www.kubaforum.info - Das deutsche Kubaforum

Comandante · Verfasst am: 11.11.2005 14:51 Titel:

Broad international coverage of Cuba’s victory in UN continues

THE media, social and political organizations and individuals around the world are continuing to highlight Cuba’s most recent victory over the futile attempts by the United States to destroy the Revolution and crush our people through the longest economic, commercial and financial blockade in history.

Cuba’s resounding victory is the clearest demonstration that the Cuban Revolution has been absolved by history, affirmed Nicaraguan deputy Tomás Borge.

Caribbean media like the Guyana Chronicle, The Nation of Barbados and the Daily Express of Trinidad and Tobago, highlighted how the blockade policy had been isolated and ratified the region’s support for Cuba.

In the Dominican Republic, El Listín Diario carried the headline in its international news section: "UN asks for an end to the blockade of Cuba;" and the Diario Libre Digital headlined its story, "Cuba wins record support at UN."

A headline on the cover and a full page of coverage were dedicated to the subject in the Mexican daily La Jornada, while La Crónica de Hoy newspaper noted how Havana won overwhelming support.

The Uruguayan Workers Federation, PIT-CNT and the leftist Broad Front (FA) issued statements of solidarity with the cause of the Cuban government and people, while the Colombian media covered the international community’s support for Cuba.

Members of Casa Caribe in Solidarity with the Peoples in Baranquilla, Colombia, stated that the UN had once again decided that the despicable blockade must end.

In Brazil, the daily O Globo described the record support offered to Cuba by 182 nations, while the Jornal do Brasil and other newspapers also carried coverage of the events, as did radio and TV news programs.

In Bolivian, Felipe Quispe, leader of the Pachacuti Indigenous Movement, expressed his contentment over the victory, "which we applaud and salute," and said that Cuba is an example for the indigenous peoples.

Immediately after learning of the vote, Radio Nacional de Venezuela and Venezolana de Television included the news among their top stories.

In Quito, Raúl Pérez, president of the National Coordinating Committee for Solidarity with Cuba, affirmed that Ecuadorians were celebrating the crushing victory of the Cuban people.

In Peru, Congressman Javier Diez Canseco, a presidential pre-candidate for the Socialist Party, added his voice in support of the island, as did the Peruvian-Cuban Inter-Parliamentary League of Friendship.

A couple of dozen Russian newspapers, and radio and TV stations, like the daily Trud (Labor), carried ample coverage regarding the UN vote, and in Angola, radio stations likewise highlighted Cuba’s victory.

Comandante · Verfasst am: 11.11.2005 14:51 Titel:

The magic visitor

BY NAVIL GARCIA ALFONSO—Granma International staff writer—

THE recently concluded month of October holds for Cubans – and for Latin Americans too, why not? – the living memory of the real days of radio.

When on October 10, way back in 1922, then-President Alfredo Zayas officially inaugurated radio broadcasting in Cuba, it opened a new chapter in technological development for Cuban society, but it was never suspected that it would become the most popular euphoria of the coming years.

That day, from his comfortable office at the recently inaugurated presidential palace, Zayas addressed himself in a speech to the people of the United States, speaking clearly in English; it was the baptism of PWX, a radio station belonging to the Cuban Telephone Company, the Yankee monopoly that controlled telegraph communications on the island.

From that moment on, and on a growing scale, transmitters began appearing all over the country, and over time became the first national system of radio communication.

One family of radio lovers deserves a special mention: Lieutenant Luis Casas Romero, deputy director of the Army General Staff band, formed a full-fledged radio station with his children. Using primitive equipment, the Casas family also founded, in 1922, the 2LC station, which operated by placing a phonograph horn in front of the microphones.

The convulsive evolution of Cuban radio was indissolubly linked to the economic and political realities of the times. The recurring "tánganas," as university demonstrations against the Machado government were called, and baseball games between the two best teams at the time, Habana and Almendares, kept enthusiasm ardent for radio.

The people’s preference for the new medium explains the important role it played in national political struggles. Suffice it to mention that on March 13, 1957, when a group of university students decided to execute the dictator Batista, they also went to the Radio Reloj station to broadcast a communiqué to the people. That prominence in social life was decisive when the Rebel Army led by Fidel created Radio Rebelde, which broadcast from the Sierra Maestra to inform Cubans about guerrilla actions.

But radio was not always well-utilized in Cuba. A premature message on the fall of President Gerardo Machado in 1933 brought people out onto the streets to celebrate. Actually, the dictatorship had not yet been overthrown, and the masses were harshly punished by the military forces and the police.

With respect to entertainment, the radio show became the hottest thing going. The largest screen in the world, as Orson Wells called it, featured the most famous artists from all over the world. Mexican movie stars were the dreamboats of housewives. Celebrities like Libertad Lamarque, Jorge Negrete, the Los Panchos Trio, Pedro Vargas, Josephine Baker and many others were in Cuba, not counting the many Cuban stars that filled radio waves with outstanding quality.

In the musical sphere, Rita Montaner, Ernesto Lecuona, Bola de Nieve, and Joseíto Fernández stood out for their popularity, the latter being the composer of the extremely popular "Guantanamera," the name of a show that featured stories of scandals and had a very big impact at the time. A popular saying remains from that show, used for those responsible for repudiated actions: "They’re going to sing you the Guantanamera."

Other memorable broadcasts include those of the "Supreme Court of Art," the first program where the public could decide which competitor would win. Live applause and prizes opened an innovative stage in the commercial model that was already being implemented. From then on, radio’s economic interests had more of a say in the fate of artistic productions. However, it’s worth noting that from that controversial program emerged some of the individuals that would go down in posterity as true bulwarks of Cuban culture.

By the 1940s, radio was already a business consolidated in U.S. technology and financing. The biggest show of the time was in the hands of commercial enterprises that almost completely distorted the social function of radio broadcasting.

Publicity was interspersed throughout broadcasting hours, and helped to create a fictitious atmosphere of economic prosperity in which there were attempts to represent the lower classes.

"You too can own a Buick," affirmed one of the advertising jingles for the well-known U.S. auto company. At the same time, images of beauty, both for men and women, came from such transnationals as Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive, disguised under tropical names like Sabatés and Crusellas.

From the 1930s, certain advertising messages were already being introduced to sell products that sponsored radio programming. This tendency became generalized, and radio stations became important elements in the arduous economic competition among foreign companies in Cuba.

This model was not exclusive to the island, and was similarly established throughout Latin America.

There were two stations that led the list in Cuban broadcasting during their time: RHC Cadena Azul and CMQ, which in 1948 inaugurated the slenderest building for radio in the country, and the first that was completely air-conditioned. It was headed up by two magnates: Amado Trinidad and Goar Mestre, representatives of the most powerful business interests.

The two stations were the stars of the so-called "War on the air" with the basic purpose of ensuring the information monopoly and receiving important dividends. Radio in Cuba, like in the United States, had gone on to occupy a new role in which it 46Agregado was developing very well: that of the salesman.

The competitive nature of an economy based on consumerism generated another famous war in Cuban society: that of soap. This one was between the main soap and perfume companies, the aforementioned Crusellas and Sabatés. The rivalry was so strong that during a Crusellas program, which promoted Candado soap, the words "give me the key (llave)" could not be pronounced, because Llave was the soap brand of the competitor, Sabatés.

When synthetic detergents appeared, they were immediately linked to the radio program in fashion in Cuba at the time, the radio soap opera.

Many people still remember the high-flown voice that could be heard resounding in Cuban houses every evening at 8:30: "Open the sonorous pages of your Soap Opera on the Air, to bring alive the dreams and romance of a new chapter."

The radio soap opera became so popular that when television expanded in the early 1950s, the genre was ready to go beyond its technological limits and maintain itself up until today as the new, televised variety of the Latin American show of its type: the telenovela.

The victorious dawn of January 1, 1959 changed the direction of radio and television. Since then their central function has been to educate and inform the people. Currently 82 radio stations throughout the island are in charge of that task.

Comandante · Verfasst am: 11.11.2005 14:52 Titel:

Carlota the rebel
BY MARTA ROJAS—Granma daily staff writer—

THE fifth decade of the 19th century was characterized by successive rebellions on the part of African and Cuban-born slaves, particularly in the great plain of Havana-Matanzas, the emporium of the slave-owning oligarchy, given the wealth of its land and the profusion of the sugar-cane industry.

The repression was infamous in its cruelty and one particularly recalls the so-called Escalera (Ladder) Conspiracy and its dramatic sequel of torture, crimes and shootings ordered by General O’Donnell, including that of the great mixed-race poet Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (Plácodo) and a group of men belonging to the incipient black bourgeoisie, thousands of black and mixed-race free persons and slaves. That process was so extended and horrifying that 1844 has come down to our days as the Year of the Strap.

Traditional Cuban history never touched on the impetuous beginnings of the slave rebellion in that historical period. But that silence – or deliberate omission in more than a few cases – is not the case in these years of Revolution. The restored landmarks include the rebellion at the Triunvirate sugar mill in Matanzas and, more specifically, the heroic dimension of Carlota, the pro-liberation slave.

The uprising led by Carlota and a group of rebel slaves had international repercussions. A few days after the rebellion began, the Vandalia, a U.S. Navy corvette, appeared in the port of Havana under the command of Rear-Admiral Chauncey, the bearer of an "official" letter from the Spanish Business Attaché in Washingon, which notified Captain General O’Donnell that he could count on the aid of the United States to crush the "Afrocuban" rebellion, a document that Commander Chauncey, accompanied by a Mr. Campbell, the U.S. consul in Havana, presented to the colonial governor in an official ceremony with full diplomatic rigor.

This support further spurred on the repression meted out by the Spanish authorities in Matanzas of the slaves who participated in the Triunvirato uprising, from the governor and district captains, to the slave owners of farms and sugar mills to simple overseers. In the end, Carlota was literally torn apart. But her action was an epic one.

This was the beginning: the drums were talking in the Triunvirato mill in the months of July and August, 1843. Two Africans were in contact. They were Lucumies: Evaristo and Fermnina, from the Acana mill. They devoted themselves to campaigning among the slaves to put an end to the brutality of that system. They managed to communicate via drums which they played with eloquence. On November 5, 1843 the Triunvirato slaves rebelled. There was a military trial from which it emerged that the Matanzas Military Committee had uncovered a vast conspiracy in the above-mentioned mills.

In addition to Fermina, other women had an energetic participation in the anti-slave movement, as well as their men. There was a militarily gifted and exceptionally daring women in the front line: Carlota, of Lucumbi origin, who belonged to the Triunvirato mill. Involved with her in the rebellion were Eduardo, a Fula; Carmita and Juliana, Cuban-born; Filomena, a Ganga from the Acana mill; and Lucía, a Lucumi from the Concepción estate, all of them in Matanzas.

For the white slave owners what they heard was merely a drumming ceremony from a black slave cabin calling to the ancestors. But the fact is that at 8:00 p.m. on the night of Sunday, November 5, Eduardo, the interpreter of the kettledrum voice advised everybody, and Carlota, Narciso and Felipe, and the Ganga Manuel, like the "spokesperson," had already sharpened their work machetes. At that hour the objective was not the cane plantations, but the brutal plantation manager, his overseers and lackeys. It was they who first felt the blades of steel and were felled, their pistols and rifles seized, as well as similar weapons from other white individuals who abandoned them in all haste.

Somewhat terse concerning these cases, the official municipal representatives on the Military Committee relate for history that the blacks "set fire to the main house, part of the plantation and the sugar mill huts."

The Fermina from the Acana mill, who took part in a rebellion on August 2, had been imprisoned with shackles from which she was released by her brothers and sisters on November 3. Carlota and her captains, according to their secret plan, had gone from Triunvirato to Acana to free the slaves.

Nobody should imagine, because it would be naïve, that Carlota went with a holster strapped to her chest, and in boots. She went barefoot, in her threadbare dress. The successes at Triunvirato and Acana must have encouraged the rebel slaves who were fighting for freedom and they continued their surprise attacks in the area. They liberated the slaves from the administrations of Santa Ana, Guanábana and Sabanilla del Encomendador, belonging to the Concepción, San Lorenzo, San Miguel, San Rafael sugar mills, and the neighboring coffee plantations and dairy farms. But the governor’s powerful forces were already pursuing Carlota the Lucumi, Eduardo the Fula and her other comrades, and in a battle as unequal as it was bitter – presumably due to the difference in the strength, quality and quantity of the enemy firepower – Carlota was taken prisoner and tied alive to horses pulling in opposite directions until she was torn apart.

According to the annals, Blas Cuesta, administrator and co-owner of the San Rafael mill, earnestly appealed to the governor of Matanzas, who had just arrived on his property, not to continue massacring defenseless blacks. Some slaves who escaped got as far as the Ciénaga de Zapata and continued fighting in the Gran Palenque (hideout of runaway slaves) in the Cuevas del Cabildo.

Fermina was shot with four Lucumies and three Gangas in March 1844.

This was not the only or the first slave conspiracy or rebellion. One would have to recall that of José Antonio Aponte in 1812. And long before, the determined and victorious protest of the slave miners of Rey in El Cobre (1677), until their freedom was de jure acknowledged in 1801.

In terms of its vigor and bravery, Carlota’s liberation struggle is part of the Cuban heritage of rebellion against oppression. Thus her name has been enshrined as a symbol of the operation that gave rise to the Cuban military mission in Angola 30 years ago. If was as if the bones and blood of Carlota and her comrades in the uprising joined together again to serve the liberation of the descendants of those Africans who contributed to the forging of the Cuban nation.

Comandante · Verfasst am: 11.11.2005 14:53 Titel:

Visa delay for wife of Cuban anti-terrorist

THE U.S. Interests Section (USIS) in Havana has postponed granting a visa to Olga Salanueva, the wife of René González, one of the five Cubans unjustly imprisoned by Washington for combating terrorism.

Olga, accompanied by lawyer Nuris Piñeiro, was one of the last persons to be seen at the USIS yesterday. (PHOTO: Jorge Luis González)
Olga, accompanied by lawyer
Nuris Piñeiro, was one of the last
persons to be seen at the USIS
yesterday.
(PHOTO: Jorge Luis González)

"They told me that my application was being considered by the State Department and that they would advise me by phone at some non-defined point," Salanueva told reporters at the USIS exit, where she was called for in relation to her proposed visit.

"They didn’t tell me yes or no," added Olga, who has been refused a visa on six previous occasions, which means that neither she nor her younger daughter Ivette have seen René in five years.

They also notified her that she might have to return to the USIS for another interview, as her file shows that she was deported from the United States five years ago, as a result of her husband’s arrest.

She also said that the official who received her asked her various questions related to her status, that of her husband and her two daughters, although he was not discourteous.

In relation to the process leading up to yesterday’s interview, she described it as a succession of complicated steps that took more than two months.

"These torturous procedures are nothing other than torture and cruel psychological treatment," observed Nuris Piñeiro, the legal assistant to the prisoners’ families.

According to the lawyer, the authorities had the time to examine Olga’s case, prepare her file and facilitate the visit of Salanueva and her younger daughter to René.

She stated that this delay over the visa demonstrates that the U.S. authorities are not acting with any vocation for justice and are obviating the rights of the family and of the prisoner.

Piñeiro noted that they had to wait for the final outcome and added that if (the U.S. officials) reflect on and properly assess what is constituted by guarantees to the family and basic rights then the decision would be a positive one.

There is no argument against granting a visa to Olga, not even the pretext of her deportation is valid as the incident occurred five years ago, an expiration period that is stipulated in US immigration legislation, she affirmed.

Two weeks ago, the State Department denied a visa to Adriana Pérez, the wife of Gerardo Hernández, for the sixth time. She has been unable to visit her husband for seven years because of Washington’s intransigence.

René González, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando González, who have been in prison since 1998, were sentenced in Miami to heavy terms that range from 15 years to double life.

The Five, as they are known in the international campaigns for their release, had the mission of obtaining information on anti-Cuban groups located in southern Florida, and which are responsible for acts of violence directed at targets within and outside of Cuba.

In August, the Atlanta Court of Appeals annulled their sentences and ordered a retrial, but decided last week to review that decision at the request of the public attorney in charge of the case. (PL)

Comandante · Verfasst am: 11.11.2005 14:53 Titel:

Bush’s unsuccessful fishing trip
to Mar del Plata
BY JUANA CARRASCO MARTIN—Special for Granma International—

MAR DEL PLATA—One has only to look at photos of the simian– I’m sorry, I meant sinister – individual to realize that things went badly for him in Mar del Plata. And not because a Summit of the Peoples lashed out at him in every possible way with thousands of reasons, exposing the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) as an annexationist farce or because others explained with uncontainable rage their opposition to a treaty designed to crush everybody in this hemisphere.

He simply failed in his own forum or domain.

George W. Bush arrived at the militarized side of this Argentine city – the other side was the people’s premises – to try to collect on the fruits of pressures brought to bear since the Americas Summits began in Miami in 1994 – with the permanent, honorable exception of Cuba – but had to leave with his hands empty, although some see them as half-full due to the so-called bilateral or regional Free Trade Agreements, which the United States hopes to use for the same purpose of domination.

Five presidents put up a wall higher than the fence surrounding and isolating the venue for the meeting of 34 presidents from North, Central and South America and the Caribbean, and their representatives from the rest of the continent. And at the end of the turbulent Bushonian road: there is no FTAA, despite the fact that a couple of altar boys practiced genuflecting to the extreme. Mexican Vicente Fox even said that there could be an FTAA with 29...

Of course, U.S. diplomacy and policy on Latin America found that this was a goal that couldn’t be saved, and that they could put this fourth chapter in their book of failures, with the impossibility of economically tying the continent to the Gordian knot of the FTAA. A machete blow of justice and reason has also severed it in the presidential theater.

The thing is, the traumatic experience of neoliberalism and formulas using the castor oil of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank don’t relieve the pain, they just increase the ills afflicting our peoples. The president of the host country expressed those opinions with resounding logic during his inaugural speech, which some analysts consider to be the same practical line expressed by everyday Argentines on the streets of that resort city and in every corner of the country, in an economic abyss that provoked the very recent social explosion there.

In fact, there are still spearheads, thorny and dangerous problems, that go beyond the economic pretensions translated in the FTA. The United States is trying to occupy political spaces of domination, as is the case with the Democratic Charter and its particular interest in aiming at the heart of Venezuela’s Bolivarian process, for example; and the intention of controlling us militarily, most recently demonstrated by the landing of Marines in Paraguay for extremely long-term exercises and training.

However, as if to avoid witnesses to his defeat, Bush left Mar del Plata – with his tail between his legs, as the most grass-roots sectors of the continent would say – even before the conclusion of the Summit, without setting a date for renewed negotiations, because it must be admitted that obstinacy is one of the imperial lord’s virtues.

After two days of meetings and disagreements, the final Declaration was limited by the discord between the largest economy in the world, its pretensions of domination and its reticence to acknowledge the right to development of everyone else, and those who find themselves obligated, under pressure from their peoples, to defend that position, and in very few cases – lamentably, that must be admitted – leaders imbued with the need to give another breath of life to Latin America’s present and future.

Thus, while there were indeed leaders willing to continue negotiations on the FTAA, it has been recorded for the history of the dignity of this continent that others opposed it. In fact, it was a reproduction of current conditions: those who are already handcuffed to Washington through NAFTA (USA-Canada-Mexico) in favor of the FTAA, and following in line the Central Americans that have signed FTAs, the Andeans that are going down the same bad road and Chile, the only country that has now been tied to a bilateral agreement.

However, the pressure of reason made itself felt in its different aspects, led by the upright position of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez holding aloft the banner of the ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, which is already showing its fruits of genuine integration on the plane of equality, and above all solidarity to the benefit of the peoples, and where the main co-protagonist is "excluded" Cuba.

On that moral elevation, dictated by the pains and vicissitudes of the reality of a rich continent, extremely poor and unequal, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay produced the consensus necessary to abort the FTAA. The fishing net that Bush cast into Mar del Plata didn’t catch the desired fish, because it had a gaping hole in it.

Some may ask, after Mar del Plata, are we dealing with a divided continent? Yes and no. Time is what is needed for the people to tear down the fence and impose their alternative, making a reality of what was said to be the motto of the presidents’ Summit: "Create jobs to reduce poverty and strengthen democratic governability," but the real one, not the fake