'An Indelible Mark' - The Dr. Alberto Jones Reader

Unforeseen circumstances, Unending possibilities

2013-10-10T07:34:00.001-04:00

Ten years ago this spring, while visiting my alma mater, i met Dr. Alberto Jones. This online journal is not about that first encounter (that was chronicled in an essay i wrote some years ago). This journal is not mine. It has been created, after more than a few conversations with him, to collect - in one place - the many important perspectives and testimonials given to us by Alberto. Thus, this journal is not his; it is humanity's. More specifically, this journal is dedicated and devoted to the countless number of Cuban and other West Indian people who lack not in dignity but do lack a voice to convey their needs with dignity and conviction.

With time, i hope to post as many of Alberto's writings as possible into this place that is - like Alberto - humble and brave, human and unselfish, honest and compassionate.

Un abrazo fuerte pa' todo,
hassan

1912: Breaking the Silence

2011-10-31T14:24:00.001-04:00

"1912, Breaking the Silence"

Alberto N. Jones

Braving a heavy downpour on Friday October 14, 2011, over fifty diplomats from Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti, Saint Lucia, Bahamas, Congo, Nicaragua and Bolivia; historians and a handful of especially invited guests were shaken and brought to tears, during the premier of the second chapter of the documentary 1912, Breaking the Silence, at the beautifully restored Casa del Alba in Havana.

This powerful documentary was built and supported by the input and analysis of many of Cuba’s most respected historians, researchers, sociologists, educators and a wealth of never before seen documents, pictures, newspapers clippings, first class images and a moving musical background.

Like most families or nations with an ugly story, some members of society may choose to believe this event never happened, others may wish it will be forgotten and die, while others may try to keep it hidden under the rug or shoot the messenger.

For nearly 100 years, most of Cuba’s history books dedicated two paragraphs or less to describe derogatorily what was known as "Blacks Little War," which was caused by racist, separatist black troublemakers, who revolted against a democratically elected government, forcing it to restore law and order in the country.

The root cause of this heinous crime in which it is alleged 3,000 men, women and children were massacred, the witch hunt that followed, the long lasting fear that was instilled in blacks and mixed raced Cubans through beatings, lynching and murders to conform or else, was never a subject matter of any history department or the media, always ready to denounce similar crimes committed elsewhere.

This is how director and producer Gloria Rolando have single handedly, made a monumental contribution to Cuba’s historiography, with an honest attempt to help us set our record straight, a plea for justice for the victims and a unique opportunity for our country to begin the healing process without which Cuba will never become the beacon of justice and social equality it must be.

'El Doce: Remembering Cuba's Hidden Genocide'

2011-10-10T06:00:00.000-04:00

In a little bit more than six months, we will arrive at the 100th anniversary of El Doce, the genocidal massacre of thousands of Afro-Cubans. In preparation for this, Dr. Jones is embarking on a process of preparation which will include but is not limited to press interviews, speaking engagements, et cetera.

To assist in his effort, i am reposting here on his blog a piece i have shared in different venues over the past 11 years. It was Dr. Jones that first brought El Doce to my attention and it is fitting that i share - again - what i wrote about it here with his writings.

Please stay tuned for additional information as Spring 2012 approaches.

- hassan

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Six years ago, I first attempted to bring to the web a story known by some, unknown to more, ignored by many, and hidden by too many: El Doce.

El Doce is the tragic story of the racist massacre that killed thousands of Black Cubans across the entire country of Cuba in late spring and early summer of 1912.

My initial attempt to play a part in bringing to light yet another example of vicious genocide was on meacfans.com in May 2000. Two years (and many Black History Month emails later), I was
fortunate enough to have The Miami Times agree to publish the story in a three part series that was very well-received by people in Miami eager to get another side of the Cuban story.

The overwhelming majority of the material I have referenced during my research comes from two very good books that I encourage readers to look into when some allows for some deep and
informative historical reading.

The first book is Our Rightful Share: the AfroCuban Struggle for Equality, 1886 - 1912 by Aline Helg who was a professor at the University of Texas and now resides in Switzerland. This
book was highly recommended to me and I can see why. It was not easy finding Our Rightful Share but, once I did locate it, it was well worth the efforts. This book is well-written and extremely illuminating.

The other book is El Negro en Cuba (or The Black Man in Cuba) by Tomás Fernández Robaina. Please note that the only copy of this book that I have been able to find is in Spanish.

I was also very blessed to have discovered during my research a wonderful website that I still refer to frequently: afrocubaweb.com. This extraordinary website has been invaluable as it has rare photographs related to El Doce - including most of the images contained on this page - as well as information about a film made by Cuban film maker Gloria Rolando about this massacre,Raices de Mi Corazon (Roots of My Heart).

I used a third book - a doctoral dissertation found in an obscure corner of the University of Miami's library but only sparingly.

Please note that what follows is not meant to be a formal academic discourse hence I beg the pardon of my friends in academia who may bristle at the lack of a formal methodology in this essay.

October, 1868 set into motion what became the definitive and defiant anomaly of the Victorian Age. While Europe and the United States were putting the macabre and sadistic tenets of social Darwinism (the "scientific paradigm" that was in vogue at that time among learned and civilized men of culture - read that to mean white men – which spoke so self-righteously of superior races and inferior races designed to justify modern colonialism) into brutal and avaricious practice in Africa and Asia andwestern North America, Cuban revolutionaries set out to drive Spain (the originator of the various modus operandi of modern colonialism) into the Caribbean Sea.

There were no more master and slave - only citizens. To be racist was to be unpatriotic - a traitor to the homeland. Black, white, Cantonese, and mixed-race Cubans rose in righteous rebellion against the Spanish crown and all of the oppressive and dysfunctional institutions it so callously imposed upon Cuba. As was said during the thirty-year struggle for independence, the blood of both white and black patriots spilled on the field of battle fighting for Cuba intermingled to fertilize the soil of freedom.
To have a revolutionary ideology (that at times manifested itself almost as a radical theology) which not only spoke and wrote of the brotherhood of all humans but also acted upon it (over 70% of the officer corps of the Army of Independence was "of color") was something that ran in the face of all that was reassuring to Euro-centric concentrations of political, economic, social, and military power. url link
Many AfroCubans fought valiently for the cause of Cuban Independence from Spain. When I write that "many AfroCubans" rushed to join the ranks of the Cuban Liberation Army (in numbers that were - in many instances - much larger in proportion than white Cubans), I mean that women and children often fought too.

The Republic of Cuba was "born" on 20 May, 1902 but only after Cuba's "leaders" agreed to make its sovereignty conditional to the impermanent approval of the United States government.

Almost from the outset, AfroCubans realized that many whites were intent on taking all of the spoils that so many Black Cubans had fought so valiantly for during the War of Independence.

Basically, three things kept AfroCubans - many of whom were veterans of the War of Independence) oppressed and frustrated:

racist, Jim Crow policies advocated and encouraged by the United States while the U.S. was occupying Cuba
racist and corrupt white Cubans that were in positions of power at virtually every level of government and business
Spanish and other European immigrants that were encouraged to settle in Cuba as per attempts to "bleach" the island.

Suffrage for Black males was not a problem in Cuba then as it was in the United States at the same time however getting decent jobs and admittance into organized labor was. For example, Quintín Banderas, one of the most famous of Black generals for Cuban independence, could not even get a job as a janitor after the war.

Banderas

With regards to the vote that Black men had in Cuba, it was not long before they realized what still so many African-Americans in the United States have yet to realize: the "big" political parties are not going to truly look out for the best interest of both Black and white party members.

Thus, on 7 August, 1908, Evaristo Estenoz and Gregorio Surín started El Partido Independiente de Color (P.I.C. or the Independent Party of Color). Remember that, at this time, the NAACP had not even been started in the United States.

The PIC was the first all-Black political party in this hemisphere.

The PIC's platform was simple and straightforward:

allow for better job opportunities for Black Cubans
end to the ban on Black immigrants
serve as a unified voice for Black Cubans.

"I am a black dot, one out of the anonymous mass of my race, who longs for the claim of my people through our own effort, through the compact union and solidarity of our family."

- a letter to Previsión, the main publication the PIC (from Our Rightful Share)

At the time, AfroCubans comprised about a third of the Cuban population at the time (this was due to disportionate casualty rates for Black during the War of Independence and the aggressive importation of white immigrants from Europe). However, if whites were split between the liberal and conservative parties modeled on the United States' two party system and Black Cubans, who were viewed as a wing vote to patronize during campaigns, were to vote as a bloc the political power of Blacks in Cuba would likely be a major force in elections and policy-making.

This basically, was the first time anything like this was seriousl proposed since Haiti. This is important to note because the "spectre" of Haiti loomed ominously over Spanish and Cuban whites for a century and most of their policies towards Cuba's Blacks were reflective of it.

The immediate reaction of whites was to denounce the PIC as being racist. Yet, they failed to realize (or acknowledge) that the PIC was borne not out of AfroCuban racism but as a direct result of white Cubans ignoring the ideals of Cuban racial harmony stressed by many and perhaps most famously by José Martí.

The PIC was formed during the second U.S. occupation of Cuba (the American provisional governor at the time of the second occupation was then-Secretary of War and future President William Taft). The following year Martin Morúa Delgado, a conservative Cuban of color, is elected Speaker in Cuba's Senate. The year after that, Morúa introduces legislation that becomes known as the Morúa Amendment and it outlaws the PIC because is based on race and, according to the bill's supporters, racism did not exist in Cuba anymore.

Interesting to note that, just before the vote was taken to enact this bill into law, Estenoz and other PIC leaders were imprisoned and were kept in jail until after the law was passed.

Estonez

Shortly after Estenoz was jailed, Morúa himself died. He was given a full state honors, no doubt to demonstrate to Black Cubans the benefits of supporting the status quo versus trying to rehabilitate it.

"Everybody has seen the succes achieved by our party [the PIC] in all the republic and [our] last brilliant tour of Oriente, and everybody could evaluate the electoral victory awaiting us. In order to oppose it, they have resorted to the bad means of depicting us as 'cannibals of whites'."
- Evaristo Estenoz, "La Discusión" (from Our Rightful Share)

A continuation and escalation of repression of Blacks that began during the first administration of Cuba's first president, Tomás Estrada Palma was one reaction to the formation of the PIC. Among the tactics employed was ignoring the blatant portrayal of AfroCubans in negative lights in the Cuban press as well as attempts to stamp out any evidence of African culture and heritage including trying to do away with the Abakúa brotherhood. This was done in much the same fashion by which Spain outlawed Freemasonry in Cuba in 1895 (many respected leaders in the Independence movement such as Antonio Maceo and Martí were Masons).

By spring of 1912, the inevitable decision to protest this repression had arrived.

On 20 May, 1912, PIC party members - many of whom were veterans of the War of Independence - assembled in protest in Oriente Province. A statement was made via an interview the following day that the movement was not racist - it sought only to redress the grievances of PIC.

American government officials, upon hearing of the protest, sent 700 servicemen and 2 warships from Philadelphia on 23 May.

Also on that day, a Cuban government official sent off a telegraph to The New York Timesstating the majority of the Cuban people were on the side of the government. Debate on the "insurrection" began in the Cuban House of Representatives and a Spaniard was captured by government forces claiming that he was forcibly conscripted by the "rebels of the PIC."

The Cuban Legation in Washington, D.C. received an urgent telegraph stating that the government is in complete control of the situation.

Volunteers to help existing Cuban government forces fight against PIC came forward en masse.

The Government declared its intention not to negotiate with PIC. The Cabinet authorized the use of whatever recourse is necessary to crush the "rebellion. " On 25 May, Cuban coast guard boat El Hatuey was sent to Oriente Province with a caché of arms and other war materiel.

The Cuban government was then informed that Washington had ordered two battleships in the area to rendezevous at Key West for the possibility of engagement. The following day, Cuban President José Miguel Goméz cabled Washington asking them to please refrain from intervening for the sake of Cuba's natural sovereign rights.

On 27 May, Cuban Army General Monteagudo was dispatched to Oriente.

U.S. President Taft replied to Goméz by stating that he understood concerns for Cuban sovereignty and then proceeded to explain the rationale behind the movement of American military forces.

A newspaper in London stated that the British opinion of the events was that the U.S. would annex Cuba outright.

On 5 June, constitutional guarantees were suspended in Oriente as martial law was declared. A war credit of a million pesos was granted to the Cuban army and 450 American servicemen arrived in Cuba. A day later, Goméz called for a national struggle against "rebels."

The following is taken from Aline Helg's Our Rightful Share:

By May 1912, there was still no sign that the independientes would be allowed to participate in the November elections.
By showing their willingness to resort to armed protest, [so as to compel the Cuban congress to repeal the "Morua Amendment" outlawing PIC] however, the independientes prompted an outbrust of racism that swept the entire country. Although the independientes actually demonstrated only in Oriente, white repression was nationwide, indiscriminate, and unopposed.
..the government rallied immediate cross-party support for a policy of merciless repression; throughout the island, thousands of whites organized themselves into local "self-defense" militias and volunteered to go fight in Oriente.
The US government dispatched Marines to protect US lives and properties.
In the face of President Gómez' inflexibility and the army's increasing antiblack violence, on 31 May and 1 June the independientes performed limited sabotage and burned some buildings. Instantly magnified, this act provoked a new escalation of repression of AfroCubans in the provinces of Havana, Santa Clara, and elsewhere. Moreover, it justified the suspension of constitutional guarantees on 5 June in Oriente, where the bloodiest violence took place.
Thousands of AfroCubans, including Evaristo Estenoz, Pedro Ivonnet, and hundreds of other independientes, were killed by the Cuban army and voluntarios. This massacre achieved what Morúa's amendment and the trial against the party in 1910 had been unable to do: it put a definitive end to the Partido Independiente de Color and made it clear to all AfroCubans that any further attempt to challenge the social order would be crushed with bloodshed.
Journalists had a predilection for reporting false rumors of rapes of white women. In a population in which the ideals of virginity and pureza de sangre ["pure blood"] still ran high and in which white men continued to outnumber white women, the image of Blacks raping white women fit in with the overall representation of race war. The idea had been so deeply rooted in white Cuban culture since the time of slavery that it did not need the support of evidence.
"The Uprising of the Black Independents
Alarms and Rumors Everywhere - The Official Version"
Moreover, newspapers claimed that the real leader of the movement was not Estenoz or Ivonnet but, rather, Eugenio Lacoste, "the Wizard of Guantánamo." The son of a Haitian immigrant, light-skinned, and educated in oriental French schools, Lacoste had been struck down by paralysis at the age of twenty-one and since then had been confined to a wheel chair. In 1912, he was a fifty-one year old coffee grower and the head of the PIC in Guantánamo; he was rumored to dominate his "fanatical" followers by spritualism and brujería [witchcraft]. This explanation allowed commentators to enhance the image of the Black brujo with that of the Haitian voodoo priest [bokor].
The racialization of the independiente movement and the ensuing mobilization of whites against Blacks rendered the Cuban myth of racial equality ideologically useless.
[One Cuban newspaper] advocated that Cuba should emulate the United States in matter of race relations. In that country, an editorialist noted, there were ten million Blacks, but they did not rebel. Why? Because U.S. whites, unlike Cuban whites, mistreated Blacks: they burned them alive, they lynched them, they kept them completely segregated, and they did not let them vote. He concluded: "Objective lessons are terrible: Dominated races do submit."
[Prior to May 1912] whites were ready to interpret any movement of Blacks as an uprising.
Local rumors...were propogated at the national level by mainstream newspapers, which gave the impression that the supposed race war raged not only in Oriente but everywhere on the island. Fears rose nationwide. In the province of Havana, though no protest group had been observed, the alarm ran high. Black seasonal workers journeying home at the end of the zafra [sugar cane harvest] were the subjects of numerous rumors about attempted Black uprisings.
The independiente leaders were well informed about the chasm between newspaper descriptions of the alleged race war and the reality of thier armed protest. On several occasions, the formally denied to Cuban journalists and to U.S. officials that they had launched a war against whites: their aim was simply to obtain a repeal of Morúa's amendment, Estenoz and Ivonnet declared to El Cubano Libre's correspondent. In addition, they asserted that their followers would not commit rapes, and that if rapes did take place, the culprits would be executed.
The orgy of murder that ensued was unilateral.
...Repression preceded Independiente actions.
Frustrated at not having the chance to fight rebels ["rebels" refers to independientes who did not surrender to the army - Ivonnet did and he was shot in the back, "trying to escape"], Cuban officers began to attack peaceful peasants [guajiros] indiscriminately in order to show military activity. One particularly bloody incident was the artillery campaign that Gen. Carlos Mendieta conducted in the area of La Maya. On 31 May, Mendieta invited journalists to witness the efficiency of the army's new machine guns against an alleged encampment of rebels in Hatillo. His forces then simulated a battle. As a result, 150 peaceful AfroCuban peasants, among them women and children, were killed or wounded. Entire families were machine-gunned in their bohíos. According to one witness, the cries of the wounded resonated in the distance, and for days vultures circled over the area, attracted by the corpses.
...Whites were permitted to carry arms without license.
Government forces suspected the entire AfroCuban population of collaborating with the rebels. Blacks and mulattoes found in the fields were considered rebels, unarmed peasants were believed to have hidden their guns, and all were treated without mercy. Military rule facilitated both arrests withouth evidence and executions for alleged attempts to escape. The requirement that individuals have military passes to enter and leave cities considerably restrained AfroCubans' movements: "No suspects or culprits are able to ask for passes," one journalist reported, "because they are well aware that such boldness would surely cost them their lives...."
Mass killings multiplied after the suspension of the constitutional guarantees. The bodies of hanged men began to appear in close proximity to towns....
By 10 June, it was public knowledge that those shot or hanged were seldom rebels. According to the U.S. Consul in Santiago de Cuba, "many innocent and defenseless Negroe in the country are being butchered." Bohíos were set on fire, and peasant families trying to run away were hunted down and shot. Alleged rebels who surrendered or were taken prisoner were often killed, and their bodies were often multilated.
The British consulate at Santiago reported that whites would come into town with a packet of Negroes' ears cut off prisoners who had been shot.
...Commander of the Cuban Army General Monteagudo carried out such "carnage in the hills" that "it was impossible to estimate the number of dead."
Estonez was shot at point-blank range, together with fifty men.... His body, covered with flies, was displayed in Santiago de Cuba before being buried in a common grave....
...The exact balance of the racist massacre of 1912 will never be known. Official Cuban sources put the number of dead rebels [no mention of innocent "civilians" murdered] at more than 2,000. U.S. citizens living in Oriente estimated it at 5,000 to 6,000. Guillermo Lara, an indepiente fighting with Estonez, spoke of 5,000 dead. In contrast, the official figure for the total dead in the armed forces was sixteen, including eight AfroCubans murdered by their white mates and some men shot by friendly fire.
In all likelihood, Estonez and Ivonnet never expected the racist outcry that followed the launching for their armed protest. Several sources even indicate that the independientes had made an argreement with President Gómez.

The deal that appears to have been was that the PIC would protest, Gómez would use the "threat" for leverage to compel Congress to repeal the Morúa amendment and he would get credit for "saving the day." In turn, the PIC would support the president and his candidates in November. This was not a big secret to the point where even the French ambassador was aware of it and the British consulate in Santiago had noticed that, as some independientes were being arrested, the leaders of the PIC, Estonez and Ivonnet, walked about undisturbed by authorities without having to "hide."

However, it appears that the president was selling worthless tickets of deceit to PIC as evidenced by the following from Our Rightful Share:

Mainstream white Cuban reaction to the 1910 ... repression of the PIC ... had shown [that Gómez had more to gain from just the opposite of what he promised to the PIC].
On this basis, a more Machiavellian version of the thesis of an independiente agreement with Gómez cannot be excluded: that President Gómez hoped to be reelected in November 1912 not through independientes' support but through a broad white support - transcending party allegiance - gained in the
military repression of an independiente armed protest he himself would've induced.

Since I first attempted to tell this story in 2000 it has become known to some as the "Cuban Rosewood." Because the telling of this story involved forces much more complex and deep-seeded than what one would expect, there is no way that this journal entry could ever fully tell the story. If anything, it is my sincere hope that this will motivate the reader to seek out additional truthes not only about this tragedy (I strongly recommend purchasing copies of Ms. Helg's important historical testimony, Our Rightful Share) but also other tragic stories such as Tulsa and its Black Wall Street, Rwanda, Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, the eviction and liquidation of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, and so many others (if you dont know about Ida B. Wells, do learn about her - soon!).

The presence of a Black dot on the psuedowhiteness of our sociopolitical floor was cleverly used to delude the Black masses into believing that they were respected and taken into account.
-Alberto Arredondo, El Negro en Cuba

* * * * * * * * *

**Other helpful sources:

La Jiribilla
Cuban history website
Diaspora Studies at NWU
Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, & Revolution, 1868 - 1898 por Ada Ferrer

The Birth and Death of a Fake Man-Made Feud

2011-06-20T22:28:00.000-04:00

"The birth and death of a fake man-made feud"
Alberto N. Jones
June 20, 2011

In 1999, it became evident that the United States through its Cuban-American surrogates in south Florida, was introducing a new strategy in their efforts to undermine the Cuban government.

Having identified a substantial demographic shift in favor of Afro-Cubans in the early 90’s, a growing economical crisis following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the existence of only a nominal amount of Afro-Cubans living abroad able to help family members with remittances, created the perfect mix for their proselytizing projects to take root in Cuba.

Aggravating these factors, was a forceful push by Cubans of Hispanic ancestry to co-opt every job earning hard currency in Cuba, monopolize most promotions, travels abroad, improved living conditions, cars and all other material benefits, further deepening the racial and social divide.

Coincidentally, a well intended program in the 2000’s with an unforeseen adverse consequence, consisted of providing emigrants and descendent from Spain, China, Arabs and Israel with humanitarian assistance from their respective countries or organizations abroad, while no similar humanitarian assistance existed for those of African ancestry.

These combined factors created the right broth in which, a number of anti-Castro Afro-Cubans in and outside of Cuba proliferated exuberantly, some of whom, were recruited as US-AID operatives and front foundations, all with a multiprong, heavily funded, subversive program, determined to exacerbate racial divisions, civil unrest and to erode the Cuban government support base.

Tens of unknown Afro-Cubans until then, such as Dr. Elias Biscet, Dr. Darsi Ferrer, Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, Vladimiro Roca, Guillermo Farinas and others, replaced well established White Cuban dissidents Osvaldo Paya, Elizardo Sanchez and others.

Suddenly, the Cuban American National Foundation, Alpha 66, Unidad Cubana, Cuban Liberty Council and other lily white counterrevolutionary groups, failed the melanin litmus test and were pushed aside by the US State Department.

Many Afro-Cubans living in Cuba, were acutely aware of these growing inequalities, which they confronted initially through intellectual gatherings, writings and visual arts, as they navigated a slippery slope, by avoiding all confrontation with the Cuban government or for creating a perception of being a resonance box for those bent on fomenting internal conflict.

Tens of thousands of people in this hemisphere, who may have escaped death or injury in a potential race war, shall forever be grateful to the vision and tireless work of Dr. Wayne Smith, Senior Fellow at the Center For International Policy, Washington, D.C., who organized a number of educational seminars on these burning and potentially dangerous issues in the United States.

The first International Conference on this matter, “Views of the Afro-Cuban Community, was organized at Barry University, Miami, 1998.

An expanded and more complex second International Conference, “Afro-Cubans in Cuban society, Past, Present and Future” took place at the John Hopkins University, Washington D. C. in 1999.

The Third International Conference, “Questions on Racial Identity, Racism and Anti-Racist Policies in Cuba Today“, was hosted by the Center For International Policy at the University of California, Washington Center on June 2, 2011, which lived up to the highest expectation of participants from Cuba and from across the United States, after a twelve year hiatus.

A profound and thorough historical description about the evolution of racism in Cuba by two excellent, well documented visiting Cuban scholars, was enlightening and defining. A myriad of questions from the audience followed each panel, requiring at times, that questions had to be grouped, in order to fit within our tight time constraints.

The past was discussed, the present was dissected and the future has begun to be plotted with all factors in Cuba, knowing that it success is contingent on our ability to bring together every person of goodwill from around the world, in this unprecedented, corrective, transformative, far reaching project, which will inexorably turn Cuba into a beacon of social equality and road map for others to follow.

Cuba, like no other country in the world, have contributed enormous human and material resources for the development of health, education, sports and culture in tens of countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and on Blacks in Cuba.

Much, much more must be done, if the victims of slavery, colonialism, ignorance, segregation and other forms of injustices, are ever to achieve their full emancipation, development and equality, new concepts must be developed and implemented immediately.

The new economical development direction that was presented and approved by the VI Congress of the Communist Party in Cuba, laid out the groundwork for what may become, a complete restructuring of its political, administrative and management of the nation’s economy.

The convergence of these separate national and international interests, may become the catalyst our nation needs to achieve its full potential, by joining forces with the underdeveloped world in unleashing the enormous human resource capabilities accumulated in Cuba and elsewhere, on behalf of millions of people who have been victimized for five centuries.

For years, millions of our nation most loyal and unconditional supporters, have been overlooked and ignored, presumably because of their limited financial resources and therefore, their inability to participate in large joint ventures with which, the country has been engaged for more than two decades.

Today, these new development opens our country, to its most interesting development opportunity ever, in which, tens of thousands of minorities from around the world, who have stood steadfast by our nation during its most challenging times, are enthused, willing and waiting to be called upon, to share their modest resources and expertise, with our incipient Mom and Pop, small and medium size enterprises in Cuba.

Here too, Cuba can conceive a new transnational, minority enterprise development in which, the forgotten and excluded of this world, may find a head-start, a true affirmative action that is capable of breaking the yoke of dependency for themselves and their country, by turning this fake, sick, man-made racial feud into a true international solidarity movement.

Unable to thank publicly thousands of intellectuals and ordinary peace loving people in and outside of Cuba, who dedicated their lives to this just cause of building bridges of understanding, harmony and respect among the US and Cuba, they can rejoice, as the fruits of their sacrifice is now within reach.

My African Pilgrimage. Part I

2011-05-14T11:09:00.000-04:00

"My African Pilgrimage, Part I"

Alberto N. Jones

May 14, 2011

On Saturday April 23rd, I began a lifetime dream at the Miami International Airport, as I departed on a long journey to Africa from where our ancestors were forcefully kidnapped five centuries ago.

Kept in bondage for over three hundred years in their newly acquired country in the new world, they were never compensated for their sweat, tears, blood and deaths, building everything visible and invisible around us and finally released into racism, segregation and ignorance 150 years ago.

Our seven-man delegation arrived at 5:00 AM at the Leopold S. Senghor International Airport in Dakar, Senegal after an 11 hour flight, where we were warmly greeted with a Welcome Home!! by an efficient and friendly immigration and customs personnel.

After picking up our bags, we got our first taste of the country financial ills, as a number of people struggled to carry our bags, begged for money and the general environment was in urgent need of upkeep.Before arriving at our hotel, we stopped at the enormous, 27 million dollar, 170 foot-tall bronze statute on a hill top with three superimposed figures representing the fresh start African countries made when they declared independence 50 years ago, which have drawn criticism from every sector, especially for not evoking African themes and for having outsourced this entire project to a Korean construction firm, in a country with 50% unemployment.

The hotel was nice with a number of amenities, but once you stepped out beyond its boundaries, there were tens of thousands of people huddled against buildings walls with huge assortment of handcrafts, garments, food, supplies, parts or equipment for sale, where potential customers negotiated, bargained, coerced or left, pressuring for better prices.

Some basic statistics:

Independence April 4, 1960

Area 198,840 Km2

Population 12.3 Million

Without reliable drinking water 31%

Undernourished 17%

Longevity 59 years%

Infant mortality 58%

Illiteracy 59%

Secondary school enrollment 11%

GDP 12.6 Billion

Annual Per Capita 1,900 dollars

Employment, primarily in service 56%

Below poverty line ($1.25/day) 34%

USAID 2009 119.9 Millions

Socio-economic world standing 144 among 169 nations

As dramatic as these numbers are, they represent a national average. If these were applied solely to the countryside or the periphery of Dakar, which are overflowing with crowded huts without running water, sewer, electricity, open drainage filled with rotting, stagnating water, garbage and every hazardous microorganism, these stats would be far worse.

A visit to a Fulani village in the desert, took us back in time to the X century. Scattered thatched huts in a barren terrain headed by a chief, while most adults are engaged in survival agriculture, fishing or worst, working at the Pink Lake, the most horrendous job on earth.This shallow body of water takes a pink hue under bright sun light in which, hundreds of wooden boats with 2-3 men on board, armed with long shovels, digs up a very salty sand which is deposited into their boats and when they are full, are rowed to the shoreline.

There the cargo is transferred into large tubs weighing over 100 pounds each, that an army of women haul on their heads and deposit on dry land forming mounds that are left to dry in the sun and for which they are paid in kind, one bag of salt for every ten delivered.

This is how, this cruel, sub-human enterprise, which has never been investigated by the United Nations Human Right Commission, enables wealthy, powerful, self-righteous Europe to acquire all the salt they need to deice their slippery, snow laden roadways in winter, without ever asking at what human cost.

Senegal has had a longstanding close relations with western countries and it is France key ally in Africa. Senegal was an anti-Communist bastion during the cold war and have contributed Peace Keeping forces to Haiti, Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur, Liberia, Ivory Coast and others.

Tens of thousands of Senegalese soldiers fought and died alongside France in WWI whose efforts and courage was not recognized nor paid veterans benefits until 2006.

A shocking visit to a fishing village, revealed hundreds of brightly colored canoes beached or unloading tons of the day catch, as thousands of people buys, clean, puts in carts or on their heads in frightening unsanitary condition, loads of fish that are rushed out of the area, hoping to find buyers who can help them survive their financial crisis.

But worse was yet to come. The following morning after a 30 minutes ferry ride from Dakar, we landed on the infamous Goree Island, one of the 3 or 4 similar slave concentration camps that under orders of the United Nations, are preserved and serve as a grim reminder of the estimated 20 millions slaves that were forcefully ripped away from their lands, incarcerated, beaten, raped, died or were sent through the Door of No Return.

As we tour this 23 hectare island of unpaved roads and ally, government buildings, numerous churches of various denominations, business, defensive forts and the slave holding fort, it is easy to recreate the wicked mind of those who conceived this monstrosity.

After crossing a lift bridge over a body of shark infested waters, one enters a hall that leads to an open courtyard. Surrounding this courtyard were a variety of cells for males, females, infants, recalcitrant, death, a chapel and a tunnel leading to the Door of No Return.

Males cells appeared to be approximately 20x10 feet, with no lighting and a single ventilation opening of approximately 1 ½ x 1 ½ feet for 150 slaves. A shallow gutter close to the wall doubled as a toilet. All slaves would be taken out for one hour in the evenings while the area was flushed out with sea water. Slaves weighing less than 60 kilos were not shipped out, assuming they would not endure the two months journey.

Females cells were larger for 400 slaves. Recalcitrant cell was a small hole in the wall with no ventilation, which was used for any slave difficult to handle, who would refuse orders or talk back. Any slave who fought back was forced into a similar but smaller cell, where he would be locked-up without food or water and condemned to a horrible death from thirst in 3-4 days. All slaves severely ill or dead, were thrown in the shark infested sea outside the walls of the fort.

Because of a host of tropical diseases, most Europeans were single males, leading to widespread rape by the prison guards. The governor’s living quarters was large, spacious, airy and located on the second floor, from where he occasionally would stand on the balcony to review all nude slave females, choose one, who would be bathed and sent up a back stairs to his room.

Those who got pregnant were released from the dungeon into farm-type camps, where their mulatto offspring would be born, sent to school and later allowed to work in the household as “house slave”, further dividing the slave community.

My personal assessment of the socio-economic situation of Senegal is a that of a very complex, intractable social stagnation, that whatever political, social, economic or religious policies have been in place since 1960, have proven to be incapable of addressing the basic needs of its society.

Rampant hunger, poverty, illiteracy, lack of healthcare, widespread transmissible diseases, unemployment and lack of development demands a different approach to fulfill the hopes and expectation of its population.

Because tens of thousands of slaves shipped to all Caribbean islands may have been held in these infamous dungeon at any given time, Cuba has a moral obligation to share its solidarity and expertise with the descendents of those victims, by helping them improve their health, education, sports and culture.

Equally important could be an economical boost that Cuba could provide to Senegal, by importing its surplus fisheries with insufficient market and/or by installing a fish sub-product plant, which could provide employment to hundreds, as we set an example for the rest of the world and begin erasing our unpayable debt of gratitude to Africa.

A Macabre Assault on the Poor

2011-04-10T00:38:00.000-04:00

"A Macabre Assault on the Poor"
Alberto N Jones
April 10, 2011

On August 11, 2006, the Department of Homeland Security announced, in conjunction with the Department of State, that it would allow Cuban medical personnel conscripted to study or work in a third country under the direction of the Cuban government, to enter the United States under a new program known as the Cuban Medical Professional Parole (CMPP) program.

Among the aspects contained in its guidelines are:

What is the statutory authority that allows the Department of Homeland Security to parole Cubans into the United States?
How does Cuban Medical Professional qualify for consideration of parole?
Who are Cuban Medical Professionals?
Are family members eligible to enter the United States under CMPP?
What should interested persons be required to submit?

Although there are precedents of similar despicable attacks against the Cuban people such as, the Peter Pan Program which literally kidnapped 14,000 teenagers out of Cuba in the early sixties and the revolting efforts to keep six year old, shipwreck Elian Gonzalez against the wishes of his father and grandparents in Miami, most refused to believe, that such a revolting conspiracy could be enacted forty years later.

Once this sinister plan began to yield its first fruits, Cuban medical professionals who had defected from a number of countries in the Caribbean, Latin America or as far as

Namibia

and

South Africa

, were regularly presented as Olympic trophy to the media in Miami.

Most if not all of the new emigrants, expressed their profound gratitude to the United States government and to the Cuban-American Congressional delegation, headed by the Diaz-Balart’s brothers and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who made their journey to freedom possible.

Because I was born and lived in a thatched roof hut without electricity, running water, sewer, jobs, schools or healthcare in Banes, our Cuban Soweto, I could relate easily to the harm that was being done to the poorest and weakest of the world.

Independent, reputable institutions such as the Pan American Health Organization, the World Health Organization, MEDICC, ex President Bill Clinton and others, have written tens of reports, which reflects how tens of millions of people in four continents have received clinical, surgical, maternal, dental, physical rehabilitation, genetic, eye surgery, immunizations, high tech diagnosis and others, free of charge.

Horrified by this criminal enticement of Cuban healthcare workers around the world with all sorts of inducements for them to abandon their patients and migrate to the US and become part of the American way of life with all of its wealth, glamour and freedoms, led me to publish "A Monstrous and Wicked Worldwide Attack on the Poor" 3/11/07.

Although hard figures are not readily available of the success or not of this well funded project, some reports suggests that between 1000-1500 physicians and 3 times as many other healthcare professionals have joined and most are living in south Florida.

The other tragic side of this horror story, is that once these professionals arrive in the United States, the ringleaders are no where to be found and then it is when they are confronted with the intractable American Medical Association or AMA requirements, Florida Medical Association and the State Regulatory Institutions with their near insurmountable legal barriers, regulations, boards exam, language barrier, hospital residence, financial supports, living quarters etc., which many have not been able to overcome in 10 or 15 years of struggle, frustration and bitterness.

Granted that no job should be seen as demeaning, it is nevertheless heartbreaking to see highly qualified and respected professionals, researchers, professors in

Cuba

, working as cashiers at supermarkets, pizza parlors, driving trucks, phlebotomists, nurse’s aide or elder care, taking orders from people with 1/10 of their education.

The US Department of State has proven once again, its absolute ignorance of historical facts and an ingrained recidivist character flaws. In 1962 and in order to create havoc, this department orchestrated the migration of 3500 physicians out of a total of 6000 in Cuba, which failed to bring down the Cuban healthcare system.

And today, when Cuba boosts over 80,000 physicians and can offer their service in close to eighty countries around the world, they childishly come up with the same poorly cooked, ill conceived, repetitive trick, which in the best case scenario; have been able to lure 1 or 2% physicians, as opposed to over 50% in 1962.

An article entitled "Hush, Hush the Scandal: US Program against Cuban Medical Assistance," Ichirino worldpress.com 4/3/11 just adds to other failures in the month of April, in which the US have tried to bring the Cuban people to their knees.

No Justice for Latin America's Most Wanted Terrorist

2011-04-09T00:08:00.000-04:00

"No Justice for Latin America's Most Wanted Terrorist"

Alberto N Jones
April 9, 2011

In a regrettable travesty of the United States judicial system, Luis Posada Carriles, a long time CIA operative with an extensive curriculum in torture, terror, conspiracy and murder in the United States, Honduras, Guatemala, el Salvador, Venezuela and Cuba, was acquitted yesterday in El paso, Texas, adding another blot to US battered image in its war against terror.

Since entering the US from Mexico, Posada Carriles was accused of illegal entry by Homeland Security, federal prosecutors and others, while no reference was made to his will documented lifelong crime spree. Venezuela and Cuba have consistently requested his deportation to face charges of torture, disappearances and murder.

Yet, his most heinous crime, revolves around masterminding the mid-air explosion of a Cubana airliner off the coast of Barbados in 1976, killing all 73 on board. In the late 90’s, he directed a bombing spree in tourists resorts in Cuba in which, an Italian tourist was killed and another 12 were seriously wounded.

Although these issues were made public during his trial through ample documentation, eye witnesses and legal findings, Judge Kathleen Cardone and the Jurors chose to ignore all 11 counts of illegal entry and his well documented crimes.

Prior to his trial, Posada Carriles spoke openly of his deeds on every Spanish speaking AM radio stations and TV talk shows in Miami, gave interviews to national media, provided tape recorded interviews for books and investigative journalism, confident of his protection and of the positive outcome of his day in court.

It is extremely difficult to reconcile shoe bomber Richard Reed life sentence with no possibility of parole and threeconsecutive life sentences in his failed terrorist attempt, while Posada Carriles was found not guilty, in numerous successful terrorist attacks.

A Museum with a Tarnished Past

2010-07-12T16:52:00.000-04:00

"A Museum with a Tarnished Past"

Alberto N Jones

July 12, 2010

“Museum plans recovery” (7/12/10), is a beautiful letter to the editor of the Daytona Beach News-Journal written by Ms Barbara C. Coleman, President of the board of directors of the Museum of Arts and Sciences of Daytona Beach, in which she deplores an act of vandalism that took place in the month of June against this important cultural institution, where several items were damaged, including a painting of Thomas Paine.

Ms. Coleman also argued strongly in favor of the museum’s mission to inspire and serve the citizens of this community, which will not be stopped by the acts of one thoughtless individual.

Apparently Ms. Coleman is not aware of the full fledge, detailed, front page article “A bit of Cuba in Daytona” written by Ms. Laura Stewart in the News-Journal on June 13, 2008, painfully describing how tens of pieces of paintings, ceramics, photo-murals and sculptures by some of Cuba’s most renowned artists, which are valued at tens of millions of dollars, have been illegally and cruelly withheld by MOAS for over 50 years, depriving millions of children in Cuba of their culture.

How can this institution attempt to enlighten our community by providing monthly free admission to our residents over a cool glass of lemonade, while trafficking in stolen pieces of arts that have generated millions of dollars for this institution, forced law enforcement institutions to ignore this crime and turned our intelligentsia into accomplices?

Central Florida and the world for that matter, will not be a better place until we garner the courage, moral values and principles, to apologize, return these ill-gotten items to their legitimate owners and become a beacon of dignity to our peers and our children.

Regret - "It has always been easier to identify a liar than a lame."

2010-05-16T03:57:00.003-04:00

Dear editors,

It is with deep regret, that I read this morning "Activists Use the Blogosphere to Fight Racism Against Afro-Cubans" in the American Chronicle by Ms Deborah Gabriel and "The Fight Against Racism in Cuba goes Viral" by Ms Marlie Hall in the Grio.

Although I am not a journalist, lecturer or an employee of any of the US government agencies, masked or unmasked foundations bent on unleashing a race war in Cuba, I would like to share with you, a bit of my personal experience, having lived 60% of my 70 years of age in Cuba and the rest in the US.

For the past 20 years when segregation and racism, -which most had presumed dead since it was outlawed in 1959-, raised its dirty head again in Cuba, many, including myself have steadfastly denounced its presence in a positive, constructive fashion.

Since the late 90's, when hostile forces to the Cuban government identified a substantial demographic shift in Cuba, in which some studies have placed blacks and mixed race as high as 62%, all counterrevolutionary efforts in south Florida geared at overthrowing the Cuban government, re-directed their strategy of using the All White Cuban American National Foundation, Alpha 66, CORU and hundredes of similar groups, which had rejected and denied the participations of any blacks willing to join their groups.

In fact, prominent Radio Talk Show host, the late Agustin Tamargo said on his highly popular Mesa Revuelta on Radio Mambi 710 AM in Miami, that Fidel Castro government had survived thirty years of relentless warfare, only because of the strong presence of blacks in the Cuban Armed Forces and in his personal security, for which he demanded a Three Days License upon the collapse of that government, to dole out retribution to the Afro-Cuban community for their past deeds.

In order to achieve their goals, many Afro-Cubans with apparent leadership capabilities in the US, were recruited and trained in civil dissobedience, human rights and other teachings in some predominantly Black Universities in the US and even at the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta. These individuals in turn, were instructed to recruit predominantly Afro-Cubans in Cuba and with endless funds coming from US-AID through numerous foundations, they created hundredes of groups with flashy names such as Independent Journalist, Independent Farmers, Indepenednt Librarians and Independent Everything Else.

Are any of these writers, Afro-Americans, Caribbean and Latin-America intellectuales who signed the spurious letter "Acting on our Conscience" aware of these strategy, statements, plans and developments of these apparently innocuous groups fighting racism in Cuba, who are all on the payroll of foreign governments and institutions?

Are any of these very objective, investigative journalists willing to interview members of the Afro-American and Central America inmigrant community in Miami, in order to determine the virtues and values that governs the elitist, racist mentality of the Cuban-American community in Miami?

My deep concern and opposition to this divisive strategy stems from our Afro-Cubans bitter life experience. Similar to many of today's concerned Afro-Cubans, who are supposedly angry with many ongoing inequalities in Cuba, were others in the past, whose actions led to tragic consequences.

Martin Morua Delgado, an Afro-Cuban intellectual, who occupied a high ranking position in the neo-colonial government in the early XX century, assumed a policy that mimicks much of what we are seeing today, which lead to the enactment of laws by the racist government of General Jose Miguel Gomez, that deprived Blacks of many of their rights, which, with the support of the United States Department of State and Defense, enabled that government to launch a retallatory attack against members of the Independent Party of Color in 1912, where 6000 of its members and innocent bystanders were brutally murdered, mutilated and their bodies desecrated in Guantanamo, Santiago de Cuba and Songo-La Maya.

These are irrefutable facts, not gossip. There is nothing personal in my opposition to Dr. Carlos Moore et. al., divisive tactics, except a well founded fear, that his actions may lead to the re-enactment of the race war that took place in Cuba 100 years ago, in a country without any clear racial demarcation. We, on the other hand, are demanding this horrific act be made public in its entirety, the victims honored and an apology is overdue.

These very broad injustices are what we must defend with our pens and intellect! Anyone hoping to rise to prominence or wealth, should earn that with his/her personal attributes, not by turning our pain, suffering and abuses into ladders to reach undeserved heights.

The plight of Blacks is worldwide and not limited to Cuba. What have motivated and suddenly kept awake so many black intellectuals over the sufferings of Blacks in Cuba, while totally ignoring the viscious murder of 500 of our youths last year in Chicago?

I am further annoyed with some of the of Dr. Carlos Moore behaviour because, like myself, we both were born on sugarcane plantations owned by US corporations in Cuba, where we were forced to live in thatched huts without electricity, running water, sewer, schools, healthcare or jobs and to see his thinking coincide with policies of some of our former slave-masters, be it the Diaz-Balart, Ros-Lethinen, David Rivera, Bacardi's, Fanjuls, Mel Martinez and thousands of others, who did not allow us to walk on their streets after dark, created a separate aisle for us in public squares and barred us from holding only menial jobs of picking up their trash, cooking, cleaning and raising their children, is beyond my imagination.

Many, many wrongs has to be fixed in Cuba, but our country should never return to that nightmarish, oppresive society.

Facts, not word will help to put things into perspective. While the Cuban Army fought for the independence of Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, demolished Apartheid in South Africa and freed Nelson Mandela and his brothers in Arms from Robin Island, tens of Cuban-Americans in south Florida brag about their stoic battle flying helicopters and fighter jets against "Cuban Mercenaries" in the southern cone of Africa and it is said, that Dr. Carlos Moore, was on the other side of this battle field, as an aide to Holden Roberto, a known CIA operative.

As our small organization travelled tens of thousands of miles across Florida begging and collecting unwanted, but usable discarded personal, medical and educational goods, which we have sent primarily to Afro-Cubans and emigrants and descendents from every Caribbean islands living in Guantananamo, Santiago de Cuba and Banes , none of those denouncing the Cuban government, have ever responded to our numerous pleas for an aspirin, a walker, a wheelchair or a blanket for our brothers in dire need.

Actions, not words is what I have learned to believe in. Writing articles, selling books, lecturing or going on TV is great, if your concerns are not about a hungry baby, a dying elderly or an illiterate person.

If this sounds like a defense of the Cuban government, let it be. But until these theoriticians are unwilling to spend some time helping the needy in Cabrina Greens, Liberty City and Overtown in Miami, North Jacksonville in Florida, Detroit, earthquake ravished Haiti, Ruanda, Soweto or willing to assist victims of Katrina, where our people are suffering and dying, I will continue to question their beautiful preaching and writings coming out of their air-cooled mansions.

In closing, let me remind readers of these poorly written thoughts in anger, that the paymasters of many of these individuals, live in posh Coral Gables, Palm Beach, Plantation and many other secluded areas in south Florida, New Jersey and elsewhere.

Most of them were here in the 60's at the height of the Civil Rights struggle. None of them can present a newspaper article they wrote in support of those being hosed-down or chewed-up by attack dogs in Alabama or Tennessee, nor anyone of them can produce a picture marching alongside the victims or refusing to sit at counters or using restrooms where they were welcome because of their Hispanic ancestry and where Afro-Americans living in this country centuries before them were denied such basic rights.

It has always been easier to identify a liar than a lame.

Alberto Nelson Jones

A Worldwide Battle of Life & Death, 3d Chapter

2010-05-15T01:18:00.003-04:00

"A Worldwide Battle of Life and Death. Third Chapter"
Alberto N Jones
May 1, 2010

I hope most of those who read the previous chapter are as persuaded as I am, that there is no valid evidence to demonstrate the existence of segregation or racism in Cuba that is promoted, instigated or tolerated by the highest level of the Cuban government. What has been clearly established is a marked increase of racial prejudices coming from whites towards Afro-Cubans, which is more evident, open and brutal than at any time in the past 20 years.

These negative expressions have manifested themselves most vividly since the introduction of the Special Period, characterized by an absolute lack of the most basic means of survival, the failure to create job opportunities for Afro-Cubans with access to hard currencies in Havana and Varadero Beach, an intensified struggle for survival and a threat of competing forces that some saw in an increased migration from the eastern provinces to the west, which many attempted to counter through segregation, defamation and racial slurs.

It is a well established fact by psychologists and others engaged in behavioral studies, that in all herds, human groupings, inter-ethnic or inter-species relations, there are always those attempting to prey, subjugate, isolate or eliminate others deemed weak.

For these reasons and as early as January 1959, Fidel Castro declared “We could not be Revolutionaries or Democrats, if we do not rid ourselves of all type of discrimination“.

In March 1959, Fidel Castro gave a speech to a workers gathering, which turned out to be a proclamation against racial discrimination, in which he made a detailed analysis of how racism expresses itself in job exclusion, educational segregation and the forceful opening by law, of all facilities and services for the fulfillment of all citizens, without discrimination.

During the V Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba in October of 1997, Fidel Castro reiterated the need of consolidating the fair policy of promoting blacks and women to leadership positions, just as had happened for youths without being dogmatic, which guarantees the moral authority of the party with the people.

During the World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Intolerance, which took place in Durban , South Africa in September 2001, President Fidel Castro endorsed the idea that “the United States and western nations must pay reparations to descendents of black slaves”.

In the last session of the National Assembly of the People’s Power on 12/21/09, the president of Council of State and Ministers, Raul Castro, said: “Personally I think it is a shame the insignificant advances that we have achieved in this”. “ I will use all my influence to make sure that these harmful prejudices continue to yield space until they have been definitively eliminated and women and blacks are promoted to leadership positions at all levels, based upon their merits and professional level.

On January 5th. 1993, Congressman John Conyers introduced a bill to “Acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 to establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery”.

The bill, which did not ask for reparations for the descendents of African slaves, won from 435-members of the U.S. House of Representatives only 28 co-sponsors, 18 of whom were black. (The Debt, Randall Robinson, p 201-10, 2000)

In the early 1970’s Boris Bittker, a Yale Law School professor wrote a book, The Case for Black Reparations, which made the argument that slavery, Jim Crow and a general climate of race-based discrimination in America had combined to do grievous social and economic injury to African Americans.

Ibrahim Gassama, a law professor of the University of Oregon in response to a question from Mr. Randall Robinson said, “ It is the strangest thing, we law professors talk about every imaginable subject, but when the issue of reparations is raised among white professors, many of whom are otherwise liberal, it is met with silence”.

Derrick Bell, another professor at Harvard Law School concluded his view of Bittker’s book in a way that may explain the reaction Ibrahim Gassama got from his colleagues: “Short of a revolution, the likelihood that blacks today will obtain direct payments in compensation for their subjugation as slaves before the Emancipation Proclamation and their exploitation as quasi-citizens since, is no better than in 1866, when Thaddeus Stevens recognized that his bright hope of forty acres and a mule for every freedman had vanished”.

Confirming this presumption is the fact that for 6-8 years, Nazi Germany inflicted horrific pain and suffering on European Jews in their concentration camps. Post WW II German governments readily paid to individuals and to the government of Israel 88 billion Marks and created a trust fund of a few billion Marks for the victims, coming from enterprises that benefited from slave work.

In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed executive order 9066 which forced 120,000 persons of Japanese and Korean ancestry into internment camps for the duration of the war, although approximately 65% were US citizens.

In 1988 president Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberty Act, granting $20,000.00 to each survivor or beneficiary. In 1992 president George W. Bush appropriated another 400 million dollars to cover a $20,000.00 compensation for 82,210 Japanese-American citizens. Canada compensated a total of 1,434 Japanese-Canadian citizens, with a total of $1.3 billion dollars and both governments apologized for their past deeds.

At the end of WW I, the Allied countries successfully demanded compensation from Germany . Korean women forced into prostitution by the Japanese occupying forces during WW II were rightfully compensated.

Although the United States and Europe inflicted far greater horrors upon Africa and its people, they have not only refused to pay compensation to Africa, instead, at the end of the slave trade, they re-arranged the map of Africa to continue exploiting the continent and have steadfastly refused to return thousands of pieces of arts stolen from Africa.

Both president Abraham Lincoln in the US and Carlos M. de Cespedes in Cuba offered during the Civil War and the War of Independence in Cuba to compensate slave owners for “property” (slave) loss during the conflict.

Is it necessary to present additional evidence to prove beyond any doubt the horrific crimes that was inflicted upon innocent people for centuries or the massive wealth that was derived from such tainted procedure?

That’s why it is so outrageous, disgusting and counterproductive to see a handful of opportunists attempting to capitalize on known failures, shortcomings and deficiencies in Cuba’s race-relations, in which, rather than putting forward an honest critique, offer suggestions or design ways to alleviate the suffering of the Afro-Cuban community, they have intentionally chosen the path of inciting our people, fanning the flames of anger, exacerbating their suffering and encouraging physical confrontation.

Can anyone in their right mind imagine that any of these individuals is reading these damming examples for the first time?

Once again, history has placed on Cuba’s lap, the unavoidable, moral obligation of pioneering and leading this just drive for reparations, by becoming the first nation to publicly admit its collective responsibility in the world most heinous crime, committed against millions of helpless slaves for over 350 years.

But contrary to what some have suggested, which is to provide each of the victim’s descendent with a fixed money value, which shortly after would have been spent in consumer driven societies, we are proposing a massive education, health, sport, cultural development and empowerment as the only viable way of equalizing racial differences, removing prejudices and overcoming centuries of subjugation and ignorance.

Cuba is hereby calling upon every government in the world, whose country benefited one way or another from slave commerce, slave traders derivatives, shipping and insurance companies, plantation owners, the church and to those governments who, although they were not participants in this horrendous crime, are ashamed of the deeds of others, to step forward, come clean, join hands with us and together, let’s pay our dues, clear our conscience and rid the world of this un-payable debt.

Our proposal is simple. Pool all reparations resources with a reputable international agency -UN, UNESCO, FAO, WHO and/or others, and turn Cuba into the world’s largest Healthcare, Education, Research and Development Center in the world, where hundreds of thousands of Africans, descendents and others from the developing world, can be received, educated and returned to their place of origin, equipped with specific knowledge for their personal and community development .

Segregation, racisms and other forms of prejudices derive from having power over others. Laws or decrees, can only mitigate but never eradicate these perversions. Equalizing individuals knowledge and empowerment, is the only remedy available to humans. Some thoughts follow:

Develop and lease across the former province of Oriente 200,000 lots of 100x100’ for 20 years to retirees and others interested in living in a beautiful, safe and peaceful environment, where they can build their homes, free of the urban decay in which they may now live. Leasing fees can range between $3000.00 and $10,000.00 per year, depending on location, beauty etc. Upon maturity of the lease or if it is preceded by death, both land and home will revert to the Cuban patrimony. It is anticipated that each nucleus of 5000 homes can generate $20,000,000.00 per year, excluding construction, maintenance and personal cost of living, while generating approximately 1000 related jobs.

Build a 1000 bed, high tech, Caribbean Medical Center in Santiago de Cuba in collaboration with the 30,000 member Afro-American Medical Association, the Caribbean Medical Association and the Cuban Ministry of Health, to provide the highest level of medical services to patients from our region, that is comparable to their counterparts in Canada and the United States, at 50% of their cost. It is anticipated this facility can generate $75,000,000.00 per year and create 2000 well remunerated jobs.

Quadruple the capacity of the Neurological Behavioral Center in Holguin, to offer specialized treatment to millions of Hispanics afflicted by alcoholism, drug addiction and post traumatic battlefield disorders without treatment in their communities, due to a severe lack of Spanish speaking professionals in that field. Anticipated income $40,000,000.00 per year and 1000 employees.

Develop in the municipality of Paraguay, Guantanamo, adjacent to its underutilized airport, the Industrial and Home Appliances Distribution Center for Latin America and the Caribbean, from where dealers from around can export their goods with a crucial advantage of two hours less flying time to most markets, perfect year round weather, low operating cost, safe environment, a large pool of technical support, and trainable personnel capable of generating Five Billion Dollars per year and employing 15,000.

Organize a high level Development Commission to visit China, Malaysia, India, Viet Nam and others, to promote the wonderful, low cost, secure environment and benign weather conditions in Guantanamo, for the creation of industries or subsidiaries, which would position them 7-10,000 miles closer to a powerful and growing industrial market in Latin America and the Caribbean, which can easily require 25,000 employees and billions in income.
Transform the Avenue of the Americas, Victoriano Garzon, Enramadas, Aguilera, and Michelsen Avenue in Santiago de Cuba into the Caribbean, Central and South America Pavilion, where their history, culture, arts, cuisine, education center, handcraft and commerce can be highlighted and become an additional source of friendship and brotherhood, celebrating each country’s national holidays and festivities, which can create thousands of jobs and generate millions every day.
Salvage approximately 10,000 homes in Guantanamo , Santiago de Cuba , Bayamo and Holguin city center and an unspecified number of closed former hotels urgently in need of refurbishing to preserve their architecture and cultural heritage, thereby creating hundreds of joint ventures with Afro-Americans, Caribbean and Latin America businesspeople specialized in hospitality. Hundreds of these facilities could be converted into economy Hostels for regional family tourism and Assisted living for retired persons. These simple, easy to implement projects could generate millions of dollars and create employment opportunity for tens of thousands.

Refurbish and equip 300 secondary schools in the countryside in the five eastern provinces in Cuba and offer its use to tens of thousands of Haitian school children earthquake victims, where they could receive adequate shelter, meals, education and medical care, if any or all international institutions, humanitarian groups and governments, would be willing to finance its operating cost.
This partial description of the enormous untapped resources available in eastern Cuba, is more than sufficient to begin cleansing our past history while it double the country’s GNP, create well remunerated full employment for all its citizen, stem the exodus of thousands of young, educated citizens in search of a better life abroad, re-energize the nation’s pride in its accomplishment and satisfy all its socio-economic needs, by applying any of the previous and following suggestions:
Re-open, revise and start the Salcines Project, consistent in re-directing part of the course of the rivers Toa, Duaba, Miel and others in Baracoa to solve once and for all the water needs of the Caujeri valley, Guantanamo , Santiago de Cuba , San Luis and Palma Soriano. Assign 100 million per year until completion.
Construct Water Purification Systems and Waste Water Treatment facilities in Baracoa , Guantanamo , Santiago de Cuba , Palma Soriano, Holguin , Manzanillo and Las Tunas , that are capable of purifying and treating 150% of today’s requirement. Funding 500 million dollars per year until completion.

Begin prospecting the feasibility of a Rapid Transit Rail System between San Luis and Camaguey , which will have branches going to Guantanamo , another going to Bayamo and Manzanillo and another touching Holguin and Moa. If proven effective, this system could be extended to the length and breath of the island. Funding 500 million dollars per year until completion.

Create in Guantanamo , a 10,000 student English and Creole University , staffed by high level educators from English Speaking and French Creole Speaking islands, where every Cuban enlisted in collaborative team to work in any of these countries, must have had to successfully approve and be proficient in said language. Assign 2 million operating cost per year.

Construct in Guantanamo, a modern, high-Tech Environmental Health and Safety University for 30,000 national and international students, an important solar, eolic, bio mass, water resource and regulatory research center, with a number of environmental related factories, which may double as students laboratory and production of a variety of environmental products, generating tens of millions of dollars in income from the national and international sales of environmental products.

Build in Guantanamo , the largest and most modern Cricket Sport Complex, to attract tournaments from around the world and thousands of visiting sports fans generating millions in income.

Create the Agriculture and Industrial Bank, to provide low-interest, mid-term micro-loans to everyone interested in developing all enterprises promoted by the Central government. Start up funds, One Hundred Million Dollars.

Transform the port of Santiago de Cuba into the most active and important commercial port in the Caribbean receiving all sorts of produce, livestock, handcraft, garment and industrial production from the rest of the Caribbean and Latin America and exporting Cuban goods, generating tens of millions of dollars in sales, purchase, taxes etc., of its vibrant commerce.

Create a number of specialized stores, selling agricultural supplies, seeds, fertilizer, pesticide, animal feed, livestock, veterinary medicine service, reproductive services, trucks, tractor, trailer, plows, work clothing, personal protective gears and spare parts. Start up funds, Five Hundred Million Dollars. Encourage 100,000 citizens with agricultural training, to apply for plots of lands, bank credit and machinery, to begin the development of agriculture and livestock.

Prior to the environmental disaster that is taking place in the Gulf States , Black Farmers were facing extinction. It is now a fact of life. In order to extend a helping hand to our brothers and sisters in distress, we are proposing to offer a 25 year lease to 25,000 rice farming families, to relocate to Cuba rice producing region of Cauto-embarcadero/Vado del Yeso. Similar offer can be extended to another 5,000 fishing families, suffering the effect of the oil pollution.

Promote an orderly migration of 50,000 Haitians families from earthquake ravished Port au Prince to northern Oriente sugar cane plantation complex, where each family will lease 40 acres of land for the cultivation of sugar cane, produce and livestock for the next 25 years. Additionally they will receive bank credits to build a home, purchase agriculture equipment and live lease-free the first two years.

Organize an orderly migration of 50,000 Haitians earthquake victims to Cuba and lease each family a 40 acres plot of land on Guantanamo and Santiago de Cuba mountain range for the next 25 years, for the development of coffee, cacao, produce and small livestock. They will receive bank credits for the purpose of purchasing agriculture equipment, personal income until the land begin to yield results and will live lease-free, the first two years.

Promote the migration of 20,000 Palestinian families from the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Jordan, to relocate to southern Oriente semi-arid region and lease to each family 40 acres plots of lands for the development of olive, palm, nuts, goats and sheep as they did in their native Palestine , reducing their hellish overcrowding. Additionally, they will be able to use the lands lease-free for the first two years, receive bank credits to build their homes and purchase agriculture instruments.

Upgrade the deficient fuel, lubricant and cooking gas service in Cuba , which is plagued by corruption, antiquated system and time consuming, irritating service, by creating a Joint Venture with CITGO, a giant, efficient, high-tech Venezuelan fuel distributor with over 20,000 macro service stations in operation, who is capable of bringing this service in Cuba into the XXI Century.

As we can see, with courage and moral determinism, we can honor the pain of the victims, salvage the vision of those who sought to remedy a notorious crime and begin to create a better world for all.

Not One, But Two Days of Infamy

2010-04-19T17:12:00.012-04:00

"Not One, but Two Days of Infamy"
Alberto N Jones
April 18, 2010
　
At 5:00 PM on April 19, 1961, the Cuban government sent out its third and final military statement announcing, that all invading forces holed-up in their last outpost in Cay Largo, had surrendered to the Cuban Armed Forces and the Militia.

This apparently simple military communiqué would become a world -wide symbol of the United States vulnerability, since it had invested endless military, political, intelligence and financial resources, only to see them evaporate before their eyes less than 72 hours after it began.

For approximately 18 months, hundreds of Cuban exiles had been trained by the US Army, CIA and the State Department at Useppa Island , Homestead AFB, Opa Locka and Miami International Airport in Florida , Ft. Gluck and Ft. Clayton in Panama , by the Alabama National Guard, at Ft. Knox , Kentucky . Ft Benning , GA , at Belle Chase, New Orleans , Vieques, Puerto Rico, Puerto Cabezas , Nicaragua , Quetzaltenango base in Guatemala and others.

The CIA had created hundreds of counterrevolutionary groups in Cuba and charged them with spreading diversionary rumors, bombing public buildings, terrorizing teachers, fomenting uprisings across the country and sabotaging industrial and farming facilities. Many CIA funded radio stations pumped scare-tactics news and false military actions throughout the country, in a failed effort to break the will of the Cuban people.

Underreported by the media is the important role played by Guantanamo Naval Base, which in fact, acted as a safe heaven and beachhead in Cuba where millions of useless pesos in the hands of Batista supporters, rich Cubans and early dissenters were laundered in broad daylight, meetings with CIA operatives and Cuban counterrevolutionaries employed or hiding on the base took place unhindered, and counterrevolutionary agents were regularly flown in and out of that military enclave.

The most important, dangerous and unforeseeable consequence from the use of Guantanamo Naval Base during its infamous history stemmed from the receiving, harboring and allowing a group of Cuban counterrevolutionary men, armed with Russian weapons and dressed in Cuban military fatigue to enter Cuba through its gates, charged with executing an auto-attack on this facility -Remember the Maine, Gulf of Tonkin- which would be followed by the US self defense reaction to this enclave, by bombing Cuba back into the stone ages. Operation Northwoods provided an in depth description of this and other sinister plans of the US government.
　
Yet most Cubanologists, mainstream media and historians, have devoted hundreds of articles attempting to determine if the failure of the reprehensive and treacherous 1961 invasion was due to a lack of air support and fire power or the choice of a wrong landing site, without ever questioning the morality of this action or condemning its perpetrators.

Much in tune with the overall, rotten principle of this enterprise was the sleazy bombing raid on Cuba ’s three air fields two days before the invasion, using B-26´s disguised with fake Cuban Air Force markings in the hope of neutralizing their Air Force. They presented to the media in Miami a B-26 littered with fake anti-aircraft bullets and its crew, as a defecting Cuban Air Force plane with its personnel, – this was later shamefully presented by Adlai Stevenson to the UN Security Council.

How can anyone plan and execute such a treacherous act, when precisely twenty years before, the Japanese Air Force attacked and destroyed the US fleet in Pearl Harbor, leading president Franklin Roosevelt to declare December 7th, as A Day of Infamy, declaring war on Japan and entering into WW II?

And today, 49 years after this heinous act, the perpetrators and intellectual authors have not come to grips with their disgraceful behavior, accepted their responsibility, apologized to the Cuban people, the wounded and dead, but rather, they are actively hosting a series of events in south Florida to honor the victimizers and strengthen the punishing 50 year old embargo on innocent Cubans, because the Cubans dared to defend their homeland.

As a survivor and on behalf of tens of thousands of friends, family and neighbors living in Guantanamo, a mere 12 miles away from the US Naval Base or Ground Zero, we have no doubts, our city would have been pulverized and we would have occasionally been remembered like the victims of Coventry, Dresden, Lidice, Mi Lay or Nagasaki.

To those whose defensive actions saved the lives of tens of thousands of fellow citizens in Guantanamo , Santiago de Cuba , Havana and everything in between, we can humbly say Thank You Very Much for all you have done.

Una Batalla Mundial de Vida o Muerte, Segundo Parte

2010-04-09T14:08:00.003-04:00

"Una Batalla Mundial de Vida o Muerte, Segunda Parte"

Alberto N. Jones

4 de Abril del año 2010

El gobierno Cubano acusado de racismo en ¨Actuando sobre nuestra Conciencia¨

Las históricas acusaciones de racismo promovidas por grupos anti-Cubanos radicados en la Florida y en Europa en contra del gobierno Cubano; las graves imputaciones del Dr. Carlos Moore que han sido profusamente diseminadas en países y comunidades predominantemente negro durante los últimos 25 años y el documento espurio recientemente circulado y firmado por decenas de intelectuales Afro-Americanos, Caribeños y Afro-Latinoamericanos, debía constituir la alquimia que detonara la explosión social que barriera al gobierno de Cuba del poder y re-instalara otro, en la imagen y semejanza del gobierno de los Estados Unidos.

La trágica, dolorosa e irreparable inmolación de Orlando Tamayo Zapata, debido a su decisión de rechazar la ingestión de alimentos, ha desencadenado una ola de protesta sin precedentes alrededor del mundo, con lo que se pretende estimular a otros llamados disidentes en Cuba, no a los que residen en el exterior, a imitar y repetir esta tragedia, como si nuestra cultura fuese Sunni, Shiita, o Taliban.

Sin pretender minimizar, cuestionar y menos aun denigrar esta fatal decisión que enlútese, mancha y avergüenza a todos, llama la atención sin embargo, que una reacción similar no se produjo cuando una decena de presos políticos se inmolaron de igual manera en Irlanda del Norte, ni despues las masacres de Sharpville, Ruanda y Soweto, las golpizas de miles de negros en Alabama, Mississippi o Tennessee durante la lucha por los derechos civiles, los miles de linchamientos a lo largo y ancho de los Estados Unidos o ante la diaria brutalidad policíaca en contra de la comunidad Afro-Americana.

Esta táctica dirigida a fomentar la división racial en Cuba, tuvo sus antecedentes en 1910 y reapareció pocos días después de producirse el asalto al Cuartel Moncada el 26 de Julio de 1953 en Santiago de Cuba, cuando los voceros del régimen echaron a rodar rumores que sugerían, que dicha acción estaba motivado por los prejuicios raciales de los atacantes blancos procedentes del occidente del país, en contra del Presidente Fulgencio Batista, debido a su condición de mulato.

Las primeras imágenes recogidas en la prensa afianzaron esta falacia, ya que todos los detenidos y muertos eran blancos. No fue hasta la celebración del juicio en contra de los atacantes meses después, que se vieron las primeras fotos de personas no blancas.

Meses despues, los estudiantes de las escuelas secundarias, instituto de segunda enseñanza, artes y oficios, maestros normalistas y de la universidad de Oriente, se vieron envueltos en intensos debates acerca de la problemática nacional y la necesidad de enfrentar al gobierno golpista. Nuevamente los apologistas del régimen hicieron grandes esfuerzos por demostrar que no existía una crisis constitucional sino, un deliberado intento por parte de los blancos para recobrar el poder.

Paradojicamente, esta táctica no tuvo resonancia dentro del estudiantado de Guantánamo, Santiago de Cuba y otras comunidades con grandes asentamientos de población negra. Las fotos de los revolucionarios a la salida del Presidio Modelo de Isla de Pinos, otras a raíz del desembarco del Granma en las Coloradas en 1956, los contactos con Willy, Cauce, Zúñiga, Temistocles, Newton, Richard, Thompson, Manfugas y otros insurrectos, constituyeron un rotundo mentis para esta patraña.

Entre las primeras leyes introducidas por la Revolución triunfante en Enero de 1959 estuvo, la desinstitucionalizacion del racismo. Todas las asociaciones recreacionales basadas en principios raciales fueron desintegradas y convertidas en círculos sociales, las escuelas privadas fueron nacionalizadas e incorporadas al sistema nacional de educación y la matricula quedo sujeto al lugar de residencia del alumno. Las playas, empleos, clubs y barriadas fueron igualmente integrados sin distingo racial.

Se aprobaron las Leyes de Reforma Agraria, Reforma Urbana, reducción de la tarifa Eléctrica, Telefónica y del 50% del costo de los medicamentos, beneficiando a las clases más desposeídas del país, del cual los negros constituían la mayoría absoluta.

La campaña de Alfabetización, Seguimiento, la Batalla por el Sexto Grado, la formación de Maestros Primarios, la apertura de Escuelas Tecnológicas, los Planes de Nivelación Educacional y el plan de Becas Universitarias, posibilitaron la incorporación al estudio de decenas de miles de estudiantes pobres.

Al mismo tiempo, cientos de estudiantes de nivel medio y superior procedentes de América Latina, África, Asia y el Caribe, recibieron becas para realizar estudios en Cuba, lo que ha permitido que graduados de estas aulas, ocupen posiciones clave en sus respectivos países en beneficios de sus pueblos.

Estas drásticas medidas en favor de los marginados, las intervenciones y las confiscaciones de los bienes de las clases dominantes, convirtió a los mas en enemigos de la Revolución, quienes acuñaron el término peyorativo eslavoide de SOLOVANNICHE a sus playas y otros centros de recreo, lo que una vez descifrado significaba SOLO VAN NICHE, donde nunca más pusieron los pies hasta que abandonaron el país, afiliándose a numerosos grupos contrarrevolucionarios.

Miles de Afro-Cubanos fueron empleados por primera vez en trabajos de administración, oficinas de la compañía de electricidad, teléfonos y similares; tiendas de ropa, ómnibus interprovinciales e incluso en algunas locales como la ruta 30 en la Habana; en cafeterías y restaurantes del Vedado, Miramar, Centro Habana y acceso a centros médicos como el Sagrado Corazón, Clínica de Miramar, Marfan, Hijas de Galicia, La Covadonga y otros.

La celebración en Cuba de la Conferencia Tri Continental y la creación de la OSPAAAL en 1966, fue motivo de orgullo nacional y símbolo inequívoco del compromiso de Cuba con los países del Tercer Mundo, lo que convirtió a Cuba en una escala obligada de decenas de líderes y jefes de estado de los países en vías de desarrollo.

El incondicional apoyo de Cuba a los movimientos de liberación de Argelia, Angola, Congo y Etiopia en África, el masivo apoyo a lucha del pueblo de Viet Nam y a los grupos de liberación nacional de Venezuela, Santo Domingo, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Chile y otros, estableció de manera definitiva la posición del gobierno Cubano ante el mundo.

Una y otra vez, Cuba no vacilo en poner en riesgo su seguridad nacional al ofrecerle abrigo a decenas de revolucionarios Afro-Americanos, Africanos, Latino-Americanos y de otras partes del mundo, perseguidos por sus gobernantes.

La epopeya militar que Cuba libro durante mas de una década en el cono sur de África en el cual, unos 300,000 militares Cubanos lucharon hombro con hombro con sus hermanos Africanos, consolidando la independencia de Angola, demoliendo el Apartheid, contribuyendo a la independencia de Namibia, Zimbabwe y Sur África y la heroica liberación de Nelson Mandela y sus compañeros de armas, es sin duda, el mayor honor que se le ha podido conferir a los descendientes de África en todo el mundo, al liberar la tierra de donde fueron arrancados en cadenas sus antecesores siglos atrás.

No obstante, el aporte de decenas de miles de Médicos, Enfermeros y otros trabajadores de la salud que han asistido a millones de pacientes y salvado a miles de una muerte segura en todos los rincones del planeta, es sin lugar a dudas, la obra cumbre de Cuba a favor de los ignorados.

Todo lo anterior y mucho mas, fue realizado con una generosidad sin precedentes en los anales de historia humana, en la que Cuba no condiciono su ayuda al estado de la relaciones bilaterales con ningún país, jamas acepto retribución económica alguna o mediante la extracción de recursos naturales de alguno de esos países.

El cúmulo de las contribuciones de Cuba en favor de los desposeídos, abusados e ignorados en general y el de los negros en particular en todo el mundo, demuestra en forma concluyente, irrebatible y refuta categóricamente todo intento mezquino por parte de enemigos confesos, asalariados y oportunistas de toda laya, que tratan de endilgarle el repulsivo calificativo de racista, como parte de una amplia campana internacional dirigida, orquestada y financiada por probados racistas Cubano-Americanos, gobiernos colonizadores, ex-esclavistas y xenofobicos Europeos, lidereados por los Estados Unidos.

Es comparable el expediente de 50 anos del gobierno de Cuba con cualquier periodo similar de los gobiernos de España, Holanda, Francia, Bélgica o Inglaterra durante los siglos XVI-XXI o el de los Estados Unidos, Alemania, Japón y otros durante los siglos XX-XXI ?

Confiando quizás excesivamente en esta colosal hoja de servicios, el gobierno de Cuba ha cometido serios errores en la administración de sus recursos nacionales, sociales, laborales, salariales, salud, vivienda, educación y otros, al someter al pueblo a severos e injustificados sacrificios materiales durante décadas, ha coartado aspiraciones básicas de la población, se ha fosilizado el desarrollo de la infra-estructura nacional, se ha perdido el sentido de pertenencia mediante la imposición de medidas inconsulta y los mecanismos de desaprobación o quejas de la población se han transformado en centros de catarsis colectivo, promotores de cinismo y de corrupción oficial.

Un factor crucial en la perpetuación de estos males ha sido, la falta de medios masivo de comunicación crítico, denunciando y desenmascarando el delito, la ausencia de un periodismo sagaz, investigativo en constante vigilia, que mida el sentimiento popular y rehuya de un falso triunfalismo creador de imagenes ficticias.

Cuba es culpable de negligencia y de una imperdonable dilación en enfrentar las crónicas injusticias y desigualdades sociales que han plagado, desmoralizado y literalmente diezmado a la comunidad Afro-Cubana especialmente a partir del periodo especial, en el que fueron excluidos intencionalmente de todo acceso a moneda convertible en un mercado dolarizado; forzándolos a delinquir, prostituirse y desmoronarse moralmente.

Cuba no puede explicarle de manera convincente a su pueblo, que las autoridades de nuestro país desconocían que Cubanos procedentes del Oriente del país eran llamados Palestinos por sus hermanos de Occidente, detenidos vergonzosamente en la calle Obispo, Parque Central o Varadero y devueltos a su lugar de residencia, tal cual ocurría en Pretoria, Ciudad del Cabo o Windhoek, antes que estos mismos Afro-Cubanos liberaron con su sangre y sus vidas a sus hermanos Africanos de tan monstruosa infamia.

Como explicarnos sin connotaciones raciales, el escandaloso y desproporcionado índice de Afro-Cubanos encarcelados en Cuba, cuya etiogenia radica en parte, en el trágico resurgimiento del racismo, segregación y las catastróficas regulaciones administrativas de muchas empresas, que han colimado y excluido a un amplio sector de la sociedad de las áreas con acceso a moneda convertible, sin que este crimen hubiera sido denunciado por académicos, centros de estudio, los medios de comunicación masiva o sometidos a acción judicial por las instituciones pertinentes?

Como racionalizar en forma desapasionada, que Santiago de Cuba con una población predominantemente negro, haya dejado de ser la segunda ciudad en importancia en el país?

Santiago de Cuba, hasta la reciente re-estructuracion politica de la provincia, se habia convertido en una ciudad frustrada, sin perspectiva, un severo desempleo, alto mentalidad migratoria en la juventud, limitado desarrollo socio-económico-cultural y relegado a una posición de menor importancia que Holguín, Cienfuegos o la Habana Vieja ?

Puede alguien explicar en forma razonable, porque el British West Indian Welfare Center, una ONG que fue fundada en 1946 en Guantánamo y que fuera encargada de fomentar, desarrollar y preservar la cultura de unos 500,000 emigrantes y descendientes de cada uno de las Islas Caribenas de habla Ingles residiendo en Cuba, ocupe hoy un edificio semi-derruido, lleno de goteras, al cual con pena, visitan decenas de investigadores foraneos de historia negra, diplomaticos y personalidades del alrededor del mundo para hurgar entre sus paginas llenas de historia en riesgo de perderse, debido el calamitoso estado del edificio?

Dolorosamente y de manera incompresible, la direccion del Ministerio de Justicia de la Provincia de Guantanamo les denego el uso de un edificio aledano apropiado, vacio por mas de una decada, en el cual la membresia podria haber construido las facilidades que satisfagan las necesidades historicas, cientificas y culturales de esta entidad, al mismo tiempo que, la direccion del Ministerio de Justicia de la provincia de la Habana, le otorgo a la Asociacion Asturiana con menos de 1000 descendientes en Cuba, un edifcio en la Avenida del Prado frente al antiguo Capitolio, donde esta ubicado el restaurant Los Nardos?

Que reglas especiales determinaron que el Ministerio de Justicia le otorgara a la pequena comunidad Hebrea residente en Cuba, todo el material de construccion requerido para remodelar sus sinagogas y para operar el bello hotel Raquel, en tanto, el Jamaican Club de Banes, fundado bajo los mismos principios que los del British West Indian Welfare Center de Guantanamo, no ha podido recobrar su local convertido en bodega, mientras la historia y cultura de esta comunidad se desvanece por minutos?

Cuales nociones preconcebidas del Ministerio de Turismo, los ha llevado a promover intensamente este sector mediante ferias de turismo en sur America, Europa, Asia, Norteamerica y Australia, en tanto han ignorado abiertamente el poder adquisitivo y la proximidad geografica de millones de turistas potenciales Afro-Americanos y Caribenos, quienes empatizarian inmediatamente con el entorno de Santiago de Cuba, Guantanamo y otras areas de Cuba, con quienes tienen un fuerte vinculo etnico, historico, cultural y familiar?

Porque sorprendernos ante las crecientes manifestaciones de racismo en Cuba, sabiendo que los planes de estudio del Ministerio de Educación han omitido o soslayado importantes contribuciones históricas de los Africanos y sus descendientes?

Porque el ICAIC ha archivado películas y otras manifestaciones culturales que reflejan a negros en actividades positivas o logros historicos, mientras muestran infinidad de películas, novelas y obras de teatro hechas en Cuba o importadas, que tienden a presentar a los negros en papeles de dependencia, servilismo o delictivos, en contraste con las expresiones de Caballero, Señoríto y Damas de otros grupos étnicos?

Como se entiende que el ICAIC disponga de tiempo y recursos para honrar la memoria de Yarine, un vulgar proxeneta convertido en fabula social, pero ha carecido al mismo tiempo de recursos o interés, para rendir homenaje a la vida de Jesús Menéndez, José Maceo o Juan Gualberto Gómez?

Como explicable sin dobleces a nuestros hijos, que despues de medio siglo de Revolucion solidaria con el mundo, nuestro pais ha tenido difficultades en replicar en cientos de jovenes Afro-Cubanos, las excepcionales cualidades humanas del General Antonio Maceo, Mariana Grajales, Brindis de Salas, Comandante Juan Almeida, Nicolas Guillen o Regino Boti, formados en las abyectas condiciones coloniales o de la seudorepublica?

Complicando aun mas este cuadro atroz ha sido, el que ningun pais u organización social, humanitaria o religiosa predominantemente negro en el mundo, ha sabido extenderle una mano solidaria a la comunidad Afro-Cubana cautiva, renuente a emigrar, esperanzada en ese mañana mejor que los ha eludido, debido a los crudos rigores de bloqueo y las férreas restricciones internas que estrangulan toda gestión económica no-gubernamental, resquebrajando sus principios éticos, estremeciendo sus valores morales y situando a millones de víctimas al borde del colapso social.

Otros grupos étnicos en Cuba, han hecho un amplio uso de las posibilidades migratorias, se agenciaron los mejores empleos con acceso a moneda convertible, ocupan las mejores áreas residenciales, viajes al exterior, son promovidos y han recibido además, un sustancial apoyo monetario por parte de los países de procedencia de sus ancestros, como es el caso de España, Israel, China y algunos países Árabes, profundizando aun mas, las divisiones de clase.

En nuestro intento por crear una patria con todos y para el bien de todos en el siglo XIX, los Afro-Cubanos se incorporaron masivamente y constituyeron el grueso del ejército libertador y de sus bajas en combate. Nuestro esfuerzo fue escatimado con la humillante intervención militar de los Estados Unidos en 1898, castrando las aspiraciones sociales de nuestro país, re-introduciendo el racismo y segregación, suspendiendo la inmigración negra del Caribe, mientras introdujeron clandestinamente a mas de 100,000 Canarios en el occidente del país, entregándoles tierras y distribuyendo el grueso de los recursos del país entre los intervencionistas y los que fueron derrotados en el campo de batalla.

Traicionados, frustrados y sin otra opción a su alcance, los negros fundaron el Partido Independiente de Color a fin de demandar justicia, equidad y los derechos conculcados, siguiendo las normas políticas establecidas.

La respuesta a esta noble acción, fue la brutal masacre de mas de 6000 miembros de dicho partido político y el de otros, cuyo único delito fue su condición de negro o mulato en Santiago de Cuba, Songo, La Maya, San Luís y Guantánamo.

Y hoy, a casi 100 años de aquel crimen, un monumento fastuoso en la Avenida de los Presidentes y la calle 27 en la Habana, honra la memoria del General José Miguel Gómez, autor intelectual de aquella cacería humana, en tanto, ha faltado el tiempo o la voluntad política para erigir una simple cruz en memoria de las victimas en el lugar del crimen.

Cuba, al igual que todos los países cuyo desarrollo, modo de vida y cuanto sea visible o invisible fue creado con el trabajo, sudor, sangre y la vida de millones de Africanos y sus descendientes, quienes fueron obligados a trabajar en las peores labores de sol a sol en forma gratuita por mas de 350 años, no puede desconocer, ignorar o dar por saldada esa deuda impagable con una parte de sus hijos.

No reconocer esa infamia, no comenzar a aplicar de inmediato medidas elementales de justicia que corrijan esa mancha imborrable de nuestra historia, ha impedido y continuara impidiendo que nuestro país alcance el sitial de honor que le corresponde entre la comunidad de naciones del mundo.

Una postura diferente, no podria corresponder con la Cuba martirizada durante la conspiración de la escalera, el cruel fusilamiento de los 7 estudiantes de medicina, la honrosa Protesta de Baragua, la criminal explosión de la Coubre, la Crisis de los Misiles y el heroísmo de Cuito-Cuanavale, no tolerara que nuestra nación continué arrastrando ese secreto que mancha a todos por igual.

Ninguno de los países que se enriquecieron con la sangre de nuestros ancestros es igual que Cuba? En Cuba existe una Revolución poseedora del carácter, fortaleza moral y principios éticos capaces de identificar los males, evaluar los hechos y tomar las medidas correctivas impostergables que nuestra sociedad demanda.

Solo Cuba dispone de la autoridad moral para enfrentar y motivar a otros deudores para asumir juntos o por separado, esta deuda colectiva con la humanidad.

Para el bien de todos, el capitulo final incluirá algunas conceptos, mecanismos simples, los cuales de ser considerados viables o merecedores de ser implementados aun en forma experimental, aspira a encontrar opciones, esperanzas, claves o direcciones que pudieran contribuir a crear la nacion que merecemos y con la que hemos venido sonando durante mas de 500 años.

A Worldwide Battle of Life & Death

2010-04-04T19:02:00.001-04:00

"A Worldwide Battle of Life and Death. Part II"
April 4th, 2010

Alberto Jones

The Cuban government accused of Racism in “Acting on our Conscience.”

Historically, anti-Cuba groups based in Florida and Europe, have systematically accused the Cuban government of being racist; the serious allegations of Dr. Carlos Moore, which have been profusely disseminated through predominantly black countries and communities for the past 25 years, and the spurious document that was circulated and signed by tens of prominent Afro-Americans, Caribbean and Afro-Latin America intellectuals, should constitute the perfect alchemy to detonate a social explosion that would sweep the Cuban government out of office and replace it with one in the image and semblance of the government of the United States of America.

The tragic, painful and irreparable loss of Orlando Tamayo Zapata through his decision to starve himself to death, has unleashed an unprecedented wave of denunciations around the world, with which some are hoping to encourage other dissidents in Cuba, not those living abroad, to imitate and repeat this tragedy, as if, our culture were Sunni, Shiite or Taliban.

Without pretending to minimize, question or denigrate this fatal decision that saddens, stains and shames our country, I would point out that a similar reaction did not occur when approximately ten political prisoners in northern Ireland took a similar action in the 80‘s, nor did one occur after the massacres in Sharpville, Ruanda and Soweto, the beatings of thousands of blacks in Alabama, Mississippi or Tennessee during the Civil Rights movement, the thousands of lynching across the United States or the daily police brutality against the Afro-American community.

This tactic, geared to promote racial divisions in Cuba, had its antecedent in 1910 with the campaign against the Independent Party of Color and re-appeared shortly after the attack on the Moncada Garrison in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953, when the spokesperson of the regime spread rumors suggesting that this action was motivated by racial prejudices of white attackers from western Cuba against president Fulgencio Batista, a mulato.

The first images appearing in the press reinforced this fallacy since all prisoners as well as the dead were white. It was not until the court appearance of the attacker’s months later that the first images of non-whites became public.

Soon after, secondary schools, high schools, technical and teachers school and university students in the province of Oriente were involved in a intense national debate about ways to confront Batista‘s government. Once again, the regime apologists made great efforts to demonstrate there was no constitutional crisis, rather, it was a deliberate intent of white Cuba to retake over the government.

Paradoxically, this tactic had little resonance among students in Guantanamo , Santiago de Cuba and other communities with large Afro-Cuban population. The pictures of the insurgents as they exited the Model Prison on the Isle of Pines, others, after the landing of the Granma in Las Coloradas in 1956, contacts with Willy, Cauce, Zuniga, Temistocles, Newton, Richard, Thompson, and Manfugas became a resounding denial of this falsehood.

Among the first measures introduced by the victorious Revolution in January of 1959 was the des-institutionalization of racism. All recreational associations based upon racial principles were disbanded and turned into social circles, all private schools were nationalized, incorporated to the national education system and registration was dependent on the student’s home address. Beaches, jobs, clubs and neighborhoods were integrated without racial distinctions.

The Land and Urban reform laws were enacted; the electric and telephone bills were reduced and all prescription medications were slashed by 50%, benefiting the poor, of which Afro-Cubans were an absolute majority.

The literacy campaign, Follow-Up, the Battle for the Sixth Grade , the training of Primary Teachers, the opening of Technical Schools , the Education Leveling Program and the University Scholarships enabled tens of thousands of poor students to join different educational programs.

At the same time, hundreds of middle and higher education students from Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean received scholarships in Cuba , which allowed these graduates to occupy important positions in their countries, benefiting their people.

These drastic measures in favor of the marginalized, the interventions and confiscations of properties of the dominant class turned them into enemies of the Revolution who coined the pejorative term of SOLOVANNICHE to their beaches and other recreational centers, which once it was unscrambled meant SOLO VAN NICHE or WHERE ONLY NIGGERS GO, where they never put their feet again, as they abandoned the country and joined numerous counterrevolutionary groups.

Thousands of Afro-Cubans were employed for the first time in administrative jobs and office settings in the electric and telephone companies, garment stores, inter-provincial bus lines and even local lines such as route 30 in Havana, coffee shops and restaurants in Vedado, Miramar and Centro Havana neighborhoods and access to medical centers such as Sagrado Corazon, Clinica de Miramar, Marfan, Hijas de Galicia, La Covadonga and others.

Hosting the Tri Continental Conference and the founding of OSPAAAL in Havana in 1966 became a source of national pride and an unmistakable symbol of Cuba ’s commitment to the Third World, turning Cuba into a compelling stop for all leaders and heads of state of developing countries.

Cuba’s unconditional support of the liberation movements in Algeria, Angola, Congo and Ethiopia in Africa, the massive support it provided to the people of Viet Nam and to national liberation groups in Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Chile and others defined the position of the Cuban government in the world.

Over and over, Cuba did not hesitate to place its national security at risk, by offering safe haven to tens of Afro-Americans, Africans, Latin-Americans and other revolutionaries, persecuted by their governments.

The epic military battle that Cuba fought for over a decade in the southern cone of Africa, in which 300,000 Cuban soldiers took part shoulder to shoulder alongside their African brothers, resulted in the consolidation of Angola’s independence, the destruction of Apartheid and contributed to the independence of Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa and the heroic liberation of Nelson Mandela and his brothers in arms. This effort is without any doubt the greatest honor that has been conferred upon descendents of Africa around the world, freeing the lands from where their forefathers were ripped away in chains many centuries ago.

And yet, providing tens of thousands of physicians, nurses and other healthcare workers to millions of patients and saving thousands of people from a certain death in every corner of the globe is without any doubt the pinnacle of everything that Cuba has done on behalf of the forgotten.

All of the above and more was done with an unprecedented generosity in the annals of human history, in which Cuba did not conditioned its support to the state of bilateral relations with any country, never accepted payment, and never extracted raw material from any of these countries.

The cumulative contribution that Cuba has provided to the dispossessed, abused and ignored in general and to blacks in particular around the world demonstrates conclusively, without a nanogram of doubt, and refutes categorically every wretched attempt by confessed enemies, salaried or opportunists of any stripe, to lodge this repulsive racist epithet on Cuba as part of a broad international campaign directed, orchestrated and financed by proven racists Cuban-Americans, colonialists governments, ex-slave traders and xenophobic European, lead by the United States.

Can we compare Cuba ’s 50 year record with any similar period of the governments of Spain , Holland , France , Belgium or England during the XVI-XX centuries or that of the United States , Germany , Japan and others during the XX-XXI century?

Relying excessively on this colossal record, the Cuban government has made serious mistakes in the administration of its national resources in social, labor, salary, health, housing and education policies. The population have been subjected to severe and unjustifiable material shortages for decades, various basic aspirations of the population have been restricted, and numerous national infrastructure developments have been mismanaged or misconceived. There has been a heightened sense of disenfranchisement of the population through imposed regulations. Most mechanisms of complaints or remedy by the citizenry have become a collective catharsis center, promoting cynicism and official corruption.

A crucial factor in the perpetuation of these ills is the lack of a critical mass media denouncing wrongdoings, an effective investigative journalism policing our day-to-day activities and an overtly triumphal news reporting that masks deficiencies and creates a fictional reality.

Cuba is guilty of negligence and an unforgivable delay in confronting and addressing the chronic injustices and social inequalities that have plagued, demoralized and literally decimated the Afro-Cuban community, especially since the advent of the Special Period during which they were excluded intentionally from all access to hard currency in a dollar-governed economy; forcing many into prostitution, crime and demoralization.

Cuba cannot explain convincingly to its people that the government was not aware that citizens from the eastern provinces were called Palestinian by their fellow citizens in Havana, shamefully detained on Obispo street, Central Park or Varadero beach and returned to their place of residence, just as it happened in Pretoria, Cape City or Windhoek, before these same Afro-Cubans freed their African brothers from such an infamy with their blood or their lives.

How can we explain to ourselves without racial overtones, the scandalous and disproportionate index of Afro-Cubans incarcerated in Cuba, whose etiology lies with the tragic resurgence of racism, segregation and catastrophic management regulations in many enterprises, that targeted and excluded an ample sector of society from areas with access to convertible currency, without this crime being denounced by academics, research centers, mass media or subjected to judicial corrective measures?

How can anyone rationalize dispassionately that Santiago de Cuba with a predominantly black population is no longer the second city in importance in the country, which until a recent political shuffle, had become a frustrated, hopeless city with severe unemployment, high migratory mentality among youngsters, limited socio-cultural development and is relegated to a lesser importance than Holguin, Cienfuegos or Old Havana?

Can anyone reasonably explain why the British West Indian Welfare Center, an NGO that was founded in Guantanamo in 1946 to preserve, foster and develop the history and culture of approximately 500,000 emigrants and descendents from every English Speaking Caribbean islands living in Cuba, occupies today a crumbling, leaky building, where researchers of Black history, diplomats and personalities from around the world visit to glean through its historical documents at risk of vanishing, as it was denied a suitable, vacant building by the Department of Justice of the Province of Guantanamo, where its membership had hoped to build a facility to satisfy their needs and historical importance, while the same Department of Justice of the Province of Havana, provided the Asturian Association, with less than 1000 descendents in Cuba, a posh building on Central Park Blvd., across from the Old Capitol building in Havana that houses the Nardo’s Restaurant?

What special rules prompted the Justice Department in Havana to provide the tiny Jewish community with every bit of construction material to refurbish their synagogues and to own/operate the beautiful hotel Raquel?

What preconceived notion leads the Cuban Ministry of Tourism to promote heavily and organize trade fairs in south America, Europe, Asia and Australia, as it blatantly ignore the purchasing power and geographical proximity of millions of Afro-Americans and Caribbean potential tourists, who would readily feel at home in Santiago de Cuba, Guantanamo and other areas in Cuba, with whom they hold a strong ethnic, historical and family bonds?

How can we be surprised by rising racism in Cuba, knowing that the Ministry of Education curriculum has omitted or intentionally evaded important historical contributions of Africans and their descendents in the development of the Cuban nation, has shelved films and other cultural events depicting blacks in positive, historical accomplishments, while innumerable films, soap operas and plays made in Cuba or imported, tends to present black people in servility, dependency or unlawful activities, in contrast with the Gentleman, Lady or Mistress attributes conferred upon other ethic groups?

Can we plausibly explain how the ICAIC (Cuban Institute of Arts and Cinematography Industry) has the time and funds to honor the memory of Yarine, a vulgar pimp turned into a popular fable, but has not had the time, funds or interest to pay homage to the lives of Bartolome Maso, Jesus Menendez, Carlota, Jose Maceo or Juan Gualberto Gomez?

How can anyone convincingly convey to our children that after half a century of solidarity with the world, Cuba has been unable to replicate among Afro-Cuban youths, tens of General Antonio Maceo, Aponte, Brindis de Salas, Mariana Grajales, Nicolas Guillen or Regino Boti, originated in the abject social conditions of colonialism and the pseudo-republic?

Complicating even more this horrible scenario is the fact that no predominantly black country, social, humanitarian or religious institution in the world, has been able to extend a helping hand to a captive Afro-Cuban community, reluctant to migrate, dreaming about an elusive better tomorrow, while the crude rigors of the blockade and the severe internal restrictions that strangle all non-governmental economic activity are eroding societal ethics, shattering their moral values and placing millions on the verge of social collapse?

Other ethnic groups in Cuba, have widely used migratory possibilities and have controlled the best jobs with access to convertible money, while they occupy the best residential areas, undertake foreign travels, job promotion and have also received substantial monetary support from the countries of origin of their ancestors, as is the case of Spain, Israel, China and some Arab countries, widening Cuba’s class divisions.

In our intent of creating a country with all and for the betterment of all in the XIX century as was postulated by Jose Marti, Afro-Cubans joined massively, constituted the bulk of the Army of Independence and suffered most of its casualties. Our sacrifices were infringed upon by the humiliating military intervention of the United States in 1898, emasculating our country’s social aspirations, re-introducing segregation and racism, prohibiting black immigration from the Caribbean as they introduced 100,000 men, women and children in western Cuba from the Canary Islands to “bleach“ the country. They were given funds and farmlands while all of the country resources were distributed among the interventionists and those who were defeated on the battlefield.

Afro-Cubans received nothing material, were prohibited to rise above the rank of lieutenant in the army even though some had led victorious armies during the war of independence. They were barred from the police force and were confined to menial, jobs or unemployment.

Betrayed, frustrated and without any other option, blacks founded the Independent Party of Color in order to demand justice, equity and their brutally violated rights, following the established political norms.

The answer to this noble action was the monstrous massacre of over 6000 members of the party and others, whose only crime was being black or mulato, in Santiago de Cuba , Songo, La Maya, San Luis and Guantanamo .

And today, nearly 100 years after that horrific crime, a magnificent monument on Presidents Avenue and 27th Street in Havana honors the memory of General Jose Miguel Gomez, the intellectual author of this human turkey shoot, while there has been no time or political will to erect a simple cross at the site of the crime, in honor of its victims.

Cuba is like other countries whose development, life style and everything that is visible and invisible was created with the work, sweat, blood and the lives of millions of Africans and their descendents, who were forced to do the worst jobs from sunrise to sundown for free for more than 350 years. Cuba cannot ignore or presume it has addressed this un-payable debt with millions of its children.

To not recognize this infamy, to not begin to apply elementary corrective measures to address this un-erasable blot in our history, has impeded and will continue to impede our country to achieve the seat of honor it deserve among the community of nations in the world, as paid hypocrites are now trying to use.

No other position could correspond with a martyrized Cuba during the Ladder Conspiracy, the cruel execution of the 7 medical students, the Baragua Protest, the explosion of La Coubre, the Missile Crisis and the heroism of the battle of Cuito-Cuanavale, to tolerate our country to continue to drag or to hide this secret that stains us all alike.

None of the countries that enriched themselves with the blood of our ancestors is like Cuba . In Cuba there is an ongoing Revolution, with the character, moral fortitude and ethical principles that are a pre-requisite to identify these ills, evaluate them factually and introduce the corrective, un-deferrable measures our society demands.

Only Cuba has the moral authority to confront and motivate others to assume together or separately, this collective debt with humanity.

For the good of all, part III the final chapter, will include some honest thoughts, simple mechanisms, that if they were deemed worthy of implementing, even on an experimental basis, we hope may shed some options, clues and directions, that may help us heal this immoral scar and begin to create the nation we deserve and with which, we have dreamt for over 500 years.

Act Now in Haiti Before It is Too Late!

2010-02-15T16:42:00.004-05:00

"Act now in Haiti before it is too late!"

Alberto N. Jones

February 15, 2010 　

One month after the most devastating natural disaster to hit our hemisphere, only limited progress can be reported in Haiti, notwithstanding the unprecedented humanitarian outpouring of moral and material support from across the globe.

Miraculously, a massive infectious outbreak has not happen as yet, albeit thousands of decomposing bodies under the rubble in our harsh tropical environment, insufficient healthcare, lack of shelter, food, running water, basic sanitation and every possible vector spreading transmissible diseases among survivors.

Compounding the previous description will be, the arrival in a couple of months of the rainy season with over 350,000 schoolchildren roaming the streets without classrooms, missing their school year and risk becoming victims of every possible social ills, including human trafficking.

Could the monumental tragedy that lies ahead of us, be sufficient to bring the United States, European and Caribbean governments together, to present a concrete proposal to the Cuban government, -located less than 200 miles from the disaster site-, to receive, provide shelter, food, education, healthcare, sports, culture and all other ancillary child care for 50,000 - 100,000 of these victims?

No other country in this hemisphere have the infrastructure, logistics, human resources and expertise to tackle a problem of this magnitude, although Cuba’s acute financial woes may have hindered her from stepping forward.

No geographical, political, ideological or religious differences should become an acceptable excuse for innocent children to suffer or die.

El Momento de la Verdad

2010-01-14T05:58:00.001-05:00

"El Momento de la Verdad"
Alberto N Jones
13 de Enero del 2009
　
La monstrousa destruccion sin precedentes que esta teniendo lugar ante nuestros ojos en Haiti, se convertira rapidamente en un reto definitorio para la humanidad, al determinar quienes somos y cuales son nuestros principios.

Durante mucho tiempo, los humanos hemos estado prestos a pelear y matarnos, mientras los mas hemos permanecido silente ante la muerte de miles de personas inocentes por hambre, enfermedades, ignorancia y disastres.

Esta catastrofe sin embargo no nos permitira huir de el o pretender que no sabiamos. El es muy grande, muy horrendo para que algun gobierno alrededor del mundo pueda alegar, que no se le informo o desconocian lo que estaba ocurriendo.

Durante los ultimos 20 anos, Cuba ha hecho mas por Haiti que cada uno de los paises desarrollados del mundo. Cuba ha aportado cientos de profesionales y tecnicos para apoyar cada uno de las areas de desarrollo. Cuba ha graduado mas de 150 medicos y actualmente existen unos 1000 estudiantes de medicina en los distintos niveles de desarrollo, en forma absolutamente gratuita.

Cuba se ha comprometido con Haiti a formarles 100 medicos por ano durante los proximos veinte anos, asi como cientos de maestros, enfermeras y otros profesionales, aun cuando una galopante crisis financiera afecta al pais.

En medio del importante desarrollo cientifico-tecnico que se le ha ofrecido a Haiti y otros 40 paises sub-desarrollados en Cuba, los Estados Unidos, aun bajo el afable Presidente Barack Obama, continua invirtiendo millones de dollares en actividades subversivas, designadas a desestablizar, debilitar y derrocar al gobierno.

Los gobiernos Europeos que se beneficiaron ampliamente de los recursos naturales de Haiti y del resto de America Latina, han preferido convertirse en tribunos, llevar a Cuba ante cuantos forum internacionales existan, acusarla de las peores violaciones de los derechos humanos, mientras ignoran y hacen poco por millones de seres humanos viviendo en abyecta pobreza en Haiti y el resto del tercer mundo.

Nadie pretende presentar a Cuba como un pais perfecto o modelo. Tampoco pretendemos excusarla de excesos que haya podido cometer; pero nadie en su sano juicio puede negar el aplastante apoyo en sudor, lagrimas, sangre y vidas que Cuba ha aportado a Africa, Asia y America Latina en defensa de su independencia, soberania, salud, educacion, cultura y deportes.

La tragedia de Haiti nos ha ensenado a partir de ayer, que nuestros ilustres discuros altisonantes en bellas salas de conferencias alrededor del mundo exigiendo libertad e independencia en un vacio, prescribiendo nuestras filosofia politicas a espaldas de este drama humano, poco sirven para las victimas de esta tragedia o los otros millones que aguardan una muerte segura, previsible alrededor del mundo.

Despues de cincuenta anos tratando de construir una Cuba a su imagen y semejanza, esta ha fracasado estrepitosamente en tanto nada ha contribuido al bienestar del pueblo de Cuba o para los de otros lugares. Trabajemos pues para superar nuestras imperfecciones, sin imponernos valores valores foraneos o pretender que somos guardianes de la verdad absoluta.

Mientras decenas de miles de personas yacen expuestos a nuestro crudo medio ambiente tropical rodeado de cadaveres en estado de descomposicion, sin agua, alimento, faltos de higiene y de medios para evacuar desperdicios en Puerto Principe, preocupa un inmediato agravamiento de la actual crisis.

Es por ello que estamos implorando a todos los moralistas de este mundo, portadores de firmes valores inconmovibles, incapaces de negociar con aquellos de criterios divergentes y las demas personas de Buena fe, que observen cuidadosamente el mundo real, tal cual existe hoy en Haiti.

La provincia de Guantanamo se encuentra a menos de 150 millas del escenario de este desastre. Cuba, con la excepcion de los Estados Unidos, acumula la mayor reserva de personal tecnico, profesional y de cuidados de salud de la region y que posee un cumulo de experiencia nacional e internacional en disastres naturales, superior a todos los demas.

Cuba esta necesitada de recursos materiales basicos como ropa, alimentos, medicinas, que cualquier otro pais solidario pudiera aportar. Superemos decadas demonizando a Cuba e intentando destruir aquella nacion por actuar y pensar distinto a los demas.

En ningun otro lugar en el mundo nuestra inversion pudiera producir resultados mas prometedores que en Cuba. Si las Naciones Unidas, CARICOM y cada organizacion humanitaria del mundo, decidieran iniciar discusiones serias, respetuosas, honestas, con Cuba, que condujeran a la reubicacion de miles de victimas del terremoto en Haiti hacia edificios escolares disponibles, donde estos pudieran recibir todas los servicios humanos basicos y sanitarios, en tanto, todos los paises, especialmente los desarrollos, financiaran este proyecto humanitario sin precedentes en la historia, miles de vidas podrian rescatarse de una muerte segura.

Mas alla de las necesidades inmediatas, Haiti necesitara ayuda a largo plazo para ayudarlo a restanar sus heridas. Decenas de miles de hectareas de terrenos agricolas baldios en Cuba podrian ser arrendados con similar proposito a los damnificados, lo que les permitiria obtener empleos, apoyar economicamente a sus familiares en Haiti y producir alimentos, fortaleciendo la seguridad alimenticia de la region.

Si solo fuesemos capaces de hacer esto, no solo estariamos ayudando a las victimas, estariamos al mismo tiempo sentando las bases para solucionar nuestras diferencias socio-politicas a traves del dialogo franco, la compression y el comienzo de la transformacion de nuestras armas de Guerra en aperos de labranza para bien de la humanidad.
　

A Moment of Reckoning

2010-01-14T02:14:00.004-05:00

"A Moment of Reckoning"
Alberto N. Jones
January 13, 2010

The monstrous and unprecedented destruction that is unfolding in Haiti before our eyes, will rapidly become one of mankind defining challenges, of who we are and what we stand for.

For much too long, human beings have been ready to fight and kill each other, while we have remained indifferent to the silent deaths of thousands of innocent people through hunger, disease, ignorance and disasters.

This catastrophe will not allow us to run away or pretend we did not know. It is too big, too shocking for any one government around the world to ever say, they were not told or did not know what happened.

For the past twenty years, Cuba have done more for Haiti than every developed country in the world. Cuba have supplied Haiti with hundreds of professionals and technical support in every field of development. Cuba have graduated over 150 physicians and presently have close to 1000 medical students from Haiti in different levels of training, all free of charge.

Cuba have promised Haiti to train 100 physicians per year for the next 20 years and hundreds of teachers, nurses and other professionals, albeit its crushing financial downfall.

As this incredible human development for Haiti and another 40 Third World countries is taking place in Cuba, the United States, even under our affable President Barack Obama, continue to invest millions of dollars in subversive activities designed to destabilize, weaken and overthrow that country.

European governments who benefited handsomely from Haiti and Latin American natural resources, have chosen to sit in judgment, take Cuba to every international forum, accuse it of the worst human rights violations, while doing literally nothing for millions living in abject poverty in Haiti and the rest of the underdeveloped world.

No one pretends to portray Cuba as a perfect country. No one pretends to excuse excesses that may have taken place in Cuba, but no one in his/her right mind can deny either the overwhelming support in sweat, tears, blood and lives, that Cuba has provided to Africa, Asia and Latin America, in defense of their independence, sovereignty, health, education, culture and sports.

The Haitian tragedy has taught us since yesterday, that our grandstanding, illustrious speeches in beautiful conference halls around the world, demanding freedom and liberty in a vacuum, prescribing our phillosophy, have done nothing for the victims of this tragedy and millions of others awaiting certain death around the world.

Fifty years trying to construct a Cuba in our image has failed, while it has done no good to Cubans and people elsewhere. Let’s work to overcome our imperfections, without imposing on others or pretending to be guardians of absolute truths.

As thousands of people are exposed to our grueling tropical environment with rotting bodies, lack of sanitation, water or food in Port au Prince, I am pleading with all moralists of the world, holders of firm values and unwilling to compromise with anyone with differing views, to take a look at the real world, as we see it in Haiti today.

The province of Guantanamo lies less than 150 miles away from the area of disaster. Cuba has the largest technical, professional and healthcare human resources in the area, except for the US.

Cuba is in dire need of basic resources such as clothing, food, medicines, which any caring country could provide. Let’s overcome decades of demonizing Cuba and attempting to destroy that country for thinking and acting differently than others.

No where in the world could our investment achieve higher return if the United Nations and every worldwide humanitarian organization in the world would open an honest, fair and respectful discussion with Cuba, that would enable the relocation of thousands of the earthquake victims in Haiti to vacant school buildings in Cuba where they could receive all basic human needs, as every country, especially the developed ones, can contribute to the financial operation of this unprecedented humanitarian project.

Beyond the immediate needs, Haiti will need longtime help to get back on their feet. Tens of thousands of fallow acreage in Cuba could be leased to provide jobs for these victims and food security for our region under a similar international goodwill project.

If we did that, we would not only help the victims, we would have laid the groundwork for beginning to solve most of our socio-political ills, through peaceful dialogue, understanding and turning our weapons into plows on behalf of mankind.

The Pot Calling the Kettle....

2010-01-08T07:48:00.000-05:00

"The Pot calling the Kettle...."
Alberto N. Jones
1/8/01

A unilateral, absurd and baseless set of assumptions are used every year by bureaucrats of the US State Department, to label primarily small and poor nations around the world as Sponsors of Terrorism or quietly remove them from this financially crippling grouping, if they meekly comply with their demands or risk economical disaster.

The State Department most recent catalog include countries as diverse as Cuba, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen.

Although it is Cuba who has been under a fifty year asphyxiating embargo, was invaded at the Bay of Pigs, suffered the first bioterrorism attack in this hemisphere in 1971 and five successive ones, had an airliner blown-up in mid-air causing the death of 73 passengers, have suffered over 100 billion in financial damages, had 14,000 children under 17 years of age literally kidnapped under a CIA inspired Peter Pan project in 1962 and have promoted the illegal exodus of thousands of professionals trained in Cuba at no charge, to migrate to the enticing US job market.

Additionally, hundreds of millions of tax dollars are spent every year under the watchful eyes of US-AID, NED and fake foundations to keep Radio & TV Marti on the air for 25 years with no listeners; by pumping tons of subversive, pornographic, escapists and violent videos into Cuba, intended to corrupt the minds of teenagers, where no school have lost a child due to Columbine-type school violence in fifty years.

A well funded, twenty year old effort by the State Department to divide Cuba along racial lines is in full gear, attempting to re-enact the racial massacre of 1912, when over 3000 blacks were butchered with absolute impunity in eastern Cuba.

Yet it is the state of Florida and not Cuba, who harbors renowned terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and Dr. Orlando Bosch who have said publicly, "we placed the bomb in the airline killing 73, so what?"

It is Florida not Cuba, where General Vides Cassanova and Guillermo Garcia who murdered over 30,000 Salvadorians have found safe haven and live as celebrities with other graduates of the infamous School of the Americas, who have terrorized Latin America for half a century.

Name calling has always been easy.

Laying the Groundwork for Another 1912

2009-12-08T04:52:00.000-05:00

"Laying the groundwork for another 1912"
by Alberto N Jones
8 december, 2009
　
Approximately fifteen years ago, a well funded campaign organized by the US-AID, NED, right-wing Cuban-American groups in south Florida and elsewhere, was poised to create an Afro-Cuban/anti-Castro leadership corps, charged with fomenting oppositions groups inside Cuba, disguised as Independent Journalists, Farmers, Librarians, Healthcare and others and to dilute the historical Afro-American support of Cuba. Evidently December 1, 2009 was their chosen D-Day.

After an intensive lobbying campaign of phone calls, e-mails, letters to the editor and Human Rights Organization’s fraudulent assessments, an explosive letter entitled “Afro-American Group Challenges Cuba on Race” scathingly described the brutal government-imposed racism in Cuba, which captured the signature of over 60 prominent Afro-American and Caribbean scholars and social researchers.

This corrosive document was most likely conceived, structured and promoted by Dr. Carlos Moore from Brazil, in a grand finale of his 50 year old, visceral hatred against the Cuban government; forcing the Afro-American community and others, to take sides in this thorny, divisive issue.

Documenting real or bogus statistics describing the existence of slavery, racism, segregation, white supremacists or lynching resonates immediately with blacks everywhere, who have had the unique experience of being victims of this human scourge.

Therefore, it was not necessary for some willing to sign this spurious document, to be knowledgeable of Cuba’s very complex, intractable 500 year old history of slavery and its aftermath or to have ever been in Cuba for that matter, to align themselves with such a vivid and painful part of our lives. This document was simply talking about a rope, where a family member had been hanged!

Publishing this open letter has been a treacherous attack on hundreds of Afro-Cubans intellectuals inside Cuba, who for the past twenty years or more, have waged an honorable and discreet struggle in defense of the plight of the Afro-Cuban people, as they walked a tight rope, not to be perceived as agents of foreign governments our mouthpieces of this and other Afro-Cuban groups, bent on subverting the Cuban government.

In every opportunity I have had, I willingly shared with Dr. Moore and others, the dangers of disrupting this ongoing process in Cuba, which has exhibited signs of progress, albeit much too slow for most of us. We emphasized the importance of unity and a uniform approach in presenting our peoples need.

Yet, it seems, personal ego, financial gains or international recognition means more to some, than solving the injustices they are denouncing.

Although I am not a historian, anthropologist, psychologist, writer or researcher, I have been forced since the late 80’s to become part of this discourse, notwithstanding my simple, ordinary writing and frequent brutalization of the English language, in order to express my concerns and potential consequences of the slippery slope we were entering.

Some of these concerns can be found in more than 500 articles in afrocubaweb, Cuba Journal, Cubanews, the Cuban Nation, blogs, letters to the editors in the US and the Caribbean, speaking engagements in Churches, Schools, Arts Festivals, Universities, Social Groups, Local, County Government, the US Congress and Senate.

For these reasons, we have been aiding Guantanamo province with its very large Afro-Cuban population, who are the prime target of the US Embargo/Blockade because of their limited family foreign remittances, no joint ventures/corporations paying wages in hard currencies and literally a non-existent tourist industry with access to hard currency, our humanitarian groups have pumped millions of dollars in health, education, physically challenged and sports donations, intended to mitigate their basic sufferings.

Tens of pleas for help for the elderly, infirmed, children or after natural disasters of this region, have gone unheard by these grieving Afro-Cubans, engaged in writing letters and books.

How do they expect to stop a hungry baby from crying, an elderly in pain, an infirmed without adequate medication or a physically challenged without a prosthesis to make his life bearable?

Not even technical/professional literature for medical schools, they have been willing to provide and would rather label those extending a helping hand as Castroites.

The contradictory behavior of these individuals, interested in increasing the suffering of the same people they gladly provide with a flash memory to hear their diatribe, religious or double-edged literature, hopes of a better future while starving, has never made sense to me.

Nor have I ever bought into their extreme, paternalistic Africanism, when communities ravaged by unemployment, drug addition, violence, prostitution, murder or ignorance, lie a few miles away from their gated communities and they are oblivious to their hopelessness and solely interested in what is taking place in Cuba.

I am not disputing the existence of a pervasive inequality, poverty, segregation and the overdue need for preferential treatment of Afro-Cubans to be instituted immediately in order to level the playing field. No one, on the other hand, can deny how much progress Afro-Cubans have achieved in the past 50 years, but that is beyond the point.

Thousands fought, were injured and died in an effort to create an egalitarian society, which for most, is yet to be achieved. Whites in Cuba continue to monopolize government, administration, management, education, best neighborhoods, travel, cars and every possible social development of Cuban life. This is an irrefutable fact!
　
Blacks to a great extent continue to live in marginal, overcrowded neighborhoods, with high prevalence of illegalities, incarceration on lower educational levels. Cuba is different than most other countries and can not therefore mimic those societies in which the wealth of the nation is concentrated in the hands of the selected few.

This is and must be the cause of our struggle, not to undermine and hopefully create a system similar to our places of residence, where these glaring inequalities are beyond repair.

As it was partially stated in the response of Afro-Cuban intellectuals, Cuba has done more than all nations together to liberate countries in Africa under Apartheid. Cuba has educated more sons and daughters of Africa than anyone else. Cuba has provided more healthcare and education to the underdeveloped world than the rest of nations combined.

But this cannot be a cop out; this is a failed argument, not to confront blatant abuses that subsist in our country. Cuba is maybe the only country in the world that can exhibit and have the courage to do what all others have ran away and hidden from.

The time has come, for our government and others around the world to come clean, admit publicly that everything visible and invisible in our countries and in Europe, was built and exists with tons of tears, sweat, blood and millions of lives of brutalized blacks.

Millions of Africans ripped away from our homeland, were not only deprived of our language, culture, religion, we were forced to create billions to enrich Europe and cities that are today world heritages, while their descendents are still living in slums of the XIX Century.

Beautiful cathedrals in Spain are adorned with the finest woods of our continent, while natives in our countries are being buried in makeshift coffins, because all of our forests were ravished.

It is no accident that many still are angry at President Barack Obama for accepting President Hugo Chavez gift, The Open Veins of Latin America, which depicts like no other what these God-fearing, democratic-posturing, election-demanding folks did to our peaceful natives and our enslaved forefathers.

Cuba was a model, a symbol to the world, when it demonstrated that Batista, his Mafia friends and the US government backing could be defeated in 1959.

Cuba was and continues to be a model to the Third World for what it has done since for its people and millions around the world. Therefore, nothing can justify keeping this nation from wiping its slate clean of all vestiges of racism, inequalities and segregation, that puts our country on the same social level as its neighbors and allows the worst human rights violators to attempt to take our country to court.

Worst yet, is that Afro-Cubans have been educated, they have been thought to think critically and they are able to discern right from wrong. These factors make it impossible for any one in government in Cuba, to pretend this burning issue can be placed on the back burner or swept under the rug.

Our country will never achieve its rightful place in history as it deserves, as long as the majority of its population, has not been transformed and Cuba is not allowed to become the society with the highest per capita of educated Blacks in the world.

If we did that, there will never be another 1912 in Cuba or in our region.

La Paradojas de Dos Mujeres Cubanas

2009-11-30T04:22:00.007-05:00

"La Paradoja de Dos Mujeres Cubanas"
por Alberto N. Jones
26 de noviembre, 2009

Alberto N. Jones
November 26, 2009

En el año 2006, miembros de la direccion de la cadena televisiva CNN, se plantearon la necesidad de crear un programa distinto de lo que venian realizando hasta entonces, basado en noticias llenas de muerte, destruccion y calamidades humanas durante las 24 horas al dia, siete dia a la semana, por lo que este debia dedicarse por entero, a rendir homenaje a Personas Ordinarias realizando Actividades Extraordinarias en todo el mundo.

El dia 6 de Diciembre del ano 2007, en el muy apropiado e increiblemente bello Museo de Ciencias Naturales de Nueva York, 2.5 mil millones de personas alrededor del mundo tuvieron la oportunidad de recibir una detallada descripcion audio-visual de las actividades llevadas a cabo por cada uno de los diez finalistas del programa HEROES, en el cual un jurado altamente calificado le otorgo el Primer Premio a Irania Martinez por Defender El Planeta.

El increible honor que le fuera conferido a esta humilde madre Afro-Cuba, que casi en forma independiente transformo un basurero en un Jardin del Eden como fue descrito por el equipo periodistico de CNN, fue capaz ademas, de colocar honrosamente a su ciudad, su comunidad y a su pueblo en el mapa del mundo.

Como pudo haber ocurrido este hecho sin precedentes? La confluencia accidental de distintos factores no relacionados, condujeron a feliz termino, el hecho mas importante en la historia del pueblo de Guantanamo. Algunos elementos.

El subito colapso de la Union Sovietica y los demas paises del campo socialista significo para Cuba, la perdida del 40% de sus mercados de importacion/exportacion, transacciones financieras, materia prima, assistencia tecnica y un impacto mental traumatico, al encontrarse sin aliados socio/politicos/financieros y una amenza real de hambruna, falta de medicina, suministros medicos, apagones interminables y la posibilidad real de un colapso total como habia sido previsto en las teorias del Domino.

En lo que la historia tendra que reconocer como otra osadia de Fidel Castro similar al ataque al cuartel Moncada en 1953, a la invasion maritima de 1956 para desencadenar la insurreccion, la direccion del contra-ataque de Playa Giron en 1961, la Crisis de Octubre de 1962 y la direccion de la estrategia militar que derroto al Apartheid y la demolicion de la maquinaria militar mas poderosas del continente Africano.

En apasionados discurscos, el presidente Cubano llamo a su pueblo a crecerse y ponerse a la altura de nuestros proceres, quienes forjaron la independencia de Cuba con su sangre y sus vidas, transformado ahora en el Periodo Especial en tiempos de Paz. El nivel de privaciones, sufrimientos y las muertes asociadas a esta tragedia que tuvo lugar en Cuba, nos recordo de una Europa devastada al final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Una vez mas y haciendo lo que Cuba ha sabido hacer especialmente cuando esta se encuentra en el suelo y los politicos y academicos han determinado la muerte de este proceso, surgio un mar de ideas, decenas de proyectos, vision y una recien descubierta energia envolvio a la nacion, desmantelando todas las predicciones fatalistas. Entre las nuevas ideas que surgieron al calor de este movimiento estubo, la inmediata transformacion de cada terreno baldio, solar yermo o espacio en la ciudades, fuesen transformados en huertos comunitarios. Como tecnica agricola, Irania Martinez fue asignada al barrio marginal de sur Isleta en Guantanamo.

Debido a una aguda falta de combustible, gomas, piezas de respuestos etc., todos los camiones dedicados a la recoleccion de desechos estaban parados y su funcion fue transferido a carretones de traccion animal. Adicionalmente, la ciudad fue subdividido en regiones, para hacer posible este trabajo mediante la traccion animal, lo que condujo a la creacion de multiples mini-vertederos en lugar del tipico vertedero central.

Cuando Irania arribo al barrio de Isleta para acometer su funcion de adiestrar a personas de la barriada en el desarrollo y manejo de un huerto, ella fue recibida por un enjambre de moscas, hormigas, roedores, un hedor insoportable por la descomposicion organica y un humo asfixiante proveniente de la quema de basura domestica contaminada con material plastico potencialmente cancerigeno.

Al alertar a funcionarios de su empresa sobre el estado insalubre del area, se le dijo que esa funcion no era de su competencia, que se limitara a cumplir con sus funcionnes, a lo cual ella se opuso y en su lugar, comenzo a organizar a los vecinos y a buscar voluntarios dispuestos a ayudarla a sanear dicho ambiente.

Algunos vecinos la apoyaron y carentes medios de proteccion personal, salario o recursos materiales, comenzaron a separar metales, vidrios y otros materiales reciclables y semillas de la materia digerible, que fueron convertido pacientemente mediante el uso de lombriz de tierrra en compost, que a su vez fue colocado en recipientes recuperados, sembrados con semillas extraidas de aquel medio y donado a toda aquel que estuviera dispuesto a cultivar un arbol.

Como resultado de la critica situacion economica que sufria Cuba en general y Guantanamo en particular durante el ano 1992 y mas alla, solicitamos donaciones a infinidad de instituciones sanitarias, educacionales, deportivas o de apoyo a los discapacitados en el estado de la Florida, quienes nos apoyaron generosamente, lo que permitio empacar maletas que enviabamos con cualquier viajero que estuviera dispuesto a llevar un equipaje extra y mas tarde, a traves de cuantas organizaciones solidarias con Cuba, se pudo enviar toneladas de medicina, suministros medicos, material educacional y para los impedidos fisicos.

A raiz de los danos ocasionados por el ciclon Gordon en Guantanamo en el ano 1994, en colaboracion con las demas instituciones solidarias con Cuba en los Estados Unidos, fue posible enviar el primer avion cuatrimotor repleto de donaciones desde Miami, que aterrizara en Cuba despues del ano 1959. Este hecho contribuyo como ningun otro a consolidar nuestra relacion de trabajo con las instituciones de salud, impedidos fisicos y otros en aquella provincia.

Debido a la necesidad de estructurar e institucionalizar nuestra labor humanitaria, fui miembro fundador de la asociacion US-Cuba Sister City, fundamos en el ano 1998 el Caribbean American Children Foundation y somos miembro/fundador de la direccion de St- Augustine-Baracoa Friendship Association.

Este proceso legal nos permitio solicitar y recibir multiples licencias del departamento de Comercio y del Tesoro de los Estados Unidos, lo que viabilizo el envio de millones de dolares en medicina, suministros medicos, articulos deportivos, culturales, medio ambientales y para los discapacitados.

Por esta razon, distintas instituciones en Guantanamo nos invitaron a visitar el CEPRU o Centro Ecologico para el Procesamiento de Residuos urbanos. Prometi que iria, pero no estube convencido que visitar un basurero era la mejor forma de utilizar el limitado tiempo de mi visita familiar a esa ciudad.

En una visita sucesiva a Guantanamo, me recordaron nuevamente de su deseo que visitara el CEPRU. Acorralado y sin salida, acepte su invitacion y quede cautivado. La imagen que me encontre ese dia vivira conmigo de por vida, al ver a hombres y mujeres, jovenes y viejos, fisicamente sanos o impedidos, trabajando de manera incansable con sus ropas raidas, sin guantes u otros medios de proteccion personal, separando material reciclable de aquellos digeribles en la basura.

Impresionado con un esfuerzo tan singular, les prometi en el momento, que apoyaria su heroica y peligrosa tarea mediante la recoleccion de ropa de trabajo, guantes, bicicletas, mascaras, implementos de trabajo, los ayudamos a construir una cocina, bano, lavanderia, un aula de computacion, camara fotografica y les orientamos a no llevar sus ropas de trabajo contaminado a sus casas.

Este modesto gesto de solidaridad y respeto, les imprimio un gran impulso a sus tareas, multiplicando y transformando su centro de trabajo en el entorno que impresiono de tal forma al equipo periodistico de CNN y otros grupos procedentes de Estados Unidos y Europa que los han visitado.

El CEPRU es hoy un vivero forestal de mediano tamano con miles de plantas medicinales, flores, arbustos ornamentales, frutales y madera dura. Un humedal para la reproduccion de mariposas esta a punto de ser concluido, se encuentra en operacion una pequena poblacion de cabras lecheras para la produccion de leche para los ninos hospitalizados que son lactosa-intolerantes, se ofrecen seminarios mensuales de proteccion medio ambiental con especialistas de la rama y se coordinan visitas de alumnos de primaria para motivarlos en el amor y proteccion del medio ambiente.

Estos logros nos llevaron de manera equivocada a pensar, que la Mencion Meritoria que le fuera otorgado al CEPRU por el Ministerio de Agricultura, el ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnologia y Medio Ambiente, el primer premio que le fuera otorgado por la oficina regional de la FAO en la Habana y el imponente galardon de HEROES por CNN, hubiera convertido a este proyecto en una joya de aclamacion nacional y trampolin para elevar el nivel de conciencia acerca de los retos a nuestro medio ambiente.

Lamentable, ese no ocurrio. El apoyo a este proyecto ha sido pobre o cuestionable. Mulltiples impedimentos artificialmente creados han frenado la implementacion del proyecto Oxigeno Para Todos, que pretendia sembrar un millon de arboles maderables, ornamental y frutales por ano, encaminado a detener y revertir el grave proceso de desertificacion y salinizacion de Oriente Sur.

Sin embargo, ha sido Yoani Sanchez y no Irania Martinez Garcia quien ha hecho tanto en beneficio de su comunidad y que ha ganado el respeto internacional para su pais, quien la virulenta prensa anti-Cubana ha convertido en una celebridad internacional.

El curso que Yoani Sanchez ha escojido para sostener su estilo de vida, alcanzar una fama transitoria a expensa de degradar, mancillar y desmoralizar su pais, es simplemente asquiante. Uno de los principios morales elementales que aprendimos temprano en nuestras vidas, es debatir y resolver las diferencias familiares dentro del seno y nunca fuera de sus confines.
Seria posible, que esta seudo-filologa hubiera podido alcanzar fama internacional y sus "obras" traducidas a 17 idiomas, si el contenido central de su tematica giraria alrededor de los mas de 500 jovenes negros brutalmente asesinados entre si, en las calles de Chicago en el ano 2008?
Cuantos se interesarian por sus articulos, si ella se hubiera ocupado en reportar el vil asesinato de un joven hispano de 18 anos de edad, baleado 11 veces en la espalda, frente y los costados el dia 11/22/09 en Queens, Nueva York, por miembros de una brutal fuerza policiaca?

Ha escuchado alguna vez Yoani Sanchez hablar de Ellinor Bumpers, una abuela de 84 anos de edad, baleada seis veces en su apartamento del Bronx en 1984, por miembros de esta misma honorable fuerza policiaca?

Que decir acerca del emigrante sur Africano Amadou Diallo, al cual la policia de Nueva York le disparo 41 veces e hiriendolo 19 veces, mientras intentaba abrir la puerta de su apartamento en el Bronx en el ano 1999?

Como explicarnos el caso del humilde emigrante Haitiano Abmer Louima al cual, un perverso sexual de la estacion de policia de Brooklyn, le perforo el intestino al introducirle forzosamente el cabo de un destupidor por el recto en el ano 1997 y no parece ser motivo de interes periodistico de algunos?

Tendriamos que estimular a Yoani Sanchez para que investigue las bases del movimiento MOVE de Filadelphia que justifico, que un helicoptero de la policia dejara caer sobre sus casas, una bomba plastica C-4 de cuatro libras, incendiando numerosas casas, mientras la policia, prensa y bomberos observaron indiferentes, como 11 personas, de los cuales cinco eran ninos, morian calcinados en aquel infierno?

Podriamos asumir que Yoani Sanchez hubiera preferido a cualquiera de los policias mencionados mas arriba, que hubiesen intervenido en la lamentalbe, vergonzoso e innecesaria confrontacion reportada con la policia en dias pasados en la Habana?

Es realmente patetico observar como Yoani Sanchez y su esposo se han unido a la industria del odio anti-Cubano para financiar su estilo de vida, la adquisicion sin limites de conexion por internet en hoteles de lujo para exudar su veneno, operar una costosa pagina web operada en Alemania, sin tener que explicarle a su pueblo, la fuente de sus abultados ingresos.

La responsabilidad de este fiasco innecesario, es atribuible enteramente a las autoridades Cubanas, por haber ignorado injustamente los merecidisimos logros de Irania Martinez y permitido que a traves de ese vacio, Yoani, su esposo y amigos, hayan podido escalar desde su oscuro tugurio a inmerecidos niveles de celebridad.

Es derecho de cada ciudadano estar de acuerdo o no con su gobierno y sus leyes. Es igualmente legal el poder expresarlo sin coaccion y menos por la fuerza bruta. Lo que resulta imperdonable, es intentar denigrar a su pais y a su pueblo, en busca de fama y fortuna.

Felizmente en esta tercera edicion de HEROES de CNN y en los que proseguiran en el futuro, no contaran con la presencia de ninguno de estos impostores entre sus homenajeados.

The Paradox of Two Cuban Women

2009-11-27T19:15:00.014-05:00

"The Paradox of Two Cuban Women"

Alberto N. Jones

November 26, 2009

Sometime during the year 2006, CNN executives conceived a project that would be different than everything they had done until then, in which, rather than the typical 24/7 news filled with death, destruction and human calamity to which we have become addicted, this project would be devoted entirely to pay hommage to ordinary people doing extraordinary things around the world.

On December 6, 2007 in the incredibly beautiful setting of the New York Museum of Natural History, 2.5 billions viewers around the world were treated to a detailed audio-visual desciption of the activities of all ten finalists, from which Irania Martinez from Guantanamo, Cuba, was declared by a high powered Blue Ribbon commission the winner of Defending the Planet.

The incredible honor that was bestowed upon this modest, Afro-Cuban, un-wed mother, who single handedly transformed a solid waste toxic dump in Guantanamo into a Garden of Eden - as described by CNN - was able at the same time, to put her city, her community and its people on the world map.

How could this unprecedented event come about? An accidental confluence of unrelated events, brought into fruition the most important development in the history of Guantanamo.

Some facts:

The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and all of eastern European socialist countries meant for Cuba, loosing overnight 40% of its import/export markets, financial exchange, raw material, supplies, technical assistance and a traumatic mental impact of being without socio/political/financial allies and the threat of mass hunger, lack of medicine, medical supplies, endless blackouts and an imminent collapse as predicted by the "Domino" theory.

In what history will record as an equally daring act by Fidel Castro, similar to when he attacked the Moncada Garrison in 1953, led the sea invasion to ignite the revolution in 1956, directed the counterattack at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and led the military strategy that defeated Apartheid and the most powerful war machine on the African continent. In impassioned speaches, he called upon the Cuban people to stand tall in defense of the fatherland in the image of our forefathers, who forged Cuba's independence with their blood, their lives, midwifing the Special Period in times of Peace. The level of need, deprivations, suffering and related deaths that took place in Cuba during this period, was a stark reminder of a devastated Europe at the end of WW II.

Doing what Cuba have done best whenever it is down and written off by academics and politicians, a flurry of ideas, projects, visions and new found energies came into play, dismantling all fatalistic predictions. Among the many novel ideas that were put in motion, were the immediate transformation of every city vacant lot into a community vegetable garden. As an agricultural technician, Irania Martinez was assigned to the marginal neighborhood of south Isleta.

Because of an acute lack of spare parts, fuel, tires etc., all solid waste trucks in Guantanamo were grounded and exchanged for horse driven wagons. Additionally, the city was sub-diveded into blocks to make it manageable by this new collection technique, by creating tens of mini-solid waste dumps in lieu of the centralized old dump.

When Irania arrived in Isleta, she was received by swarms of flies, ants, rodents, choking smoke from burning household solid waste contaminated with cancerigenous plastic containers and an offensive odor from decomposing matter.

After bringing this challenging health hazard to the attention of her managers, she was told that, that was not of her competence and that she should limit herself to do what she was sent there to do. She not only rejected such orders, she began organizing neighbors and asking for volunteer workers, to start addressing that critical problem.

A few joined and without any personal protection gears, salary or material support, they started sorting, recycling glass, metal, composting and creating a seedling of thousands of hardwood, ornamental and fruits trees, that were given away to everyone willing to nurture a plant.

As a result of the dire humanitarian drama that Cuba in general and Guantanamo in particular was enduring in 1992 and after, we begged, packaged and sent with everyone willing to take an extra suitcase and later through every Cuba solidarity group, tons of medical, educational, physically challenged and sport supplies that were generously donated to us by peace loving, caring people in the state of Florida and beyond.

This working relationship reached its peak after hurricane Gordon hit Guantanamo in 1994 and we were able in collaboration with others, to send the first four engine cargo plane loaded with humanitarian assistance to land in Cuba since 1959. This act created a permanent working relation with the healthcare, education and the physically challenged association of that province.
Because this activity needed to be structured and institutionalized, I became a founding member of US-Cuba Sister City, founded the Caribbean American Children Foundation and an officer in the St Augustine-Baracoa Friendship Association.

These legal proceedings allowed us to apply for and receive multiple licenses from the US Treasury and Commerce Department, which enabled us to send millions of dollars in medicine, medical supplies, sports, physically challenged, cultural and environmental health supplies.

This factor, led members of different institutions to invite us to visit CEPRU or the Ecological Center For Processing Urban Refuse. I promised I would, but was not convinced that a solid waste dump was the most interesting place to spend my limited time during my family visits to Guantanamo.

On a second visit to Guantanamo, I was reminded of their desire for me to visit CEPRU. Cornered and with no other possibility, I accepted the invitation and I was doomed. The image I came across that day will live with me forever, as men and women, young and old, physically fit and challenged, worked tireless with their bare hands, ragged clothing, without personal protection, sorting through piles of household refuse.

There and then, I promised that we would support the heroic and dangerous work they were doing, by providing them with work clothing, gloves, mask, bicycles, work tools, help build a kitchen, bathroom, laundry room, a computer/classroom, camera and forbade everyone from taking their contaminated work clothes home.

These modest signs of respect and solidarity became a real boost to each of them, who multiplied their efforts and transformed their workplace into the enviroment that so impressed the visiting CNN team.

Today CEPRU has a midsize nursery with thousands of medicinal herbs, flowers, ornamental, fruits and hardwood. A humid pond for butterflies reproduction is about to be completed, a small goat dairy farm for lactose intolerant hospitalized babies is in production, monthly environmental seminars with specialists in the field are held on premises and primary school children are encouraged to visit and learn to love and respect nature.

It was our hopes, that after CEPRU had been awarded meritorious recognitions by the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Science and Environment, the regional FAO office and the stunning CNN HEROES first prize, this project would be widely acclaimed by everyone in Cuba and used as a springboard to raise the awareness of the threats to country's environment.

Unfortunately, that has not been the case. Support has been questionable and bureaucratic impediments have stalled a project, "Oxygen For All," whose goals were to plant one millon fruit, ornamental, hardwood and other trees per year, intended to revert the desertfication/salinization on the southern coast of Oriente.

Yet, it is Yoani Sanchez - not Irania Martinez who have done so much on behalf of her community and earned international respect for her country - who the hostile, anti-Cuba media, have turned into an international celebrity.

The path that Yoani Sanchez have taken to earn a living, achieve transitory fame at the expense of degrading, tainting its image and demoralizing her country, is simply revolting. One of the moral principles we learned early in our lives , is to debate and settle all household differences within our homes, not outside of its confines.

Would this pseudo-phillologist have earned world wide repute and her "works" translated into 17 languages, if she had focused on the 500 plus minority students murdered viciously on the streets of Chicago in 2008?

Would anyone be interested in her writings if she would report on a Hispanic 18 year old youngster shot 11 times in his back, side and forehead in Queens on 11/22/09, by members of the brutal New York Police force?

Have Yoani Sanchez ever heard about Elinor Bumpers, a 84 year old grandmother, shot six times by New York cops in her Bronx apartment in 1984? How about South African emigrant Amadou Diallo, shot at 41 times and hit 19 times while opening his apartment door in Bronx, or Haitian Abner Louima, viciously sodomized with a broom stick in a police precinct in Brooklyn, New York?

Should I remind Yoani Sanchez and encourage her to research the MOVE organization in Philladelphia, on whose home a police helicopter dropped a 4 pound C-4 plastic bomb in 1985, calcinating 11 people among which were 5 children and no one was found guilty?

Should I assume Ms Yoani Sanchez would have preferred any of those police mentioned above, would have handled her recent regretful and uncalled for scuffle with members of the police in Havana?

It is pathetic to see how Yoani Sanchez and her husband have allowed themselves to be used by these Cuba-haters, who have financed their lifestyles for years, provided them with abundant cash to purchase endless internet connection in luxury hotels spewing their excretions and operate a costly web site moderated in Germany, without ever having to explain who is picking up the tab.

No one other than the Cuban authorities are to be blamed for this fiasco, by willfully denying Irania her rightful place in society and for creating a vacuum, where opportunist like Yoani, her husband and friends could walk through from their obscure past into world celebs.

It is everyone's right to agree or disagree with their government and/or its policies. What is repulsive is to denigrate your country and its people in search of false glory.

Fortunately, neither one of them will be on CNN HEROES Third Awards!

As We Push the World Towards Disaster

2009-11-11T13:00:00.004-05:00

"As we push the world towards disaster"
Alberto N Jones
November 10, 2009

As I read “Prejudice guides speculation over Fort Hood killings” by Pierre Tristam, Daytona Beach News Journal 11/8/09, I am compelled to reflect into another of his in-depth, objective, analytical journalism that we have come to expect and respect; when he carefully lead us through the violent scourge that have engulfed and is devouring our nation.

As Tristam tries to stay clear of the incendiary speculation and prejudicial Muslim implication in this horrendous crime, a biased and complicit media have conspicuously ignored other despicable acts committed by those without an easy scapegoat background.

Attempting to prevent the root cause of the massacre in Fort Hood and others to come, we marched, held vigils, wrote letters and pleaded with everyone bent on unleashing a monstrous, unjustifiable, lie-laden war on Iraq, which is returning to our shores, sons, daughters and husbands, crazed by hundreds of maimed, charred and mountains of dead bodies that may have changed their lives forever.

When we see a physician who has been trained to help thousands of mentally deranged, morally ravaged soldiers by the horrors of war, doing exactly what he was supposed to prevent, paints a troubling picture of the future, if only 1% of those that have been deployed to that inferno, may be affected by this silent, dreadful syndrome.

Not withstanding the actions of Timothy McVeigh, Allen Muhammad, Malik Hassan and others, all with a common denominator military background, those who have fanned the flames of hatred against Viet Nam, Iraq-I, Balkans, Iraq-II, Iran, Afghanistan and potentially Pakistan into another conflagration; continue today to spew their hate, beat their war drums and are constantly trying to push the United States deeper into the Afghanistan quagmire, from where no nation have ever been able to extricate itself without irreparable damage.

Our efforts to create peace, love and understanding among men may fail once again, as we refuse to tire, give-up or learn to cope with this man-made catastrophe.

The Pain of Aging, as Cuba Struggles for its Survival

2009-10-28T17:42:00.000-05:00

"The pain of aging, as Cuba struggles for its survival"
Alberto N Jones
10/28/09

As years goes by with its crushing forces, we become impatient, fearing that things which are dear to us and others that have played an important role in our lives, may not come to fruition before departing this challenging world.

My deep love and admiration for my family, friends and Cuba, has become an obsession as time slips by at supersonic speed. How much more will I be able to contribute to either of my loved ones when so much remain to be done and our energy is fading rapidly becomes a big question mark?

I was born poor in Banes, a United Fruit Co., sugar plantation community where segregation, hunger and despair was an integral part of our daily lives. Wakes and funerals became our family outings. Moving later to Guantanamo was a social improvement although racism, deficient education and poor healthcare was notable.

This cruel, uncaring society with its huge social disparity, came to the fore when my mother required an urgent hernia surgery and before rushing her to the emergency room, we had to go to Pepe’s home, one of the richest man in town in search of a note, without which, she most likely would not had been admitted to the Pedro A. Perez hospital in Guantanamo.

Similar history repeated itself, when my grandfather was afflicted with diabetes and was admitted to the Saturnino Lora hospital in Santiago de Cuba, where he lost one toe after another. Bedding, meals, medicine had to be taken care of by the patient guardian, who occasionally had to clean the area and/or bathroom.

The public school system was no better, in which the possibility of succeeding was nil, requiring personal connections to advance and financial resources to acquire every piece of school material which many could not afford. That’s why 4th grade became the cut-off point for most.

History and Civics played an important educational role in forming our character, especially when as an innocent bystanders, I experienced first hand the horrors following the attack on the Moncada garrison in Santiago de Cuba on 7/26/59, when tens of prisoners were wantonly murdered and their bodies desecrated by dumping their coffins on the sidewalk in our baking summer sun.

Since, my life have been dedicated to do whatever it takes to modify the status quo. I will not go into my limited contributions to that effect, instead I prefer to share my inner fears with the critical problems affecting my country, its people and their future.

For some faithful readers of my poorly written notes who have forgiven my brutalization of the English language and who believed in my well intended approach on a diverse number of issues that have concerned me deeply, are now wondering if I have changed my tune, my views, switched sides or worst. How could I ever forget my point of origin, life experience and my unshakeable commitment to the poor, abused and ignored?

But where is all of this coming from? Early on in life, I noticed my home in Banes actually doubled as a free, first aid facility operated by my grandfather George (Pappy) Jones who had a year round job as an orderly in the United Fruit Co. hospital, from where evidently, he sneaked out medicine and medical supplies for those less fortunate.

Our small home doubled also as the first Bed and Breakfast I have known, where people from the countryside coming to Banes for health or other reasons, always found free accommodation.

When I entered 6th grade, my education came close to an abrupt end, because at the time I was living in the fishing village of Caimanera with my mother where she worked as a maid, taking care of Pepe’s daughter. Although his meager salary was the best in town, my mother could not afford my twenty train and bus rides a month to stay in school.

Fortunately, my aunt jumped-in, offered a space in her small house, where I could open a cot at night. Strict discipline, which was enforced with a belt that hung behind the bathroom door, lived with me wherever I was.

In 1968 as I began my residence in Pathology at the Veterinary Medicine National Diagnostic Laboratory in Havana, my boss was the late Dr. Hugo Fernandez Luciano, an extraordinarily knowledgeable, demanding professional, whom many of us initially labeled as an extremist, always ready to point out what was wrong or the shortcomings of any of us but at the same time, was extremely slow to shower praises on anyone.

A case in point. As we were getting ready to end our work day at 4:00 PM, an urgent call came in advising that some very important samples were on the way, whose autopsy could not wait until the following morning. Hugo, as we all called him, asked for two volunteers and I offered to stay.

All three of us worked on these specimens until close to 3:00 AM. Even though we had sleeping facilities at the lab, we decided to go home. I overslept and walked into my workplace around 10:00 am. Hugo, called me immediately into his office and reminded me that our work began at 7:30 am., and the fact that I did something commendable the evening before, did not entitled me to break established rules.

Adding to my strict upbringing, was an eighteen month epizoothiologic course in East Germany in 1965-66, where I was thought early on, that having to do something at 2:00 PM would never mean 2:02 PM.

Grateful to each of these individuals who had carefully instilled in me principles, ethics, values and commitments that would guide my life, I happily assumed in 1970 the impossible task of heading the Veterinary Medicine Provincial Diagnostic Laboratory of Oriente, the Pathology department, Foreign Technicians coordinator, President of the Scientific Council and later instructor of Pathology, all for one salary.

Because of the vastness of the province of Oriente (¼ of Cuba land mass), lack of laboratory professionals, qualified technicians, building facilities and equipment, our laboratory was rated as the worst of all six provincial laboratories in the nation.

By 1973, the old building had been completely renovated, three new buildings had been erected, a laboratory technician academy was created and every working tech., was re-qualified. Tens of diagnostic equipment and technique were introduced in Bacteriology, Serology, Parasitology and Bromatology, elevating our diagnostic capabilities and leading us to occupy the third spot behind Havana and Matanzas.

In 1971, four hundred and seventy nine years after the arrival of Christopher Columbus to our shores, the first histology specimen was processed in our lab. That same year, we inaugurated the first Bioterium or laboratory experimental animal production outside of Havana, which provided these research animals to two other Veterinary Provincial labs, hospitals and laboratories in Holguin, Bayamo and Santiago de Cuba.

Between 1970 and 1974, our laboratory earned national recognition for discovering three transmissible diseases that were previously unknown in Oriente and two that were unknown nationwide and for setting-up joint research projects with the department of Pathology of the Carlos M. de Cespedes hospital, the department of hygiene in Santiago de Cuba and the National Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory in Havana.

Another important contribution of our laboratory took place during the African Swine Fever bio-terrorism attack on the province of Havana in 1971, when we implemented a sanitary quarantine barrier between the provinces of Camaguey and Oriente, days before the affected province did.

In 1972, our lab, successfully challenged with a complex battery of tests, an order from the health department to confiscate and dispose of 250,000 cans of condensed milk contaminated with yeast, which were salvaged and re-directed to animal feed.

Under the guidance of the Veterinary Scientific Council, bi-monthly meetings were held around the province of Oriente. Numerous seminars and one national symposium was organized in 1973.
In 1974, I was awarded a Diploma for Outstanding Instructor at the School of Veterinary Medicine in Bayamo. Eight third year students assigned to our laboratory for higher Pathology training, became excellent pathologists earning Masters Degree, Doctorate and PhD’s. Most are in Cuba and a few have proven their knowledge in Spain, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Sweden and elsewhere.

Grudge, corruption, envy and an obsessive effort to keep our laboratory achievements under wraps to avoid highlighting their incompetence, led a few opportunists into a fail attempt to stifle our work by diverting its resources and later, to concoct and accuse me of the most heinous, criminal acts, that only deranged minds could have conceived.

For this monstrosity, I was incarcerated for 4 ½ years, irreversibly ashamed, deprived of my professional development, literally forced to migrate to the US and severance of ties with many family and friends.

I have never asked for nor will I ever accept any form of restitution for personal damages. I have never demanded retribution for the executioners of this crime, for which I am sure, life will be their toughest judge. My only demand has and always will be, a full restoration of my ruined image, principles and morals among my piers.

But what have hurt me most and I am unable to forgive, has been the total destruction by these and similar specimens across the country, of years of hard scientific work by hundreds of first class, dedicated professionals, whose only dream was to create a premier teaching, medical, diagnostic and research Veterinary Medicine corps in Cuba, that would be capable of occupying a seat among the best in the world.

For these and many more reasons, I have denounced in the past, I am denouncing now and will continue denounce in the future, the macabre and destructive acts of these opportunists disguised as staunch supporters of the Cuban government.

Cuba must begin to ask itself many hard questions. Not all of its shortcomings are related to the cruel and destructive US blockade. Worst has been done by those treacherous demagogues, who have destroyed hundreds of lives and careers, have forced to migrate unquantifiable, irreplaceable professionals and by constantly instilling fears in others to remain silent or else, as these hyenas lurch in the dark for new victims.

Determining when veterinary medicine have regained its rightful share among all health related institutions in Cuba and around the world will be very easy. As soon as our hematologists, bacteriologists, virologists, clinicians or pathologists can stand on equal footing and/or challenge any diagnosis coming out the Provincial Hospital, Hygiene Laboratory, Bromatology, Soil and Water laboratory or research centers such as CENIC, CENSA, Finlay, ICA and others, the celebration can begin.

It is here where my fears are centered. We have lost so much, my advanced age, health status and other factors, may not allow me to see, revel in joy and pride once again, when our institution can stand tall among their piers as it once did in the GDR, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Sweden, France, Hungary, Chile, Soviet Union, Mexico and others.

Just as the Ministry of Health in Cuba is educating tens of thousands of physicians for the developing world, Veterinary Medicine in Cuba, have an unavoidable responsibility of training thousands of professionals in each of its specialty, if the developing world will ever rid itself of the stifling yoke of dependency.

Eternal gratitude to everyone who made this wonderful journey possible!

Spontaneous Generation and the US Embargo on Cuba

2009-10-26T15:52:00.000-05:00

"Spontaneous Generation and the US Embargo on Cuba"
Alberto N. Jones
October 26, 2009

In preparation for the upcoming vote at the United Nations General Assembly on the everlasting, unilateral embargo imposed upon Cuba by the United States, I decided to read Cuba’s full report, which will be presented to argue and counter this monstrosity.

No significant differences are presented compared to previous reports during the past seventeen years except, for the ever mounting damages, our collective shame or impotence, when all votes are counted and the world clamor for justice, will once again be brutally ignored.

Shortly after, I read an article entitled “A thousand-faced monster called the CIA 10/22/09, in which Dr. Nestor Garcia dissect an apparent innocuous, supposedly objective article entitled Cuba’s fate: balanced on razor’s edge, by Dr. Susan Williams from the Freedom Socialist Party, on 10/19/09

If I were to add my personal experience during a month long (9/09) visit to Cuba, in which I was privy to a wide range of opinions from friends, family members, ordinary people in every venue and my personal observations, speaks of the complexity and urgency of the critical moments Cuba is undergoing.

There has been and continue to be albeit a different rhetoric from the White House , a strong, concerted, amply funded effort by the US government to destabilize, weaken and overthrow the Cuban government. That is not news! This multi prong, all encompassing effort is especially geared to undermine and corrupt the minds of the younger generation, through mesmerizing images of our free market, consumption society.

Tens of thousands of Nintendo’s, violent games, pornography videos and other escapists material, have been widely distributed through the island, transforming our once thoughtful, science inclined students into disaffected, low esteem, apathy prone, foul mouthed youngsters, mimicking the gangster-like behavior of many of our middle and high school inner cities students.

Not confronting head on this growing malignancy, may lead to a Columbine type event which have never happened in Cuba.

Thousands of DVD featuring the most outrageous, distorting and degrading social programs of the Spanish speaking TV such a Cristina, Casos de Familia, Quien Tiene La Razon, all Springer/type garbage that is shunned and kept out of the living room of all family oriented household, have become hits, top rated entertainment in Cuba.

Flashy magazines exhibiting all sorts of products especially cars, garments, food, homes and travel, are having an impact on this vulnerable sector of society, who never stop to question, if those visitors peddling these diversionists tactics, enjoys such lifestyle in their working class Hialeah neighborhood.

It is a widely known fact, that hundreds of less educated or purported disaffected Cubans arriving in the US, their greatest dream is fulfilled, after their first year in the US and having obtained their Green Card, is to return to Cuba wearing an array of necklaces, rings, bangles, watches which are for the most part, “purchased” from local pawn shops, where they are promptly returned for a user’s fee, as soon as they return to the US.

Renting luxury cars in Cuba, giving hefty tips and throwing neighborhoods parties, are some of the regular family activities of these visitors, intended to fascinate their neighbors, not withstanding the weighted credit card debt with its loan shark interest that will haunt them for month to come.

In Cuba on the other hand, decades of neglected, unfulfilled basic needs of the population housing, food, clothing, transportation, recreation and other important human needs, have been compounded by poorly thought-out bureaucratic restrictions, which have fueled apathy, disenchantment, social breakdown and moral fissures.

Corruption in Cuba first raised its dirty head in the early 70’s. Hundreds of Cubans opposing this plague, were quickly silenced and consumed in a fake counterrevolutionary altar that was created by some, to protect their criminal activities. Today, this cancer have metastasized across the country and is devouring its soul.

No longer shop clerks exhibit any shame for overpricing or keeping the change, nor cabby drivers turning off taximeters, bus conductors pocketing fares, reservations agents expecting a kick-back and many health, educators or managers processing important documents, expect a meaningful gift.

Years of indifference or pretending this was not happening, allowed millions to be tainted. Any attempt to reverse this malady through legal or coercive measures are past due and are doom to create a far reaching backlash of unprecedented social consequences. Fully addressing the root cause of this crisis, is the only way of restoring the nation moral fiber.

The Skin written by Cursio Malaparte at the end of WW II, details like no one else, the horrific effects that hunger, sickness and other social needs, may inflict on any vulnerable society. Italy, Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan and others, are prime examples of such maladies and the reflective, intelligent, non repressive way in which they dealt with it.

Cuba’s economical situation today is not unique and it should not pursue unique solutions for this universal problem. Cool heads and minds must prevail over hot headed improvisations.

Fortunately, Cuba’s only uniqueness lies with the wealth of untapped, ignored resources sitting across the country, which any serious attempt to address the people’s need, could provide overnight, all the material resources necessary to obliterate every human, social, development need the country may have.

For much too long, most administrative branches of the Cuban government became accustomed to the easy answer of saying, we do not have it, “invent it”! Nothing need to be invented, when our nation is sitting on hundreds of billions of untapped resources, either because of near-sightedness, indifference or both. Life suggests, we test any of the following options:

- Parcel and develop one million home sites across the country and lease/use for 25 years to carefully selected families around the world at prices ranging from $40,000.00 to $1,000,000.00 each, depending on location.

- Open Joint Venture bids with foreign enterprises for the operation of all groceries, garment, household, pharmacies and building supplies corporations.

- Open Joint Venture bids with foreign enterprises for the operation of land, air and sea transport corporations.

- Open Joint Venture bids with foreign enterprises for the operation of agriculture, fishing and mining corporations.

- Open Joint Venture bids with foreign enterprises for the operation of heavy, light industry, chemical and power generation corporations.

Any of these carefully structured and managed projects, could signify by itself, tens of billions of dollars to stabilize the country finances, acquire all the means needed by its people and better support its worldwide humanitarian projects.

Such influx of financial resources would allow the government to offer a hefty relocation package to thousands of migrants from all provinces living in sub-human conditions in Centro Havana, assign plots of agriculture lands, funds for its development, house construction, machinery and personal transport in a location of their choice, clearing this prime city area for its future urban development.
Invest millions in water supply, wastewater treatment, solar industry, urban development, ports and highway construction. Initiate a massive restoration/construction of ultra modern healthcare facilities, educational centers, recreational facilities and cultural development.

Cuba can and must occupy the hard earned position it deserves in the world. This will happen through hard work, intelligence, vision and not by relying on spontaneous generation.

The Entrenched Cuban Embargo

2009-10-19T15:34:00.003-04:00

"The Entrenched Cuban Embargo"
by Alberto Jones
October 19, 2009

In the upcoming days, the United Nations General Assembly gathered in New York will hear once again, an endless list of powerful arguments denouncing the fifty year old war of attrition, that the most powerful nation on earth have imposed unilaterally upon a small, developing country for no legal or morally acceptable reasons. What is really sad about this event, is that it is rapidly becoming a ritual, in which the United Nations is unable to carry out the mandate for which it was created.

As it has been during the past decade, we can anticipate a near unanimous parade of heads of delegation, denouncing this immoral practice and demanding the United States to cease and desist from this inhumane practice, which have caused unspeakable harm to the people of Cuba. At the end, when the votes are cast and counted, the world will receive another slap on its face, when one hundred and eighty something nations abstain or vote against this monstrosity and the United States exerts its overwhelming power with the help Israel and a couple of geographically insignificant or financiallly compromised nations, to deny the will of the majority, further weakening the authority of this institution and leading many to ask, what's the purpose of this expensive exercise in futility?

We have and will continue to despair over this irrational behavior, yet we must remember, that each of these despicable acts, have become a part of human history.

On the other hand, when we read year after year, the powerful arguments presented by the Cuban government describing the damaging effects the embargo/blockade have done, in its effort to stifle education, health, industry, culture, development and every other sector in Cuba, it becomes harder and harder for any average outsider to understand, how can the Cuban government expect that this year, after presenting the same report, about the same government, at the same United Nations Assembly, that this time around, they will meekly go to the podium, apologize for thier historical wrongdoings, squash this rotten policy, become friends and live happily ever after with Cuba.

Never in life, have anyone done the same things over and over and achieve a different outcome. With this basic premise in mind, it is therefore incumbent upon Cuba, the victim, to actively develop a strategy that is capable of forcing the United States government to relinquish its murderous stranglehold on our people, rather than continuing to accrue symbolic, moral victories on the world scene, with no tangible results four our people.

As we have experienced over time, leverage is the key in all negotiations. Cuba has not been at war with the United States nor have killed over 50,000 of its soldiers. Viet Nam did and yet, leverage have created a different outcome.

China have not renounced or denounced its socialist political arrangement, which puts her in a similar political camp as Cuba. Yet, the treatment of both countries by the US, are diametrically opposed.

As Cuba, the United States have labelled Iran as the worst country in the world and yet, it has refrained from imposing any draconian political or military measures against which Iran, would likely retaliate reducing or shutting-off its oil supply to some of the US allies.

What were the arguments invoked by the US to send its armed forces into the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Grenada or Panama, that are absent in Honduras for the past two months, while they debate or concoct theories, intended to allow time to run out on the dethroned president?

Is it not an apparent lack of leverage, that have allowed the US government to remain for over 100 years in the illegally occupied territory of Guantanamo Bay Cuba, now turned into a torture center similar to Abu Ghraib?

Cuba has too many highly educated people in and out of government, not to be able to extrapolate from these weak bargaining position and determine why this absurd position of the US government have remained entrenched, with no change in sight. As long as Cuba refrain from developing a well outlined strategic plan, capable of leveraging with the US self imposed embargo, nothing is going to change.

Few people in the world would dispute, that the main goal of the US government is to weaken, erode and encourage the collapse of the Cuban government, so that once again as in 1898, every valuable enterprise in Cuba, will be back in the hands of US transnationals. Unwittingly, Cuba's position over the years, have been based on the righteousness of its just and fair cause, which have unfortunately left in place, an outdated, non-changing approach, which the US can live with, while the Cuban people despair because of years of pain, suffering and stagnation, is wearing thin, causing a clear loss of support especially among the younger generation, whose only solution seems to lie with migration.

In lies squarely in the hands of the Cuban government, to do an in depth study of why after fifty years of denouncing this injustice, nothing have changed and come up with an alternative approach, eveh though it may or may not elicit a different result.

Many are convinced, that if the Cuban government would take a few basic steps, that would send a clear message to corporate America, indicating a real possibility of loosing it's hopes of reconquering Cuba financial world, they would, as many others who have claims of properties loss in Cuba, assume the position to let bygone be bygone.

Open bids to international corporations, for the creation of exclusive joint ventures with the Cuban government for the next 10 years, of a national food, medicine and medical supplies distribution chain.

Open bids to internationals corporations for the creation of 10 years exclusive joint ventures with the Cuban government for all air, land and sea transportation.

Open bids to internationals corporation for the creation of 10 years exclusive joint ventures with the Cuban government for the operation of mining, fisheries and environmental development.

Open bids to internationals corporations for the creation of 10 years exclusive joint ventures with the Cuban government for the hospitality industry.

Open bids for the promotion for of small business cooperatives between the Cuban government, Cuban nationals in and outside Cuba and with every solidarity solidarity organization.

Logic suggests that one year after the enactment of these and other simple principles, the embargo/blockade will no longer exists and become an integral part of our turbulent history.

The Handling of the Cuban Housing Crisis

2009-10-18T16:29:00.002-04:00

"The Handling of the Cuban Housing Crisis"
Alberto N Jones
October 16, 2009

An article published in the Miami Herald on 10/15/09, "Cuba cracks down on unlicensed home improvents" cannot or should not be true, because that would be the be the most outrageous, counterproductive way of dealing with that country's most sensitive, painful, conflicting, unresolved social problem.

Among the multiple, crushing reasons presented by Fidel Castro in his dramatic self defense during the trials for the attack he lead against the Moncada garrison on 7/26/53, was the inhumane living conditions of 90% of our peasentry in primitive shacks, over 50% of the urban population living in beyond reach, overpriced rented homes and thousands of apartment buildings in the hands of a handful of rich homes moguls, which became a powerful argument justifying the need of changing the status quo.

Immidiately after the truimph of the revoltution, Pastora Nunez was given the near impossible task of solving the nation housing problem. She began aggressively substituting peasants shacks with comfortable cinder blocks homes. Thousands of modest, functional, beautiful homes were built in cities across the country applying a suburban concept, which up to this moment, was limited to the middle and upper class neighborhoods, turning this venerable woman overnight, into one of the best known faces of the revolution, leading the population to spontaneously name these communities Pastorita.

An enormous sense of pride filled these neighborhoods, in which most homes literally competed against each others in the upkeep of their gardens, planting of fruit or ornamental trees, creating vegetable gardens and raising chickens in their backyard.

Simultaneously with education, health, sports, job creation and the enormously popular Housing Reform Act enacted in 1959, which gave ownership to all renters, sent a clear message of what a triumphant revolution was all about. Mass euphoria blanketed our country with a thick pride that could be touched by all.

For unknown reasons to most, this wonderful Pastorita project ended in the mid sixties when this colorful, enthusiastic lady was transfered to other responsibilities in the agriculture ministry. I saw her for the last time during my residency at the National Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory in Havana, as her inquiring mind brought her in search of answers for some unknown pathology affecting a herd of cattle under her responsibility. We later learn about her passing.

The Pastorita type houses, were supplanted by similar looking, modal type, non functional, pre-fab, four story apartment buildings, that spread across the country like a wild fire and which were quickly renamed Pigeon Cubs by the population. In order to spead-up the output of aparments to address the growing needs of the population, Gran Panel, a Soviet type, similar pre-fab apartment buildig was introduced, creating thousands of look-alike, poorly ventilated apartments in Santiago de Cuba, the warmest section of Cuba.

This new style of living created by dense concentrations of multiple apartments buildings, brought with it, many unforseen, negative transformational changes to our 500 year old block-style neighborhood culture, in which everyone was seen as neighbor, their names was known, their children, activities, personal relations and friendship became a village, was suddenly frayed, as people in a same building or across the streets, were transformed into strangers.

Another important missing component of the conglomerate living leading to its failure, was the supression in the name of savings, of the Super or building supervisor, who historically had taken care of all the building needs. Some housing genius presumed that a neighborhood collective administrative board, would be able to sweep stairs, fix leaks, cut lawn, forbid hanging laundry on the balcony or the maximum decibels tolerable on individual boom box.

With all the negative results outlined above and many more which would extend unnecessary these arguments, the Cuban government have stubornly adjudicated itself the sole responsibility of solving the huge housing demands. In a population that have gone from 6 to 12 millions inhabitants, construction of new buildings are far from addressing the needs of 10% of this growth, to which we must add, a unbelievable lack of maintenance of all structures during the past 30 years, which have created a pathetic scene of crumbling, hazardous buildings nationwide.

For years, the Cuban government have made its most serious miscalculation, by not assigning 1-2 of its 5-6 cement factory production to satisfy the needs of its population. Ten years ago, while touring Cuba's largest cement factory in Cienfuegos, at the end of the presentation the manager proudly told us about how his upcoming trip abroad in search of markets for his product.

Stunned, speechless, I could barely bring myself to ask him, what was wrong with our internal high-demand, unsatisfied, overpriced cement market, for which Cubans have been willing to pay 200% more for his product exported to neighboring countries.

Increasing overnight the output of sand, stone and other basic construction material, should be easy. Importing lumber, plumbing, electrical, paint and other building supplies from countries with which Cuba has a friendly relation, should not be a problem, having a monopoly of the sales prices, which could additionally, create thousands of jobs and contribute large sums of hard currency to the economy.

Yes, everyone knows, that in order for every individual to solve their otherwise intractable housing crisis, every Cuban have had to bend the rules, find shortcuts, pay bribes, purchase stolen goods, as the only existing way for dealing with the monstrous overcrowding in places such a Centro Habana and across the country. Obtaining a housing renovation permit is near impossible, if an ordinary person do not have an inside connection, is willing to pay a hefty bribe or sexual favor. Why should we pretend this is not happening and are now willing to kill an ants with a sledgehammer?

Although no mistake, abuse, crime committed by any citizen in the past, as the sole way of addressing their family desperate living condition, should never be punitive or retroactive. I plead with everyone, to draw the line today, make all of these material readily available to everyone at large for a price, encourage everyone to build a new home or repair or expand an existing one and stop a failed paternalistic idea of giving away homes, household goods.

Solving this social calamity in Cuba is within reach. Venezuela, our closest friend produce infinite amount of petroleum derivate plastic homes. Rather than the present thinking, why not import a few millions of these structures, put them on sales with a 10% interest payable in 20 years, adress our citizens needs and incorporate millions of hard currency to our public funds, instead of silly discussions taking place within the housing department, if these houses should have two or one bathroom.

Cubans will never grow up, as long as they hold to the false notion that government is there to solve their personal problems, not to pave the way for them to solve their needs with the sweat of their foreheads.

For those who wish our country the best, those who believes that Cuba must survive for the wellbeing of the developing world, can no longer pretend that everything is OK and pretend to keep them in the cellar or assume an opportunistic, super revolutionary attitude, denouncing as anti-government activity, by anyone daring to make public these unpleasant family stories.

Doing otherwise is a prescription for disaster.

Our love for our country must express itself in our critical denounciations of what is wrong. From the clerk who overcharges, the bus conductor pocketing the public fares, the office receptionist not picking up the phone, the pizza parlor cook stealing the tomatto sauce or the baker stealing the lard, should and must be our daily work in defense of our beliefs.

Still, if this and many similar pleas to the highest level of the Cuban government from us, from tens of friendly nations around the globe and from millions of our loyal friends in every city, country and continent would go unheard, we would not only have repudiated one of the most important pillars of the revolution, we maybe unwittingly inviting everyone to the wake and death of 50 years of the most honorable, unparallel, desproportionately uneven struggle in defense of justice, dignity and values of humankind.

Ignoring History Has Cost Us 50 Precious Years of Our Lives

2009-04-18T07:21:00.000-04:00

"Ignoring History Has Cost Us Fifty Precious Years of Our Lives"
Alberto N Jones
April 18, 2009

In an ironic twist of history, the V Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago will come to a successful or irrelevant closure on Sunday, April 19th, the same day, forty eight years ago when the United States suffered its most resounding political, moral and military defeat in the swamps of the Bay of Pigs.

Prior to this transformative milestone, the United States political/military thinking was formulated around a self-proclaimed invincibility, which emerged from the three months military skirmish in Santiago de Cuba, euphemistically known around the world as the Spanish-American War in 1898.

This tragic event, effectively deprived the Cuban people of the fruits of their long and hard fought struggle for independence and sovereignty, which began with the uprising of Chief Hatuey and Guarina in the 1490‘s. Thousands of Cuba’s best sons and daughters were deported, imprisoned, wounded, maimed or killed on behalf of this goal.

Tens of slave uprisings across the island attempting to free themselves from their inhumane captivity, were put down with unspeakable brutality. The infamous Ladder Conspiracy earned its name from two parallel logs with other horizontally spaced logs upon which slaves accused of plotting to escape or recaptured run-away slaves were tied to and beaten into a pulp or killed with blows from another log, reminiscent to a primitive baseball bat.

On October 10th 1868, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes a wealthy sugar baron, who later became the father of the Cuban nation, freed his slaves and encouraged them to join the war of independence, which they did in droves, contributing the bulk of the casualties during the next 10 years vicious war, which ended in an armistice. This tragic outcome was salvaged by another son of Africa, General Antonio Maceo who opposed this decision with his heroic Protest of Baragua and his commitment to continue the struggle to its last consequence.

The final war of independence was re-started in 1895 under the leadership of Jose Marti, the greatest Cuban political leader in its history. By 1898 victory was within reach of the Cuban Army, when alleging protection of life and property, the USS Maine entered the port of Havana where it later exploded under questionable circumstances, laying the groundwork for the United States to unleash the Spanish-American war, which defeated in three months, an exhausted Spanish occupying forces.

This simple, unsolicited, unilateral decision by the United States, derailed 400 years of struggle for Cuba’s independence, when they denied the Cuban Army the right to be present at the Spanish Army surrendering ceremony or at the subsequent peace talks in Paris. The dismantling of a fully integrated Army of Independence, replacing it with an all white police force and with a Rural Guard where blacks could not rise above the rank of lieutenant, opened deep and bitter wounds between the US and Cuba.

By emasculating Cuba sovereignty with the Platt Amendment, forceful occupation of prime lands for naval bases, engulfing thousands of acres of fertile agriculture lands for pennies, taking over every important industry, utilities, commerce, banking, perpetuating illiteracy, segregation, corruption, political violence etc., they sowed the seeds of discord that have survived to this day.

These and other social ills were compounded with the brutal assault on the “democratically” elected, corrupt presidency of Carlos Prio Socarras in 1952, which lead the Generation of the Century headed by Fidel Castro, to accuse General Batista before the Supreme Court for overthrowing the government and later leading a failed insurrection, imprisonment, emigration, return with an 82 man strong invading forces in 1956, which defeated Batista’s powerful, US backed military machine on January 1, 1959.

Attempting to correct years of abuse, corruption, a worldwide image of Cuba being a playground for the rich, famous and the mafia, the new government clamped down hard and confiscated most ill gotten wealth of these individuals, irritating the US government, unleashing a tit for tat and the breaking-off of diplomatic relations.

The infamous Bay of Pigs, is nothing more than a traumatic abortion of an ill-conceived, well funded, abundantly equipped, vertically CIA managed 2000 man-strong mercenary force, charged with overthrowing the newly formed, poorly equipped Cuban army.

Having failed to take into account these irrefutable historical facts, have left a legacy of distrust, billions of dollars in misguided projects and unnecessary destruction, wounded and dead.

And today, as a highly educated, visionary, courageous president of the United States is working tirelessly to reverse decades of absurd, confrontational, hate spewing, retrograde policies that have created millions of enemies around the world, many continue to undermine every idea, policy or bridge building effort the White House may develop.

Let us join hands and stave off those backward forces that revel in wars, death and destruction. Let’s express in a clear, strong, unison voice, enough is enough!

If for millions of people around the world, April 19, 1961 is remembered as the Day of Infamy, it is incumbent upon us to transform this day in the year 2009, into the Day of Rediscovering America, Goodness, Brotherhood, Love and Hope.

I was Wrong, I am Sorry & I Apologize.

2009-01-16T18:14:00.001-05:00

The brutal assault on the high seas of a humanitarian vessel heading to Gaza, lead me to re-read my views 18 months ago. Please evaluate and consider publishing. Thanks very much.

"I was Wrong, I am Sorry and I Apologize"

by Alberto N Jones

January 16, 2009

When I first saw in 1965 what Nazi Germany had done to the Jewish businesses and their communities in Leipzig, Dresden or Berlin, I was outraged.

When my female friend told me about the day after Kristalnackt, when her Jewish schoolmate and her entire family vanished, never to be seen again, I was angry.

When I read and saw pictures of how Jews were rounded-up, labeled and herded off into the unknown, which later turned out to be any of those infamousconcentration camps, I was sickened.

When we were taken to Buchenwald and our tour guides, who were survivors of this human monstrosity described the bestiality that took place in this encampment, ranging from hunger, forced labor, disease, mass murder, sadism, gas chamber, furnaces to broil humans or soap factory using human fat, was too revolting to believe it to be true.

When we were exposed to horrible films of box cars filled with humans as we would not do to animals, or bony bodies covered with skin being bulldozed into trenches, or children wearing horrible camp uniforms behind barbed wire, we despaired and fully supported the tragic end and the horrible human cost thatGermany paid for its barbaric actions.

Equating the tragic Jewish experience with that of my ancestors, who were ripped away from their homeland, chained to the hull of slow moving slave schooners undergoing weeks of grueling pain, sickness or death, thrown overboard and those genetically fit who survived such brutal voyage, were rewarded with hundreds of years of slavery, whippings, hunger, pseudo-freedom, illiteracy, racism, lynching, segregation etc., made it easy for me to be in solidarity and a strong supporter of these victims, concentrated in Israel.

My first indication that something was not quite kosher occurred when I was first exposed to Gamal Abdel Nasser articulating the nationalistic views of the Non-Aligned nations and Israel subsequent siding with colonial England, France and others against Egypt, for legitimately claiming back its canal.

When the seven days war erupted, I did not have most of the basic understanding to determine who was right and who was wrong. Like most other uninformed citizens, we saw and shared the mass-media perception, of a small nation “defending” itself against its large, aggressive neighbors.

The massacre of hundreds of innocents refugees in Sabra and Shatila at the hands of Ariel Sharon, butchered in the middle of the night by his henchmen with the support of most western powers, became the first full size picture of a morally compromised society with a decaying supremacist philosophy, that will eventually bury a nation that was created upon a victim syndrome and world sympathy.

Encouraged, tolerated and supported by every United States administration, the Zionist regime in Israel became bolder and bolder. They were no longer subjected to world opinion or international condemnation, knowing their prime supporter held a financial stranglehold that was capable of blackmailing most poor nations and veto power in every international organization.

Although the world was acutely aware of the vicious, inhuman and wanton deaths that Israel inflicted on a regular basis upon the Palestinian people, they had driven tens of thousands from their homes and turned into refugees across the middle east. Those left in Palestine, were forced into the world most dense, cramped human settlement in Gaza and the West Bank, over which the Zionist regime held absolute control over land, air, water and human movements.

As prisoners at the mercy of their master, willing to incarcerate the entire comunities at will, by closing its few crossing points, cut off all supplies, shut down financial remittances, control every individual movement through a pervasive infiltration of MOSSAD and an army of paid informants, keeping the entire population under total surveillance, terror and perennial poverty.

Wickedly controlling 80% of the water resources and subjecting the Palestinian to hunger through drought-scorched land, they openly brag about their racial superiority expressed in their greenery, agricultural production and Kibutz development, mostly dependent on semi-slave Palestinian migrant labor.

Not satisfied with controlling most of the land mass of this highly disputed region, President Ronald Regan strongly encouraged the creation of settlements or communities ripped away from Palestinians living on the West Bank, which was then given and guarded by thugs armed to the teeth, willing to shoot to kill any non-Jewish person, knowing they enjoyed complete immunity.

Tens of thousands of people purporting to be of Jewish background, desperately willing to emigrate from the Soviet Union, presented themselves to the world as innocent victims of a brutal communist system that deprived them of their right to practice their faith and culture, who were now emboldened and quick to shoot, killing Palestinian children like stray dogs.

Desperate, with no way out of such monstrous abuse, threatened by mercenaries brought from foreign lands, Palestinians youths were left with no other option than their heroic Intifada and the willingness of their children to be slaughtered by Israeli tanks, bulldozers and snipers.

Taking their desperation to its highest level, youngsters, females, elderly Palestinians were willing to assemble crude bombs, don explosive belts, walk into crowds of Israelis and pull the trigger, blowing themselves to bits with their oppressors.

Salaried journalists, mainstream media and others who have skillfully highlighted the scratches or minor destructions caused by primitive non-guidance rockets launched into Israel which seldom cause any human casualty, are mute in a concerted effort to hide or downplay, the massive destruction caused by their F-16, M-1, smart bombs and wide use of forbidden weapons, along with their undisguised threat of their nuclear arsenal.

Labeled as terrorists by those journalists willing to desecrate desperate people willing to go to such extreme, they never asked themselves, what have we done to these people to lead them to such drastic decisions? Is there anyone these journalists know, who are willing to blow up themselves for whatever amount of money they would be offered?

These are the simplistic, offensive tactics, geared to tarnish young men and women, robbed of their most basic human dignity, willing to give it all and pay the ultimate price on behalf of their people.

Although I do not condone these actions, I experienced first hand the tragic effects that massive abuse can inflict to the human physic. I clearly remember Batista’s murderers, armed to their teeth, pulling youngsters from their classroom, homes or off the streets, to be tortured, murdered, desecrated and their bodies left to rot by the side of highways.

What else were the Cuban people left with, except to learn how to make pipe bombs, Molotov cocktail and shoot any lone military or politician supporters of that rotten system and become part of a triumphant insurrection that wiped them forever out of that country?

Then came the most vicious onslaught on Lebanon with Israeli WW III weaponry in action, with the full complicity/support of President George W. Bush andSecretary of State Condoleezza Rice, they forcefully rejected any effort to stop this conflict in its early stage, confident, that Israel would reduce Hezbollah and south Lebanon to rubble, which to their consternation, turned out to be, a crushing defeat for the long time Middle East bully.

With the entire Knesset in turmoil, the military top brass pointing fingers at each other, their invading army retreating with their tail between their legs and a born-again peace-loving Condoleezza Rice shuttling back and forth to avoid a more embarrassing unraveling of their most powerful repressive forces in the region, she was now bent on penning a truce.

This embarrassing defeat of the Israeli Defense Forces in south Lebanon became a great lesson for the region, by teaching everyone, that a new, successfulmilitary strategy was capable of breaking the spine of the IDF and destroying its myth of invencibility.

Attempting to restore the Israeli Defense Forces morale, fear factor and invincibility , they actively sought an easy prey which they identified in Gaza, where Hamas had overwhelming won the past election. This political setback led them unleash a full scale blockade, encircle the region, cut off all basic supplies, shut off remittances, impose strict human mass incarceration and constant spying on the area with unmanned aerial vehicles, helicopter gunship, fighter jets, armed drones, willing to shell and send rocket into dense populated areas, assassinating with impunity, irrespective of being a child or an 80 year old paraplegic in a wheel chair.

Assuming Gaza had been sufficiently softened, they launched in December a full scale, murderous assault on a densely populated area, using their most sophisticated war machine and murderous live phosphorous, banned by international laws.

In a disproportionate killing of 120:1 Palestinians, mostly civilians, of which, three hundreds were children, was the trophy that Tipzi, Olmert, Barack or Perez and many more criminals, are attempting to add to their resume, as others before them, did in Germany during the 40’s.

Still, the only thing that is clear, is that the world have come to know them. No longer can they hoist the victim banner, sing the hymn of the abused, attempt to justify their wicked actions with anti-Semitism which have served them so well for the past 60 years. What they have shown the world over time, is no different to what the forefathers of today’s military and political leaders of the Israeli government endured in Germany, when they enjoyed the entire world sympathy.

My sentiments betrayed me, I extracted the wrong conclusion and I am sorry for having supported those who are willing to do worst to other defenseless individuals.

A Critical Look at the Future of Cuba, III

2008-03-13T04:43:00.000-05:00

"A Critical Look at the Future of Cuba, III"
Alberto N. Jones
March 13, 2008

Hoping to write the third and final chapter of this article, I rose-up around 3:00 am on Tuesday February 19. At 3: 18 CNN interrupted its normal programming with a breaking news that Fidel Castro, the President of Cuba had written a letter in which he stated “I will neither aspire nor accept the positions of president of the Council of State or Commander in Chief.”

This stunning news, after leading the Cuban government for 49 years and 49 days albeit expected, left me speechless, frozen in my chair, as thousands of life changing, vivid experiences crossed my mind at the speed of light. I must digress a bit from my original line of thinking.
How could I ever envision that I would live through this unprecedented, historic transformation of Cuba and its people? It all began on Saturday July 25th 1953, when my uncle Clifford invited me to join his friends, who were going to a carnival dance that took place every year at the Hatuey beer gardens in Santiago de Cuba.

Exhausted, after having a wonderful time around 3:00 am my Uncle decided to call it quits and go home. Because it was a large group and there was few if any taxi’s at such late hours of the night, we sang all the way as we walked to our friend’s home, who hosted us for the week-end.

In one of those inexplicable twists of life, our friends lived in Sueno neighborhood, only 4-5 blocks away from the Moncada barracks, Cuba’s second largest military garrison with its threatening looks as we strolled outside of its fortified walls. As we approached one of its many gates, we said Hi to a small number of soldiers guarding one of its entrance. Shortly after reaching home and in the process of getting in bed, we heard loud, relentless explosions that we thought initially were fire crackers.

Later, wild rumors went that a gun battle had ensued between the military stationed at the Moncada and members of the reinforcement brigade that came in from Havana. Around 9:00 am, a couple of B-26’s flew low overhead threatening to bomb, which fortunately did not happen. What we did witness from our vantage point, was military jeeps constantly speeding into the garrison, sometimes with someone laying on the floor of the jeep with their feet hanging out, which was followed by sporadic shots, suggesting someone had been executed.

On Monday, as life partially returned to normal, people were allowed to leave their homes and as we walked near the garrison, more than forty gaskets were spread-out on the sidewalk, exuding a nauseating odor and covered with swarms of flies, in a repugnant desecration of the dead.

How Fidel was captured days later and was miraculously saved by Lt Sarria who had instructions not to take prisoners, attempts to poison him in jail, the trial and his self defense “Condemn me, it doesn‘t matter; History will Absolve me” became a treatise in jurisprudence.

This was followed by jail time in Cuba’s most feared prison, paroled, migrate to Mexico, regroup, military training, launching of a maritime invading force of 82 men most of whom were ambushed and murdered upon landing and with the twelve surviving men, they organized a nation-wide movement that ousted Batista and his 80,000 men-strong army, less than three years later.

Out of this victorious revolution, came a wide-range, political-ideological third world solidarity movement, that spread across the world like a wildfire, supporting every liberation movement, providing its leaders with all necessary moral and material support, denouncing and weakening tens of neo-colonial institutions that had enslaved millions of people in Africa, Asia and Latin-America.

Today Cuba can proudly exhibit, thousands of people who were educated in its classrooms, a host of countries whose liberation and independence is closely tied to Cuba’s efforts and millions of people whose pain and suffering have been relieved and their lives preserved from certain death, because of Cuba’s unqualified, generous devotion to those in need.

These examples and many more may help us understand and counterbalance the difficult socio-economic conditions in Cuba today, that her enemies enjoy highlighting and portraying as a symbol of Cuba’s social failure. In fact, its low wages, crumbling housing, pathetic infrastructure, poor food and medicine supplies, insufficient personal and durable goods, etc., rather than an indictment of their system, it exemplifies their unparallel generosity, unselfishness and profound concerns for the wellbeing of those less fortunate, even at the expense of their own.

Like so many man-made projects, Cuba have had its own long list of mistakes, just as it had these incredible vision and perspective that have changed history, impacted the lives of millions and restored hope of a better world for present and future generations. These incontrovertible facts, are what have made Cuba under the leadership of Fidel Castro a unique, one in a century event that no government, historian or media can negate, tarnish or distort.

But after forty years of the Cuban people enduring all forms of deprivations, it is past due to have a thorough, profound re-evaluation of the country’s resources, its people’s need and ways of increasing its industrial and agricultural output, in order to begin satisfying the most pressing issues affecting that nation.

Contrary to what many Cuban-American scholars may assume, that in order to address the huge material need that have been accrued over the years, Cuba will have to dismantle its political system, beg its enemies for forgiveness, plead with the World Bank for financial help, apologize to the United States government for misbehaving and invite back into the country the Cuban-American bourgeoisie with their corrupting mentality and truckload of vices; rest assured, that will never happen.

To some extent, the success and failures of the Revolution are reflected in me and many others. Rescued from a clerical dead-end job on the United States Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay Cuba in 1962, the Cuban government spent thousands of dollars on my education to become a Veterinary Pathologist with additional training in counter epizoothiologic bio-terrorism education in Germany in 1966, when only a handful of professionals in this hemisphere knew about this specialty.

In 1970 I became Director and Pathologist of Oriente Provincial Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory , which encompassed at the time, a territorial responsibility of 1/3 of Cuba’s agriculture expanse. In addition to this impossible task, I was later put in charge of overseeing the technical and personal needs of our foreign professional support team, I founded and became President of the Provincial Veterinary Scientific Council and in 1972, instructor of Pathology at the University of Oriente.

As difficult and overwhelming as these multi tasks complex responsibilities were, my greatest and most challenging problems arouse from my constant battle against an incipient corruption -that have since swept the country- among some co-workers in administrative positions, who misused their authority to steal, divert or bribe others with all sorts of material resources assigned to or in possession of our laboratory. Stopping, challenging, denouncing and going as far as forbidden their entry onto our premises, spurred a formidable and rabid array of enemies, that were all too willing to join forces, plot and accuse me of the worst imaginable political crimes, landing me in jail for 8 years, of which I served 4 ½.

For many, this unspeakable and unjustifiable crime meant, destroying the pride and joy they felt over the professional achievement of their country boy from Guantanamo. For me, after many years of shame, pain and frustration, thanks to the help of friends and loved ones, I was able to do an in-depth, rigorous analysis of this event and identify the human frailty that cohabitate in many of us, causing my demise and the abominable end of my professional life.

But far more important than my personal grief, was the incredible opportunity that life had reserved for me, by making me the second member of my family to ever sit in a classroom of higher education, three hundred years after our forceful removal from Africa. That’s why, knowing what I know now and given the opportunity to do it all over again, I have no doubt, I would do exactly the same.

Now, in order for Cuba to confront and begin addressing the enormous backlog of urgent, intractable social problems that have severely affected the wellbeing of the Cuban population for decades, I will put forth some unsolicited ideas that I truly believe, once they are subjected to a thorough, critical, objective analysis and added all necessary modifications, corrections or rejections, we can anticipate a 360 degree socio-economic surge in Cuba by the year 2020, that will catapult this nation into her rightful place among nations in this hemisphere, without having to alter any of the structural foundations, that constitutes the moral pillars of the Revolution.

Sources of Income
Cuba’s massive educational system has made all of its émigré potentially more successful than those from other countries. This reality suggests, that every Cuban living abroad is indebted to our country and should therefore be willing to refund a portion of their education cost, which can be done, by signing a payment agreement at the closest consulate and remitting equal yearly payments for the next ten years, until his/her debt has been paid in full. Conservative estimates puts the gross income of this project on/or around $5,000,000,000.00

A rampant and uncontrollable violence that is ravaging the United States, Central America and some Caribbean islands, have left no workplace, school, healthcare facility, church, courthouse, daycare centers, congress or homes, immune to this plague. Millions of teenagers, especially minorities are confronted every day with life threatening challenges, which is expressed in the high homicide ratio, massive incarceration, and lack of basic education, drug addition and gang proliferation, placing them squarely among other endangered species.

Creating a network of boarding middle and high schools on the Isles of Youth in Cuba, could become a refuge for thousands of US, Caribbean and Latin America youths, where they could safely acquire a solid education and a technical or professional formation, which could prepare them for a creative and productive life. Conservative estimates for tuition, boarding, insurance and family visits for each 300/alumni school, could generate approximately $4,500.000.00 per year.

Forty seven million US citizens and presumably a large number in Latin America and the Caribbean are without a Health Insurance Policy. Creating an affordable policy that may oscillate between $25.00 and $50.00 per month, could possibly enroll between 3 and 5 million individuals, operating on a preventive medicine basis, with yearly physicals.

In support of this project, a 1000 bed Multi-Specialty Caribbean Medical Center could be built in Santiago de Cuba with a similar 500 bed satellite, specializing in certain pathologies, could be located in Holguin.

Additionally, a Regional, high-tech Caribbean Clinical Pathology Laboratory/Imaging Diagnostic Center with Pathologists strategically situated abroad to serve the area, would provide its top-notch diagnostic capabilities to a region with an anemic service in need of upgrading.

A 2000 bed Nursing Home/Assisted Living facilities distributed through Guantanamo, Santiago and Holguin, would satisfy a poorly developed service in this region. Conservative estimates sets the income that can be generated by these entities in billions.

Mental Health and illegal Drug Additions are rapidly becoming the most widespread pathology of the XXI Century. Cuba near-drug free environment, thousands of healthcare professionals in that field, its renowned track record with Spanish speaking patients and its highly competitive cost, can anticipate with an adequate promotion, registering tens of thousands of patients from our region, who have no where else to go in search of help. Income from this service may easily surpass any of the country’s main source of foreign income.

Tens of millions of people who have been the backbone of Cuba’s solidarity movement around the world, disseminating its reality, marching, holding vigils or collecting donations for its people, could be encouraged to join a new form of solidarity at this critical juncture, by participating in a Tri Party Joint Venture composed of solidarity members, Cuban retirees/unemployed organized in co-op’s and properties owned by the Cuban government, in the creation of tens of thousands of micro commercial, industrial, agriculture or hospitality ventures, expanding exponentially these activities, creating thousands of jobs and generating billions in profit, that will be disbursed equally among all three participating sectors.

Cuba’s excellent geographical location, its natural beauty, near perfect climate, educated population and having the safest social environment in the western hemisphere, seems to combine all the ingredients for the development of 200,000 home sites of 100x100 sq ft in the periphery of cities, lakes, beaches, mountain, valleys or secluded areas, upon which individuals with a longstanding friendly relation with Cuba, Cuban emigrants respectful of its sovereignty and others, retired or active, preferably those with higher education, willing to assume parcels in usufruct for 25 years for which, depending on the location of any specific lot, a users fee may range between $2,000.00, $5,000.00 or $10,000.00 per year.

Homes built on these home sites will reflect the taste and acceptable discretion of the home dwellers, who at the end of the 25 years usufruct or if death occur before, these properties in good maintenance conditions, will become part of the Cuban patrimony. In addition to the home value and yearly land payment, it is estimated that Cuba could earn millions in individuals living expense.

A worldwide demands for shorter delivery time of goods and services, have given rise to an enormous air cargo service and a constant search for establishing distribution centers closer to their marketplace. The city of Guantanamo situated on the southern tip of Cuba, have the longest airstrip in the country, a perfect year round aviation weather, abundant availability of water, electricity, good land, rail and sea conections, hundreds of thousands of underdeveloped acreage and its most attractive feature is being 2, 4 or more flying hours, closer to most of Latin America markets.

A project of this nature will require, hundreds of thousands sq ft of open air, covered and refrigerated storage facilities, thousands of employees, generating billions in rental, customs, air transport, fuel and landing fee, transforming this region into one of the most prosperous in the nation.

Funds Allocation:
If half of these funds were invested primarily in the former province of Oriente and in other specific projects around the country on a variety of social, agro-industrial development, job creation and scientific/technical development, the present unequal development gap existing between the east and the west of Cuba, could be narrowed dramatically by 2020 and wiped-out by 2050. Among the steps to be considered are:

* Assign 50 million to refurbish every middle and high school on the Isles of Youth and construct as many as necessary to reach a 20,000 capacity for middle and high school students from the Caribbean, Africa, America and Latin America.

* Assign 10 million to refurbish and expand the Frank Pais teacher’s school in Santiago de Cuba, to reach a capacity of 5000 students from Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America.

* Assign $20 million to refurbish, upgrade and expand the School of Veterinary Sciences, the regional Diagnostic Laboratory and the Animal Research Center in Bayamo.

* Assign 60 million for the construction of a Solar, Wind and Environmental Sciences University for 2000 students, a Solar Research Center and an Energy Saving bulb factory in Guantanamo.

* Assign 15 million for the construction in Guantanamo of the National English, French and Creole Language Academy with a capacity of 5000 students, staffed with teachers from the English and French Speaking Caribbean islands.

* Assign 20 million for the construction of the Planetarium, Aeronautical and Aerospace and Cosmonaut Museum in Guantanamo.

* Assign 50 million to transform the Avenida Michelsen in Santiago de Cuba, into the Developing World Cultural, Expo and Business Center, where every African, Latin America and Caribbean country can exhibit their arts, culture and heritage to promote economic agreements among nations.

* Assign 30 million for the construction of the Faculty of African, Caribbean and Latin American studies, with its museum and visual arts center in Santiago de Cuba.

* Assign 100 million to refurbish thousands of colonial homes and others of unique architectural value throughout Oriente, create co-op of employee/operators in partnership with the Tourist Industry, turning them into moderate cost Bed and Breakfast lodging.

* Assign 300 million for the environmental clean-up, dredging of the port and restoring Ciudamar, Cayo Granma and Punta Gorda in Santiago de Cuba to its original beauty.
Assign 500 million to construct waste water treatment facilities in Santiago de Cuba, Guantanamo, Bayamo, Holguin and Las Tunas.

* Allocate 800 million for the Plan Salcines hydrology complex in Baracoa, to satisfy the drinking water needs of Santiago, Guantanamo and Palma Soriano.

* Establish a 25,000 family Guest Worker agreement with Haiti, Brazil and other Caribbean Islands and for every Cuban family interested in relocating from the inner city to the countryside and assign 50 acres of land in northern Oriente and Camaguey in usufruct for 25 years, in order to revitalize the sugar cane plantation and restore the production capacity of the sugar industry. A Sandino type home with windmill, septic tank, means of transportation and a $10,000 loan, will be part of this package.

* Establish a 20,000 family Guest Workers agreement with Haiti, Brazil, other Caribbean islands and every Cuban family wishing to relocate from any inner city to the mountain range of Guantanamo, Santiago de Cuba , El Escambray and la Sierra de los Organos, and assign 50 acres of land and personal facilities as described above, for a massive revitalization of Coffee, Cocoa plantations, fruits and produce production.

* Establish a 10,000 family Guest Workers agreement with Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, relocate to southern Oriente and assign 50 acres per family of semi-arid lands for herding sheep, goats and growing nuts, cactus, olives and other typical middle eastern produce. As in previous examples, similar start-up kit is included.

* Establish a 10,000 family Guest Workers agreement with Viet Nam/China, allowing their relocation and assigning each family 50-75 acres of wet lands in the delta of the Cauto river, for the expansion of rice production. All other initial benefits are included.

* Assign 50 acres of land in usufruct for 25 years and a $10,000.00 loan, to every new and old farmer in the country, interested in revitalizing fruit production in Santiago de Cuba, Contramaestre, Ciego de Avila and the Isle of Youth. All other offer applies.

* Create a similar project with 50,000 inner city dwellers with agriculture background, interested in developing feed cattle production in Camaguey, Bayamo, and Sanctis Spiritus and the Havana/Matanzas corridor. All other offerings apply.

* Provide a $5,000.00 loan to every home owner interested in refurbishing their home and a $15,000.00 loan for every new home construction.

* Assign $20 million for the construction of a motorcycle (scooter) assembly plant in Santiago de Cuba, to provide basic means of transportation to every citizen and for export in the region.

These ideas, which may seem idyllic to some, are solely intended to improve the living standard and quality of life of the exceedingly generous and deserving Cuban people, who have done so much for those society deem unworthy and have left on their own to perish. Cuba must survive, strive and continue to extend its care around the world.

No philosophical, political, racial or social difference should ever be more important than the sanctity of life and its inalienable right of happiness.

If any or all of these suggestions were applied and they would achieve the anticipated economical development, the fossilized, cruel, inhuman embargo would implode as it happened with China, Viet Nam, Russia and everywhere else, where the enforcer recognizes they have become an irrelevant spectator.

Elián's Tragedy and the Traiterous Behavior of El Duke

2000-01-23T02:54:00.002-05:00

"Elián's Tragedy and the Traiterous Behavior of El Duke"

por Alberto Jones

January 23, 2000

*originally posted on afrocubaweb.com

During the summer of 1966, as a student in Germany, I went through my life most revolting experience, when I visited Buchenwald, one of Nazi Germany best known concentration camp. Without ever being there, seeing the ovens, the human skin lamp shades, the films, it would not be possible to fully capture the bestiality in many of us.

But most difficult to understand was that this extermination complex was located a few miles from Weimer, the highly educated, cultural center of Germany, where the cream of that society, took part regularly in music or arts festivals, pretending nothing was wrong or intentionally remaining silent, sanctifying such heinous deed.

Millions of people paid the ultimate price, because of our complacency, lack of courage or complicity. Sixty years after, it appears we have learned very little from this tragedy or as it was then, we are too busy, too selfish to care about the suffering of others.

The tragic events surrounding 6 year old Elian Gonzalez, who was found Thanksgiving Day clinging to an inner tube off the shores of South Florida after the drowning death of his mother and 9 others involved in an ill-fated, alien smuggling attempt, have shocked the conscience of millions of people around the world.

This child, who may have suffered permanent psychological trauma and more physical pain than most of us in our lifetime, continues to be forcibly retained in a foreign environment, surrounded by people he has never seen before, turned into a celebrity and plunged into a media frenzy by the heartless, vengeful, ultra-right-wing Cuban American pseudo-politicians in Miami and New Jersey.

In order to explain their absurd position, they are presenting the most bizarre, baseless arguments; as they perceive the well being of the child in direct relation with the availability of Nintendo, Tommy's or McDonalds, creating an artificial "Dream World" around him, which incidentally, does not apply to hundreds of other Cubans, Haitians, Afro-Americans or poor Anglo children in Miami and every other city in this country.

But what makes this action more despicable, is that they are knowingly, systematically applying against this innocent child, well established and universally accepted theories of "Conditioned Reflexes," which was demonstrated many years ago by Pavlov and others.

By showering this child with an ample variety of foods, garments, toys, Disney World etc., they are imprinting in his young brain a world he will no longer have, as soon as he is returned to his father, creating a vacuum that will be replaced by withdrawal, anxiety, depression, or a socially unfit time bomb, capable of going off any time.

Having been in this world for much longer than I would like to accept, I have experienced first hand, the brutality, cruelty, visciousness that humans are capable of exhibiting. But for the most time, we expect to see these subhuman behavior associated with civil unrest or other types of deranged environment, that may explain in part, such actions.

But to do that in cold blood to a fragile, timid, scarred child, is beyond all humanoid classification of these barbarians disguised as teachers, mothers, politicians, pediatricians, psychologists, sociologists and even clergy!

As an Afro-Cuban, I am deeply troubled by the casual reporting or limited coverage of this horrendous human experience in the Black media. With few exceptions, prominent leaders with the moral standing capable of expressing their disgust, have been conspicuously silent.

But above and beyond the morality of this issue, no other racial/ethnic group in the world, should be more sensitive to any perception of forcefully restraining and separating family members, based upon our own tragic experience in which family members were separated and dispersed throughout this hemisphere.

It must be emphasized also that what is being done to this defenseless child by the Cuban-American community in Miami, is nothing more than a rehash of what they did to the native community in Latin America as of 1492, to the African slaves as of 1512, to the Afro-Cuban community until 1959 in Cuba and to the Afro-American community in South Florida since 1960, which they have subjugated and made hopelessly dependent, inflicting a massive influx of drugs and other social ills.

But if all of the above is nauseating and repugnant, even more so was the spectacle of watching the Three Kings Parade in Miami, in which New York Yankee Afro-Cuban pitcher "El Duke" Hernandez was the Grand Marshall of this event, thereby sanctioning and giving approval to the past behavior of this group of right wing Cuban-Americans.

This individual, through his irresponsible action, has tried to obscure or ignore the horrendous racism, ignorance, poverty, hunger and the deaths of thousands of children through preventible causes inflicted on our people by these criminals when they owned the lives and property in Cuba.

This traitor cannot deny that if he did not feel it himself, he heard from his parents, neighbors, how it was and what these people did to us.

These Miami Cuban-Americans, rightfully driven out of Cuba FOREVER, were the enforcers and perpetrators of our 29% illiteracy rate, 24% infant mortality, segregated neighborhoods, beaches, clubs. They forced us to live in huts without electricity, running water, sewer, no jobs, and openly prohibited us to work in department stores, banks, office settings or even drive a provincial bus.

These are the same individuals that forced Nat King Cole, Josephine Baker and other luminaries, to use the kitchen door in order to enter the night club where they were to perform. These are the same individuals that bragged that their puppet President Batista, was denied entry in the Havana Yatch Club.

These are the same individuals, that when beaches and clubs were integrated in Cuba in 1960,

they UNANIMOUSLY refused to enter to these places and renamed them SOLOVANNICHE. Later, we were able to unscramble this as SOLO VAN NICHE or ONLY WHERE NIGGERS GO!

But what makes more blatant, offensive and painful the irresponsible behavior of "El Duque" is the extensive and proud history of Black Cubans, who since the Ladder Conspiracy against slavery have crafted one of the most dignified, honorable and heroic history in this hemisphere.

No Afro-Cuban can ever forgive the affront to the memory of Antonio Maceo, Guillermon Moncada or Quintin Banderas. Mariana Grajales, the Black mother of the Cuban Nation, who gave the lives of 9 members of her family in the war of independence, may have cried for the first time in her life, to know, that such a THING, could be one of us!

But his indignity has no parallel. Made drunk by the few millions paid to him by his team owners, he feels compelled to be on his knees, to accept his self-inflicted inferiority, to forgive and forget our history.

Jesus Menendez, the sugar industry union leader, with approximately the same or less level of education than this other Personality, but with an absolute sense of dignity, self respect and love for his nation, was called to the White House, -not for the 6 million that is paid to "El Duque"- he was handed a blank, signed, federal check for him to fill out and stop the strike in Cuba. He refused the check, returned to Cuba and under orders "from above" was shot as he detrained in the station in Mazanillo.

Jesus Menendez is another of the endless list of Afro-Cubans heros who Cubans respect, admire and imitates on a daily basis. "El Duque" will be remembered by the Cubans for opposite reasons!

I am forced to admit, that the actions of "El Duque" Hernandez, have created in me the same revolting experience as the one I experienced in Buchenwald 35 years ago and never thought I would ever have to relive!

A Cuba in Diaz-Balart's Image or That of Today's Miami

1998-07-26T17:52:00.000-04:00

"A Cuba in Diaz Balart's Image or that of Today's Miami"
by Alberto Jones
*from AfroCubaWeb

On August 1, 1975 in Helsinki, Finland, 35 countries signed what became known as the Helsinki Human Rights Agreement. The Agreement declared, among other things, "the right to be free of governmental violations of the integrity of the person..."and "the right to enjoy civil and political liberties...." For myself and other Afro-Cubans and millions of human beings, understanding the scope and morality of this agreement was very easy.

I was born on a hot and humid day of August 1938 in La Guira, Banes, Cuba, a community of transplanted emigrants, mainly from the English speaking Caribbean Islands and Haiti, lured to Cuba to what was billed as the "Promised Land" by the United Fruit Company, Manati Sugar Company, and others.

In this community on the "other" side of the tracks, I learned early on, that the only homes we were allowed to build were the shack-type homes with thatched roofs that defined our living quarters. Sewer, running water, electricity, schools, jobs, hospital or medical services were limited to people living on the "other" side of town.

What we did have was a pervasive infant mortality due primarily to preventible diseases that touched the lives of every family. There were rampant pre and post partum deaths; hunger and malnutrition seen predominantly in children with their disproportionate heads and distended abdomens, overflowing with such a variety of intestinal parasites sufficient to produce our own Atlas of Parasitology. Another common landmark was the infamous gully with its putrid drainage winding through our neighborhood.

The only schools in our community of approximately 8-10,000 people, were two or three mock-classrooms of 10-20 children in the living room of those slightly more enlightened members of our community. Two churches had what could be qualified as small schools, with approximately 40 children each. Because of our teachers’ own limited education, the level of training by those who were able to stay through the entire school program (3-4 years) was the equivalent of a low third grade.

But this vicious cycle gets even worse if we add that living in Cuba, a Spanish speaking country, the teaching was in English and everything that was taught to us, was either pertaining to England, Ireland, or Jamaica! We learned about Admiral Nelson but nothing about Marti, we learned about Pound, Shilling and Pence, but nothing about Peso, Peseta y Centavos. We learned about the Thames river but nothing our own Rio Cauto!

Unbelievable as it may sound today, most of the kids could not stay in school, either because their parents could not afford it or their helping hands were already required on the plantation. As a direct result of this horrendous environment, our community, and tens of similar ones dispersed through what was then the provinces of Camaguey and Oriente, did not produce in 60 years a single person who had achieved a mid level or higher education. An exception was a lady who was able to complete nursing school, only because her parents had the vision and could afford to send her back to Jamaica.

The only jobs available was in the zafra, the 4-5 months sugar harvest, which was virtually slave labor, because it was not only the lowest paying job, but it also kept the people in perennial debts: whatever income you made last year would be credited to debts incurred this year. This practice was so pervasive that thousands of workers never saw or received money, they would only receive promissory notes -VALES- from the landowners, who were often the same owners of the stores. That is why, 10-12 year-old boys went off to work in the fields, while girls in the same age group became maids.

I will be eternally grateful to my grandfather, George Jones. Pappi Georgy, as he was known, was a dignified man of enormous fortitude, respect and deep religious beliefs, who kept our family together in spite of the most difficult circumstances by instilling in us honesty and moral values. My grandfather was among the fortunate few, because, as an orderly in the United Fruit Company's hospital, he had a year round job paying 50 cents per day.

There were always people sitting in my backyard, waiting for Georgy to get off his job. Some suffered from diarrhea, vomiting, fever or any sort of injuries. He would cleanse their wounds or give them medication he stored in a coffin-like cabinet he kept in his bedroom. As I pieced these events together, I concluded that this honorable man, who preached values to us, was forced by the brutal society in which he lived, to steal from his workplace, in order to serve those who were deprived of the most basic means of survival.

What can we say about the psychological trauma endured by unfortunate mothers, trapped in abusive relations, domestic violence and occasional life threatening situations without anywhere to go, forced to live this hazardous existence as the only means of feeding their hungry children.

For these and so many other reasons, none of us had to flock to South Africa to see what Apartheid was all about. We were born, lived and many died in our own Soweto! That's why it is so painful to us, when we hear the likes of Diaz-Balart attempting to apply the content of the Human Rights Declaration, to their narrow and selfish, self serving interest.

Where were these demagogues, hypocrites and frequently active perpetrators of the terrible conditions previously described when young people were beaten, tortured, disappeared or murdered, and left by the side of the roads to rot by the military structure that they helped put in place to protect their illegal loot, stolen public funds, or immoral business practices?

For us to have a clear picture about the real intentions and the interests that these individuals stand for, suffice to say, that Diaz-Balart's father was one of the highest ranking government official in the Batista regime while all of the above was happening, and today, both his sons, one as a State and the other as a U.S. Representative, both representing Miami, which has become one of the most politically corrupt, segregated, bankrupt, drug ravaged community in the nation. I can only wonder if the Cuba that U.S. Representative Diaz-Balart struggles fervently to recover - even at the expense of the country's sovereignty - may well be a Cuba reconstructed in his father's image or that of today's Miami.

*Originally published in "La Alborada", Summer of 1998