Uncommon Sense

Marching towards dictatorship

Venezuela, you were warned.

Cuban journalist on hunger strike

Cuban independent journalist Haydee Rodríguez, on a hunger strike since Dec. 20, was admitted to a hospital for treatment for dehydration, according to APLO/Noticuba Internacional.

Rodríguez, 74, has been on hunger strike to protest being harassed by the political police.

Last month, Rodríguez, the director of La Voz de Oriente ("the Voice of Oriente") news agency, was met at the train station in Santa Clara by police officers who confiscated items he had brought from Havana for an independent library. Among the items taken were children's books and some crayons.

Later, officers raided his Rodríguez's home and took some video equipment, two shortwave radios and several books.

To read the whole Noticuba story, in Spanish, go below the fold.

Six months later

Raul's style may be different, but he is still a dictator.

Just ask the more than 275 political prisoners still in the gulag he helped build.

And the independent journalists who, against great odds, struggle to tell the stories about what is really happening in Cuba.

In politics and government, style is important, and Raul needs all they style he can get if he is to dictate anyway like his brother did.

But results also matter.

On that score, Raul and the other cronies Fidel left in charge six months ago, have only brought more of the same — repression, poverty and further proof that the only true way to reform a communist dictatorship is to destroy it.

Rats on a sinking ship

"Cuba recycling: 'A question of survival'"

That was the headline on a story about how after 48 years of a glorious socialist revolution, Cubans "(f)aced with chronic shortages, meager salaries and the United States' economic embargo ... have mastered the art of recycling. The socialist government promotes the practice as a way to save the planet. But for most Cubans, it's more about saving themselves."

It also could have been a headline for a Miami Herald story this morning about who's in and who's out of Dictatorship, Version 2.0.

Apparently, Vice President Carlos Lage, considered an economic "reformer," is in tight with Raul, leading to speculation that changes previously blocked by Fidel are on the way. But Lage himself cautions that what he favors is just recycled communism.

''Socialism in Cuba is irreversible . . . because with our efforts yesterday and today, we make it irreversible,'' he said in a speech last month. ``In Cuba, there will be no succession; there will be continuity.''

A question of survival, indeed.

Arroz Con Frijoles, 1/31/07

Some notes from the gulag:

Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a former Uncommon Sense Political Prisoner of the Week, is in more trouble with his jailers.

And female political prisoners are treated no better by the dictatorship and its agents than their male counterparts.

From CubaNet:

Political prisoner charges medical negligence

CIEGO DE AVILA, Cuba - January 27 (Tania Maceda Guerra, CPIC / www.cubanet.org) - Political prisoner María de los Ángeles Borrego, who is serving a four-year sentence in the Manto Negro women's prison in Havana, charges prison authorities have neglected her repeated cries for medical attention.

Borrego, 46, says she has had a toothache for a month now and has not been allowed to see a dentist.

Borrego is a human rights activist and was sentenced in December 2005 for "pre-delinquent social dangerousness."

Finally, political prisoner José Ramón Falcón's parole has been revoked, and he is back in jail.

The bastard lives

At least for now. Or so says the dictatorship and its No. 1 sugar daddy, Hugo Chavez, the wannbe dictator of Venezuela.

Or maybe he's just partially dead.

Or maybe it doesn't matter — especially if nothing is done to force his brother Raul and other successors to change the system.

Regardless, here's guessing, with artificial anus or not, the dictator is still decaying.

For more on why maybe these images were released Tuesday — on the eve of the six-month anniversay of Fidel's giving up power — read KillCastro and Child of the Revolution.

Broken pipes

Fidel Castro's isn't the only sewage system in Cuba that has sprung a leak.

From CubaNet:

Residents decry deterioration of sewers

HOLGUIN, Cuba - January 26 (Liannis Meriño Aguilera, Jóvenes sin Censura) - Backed-up and overflowing sewage systems are driving the residents of Banes to distraction.

Residents say the more-than-50-year-old sewage pipes have received little if any maintenance in all those years and they routinely leak, spilling their contents on the streets.

There is only one truck destined to clean septic tanks, and to boot it is often out of commission due to breakdowns. The employees of the community service agency that would service the sewage system have little motivation to work due to low salaries, residents complain.

Banes is in Holguín municipality, in eastern Cuba.

Castro "deserves the artificial anus that he gets"

Now that I have your attention, let Jon Stewart make you laugh at the expense of "not a nice man."

Men of good will must never quit

Every week, I write about at least one Cuban political prisoner, as an attempt to put a human face on one of the many tragedies that is Cuba today. The numbers alone — more than 275 prisoners in Fidel Castro's gulag — are awful enough, but the true magnitude of the dictatorship's horrors, I believe, can truly be comprehended only when you reflect on its effects on one brave soul.

That's why on most days, visitors to this site will find at the top of the page, a profile of one these heroes. We must all be reminded, so that we never forget.

Sometimes, my frustration boils over.

"Sons-of-bitches," I will cry out when reading of one of the regime's latest outrages.

Something similar, too, when I again realize that the suffering by these brave prisoners of conscience goes largely unnoticed in the United States. They are forgotten, as Cindy Sheehan and her cohorts go to the island to protest outside the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, and they are forgotten as American politicians line up to lift a so-called "embargo," with no demands or expectations for changed behavior by the dictators.

Sometimes, I am ashamed to say, I wonder why I care. After all, what difference does it make? No one seems to be paying attention. And I don't need any more stress.

And then I read the words of former Cuban political prisoner Armando Valladares, who in 1988, as the American ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, said:

Torture and violations of human rights, come from where might, are an aggression against all mankind and we must fight back with all our strength. There lies, precisely, the efficacy of our message.

International denouncements achieve their objective. They are the only means of pressuring the torturers, the only means to force them to free prisoners for the sake of public image, to save face, to be more careful, to transgressing less.

Denouncing the criminal does not guarantee his punishment but it may deter him from continuing the practice. We must raise our voices without fear and use all resources available to defend the persecuted, the tortured of the world. We must shout their suffering for them and fearlessly denounce their henchmen.

We must enter the cell of every Fernando López del Toro (a fellow political prisoner who took his own life while in jail) in the world, embrace him in solidarity and tell them to their faces, "do not take your life, there are men of good will who are standing by you, your dignity as a human being will prevail. In remembrance, there will always be a flower, the notes of a violin, the saddened voice of the so-called brothers who grief with you and defend you. Look, you are not a beast. Do not take your life. Freedom will never disappear from the face of the Earth."

I am once again inspired for the good fight, mainly because I recognize the struggle is not about me.

It is about freedom, for Cuban political prisoners, and for the rest of us, too.

Read all of Valladares' speech here.

And order a copy of his prison memoirs, "Against All Hope," here.

The Cuban health care myth crumbles

There is not sweeter indictment of the Cuban health care system than the fact that the Cubans had to call in a Spanish doctor to treat the decaying dictator.

But a close second might be the fate of the maternity ward at the Julio Trigo Hospital in Arroyo Naranjo, near Havana, which is shown in a recent photograph.

In May 1989, Castro said:

"Well, I think we have a magnificent hospital facility. It was finished a few weeks ago and has already started to render services, except the inauguration was delayed a little. That's fine though because we are still on time. I was saying that it is a magnificent hospital facility. I asked the public health investor: How does it compare with other maternity hospitals? He said to me: Undoubtedly, this is the best one in Cuba. This is logical because I think that every new thing we make should be better.... As with every one of these hospitals, there will be something that will be amended, there will be things that are perfected. Even though they are similar projects, there is no doubt that each one will be better than the other. Here, however, we have the best maternity-infant hospital in the country."

Almost 18 years later, the place has gone to the cows.

The Real Cuba, which gets the H/T, has more photos.