Columnistas invitados/Guest columnists

Another important development has taken place in the anti-corruption wave in Latin America.

This incident involved the vice president of Uruguay who resigned after months of accusations that he made personal use of the Uruguayan national oil company’s credit cards. The Vice President, Raul Sendic, was the president of the oil company called ANCAP from 2009 to 2013. It was proven that he used the company’s credit card for personal shopping to purchase jewelry, sports clothing and electronics. Likewise, he was ethically questioned by a forum of his own political coalition as he lied about his academic credentials. Sendic claimed he held a degree in genetics from a Cuban university, an argument he strongly defended but later admitted he never received.

This may sound like a joke to the average Latin American especially after the scandals involving the giant Brazilian company, Odebrecht. That scandal involved several Latin American governments, high level leaders and political parties which were implicated in a bribery scheme making the Uruguayan situation sound meaningless. Indeed, the impeachment of Brazilian former president, Dilma Rousseff, and the incarceration of the former speaker of the Brazilian House of Representatives are major acts of corruption where millions of dollars in bribes involved the highest levels of government in various countries.

Yet,the Sendic case is not a meaningless case. In fact, it is a symptom of something more important. It is not a matter of how little or big the scandal was or how much money it involved. Sendic was investigated by his own ruling coalition, the Broad Front, which found Sendic’s behavior ethically and politically unacceptable. The ethics committee of the Broad Front reprimanded him for denying wrong doing and found his behavior unbecoming as he was the one who set up the rules and regulations regarding the use of credit cards in the company he then presided over.

La Gran Purga no fue, como algunas interpretaciones pretenden, un hecho accidental y descontrolado, ni una rutinaria oleada de arrestos. Fue una política concienzudamente organizada de asesinato masivo, con la cual Stalin se perpetuó en el poder.

En La revolución traicionada, Trotski apuntó: “El viejo partido bolchevique ha muerto y ninguna fuerza será capaz de resucitarlo”. En efecto, durante la Gran Purga el estado mayor leninista fue aniquilado: de la media docena de integrantes del Politburó, solo Stalin sobrevivió. Cuatro fueron ejecutados y el propio Trotski fue asesinado en México. De los 1.966 delegados al XVII Congreso del Partido celebrado en 1934, 1.108 fueron arrestados. De ellos, casi todos fueron condenados a la pena de muerte o murieron en prisión. Stalin pudo deshacerse así de los antiguos dirigentes de la revolución de 1917, compañeros de partido a quienes no tuvo ninguna compasión en exterminar. Con eso logró promocionar a una nueva generación de fanáticos y leales a él. Aunque el número de víctimas es difícil de precisar, debido a la opacidad del régimen, se afirma que Stalin mató más comunistas que Hitler y Mussolini juntos.

Sin embargo, las ejecuciones de los antiguos dirigentes bolcheviques, pese a ser la parte más visible, solo representaban una pequeña parte de las purgas. El Gran Terror afectó a todos los segmentos de la población, y la inmensa mayoría de las víctimas eran ciudadanos comunes. La posibilidad de ser arrestado dependía esencialmente del hecho de pertenecer a una de las categorías incluidas en las “órdenes operativas” del NKVD o de los vínculos que se tuviese con quienes habían sido detenidos antes. 

A Stalin no le importaba si se asesinaba a personas inocentes y defendía que estas debían ser sacrificadas para garantizar que los enemigos reales fueran eliminados: “Cada comunista es un posible enemigo oculto. Y puesto que no es fácil reconocer al enemigo, el objetivo se logra incluso cuando solo el 5 por ciento de los ejecutados fueran enemigos reales”.

Austin, Texas.– The Civil War lessons taught to American students often depend on where the classroom is, with schools presenting accounts of the conflict that vary from state to state and even district to district.  

Some schools emphasize states’ rights in addition to slavery and stress how economic and cultural differences stoked tensions between North and South. Others highlight the battlefield acumen of Confederate commanders alongside their Union counterparts. At least one suggests that abolition represented the first time the nation lived up to its founding ideals.

The differences don’t always break down neatly along geographic lines.

“You don’t know, as you speak to folks around the country, what kind of assumptions they have about things like the Civil War,” said Dustin Kidd, a sociology professor at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Lessons on the war and its causes usually begin in the fifth through eighth grades. That means attitudes toward the war may be influenced by what people learned at an age when many were choosing a favorite color or imagining what they wanted to be when they grew up.

     The Twenty Seventh Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE) was held, as usual, in late July in Miami. But it was a bit different this year; most participants--paper presenters, discussants, and audience members--seemed to agree that significant "reforms" of the Cuban economy would not only be limited in the next few years, but because of the slow and partial implementation of those that have occurred, inequality was increasing. But even more conclusive was the general belief that not only could no major changes be expected until the dictatorial regime was changed, although as forces beyond the dictatorship's control, now unleashed, continue steadily there may be some hope in the further future for a more open and prosperous Cuba. I'm not betting on that yet.

    It is the gravity of Cuba's present economic/social situation that leads to this conclusion; the situation is so bad, so extreme, that it is difficult to believe the present regime could--let alone want to--ameliorate this mess. In spite of a boom in US visitors (both Cuban-Americans and other Americans) as well as a clear expansion of private restaurants, B&B's, and other services stemming from President Obama's 2014 opening measures, Cuba's GDP fell last year and may continue to fall this year. Export and import of goods has fallen. Liberalizing reforms in agriculture have been reversed. No action has been taken to unify the perverse dual exchange rate. Petroleum imports from Venezuela have almost been halved; Cuba had to buy some oil from Russia recently but paid cash for the purchase. Housing construction has faltered; emphasis is now placed on upgrading some of Old Havana's deteriorated buildings to please tourists. The medical system used by most Cubans is in a state of chaos; hospitals are being closed and consolidated. Equally discouraging, the quality and resources dedicated to education have greatly deteriorated.

    The external factors that Cuba confronts also lead to pessimism, at least in the short term. Venezuela's political turmoil means its highly subsidized oil deliveries to Cuba will not increase; they will likely continue to decline. President Trump's minor adjustments to the Obama actions will not lead to a continued boom of US tourists; at worst it may well lead to a decline in non-Cuban-American tourists as the 12 reasons to justify visiting the island are more carefully monitored and payment to military-owned hotels and services is restricted. Russia, now under EU and US sanctions and with a declining economy, is in no position to bail out Cuba, and China seems more interested in commercial activities than grant assistance.