Maintaining control over all of the media and having the power to decide who manages these and what gets published is probably the dream of many politicians around the world. Such a degree of control, however, is not without serious dangers. When all of the media are controlled by a small group of people in the governing party, these individuals have enormous influence over society, so much that, if push came to shove, they could use it to pressure the rest of the party and government. The experience of the Soviet Union demonstrates the consequences of that control. Alexander Yakovlev, head of the Agitation and Propaganda Department (AGITPROP), became one of the main actors responsible for the disappearance of the USSR. Alexander Yakovlev used his power over the Soviet press to isolate a sector of the Communist Party. For years, this “ideologue” was the second-in-command in this department. He was a rather insignificant figure until Mikhail Gorbachev appointed him head of AGITPROP, placing all of the Soviet Union’s media in his hands. He then went on to replace many newspaper editors, appointing people who were politically like-minded. He encouraged journalists to criticize certain sectors within the Communist Party in order...

Spaces for citizen participation have become a formal endeavor and many have no confidence in them. The struggle against corruption in Cuba has proven to be a long-distance race where every lap presents new and more difficult challenges. It’s like opening a Russian nesting doll and finding that the one inside is larger than the first. The Comptroller’s Office is making a huge effort, but it is pitted against a silent army of corrupt and/or inept officials united by common financial interests. They protect and rescue one another as they are “busted.” This is why the Comptroller’s Office complains that some of the inept officials who are dismissed reappear six months later as managers in just another company. Their mutual aid network reaches far back in history, having emerged as a means of skirting regulations against nepotism. Official X cannot give his son or wife a good job where they work, so official Y gives them a good position in his place of work. In exchange, X repays Y by hooking up his relatives and friends with jobs where one can get one’s hand on hard currency, trips and gasoline. Most of those who have been hooked up become the...

With 132 companies, Spain is the country with the largest presence in the International Trade Fair of Havana. Currently there are 220 ​​branches of Spanish companies established on the island and 32 firms operating in joint ventures. Trade relations between the two countries amounted to one billion Euros annually. On these issues, the Ambassador of Spain in Cuba, Juan Francisco Montalvan, gave an exclusive interview to Público: Why does Spain has the largest presence at this fair? It is due to a trajectory of decades of many companies, a good knowledge of the Cuban market, very attached to the ground, to a desire to strengthen our external sector, which is one of the basic pieces with which we are surmounting the crisis and a closeness between the two countries that makes the relationship to be very strong. What do Spanish companies seek in Cuba? They seek to strengthen their trade flows, to invest and that is why they are studying the new Cuban law, they seek to participate in new contracts, to be present in Cuba through all possible means and Spanish government accompanies and supports them in this endeavor. Are there any now a greater approach than with previous...

The Cuban government has announced it will pass to cooperatives 13,000 cafes and restaurants belonging to the State. The move will give a new boost to non-state economic sector, whose numbers had stagnated in the half a million workers. A lot of these entities are a wreck. Managers and clerks steal, add to the price and sell products they buy on the street, while the State gives them free premises, electricty and water to do their business. The trucks that supply them deliver part of the goods "on the left", inspectors sell themselves without compunction and Cubans consume products that have not passed even by minimum health checks. They buy goods of dubious origin, fry a thousand times with the same oil and the portions are always smaller, but in restaurants they pompously announce that the fried rice weighs exactly 348 grams and spaghetti 406 grams. Most state bars and cafeterias lack the slightest quality / Photo: Raquel Perez. The control that the State had on these businesses was merely an illusion. Handing them over to employees for them to manage at will is simply legalizing a situation that has existed since long ago. In addition, other economic reforms allowed...

Jorge Luis Perez is the owner of one of the most popular cafes in Havana. It is located in a remote spot in Guanabacoa municipality but very close to road coming from the eastern beaches, so many people make a stop at "El Mexicano" to eat, especially his famous sandwiches. For many years, Jorge was devoted to the breeding of goats and sheep but in the 1990s he decided to open a cafe at home. He took the chance of the first and very tentative opening of self-employment that occurred in response to the worst economic crisis in the history of the Cuban Revolution. His business boomed, partly because the limitations present then discouraged most entrepreneurs. Restaurants, for example, could only have 12 chairs, while at cafés customers were forbidden to sit. The few businesses that managed to stay afloat concentrated clientele throughout the city. It was a golden age because thanks to the Cuban government they had no compettion, state cafeterias were underserved and most of the private entepreneurs were denied the necessary licenses to open a business. The government put barriers to prevent the birth of a class of wealthy merchants but paradoxically these same obstacles were those...

Juan Triana is one of the most famous economists of Cuba; some of his lectures recorded on flash memories are passed from hand to hand among Cubans. Before Raul Castro’s reforms to be initiated, his views and the ones by his colleagues at the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy aroused much controversy. Today, some of his proposals are being implemented by the government in its plan to "upgrade" the model. Triana explains to us that in this process, "the economists are heard as never before in Cuba." Cuba prepares for the International Fair a project portfolio for foreign investment totaling 8000 million dollars... The organisms have announced more than 240 projects, prepared as business opportunity with a calculation of the investment needed. The 8000 million dollars are much more than the initial figure but of course that digit is to be developed in several years. The important thing is that there is a new portfolio of investments more realistic and adjusted to Cuba today. "We have a large deficit in agricultural production and not just because we have to import a lot but because we produce with low yields" / Photo: Raquel Perez. Which sectors are going...

This weekend, millions of Cubans enjoyed the classic Real Madrid-Barcelona. And it's not new; they can watch all the matches of the Spanish League live without paying for it. Local TV transmits to the delight of lovers of this sport which increasing numbers, especially among the younger generation, threatens to dispute the first place of baseball as the national pastime. This Saturday some of the members of the official Penya of the Barcelona Football Club met in Havana to watch the game in the cafeteria of the Catalan Society. Most are young people under 40 and some come with his wife and children, all wearing club shirts, which incidentally are not sold in any stores in Cuba. They are the generation of Cubans that has changed baseball for football. José Enrique Gomez is the vice president of the Penya Barca in Havana, which started in November 1996. "Many of us Cubans have followed soccer our entire life. I have been following it since the first European Cup, we followed it on Radio Exterior de España, "says Jose Enrique and smiling adds that" for years we followed the game without ever having seen the face of the players of most of...

"The theft to the State was at a large scale systematically. They were truly well-organized criminal gangs who performed large-scale risky operations. That included declaring losses or damages by directors and managers, who were actually diverting resources onto the underground economy. It was common practice in state stores that clerks and managers keep most sought after products in order to gain privileges over the legal selling price. " Although it may seem like it, the analysis does not refer to Cuba, but the Soviet Union shortly before its demise. Gregory Grossman is one of the most knowledgeable of the operation of the "Second Economy" in that nation. To get an idea of what this parallel economy can mean in a socialist country enough to say that 219 billion rubles were paid in wages in the USSR in 1988 while the population spent or saved 718 billion, three times more. The control of the government went as far as to have street vendors organized in state enterprises / Photo: Raquel Pérez. As in the USSR, the underground economy has been little studied in Cuba, although its effects are remarkable. And there is no solution to problems that are not recognized as...

Cuban émigré Mercedes Morera Roche pleaded guilty in the USA of leading a gang of illegal trafficking of migrants from 2004 to 2011. She benefited from some of the 6.6 billion dollars these criminals move in the world. Mercedes ran over the transit of migrants through Central America and Mexico, mostly Cubans coming from Ecuador, the only country that does not ask them a visa. She used to give them instructions, false identity documents, safe houses and transportation. However, despite assurances they received from the dealer, the Ecuador-US route is fraught with danger. In El Salvador the Mara Salvatrucha is dedicated to capture illegal immigrants of any nationality. It is said that they have already kidnapped more than 22 000 people. Cuban immigrants have lived very difficult situations also during their passing through Mexico. In 2008, armed groups attacked a bus of Chiapas detention center and took with them the 33 Cuban illegal immigrants it was carrying. In 2010, Mexican authorities rescued six Cuban illegal immigrants who were held as hostages of the bands in Cancun. In the same city, the previous year another 14 Cubans had been abused and beaten in an abandoned house. The number of Cubans who...

The website www.cartasdesdecuba.com is being attacked by hackers from the last several weeks, especially in the days before the release of my main post on Thursdays, with the evident intention of preventing its spread. The blocking technique is to enter our site, plant viruses in their content for Google to detect and rate the website as dangerous, generating logical fear of Internet users, most of who then refuse to open it. The attacks come from twenty different IP addresses, although we have no absolute certainty, but for some of its features, we believe that may be located outside of Cuba. Obviously we need to improve our security. The problem is that it is not always within our economic reach. The page is financed entirely with the money I make writing for other media and almost volunteer work by IT people, web masters and photographers. Some friends of Letters from Cuba recommend us even to move to a hosting with better protection. We made the first steps with those that were recommended to us but they were from the USA and when we mention Cuba they turned us down. It is evident they are trying to silence our voice, mine and...

A few days ago Granma newspaper referred to the need to improve productivity to increase wages calling for greater sacrifice of the workers in order to create more wealth as the only way to improve their incomes. But the truth is that many times Cuban workers are not the real responsible for increasing productivity and efficiency, but the directors of their companies and bureaucratic structures created by the government to control and centralize . Two of these sad institutions were already dismantled: Stockpiling and Housing. The first was famous for its inefficiency to distribute the crops and the second one had become a nest of corrupt people speculating with housing shortage. However, much remains to be done in the way of bureaucratization . It is a Gordian knot impossible to untie if there is not the will of taking radical measures. There are structures which disappearance is essential to progress. It is also advisable each one to occupy the place he deserves . I would say that nowhere in the world the Ministry of Transport decides the brand of the engines of the buses imported by transport companies. Unlike Cuba, in other countries the importers do not decide what to be bought and to whom. Their role is limited to make the necessary formalities for passage through customs of products or equipment that customers decide to purchaseaccording to their needs. All these entanglements of bureaucratic corruption make difficult the operation of enterprises which suffer because American engines are imported without spare parts or medical equipment are rotting in customs waiting for importers to pick them up. In recent days I heard of more arrests of senior officials of the Cuban import companies. Each month one of them is put in jail, but corruption of those persons continue by selling contracts to the one who pay them the highest ¨commission.¨ In addition, an important foreign entrepreneur has just been condemned, who thanks to these mechanisms stole the country tens of millions of dollars. How many more arrests will be needed to understand that that bureaucratic labyrinth is which facilitates corruption ?. Cuban companies are hamstrung ;...

The slow pace of reforms in Cuba is been justified on the grounds that they do not want to make mistakes. Each step they move up is preceded by a pilot period during which they assess the consequences of changes. No doubt this is a new style of doing things, to have practice over inspiration. However, many Cubans are getting impatient because often times last more than what they consider necessary. The case of the catering businesses is a good example. It is clear to all Cubans that the state cafes and restaurants function generally disastrously and today is the private sector that provides the best services. But the transfer of that sector to cooperatives or private hands is moving at snail's pace even though anyone who drops by a state cafeteria can see the poor quality of the offers, in the case that it is offering anything beyond cigarettes and rum. There is a cafeteria in my neighborhood that for years people call, "the palace of the Flies", by the number of these animals that inhabit it. Interestingly enough, the same inspectors that so strictly monitor private ventures in the area fail to visit this one. I have a...

United States has had to yield to pressure from Latin America and accept the participation of Cuba at the Summit of the Americas. Barack Obama had no choice, having held the veto would have meant the end of these presidential meetings. Washington tried to press as much as it could, but several major countries in the region warned it that they would not go if Cuba was excluded. Really with minimal analysis of the regional situation they could have saved the reversing of its position. Currently 4 countries in Latin America (Brazil, Uruguay, Nicaragua and El Salvador) are governed by leftist guerrillas. They are the very same the USA used to call terrorists and fought, arming and advising counterinsurgency armies. In return, Havana became in those years their regional rearguard, in the hospital to where the wounded were sent and sometimes, in training camp to prepare fighters in guerrilla tactics. Leading Chile is no one else than socialist Michelle Bachelet, whose father was arrested and died in prison after the coup of General Pinochet, who was supported by Washington to overthrow the constitutional president, Salvador Allende. The President of Bolivia is that young coca farmer who the US called trafficker....

“Several men got on the bus and sat down and began to bet with caps until a girl fell for it. Within minutes they had taken all her money, watch and got out before she could react, " a A Fondo reporter that saw everything told me. These scammers play with innocence and greed of the people. They always work in a group, a couple watching the arrival of the police, a pal playing and the magician, that with rapid hand movements makes a ball come and go under 3 rum caps he shuffles constantly. The trick is to play in front of people evidently putting the ball under one of the caps but with the pal mistakenly choosing it over and over again. Meanwhile, viewers are cooked in sauce, calculating how much they be would able to win were they the players. "I went to buy a pair of shoes at the Habana Libre and the door a man offered me the same shoes but cheaper. I went with him to his house and he left me in the waiting room while he was fetching them. There people were playing caps, I began to observe and every time I...

On January 1, 1959, the Cubans took to the streets to celebrate the fall of dictator Fulgencio Batista. Interestingly, their anger was focused on parking meters and casinos, many of which were destroyed by the people. Paying for parking was identified as a form of theft from dictatorship and casinos as the largest center of corruption in the nation. And they weren’t far from the truth; most were controlled by the Mafia from the United States. And they would spread from Havana to Varadero if they bearded men from the Sierra Maestra hadn’t arrived. Apparently the mobster Meyer Lanski plan was to turn Cuba into a center of international game even bigger than Las Vegas. However, the rebels led by Fidel Castro came ready to end it. And Cubans always fall short or pass, prohibited all games of chance for money, even outlawed the National Lottery. Not even in the 1990s, in the midst of the worst economic crisis of revolutionary history, it was allowed to open casinos in the cays for the enjoyment of foreign tourists who, at the time, were the only ones who could access them. But the virus of gambling had already got so deep that...

Since the 50 Cubans didn’t suffer from the heat as they did this summer, so beaches, camping sites, swimming pools and hotels have been filled. Economic liberalization and the end of the prohibitions opened new possibilities. For 15 years access to tourist hotels was banned for Cubans, trying to artificially maintain social equality that had disappeared since the beginning of the crisis of the 90s and the legalization of the dollar. Quickly Cubans living on the island became the second tour group, with 10 percent of the total and an increase this year by 28 percent from 2013. They are located behind the million Canadians and ahead of the emigrants. The number of Cubans in tourist hotels is growing every year after the end of prohibition / Photo: Raquel Perez. And most important for the tourism industry is the fact that they go on vacation in low season which allows better hotel occupancy. On a Saturday in August 2013 Cubans paid about $ 800,000 for lodgment. But opening hotels has also produced a social movement in the holidays. Those with more income went to hotels and by doing that they left private houses to people with medium resources. The latter...

The Cuban press has set its crosshairs on resellers as if it were a story, as if only now they seem to realize that there is a black market dealing in every corner of the country with everything that can be sold there. In the report of the national television news they have even hinted that even some employees of state stores are buddies with the hoarders. They discover that thanks to the complicity of the shopkeepers the black market caters largely. They swim on the surface, touch the effects without daring to penetrate the causes of a problem that has dragged on for decades due to a chronic shortage of products ranging from screws to mopping cloths. During the early years of the revolution shortages could be attributed to the United States embargo, but today Cuba has trade relations worldwide and can purchase the products people need in other markets. It doesn’t even seem there is a financial problem because the products are there and disappear intermittently. The shaving cream can completely disappear for a couple of months and overnight reappear in all stores. These fluctuations are what allow a group of street-wise people to hoard and resell after...

For several months the reform process in Cuba is leaving a bitter taste in the mouth of the Cubans, killing the hopes that had been aroused by the opening of self-employment, access to hotels, the sale of homes or the freedom to travel. In the last stage, virtually all measures adopted hit the citizen: cars at crazy prices, higher customs and in the shipping of packages restrictions, 3D cinemas were outlawed and the sale of imported clothing was prohibited. They closed the Jose Marti airport, forcing the companions to receive or discharge passengers in the street, without seating for relaxing or a bathroom to use. Without thinking that that crowd will be the first and last image visitors get of Cuba. While accepting that within the airport there is insufficient space you may wonder if there could not have set up several "bars" with tables and umbrellas, a couple of bathrooms, seating for those waiting and even a small playground. Recently, blogger Harold Cardenas claimed in a post that "someone wants the system to crash," according to this statement, there may be a conspiracy of some who, from power, want a transition to capitalism as happened in Russia. He adds...

The prohibition of 3D cinemas and shops selling clothes has been among the most unpopular measures taken by the government because it made clothing more expensive for Cubans and eliminated the only entertainment in neighborhoods. However, in most cases the effect has been purely formal; businesses continue to operate in secrecy, without paying taxes or license. Our team reached out these underground self-employed. "It is true that going to a 3D movie but you cannot tell anyone because then the government closes it and the neighborhood children will be left without the only fun we have," admits one 10 year old Cuban girl. Everyone in the neighborhood, from the smallest to the Party members, knows where the cinema is and knows that these were banned by a fulminating decree last year. However, as in the Fuenteovejuna play, no neighbor denounces the guilty one. The members of the Committee for the defense of the Revolution (CDR by its Spanish acronym) look the other way because, well, "cinema owners are revolutionary people who never hurt anyone." Meanwhile, the children are taught to lie, trained in the art of simulation, a lesson that they surely will not forget. And indeed 3D owners are...

News agency AP seems determined to make publicall plans by the US government in Cuba. First, they revealed Alan Gross –the US citizens imprisoned in Havana—had smuggled communication systems so sophisticated as to be used by the Pentagon and the CIA. Furthermore, it proved that in order to carry out those operations they had charged Washington hundred thousandths dollars, which weakened the image of the selfless Jewish collaborator that risks freedom for providing internet access to his community in Cuba. Sometime after, it exposed the existence of “Zunzuneo”, some kind of Twitter specially designed for having a bearing in the domestic political situation in Cuba by means of messages from cell phones. Thus, they gathered about 40 000 people within Cuba. The plan was to send interesting information politically harmless in order to gain credibility among an audience that later on they would gradually swell with materials addressed to influencing the Cuban internal situation with the purpose of “promoting democracy”. Now the agency disclosed that the US government also infiltrated in Cuba groups of young Latin Americans – from Costa Rica, Peru and Venezuela—for boosting opposition, with the pretext of health programs. Democrat senator Patrick Leahy, chairing the commission monitoring...

Cecilio Avilés is the promoter of Imagen 3, a project that combines music, plastic arts and design. It brings together about 200 artists in the middle of the street and they offer free workshops mainly for children and the elderly while they exhibit and sell their own pieces. The project is held on weekends, in the emblematic Paseo del Prado Avenue, the border diving two of the most densely populated neighborhoods in Havana. Under the trees, there are children drawing and learning origami techniques and grandmothers knitting bobbin lace. Imagen 3 offers three different variants: entertainment so that people have fun learning through culture; and learning for developing their own business in the self-employment sector. The third one is through self-discovery and improvement of people’s artistic gifts. Yet, that’s not all. In addition, “in the workshops we try to encourage mostly in children popular education as for instance respect to diversity, social inclusion, the concept of gender, and racial, interethnic or generational aspects”, explained Cecilio. Cecilio Avilés is the director of the Project, which brings together more than 200 artists that offer free workshops / Image: Andy Ruiz. Hundred Cubans take part in these events, including more than 300 children...

Many Cuban artists have given their work a social projection that transcends their work and impact on ordinary people. Teaching art in the streets, turn their neighborhood into a gallery, take opera to the neighborhoods and repair houses for their neighbors or create studios to record discs that record labels discarded. In most cases these social projects are financed with their own money and effort. "These are recording studios that do not pay for themselves; they are always in the red. I finance them with my trips abroad, like everything I do in Cuba, "says songwriter Silvio Rodríguez in an interview. He should also fund out of his pocket his tours through Cuban prisons, singing to inmates and doing free concerts in the most humble neighborhoods throughout the island The artist José Fuster has turned his neighborhood, Jaimanita, into a giant art gallery in which beauty is combined with repairing the houses of his neighbors. He told OnCuba that "the project began in 1994, in the Special Period (economic crisis), and is a symbol of my optimism. They told me that it was a too expensive project but I wanted to show that my painting could pay without asking for...

(The costs of the works Fuster develops in his neighborhood are financed with the selling of his paintings / Images: Raquel Pérez.) “The Project started in 1994, in the midst of the Special Period (economic crisis), and it is a symbol of my optimism. People used to tell me it was too expensive but I wanted to prove that I could afford it with my paintings without using resources from the State”, states plastic artist Jose Fuster. Now, 20 years after, his paintings and ceramics embellish the whole neighborhood, from the Family Doctor’s office and the bus stop to the walls of his neighbors and even some of their roofs, resuscitated with new shapes and colors after being hit by a hurricane. “I started with my own place because I didn’t have to ask for permission to no one”, he recalls. “Then, my neighbor Iris liked it, she is a nurse that served some time in Angola and I built her house and wrote Doña Irisat the entrance, something she had always dreamt about”. Thus, neighbors gradually joined the project and Fuster’s work spread through Jaimanitas, in the outskirts of Havana. His work ranges from a colorful roof with a...

Rarely in half a century, you get the chance to witness a full circle of history like this that Cuba and Russia just closed. Of course, the relationship will not go exactly through the same parameters but the essence is that Havana and Moscow again know they need each other. I remember in 1990, when I arrived in the island I witnessed the relations between the two countries were crumbling and all, friends and enemies of the Cuban Revolution, believed that it was such a breakup it could never mend. In those years, they brought citrus that usually were exported to sell in the market in my neighborhood and many neighbors felt happy without understanding that wealth was the result of the end of a system of beneficial trade and the prelude to the greatest shortage in its history. The Russians told Cuba they would no longer barter, that from that time if they wanted to trade they would have to pay in hard currency like everyone else. Fidel Castro replied that in that case he would not buy anymore the crap that his former socialist brothers used to sell him. The rarefied air grew worse even when Moscow demanded...

Finally, the Cuban government decided to throw a lifeline to agriculture, eliminating the bureaucracy that stifles it. 6400 administrative jobs disappear along the entity responsible for distributing agricultural production. It is a bureaucratic apparatus, known as Acopio "Collection" which was always noted for its inefficiency, being responsible for the loss of more than one crop and the bad shape almost all products had when they reach the consumers. Now it seems they are attacking the underlying problem, there are too many bosses in agriculture. You don’t make the land produce by sitting on a desk and writing absurd orders such as forbidding farmers to build a house on their farm. The history of nonsense is huge, from a retired General who was not allowed to import a tractor he was given away, to the order to save wood by making shorter sticks for living fences, which would kill them because livestock are eating sprouts. Probably, there isn’t in Cuba a ministry larger bigger than the agriculture one and few equals it in results. Its headquarters is a huge building in Havana, near the center of political power but far from the field and peasants. Maybe that's why it took years...