El Tumbao Cubano - El Blog de Cuba en el Exilio

If I Had a Hammer: Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution

LINK   A revolution is presently on course in Venezuela known as the “Bolivarian revolution.” It is an antisystemic and socialist revolution, which benefits from very broad support. Since 1998, Venezuelans have repeatedly affirmed their liking for this revolution as amply evidenced by Hugo Chávez’s election to the presidency, the reform of the Constitution, the “no” vote to attempt to recall the chief of the state, and regional elections won some months later. Even earlier, in April 2002, the broad public rose up in protest against a coup supported by the oligarchy and, in December of the same year, resisted an employers’ lockout which attempted to strangle the economy.

Fundamentally, the legitimacy of the revolutionary process in this South American country lies in strict respect for the law (so as not to give a handle to reaction), and appeals to an ideal of social justice imbued with the spirit of Christianity and deeply rooted in the people’s mentality. But in the word of Chávez this ideal will be achieved only if “one gives the power to the people.”

This is exactly what Hugo Chávez, an exceptional revolutionary leader, is trying to do. In this difficult time for the left, the radicalism of Chávez’s discourse is almost surprising in its anti-imperialist firmness in bringing to the fore the vital need for humanity to search for an alternative to capitalism and find a new way to a socialism of the future. US imperialism does not make a mistake in seeing him as a major enemy.= If the Venezuelan revolution is peaceful, however, it is not unarmed. Arms have recently been imported, because “the people of Venezuela are ready to defend its territory and to fight for its revolution.” Within Venezuela, Chávez is resisting the aggressiveness of the still powerful local bourgeoisie. At the international level, he does not cease to insist on the urgency of building an anti-imperialist front in the South by uniting Latin American countries.

FREEDOM OF RELIGION IN CUBA

A Distorted Reality.
Cuba: a medley of religions. Numerous churches and religious denominations practice their faiths freely on the island, said Samuel Kobia, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), following his recent visit to the Caribbean island. The Cuban Constitution on Religion. Believers Join the Cuban Communist Party.

The presumed lack of any kind of freedom in Cuba is outstanding among the many distortions that exist today regarding the island's reality.

It's then hardly surprising that the empire includes in its arsenal of official, as well as media fallacies, the false idea that the island's inhabitants are denied the right to practice a religion of their choice. Accustomed to spreading only what favors their evil purposes, the U.S. administration of President George W. Bush and its lackeys from the Florida-based Cuban-American National Foundation, pretend to not hear or see the facts, the truth…

In order to determine who is right, it would be enough to verify the differences between what the enemies of the Cuban Revolution say and the many achievements the island nation demonstrates to the world.

Everyday life in Cuba is open to anyone interested in getting to know and understand it. That was the experience of Reverend Samuel Kobia, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), who after spending almost one week on the island in August 2005, described his pastoral visit as excellent and very useful...

LINK

Cuba’s Hurricane Response Far Superior

Commentary.   Marjorie Cohn,La Prensa-San Diego, Sep 13, 2005

Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

What is Cuban President Fidel Castro’s secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, “the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go.”

“Cuba’s leaders go on TV and take charge,” said Valdes. Contrast this with George W. Bush’s reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on Thursday, the New York Times reported, “nothing about the president’s demeanor yesterday – which seemed casual to the point of carelessness – suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.” ...

A cat among the pigeons, with Cuba in the wake

LINK  Web Posted - Mon Sep 05 2005. Calling to Mind. By Carl Ince
Readers who like their English pure will be yelling that the title of this effort is the mother of all mixed metaphors. The purists would argue that you could not bring together the cat and pigeons with the wake of a ship. Permissible, the English linguist, Eric Partridge, would say and I would say admirable, not only because the statement is clear and concise, but also because it represents a desirable development in the Caribbean. The Petro Caribe Agreement goes beyond oil and illustrates recognition by Venezuela and Cuba that if they are to establish themselves as stars in the firmament of world affairs permanently, it would be most advantageous to win and retain the support of the dozen CARICOM States

What Other Systems Look Like

To Cuba and Back.

By ANIS MEMON .
I recently went to Cuba as part of a delegation sponsored by the American organization Witness for Peace whose Cuba project works closely with the Martin Luther King Center in Havana. Neither organization is affiliated with either the US or Cuban governments, but WFP does operate legally in Cuba on a religious license from the US Dept. of Treasury. The group has been in Cuba since 1999 on an annual renewable license which expires at the end of April and which will most likely not be renewed this year. The US has been tightening restrictions on travel to Cuba -- educational licenses have been almost entirely eliminated in the last year -- and the new regulations for religious licenses stipulate that people affiliated with a group must "engage in transactions directly incident to a full-time program of religious activities in Cuba". WFP's origins are vaguely Christian in its commitment to non-violence and solidarity, and it works with both religious and non-religious groups, but its work in Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America has no particular religious character. As the name suggests, WFP is less concerned with improving conditions in Cuba -- that is the Center's job -- than with bringing Americans to Cuba to see the conditions there, to learn more about the social, political, economic and cultural realities that Americans have little access to, and to encourage visitors to work for changes in US policy upon their r! eturn.

The MLK Center, which is an important and well-known entity both within Cuba and internationally, was founded by the Reverend Ral Su·rez, pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, out of which the Center developed. The two are located in the predominantly black neighborhood of Marianao, the poorest one in Havana, which once served as the living quarters for manual laborers. The Center is very much a part of local and national life, engaging in religious, educational, local construction and other social projects. It is the result of Su·rez's attempt to reconcile the traditional churches' elitist and spiritually-oriented activity with the Revolution's concrete programs of social and political change. Su·rez has attempted to practice a religion whose concern is not exclusively on the condition of the soul after life, but also on the condition of body and soul here on hear, and to find a place within the Revolution for different methods of spiritual expression -- not limited to Christianity, but encompassing all religions. In recent years, Cuba has changed its Soviet-derived policy of total atheism to one of secularism, leaving room for religious freedom. And this is in part due to Su·rez's political efforts, for he is among many other things a non-Communist member of Parliament who describes himself as an uncomfortable friend of the Revolution.

The WFP trip lasted one week and included meetings with Su·rez, JosÉ Vidal -- a former editor of one of Cuba's three newspapers and currently a professor of communications at the University of Havana -- Ester PÉrez, a prominent intellectual, a group of medical students from the ELAM (Latin American School of Medicine), a visit to an agricultural cooperative, a maternity hospital, an elementary school, the Cuban Foreign Ministry and the US Interests Section (the equivalent of an embassy), as well as various cultural activities. I would like to stress that my comments do not reflect the opinions or positions of either WFP or the Center, nor those of any other member of the group. Moreover, they are, to the best of my ability, not meant to be taken as generalizations! about Cuba or about Cuban-American relations; they are simply observations and concerns stemming from a hectic one-week visit to a country that Americans are not encouraged to learn about, that indeed we are in many ways prevented from knowing in any meaningful way....

Brazil's Lula says he will work for 'democracy in Cuba'

Monday, April 11, 2005.
BRASILIA, Brazil (AFP): Brazil's leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said he will work "for democracy in Cuba" and "against the (US economic) blockade" of the communist-run island, the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo reported Saturday.

"We have a lot to do for democracy in Cuba. We must help in the struggle against the US economic blockade (sanctions). Brazil has a chance to help normalize Cuba's relations," Lula told the daily in Rome, where he attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II.

Lula, of the Workers' Party, made his remarks after meeting at Brazil's embassy in Rome with Cuban National Assembly speaker Ricardo Alarcon. The Brazilian president has a cordial relationship, but no great political kinship, with Cuban President Fidel Castro, whose lone major ally in the region is Venezuela's leftist-populist President Hugo Chavez. =Cuba is the only one-party communist state in the Ameri