Cuba’s Detractors: Lies Always Humiliate the Liars
Elio Delgado Legon
HAVANA TIMES — Over nearly 60 years of a revolutionary government in Cuba, the string of enemies against the Revolution has been constant, and because they have no convincing argument against the Revolution, they have to resort to telling lies. Thousands of mothers and fathers were deceived by lies when they sent their children alone to the United States, during Operation Peter Pan (1960-62), which is still a sad memory for many of those involved.
Lies, slander, half-truths and biased interpretations of reality, have been journalism’s keynote in the media to serve the oligarchies and the most backward ideas of contemporary thought.
News coming from Spain via the Latin American news agency Prensa Latina, give us an idea about how lies take over the above-mentioned media. I will copy a part of this information for those of you who are interested:
“Today, over fifty Cuba solidarity organizations awarded El Pais, the Spanish newspaper, the Prize for the most lying press against the Caribbean nation.
“The awarding of this unique prize was announced during the last day of the 14th National Meeting of Solidarity with Cuba in Bilbao Spain. The groups met in this city of the northern region of the Basque Country for several days.
“In a resolution adopted by its over 200 participants, the conference awarded El Pais for being the Spanish newspaper with the most accumulated merits in the art of slandering, manipulating and distorting news and information against Cuba and its Revolution.
“This is the second time El Pais has been granted this recognition by the solidarity movement with Cuba, as in 2015 this ‘honor’ was given to the ultra conservative ABC newspaper”.
“Even foreign investment groups could not compensate enough with its publishing of one embarrassing scam after another which led this newspaper to lose readers, subscribers and even advertisements.
“[They are] a daily friend of the violent Venezuelan protestors (guarimberos) and the Ladies of Blank Checks, the applause-meter of “smart” bombs and ideological ram for NATO interventions. Definitively: a friend, a really good friend of peoples’ enemies.”
I have given you this example, but there are many media outlets who use lies against the Cuban Revolution in many different ways.
I recently read an article about the inauguration of a luxury hotel for high-quality tourism in Havana, and at the end of this piece it added that the main challenge the hotel faced were the problems with the capital’s electricity network, with the quality of water and water pressure, waste disposal and communications infrastructure via the internet.
Four lies with one stone, because there isn’t a problem with any of these four things here in Havana. If there were, the Kempinski hotel chain wouldn’t have taken on running a hotel of this caliber here.
There are more than enough lies when it comes to the quality of service tourists receive, with the aim to detract value from the Cuban tourism product, which is growing year after year and has a high repetition rate, which refutes these lies and discredits them because this is one of the worst flaws a person and media outlet can have.
Que? I don’t see the connection? On the contrary, both dictatorships have failed the Cuban people.
In other words, Moses, the Batista-Mafia dictatorship from 1952 till 1959 was a HUGE SUCCESS…especially for the Mafia-types.
Even inside $435 per night hotel rooms, there are frequent reminders that the Castro revolution has failed. That’s my point.
Rich Haney, Like you I don’t have enough wedge to stay in such accommodation.
Probably wouldn’t choose to stay there even if I had. I stay with my people when I’m over in Cuba. Where I stay I may very well be affected by such problems. But hey ho.
There is, as you suggest, a bias that frequents these comments pages.
There is also a historical bias which we all know about.
I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that Cuba is some paradise on earth.
That would be a bias in the other direction.
I’m all in favour of people ignoring all bias and taking a trip there to see for themselves and make their own minds up.
You state that even in luxury hotels these problems still exist.
I’m saying that I don’t think they do.
Like anywhere else in the world, when tourists have a look around they will see what there is to see and all sorts of things may come to pass.
In Havana a tourist might trip up over some garbage in the street?
A tourist might conceivably may be somewhere where there is a power cut?
A tourist might be invited round someone’s house to take a shower and the water pump cuts out?
Likewise the tourist may have one too many Bucaneros whilst sitting on the wall of The Malecon, fall into the sea and drown.
All manner of things may interrupt the day of the intrepid tourist.
All such occurrences would be ‘resoundingly’ unconnected to the fact that the tourist is staying in perfectly good standard of luxury hotel.
So I don’t really get you’re point, unless your point is simply to go round and round until this article slips off the HT front page?
So you concede the answer to your previous question? You asked “Do these problems really directly affect the guests in Havana’s Luxury Hotels?” The answer is resoundingly yes.
I am a huge fan of the jazz produced in Cuba. As often as possible, I try to smoke a Cuban cigar. But more than all of that, I feel very positive about Cuban women. I married one.
Mr P, I would most certainly hope that no-one spends a whole week in a hotel. How dull. Even if the sheets have the highest threadcount of all sheets on this good earth.
Tourists can wander around Havana. They don’t have to stay in a cordoned off enclave for their own safety as in other parts of the region.
Whist having their wander they will no doubt see Havana for what it is.
Imperfect? Yep.
With it’s problems.? Yep.
Unique? 100%.
But I imagine foreign-owned or managed luxury hotels in Cuba — including the two Starwood U.S.-managed hotels — are in Cuba to make money, not to prop-up the Revolution. Unless the Starwood executives tell us there is no running water and no toilet seats in their two luxury hotels in Cuba, I tend to believe someone who is not totally biased against Cuba, which probably means there is running water and toilet seats in those hotels — which, by the way, I couldn’t afford when I was in Cuba.
In all your adult years, Moses, have you ever agreed with any positive comment about Cuba or ever disagreed with any comment that demeans Cuba? I believe, if you expect anyone to take your easily anticipated rants seriously, you should perhaps answer those two questions.
Mr. Ritchie, by the wildest of chances, could powerful military attacks, omnipotent terrorist attacks, the longest and cruelest embargo ever lodged against a small nation by a powerful nation, etc., etc. — all highlights of a 6-decades-old effort to recapture the island — have anything to do with the multiple problems that you mention?
My credibility has nothing to do with it. But let’s just say that I’m making all of this up and the handful of luxury hotels in Havana are as perfect as they look in the brochures. That’s to say, fresh high-threadcount sheets every day, high speed Internet and fresh fruit and fresh fish on demand. Are you with me? So, does that mean that you spend the entire week inside the hotel?
Even in the luxury hotels, these problems exists.
You are entitled to your own opinion buy not your own facts. My comments reflect the Cuban reality of today.
You do not live in Cuba under the name of Carlyle MacDuff, that’s for sure. You make me laugh.
Tell that balderdash to my family, friends, neighbours and our pet dog. They will enjoy laughing at you CErmle!
You do NOT “live” in Cuba, my friend, obviously. Today is June 28, 2017.
Nice try. Perhaps you need to get your glasses checked, and while you’re at it maybe your hearing, too. You comments are simply not accurate. They are tainted.
I think Elio’s articles are consistently wonderful.
If only for the fact that they are always guaranteed to ruffle the feathers of some of those readers who are the more over-zealous critics of the state of affairs in Cuba.
Lets get a bit of perspective here shall we?
The ‘Four Lies with one stone’ comment seems to attract particular comment.
ELECTRICITY: Power Outages can still be a problem in Havana (but nothing like as much of a problem as they were in the so called ‘Special Period’ of the 90s).
WATER & WATER PRESSURE: Can be a problem. In my many experiences of this, it is always a localised problem caused by breakdown of the motor driving the pump that provides water to a block or group of houses. Had a go at helping to fix these motors a couple of times. The difficulty is lack of spares and years of ‘makeshift’ repair jobs.
WASTE DISPOSAL: There is obviously a problem with waste collection and build up of waste on certain corners throughout much of the city. There was a very good Havana Times article which perfectly described this problem a couple of months ago.
INTERNET: There is clearly a problem with so few people being hooked up to the net and a problem with slow speed.
Now if Elio is saying that none of the above are problems in Havana, then he’s in a dream-world.
I have never stayed in a Luxury Hotel in Havana or anywhere else in Cuba, but I haven’t really heard of such hotels being subject to these issues. I’m pretty sure that this would not be typical.
So if Elio is saying that these are not problems that will directly affect guests in Havana’s Luxury Hotels, then he is probably actually quite correct.
.
I was there for the New Year holiday. Eliot lives in Propagandalandia.
I too live in Cuba, which you self evidently do not CErmle. Read carefully the contribution of Michael Ritchie who writes consistently in support of the Castro regime.
To his credit he records accurately the fallacy of Elio Delgado Legon’s piece writing that: “Havana’s infrastructure is just beyond the pale.”
The difference CErmle between Michael Ritchie and yourself, is that he has clearly witnessed the reality in Havana – which has better services than many other cities in Cuba – whilst you have been reclining in the comfort of the capitalist world enjoying water running from the taps, light from the electricity supply, garbage collected regularly (to which you should add your writings) and delivery of goods to all your local stores.
Elio in his support of the Castro regime has over-stretched his imagination!
You haven’t been in Cuba for a long long time, have you brother? You are out of date. Elio knows exactly what he is talking about. He lives there.
Both, Mr. Ritchie & Mr.Patterson are correct. I am a Pedro Pan, my father as a bank executive went to jail for close to five years, my parents lost every single possession they had (notice that I did not say “we”), etc. and in the end I have helped them overcome some of the embargo problems legally when “Cuba was not fashionable” as it is now with so many “experts” in Washington and other areas of the country making money off possible dealing with the Island. Point? Revolutions end and republics begin which has not been the case in Cuba and so changes do not become reality as the government continues to be afraid of
changes” like those of Vietnam & China. If the government has the support of its people why not make the changes? Why continue to lose generation after generation with empty promises and seeking more sacrifices? The government there needs to come to the reality of their situation, or at least the situation of its citizens as I do not think that those in “power” suffer the same problems that the average Cuban suffers daily. the government needs to learn that those ideas of Che Guevara are not applicable in the new world, people are consumers and will always be. Quit the slogans. Quit the parades. Quit the centralization of every agency to dictate what and how to conduct business. There are two EMBARGOS, I personally called them blockades. One is external, apathetic policy of the United States, and the other internal, the Cuban government. I hope to see Cuba come to terms with the need to adopt those models of socialist nations that have already made their changes.
Since I began reading Havana Times I have admired Mr. Delgado Legon for his staunch, unbending defense of the Cuban Revolution. And as a student of that great uprising and subsequent victory for more than two decades, you won’t find one more in agreement with much of what he has to say.
But to deny the omnipresent problems with Havana’s infrastructure is just beyond the pale. Water pressure is non-existent, even at the shiny new Gran Manzana hotel, built by foreigners for foreigners. Electric power goes out almost daily, often for hours on end. The only reliable internet connections are at the luxury hotels, and there it’s beyond the average Cuban’s salary. There is no distribution system for the delivery of goods. Hell, as I constantly lament, there aren’t even toilet seats.
Yes, the Revolution was glorious and its memory remains so. But the Revolution lost its luster somewhere along the way, leaving the Cuban people in a most miserable state.
Elio has more in common with Donald Trump than he will likely admit. In the same way that the Trump ‘dog whistle’ Fake News simply means the news he doesn’t like, Elio calls the news he doesn’t like “lies”. For example, Elio writes “Four lies with one stone, because there isn’t a problem with any of these four things here in Havana.” [the capital’s electricity network, with the quality of water and water pressure, waste disposal and communications infrastructure via the internet.] Is he serious? So blackouts, no water service lasting days at a time, human filth piled up on street corners and vacant lots and Internet speeds from the last century aren’t a problem?