Mojito!

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We write about this in Mojito! Turns out we were seeing the future...
We speculated that this would happen because of Castros' Cuba need for cash and the most ready source without strings would be from Saudi Arabian and their clients.

http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2011/agosto/31/Hezbollah_sbarca_Cuba_Prepara_nuove_co_9_110831020.shtml

Why Post Media should apply some level of quality control over its content. This piece is replete with shaped commentary. It obviously wasn't neutral. Then I found out that its author was a writer for a Communist Newspaper.

Here is the writer's "credentials" http://newsbusters.org/node/70​22

Here is the story he wrote in Canada's National Post
Cuban parliament approves economic, social reforms | News | National Postnews.nationalpost.comBy Marc Frank HAVANA - The Cuban National Assembly approved on Monday Communist Party proposals to overhaul the country’s stagnating, state-dominated economy and lift some restrictions on citizens’ personal lives, state-run media said. The plan, which includes more than 300 points, was first approve

At the start of the new year, my sweetie and I were looking for a warm destination to compensate for the ugliest and coldest and snowiest winter since the start of global warming.
I always answer in a four letter word. C.U.B.A. But with a little back and forth, I'll settle for G.O.L.F.
Well, we got both. Stayed at the Melia Los Americas in Varadero, all inclusive Golf, Food and Booze. Booze is at it is there. Lotsa Rum with mostly cheap knock-offs of everything else. They did have a bottle of a fancy liqueur a day, which lasted til about eight p.m. Food was okay, basic Cubano fare. Japanese restaurant (which is at a quality that one might expect given the place) A Fish Grill that really was pretty good and a continental place with a string trio that was terrific. The buffets were decent; like always first come better served. Pretty fair supply of smoked salmon in the morning. Always a shortage of ketchup to make up for any deficiencies.
The golf .... was .... great!!! Except for the greens. Looked like someone in their wisdom decided to top dress with sand from the beach, which, of course, is really, really salty so fried the grass.
But that's the way things are done there. Someone gave the order and others obeyed. 
A few notes. 1/ Golf is not really free. You must pay $35 for a cart. 2/ Golf balls are ridiculous - $7 ea. Except of course you can buy black market ones for $5/dozen. 3/ #8 is one of the great Par 3s in the western hemisphere. 4/ #18 is one of the great holes in the world. 5/ The bar in the duPont residence is spectacular.

The exposure for turistas in Cuba is almost entirely of two forms; Cubans met working on resorts and Cubans hustling on the street to survive in cities. Almost all the Cubans we meet are entirely, or mostly Spanish. Because lighter skinned people are given more opportunities than blacks especially working in tourist areas. What we don't get to see is the cultural and religious lives of black Cubans (note - Chen just sent me a note that the book is about Cubans of .    

I've been reviewing the US and Canadian reportage on the 6th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba. And it get's worse the further one is from Miami.
Here's an example
They (the media) are talking about more opportunities, leadership transition, right to sell homes and cars, free markets, some are even saying that the ration books  are being eliminated and bringing in young people.
What all these stories miss is that every single change that is being committed to has one collective purpose; to sustain the status quo.
The Castros haven't gone soft, but they know that their economy is a disaster and that the only thing that keeps millions of people from starving is the black market (which of course doesn't pay taxes to sustain the bureaucracy and politburo). People haven't lived on their "public-sector" jobs since at least 1994 - every family has survived on the black market and the pittance they have gotten paid is of no account. So they are making changes to reduce the money they waste in feeding people with ration books and to dip their beak into the work that people do on the side to actually feed themselves.
Here are some of the big truths:
THEY ARE NOT CREATING PRIVATE JOBS
They are cutting payroll. People that now are getting a stipend will no longer get one. But this is no big deal because no one lived on their stipend anyway, but on their black market activity. NOW their black market activity will be reported on and taxed. 
Generating entrepreneurism? In the form we know this, where someone puts a sign up and sells bobble-head Blue Jays or cuts hair - is impossible in Cuba. There are no customers, no one has extra money.
The government will do what they have done with Casas and Paladares - heavily tax them. 
The good news is that, by being fired from their jobs, Cubans will have another 40 hours/week to hustle, buy/sell/trade (but most likely 100% of this extra income will be taxed).
THE OLD FARTS WILL NOT GO QUIETLY
Cuba is run by 80 year olds and will continue to be run by 80 year olds. As evidence, the Castros' appointment of 80 year old Jose Ramon Machado as Raul's successor. (Lest we forget, they had a couple of terrific young guys in Felipe Perez Rogue and Carlos Lage - but they were deemed not communist enough and were fired).
RIGHT TO SELL HOMES AND CARS
People have traditionally earned the right to buy cars through exceptional service to the Revolucion - maybe shooting peasants in Angola. And, on return to Cuba, they have sold or rented these cars to people who can afford them - illegal taxis. People who have nice assigned homes are known to rent them out to people with more money. So long as the CDR doesn't find out it's cool.
TERM LIMITS
Raul and Jose Ramon both get another ten years. They will be ninety. Will they remember that their terms are up?
MORE OPPORTUNITIES FOR BLACKS, INDIO/SPANISH, WOMEN
Sure. The Spanish in Cuba have been enormously fair in promoting equality to all. But, as in the farm yard, pigs are more equal than others. we will see blacks given equal opportunity in getting tourist jobs, and real incomes, when pigs fly.

Cuba is one big lie. Old people lie because they have always had to to survive. Young people lie because it's the only thing they know. It will not be different as long as a single person over sixty, who grew up with Fidel, is in a position of control.

Those interested in the plight and prospects for Cubans are keeping an eye on the 6th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba now on in Havana. Every ten years, since 1961, Fidel et al has pulled together all his acolytes and cronies to design and plan Cuba’s economy for the next decade. Something Fidel learned from his friends in the Soviet Union that worked so well for them.

Those who love whiskers on kittens, raindrops on roses and re-read Pollyanna every spring have expressed some belief that this Congress will finally be the place and time of huge progress for Cuba. According to them, Fidel is going to announce his total withdrawal from public life (again), his odd brother Raul will announce his successor and succession plan and the hated rationing system will come to an end.

This is, of course, to laugh. ‘Cuanto más cambian las cosas, más permanecen igual’.

According to Raul, in a massive public consultation program, almost 9 million Cubans contributed to the principles of the new ten year plan and they provided 3 million suggestions to the way the island should be governed. But using the well known Castro sleight-of-hand ability, he’s been able to distill these down to six, to wit:  ration books, prices, transportation, education, monetary union and health services.

A little bit like Canada’s list, except for the ration books, at least to this point in our history.

To Cubans, ration books are a symbol of everything wrong with the place. They are a reminder of the control the government has over their lives and they don’t work for their desired purpose; as often as not rationed items don’t exist and people are forced to participate in the black market to survive. People want them gone.

But Raul, in a rare moment of clearthink, warned against any optimism that the ration system will change; “Nobody in their right mind in this country can suddenly decree the elimination of the system without first changing the conditions for it."

But then he went on to describe how they will, “move progressively to the support of people with no other support” instead of subsidizing mass programs available to all. In stating this, Raul is enunciating the obvious; for anyone able to sell a trinket or get their picture taken, the value of the rationing system is irrelevant.

He avoided commentary on the other suggestions, probably because he knows he can’t really do anything about them. They really can’t afford to stop trafficking workers to hotel chains (charging in dollars while paying in pesos). And while China is giving them shiny new buses, it doesn’t make much sense to build a transportation network when residents are prohibited from leaving their designated place of residence without permission. And to unify the value of Cuban pesos with currency equivalents raises the question of whether to inflate one up or deflate the other down. As far as the concern relative to health services (aspirins are a luxury) ask Michael Moore.

Raul promised that more and more jobs would be created in the “non-state economic sector” but made sure that people understand this is not privatization, “but an enabler of the construction of socialism in Cuba”. In truth, this “job creation” initiative is a massive job shedding program that has already eliminated 200,000 government employees. But this is no big deal because none of the government employees can survive on their wages alone and all feed themselves in the black market; now they’ll have an extra forty hours a week to hustle.

There are a few other ideas revealed in Raul’s opening comments that deserve a little attention. He’s promising to de-centralize government and to simplify laws associated with the ownership and sale of cars and homes, as well as allow farmers to extend their boundaries to encompass vacant land.

And now that he and his brother are facing their mortality after fifty two years in command, he said that they should stop the tradition of Cuba being run by octogenarian, white, Spanish men and that anyone who succeeds them should be limited to a maximum of ten years in power. Which allows him to keep his job until he’s ninety. So, will he and his brother be retiring to Miami Beach any time soon? Ah. No.

718 words

Brian French is a political consultant and commentator, a blogger and author of a soon to be released book, “Mojito” about Cuban politics and culture.

A few weeks ago I clicked a Facebook ad for luxurious "Boomer Tours" in Cuba. Being somewhat interested in that topic, I clicked a little deeper. I noticed that one of the local guides proudly made a claim to be a personal friend of Che Guevara - who, of course, wasn't exactly a role model for those interested in human rights. Except perhaps for those interested parties that wish to learn how to execute and imprison political opponents and get away with it.
A click later I learned that the organizer of the tour is a self-confessed Trotskyist. Which is fine - our society allows anyone to pursue any philosophy they wish. And any party, if it gets a sufficient share of the votes in an election, can receive federal funding for their party. I have many friends within the entire spectrum of philosophical positions - and we get along because we have more in common that we have in differences.
Which is the way that democracies act.
But it's not exactly that way in Cuba. Down there if you speak up you risk a term of re-education in a resort called Villa Marista. Which ain't five stars.
To the organizers' credit, they don't try to hide their beliefs. A click and a Wiki search and it's all there. Cuban propaganda is alive and well, and the internet does set us free. It’s easy to discover a bias that a writer of an article might have or, like Yoani Sanchez, to actually blog from Cuba about government abuses of the governed.
Lenin described those westerners who support communism as “Useful Idiots” and he would be smiling in his hereafter about this if he hadn't been such an atheist.
A few years back, I was encouraged to write a novel as a sequel to one written by a famous friend of mine. We decided that Cuba would be a terrific place in which to place the plot and characters. Since then, I've spent a lot of time in Cuba with lots of Cubans, and I think I have a pretty good understanding of how they live day-to-day, even though I will never have to worry about what I say in public, or whether my family will eat protein at least once this week.
When does a revolution stop becoming a revolution and start being recognized as a misguided philosophy with a status present that is an insult to all those who believe in human rights?
Lies are a permanent part of life on the Castros' island paradise lost. Younger Cubans have to lie about their opinions of the government, its leadership and their opinion of the United States. Old Cubans lie about Fidel Castro because those lies are the only opinion they've ever been allowed to have. The Cuban politburo lies about everything it does, and just about everything everyone else does; especially the USA. The Castros spew lies constantly but are so absent from reality that they seem to believe them.
Fidel has always lied about his form of democracy. It started with his “temporary” suspension of free elections soon after he took power. Lie. While every few years Cubans are forced to go to a ballot box and vote for Socialist Candidate tweedledum or Socialist Candidate tweedledee, this temporary suspension is older than I am, and not likely to really become temporary any time soon.
Another great lie is that Cuba is an egalitarian paradise; where all are equal and everyone gets a great education and has tremendous health care. But as in Animal Farm, the pigs are more equal than others. In Habana, for example, loyal Fidelistas, virtually all of Spanish extraction, are rewarded with pleasant accommodations in nicer areas like Vedado and Miramar. Those who unfortunately are not in favour, who are mostly black, live in tenements in Central City on narrow streets filled with rubble that serve as both sewers and playgrounds.
There is only way to survive in Cuba. Theft. At least Fidel considers it theft. It's participation in the black market. A typical family stipend is between 10 and 20 dollar equivalents per month. Families are provided with housing (of a sort), a ration booklet that provides rice, beans, potatoes, milk (if you’re a pre-schooler) and a few other staples. The ration coupons have some value as they that can be used for items to trade. Sick looking green onions and tiny garlic bulbs can be purchased at markets for a pittance. But meat isn’t on the menu and eggs are treated like they are laid by a golden hen.
But what a family really has to do to survive is to somehow scrounge for something, anything of value that they can trade. It might be a coupon for a pair of shoes (size 11, men’s black). They might be given chintzy curios and mass produced Cuban art to sell to naive turistas. Every month workers in tobacco factories get a box of cigars to smoke (but really to sell to gringos).
The young and old share the responsibility to come up with stuff to trade. Grannies dress up in Santarian priestess costumes to have their picture taken by tourists for a fee. Children look for kind foreigners who will give them a buck because they're cute. Some young Cubana's dream of having a child with a rich tourist and, if the Dad has at least some ethical standard, an annuity by way of child support.
Yes. There is prostitution. And yes many "northerners" from Canada, Germany, Italy and England conduct the most heinous of all acts of economic imperialism; they travel to Cuba to have sex with young people, mostly girls. White haired Decembers from the north are often seen with dusky Aprils from the South. I try to show my disdain any way I can when I see this. I'm hardly a moralist, but these guys feel rich and handsome in Cuba by throwing ten dollar bills around like man-hole covers and I don't like it.
A key source of income for families is to have at least one family member that somehow has access to tourists. They may work in a hotel, restaurant, drive a taxi (legal or illegal), or act as "tour guides".
Almost all the official jobs that are tourism related are given to those of the Spanish persuasion. The "tour guides" are almost all black and risk their freedom if they get noticed doing the wrong thing by the wrong people. You will know them by their furtive catch phrases as they pass you in the streets of Old Havana, "Chica, Senor?" "Cigar, Senor?" "Restaurant, Senor?" Trust me. Chances are almost 100% that the cigars are fake, the girl is somebody’s daughter who despises her source of income, and the restaurant will be over priced. (Private restaurants - paladares -were the only way to go up to a year or so ago when Fidel started taxing them to death and dropping the prices at government restaurants. He has succeeded in pricing these entrepreneurs out of business. But I’d not be the least bit surprised that even if they’re without customers that they are still forced to pay protection money to the boss.)
Public Health? Cubans have admirably healthy people at least partly because their lifestyle prohibits them from enjoying the goodies that make us die prematurely. They pretty much can't help but avoid obesity - they can't get their hands on enough food to get fat. Rum, even at a CUC (dollar equivalent) a bottle is really beyond their budget. Drugs? Really, really beyond their budget.
They don't die in car accidents because no one has cars (but the few vehicles there do put out an admirably unhealthy quantity of exhaust). Cuba brags about it's low level of infant mortality, and the lack of unhealthy life choices helps this, but so does abortion on demand which isn't reported in any of their stats. And as far as drugs, ordinary Cubans do not have access to any, from Lipitor down to Aspirin. I had a friend die last year – a great musician – who died of a staph infection incurred when he was having his back scoped.
But if you're down there doing a documentary, they'll invite you to have a kidney or cornea transplant.
Schools are pretty good but all the kids are members of Fidel's version of the Young Pioneers, which was such a rousing success in great democracies like the USSR. Fortunately, around about the time that testicles start dropping and breasts lifting, the political indoctrination of the Communist Party on Cuban youth is forgotten and replaced by a huge desire to have nice clothes and a moto to drive your sweetie around in style.
Safety? Cuba is a police state, so tourists are likely as safe there as in, say, the guest lounge in a Canadian penitentiary. There is at least one para-military on every street corner that tourists frequent. So we’re safe. The entire Cuban security apparatus, including their neighbourhood spies, are there to protect Cuba from Cubans, not to be a significant factor in fighting Bahia de Cochinos Dos.
For locals, nobody has anything so there really isn't very much to steal. But I do have a friend in Havana who runs an organized crime organization, and there is crime. Just not on an Ocean’s Eleven scale.
Cuba’s "friends" in Canada and the USA brag about how well Cuba manages through a fairly regular procession of hurricanes and tropical storms. But they fail to mention that there is very little in property value there to be lost in a killer storm and Cubans are savvy enough to get out of the way of hurricanes. Unlike more wealthy Americans.
The big lie, or course, was the first one. Fidel Castro, according to himself and his Bolshie buddy, Che Guevara, took over Cuba to rid it of a torturous tyrant in Fulgenio Batista. To let his people go.
But, history does not absolve Fidel, as he predicted in his legal defence when jailed for fomenting rebellion in Santiago de Cuba in 1953. History has proven that he is a whole lot worse than his predecessor. Cubans traded one despot for two; either and both of whom are at least as nasty as their predecessor.
First off, Batista was mulatto, not “pur laine” Spanish, and mixed race and black Cubans had lots more opportunities to get ahead under Batista than ever under Fidel.
Pictures of the time reveal that Batista’s Havana was a true jewel – among the most civilized of all Latin American cities with the highest standard of living and a thriving middle class. The architectural look of the place was spectacular and photos of Cubans on the main shopping street, San Rafael, reveal an eclectic population of well dressed, multi-hued and happy people shopping and having fun.
And in terms of treating political opponents badly, Batista only sent Fidel to jail for 3 years for starting a bloody rebellion. Fidel throws drunkards in the slammer for complaining about not having food to eat. And he provides vacations for newspaper journalists who don’t appropriately honour him with praise.
The next big lie is everything about Commandante Ernesto Guevara de la Serna. And the one after that is the myth of Fidel ever ceding power to his younger and much dumber and meaner brother.
But those are tales for another day. Meanwhile, Fidel has a lotta esplainin' to do.