Cuba’s Top Brass Celebrate July 26th
HAVANA TIMES – The top leaders of the Cuban military, Communist Party and government accompany general/president Raul Castro, 84, in the front row at the July 26th commemoration in Santiago de Cuba.
The event for the 62nd anniversary of the attack on the Moncada garrison, which sparked the Cuban revolution five and a half years later in 1959, had the keynote speech from Jose Ramon Machado, 84, the number two man in the Communist Party.
Machado insisted on the importance of “not forgetting history, including the words of Fidel Castro, which contain the roots of our values, our ideology and our independence, as well as the living legend of the founders of our country,” reported the official Granma newspaper.
I guess it would depend on what those houses are worth.
The shoes do look great! Must be from Italy!
IC, except for Bruno, even the young ones have that thousand mile stare!
Moses, generally you’re correct and you are black so you must know the dilemma faced by those who are raised in the inner cities. It’s horrific and two strikes when you come out of the womb. we have some major problems with people who don’t fit into the system however, looking at South Americans’, who came with nothing, they have made tremendous strides succeeding.
One thing that we must do in this country is get rid of the bureaucracy that
continues to stifle this growth. In NYC it’s a disaster. If it wasn’t for the underground economy, the economy would be quite bad.
John, they have their own McDonalds’! You must know that!
John does rock Carlyle. I’m sure he lives in a box with no TV, radio, computer,
cell phone, cheez-its, netflix (no tv) fridge, stove, hot plate, hot and cold running water (google mountain man), heat or air conditioning, electricity (as in no blackouts) car, bike, ice cream, beer, fritos, radical movie theatres, books, google search (no computer) forget apple because if has any products conceived by another capitalistic pig it’s over
etc. etc. I love the guy! he’s the real deal! oh, forgot, bathroom!
I agree that the U.S. will be orchestrating any meaningful change. Raul and his team will handle that. A move to individual versus collective approaches has taken hold in many areas of economy. This trend will continue as it is paying off. How to tax, regulate and control will all evolve for non stare owned enterprises.
As I have written before, US policies towards Cuba from the Monroe Doctrine onwards have been a succession of political errors. Banning US citizens from travelling there being just one small example.
No Mr. Goodrich, Cuba has half a HOCKEY team. The other half defected at the Pan American Games seeking the freedom that you and I enjoy.
Five mansions plus his two island retreat suffice for Fidel Castro Ruz.
Envy leaks out of every pore!
The Castro’s are not “world leaders”. The two brothers have in turn been dictators of a small island nation of 11.2 sorry correction its down to 11.1 million people. Yes, I can list the 13 countries where Castro’s Cuba intervened militarily.
Your colleague Dan wrote that he would like to see pictures of your US legislators wearing expensive suits with their net worth printed upon them..
I responded as the article was about Cuba and the Castro family regime, that I would be more interested in seeing the bank account balances of those sitting in the front row in the picture shown in the article. That remains the case!
You Mr. Goodrich and your fellows like Dan, have an inner compulsion to always divert matters away from Cuba on to the USA. I understand why in you own case, because you know naught of Cuba except that which others have written. It appears to me that your energies would be better utilised addressing how to improve the multitude of faults you find within your own country rather than pontificating about a country you don’t even know.
Yes, I refer to other countries when there is direct relevance – and yes I have visited many, but not all of them. But, I try hard to avoid comparison between Canada and Cuba and using these columns of the Havana Times to vent my spleen about Canadian politicians.
Five houses plus his two island retreat is scarcely a description of poverty.
RAFIN SA (Raul & Fidel) paid $706 million for 27% shareholding in ETECSA
I assume you mean US politicians, but it’s an amusing idea and gave me a laugh – thanks!
To try to give a valid comparison with the average Cuban of his age, let’s just assume that Machado receives $500 per month plus comfortable accommodation in Siboney, plus a car and driver. Put the accommodation at say $50 per day (lower than many casa particulars in Mirimar). To rent even an awful Geely from CubaCar per day is $60 and the driver probably costs $2 per day ( I have excluded insurance – CubaCar charges $18 per day). The total is $3,860 per month as compared with the old age pension of 200 pesos ($8) per month. Divide one into the other and you get a better picture – and understand why Ministers in Cuba don’t retire.
Incidentally how much do you reckon Alarcon receives having been fired but now obviously back in favour as he went to the opening of the Cuban Embassy in Washington?
A number of years ago Forbes Magazine listed the richest people on the planet and they had Fidel way up on the list because….wait for it……they claimed Fidel could walk into the national treasury and take as much money as he wanted anytime he wanted .
That’s what these simpletons actually believe .
It’s more than obvious that Fidel doesn’t live the life of any
typical dictator installed and supported by the Empire but the counter-revolutionaries have impossible positions they must maintain. .
How do you know Fidel doesn’t have those things? Because he says so? Hahaha!
When someone comes up with an economic system that can guarantee a decent life for every person willing and able to work and a safety net for the elderly, children and the infirm WITHOUT cannibalizing entrepreneurship and economic rewards commensurate with effort, I will vote for it. So far, that ideal economic system has never existed. Capitalism, warts and all, is the next best thing.
Michel and Agelica Robinson are related to Dr. Machado by their mothers adoption and I have more $$$ than Machodo dues
Well Carlyle, I almost put Johnny G, sorry, I can only write with regards of the many I know who have visited Cuba and with the rooms available now for a while, they interact directly with Cubans. They also drink with Cubans and as much as the consensus is how tough it is living in Cuba they love their country and are desperate for change. I discussed before my State Dept. sanction trip during a hot time with USSR, 1971, going to Czechoslovakia and Romania
and lived amongst the peoples their and again, they were living in hard times but ate well, great agricultural system at that time in Romania, and had notintention on leaving. They freely disagreed with the powers at hand and one of the best experiences i have had. Sadly, I will not go to Cuba until I am free to do so without any preconditions and capable of
using my credit card openly. I can wait it out. Lucky you lived in Canada!
I thought you were a Trump fan Johnny G!
Well you got that half right John.
I love how you throw accusations around. We (you) “know’ he has millions. You are privy to those facts how ?
Do not disrespect the Donald.
His lack of command of the facts and repetition of erroneous information has him the favorite of a fairly large percentage of people on the Republican side who think as stupidly as he does.
You know, the same people who do not understand that the government and the media presentation of reality amounts to the rich and powerful telling the middle class that everything that’s wrong is the fault of the poor .
So it’s the inner-city blacks, the immigrants fleeing U.S. inflicted poverty in their own countries, the unemployed who “don’t really want to work” , those on welfare and food stamps who become the villains.
It’s how it works for the oligarchy.
I heard that all the Republican clowns running for the residency plan on all showing up together at the first debate in one of those little clown cars .
The laughs are at the expense of the electorate though.
As I am not a mind reader nor can I predict that specific a near future event.
, I will wait until the possible normalization of relations between the Empire and Cuba before opining on the possible eventuation of democracy in Cuba or at least, moves in that direction.
Cuba’s system is autochthonous; , uniquely Cuban and in many areas of change, that change must be made incrementally to test its efficacy and its drawbacks to avoid fatal or seriously deleterious effects to the overall society.
IMO, Nothing will change until normalization and since Cuba has held out against the Empire for 54 years, I don’t think the Cuban leadership will likely make any hasty moves that would endanger what they wish to preserve when all they have to do is wait another year or so given the rapidly shifting opinions on Cuba in the U.S.
Playa Giron would have been a good place for no one to get in the way of you getting yours.
You believe in capitalism regardless of it being responsible for half the world living on less than US$2.00 a day.
You can’t tell me you don’t hate them.
Cuba has a HOCKEY team?
And you are correct Fidel has no idea of what a traditional U.S. installed-type dictator is supposed to do as far as having many mansions , Swiss bank accounts ( just in case) and thousand dollar suits and having escape plans .(just in case) and reserve houses in the south of France, pianos filled with the country’s cash reserves like you-know-who (just in case)
Ever wonder why that is ?
Where do all these corrupt and very wealthy Cuban leaders get to spend that money ?
Cuba “intervened” (in reality responded to requests for help by these two countries ) where else besides Ethiopia when it was invaded by the U.S. and Saudi backed Somalis and in Angola when it was invaded by your racist South African friends ?
Name me one country whose leaders do not dress well as befits world leaders .
Talk about grasping at straws ! .
Like race car drivers, all politicians should be required to carry the corporate logos of all their sponsors, those whose interests get top priority with them.
I don’t care how much money they have but I want to know what percentage of that money constitutes legal bribery and to what extent it affects their legislative thought processes.
But you know what ? there is not a damned thing I , you or anyone can do about that legal bribery and what we have is not democracy, not a representative democracy (republic) but an out and out oligarchy: rule by the wealthy.
Those employed in the tourism sector in Cuba meet far more Canadians that Americans. Look at the list of Canadian businesses in Cuba and you will realise that similarly those who work at (I am carefully avoiding saying “for” as they are paid by the state) those companies come in contact with Canadians. I say that to explain that they too know that their life sucks.
Whereas it is correct that most of those that have fled Cuba live in the US, there are some who live in Canada and with the exception of one (I refer to the Canadian Gomezz who pretends to represent Cubans in Cuba having lived half his life in the security of Canada) they are just as critical of the Castro family regime as those in Miami.
Not all of those who defect in Canada go to the States – and if Trump is elected, fewer will as he will probably lump them together with the Mexicans.
I’m not a hater. I don’t want to stop you from getting yours because I don’t want you to get in the way of me getting mine. I believe in equal opportunity not equal outcomes.
Hard work you say ? Certainly. That’s the way they all got rich. Do you believe multi-millionaires relate better they immensely more numerous 90 percenters or to their own class ? They certainly know how to give lip service, but then there is that pesky Princeton study done last year re the perfect correlation between policy and legislation and the interests of the country’s squillionaires.
As Cuba is the subject, I would be more interested in seeing the bank account balances of the front row shown in the picture. We know that Raul has millions, but what about all his henchmen? How does Bruno pay for all his suits and ties, how does Diaz-Canel pay for his shoes?
I would love to see a picture of the henchmen with their net worth printed on their shirts and uniforms. I note the generals all wear a multitude of ribbons – for service where? probably the thirteen foreign countries where the regime intervened?
What’s wrong with wealth? Do you have a problem with reaping the rewards of hard work? You can be just as dishonest and not have a dime to your name. Socialists always talk anti-prosperity but are first in line for handouts.
Age ? That worries me less than class and bank account balances. I’d like to see a picture of our legislators with their net worth printed on their expensive suits.
That’s what a whole lot of people said Fidel would do a few years ago but contrary
to the so called experts the guy is still wearing his outrageous Adidas outfits making
carrot top look like a poster boy for GQ! Half the hockey team defected this weekend
and we all know these guys live better than 90% of the Cuban population so that speaks volumes Marti. Like so many dictatorships throughout history, they just don’t get it and now it could become serious. Agriculture alone is disgraceful!
That is not going to happen in Cuba. It’s already too late for that sort of thing to work. Some version of China state capitalist / one part rule is their aim. Socialismo is the air cover, but just look at what is actually happening in today’s Cuba.
The old guys are still tough as nails. They will be dropping off one by one.
My God, it looks like a party at an old folks home !!!
i continue to like bruno out of the lot. the photo looks like an old groucho marx movie
and i wonder if they knew that half the hockey team just defected? these guys better move fast or they’ll be forced out by an ugly rebellion. people in Cuba aren’t dumb Carlyle and those coming back from the US and meeting US tourists know full well their lot in life sucks! they are brilliant people and as with the expat’s enterprising
and not to be pissed off. it’s like in business, not what you did in the past but what are doing now! excuse me while i watch the latest donald trump speech and how the republican’s will again lose the next prez election.
If you look carefully, there is one in the fourth row!
Bruno Rodriguez spoils the front row which otherwise has grey hair – including Diaz-Canel.
History has a way of washing away the very memories the 1950’s generation of leaders want preserved. What matters most for Cuba is not the past. It is what it does now given the experience of the past 50 years. What stays and what will be made again by the emerging generation of leaders.
A thought:
Just as the present Cuban government celebrates the revolution but is -so far- a far cry from the sort of Cuba we would have imagined it would be 55 years , the people and government of the USA celebrate their revolution of some 250 years ago in a country that also it’s 1776 followers could not have imagined.
In both cases what rose from the revolutions were totalitarian forms both in the economic and in the political spheres of both countries.
It took the big capitalists a few hundred years to take control of the GOUSA and eliminate anything resembling representative democracy but only 55 years of the US embargo to enable the Leninists in Cuba to do so .
The difference ?
There is a very small chance that once the crushing imperial U.S. embargo and all other costly (to the Cuban economy) actions have ceased, that the apparently Leninist leadership will choose to go to their self-proclaimed socialist and communist principles and institute democratic,grass roots/cooperative-like structures across the economic and governmental spheres i.e. give democracy a go.
In the USA, there is absolutely no chance of either having a democratic society much less returning to the USA intended by the founding fathers because
“…The USA is an unelected dictatorship of money …which works behind the scenes to veto any elected official who might seek to change the foreign or domestic priorities of the imperial U.S…..”
Edward Herman and David Peterson : ” Riding The Green Wave”.
and
” If voting could change anything, they would outlaw it”
Emma Goldman (anarchist )
Would anyone care to question the absolute truth of those two quotes ?
)
The title of this article should be “Women in the Cuban Revolution”.