Political Economy of Capitalism

Photo: Claudio Fuentes

I have an exam coming up in this subject and these are its general objectives. I have decided to publish them to share my moral conflict of wanting to pass it, which is too large to bear alone.

GENERAL OBJECTIVES:

1. Interpret the significance of Marxist-Leninist Political Economy as a scientific foundation for understanding of the exploitative character of the Capitalist Model of Production.

2. Develop the belief that the study of capitalism is a necessity for the construction of Socialism.

3. Explain, from the Marxist-Leninist and third world viewpoint, that the socioeconomic changes operating in contemporary capitalism don’t alter its exploitative nature, classism, and its historical trend.

A documentary about Mussolini

Photo: Claudio Fuentes Madan

Last Saturday at 10 in the morning they showed a documentary about Mussolini. They didn’t put the credits at the end and I missed the beginning, so I can’t tell you what it was called or who directed it. I started to watch it in the middle and as it went on I decided to take some notes to share here. It’s not that I am already seeing ghosts where there aren’t any, but tell me if all this isn’t too much of a coincidence…

Mussolini:

- He always wanted to win over his audience even if this meant contradicting himself over and over in the media.
- Under his government you could only belong to one party.
- The media only talked about the prosperity of the country.
- He had initiated censorship at the beginning, which ended up becoming the status quo of his regime.
- He promised progress and development.
- He made himself Commander in Chief of Italy.
- He fought wars against the will of his people, in which thousands of soldiers died.
- His wife was barely seen in public.
- His family held positions in the government.
- He introduced compulsory military service.
- He was very paranoid and toward the end of his life his mental state was terrible.
- All the bad he did outweighs the good he’d been able to do.

Note: I have no picture of Mussolini, so I decided on this one by pure "coincidence".

¿DiSidimos todos ser disidentes? / Did we all "Disside" to be dissidents?

(A friend brought me this text, it seems my work is bearing fruit and my friends are beginning to get excited and give me posts. Even though they are anonymous, I know that bit by bit they’ll stop being so, we’ve already come a long way even with a pseudonym, which gives me hope they’ll continue writing.)

Photo: OLPL
Text by: The White Salamander

There are journalists, almost always foreigners because the national ones are too “careful,” who pose “uncomfortable questions” to “our leaders,” more or less causing heart attacks in public. Just a few days ago they asked Raúl about dissent in Cuba and he almost had a heart attack, meanwhile answering “forcefully.”
Sometimes you assume you know the meaning of certain words for many reasons, through reading, conversations and hearing them so often from the mouths of others. And so you don’t look them up in the dictionary because their meanings are “obvious.” But I wonder if sometimes they aren’t used badly, leaving us with a slightly erroneous idea of them. I have to share, even if no one has asked me to:

Dissidence: (ad. L dissidentia) n. 1. Action and effect of dissenting. II. Serious difference of opinion. Synonyms.: Disagreement, division, Anton.: Harmony.

Dissident: (ad. L Dissidens,-entis.) n. One who disagrees. adj. Disagreeing.

Dissent: (ad. L Dissidere.) v. To deviate from the common doctrine, belief or conduct. n. difference of opinion.

This word, dissidence, and all of its “derivatives,” in this country has, for all practical purposes, been banned as nearly every thought that is different from theirs is banned. And as a consequence they want “the masses” to look at a dissident like a social pariah. “EWWWW, stinking dissident!!!!” they seem to shout. Because of this some have already been separated from the their families, friends or acqaintances simply for being, or going with others who are, “disaffected with the Crown.” The fear instilled is great, I honestly admit that for me sometimes it is… (That’s why I write this as “anonymous.)
In this country, the governemnt, on the few occasions they’ve done so, mentions dissidence (or “political deviants”) as a small percentage of people whom they believe they can “control” very well. Furthermore, they accept as a fact the belief that all of them are supposedly “paid by the Empire.” Knowing the full meaning, I wonder if the government is really so naïve as to believe that there are only a minimum number of people who disagree with its “Common Doctrine” (??) or who are “seriously in discord with the opinions” of the government.
Because if that’s the case, I believe they’re seriously deluded or, one might say, total clowns, to not know that there is a great percentage of dissidents in this country, many, thousands. Too many people don’t think like “Them,” they want to change things, they are tired of everything, of nothing changing for 50 years. It’s only that lamentably we don’t all have the balls to do what some do, some of the wonderful very young people, bold, and though fearful, brave.
And paid by the Empire? What Empire might that be that they’re talking about? Oh right, I’m sure it must be the “Foreign Empires,” because in this country a large share of the people live on what their families and friends send from “outside,” if not…

Vámanos pa’G / Let’s go to G

Photos: Claudio Fuentes Mandan

This last Friday night we went with some friends to G Street to accompany a Canadian journalist who was doing some interviews for a punk rock magazine and wanted to ask the frikys about Porno Para Ricardo. The man asked me to help him choose some people to interview and to serve as translator during the interviews. I was a little pessimistic, at times I have less faith than I should, but I went with him convinced that no one would speak well of Porno Para Ricardo, of that they would be afraid to speak or wouldn’t give their names. I was absolutely wrong in all three cases.

All those interviewed said that PPR was the best rock band in Cuba at this time, and that its songs were very good with excellent lyrics. To the annoyance of Alonso Alpidio, number one in the top ten of those interviewed was “Comunista Chivatón” [Communist Snitch] followed by “Comunistas de la Gran Escena” [Communists of the Grand Stage] and by “Nueve Cuentos” [Nine Stories] (the latter sung into the microphone in English by a fan of the Faculty of Foreign Languages). All those interviewed agreed that the group is censored for telling the truth, the government fears and stifles them, and there is no freedom of expression in Cuba. Everyone gave their full names and one said, “There is no fear.”

On the fate of the group, however, there were several answers:
1. Gorki is still in prison.
2. Gorki isn’t in prison because Ciro’s father, from the United States, mobilized the human rights community.

These answers made me feel a little guilty and I’ve decided to work with Yoani Sánchez to remake the multimedia presentation, “The Gorki Case,” no to present it as an exhibition, which was the initial idea, but simply to distribute it on flash drives and CDs, as we do with all the info, and so the frikys can, at least, know how we got Gorki out of jail.

On the other hand, this morning I received one of those good luck emails that friends send me, with a note from someone names Ricardo Espinosa which you can read in Habanemia. For the most part the text attacks the rockers for making a scene at and littering “G Street (or the avenue of the presidents)” as the article says.

First I would like to remind Ricardo that G Street was called The Avenue of the Presidents when we had presidents in Cuba, so the clarification in parenthesis can be interpreted as political irony. But I don’t think that was the intention of the author, so I advise you to edit your note so you won’t have problems with the political police.

The rest of the note seems quite consistent, it’s true that the street is “taken” and there is a tremendous scene. However, it seems a little exaggerated to me for Espinosa to think that, “a group of those young people, with obvious intent to annoy, were pounding drums from 10 at night until 5am.”

I would also like to take advantage of his note to append a small paragraph. I would like to sue the Cuban government for the public scene it causes at the “protest-drome” whose neighbors have to endure days and days of crowds of people who attend marches, interminable shouted speeches, traffic blocking their streets, concerts from every kind of musician, parades of every kind, and to make matters worse, when they look out their windows, a blue sea is blocked by I don’t know how many black flags, which has given rise to another nickname for the unfortunate “Anti-imperialist Bandstand,” this time a literary one: Mordor. Meanwhile, the Plaza of the Revolution and the Central Committee are called “The Eye of Sauron.”



Translator’s note
The title of this post is also the title of a PPR song.
Frikys – Derived from the English word “freak”.

Penúltimos Días

The site Penúltimos Días, appears to have been hacked; Ernesto Hernández Busto, its author, is working to fix it as quickly as possible.

The best of our Bloggers Meetings

Photo: Claudio Fuentes Madam

Yesterday, Wednesday, January 8, we held our blogger meeting without any difficulty except that Yoani’s phone mysteriously stopped working at noon. The presentation this time was enlivened by Reinaldo Escobar of the blog Desde Aqui [From Here] who, with his never failing and off-the-wall sense of humor, several times made me laugh until I cried. Among other themes, we talked about freedom within the blog, but what I liked the most were the selections that Reinaldo used as illustrations during his presentation. Here are a few:

Clarification: The source of the obscure metaphor, below, is Comrade Fidel

Examples of double meanings:

Tell Manolo that Roberto has the books he wants
(who wants what?)
They spoke with Maria about their affairs
(the affairs of whom?)
The strength that victory brought was notable
(victory brought him more strength, or was it the strength that allowed him to obtain victory?)

Example of obscure metaphors:

(…) after lives offered up and so many sacrifices defending sovereignty and justice, one cannot offer Cuba the other shore of capitalism.

It’s not clear if they are offering capitalism to Cuba from another shore to lead it astray from the right path or, if, on reaching the anticipated shore, oh! surprise! there’s someone there offering capitalism. In our historical context “the other shore” is Miami, and so to use the term the other shore to refer to the end of the road causes confusion. On the other hand, we use shore to refer to the periphery of an area, not for the ends of a line.

Example of a presumptuous reference:

(For a recipe for fried rice) "the tomatoes here exceed, not in the ontological sense that Heidegger might give it, but because of the inconsistency that Schopenhauer might imply"

Example of a humiliating clarification:

He turned on the faucet by putting his hand on the handle and giving it a slight turn to the left.

Example of unnecessary detour:

What I want to say, without offending anyone and without my words awakening any sensitivity among my hosts, who have given me the most conscientious attention, perhaps greater than my humble person deserves, is that, despite the pleasantness of the evening, I’m tired.

Politics between the sheets

Photo: Orlando Luis Pardo

To come to an understanding of how far we have taken this system, we need to be attentive to the details that, with the force of half a century, shape our everyday lives but that are anomalous in any healthy society. On December 24th we always eat with our family and friends. We have someone in the family who is a communist. The ten people whom we ate with this year, by unanimous vote and without abstentions or ‘no’ votes, decided we wouldn’t invite her. We wouldn’t be able to speak about any topic (she relates almost everything we say to politics, particularly everything Ciro says, the poor guy, he says ‘school’ and already there’s a squabble); we wouldn’t be able to make political jokes (among which we had printed for the occasion); we wouldn’t be able to yell at each other about social topics (we agree on almost nothing but we argue with great vigor); and the worst of all is that we know she would feel super bad among so much worminess, and we’d never be able to reestablish our relationship after a single disastrous Christmas eve dinner.

Those are the sad situations which this revolution has led to in 50 years: a society in which parents and children aren’t on speaking terms, mothers take their children from home, friends don’t speak, long time marriages break up for ideological reasons.

The mother of a childhood friend was married her whole life to a State Security official. They never divorced but from what I understand they slept in separate rooms and while she went to church he went to the Ministry of the Interior. Ironically, the wall of the living room was in agony, one day yes and one day no when a photo of Fidel was replaced with one of the Pope and vice versa, with the usual squabble and shouting that preceded the change in decoration. In time, the one of Fidel ended up hung on one side of the kitchen (it’s worth clarifying that the one in my house mysteriously disappeared along with all the photos we’d hung under it).

I believe the moral crisis in which we bathe every day still isn’t calculated: the best match—a foreigner; the lottery—permission to live abroad; the best skill—the double standard; the sexual harassment—naïve public exhibitionism; the prostitutes—‘fighting’ women; the illegality—selling eggs; the legality—snitching; the best in the class—the best liar; survival—stealing.

Once on the news they were talking about a serious problem in England where the majority of the young people don’t exercise their right to vote because they’re not interested in politics… What irony: I dream of not being interested in politics, of not caring who will be president elect. But even better: I dream that in the next election we eleven million Cubans on this island don’t exercise our right to vote.

Casualty report

From the Saga of The Ciro versus State Security

The rigors of life in the G2 are too hard for me. Imagine, the first day at work they ordered us to ….God! How stupid, to be standing still in place? From that moment on my lumbago started. Later, when they saluted the flag and started to sing the national anthem, I developed a rash all over my body that itched like hell. But when that colonel said that we had to recite by heart the putrefied mummy Castro’s commandments about his definition of revolution, I suffered an intestinal infarction and fainted.
The doctor who saw me at the Naval Hospital tested my tolerance for Socialist Slogans and determined that I wasn’t fit to continue to provide my services in the State Security, now I am a retiree of MININT with a meager pension of 120 pesos monthly, so I must return to music. By the way, I did manage to get into the secret files and recover my papers, so, in case I don’t survive the consequences stemming from my one day in the G2, here are the lyrics to the song I wrote about stinky-feet Che:


Che did not bathe

Che was a babbling cocksucker the day Castro found him
and with his crooked teeth signed him up and put him on his boat.
and there wasn’t a single expeditionary who could fall asleep.
Because an unbearable foot stink hung around the place.

The farts he farted raised tremendous curiosity.

If his asthma doesn’t let him breathe, where does he get so much gas?
Such putrefaction bothered even Fidel himself.

Who made him a commanding officer and sent him to an invasion far away from him.

He even had a few children when the revolution was won.
Who was the madwoman who could tolerate such a stench?
And Castro sent him to Bolivia never to smell him again.
And under that pretense, made sure they would kill him there.

P.S. I’m missing a stanza that someone ripped off the page, I’m sure to keep it as a souvenir.

Ciro Díaz


On the 50th anniversary, this is the question: Go or stay?

Painting: Claudio Fuentes Madan

The reasons for both decisions are equally important to me. The sacrifice of either option is great. I think things can be done for this country from within or from without, that’s not the point.
What does seem important to me is NOT to be judging the role of those who are doing things from whatever place on the planet while everyone thinks they are all State Security or opportunists. It seems that the long arm of paranoia has gotten lodged in the minds of many of us to absurd levels.
Deciding to stay doesn’t mean that I think there will be changes in Cuba in the next 50 years, I don’t want to err on the side of naiveté with the disillusionment that tomorrow becomes repentance. However, to stay is to renounce for an indefinite period the rights that I am due as a citizen, some of which I exercise in these times because I want to, even though they are not legitimized, as Mariela Castro argued in her strange letter “NOT” directed at Yoani Sánchez (it seems, somehow, exceptional in the history of writing, that now people write to themselves from Cuba about Yoani, people who are NOT interested in her and who don’t even know who she is).
On the other hand, deciding to go, I think. would be conversely to give up any hope of possible changes in the next 50 years. But why not dream of a world where paranoia and fear of thinking don’t exist, where I am paid for my work, where there is no talk of gratuities of 60 million dollars for who knows what prominent figures when the rest of us mortals still live on 20 CUC a month and without gratuities (trips, vacations in Varadero or in the keys where I can’t go) and where snitching, as I once said, is institutionalized and if anyone doubts it I quote:

"It is not possible to lead and control and at the same time to be tolerant; to play the role of 'the good guy' as it's popularly called. Hence, the various epithets, usually derogatory, that they assign to those who do what really needs to be done."

Raúl Castro speech before the National Assembly of People's Power
Palace of Conventions, Havana, December 27, 2008.

If I balance the vocabulary that I’ve heard in the past month, that of the government shows clearly the words Hate and Intolerance; of what changes does this speak to me, from within and at what time? I don’t know with this syntax. Thanks, but I think I prefer Guatemala, because without a doubt we are entering Guatepeor.

Translator’s note
“From Guatemala to Guatepeor” is an expression that means “from bad to worse” or “out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

Four reasons to leave a man

Photo: Claudio Fuentes

A friend comes to see me and tells me she's very upset that she had to dump her boyfriend (they’d been going out for two months). I was very surprised because until that week he’d been the perfect boyfriend, and I asked her why.

She was kind enough to write down the reasons, because she’s convinced that my house is full of microphones from State Security, so she didn’t want to tell me out loud. Here they are:

1. He’s a Fidelista, not a communist. He says Fidel is NOT guilty of everything that happens in Cuba. The fault lies with those around him who do things without telling him. The poor guy, after fifty years he hasn’t learned anything…

2. He’s a Delegate to the National Assembly from his district, but even though he doesn’t agree with the way in which “the Others” manage the country, he received construction materials to fix his house (the ends justify the means).

3. He told my friend not to complain about being required to serve more than two years of social service duty, that it was a way to pay back the Revolution for everything it had done for her.

4. When he comes over to the house, it’s always at night and when she’s already sleepy, so she asks him to make coffee. However, he’s never done it.