HAVANA – Cuba's Communist Party newspaper Granma published a front-page story Wednesday marking the 15th anniversary of street protests that Fidel Castro himself had to quell, an unusual public reference to one of the few serious internal threats to his nearly half-century of rule.

The article portrayed the event as a victory for Castro's revolution — challenging the version of anti-Castro activists who celebrate it as a "day of resistance" to the communist government.

In the summer of 1994, food and fuel were scarce and islanders were sweating through hours-long blackouts that stilled fans, air conditioners and water pumps, making sleep fitful and bathing difficult.

Some desperate Cubans invaded foreign embassies to demand asylum. Others hijacked Havana harbor ferries and tried to take them to the United States.

On Aug. 5 — reportedly after police tried to block a ferry hijacking — hundreds of Cubans spilled onto Havana's seaside Malecon boulevard, picked up rocks and debris from crumbling buildings and hurled them at police.

Chants of "Liberty!" rose from the crowd.

Such street protests were — and still are — unheard of in a country where police officers are stationed on many street corners in cities and block-level committees are assigned to watch neighbors and defend the government.

Castro arrived in an army jeep to quiet the disturbance, and his appearance prompted some demonstrators to drop their stones and applaud.

Granma published a photo of Castro in his trademark olive-green fatigues listening to demonstrators, and it cast the protest as the government prevailing over "those who, spurred by the United States, disrupted public order in Havana's Malecon sector in a violent manner."

"That, as Fidel said, 'wasn't a bad day for the Revolution,' but actually a day of revolutionary reaffirmation," Granma said, referring to the armed uprising Castro led against dictator Fulgencio Batista.

Still, the paper also called the protest "a moment of great tension."

Tensions ran so high that summer that Castro briefly opened the island's borders, dropping efforts to halt Cubans from setting out in flimsy boats to reach U.S. shores. Nearly 37,000 islanders attempted to reach America in almost anything that would float.

The Granma story was not the first public acknowledgment of the 1994 unrest. Castro appeared on state television on the first anniversary, saying Cubans should never forget it.

"I came because I had to come; it was a fundamental requirement to be with the people in a movement in which the enemy had worked for a long time to create a disturbance," Castro said in 1995.

But such prominent mention of the protest in state-controlled media is extremely rare.

Castro stepped down as president in February 2008 and has not been seen in public for three years. He has published scores of essays in state newspapers, though a recent drop in the pace of the articles has sparked rumors that his health has worsened ahead of his 83rd birthday Aug. 13.

A new column signed by Castro appeared Wednesday on the Cubadebate Web site in which he backed his friend and ally Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, in his opposition to an impending deal to expand the U.S. military presence in Colombia. It was Castro's first essay in 13 days.

Cuba gradually pulled its economy out of the crisis of the early 1990s, which was prompted by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of its billions of dollars in annual subsidies.

The current global economic crisis has plunged Cuba into its worst slowdown since that time of hardship. Authorities have imposed strict energy conservation programs to save oil that have cut air conditioning at state office buildings and businesses, but have yet to affect residential sectors.

Granma concluded that the 1994 uprising was: "A great victory and a warning to those who try to rise up against the revolution."

HAVANA – Cuba's Communist Party newspaper Granma published a front-page story Wednesday marking the 15th anniversary of street protests that Fidel Castro himself had to quell, an unusual public reference to one of the few serious internal threats to his nearly half-century of rule.

The article portrayed the event as a victory for Castro's revolution — challenging the version of anti-Castro activists who celebrate it as a "day of resistance" to the communist government.

In the summer of 1994, food and fuel were scarce and islanders were sweating through hours-long blackouts that stilled fans, air conditioners and water pumps, making sleep fitful and bathing difficult.

Some desperate Cubans invaded foreign embassies to demand asylum. Others hijacked Havana harbor ferries and tried to take them to the United States.

On Aug. 5 — reportedly after police tried to block a ferry hijacking — hundreds of Cubans spilled onto Havana's seaside Malecon boulevard, picked up rocks and debris from crumbling buildings and hurled them at police.

Chants of "Liberty!" rose from the crowd.

Such street protests were — and still are — unheard of in a country where police officers are stationed on many street corners in cities and block-level committees are assigned to watch neighbors and defend the government.

Castro arrived in an army jeep to quiet the disturbance, and his appearance prompted some demonstrators to drop their stones and applaud.

Granma published a photo of Castro in his trademark olive-green fatigues listening to demonstrators, and it cast the protest as the government prevailing over "those who, spurred by the United States, disrupted public order in Havana's Malecon sector in a violent manner."

"That, as Fidel said, 'wasn't a bad day for the Revolution,' but actually a day of revolutionary reaffirmation," Granma said, referring to the armed uprising Castro led against dictator Fulgencio Batista.

Still, the paper also called the protest "a moment of great tension."

Tensions ran so high that summer that Castro briefly opened the island's borders, dropping efforts to halt Cubans from setting out in flimsy boats to reach U.S. shores. Nearly 37,000 islanders attempted to reach America in almost anything that would float.

The Granma story was not the first public acknowledgment of the 1994 unrest. Castro appeared on state television on the first anniversary, saying Cubans should never forget it.

"I came because I had to come; it was a fundamental requirement to be with the people in a movement in which the enemy had worked for a long time to create a disturbance," Castro said in 1995.

But such prominent mention of the protest in state-controlled media is extremely rare.

Castro stepped down as president in February 2008 and has not been seen in public for three years. He has published scores of essays in state newspapers, though a recent drop in the pace of the articles has sparked rumors that his health has worsened ahead of his 83rd birthday Aug. 13.

A new column signed by Castro appeared Wednesday on the Cubadebate Web site in which he backed his friend and ally Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, in his opposition to an impending deal to expand the U.S. military presence in Colombia. It was Castro's first essay in 13 days.

Cuba gradually pulled its economy out of the crisis of the early 1990s, which was prompted by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of its billions of dollars in annual subsidies.

The current global economic crisis has plunged Cuba into its worst slowdown since that time of hardship. Authorities have imposed strict energy conservation programs to save oil that have cut air conditioning at state office buildings and businesses, but have yet to affect residential sectors.

Granma concluded that the 1994 uprising was: "A great victory and a warning to those who try to rise up against the revolution."

Defying the Castro Brothers "Under Cuban Skies"

Under cover of international distraction with the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Cuban authorities violated their own Constitution by arresting and charging 75 prominent dissidents with being agents of "Yankee Imperialism."

Many were associated with the Varela Project, a peaceful human rights initiative developed by Oswaldo Paya to encourage the Cuban government to open up and respect human rights. Before they were arrested, convicted and sentenced to terms ranging from 15 to 25 years in prison, many Varela Project participants circulated a petition signed by more than 11,000 Cuban citizens across the nation, all imploring their government to grant them basic human rights.

Of these 75 dissidents, between 35 and 40 had collected signatures for the Varela Project, while others were independent journalists, librarians, and labor activists. All were simply engaged in peaceful opposition to the Castro regime. All were sentenced to prison in a short, terrifying period now known as the Black Spring of 2003.

Since the Black Spring, a few of the original 75 have been paroled for health reasons. All the others remain incarcerated for simply exercising their Cuban Constitutional rights to organize, circulate petitions, and then literally petition the government to grant basic human rights.

Initially ignored by the international community, many of the wives of Varela Project participants, now called The Group of 75, organized themselves into Las Damas de Blanco: The Ladies in White.

Now internationally respected as powerful human rights activists with impact far beyond the Cuban borders, every Sunday Las Damas have been walking across the Quinta Avenida in Miramar, Havana to the church of Santa Rita. After they attend church services, they walk through the streets of Havana, despite the constant surveillance and intimidation of the Cuban secret police.

After two years of faithfully, peacefully walking in white, the Ladies in White garnered international attention. First, they were awarded the prestigious 2005 Sakharov Prize, which is annually bestowed by the European Parliament. In the wake of that award, a movement has gathered to nominate them for a Nobel Peace Prize.

While the Ladies in White continue their walk from Miramar, Havana to the global stage, several paroled members of the Group of 75 were recently featured in a July 2009 independent documentary, "Under Cuban Skies: Workers and Their Rights.'' Filmed in Cuba between March and May 2009, the film details "...the systematic violation of human and labor rights committed by Fidel and Raul Castro since they took power fifty years ago."

"In Havana, on Monday August, 3, 2009, human rights and labor activists Maria Elena Mir Marrero, Justo J. Sanchez, Hanoi Oliva and Daniel Sabatier, who were featured in Under Cuban Skies, were summoned and threatened," said Cuba Study Group executive director Tomas Bilbao. Labor leader Maria Elena Mir explains:

"We were told to report at a police station at 10:00 a.m. Tuesday, August 4. We reported as we were told. There, they interrogated, scolded, and warned us not to stage a demonstration on August 5: the anniversary of the Maleconazo, a major protest which took place on August 5, 1994 and that was repressed by government thugs."

Maria Elena refers to Cuba's Rapid Action Brigade as thugs -- all highly trained government agents that would transform peaceful assembly into terror and violence by wading into the peaceful group wearing civilian clothes, but armed with truncheons and other weapons and carrying official orders to disrupt, intimidate and terrify people into abandoning their peaceful human rights demonstrations.

Maria Elena continued:

"Those of us who appeared in Under Cuban Skies had our fingernails cut for DNA sampling, were fingerprinted and told to hold a cloth we were given on our private parts for about 15 minutes. We were told that it was to register our body odor. It frightened and humiliated us."

Via telephone, she went on to share that State Security Agents overseeing their interrogation at the police station said the film, "...attacks the CTC (Central de Trabajadores de Cuba). We now understand that four teams had been sent to Cuba to film Under Cuban Skies. We are now on guard and will not allow that to happen in the future."

In spite of all they endured, Maria Elena Mir said that the dissidents deeply appreciate that the film has been completed and is now being presented well beyond the streets of Havana:

"We are grateful to you for allowing us to tell the world, in our own words, what is going on - the violations of human and labor rights -- here in Cuba."

Luis Carlos Montalván was a consultant on the film, "Under Cuban Skies - Workers and Their Rights.
Shame on you if you support this corrupt violent regime

YOANI SANCHEZ.............................................................The Ghost of Power Cuts Past has returned across my country. The inconvenient blackouts so common in the nineties have returned because of the international crisis and the dysfunctional Cuban economy. We'd come to believe they were ancient history, overcome by the so called Energy Revolution driven -- five years ago -- by Fidel Castro himself.

In a frenzy to reform electrical generation on the Island, millions of incandescent bulbs were exchanged for energy-savers and thousands of electricity generators were installed throughout the Island. The old Soviet air conditioners were replaced by more modern Chinese ones and the hardy refrigerators from the forties were turned into scrap. Along with these electricity-saving approaches, a stable supply of oil -- coming from Venezuela at a very low price -- helped to eliminate the annoying cuts in electricity. Our leaders pledged in front of cameras and on national television that only a hurricane or an accident could once again plunge us into darkness.

Now the moment has come to trim the illusions but not, this time, because of the high price of fuel in international markets. Paradoxically, the problem has come because of a fall in the value of oil and its derivatives. Cuba can no longer resell a portion of the barrels that come from Caracas and this -- along with the international financial problems -- has forced it to re-impose the cuts. At the same time, a good portion of the state enterprises spend more than they produce, putting pressure on them to become more efficient or shut down. Those who will feel it the most, however, will be the residential sector, which will return to candles and rechargeable lamps for lighting. These days my compatriots are purchasing -- compulsively -- lots of flashlights and batteries.

The big mistake that was made during the military coup in Honduras was, not to let Zelaya get dress up in his signature costume with cowboy hat and all.
Now we have to hear the flak of the critics pounding "he was taken in his pajamas", over and over. LOL.

they should have taken his picture wearing the hat in his pajamas or just the hat and nothing else giving truth to the expression all hat no cattle

Cuban Generation Y Blogger Mocks Che T-shirt Wearers


Attention all you folks who think of yourselves as counterculture types who demonstrate your rebelliousness by wearing Che Guevara T-shirts. The author of the most popular blog from Cuba, Yoani Sanchez who not only talks the talk but walks the walk, thinks you are absurd. The Generation Y blogger was the subject of a Miami Herald story on Saturday. We will get to her marvelous quote on the subject of Che T-shirts below the fold but first some fascinating information on the person who provides an inside look at what is really happening in Cuba which is often missed by news agencies on that island:

Yoani Sánchez, the blogger who has gained an international following detailing the absurdities of daily life in Cuba, is on the phone from her 14th-floor apartment in Havana, where the elevators rarely work. She speaks plainly, boldly, with none of the hemming and hawing common among folks on the island who fear their phones are tapped.

Sánchez is certain hers is. She is constantly followed, too. None of this stops her from finding ways, despite government attempts to block her, of continuing to post to Generación Y, the blog she launched in April 2007 and for which she has won several awards. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2008.
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...With her skinny frame and dark hair, she looks a tad like Olive Oyl. But that's where the comparison to Popeye's weak-kneed girlfriend ends. Sánchez is a much tougher figure, a tech-savvy representative of a growing youth-oriented Cuban counterculture who tells it like it is -- about having to feed her family rice with bouillon cubes when there is nothing else, about the surging number of women on the island who deny their realities by popping black-market Valium, about the cops who are assigned to tail her.

...Sánchez may be the best-known blogger in Cuba, but she is part of a multiplying roster of critics who have joined what she calls ``the virtual raft.' In fact, she has inspired several to turn to Web-based journalism and activism and offers training on how to keep a blog and circumvent the Cuban laws that keep most of the populace unplugged.

Although Raúl Castro decriminalized ownership of computers, cellphones and other technological gadgets in 2008, only professionals, academics and officials are allowed to surf the Web, and they are monitored. Some islanders are hooked up through black-market accounts, but the general population is allowed only to send and receive e-mails from public spots.

Sánchez and other bloggers go to cyber cafes and hotel access points meant mostly for tourists, where an hour of connectivity costs about $8, out of reach for the average Cuban with a monthly salary of $15 to $20. (Sanchez and her husband, independent journalist Reinaldo Escobar, make ends meet by working as private tour guides and translators).

Okay, now for the Yoani Sanchez money quote for you counterculture "rebels" and hip types such as the "Che Spotting" girls who think it is so cool and non-conformist to wear Che Guevara T-shirts:

"I am part of the counterculture, and the counterculture is growing, but it is very diverse. Maybe one thing we all have in common is that we don't wear Che T-shirts, like foreign kids who consider themselves counterculture do,'' she says. ``In Cuba, Che represents the government. In Cuba, only tourists and members of the Young Communist League wear Che shirts.''

Got that? The true counterculture rebels in Cuba shun the Che Guevara T-shirts that the wannabees in the West seem so fond of wearing.

If the Castro regime was as repressive as you say, Ms. Sanchez would have already been gone!

GC/FD/ER, what do you and or your contrymen plan to do when your so called repression is let loose on your island paisanos ?? Sit here and watch ????

The exile cubans have no gonads at all!!!!! To allow their most hated devil to die of old age says volumes of their hypocritical convictions!!!

He sat at the table with Velasco Alvarado, Brezhnev gave him a bicycle, Fidel announced his birth during a speech at the Plaza of the Revolution and Pinochet himself gave him a lemonade. With these vibrant adventures it’s hard to end up being a common person. The person who all this happened to was, in turn, an amusing hedonist, born conversationalist, tolerant, pertinacious and the worst guerrilla one could imagine. Decanting Cuba Libres by the gallon for the skirmishes that happened in bed and for the battles he escaped from with a fork and spoon.

Juan Juan Almeida brushed up against power and got scratched, without it doing him much good to be the son of the Comandante down from the Sierra Maestra. His ancestry was more of an aggravation, since they made him pay for not rising to the epic height they expected from the offspring of the “heroes.” His military training, studies in the Soviet Union, and even classes to turn him into a Cuban intelligence agent, showed him what was hiding behind the mask of Utopia. So his book, “Memoirs of an Unknown Cuban Guerrilla,” is the story of a brazen witness, someone who hobnobbed with those who call us to sacrifice, while living a life of pleasure and excess. According to the author, they are those who “speak like those on the left, think like those in the center and live like those on the right.”

This chubby, forty-year-old limps with one leg but jumps with unvarnished humor from every page of his memoirs. He seems to want to tell us that from the yacht, the hunts in the keys and the perfectly chilled vodka, our daily difficulties seem tremendously blurry, far away and unimportant. From a travel-filled roguish life, Juan Juan fell, abruptly, into the position of a marked and persecuted man. A series of interrogations, searches and detentions let him experience the day-to-day reality of the most critical, the opposition and the dissidents on this Island. “Memoirs of a Guerrilla…” is the story of a fall, of a collapse that he tells without rancor, rather with nonchalance. It is narrated by someone who learned, quickly, the most widespread meaning of the word “guerrilla,” that which implies fighting for status, killing for certain possessions, lying to remain in power.

As a teaser for those interested in Juan Juan Almeida’s book, published by Espuela de Plata, here is an excerpt.

“I’m just a man who grew up and was trained among the corrupt, immodest, modern corsairs who played at being strict, simple guardians of honor but who forget to shut up in front of their children. Because this boy grew up admiring these destructive and heroic vicelords, an excuse for leaders, they made me see that an assault on a barracks, in a country with laws, could be a just thing. They made me see that to subvert countries with foreign ideas, using illegal methods, was a necessary thing. They made me see that the problems of the state can be solved most easily if we banish our own citizens. They made me see that to repudiate, discredit, stomp on, hit, spit on or imprison were good options for those who don’t think as the system requires. They made me see that the people are an amorphous and distant mass which is borne in mind from the dais to praise them a bit, incite them a little more, before returning to the air conditioning. They made me see so very many things that I ended up confused like millions of Cubans, so that we no longer know the exact difference between good and evil.”

Translator’s note:
Juan Juan Almeida is the son of Juan Almeida Bosque, age 82, third ranking member of Cuba’s Council of State, Hero of the Republic of Cuba, and one of the original Commanders of the Revolution who fought with Fidel in the Sierra Maestra.

Tomorrow will dawn as every Monday. The convertible peso will continue its ascent, Adolfo and his colleagues will have another day behind bars in the Canaleta prison, my son will hear at school that socialism is the only option for the country and at the airports we will continue to ask permission to leave the Island. The Juanes concert will not have significantly changed our lives, but nor did I go to the Plaza with this illusion. It would be unfair to demand of the young, Colombian singer that he propel those changes that we ourselves have not managed to make, despite wanting them so much.
I was at the esplanade to check out how different the same space can be when it accommodates crowds organized from above, versus when it shelters a group of people dancing, singing and interacting without the involvement of politics. It was a rare experience to be there, without shouting slogans and without having to applaud mechanically when the tone of the speech marked that it was the time to cheer. Clearly some elements resembled those who march each May first, especially the proportion of plainclothes police in the audience.

Certain technical details were uncomfortable. The audio couldn't be heard well, the small screen to show what was happening on stage couldn't be seen from a distance, and the hour chosen was inhuman, coinciding with the worst moments of the sun. Fortunately it clouded over after four, and those who were holed up under the few trees took to dancing with the Orishas. They are details that can be fixed the next time Juanes performs in Cuba, when technical glitches will be few and those excluded this afternoon can sing.

If we see the performance of this September 20th as the dress rehearsal for a concert we'll have one day, then we must congratulate those who participated. Even if there isn't another, and the Plaza again takes on its solemnity and grayness, at least this Sunday afternoon we live something different. In a place where the division between us has been systematically sown, Juanes--to the setting of the sun--has shouted, "For one Cuban family!"