Che Guevara and Juan Almeida, 2 leaders of the Cuban Revolution.

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/international-i/20may-Statement.html

ON April 23, Jan Brewer, governor of the state of Arizona, United States, publicly announced Law SB1070.
This law, of a profoundly racist and xenophobic nature, allows the police to use racial profiling to detain any person if they have “reasonable suspicion” that the person concerned is an illegal, thus criminalizing undocumented immigrants and creating an atmosphere of generalized persecution of all immigrants who, in the near future, will be constantly subjected to arbitrary detention, searches and humiliation, including deportation to their countries of origin. This is occurring in a state in which one third of the population is made up of Latino immigrants and in which 300,000-plus undocumented workers, in the main Mexicans, have taken on the hardest jobs in long and interminable days of agricultural harvests in return for miserable wages.
From the moment at which this legislation started being drafted, broad sectors within the United States have been exposing its selective and discriminatory nature.
Last May Day, more than 70 U.S. cities were the scenario of mass demonstrations by immigrants, workers, students and human rights defenders who, under the slogan “We are all Arizona” demanded a general migration reform and the annulment of that monstrous legislation imposed on Arizona.
Bearing in mind the implications of this law for millions of human beings from our region who are obliged to travel to the United States in search of better living conditions for themselves and their families, and given the definite possibility of similar legislation propagating like a plague in U.S. territory, the International Relations Commission of the National Assembly of People’s Power of Cuba proclaims its solidarity with those who are confronting this brutal violation of their human rights.
We feel bound to draw attention to the fact that, while walls are being constructed and laws like this being passed in an attempt to close the door on immigrants to territory stolen by force from the noble Mexican people, the Cuban Adjustment Act, a constant incitement to disorderly emigration and desertion by any means possible and which has cost the lives of hundreds of our people over many years, remains in full force.

Despite President Obama‟s declaration of his administration‟s desire to “seek a
new beginning with Cuba”, and to “learn from history, not be trapped by it” in April of
last year, Cuba has remained under attack by the U.S.

In January, new US air security policies included Cuba on a list of countries
whose air passengers would get extra security screening as they enter US territory.
And Cuba remains on the State Department‟s list of „state sponsors of terrorism‟,
notwithstanding the lack of any evidence of Cuban involvement in acts of terrorism.
Cuba has vigorously protested all of these unconscionable attacks.

In fact, Cuba‟s policies of internationalism have arguably been the most
politically advanced in the world. From the direct military intervention to help in the
defeat of Apartheid in southern Africa in 1988 (Cuito Cuanavale, Angola) to direct
medical aide and solidarity with Haiti (before the earthquake). Since the earthquake,
western media has been suspiciously silent on the exceptional role Cuba has played in
support of Haiti with more than 900 health care providers on the ground, the largest and
most organized contingent on the island.

Yet, one of the most disturbing new attacks against Cuba occurred late last year
when a host of prominent African Americans signed on to a so-called “…Declaration of
African American Support for the Civil Rights Struggle in Cuba”.
This misguided “declaration” accuses the Cuban State of racism. It cites the
imprisonment of a Dr. Darsi Ferrer, an active critic of the Cuban government, as an
example of racism in Cuba.

Dr. Ferrer was reportedly accused of attempting to establish a private medical
clinic outside of Cuba‟s world-renowned medical system, by receiving illegally obtained
construction materials. Whatever the case, Dr. Ferrer‟s situation should immediately
bring to mind the 50 year history of attempts by the US to subvert the Cuban Revolution
through internal dissent and direct attack harkening back to the Bay of Pigs invasion
and so on.

Certainly the struggle against racism anywhere in the world is of paramount
importance to all of humanity. But can this attack against Cuba under the guise of
fighting racism really be justified? We think not.
Many African Americans may not know about some of the unique features of
Cuban history even though African Americans and Cubans have a deeply rooted history
of solidarity with each other.

For example, during Cuba‟s first War for Independence from Spain in 1868,
plantation and slave owner Carlos Manual de Cespedes freed and armed the slaves on
his plantation and called on them to join the struggle for Cuba‟s independence. The
Afro-Cuban General Antoneo Maceo emerged as one of Cuba‟s most renowned
revolutionary leaders of all time. As a result of this struggle, slavery was abolished in
Cuba by 1886.

What a contrast to US history where the maintenance of slavery was a pre-
condition of unity between the colonies in the American fight for independence from
Britain. Although more than 5,000 Blacks fought in the American Revolution, legalized
slavery continued for nearly another 100 years.

And the US has historically played a role in maintaining racism in Cuba. The US
intervention and occupation of Cuba starting in 1898 during Cuba‟s second War for
Independence (1895) and where more than half the fighters were Black, re-established
institutional racism in Cuba. Under the intermittent US occupations there, Afro-Cubans
and women, as well as the poor, were barred from voting, holding elective office,
owning businesses, land, and etc. Sound familiar?

Most Cuban historians and scholars agree that the Cuban Socialist Revolution in
1959 abolished legalized institutional racism in Cuba. Cuba‟s revolutionary constitution
outlawed racial discrimination while open and public debate and education since the
revolution have tackled Cuba‟s history as an Afro-Cuban nation. However, the legacy
of 500 years of slavery, racism, and all forms of discrimination is difficult to completely
eradicate in just 50 years, especially while also under the US led attacks and blockade
against Cuba.

Even so, the conditions of all Cubans have improved under the covenant of the
socialist revolution in Cuba which has provided free education, free health care, land
for poor farmers, reduced cost rent and utilities, the elimination of unemployment, and
so on.

Racism, institutionalized or otherwise has not been abolished any place in the
world. Yet Cuba, in our view, remains a hopeful beacon in the western hemisphere that
humane societies can be constructed that provide the basis for the elimination of all
forms of discrimination, exploitation, and oppression.

Ashaki Binta
For the “Cuban Working Group”
Black Left Unity Network
You may contact the working group at: cubaworkinggroup@gmail.com
And documents from the Cuba Working Group may be viewed at:
www.blackeducator.org/cubasolidarity.htm

Cuba Working Group
A Committee of the
Black Left Unity Network
Contact: cubaworkinggroup@gmail.com
View our documents at: www.blackeducator.org/cubasolidarity.htm
Press Release
Contact:
Ashaki Binta, Co-Convener 203-379-7711
March 1, 2010

National: The Black Left Unity Network (BLUN) announces the formation of it’s Cuba
Working Group (CWG) today. The CWG is a national network of activists and organ-
izers who are concerned about the ongoing attacks against the nation of Cuba despite
President Obama’s proclamations of improving relations with the Cuban state in the
Spring of 2009.

Most CWG members have traveled to Cuba and/or have been active in Cuban
Solidarity work for many years and are familiar with the difficult challenges faced by
the island over the last 50 years.

One of the latest attacks against Cuba was generated in the Black community
late last year when a prominent group of African Americans signed on to a declaration
originated by anti-Cuban activists in Latin America who accused the Cuban state of
racism.

Signers of the accusatory declaration include preeminent figures such as Dr.
Julianne Malveaux, Dr. Ron Walters, actress Ruby Dee, film maker Melvin Van
Peebles, Dr. Kathleen Neal Cleaver, and Dr. Cornel West among many others.
A list of 60 notable African Americans signed on to the document.

“Our consideration is that the accusation of racism against Cuba is disingenu-
ous and is in fact intended to weaken solidarity between the African American commu-
nity and Cuba which has historically been very strong.,” said Alberto Jones, a member
of the CWG and a native Cuban residing in Miami.

“A further consequence of this attack would then be to increase the unjustified
pressure on the Cuban state to abandon its socialist character and eliminate the cru-
cial gains of the 1959 Cuban Revolution in providing education, healthcare, affordable
housing, and a healthy cultural life for the Cuban people,” the group said.

According to the CWG, the US government’s historic blockade and ongoing
programs to foment internal dissent within Cuba contribute significantly to weakening
the island nation’s ability to improve and advance the political, social, economic, and
cultural gains of the revolution including the elimination of all forms of inequality and
lingering remnants of slavery.

Despite this, says the CWG, Cuba has abolished institutional racism and has
considerably improved the lives of all it’s citizens since the revolution including nearly
eliminating illiteracy and vastly improving infant mortality rates to levels lower than
those in the US, especially among African Americans. The Cuban nation has officially
acknowledged that more than 60 percent of its citizens are of African descent.

“We believe that those who are concerned about racism in Cuba should be in-
creasing pressure on the US government to end the blockade and other illegitimate
attacks against that country, rather than signing on to specious accusations that do
nothing to help the people of Cuba,” the group said.

The Black Left Unity Network (BLUN) was formed in May of 2008 to strengthen
and revitalize the Black Freedom Movement in the United States. The BLUN Cuba
Working Group was instituted in January this year to help educate the African Ameri-
can community about the importance of Revolutionary Cuba in the international fight
against all forms of discrimination, exploitation, and oppression and about Cuba’s
historic solidarity with the struggle for freedom of the African American people.

Dwight D. Eisenhower – 38 attempts

John F. Kennedy – 42 attempts

Lyndon Johnson – 72 attempts

Richard Nixon – 184 attempts

Jimmy Carter – 64 attempts

Ronald Reagan – 197 attempts

George Bush Sr – 16 attempts

Bill Clinton – 21 attempts

(from the london telegraph)

Watching Che Part Two again the other night, and marvelling at Benicio Del Toro’s quietly majestic performance of the revolutionary doctor as he yomps through the Bolivian mountains to what we know will be certain death, I found myself more impressed than ever by director Steven Soderbergh’s achievement: the way he makes a story staled through hagiographic repetition feel raw and new; how he junks all the clichés of the ‘long march’ sub-genre the better to portray the frequently undramatic realities of guerilla struggle; the extent to which he decenters and depersonalizes Che.

The mark of a good biopic is that it leaves you wanting to learn more about its subject rather than being the final word on him or her.  With Che the best place to start is Jon Lee Anderson’s biography on which Soderbergh drew heavily while researching his film.  An even better evocation of America’s dark, self-serving relationship to Cuba and to Latin America in the Cold War period is to be found in an extraordinary and relatively little-known documentary called 638 Ways To Kill Castro (2006).

The title is not a joke.  Director Dollan Cannell, drawing on interviews with Cuban intelligence officers and a great deal of original historical research, has discovered hundreds of attempts on the life of Che’s fellow freedom fighter and, from 1959, President of the Socialist Republic.

They involved grenade attacks at a baseball game he was attending; feeding him a poisoned milkshake at the Havana Hilton; ambushing a presidential convoy as it made its way to the national airport; packing plastic explosives inside a softball that was meant to be thrown at a passing motorcade during his visit to the States to meet Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s.

It gets more bizarre: operatives tried to insert poison in a fountain pen that, they hoped, he would use to scratch his beard; they tried both to poison his cigars and to plant explosives in them; upon discovering that he was a keen diver they poisoned a diving suit only to discover that he preferred to wear an older style; disappointed, they hatched a plan to pack dynamites into sea shells so that he’d be been blown up underwater, but failed because they couldn’t find a Caribbean mollusc large enough.

These gimcrack schemes seem sensible compared to some of the tactics they intended to deploy to discredit Castro in the early 1960s.  One involved spraying LSD on the television station from which he was broadcasting in the hope that he would wig out live on air.

Another pivoted around the American astronaut John Glenn who had recently embarked upon a space mission; the plan, had he gone missing, was to claim that Castro had zapped the astronaut’s module with magnetic rays.  Fortunately for Glenn, and unfortunately for the vultures in secret service, he returned to earth safely.

What’s remarkable about these covert operations to oust Castro are not just the outlandish, almost Hanna-Barbera forms they took – at one point, before the Bay of Pigs invasion, Miami Zoo was being used as a training camp for Cuban exiles – but that they have continued for five decades.  They were developed in both Democratic and Republican eras.  Cannell breaks down the assassination attempts by political leader:

Dwight D. Eisenhower – 38 attempts

John F. Kennedy – 42 attempts

Lyndon Johnson – 72 attempts

Richard Nixon – 184 attempts

Jimmy Carter – 64 attempts

Ronald Reagan – 197 attempts

George Bush Sr – 16 attempts

Bill Clinton – 21 attempts

Add these up and you get 634, not the 638 claimed by former Cuban Intelligence Chief Fabian Escalante.  Cannell says: “We knew of several plots from other sources that he hadn’t included.”  He adds: “We are NOT claiming that all these plots were presidentially endorsed.  The reality is more complex:  most are inspired, with differing degrees of complicity from the CIA at various points, by Miami Cubans.

“While the allegation of direct presidential complicity can be made with some degree of certainty in the case of Eisenhower, it’s highly controversial even in the case of Kennedy (certainly there are historians, eg Seymour Hersh, who have argued Kennedy’s culpability), let alone all the subsequent Presidents.  In the case of, for example, Jimmy Carter, it’s unthinkable that he would have endorsed a CIA related assassination plot.”

None the less, the effect of these botched and unsuccessful attempts to kill Castro was to make him stronger rather than weaker.  He came to be seen as David to the Goliath of American imperialism.  He was near-invincible, a superhero, protected by the positive spirits cast by priests belonging to the island’s Santeria religion.  Asked by a journalist if he wore bullet-proof clothing, he replied: “I have a moral vest”.  As for the guards who shielded him from attack, they became popular heroes after their work was dramatized on a state-television cop show.

Cannell’s film begins to get really dark when it investigates the men who were assigned or who took it upon themselves to kill Castro.  Initially, the CIA hooked up with the Mafia whose mobster members had made a mint organizing crime during the Batista era and who were furious at being hounded out of Havana.

The CIA also worked with the likes of Antonio Veciana, a gun-runner and cocaine smuggler, and later a marine-supplies storeowner in Miami.  He founded the paramilitary group Alpha 66 and on three occasions came close to assassinating the Cuban leader.  In 1963, John F. Kennedy tried to have Veciana arrested after he suggested that the American government had supported his attack on Soviet ships docked in Cuba.

The CIA helped Venezuelan Luis Posada Carriles who has admitted to attacking Cuban hotels and nightclubs in the late 1990s.  When he was held by US authorities in Texas for minor visa irregularities, he lamented: “I’m imprisoned by my own allies.”  The US government has consistently refused to extradite this man, dubbed the ‘Bin Laden of Latin America’, on the grounds that he will face torture back in Caracas.

Most notorious is Orlando Bosch, the man responsible for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian plane that killed all 73 passengers, among them the island’s fencing team, and whose panicked pilot is heard, via black box recorder, in the documentary.  Bosch, helped by the US Ambassador to Venezuela Otto Reich, was taken to the States where he was detained for six months before being freed by George Bush Jr’s brother Jeb.

Bosch, like Veciana and Carriles, is interviewed by Cannell in the documentary, and, like them, he is totally unrepentant.  Asked about the plane attack, he replies: “I’m supposed to say no.”  He adds: “In a war, wherever you are, you have to destroy the enemy’s submarines and aeroplanes, anything you can.  That’s how it is.  I consider we are at war with Fidel Castro.  In war everything is valid.”

These men are dark nostalgists.  They are committed to their hate.  It keeps them tied to a Cuba that has changed a good deal since they left many decades before.  But they’re also terrorists of the kind that America says it is deeply opposed to.  It’s a point Cannell emphasized when I contacted him after watching the film: “The treatment by the United States of accused terrorists like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles is in extremely stark contrast to the treatment of accused Islamic terrorists since September 11th. 

“In short, this story reveals extraordinary double standards over ‘terrorism’.  It may be unfair to use the past to berate the present, but this story does connect powerfully to the present, since accused terrorists of the Castro era are still living free in Miami.  In a supreme irony, the accused terrorists of the 9/11 era are behind bars in Cuba! – Guantanamo Bay.”

In the documentary, Wayne Smith, a former US diplomat in Cuba, tries to explain this contradiction: “Cuba seems to have the same effect on American administrations that the full moon had on werewolves.  We may not sprout hair and howl, but we behave in the same way.  Just irrationally.”  Of the word “kill”, he says with acerbic judiciousness: “That word is not easily used in government circles.”

This is meant to be a golden age for documentaries.  It is commonplace to argue that they expose viewers to the kinds of urgent, necessary stories that rarely get screened on television any longer.  I asked Cannell about its reception in the States: “It played well at festivals, eg, SXSW, but didn’t get a mainstream network TV release.  Sundance Channel though has screened it. 

“The reception in the US was overshadowed by a controversy that arose when in the publicity for the film we released a clip of an interview (not used in the doc itself) with Cuban American Congress member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, in which she said that she would welcome any attempt on the life of Fidel Castro.  This was to say the least uncomfortable for her since – despite the fact that in Miami such a sentiment would be absolutely normal – if you’re in the running for chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee, it’s not the sort of thing you’re meant to say. 

“Ileana’s response was to accuse us of concocting the clip, editing her words together to make her say something she’d never said.  I released the transcripts, the rushes etc, and she eventually retracted on Christmas Eve, a good day to bury bad news.”

Angolan and Cuban soldiers at the front

Raul Castro paid hommage to late cuban internationalist

http://www.portalangop.co.ao/motix/en_us/noticias/politica/Raul-Castro-paid-hommage-late-cuban-internationalist,c87825a2-2df0-4ebe-ba4c-07c3a9cf2363.html

Luanda – Visiting cuban president Raul Castro paid hommage today to the late cuban internationalist, Jose Raul Arguelles, who passed away in 1975 in Kwanza Sul province, while helping the angolan armed forces to fight back the apartheid south african invasion.     

Army commander Raul Arguelles died when his vehicle run over aa anti-tank landmine in the municipality of Ebo on 12th december 1975. 

At the cemitery Alto das Cruzes, the cuban leader laid a wreath of flowers on the tomb of commander Arguelles and also on the tombs of the parents of angolan president Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

Hundreds of cuban soldiers died in Angola soil helping to drive back the racist South Africa army from angolan soil, in a struggle which ended up with the independence of Namibia and the burial of the apartheid regime in Pretoria.  

The cuban president arrived here on wednesday on a three day official visit aimed at strenghtening cooperation and friendly relations between the two countries. 

Cuba reflects on fifty post-revolution years

      

http://www.welt.de/english-news/article2942953/Cuba-reflects-on-fifty-post-revolution-years.html

When 70-year-old Communist Party member Amanda Gonzalez recalls life before the Cuban revolution, bitterness creeps into her voice.

She chokes back tears as she remembers her parents working long hours at dead-end jobs in a stratified society where the odds seemed hopelessly stacked against the poor and the rich showed little concern for their plight.

“Poor people at that time had nothing, and there were many poor. The rich only cared about profits and wealth,” she said, sitting at a table in her peeling, 19th century home in central Havana.

Now, five decades after the triumph of the revolution that toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista and put Fidel Castro in power on Jan. 1, 1959, the rich are gone and a social safety net is in place, but economic hardship remains.

Like many Cubans, Gonzalez is anxious for it to end.

“On balance, the revolution has been positive, but what hits me is the economic situation. We are forced to do illegal things to improve our lives,” she said.

As their country prepares to mark the revolution’s 50th anniversary on Thursday, Cubans complain about some things and praise others in their remade society.

They like the free health care and education which have helped make Cubans some of the longest-living, best-educated people in the Americas. They also appreciate the low crime rate and absence of dire poverty.

But they say that, despite the revolution’s lofty goal of economic justice, it is a struggle to survive on salaries that average $20 a month.

“I can’t live on my salary. I have to ‘invent’ because it can’t be done,” said teacher Pedro Perez, using a Cuban term for bending the rules to make ends meet.

Inventing means finding ways to augment one’s salary or to make it go further by buying goods, often stolen, on the black market where prices are cheaper than in the state-run stores.

It is not uncommon for vendors to go to offices or homes peddling goods either stolen from government enterprises or purchased for sale at a higher price. They have no trouble finding buyers.

Gonzalez said she uses the subsidized monthly food ration the government gives all Cubans to buy cigarettes for two pesos (8 cents), then sells them for 5 pesos (20 cents).

In a country where most private enterprise is forbidden, she said that trick to earn a few more pesos is against the law. “Everything is illegal,” she said.

The government staged a crackdown against the black market for food after three hurricanes wiped out 30 percent of Cuban crops this year, but the peddling goes on.

Officials blame many of Cuba’s economic problems on the U.S. trade embargo against the island, put in place in 1962 to drive Castro and communism from power. But they also say Cuban productivity needs to improve and President Raul Castro called on Saturday for new austerity measures, including fewer subsidies for workers.

REFORMS

When asked what changes they would like to see, most Cubans say they do not want a return to the capitalism in place before the revolution. Mostly they call for tweaks to the socialist system, focusing on economic needs, not political reforms.

Many say they’d like to be able to open their own business and have the right to buy homes and cars, all now mostly prohibited.

“I’d just like to make enough money to live off my salary,” said Perez.

But some call for broader changes such as multi-party elections, greater freedom of expression and more freedom to travel.

“We Cubans want freedom. Changes mean freedom,” dissident Oswaldo Paya said recently. “To deny changes is to close the doors of the future to the Cuban people.”

Younger Cubans, for whom the events of 1959 are ancient history, express greater dissatisfaction than their elders.

Prominent blogger Yoani Sanchez, 33, and rock musician Gorki Aguila, 39, have run afoul of Cuban authorities for their outspoken criticism of the government, and many younger Cubans are frustrated by the lack of opportunities.

Apart from the improved social services, 32-year-old Manny Garcia said “everything else about the revolution has been bad in my opinion.”

He scoffed at reforms Raul Castro initiated after officially replacing Fidel Castro as president in February. The changes included letting Cubans buy cell phones and computers for the first time.

“To allow Cubans to have cellular phones, I don’t see that as a change. When you lack everything else, a cellular is a luxury. I have to save for months if I just want to buy a pair of tennis shoes,” Garcia said.

Fidel Castro retired due to poor health but is still a powerful figure behind the scenes and his younger brother is not expected to push through radical reforms.

Argelio Gonzalez, a 61-year-old gardener with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and a machete in his hand, said the young critics should not forget the conditions that created the revolution.

“The rich had everything and the poor had nothing, only misery,” he said.

As for change, “I don’t want any,” he said. “I want everything to stay like Fidel wants it.”

This is why we say that for countries like Haiti, socialism is the only path forward.  As dogmatic as that may sound, we know that the imperialists will never give Haiti enough scraps to feed their entire population.  Haitians will have to reorganize the entire country on an egalitarian basis so that the bare necessities are provided for all.  Playing games with the IMF and capitalist economic doctrines will never address the concerns of the starving masses in Haiti.  We know that pursuing socialism wouldn’t change things in Haiti overnight, but we must say that only on that economic basis will the vast majority of Haitians see improvement in their lives.

Meeting Cuba’s youngest politician

Liaena Hernandez

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7784234.stm

As Cuba prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fidel Castro’s revolution on 1 January, most of those in power are the same people who fought alongside him half a century ago.

Fidel’s brother Raul Castro, 77, is now president and he chose 78-year-old Machado Ventura as his number two.

But there is a new generation of communists waiting in the wings.

The majority of deputies elected to the national assembly, or parliament, earlier this year were born after the revolution.

The youngest, Liaena Hernandez, is just 18 years old. A petite young woman with long black hair and an engaging smile, she has been a political activist since her early teens.

We first met during a coffee break at the last national assembly meeting.

“Having young Cubans in parliament shows that the revolution continues. It isn’t just something from our history,” she told me. Ms Hernandez comes from Guantanamo province at the eastern end of the island.

Her father is in the army and she has just completed her voluntary military service as a border guard in an all-female unit along the controversial US naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

She was born just as Cuba’s main benefactor, the Soviet Union, collapsed.

What followed was called the special period, a time of hunger and hardship. The United States also tightened the trade embargo believing it would hasten the collapse of communism.

This is the Cuba that Ms Hernandez grew up in.

Kissing babies

“I was born with the revolution. I’ve never known capitalism,” she said. “My earliest memories are of socialism, the special period and the US blockade.

Farmers in Manuel Tames are waiting for land reforms to pay off

“As a family we couldn’t have all the things we would have liked. For years I had to wear the same pair of shoes to school, we just had to keep mending them.

“But at least I had free health care and education. And as a nation, everyone was willing to work together to get by and move forward.”

Ms Hernandez invited the BBC to visit her on a constituency visit.

She represents Manuel Tames, a small rural community nestled in the foothills of the Guantanamo’s Sierra Cristal mountains.

There is little traffic on its dusty streets apart from horses and the occasional tractor.

At the heart of the town is an ageing sugar mill with its giant smokestack chimney. There is also a recently renovated health centre with nurses and beds to spare.

But solving constituency needs is not the primary role of Cuban deputies.

“Our most important mission is to explain to the people the politics of the state so that they understand what going on,” she explained as we arrived.

Some two dozen constituents had gathered to greet us outside of the municipal offices.

Like all good politicians, Ms Hernandez moved comfortably amongst them, kissing babies, joking and chatting with young and old.

Better roads and housing are amongst their concerns, but food appears the number one priority.

Raul Castro has started to hand over unproductive state owned land to private farmers and co-operatives in a bid to boost production and cut food imports.

Farmers in Tames are waiting expectantly for the scheme to take off.

“Today is a different period from that of the revolution. There were some things which were needed then which are not so good now, because the context has changes,” she said.

“We need to keep perfecting our economic system, that’s where the country is going.”

‘Perfeccionamento’

The government’s priority is to try and make the state-run system work more efficiently, rather than opening up to a free market, like the Chinese have done.

You hear the word “perfeccionamento” – perfecting the system – used a lot by officials.

There are also no signs of any political reforms. Opposition parties are not allowed.

The national assembly only meets twice a year, a few days of committee sessions followed by a single day’s sitting. Critics call it a rubber stamp parliament. The next session is scheduled for 27 December.

Candidates are also selected in advance. In the elections in January there were 614 people standing for the same number of seats.

You do not have to be a member of the Communist Party to stand, but it does help.

Ms Hernandez, though, believes that the system has served Cuba well.

“History has taught us that the Communist Party is the road that Cuba needs to follow.

“We don’t need to copy other countries’ systems. We are satisfied with our own and we are going to keep perfecting it.”

In “eat local” movement, Cuba is years ahead

Scientific-American video on Urban Farming in Cuba: http://www.sciam.com/video.cfm?id=4899546001

http://uk.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUKN12464780

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Cooperative-Agriculture-Sustains-Cuba-After-Devastating-Hurricanes-100125.shtml

HAVANA (Reuters) – After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba planted thousands of urban cooperative gardens to offset reduced rations of imported food.

Now, in the wake of three hurricanes that wiped out 30 percent of Cuba’s farm crops, the communist country is again turning to its urban gardens to keep its people properly fed.

“Our capacity for response is immediate because this is a cooperative,” said Miguel Salcines, walking among rows of lettuce in the garden he heads in the Alamar suburb on the outskirts of Havana.

Salcines says he is hardly sleeping as his 160-member cooperative rushes to plant and harvest a variety of beets that takes just 25 days to grow, among other crops.

As he talks, dirt-stained men and women kneel along the furrows, planting and watering on land next to a complex of Soviet-style buildings. Machete-wielding men chop weeds and clear brush along the periphery of the field.

Around 15 percent of the world’s food is grown in urban areas, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a figure experts expect to increase as food prices rise, urban populations grow and environmental concerns mount.

Since they sell directly to their communities, city farms don’t depend on transportation and are relatively immune to the volatility of fuel prices, advantages that are only now gaining traction as “eat local” movements in rich countries.

ROOFTOPS AND PARKING LOTS

In Cuba, urban gardens have bloomed in vacant lots, alongside parking lots, in the suburbs and even on city rooftops.

They sprang from a military plan for Cuba to be self-sufficient in case of war. They were broadened to the general public in response to a food crisis that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s biggest benefactor at the time.

They have proven extremely popular, occupying 35,000 hectares (86,000 acres) of land across the Caribbean island. Even before the hurricanes, they produced half of the leaf vegetables eaten in Cuba, which imports about 60 percent of its food.

“I don’t say they have the capacity to produce enough food for the whole island, but for social and also agricultural reasons they are the most adequate response to a crisis,” said Catherine Murphy, a U.S. sociologist who has studied Cuba’s urban gardens.

GREEN PRODUCTIVITY

In Alamar, the members get a salary and share the garden’s profits, so the more they grow, the more they earn. They make an average of about 950 pesos, or $42.75, per month, more than double the national average, Salcines said.

The co-op, which began in 1997, now produces more than 240 tons of vegetables annually on its 11 hectares (27 acres) of land, which is about the size of 13 soccer fields.

The gardens sell their produce directly to the community and, out of necessity, grow their crops organically.

“Urban agriculture is going to play a key role in guaranteeing the feeding of the people much more quickly than the traditional farms,” said Richard Haep, Cuba coordinator for German aid group Welthungerhilfe, which has supported these kinds of projects since 1994.

When the Soviet Union fell apart, Cuba’s supply of oil slowed to a trickle, hurting big state agricultural operations. Chemical fertilizers were replaced with mountains of manure, and beneficial insects were used instead of pesticides.

Unlike in developed countries, where organic products are more expensive, in Cuba they are affordable.

“We have taken organic agriculture to a social level,” said Salcines.

Some experts fear that rising international food prices along with the destruction of the hurricanes will return Cuba to the path of agrochemicals. The government is planning to construct a fertilizer plant with its oil-rich ally Venezuela.

But Raul Castro, who replaced ailing brother Fidel Castro as president in February, has also borrowed ideas from the urban gardens as he implements reforms to cut the island’s $2.5 billion in annual food imports, much of it from the United States.

Castro has decentralized farm decision-making and raised the prices that the state pays for agricultural products, which has increased milk production, for example, by almost 20 percent.

And, in September, the government began renting out unused state-owned lands to farmers and cooperatives, measures that met with approval of international aid groups.

“Decentralization and economic incentives. If those elements are expanded to the rest of the agricultural sector, the response will be the same,” said Welthungerhilfe’s Haep.

In Havana, for instance, some cooperatives have as much as 160 members, who take care of a field that yields crops in just 25 days, if the right plants are grown. Now, following the natural disasters, people attending to the field work around the clock care for a variety of beets that can grow really fast. “Our capacity for response is immediate, because this is a cooperative,” Miguel Salcines, one of the people working the land, says.

The fact is that the “eat local” movement, which has been set in place in Cuba many years ago, is starting to pay off, and to take over other major cities in the world as well. Because everything is produced at the outskirts of the city, fuel prices do not influence those of the vegetables, and transport is fairly cheap. Some producers even use bicycles and other such transportation to bring their crops to the markets.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that some 15 percent of all food produced globally is made in, near, or around urban centers, as demand continues to increase daily, due to the rapid rise of population. The agency estimates that this percentage will raise even more in the future, as the volatility of gas prices will make it uneconomic for farmers and animal growers to keep their business out of the cities.

“Urban agriculture is going to play a key role in guaranteeing the feeding of the people much more quickly than the traditional farms,” the Cuba coordinator for German aid group Welthungerhilfe, Richard Haep, an outspoken supporter of this type of endeavors since 14 years ago, argues.