Workplace debates surrounding Cuba’s draft labor bill officially came to an end this past October 15th. Now, we are left with the question of what comes next.The National Assembly of the People’s Power has a scheduled session December. Then, we will finally get to see what comes out of this bill.
The bureaucracy “didn’t” understand how the official (and humanitarian) cause of the Cuban Five could be equated with the rest of Carcasses’ petitions, demands which, I imagine, smelt of brimstone and heresy for no few government officials.
Recently, on the eve of October 10, a Cuban national holiday commemorating the date (in 1868) in which Cuban landowner Carlos Manuel de Cespedes and his retinue of (former) slaves took up arms against Spanish colonial domination, a Round Table program bearing the controversial title of “Neither Black Nor White: Cuba is Mixed Race” was aired on television.
It’s been over a month since the beginning of the “yellow ribbon” campaign calling for the release of the 4 Cubans imprisoned in the United States and yellow – which is also the color of Cuba’s Virgin of Charity and the Yoruba deity Oshun – continues to tint the city with its complex polysemy of spiritual symbolism and its tacit call for conformity and political commitment.
A specter is haunting Cuba: the offline specter. All of the conservative forces of the old Cuba do everything in their power to make this specter a permanent resident of the island, while those of us who identify with a new Cuba wish to exorcise it immediately, so that it will never return.
Shortly after arriving from Russia (yes, I was in Russia for a couple weeks, visiting relatives), I noticed that Cuban television has introduced an innovative new program – added a new section to the news, to be more exact – with the suggestive name of “Cuba Says.”
Cuba’s close ties with North Korea, evidenced by the recently confiscated shipment of obsolete war equipment sent to Kim Il Sung’s People’s Democratic Republic for their eventual “repair” and re-shipment to the Caribbean island, has not got in the way of a rapprochement between Cuba and South Korea, at least not culturally speaking.
Last Saturday, a group of activists and scholars from different nations who describe themselves as “friends of the Cuban revolution” issued an “Open Letter to the Cuban People” with warnings about the use of transgenic plant species in agriculture.
In a country like Cuba, filled with busts of Jose Marti and all manner of portraits of Che Guevara, where one comes across many a plaster figure of Saint Lazarus and even of a Sioux native (the emblem of the Native American Commission of Cuban spiritists), these busts are a rare sight indeed.
The practice of teaching courses on issues related to the country’s security isn’t new, at least not in a country like Cuba. The academic transcript for the Biochemistry Major I completed – to the dismay of foreign academic peers – begins with “Marxist-Leninist Philosophy” and ends with “Military Training.”