CubaNews notes from Los Angeles

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Marxism List readers will, I think and hope,
find much of interest in this edition of the
CubaNews list, including news of the
second long article in Cuba about George
Orwell, and also the news about LBGT
issues now being discussed in Cuba.
If any of you would be inclined, I'd be
very grateful if you would report this to
other lists on which you are active.

Thanks!


Walter
=============================
CubaNews notes from Los Angeles
by Walter Lippmann, August 24, 2003.
=============================

Today there are a large selection of remarkable new
material. In Iraq the resistance to occupation goes
up daily. In the United States support for the war is
down and support for the re-election of Bush is also
down. Indeed, it was so striking that even the Voice
of America reported the fall in Bush's popularity.
Bear with us today as there's a great deal of new
and unusual information.

>From Cuba, in addition to the daily news reports of
the island's struggle to meet peoples's needs under
blockaded conditions, we've got new written material
from the island. This material, including an essay on
George Orwell and his contemporary relevance is
of urgent interest to people in the United States.
This is the second recent article about Orwell to
appear in the Cuban media this year. You will
definitely want to read it. thoroughly.

The Bush administration is working overtime to
further curtail the democratic rights of our country
as so as to counter popular resistance to the war
drive as it develops. This make the George Orwell
material all the more of interest I believe.
====================================

SUITE HABANA - Interview with the director
A feature interview with the director of the great
new Cuban documentary SUITE HABANA,
Francisco Perez is now available. Perez has been
making movies in Cuba for over thirty years and
he has lots to tell about the film, his cinematic
conceptions, and how the picture got made.
====================================

GAY RIGHTS: Interview with Mariela Castro.
Cuba's long and difficult relationship with lesbian
gay, bisexual and transgendered people has now
become a topic for public discussion on the island.
We have an interview to share with you with the
head of Cuba's National Center for Sex Education,
Mariela Castro. She discusses the gains lesbians
and gays have made in recent years, but pointedly
acknowledges there's much further that needs to
be done to win full acceptance in today's Cuba.

She even says she believes the constitution of her
country should be amended to include sexual
orientation among along with race, gender and
so on as categories against which discrimination
should be outlawed. We have a translation of the
full text of her interview with Alma Mater, which is
the magazine of the University of Havana. Great
appreciation to Kenya Dworkin's ABC Language
Solutions for providing these translations for us.
====================================

LOS ZAFIROS: MUSIC FROM THE EDGE OF TIME
On Saturday I saw a beautiful documentary on the old
Cuban acapella group which has been traveling the
festival circuit. It's showing this week at the Laemmle
Fairfax 3 for one week. Distributors who want to have
their films receive Academy consideration must show
them for at least one week to obtain that. It's at once
sweet and sad. If you like Cuban music, particularly
of a certain type (if you don't know them, and if, like
myself, Spanish is NOT your first language, imagine
a Spanish-speaking, Latin-sounding music which is
reminiscent of The Platters and you'll get the idea)

You'll enjoy the music and the movie. Very little of a
political nature is shown in the film. The group which
became famous on the island during the late 1950s
through the early sixties, but which continued for a
considerable time afterwards, remains very popular
both on the island, where I first heard them, and in
Miami as well. The movie presents many clips from
the group singing as well as interviews with some
of the surviving musicians. the filmmakers brought
the two remaining singers together (one had left
Cuba in 1990 or 91) together for the film and they
talk, perform and cry together. There's even one
scene where they go to the cemetery in Havana
to bring a wreath, share memories and drink rum
out of a bottle. In one scene we see an interview
in which the artists were offered a bribe during a
tour of France if they would defect. They were
told they could write their own ticket, but they
chose not to do so. The one who did leave isn't
presented as defecting, simply leaving, and not
a single negative word is said about the island.
I found one review of the movie on the net which
will be going out with today's materials.

NEWS FROM THE ISLAND THIS WEEKEND
Paraguayan author Raul Bustos Road remains in
Cuba being feted and having his books published
and distributed there. Fidel Castro participated in
some of the events.

Fidel Castro has made his first public response to
Washington's announced upgrading of its attempts
to destabilize the island through Radio and TV Marti.
He says it won't work. So far the US hasn't been
able to reach the Cuban people with these things,
though anyone with a radio inside Cuba can, if they
put up a sufficient antenna, listen to US radio. I've
done it and anyone else can. It's apparent that the
Cuban government doesn't try to jam any of the
other broadcast signals which are able to reach the
country, only those trying to destabilize it.

Much more material is available on these and
other items from the Cuban media in the daily
summary from Radio Havana Cuba which Heikki
consistently posts to this list.

Cuban exile and former revolutionary leader,
then counter-revolutionary leader, and now
non-violent critic of the Cuban government
Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo has been interviewed
widely in the foreign media. His presence has
not been reported in the Cuban media as far
as I know. Today a major story on his actions
appears in the New York Daily news written by
Albor Ruiz. Since it's one of the largest circu-
lation dailies in the country, and since Ruiz
has long favored moves toward normalization
of relations with our Caribbean neighbor, his
column is very significant, in my opinion.
================================

A CUBAN LOOK AT INTERNATIONAL TRENDS
Trying to make sense of the international trends at
this time is no easy task. Looking at them in their
broad historical context can help. A new document
from Cuba will help do this. By Roberto Reglado
Alvarez of the International Relations Department
of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist
Party, and released just this week, the title of it is:
"Social and Political Aspects of the People's Struggles"
and we have it as a nine-page file at the CubaNews
FILES section, in the subfile on Cuban theoretical
statements. Some of it makes for tedious reading,
but take the time and you'll see it's worth the effort.

Two paragraphs from the end of the text:

"The incapacity of the bourgeois state to fulfill basic
functions of domination and subordination of social
classes causes the sharpening of the political,
economic, social and moral crisis of the capitalist
system of production on the global scale and, with
greater intensity, in regions of the so-called Third
World like Latin America. It is a matter of the
creation of objective conditions for the revolutionary
transformation of society, which go beyond the
present level of consciousness, organization,
mobilization and political struggle of the left.
This leads to the situation where, for the moment,
all that popular transforming energy pours out into
social explosions lacking leadership and political
orientation, whose outcome, in general, is the
recycling of the neo-liberal system of domination itself.

"What impedes the unity of the popular block,
organized as a flourishing and solid network of
left parties and social movements, as much on
the national as regional and universal scale,
capable of bringing about the revolutionary
transformation of society, is the pernicious effect
of the penetration of imperialist ideology in its
sweetened versions of the "third way," within the
left political parties as well as the social movements.
This is the reason for the rejection by the most
radical sections of the popular movement of the
political trends of the "possiblist" left, and visa
versa. It is also the reason for the European
social democratic parties' fears of the "social
movements" interacting with and being
"contaminated" by the political parties of the left."

The full text will be sent in e-mail, but  it can be a
lot easier on the eye to print out and read offline.
Must be my getting-older eyes...

Take the full document from FILES section here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/files/
=====================================

GUANTANAMO BEING UPGRADED
The US Naval Base which has become the US
prison camp and may become the US execution
chamber at Guantanamo, on what we might as
well refer to as the "occupied territory of Cuba"
is being fortified. Washington is digging in and
planning to remain at that base where it has
held numerous prisoners, some of whom are
children, for going on two years now.
===================================

NEWS FROM INSIDE THE UNITED STATES
US companies and some states continue taking
steps toward establishing and expanding trade
relationships with Cuba. We have reports on
some of these which continue regularly.
====================================

CUBAN ATHLETES DECIDING TO STAY
Three Cuban athletes who attended events in
Anaheim, California have decided to remain in
the United States and not return to Cuba. They
have issued statements about what they say is
political repression in Cuba. The most detailed
report on this appears in today's edition of LA
OPINION, the Spanish-language daily here in
Los Angeles. It's worth looking at.

Cubans who wish to leave the island know
that they can easily be admitted into the US
and are quickly accepted if they claim they
face political persecution on returning to the
island. If that doesn't work, the big privileges
granted all from the island under the 1966
Cuban Adjustment Act may provide the way
in. Citizens from no other country on earth
have this kind of special privilege. The one
longest article we have on this is in Spanish.
===============================

FROM THE WORLD OF THE CUBAN EXILES
In the United States, the wealthy rightwing minority
of the Cuban exile community is on the march now,
feeling a touch of wind in their sails, and showing at
the same time virtually no gratitude to George W.
Bush for his latest anti-Cuba measure. They are
continue to complain and to escalate the rhetoric
through which they hope to pressure the US in the
end to invade the island. That's the logic of all their
pronouncements. Many of them live, and are trying
or encouraged to live in an insular world. Many of
the oldest have lived in the US for decades and
not bothered to learn the local language, dreaming
as many do of returning to the island one day.

Father time is taking its toll on these people which
is one reason why I've been sharing some of their
obituaries with you. These people have begun to
speak of "the biological solution" when referring to
the fact that Fidel Castro, now 77, looks like he'll
die peacefully in his bed. The exiles would prefer
a more dramatic outcome, but they're not getting
their wish. However, the grim reaper remains on
the job anyway, coming to pick up those whose
time has finally arrived. I also find it interesting to
see how they've lived, and how they've been
described and promoted in the pages of the
Miami Herald and so on.

It's long been said that the Miami exiles live in a
virtual world, a dream world in which they fantasize
about the Cuba they never knew, or wish had once
existed, and which they dream to recreate one day
if they get their wishes to return. These people trade
on the hopes, dreams and nostalgia of the old and
the ignorance of the new. Miami is filled with various
schemes to trade on these fantasies, from cookbooks
to mementos of all sorts. A Miami Herald article from
today's paper exemplifies this rarified world.
===================================

IN VENEZUELA THE STRUGGLE DEEPENS
In Venezuela the supporters of President Chavez
and his Bolivarian Revolutionary project held a giant
mobilization Saturday. While we sent out one good
article yesterday reporting 500,000 attendance, it's
possible many more came out, according to one
report on VHeadline.com which includes lots of
great photos from the protest. They say that the
rightist media tried to say that far fewer, in one
case as few as 15,000, actually came out. Check
out the photographs at VHeadline.com's website:
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=10538

The Venezuelans who are trying to recall President
Chavez are the same kinds of people who are also
behind the recall campaign in California. Here in my
home state of California, Bill Simon, one of the many
rightist millionaires who supported the recall dropped
out of the race over the weekend. While he didn't
endorse Schwarzenegger, his departure helps to
smooth the way for the right to coalesce around one
big campaign. Already the media have begun to say
the race is narrowing down to between Schwarze-
negger and the current Lieutenant Governor Cruz
Bustamente. One of Bustamente's biggest backers
is Democratic Presidential aspirant Joe Lieberman.
He's one of the Democrats trying to take advantage
of the disarray among the rightist Cuban exiles by
campaigning against George, FROM THE RIGHT.
====================================

There is much more than what is suggested here
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==================================

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