Eduardo Gonzalez Loumiet

July 16, 2010

By RICARDO GONZÁLEZ ALFONSO

Madrid

I NEVER imagined I would be born at the age of 60, at an altitude of several thousand feet above the Atlantic. That isn’t gibberish; it’s what I felt when I was released from jail in Cuba and exiled to Spain last Monday.

My debut as a prisoner of conscience came early in 2003, a period subsequently characterized by the world’s press as the Black Spring. I was just one of 75 Cubans imprisoned for our belief that freedom is an achievable miracle and not a crime against the state.

They say prison is a school, and it’s true. I did my best to be a good student and kept back my tears. I succeeded so well that my prison companions still think me a brave man.

Within a few months I could find my way pretty well around the labyrinths of shipwrecked souls. I learned the secrets and legends of killers for hire, crimes of passion, traffickers in illicit powdery substances, would-be emigrants whose clandestine departures had been no secret to the state — even thieves who’d share their teaspoon of sugar on days of hunger.

Zoology was one class we had every day. I learned to live with rats, and even came, on certain nights of our tropical winter (which is winter, nevertheless) to stare at them with an urgency not unlike what people call appetite. I was a solitary friend to the deft spiders that sometimes freed me from the torturous buzzings and blood-shedding bites that accompanied my insomnia.

I became well versed in cosmic solitude and silence. I remember being in a cell no wider than a man with outstretched arms. I also grew familiar with fetid overcrowding and unceasing clamor. Months of unending darkness, months of eternal light.

I was only an auditor in certain courses, in which I learned that some prisoners were specializing in self-injury as a crude solution to their despair. I was witness to mutilated hands and other wounds as mortal or venial as sins. A man cut off his own penis and testicles in a desperate attempt to become a woman. Others, more radical and exhausted by perpetual existential tumult, turned to various methods of suicide, all of them extremely effective.

A large part of the program of study consisted in the defense of one’s rights. There was no theoretical option, only the very Cuban practice of the hunger strike. I carried one out for 16 days, until part of my will felt satisfied with my victory. That long and voluntary fast vindicated the enforced daily fast of imprisonment.

As in any school, there were periods of leisure. Packs of cigarettes were wagered on the outcome of chess matches, card games or soccer contests. I knew sellers and buyers of recreational drugs who were very good at evading or bribing both prison guards and informer inmates.

There was no lack of expertise in armed aggression. Pitiful, decaying knives that were nevertheless sharp-edged and skillfully wielded left trails of blood and rage behind them. (But I never signed up for that class.)

I’ve always had an aptitude for subjects that have to do with dreams, and I dreamed of my wife and children with such fervor that I know they felt my caresses as they lay asleep.

I was almost an exemplary student, and received only one failing grade: in hatred. Despite certain zones of memory, I bear no rancor against my jailers.

And now, after this senescent birth of mine, I’m contemplating the future with all the hope of the newly unveiled. Ever the optimist, I even dream of returning to a Cuba where freedom is not an impossible illusion. I know that, in the next 60 years, I won’t have to be reborn again.

Ricardo González Alfonso is a journalist. This article was translated by Esther Allen from the Spanish.

Government realizes that 1-in-5 workers may not actually be needed

Franklin Reyes / AP

Facing a severe budget deficit, Cuba’s government has hinted at restructuring or trimming its bloated work force. Such talk is causing tension.

by ANNE-MARIE GARCIA

updated 7/18/2010 5:04:51 PM ET

HAVANA — At a state project to refurbish a decaying building in Old Havana, one worker paints a wall white while two others watch. A fourth sleeps in a wheelbarrow positioned in a sliver of shade nearby and two more smoke and chat on the curb.

President Raul Castro has startled the nation lately by saying about one in five Cuban workers may be redundant. At the work site on Obispo street, those numbers run in reverse.

It’s a common sight in communist Cuba. Here, nearly everyone works for the state and official unemployment is minuscule, but pay is so low that Cubans like to joke that "the state pretends to pay us and we pretend to work."

Now, facing a severe budget deficit, the government has hinted at restructuring or trimming its bloated work force. Such talk is causing tension, however, in a country where guaranteed employment was a building block of the 1959 revolution that swept Fidel Castro to power.

Details are sketchy on how and when such pruning would take place. Still, acknowledgment that cuts are needed has come from Raul Castro himself.

"We know that there are hundreds of thousands of unnecessary workers on the budget and labor books, and some analysts calculate that the excess of jobs has surpassed 1 million," said Castro, who replaced his ailing brother Fidel as president nearly four years ago. Cuba’s work force totals 5.1 million, in a population of 11.2 million.

In his nationally televised speech in April, Castro also had harsh words for those who do little to deserve their salaries.

"Without people feeling the need to work to make a living, sheltered by state regulations that are excessively paternalistic and irrational, we will never stimulate a love for work," he said.

Indeed, the process of labor reform may already have started, albeit slowly.

Workers in the tourism sector say some of their colleagues have been furloughed during the lean summer months, while others have been reassigned to jobs on state-run farms.

"Since we are now in the low season, the hotel where I work has sent many workers home for two or three months," said Orlando, a chef in Varadero, a sand-and-surf enclave east of Havana.

"It’s very hard because you’re left with no salary at all," said Orlando, who like almost all state employees, didn’t want his full name used to prevent problems at work. He added, "I’m lucky since I’m still in my job."

Veronica, a receptionist at another Varadero hotel, said she feared she may be sent home in August, when her resort will be only half-occupied.

"Sometimes they offer alternatives, to study in a particular course or another job," she said, "but sometimes, when (workers) are sent into the agricultural sector for instance, they just quit."

With the government giving no details of its thinking, rumors have spread that as many as a fourth of all government workers in some industries could lose their jobs or be moved to farming or construction. But Labor Minister Margarita Gonzalez has promised that "Cuba will not employ massive firings in a manner similar to neoliberal cutbacks," using "neoliberal" as a description of free-market policies.

The government has moved to embrace some small free-market reforms. It handed some barbershops over to employees, allowing them to set their own prices but making them pay rent and buy their own supplies. Authorities have also approved more licenses for private taxis while getting tough on unlicensed ones.

The global financial crisis, and the $10 billion in damage inflicted by three hurricanes in 2008, have forced authorities to run a deficit of 5 percent of GDP, leaving them unable to pay back credits received from China and elsewhere.

Cuba slashed spending on importing food and other basics by 34 percent to $9.6 billion in 2009, from $12.7 billion the previous year. But so far, the moves have not been enough to rein in the deficit.

Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a Cuba economics expert and professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, said Cuban officials have spent months debating cuts in the labor force and economic reforms. He said they know what’s needed, but face "a problem of political viability."

Various government perks like cars, gas, uniforms and office supplies have become incentives to bloat the payroll, since they are based on the size of a company’s work force.

But low pay means low productivity. On Obispo street, a state-run cafeteria sells heavily subsidized soft ice cream and pork sandwiches for the equivalent of a few American pennies — meaning wages and tips are so tiny that the staff is completely indifferent toward customers.

Three waiters sit at the counter cracking jokes. A fourth is the only one working, making coffee for three tables. Nearby, a cashier stares into space, a cook flirts with a scantily clad teen and a supervisor sits idly by.

The state employs 95 percent of the official work force. Unemployment last year was 1.7 percent and hasn’t risen above 3 percent in eight years — but that ignores thousands of Cubans who aren’t looking for jobs that pay monthly salaries worth only $20 a month on average.

Salvador Valdes Mesa, secretary-general of the nearly 3 million-strong Cuban Workers Confederation — the only Cuban labor union allowed — has instead written that "reorganization" will ensure redundant workers are reassigned rather than fired.

He said the government wants more jobs in construction and agriculture.

Still, 35-year-old computer engineer Norberto fears for his job. He thinks it’s unfair to keep workers under communist domination and yet call them unmotivated. "I didn’t graduate from college to now work as a day laborer or a peasant, he said.

If he loses his job and gets an offer to work abroad, he said, "my question is ‘Will the Cuban authorities put aside their paternalism and let me leave?’"

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

As most of you know, I attended LISTA’s 2010 Legislative Forum in June. Below are a few pictures and notes from the successful event.

With Jose Marquez, LISTA National President

We had the honor to attend a meeting with the White House focusing on Broadband, Health IT, and Employment. Below is the agenda:

Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart receiving an award from LISTA National President, Jose Marquez:

The event focused on several topics but this year there was a special emphasis on Health IT. I had the privilege to moderate a panel on the topic, which included these speakers:

• Dr. José Enrique Piovanetti, CMIO, CIO, Puerto Rico Department of Health
• Alex Bello, Consultant for Electronic Health Information Systems, LLC.
• Erik Pupo, Health Interoperability Architect, ONC, Vangent Inc.

Also, LISTA launched the National Latino Health IT Alliance project and web site: http://www.latinohit.org/ . I am honored to be a member of the Board Advisors and will dedicate time and resources to supporting this cause.

Below is an excerpt from the panel:

As you can see from the picture below, LISTA’s Legislative Forum was sponsored by amazing companies, including Uber Operations.

FCC Chairman Genachowski  sharing a few words with the LISTA members:

LETTERS – July 7, 201

Reconsidering the Ban on American Travel to Cuba

Mary Anastasia O’Grady is right ("Why Lift the Travel Ban to Cuba Now?," Americas, June 28) that some argue that American tourists will bring greater freedom to Cubans. I was the chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana from 2002 to 2005. I spent most of my foreign service career in Latin America and continue to keep abreast of Cuban developments.

If dictators like the Castros thought they could not control tourism, they wouldn’t allow tourists in. The tourists need visas, are screened against a huge state security database and are monitored and often video-taped while on the island. If they misbehave they are expelled or never allowed in again; or worse, as with Alan Gross who has been in the hands of Cuban political police since December 5, could be arbitrarily held in prison for a long time. Mr. Gross’s crime: giving a laptop computer to a Cuban.

The cases of South Africa and Burma are instructive. The tourist ban did play a key role in convincing the apartheid regime that its practices were held in world contempt. Today Burma’s opposition leader, under house arrest, asks the world not to travel as tourists to her country.

Tourism and trade have not brought down a totalitarian regime in history. In Eastern Europe, communism collapsed a decade after tourism peaked. No study of Eastern Europe or the USSR alleges that tourism, investment or trade had anything to do with the end of communism.

Critics argue Americans are different from other tourists. This implies that we have some magic democratic pixie dust that will rub off on foreigners and that our bathing-suited guests have some unusual burning desire to teach democracy while on vacation. If tourism were a catalyst for democracy it would be the polyglot Europeans who would have a better chance at engaging Cubans. There is no evidence of any liberalizing impact of their stays or imprint of their footprints on the regime’s behavior. Instead, their expenditures strengthen the security apparatus because the Cuban military owns the hotels they stay in and gets first crack at the cash flow.

Almost all tourists to Cuba stay in four- or five-star hotels. Sixty-seven percent of the 103 hotels catering to foreign tourists are located predominantly in isolated areas where ordinary Cubans are denied access.

Those who favor American tourism to the island are entitled to their views. But the policy debate should include a greater respect for the facts.

James Cason

Coral Gables, Fla.

Ambassador Cason is honorary president of the Center for a Free Cuba.

Presentation Zen, by Garr Reynolds, is a must read if you are a presenter or create presentation slides. Garr has a knack of you his own recommendations on images, layouts, and structure in his book. Its an easy read and can be used as reference when designing a slide deck.

I had my copy of Presentation Zen near me while I was working on a slide deck (PowerPoint) for a web-conference today.

Actual slides from today’s presentation below. The presentation was actually conducted using LiveMeeting, which posed a few challenges but I believe I was able to share our story effectively.

I was first introduced to Garr Reynolds by a friend when he shared this video with me.

buy the book here