world have their eyes set on the streets and plazas of Spain, where a decisive battle is beginning. [3]

Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Long story short.  Ted Henken, the quite white chair of the Black and Hispanic Studies department at Baruch College who calls himself “El Yuma” and writes a blog under the same title, recently returned from a trip to Cuba where he had gone to interview bloggers of all persuasions, but most especially his close personal friend, “La Yoa,” (Yoani Sánchez) whose cherished interview he saved for last.

"El Yuma" and "La Yoa"

Before undertaking his mission, Henken had a small problem, which was that he guessed that his effusive public support for Sánchez – the Cuban blogger who writes about Cuba only as a chamber of horrors – would likely compromise his efforts to obtain a journalist’s visa for his Cuban blogger publicity tour.  So as he says, on the basis of “better to ask forgiveness than permission,” he set out on the well-worn trail blazed by plenty of previous US journalists whose desire to report from within Cuba overwhelmed their willingness to respect the rules that Cuba has established for such pursuits.

It’s sort of an old story by now, and Ted admits he was no innocent abroad.  After being ushered out of the country as persona non grata, he wrote to the Cuban blogger Harold Cárdenas Lema at La Joven Cuba, “No big deal.  I always knew that this might happen to me.”

Harold Cárdenas Lema, left, and Ted Henken, right

Ted has painstakingly recounted his exit interview with Cuban security at José Martí International Airport, tellingly in Spanish, not English, as this is the language that is far more useful to recruit Cuban defenders.  On this side of the straits, it’s not that big a story, after all.  Normally, it’s even a win-win for the USAmerican who attempts it.  Tourist visas to Cuba are dispensed at most foreign airline desks for a nominal fee, no questions asked.  You pay your money, you take your chances. And if you get stopped at Cuban customs and sent back on the next plane, you can always moan about Cuba being a totalitarian state, and the media will be happy to print your statement.

We don’t know if Henken ever made any attempt to obtain a journalist’s visa, but he seems to imply that he did not.  And when he arrived in Cuba, once again purchasing his umpteenth visa turistica, Cuba did not turn him away but gave him the benefit of the doubt.  That’s when he decided to roll the dice.  Day after day at his blog, he posted pictures of himself meeting with one Cuban blogger after another, mentioning their chats, mocking Cuban visa control and daring Cuba to do something about it.

Unsurprisingly, this led to an unpleasant conversation as El Yuma was leaving the country, and as a victim of plenty of unpleasant conversations at customs (unfortunately of the US variety) I feel a certain amount of sympathy for Henken.  I wonder how many of those kinds of Cuba-related interrogations he’s experienced on US soil?  Has he ever experienced the pleasure of having OFAC open a case against him and try to extort money from him?

Henken says that Cuban security told him that they were well aware of the content of his interviews and that he had not come, as he claimed, to dialogue, but to impose his viewpoint.  Henken pointed out that he had met not just with counterrevolutionaries like Yoani, but also with bona fide revolutionaries like La Joven Cuba.  The response was tart.  “Cubans are very polite and of course they’re going to talk to you because they don’t know what you’re up to.  But we know, and we’re not going to allow it.”

There is a certain truth to this.  Henken has always been very clear about where his sympathies lie (even after the shameful recent remarks from our vigilante-in-chief to 60 Minutes, he admits to being a hopeful Obama supporter) especially when it comes to the media creation known as Yoani Sánchez.  He does not level the least criticism against her for her relentlessly negative spin, and never bothers to examine the rather clever marketing plan she represents.

As I understand it, the offer to Yoani some years ago in Madrid went like this: go back to Cuba, beg for repatriation, with tears if necessary, start blogging – just two or three paragraphs a day, a few times a week, always in a negative way, then watch the money roll in through jinned up prizes and corporate media mentions.  The alternative; backbreaking domestic labor in a country where neither she nor her husband could speak the language, made the offer a no-brainer.  By now, the international awards accruing to Sánchez from opaque foundations and multinational media conglomerates are fast approaching the million dollar mark, while she continues to hammer the Cuban government for refusing to allow her to leave the country to accept all the invented awards, while deliberately making no mention of the visa denials and economic conditions that are the real barriers to travel for the rest of her compatriots and other third world citizens.

So Henken’s lack of critical thinking about any of this is somewhat surprising for an academic.  Rather, his criticism has been squarely aimed at those who presume to criticize the media creation.  Full disclosure: I have been one of his targets.

If the bloggers not allied with Yoani, like Elaine Díaz and La Joven Cuba for instance, agreed to interviews with Henken it most certainly would have been out of courtesy, and with a politeness that most likely precluded any uncomfortable questions about Henken’s visa status and whether his journalism was authorized. His complaint that he should be able to interview counter-revolutionary Cuban bloggers because Jimmy Carter did, is absurd.  I’m pretty sure that diplomatic passport holders have no use for visas of any kind.

The upshot of Henken’s exit interview at José Martí was that he was told that this would be his last visit to the island.  Personally I wouldn’t have done it that way.  I’d have left it a little more vague, and waited for Henken to spend some money on another charter flight before sending him back on the next plane.  But I’m not Cuban.  It’s not for me to say.

In the meantime, Henken finds himself in a (self-created) pickle. Without being able to travel to Cuba, it’ll be hard to maintain his career as a Cuba consultant and expert on Cuban social media matters.  Not impossible though.  Brian Latell seems to manage.  So does Ann Louise Bardach, although Henken’s not really in her league.  He seems to be counting on a groundswell of support from his Cuban interview subjects to overturn his persona non grata status.  But I don’t see it happening.  Because if they do it for Henken, they’ll have to do it for everyone and tell the world that their journalistic visa controls are just for show.  And Cuba, like any country, has the right to set its own rules and control its own borders, even when those controls inconvenience capitalism’s defenders.

However, I can see an opportunity for a trade as well as a chance for Henken to put his visa experience and love for Cuba toward something useful.  Not that anyone’s asking but I’d recommend that he use all his academic credentials and connections to agitate for the US to give Olga Salanueva and Adriana Pérez O’Connor visas to visit their husbands in US federal prison.  And if he is successful, perhaps Cuba might consider responding in kind.

Not long after the White House announcement about its US Navy Seals operation in Abbottabad, ABC News released a set of pictures from what it claimed was the interior of Bin Laden’s home.  With ABC refusing to share the photos with other news conglomerates, both the NY Times and Wall Street Journal handled the photos gingerly, using language like: “Footage obtained by ABC News showed what the network said was a room inside the compound,” or “Footage obtained by ABC News showed what appeared to be blood on a floor inside the compound.”

Later, ABC released the video from which the images were presumably culled.  Missing from both the video and later uploads of the picture series was the photo above.  Why did ABC scrub this particular segment?  If the legs are Nick Schifrin’s, the ABC correspondent who seemed to have breached the security cordon, why is the video so shitty?  If the legs are not Schifrin’s, which intelligence agency produced it and why is ABC so concerned about protecting the anonymity of the mystery legs?  And when will we see photos from inside Luis Posada Carriles’ lair? (Never.)

In fact, Simon McGuinness, in a post at the CubaNews listserve, aptly points out the following:

Anyone care to suggest how the baying mob in Times Square, that has graced the world’s TV screens today, would respond to the following report:

“Cuban President, Raul Castro, has announced a successful raid on the mansion of Luis Posada Carriles in Florida and reports that the terrorist, his wife, son and some unidentified others were killed by Cuban commandos after a shoot-out. His body was photographed and taken away for burial at sea. No Cuban lives were lost in the mission. The world is a safer place without him. God bless Cuba.”

The difference, of course, is that Posada is a convicted terrorist, a self confessed mass murderer and fugitive from justice that the US government refuses to extradite. We have only the US president’s word that Osama Bin Laden was responsible for any act of terrorism.

The other difference is that the Cuban President doesn’t engage in assassination of his political opponents.