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Les 180 jours de Raul Castro

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L’après Castro ? La question est depuis un certain temps dans toutes les têtes. Mais pendant longtemps le sujet est resté tabou, preuve s’il en était besoin que même gravement malade ou moribond, Fidel Castro tenait encore les rênes du pouvoir. A l’instar des fins de règne des grands caudillos, il était indécent d’évoquer avec trop de précisions la succession du Lider Maximo de son vivant. La question n’est plus maintenant de savoir s’il y aura une transition à Cuba, mais quand et comment.

Malgré l’assurance officielle qu’il n’y a ni “transition”, ni “succession” à Cuba, et que Raúl n’est au pouvoir que “temporairement”, le doute susbsiste sur un retour de Fidel Castro au pouvoir. L’option militaire reste dans un premier temps la plus probable, ne serait-ce que parce qu’elle est sans doute la seule susceptible d’éviter un scénario catastrophe à la roumaine avec une explosion des tensions et des antagonismes qui minent la société cubaine. L’armée est déjà fermement implantée dans les sphères du pouvoir avec notamment la présence de deux généraux de premier plan au bureau politique (Abelardo Colomé Ibarra et Ulises Rosales del Toro). Cependant la personnalité de Raúl Castro reste un mystère.

Raúl Castro n’a que cinq ans de moins son frère ainé, et la réputation d’avoir une santé plutôt fragile : homme d’appareil et de coulisses, il est plutôt mal à l’aise en public. Autant Fidel est grand, imposant par sa carrure et sa prestance, autant Raúl est petit, chétif, terne et sans envergure. Fidel paralyse ses interlocuteurs du regard, et est encore capable de captiver ses auditeurs en alignant les anecdotes et les plaisanteries. Raúl fait pitié avec son regard chafouin, ses manières apprêtées et ses discours d’un dogmatisme et d’un ennui mortels.

Raúl a la réputation d’être un pragmatique : son appel aux Etats Unis pour négocier en est la preuve. Plus récemment il a décidé d’arreter de donner des noms aux années. 2006 était l’année de la “révolution énergétique”, 2007 sera l’année du “48 eme anniversaire de la révolution”. Et ainsi de suite. Pourquoi se casser la tête chaque année pour trouver un slogan dont tout le monde se soucie comme de sa première chaussette ?

Raúl Castro ne laisse pas beaucoup d’illusions d’ouverture du système. Bien qu’il soit une personne affable et connu pour sa cordialité, il a été le protagoniste de quelques moments d’une extrême dureté dans l’histoire de la révolution. En 1959, il assumait le commandement des troupes révolutionnaires qui prirent Santiago de Cuba, la seconde ville de Cuba ; il y ordonna l’exécution sommaire de 70 officiers et soldats qui s’étaient rendus. Après avoir été fusillés, les prisonniers furent jetés dans une fosse commune. Raúl, qui avait formé « l’Armée rebelle » à une discipline reconnue comme étant de fer, fut aussi l’organisateur, en 1996, d’une purge d’intellectuels du PCC qu’il accusa de déviations capitalistes en raison de leur appui à la politique d’ouverture économique.

Raul a toujours donné l’impression d’être un communiste dogmatique et un idéologue intransigeant : son rôle de procureur dans l’affaire Ochoa a montré qu’il était capable du pire. Mais l’histoire a déjà prouvé avec Gorbatchev que du plus terne des bureaucrates peut parfois surgir un réformateur audacieux. On sait maintenant qu’au lendemain des manifestations spontanées du mois d’août 1994 qui ont opposé la police et des émeutiers en plein centre de La Havane, Raul a fait personnellement pression sur Fidel pour obtenir la réouverture des marchés libres paysans au mois d’octobre de la même année.

Secondé par six cadres prééminents du Parti communiste, dont le vice-président Carlos Lage, et le chef de la diplomatie Felipe Perez Roque, Raúl a adopté un style aux antipodes de celui de son frère, avec des discours synthétiques et de rares apparitions devant les caméras. Il s’est aussi dit ouvert, aux “divergences” et au débat, et favorable à l’ascension de nouvelles générations. Pour le moment, rien de concret n’est cependant venu etayer ces déclarations.

En particulier, aucune amélioration n’est intervenue du côté des droits de l’homme. La libération pour raisons de santé le 6 décembre d’Hector Palacios, l’un des dissidents les plus combatifs du groupe des 75 arrêtés en mars 2003, n’a aucunement été perçue comme un signe d’assouplissement. Les autorités de La Havane ont déjà averti qu’elles prendront «toutes les mesures nécessaires» envers la dissidence y compris pour l’empêcher de recevoir des aides de Washington.

L’ère post-Fidel Castro a bel et bien commencé. Même si Raúl Castro a été désigné en tant que garant de la continuité révolutionnaire, une véritable relève des générations est inévitable. Peut-on imaginer que le vide créé par la maladie de Fidel Castro puisse être comblé par une direction collective issue du Parti communiste sous la direction de Raúl Castro ? C’est l’option qui semble se mettre en place actuellement. Mais une fois la succession de Fidel Castro confirmée et définitive, Raúl sera obligé de faire des concessions : les Cubains n’accepteront pas de la part du petit frère, ce qu’ils ont enduré en silence de la part du grand frère pendant près d’un demi siècle de privations.

droits de l'homme

L’organisation internationale contre la torture lance une “intervention d’urgence” pour José Daniel Ferrer

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José Daniel Ferrer

MIAMI, États-Unis.- L’Observatoire pour la protection des défenseurs des droits humains (OPDDH), a lancé ce vendredi une campagne d'”Interventions urgentes” en faveur du prisonnier politique et de conscience cubain José Daniel Ferrer García, leader de l’Union patriotique de Cuba (UNPACU), selon une note de Radio Televisión Martí.

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Who Is Filling Cuba’s University Classrooms?

New students at the University of Havana (14ymedio) Born during the Special Period, they have grown up trapped in the dual currency system, and when they get their degrees Raul Castro will no longer be in power. They are the more than 100,000 young people just starting college throughout the country. Their brief biographies include educational experiments, battles of ideas, and the emergence of new technologies They know more about X-Men than about Elpidio Valdés, and only remember Fidel Castro from old photos and archived documentaries. They are the Wi-Fi kids with their pirate networks, raised with the “packets” of copied shows and illegal satellite dishes

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New students at the University of Havana (14ymedio)

Born during the Special Period, they have grown up trapped in the dual currency system, and when they get their degrees Raul Castro will no longer be in power. They are the more than 100,000 young people just starting college throughout the country. Their brief biographies include educational experiments, battles of ideas, and the emergence of new technologies They know more about X-Men than about Elpidio Valdés, and only remember Fidel Castro from old photos and archived documentaries.

They are the Wi-Fi kids with their pirate networks, raised with the “packets” of copied shows and illegal satellite dishes. Some nights they would connect through routers and play strategy video games that made them feel powerful and free. Whoever wants to know them should know that they’ve had “emerging teachers” since elementary school and were taught grammar, math and ideology via television screens. However, they ended up being the least ideological of the Cubans who today inhabit this Island, the most cosmopolitan and with the greatest vision of the future.

On arriving at junior high school they played at throwing around around the obligatory snack of bread while their parents furtively passed their lunches through the school gate. They have a special physical ability, an adaptation that has allowed them to survive the environment; they don’t hear what doesn’t interest them, they close their ears to the harangues of morning assemblies and politicians. They seem lazier than other generations and in reality they are, but in their case this apathy acts like an evolutionary advantage. They’re better than us and will live in a country that has nothing to do with what we were promised.

A few months ago, these same young people, starred in the best known case of school fraud uncovered publicly. Some of those hoping to earn a place in higher education bought the answers to an admissions test. They were used to paying for approval, because they had to turn to private tutors to teach them what they should have learned in the classroom. Many of those who recently enrolled in the university had private teachers starting in elementary school. They are the children of a new emerging class that has used its resources so that their children can reach a desk at the right hand — or the left — of the alma mater.

These young people dressed in uniforms in their earlier grades, but they struggled to differentiate themselves through the length of a shirt, a fringe of bleached hair, or through pants sagging below their hips. They are the children of those who barely had a change of underwear in the nineties, so their parents tried to make sure they didn’t “go through the same thing,” and turned to the black market for their clothes and shoes. They mock the false austerity and, not wanting to look like militants, they love bright shiny colors and name brand outfits.

Yesterday, with the start of the school year, they received a lecture about the attempts of “imperialism to undermine the revolution through its youth.” It was like a faint drizzle running over an impervious surface. The government is right to be worried; these young people who have entered the university will never become good soldiers or fanatics. The clay from which they are made cannot be molded.

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Who Is Filling Cuba’s University Classrooms?

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A Caricature of a Cuban Woman

Woman drinking (14ymedio) 14yMEDIO, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 22 August 2014 — A woman on national television said that her husband “helps” her with some household chores. To many, the phrase may sound like the highest aspiration of every woman. Another lady asserts that her husband behaves like a “Federated man,” an allusion to the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), which today is celebrating its 54th anniversary. As for me, on this side of the screen, I feel sorry for them in the face of such meekness

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Woman drinking (14ymedio)

Woman drinking (14ymedio)

14yMEDIO, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 22 August 2014 — A woman on national television said that her husband “helps” her with some household chores. To many, the phrase may sound like the highest aspiration of every woman. Another lady asserts that her husband behaves like a “Federated man,” an allusion to the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), which today is celebrating its 54th anniversary. As for me, on this side of the screen, I feel sorry for them in the face of such meekness. Instead of the urgent demands they should mention, all I hear is this appreciation directed to a power as manly as it is deaf.

It’s not about “helping” to wash a plate or watch the kids, nor tiny illusory gender quotas that hide so much discrimination like a slap. The problem is that economic and political power remains mainly in masculine hands. What percentage of car owners are women? How many acres of land are owned or leased by women. How many Cuban ambassadors on missions abroad wear skirts? Can anyone recite the number of men who request paternity leave to take care of their newborns? How many young men are stopped by the police each day to warn them they can’t walk with a tourist? Who mostly attends the parent meetings at the schools?

Please, don’t try to “put us to sleep” with figures in the style of, “65 percent of our cadres and 50 percent of our grassroots leaders are women.” The only thing this statistic means is that more responsibility falls on our shoulders, which means neither a high decision-making level nor greater rights. At least such a triumphalist phrase clarifies that there are “grassroots leaders,” because we know that decisions at the highest level are made by men who grew up under the precepts that we women are beautiful ornaments to have at hand… always and as long as we keep our mouths shut.

I feel sorry for the docile and timid feminist movement that exists in my country. Ashamed for those ladies with their ridiculous necklaces and abundant makeup who appear in the official media to tell us that “the Cuban woman has been the greatest ally of the Revolution.” Words spoken at the same moment when a company director is sexually harassing his secretary, when a beaten woman can’t get a restraining order against her abusive husband, when a policeman tells the victim of a sexual assault, “Well, with that skirt you’re wearing…” and the government recruits shock troops for an act of repudiation against the Ladies in White.

Women are the sector of the population that has the most reason to shout their displeasure. Because half a century after the founding of the caricature of an organization that is the Federation of Cuban Women, we are neither more free, nor more powerful, nor even more independent.

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A Caricature of a Cuban Woman

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