Cuba

Cuba Elections: the revolution prepares for a new chapter

Details: Created: Thursday, 19 April 2018 14:14; Written by Will Harney

President Raul Castro (left) and First Vice President Miguel Diaz Canel (right)

Cuba’s 60-year-old revolutionary democracy is at a historic milestone as it prepares to elect a leader on 19 April who will be part of a new generation taking over from those who originally took part in the 1959 revolution. For the people of socialist Cuba, the careful process of electing a new President and Vice President began back in September with nominations for the 168 Municipal Assemblies of People’s Power. These basic components of Cuba’s participatory democratic system are composed, not of career politicians, but of ordinary Cubans who are put forward by their neighbours and communities. On this broad base the parliament is built, in a political system rooted in a long revolutionary tradition and designed above all to empower the working class. Cubans’ choice of new leadership will be crucial in meeting the challenges that lie ahead. Will Harney reports.

Cuba’s gay revolution: normalising sexual diversity - book review

Details: Created: Thursday, 15 February 2018 13:12; Written by James Bell

cuba mariela cartro gay revolution
Mariela Castro, head of CENESEX, on a LGBT parade in Havana

Cuba’s Gay Revolution: normalising sexual diversity through a health-based approach

Emily J Kirk, Lexington Books, 2017, 167pp, £60

In 1992, Fidel Castro was one of the first heads of state to openly support LGBT liberation, declaring: ‘I am absolutely opposed to any form of repression, contempt, scorn or discrimination with regard to homosexuals.’ He later expressed personal regret for historic persecution of homosexuals in the country: ‘Yes, there were great injustices... if someone is responsible, it’s me... We had so many and such terrible problems, problems of life or death. In those moments, I was not able to deal with the matter. I found myself immersed, principally, in the Crisis of October, in the war, in policy questions.’¹

Internationally, the history of LGBT politics in Cuba has received little in the way of serious attention which often takes the form of generalisations or thinly veiled attacks upon Cuban socialism. Emily J Kirk’s book, therefore, is hugely significant. Drawing from the archives of the National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX) and interviews with its staff, she sets out an objective and insightful analysis of how LGBT rights have developed through the history of the Cuban revolution.

Acoustic illusion: pretext for renewed US hostility to Cuba

Details: Created: Tuesday, 12 December 2017 14:13; Written by Jack Lukacs

sonicattack cuba

On 8 November 2017, the United States government launched new sanctions against Cuba, releasing an updated list of Cuban entities – from hotels to agricultural suppliers and from soft drinks to retail stores – which US businesses and citizens are banned from engaging with. What do they have in common? The US Department of State list states that they are all ‘entities and subentities under the control of, or acting for or on behalf of, the Cuban military, intelligence, or security services or personnel with which direct financial transactions would disproportionately benefit such services or personnel at the expense of the Cuban people or private enterprise in Cuba’. Jack Lukacs reports.

It is an untenable proposition to distinguish between civilians and the military in a revolutionary state under siege. By attempting to starve the Cuban government of revenue from travel, remittances and trade, these measures hurt all Cubans on the island. Trump appears to be dancing to the tune of his key electoral allies in Florida, Miami. Extreme right-wing Cuban-American Senators Marco Rubio and Congressman Mario Díaz-Balart are the architects of the ban on transactions with military-linked enterprises. But they are not easy to please. Following the publication of the State Department’s list, they complained that it was too short because US ‘bureaucrats’ were ‘refusing’ to carry out Trump’s policy.

Close Guantanamo! Free or put on trial the final prisoners

Details: Created: Tuesday, 12 December 2017 12:16; Written by Nicki Jameson

close guantanamo

Nine years after President Obama promised to close the US torture camp in illegally occupied Guantanamo Bay in eastern Cuba, 41 prisoners continue to be held there. At least four are on hunger strike and, as we go to press, the campaigning charity Reprieve is warning that they are ‘edging close to death’.

The camp is situated within a US naval station at Guantanamo Bay, which dates back to the US-Spanish War of 1898. The Cuban people have always opposed this blatantly imperialist occupation and, since the Revolution, Cuba has demanded an end to the US presence. Lease payments have been sent annually from the US but since 1959 the Cuban government has not cashed any of the cheques.

Cuba puts the US to shame as hurricanes wreak destruction

Details: Created: Thursday, 02 November 2017 16:16; Written by Barnaby Philips

The succession of hurricanes which hit the Caribbean Americas in August and September were some of the most immense and devastating on record. Climate scientists warned that warming ocean surfaces are exacerbating the conditions that produce such extreme weather events. After the storms had passed it was clear that within the region only Cuba, thanks to its socialist central planning, had been equipped to adequately prepare and protect its people, putting even the US to shame. Barnaby Philips reports.

When it was announced that Hurricane Irma was going to be a Category 5 storm, Marien, a Cuban who has been living in Miami for four years, decided to take her family back to her home country for a week even though they wouldn’t escape Irma’s path there: ‘We know we’re going to be safer.’

Indeed, according to the Centre for International Policy, a Washington-based research and advocacy group, ‘a person is 15 times as likely to be killed by a hurricane in the United States as in Cuba’.