Cuban academic says corruption island's big threat

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100415/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_cuba_corruption

Cuban academic says corruption island's big threat

HAVANA – Corruption at the highest levels of government — not the meddling of a small band of dissidents — is the greatest threat to Cuba's communist system, a leading academic said in a highly unusual opinion posted Thursday on a state Web site.

The article by Esteban Morales — a historian who has written extensively on race and relations with the United States — crossed a number of red lines in tightly controlled Cuba, including openly discussing corruption rumors surrounding the dismissal of a top government aviation official who had fought alongside Ernesto "Che" Guevara and the Castros in the 1950s.

Morales said some top Cuban officials are preparing to divide the spoils if Cuba's political system disintegrates, like the shadowy oligarchs that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.

"In reality, corruption is much more dangerous than so-called internal dissent," Morales wrote in the piece, which appeared on the Web site of the state National Artists and Writers Union of Cuba. "The latter is isolated ... but corruption is truly counterrevolutionary because it comes from within the government and the state apparatus, which are the ones that really control the country's resources."

Members of the artists union have been surprisingly critical of the government in the past, but often with little effect. Criticism can also appear in government newspapers, but rarely on such hot-button issues as corruption among senior officials.

Morales is a prominent intellectual who only Monday appeared on a state television program defending the government on another topic. The frank assessment on the Web site went far further than what is normally tolerated.

Morales never singled out Fidel or Raul Castro for blame, but he said cronyism is rampant in the system that has developed 51 years after their revolution won power and said some officials are waiting for a chance to grab the country's resources.

"It has become evident that there are people in government and state positions who are preparing a financial assault for when the revolution falls," Morales wrote. "Others likely have everything ready to produce the transfer of state property into private hands, like what happened in the former Soviet Union."

Morales brought up the abrupt March 9 firing of veteran revolutionary Rogelio Acevedo, who had overseen the country's airlines and airports since the 1980s. The government gave no reason for his dismissal, but the island has been awash with speculation that he has been placed under house arrest for corruption.

Exile Web sites have reported that a large amount of cash was found hidden at Acevedo's house and that he is suspected of operating a private airline, among other things. The government has not commented on the allegations.

"There must be some truth to these reports, because this is a small country where everyone knows each other," Morales wrote of the speculation over Acevedo. He said the government owed people a fuller account because the same sort of corruption is happening in other state-run institutions.

"Whether it be to vindicate or condemn Acevedo, the people must be told what happened," he said.

While complaints of low-level corruption are not uncommon in state media, allegations of wide-scale, top-level malfeasance are very unusual and the fall of party officials has usually been seen as an anomaly rather than a symptom of broader rot.

When Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque and Vice President Carlos Lage were dismissed last year, Fidel Castro wrote that "the honey of power ... awoke in them ambitions that led to an undignified role."

Officials gave few public details of what they had done wrong, though Communist Party members said they were shown a video showing both making disparaging comments about the government and Miami journalist Maria Elvira Salazar released photos showing them partying with a Spanish business representative.

Morales appeared to refer to that case Thursday, when he complained of "favoritism, cronyism, certain acts of corruption" that led to information being passed to Spanish intelligence.

I see there are winds of change blowing in Cuba. I wonder, will they publish about high level corruption in Granma? Or will it be kept on a web page?

We have another thing in common.

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Oh. Wow. Cuba isn't a paradise? Whodathunkdat? No commie fer sure. :dunce:

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Didn't the Marxist-Leninist ideologues of the old Soviet Union insist that private property is theft? With a belief like that knocking around in the back of the minds of people in positions of trust and/or power, the temptations of embezzlement and theft are almost irresistible.

Corruption and the failure of the Cuban revolution to deliver on the promises of prosperity made back in the early days of the Castro regime are going to continue to make serious problems for whatever Cuban state or economic system that emerges within the next ten to fifteen years.

We already saw how the state's resources got redistributed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. That's just one potential scenario. What narcotraffickers could do with big sacks of mega-dollars is another very disturbing possibility.

Sorry, but I DON'T believe that today's Cubans are THAT much more spiritually evolved than the Soviets were in 1989--1991.


:banghead: :crazy:

:shrug:

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Even if I had links for my own original thoughts and cynicism about the average human mindset, I doubt that they'd make it through the filtering software currently in place for the servers by the banks of Denial.

So well put.

... into what could be a major scandal in Cuba.

Breaking story this week has all sorts of juicy details including Max Marambio, former bodyguard of Salvador Allende, later good friend of Fidel Castro. Marambio managed the presidential campaign of Marco Enríquez Ominami, the Socialist who split the Concertacion and allowed Pinera to win the presidency, which supposedly angered the Cuban government.

I got the info on the scandal in Cuba (in Spanish) from a friend in Santiago and just now found an AP article.



News media in Chile reported that Roberto Baudrand, who was found dead in his Havana apartment Tuesday, appeared ``tense'' in recent days and speculated he may have committed suicide.
EL MERCURIO


http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jEroXZ0HA6IOoyvoI-s5zNiz1wYAD9F3AKS00

It is not a heart attack anymore, and little by little the secrecy is being unraveled.

The Cuban government issued a communique during the dawn hours of today that said the Chilean executive, Roberto Baudrand, had died of a combination of drug and alcohol overdoses. It does not say whether it was suicide.

The communique also confirmed for the first time rumors that the highly lucrative Max Marambo businesses in Cuba were being investigated and audited by the Cuban government.

The Chilean government wants the body to perform an atopsy in Santiago. The widow is in La Habana to reclaim the body and take it back to Chile. Baudrand was prohibited from leaving Cuba on April 8. He had been interrogated days previously for some reason by Cuban authorities.

------------------------------------------------
Snips from El Mercurio in Santiago today.


La Habana dijo que resultados de autopsia de Roberto Baudrand apuntan a una "insuficiencia respiratoria aguda":
Cuba afirma que combinación de fármacos y alcohol provocó muerte de ejecutivo chileno

Comunicado difundido esta madrugada confirma que ese gobierno investiga a la empresa Río Zaza, de Max Marambio. El documento es la primera declaración oficial emitida por las autoridades de la isla sobre ambos temas.

PHILLIP DURÁN
En los primeros minutos de esta madrugada, la Cancillería cubana emitió un comunicado en el que revelaba los resultados de la autopsia de Roberto Baudrand Valdés, ex gerente general de la empresa Río Zaza -en la que comparte propiedad el también chileno Max Marambio- y quien fue encontrado muerto el martes en su departamento en La Habana.

En el texto, se afirma que tras el peritaje hecho en el Instituto de Medicina Legal de la capital cubana "se estableció como causa directa de la muerte una insuficiencia respiratoria aguda. Dicha afección ha sido asociada con la presencia de fármacos en el contenido gástrico del fallecido, combinada con una concentración de alcohol etílico en la sangre".

Si bien el documento no explica si la muerte fue accidental o un suicidio, contravino las versiones que circularon durante la tarde, y que apuntaban a que la necropsia había establecido una dolencia cardíaca como causa del fallecimiento.

De hecho, al ser consultado por ese tema, el canciller chileno, Alfredo Moreno, había señalado que "tenemos información verbal que no coincide con la que usted me da", aunque agregó que los datos no eran "definitivos" ni "formales".

En la Cancillería dijeron ayer en la tarde que estaban dispuestos a apoyar una segunda autopsia, esta vez en Chile, pero que será una decisión que tomará la familia de Baudrand. Esto, porque en su entorno se descartó la posibilidad de un suicidio, apuntando a dolencias coronarias como la posible causa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_is_theft!



The Stalinists and their successors really would not have had much use for Proudhon, I think he would have been shot.

For a look st the results of post-socialist privatization, interested readers might choose to click on the link for the Huffington Post's photo spread on Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich's $500 million 557 foot yacht.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/16/roman-abramovichs-eclipse_n_540947.html

I admit that I'm no fan of state socialist economies, but the possibilities for similar post-socialist abuses in post-Castro Cuba do bother me.

I mean, I'm not saying it's a good thing... but, that happens everywhere. If it's the worst complaint, I'm packing my things, where do I get dropped off?

s

You see, corruption in Cuba is a very large iceberg. So we only hear about the small piece which pops above the sea level. If you talk to Cubans who live in Cuba, and manage to leave and are willing to talk, then you will understand corruption is endemic in Cuba. I know this is a big disappointment for you (or will be as you find out more and more about it), but it's the ugly reality you should be honest to face.

I believe many Americans suffer from this problem when it comes to the USA itself. For example, they are not told about the war crimes carried out by US forces in the Philippines during the colonial regime period. Nor are they told about the US defeat in the Soviet Union in WW I, when US forces invaded the Soviet Far east, and went on to be defeated by a light component of soviet soldiers and the siberian winter. Like Americans who either deny these facts, or close their eyes and never bother to learn about history, you close your eyes and/or make excuses for the failures of the Cuban regime. Which is a shame, because the reality is that those of you who cover up the truth are the most effective enemies of real change, real revolution, and real justice for all.

" that happens everywhere. If it's the worst complaint, I'm packing my things, where do I get dropped off?"

I thought you meant the corruption in Cuban "happens everywhere", and this could be the "worst complaint". If that's what you hear, or think, or suspect, then you are missing the iceberg of Cuba's systemic corruption problem. We have a similar problem evolving under our new "fatherland, socialism or death" sloganeering leadership. The corruption is bad, and it seems to get worse all the time.

I suppose you could say it's not corruption if you assume it's institutionalized, approved by the top ranking party members, there's no respect for the law by anybody, and nobody complains openly because if they do they're accused of being oligarchs or traitors to the fatherland. And of course, there will always be Sean Penn to apologize and cover for what's so patently wrong. I think Sean Penn believes we're all little brown guys who lack the ability to tell when we're being fed garbage.

I was responding to the article. I'll state it another way: If corruption in government is the worst complaint about a country that anyone can possibly conceive of, then that is a place I would like to move to. In other words, no complaints about trampling on human rights, massacring some group they don't like, exploiting the weak and the poor for material gain, foreign wars that only benefit a tiny elite, etc. None of that kind of stuff. Instead, it's just "we have a corrupt government". Yeah, give me that place.

perfectly the first time.

But corruption isn't the worst complaint. I suggest you visit the Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and United Nations websites to read their comments about the human rights situation in Cuba.

The article talks about corruption in government being the "big threat" to Cuba. Did you read it? If you hadn't, may i suggest that could be the reason why my response has been so confusing for you?

Like I said, big if. I understand perfectly well there's a tendency to try to look the other way. The American people, the majority, supported the Iraq invasion and other terrible interventions the US has carried out. People have a tendency to want to look the other way.

Corruption is the big threat to Cuba, of course, meaning it's a threat to the government - even though it's government officials who are corrupt in the biggest way. The big threat for the people is the way they are treated by the government. If they were free to complain about corruption (really), then the problem wouldn't be so bad. Even better would be if they had a chance to change the government - but that's impossible under the current constitution, which of course was put in place by...those who rule. Reminds me of Honduras.

The question is, do those like you who declare such readiness to move to Cuba, are really aware of what this implies? Or are you merely providing a convenient smoke screen for dictatorships because they happen to be "socialists"?

I commented on the article. Other people got it right away.

You're the only one with a problem, insisting on correcting what you perceive as fallacies in a single mere comment, drawing up wild conclusions about tendencies of "others" or about "people like me" or whoever it is you imagine you are referring to.

Seriously, bud... are you drinking or something?

I don't drink much. So do you want to move to Cuba after you visited the Human Rights Watch website? :-)