Buzzing February in Cuba
By Circles Robinson
Politics, culture and sports take center stage in Cuba this February, beginning with a Chinese New Year celebration, a coast to coast cycling competition, international jazz festival, mammoth book fair and, yes, the election of the next Cuban president.
Almost every capital in Latin America has a Chinese immigrant community and Havana is no exception. Residents of the local Chinatown are presently holding a week of activities to celebrate the Chinese New Year (The year of the rat) including a fireworks display held Thursday night.
Attractions include a traditional clothing exhibition and lion dance. Tomorrow, the Sports City Indoor Coliseum will host the Havana-to-Beijing gala, including the participation of 800 people who practice martial arts, the youngest age three and the oldest 90.
The 33rd Vuelta a Cuba bicycle race kicked off this week starting at the eastern tip of the island. The 13-leg, 1791-kilometer road cycling competition and runs through February 17. The athletes hail from Germany, Slovenia, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Cuba. US teams used to take part in the challenging event, but in recent years the Bush administration’s tightened travel restrictions have made that all but impossible.
Jazz Plaza in Havana opens on Valentine’s Day. The twenty-fourth edition of the festival features both Cubans and international performers from countries including Austria, South Africa, Spain, Costa Rica, Rumania, Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico and Italy.
The hosts include some of Cuba’s most seasoned musicians: Jorge Reyes, Orlando Sanchez, Chucho Valdes, Bobby Carcasses, Giraldo Piloto. The younger generation of Cuban musicians will also participate, including Harold Lopez Nussa, Rolando Luna, Alfredo Rodriguez, Tamara Castaneda, Alexis Bosh, Roberto Carcasses, Roberto Fonseca and Elmer Ferrer.
Organized by pianist Chucho Valdes, nine Havana sites will host Jazz Plaza along with a sub-venue at the Varadero Beach Resort, a few hours north of the capital. The festival’s closing will feature Brazilian recording artist Tania Maria at the 5,000 seat Karl Marx Theater.
What used to be the annual Havana International Book Fair is now known as the Cuba International Book Fair. Presentations and expositions take place throughout the country over nearly a month. This year the fair spotlights Spain’s autonomous community of Galicia, from where countless people immigrated to Cuba and Latin America over several centuries. Some 200 Galician authors, artists, musicians and officials, and books from over 30 of its publishers, will be on hand when the gates at the Morro-Cabana fortress turned cultural center open on February 13.
The family event draws astoundingly large crowds throughout the country. Cuba’s publishers have printed huge runs of hundreds of titles to offer at very low prices ranging from pennies to the equivalent of a little over a $US dollar.
Book presentations, live music, children’s pavilions plus theater and other cultural activities are part of this highly popular event. Last year Mexican novelist and journalist Elena Poniatowska had these words to say about Cuba’s book fair: “On very few occasions have I had the opportunity of seeing such a wonderful landscape: so many people attracted by reading fever.”
POLITICS WILL CLOSE THE MONTH
With the bike race and the jazz festival over and the book fair about to move on from the capital, on Sunday February 24 a new 614-member National Assembly (Cuba’s one chamber Congress) will be sworn in. The legislators, who were themselves elected on January 20, will then elect a new 31-member Council of State and the nation’s president. This new president may or may not be Fidel Castro.
Fidel, 81, loves to keep the White House and his detractors in Miami guessing, and he’s done it rather successfully since the 1950s. Now, in the twilight of his long career as a revolutionary and statesman, he can sit back and enjoy all the speculation in the foreign press about his health and next move.
Despite his gradual but slow recovery from intestinal surgery in July 2006 that has physically kept him out of the public eye —except for footage of occasional meetings with visiting heads of State—, the decision to be a candidate for reelection is clearly Fidel’s.
While the question whether the next president will be Fidel or Raul Castro, or a figure such as Carlos Lage or someone else entirely, looms large in peoples’ minds, it isn’t the only question at hand. The National Assembly also has to elect six vice-presidents who take on important tasks, including a first vice president (Raul’s current position).
Women have made considerable inroads in Cuban society at the grassroots and mid-level leadership positions. The National Assembly is now 43 percent female, up from 36% in 2003. Top leadership positions, however, have remained heavily male.
Of the 31-member Council of State elected in 2003, only six (19%) were women, and there were no female vice-presidents. In the recent general elections, 40.8 percent of those elected to the fourteen provincial legislatures were women. Nonetheless, when it came to electing the presidents of those bodies last weekend, only Holguin province selected a woman. Likewise, only Las Tunas and Guantanamo have women VPs as part of their new governments.
SIGNIFICANT LEGISLATION
The nation’s leaders have also hinted at a package of legislation to come soon after the National Assembly is seated that might affect the way Cuban society operates. These follow months of consultation with the general population and of analysis at different levels regarding how to make the island’s socialist system operate more efficiently and be more citizen-friendly.
Speculation runs high on what the changes could be. Further land reform to stimulate agricultural production is one of the most consistent predictions. Other projections range from streamlined procedures for travel abroad, to measures that make it possible to supplement ones salaried income, or changes in the cumbersome regulations for exchanging properties and vehicles. Still others are hoping for the right to purchase cell phones and use Internet cafes and hotels that are currently reserved for tourists. Yet another much commented problem is the two-currency economy, where a large segment of the population only has access to one and many products are sold in the other.
Politics, culture and sports take center stage in Cuba this February, beginning with a Chinese New Year celebration, a coast to coast cycling competition, international jazz festival, mammoth book fair and, yes, the election of the next Cuban president.
Almost every capital in Latin America has a Chinese immigrant community and Havana is no exception. Residents of the local Chinatown are presently holding a week of activities to celebrate the Chinese New Year (The year of the rat) including a fireworks display held Thursday night.
Attractions include a traditional clothing exhibition and lion dance. Tomorrow, the Sports City Indoor Coliseum will host the Havana-to-Beijing gala, including the participation of 800 people who practice martial arts, the youngest age three and the oldest 90.
The 33rd Vuelta a Cuba bicycle race kicked off this week starting at the eastern tip of the island. The 13-leg, 1791-kilometer road cycling competition and runs through February 17. The athletes hail from Germany, Slovenia, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Cuba. US teams used to take part in the challenging event, but in recent years the Bush administration’s tightened travel restrictions have made that all but impossible.
Jazz Plaza in Havana opens on Valentine’s Day. The twenty-fourth edition of the festival features both Cubans and international performers from countries including Austria, South Africa, Spain, Costa Rica, Rumania, Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico and Italy.
The hosts include some of Cuba’s most seasoned musicians: Jorge Reyes, Orlando Sanchez, Chucho Valdes, Bobby Carcasses, Giraldo Piloto. The younger generation of Cuban musicians will also participate, including Harold Lopez Nussa, Rolando Luna, Alfredo Rodriguez, Tamara Castaneda, Alexis Bosh, Roberto Carcasses, Roberto Fonseca and Elmer Ferrer.
Organized by pianist Chucho Valdes, nine Havana sites will host Jazz Plaza along with a sub-venue at the Varadero Beach Resort, a few hours north of the capital. The festival’s closing will feature Brazilian recording artist Tania Maria at the 5,000 seat Karl Marx Theater.
What used to be the annual Havana International Book Fair is now known as the Cuba International Book Fair. Presentations and expositions take place throughout the country over nearly a month. This year the fair spotlights Spain’s autonomous community of Galicia, from where countless people immigrated to Cuba and Latin America over several centuries. Some 200 Galician authors, artists, musicians and officials, and books from over 30 of its publishers, will be on hand when the gates at the Morro-Cabana fortress turned cultural center open on February 13.
The family event draws astoundingly large crowds throughout the country. Cuba’s publishers have printed huge runs of hundreds of titles to offer at very low prices ranging from pennies to the equivalent of a little over a $US dollar.
Book presentations, live music, children’s pavilions plus theater and other cultural activities are part of this highly popular event. Last year Mexican novelist and journalist Elena Poniatowska had these words to say about Cuba’s book fair: “On very few occasions have I had the opportunity of seeing such a wonderful landscape: so many people attracted by reading fever.”
POLITICS WILL CLOSE THE MONTH
With the bike race and the jazz festival over and the book fair about to move on from the capital, on Sunday February 24 a new 614-member National Assembly (Cuba’s one chamber Congress) will be sworn in. The legislators, who were themselves elected on January 20, will then elect a new 31-member Council of State and the nation’s president. This new president may or may not be Fidel Castro.
Fidel, 81, loves to keep the White House and his detractors in Miami guessing, and he’s done it rather successfully since the 1950s. Now, in the twilight of his long career as a revolutionary and statesman, he can sit back and enjoy all the speculation in the foreign press about his health and next move.
Despite his gradual but slow recovery from intestinal surgery in July 2006 that has physically kept him out of the public eye —except for footage of occasional meetings with visiting heads of State—, the decision to be a candidate for reelection is clearly Fidel’s.
While the question whether the next president will be Fidel or Raul Castro, or a figure such as Carlos Lage or someone else entirely, looms large in peoples’ minds, it isn’t the only question at hand. The National Assembly also has to elect six vice-presidents who take on important tasks, including a first vice president (Raul’s current position).
Women have made considerable inroads in Cuban society at the grassroots and mid-level leadership positions. The National Assembly is now 43 percent female, up from 36% in 2003. Top leadership positions, however, have remained heavily male.
Of the 31-member Council of State elected in 2003, only six (19%) were women, and there were no female vice-presidents. In the recent general elections, 40.8 percent of those elected to the fourteen provincial legislatures were women. Nonetheless, when it came to electing the presidents of those bodies last weekend, only Holguin province selected a woman. Likewise, only Las Tunas and Guantanamo have women VPs as part of their new governments.
SIGNIFICANT LEGISLATION
The nation’s leaders have also hinted at a package of legislation to come soon after the National Assembly is seated that might affect the way Cuban society operates. These follow months of consultation with the general population and of analysis at different levels regarding how to make the island’s socialist system operate more efficiently and be more citizen-friendly.
Speculation runs high on what the changes could be. Further land reform to stimulate agricultural production is one of the most consistent predictions. Other projections range from streamlined procedures for travel abroad, to measures that make it possible to supplement ones salaried income, or changes in the cumbersome regulations for exchanging properties and vehicles. Still others are hoping for the right to purchase cell phones and use Internet cafes and hotels that are currently reserved for tourists. Yet another much commented problem is the two-currency economy, where a large segment of the population only has access to one and many products are sold in the other.
posted by Circlesonline | 4:30 AM
2 Comments:
Thanks, Robinson -
You've provided a terrific verbal snapshot of Cuban life at this most interesting moment. Keep up the good work. I'm sharing your work as widely as possible.
Best,
Walter
Thank you for allowing the world to see Cuba through your loving eyes. Your passionate and honest perspective is truly poetic. I think you are providing a great service during these fascinating times of measured but rising, well-founded and well-deserved hope.
Felicidades.
Rob
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