1787. Interview: Cuba Today and Cuba Tomorrow

By International Affairs Forum, March 27, 2015

1786. Bats Learn Sounds Like Humans Do

By Virginian Morell, Science Magazine, March 27, 2015

Children and parrot and songbird chicks share a rare talent: They can mimic the sounds that adults of their species make. Now, researchers have discovered this vocal learning skill in baby Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus, pictured), a highly social species found from Africa to Pakistan. Only a handful of other mammals, including cetaceans and certain insectivorous bats, are vocal learners. The adult fruit bats have a rich vocal repertoire of mouselike squeaks and chatter (listen to a recording here), and the scientists suspected the bat pups had to learn these sounds. To find out, they placed baby bats with their mothers in isolation chambers for 5 months and made video and audio recordings of each pair. Lacking any other adults to vocalize to, the mothers were silent, and their babies made only isolation calls and babbling sounds, the researchers report today in Science Advances. As a control, the team raised another group of bat pups with their mothers and fathers, who chattered to each other. Soon, the control pups’ babbling gave way to specific sounds that matched those of their mothers. But the isolated pups quickly overcame the vocal gap after the scientists united both sets of bats—suggesting that unlike many songbird species (and more like humans), the fruit bats don’t have a limited period for vocal learning. Although the bats’ vocal learning is simple compared with that of humans, it could provide a useful model for understanding the evolution of language, the scientists say.

1785. Cuba's Sustainable Agricultural Revolution

By Schumacher Center for Economics, No Date At the end of October 2014, thirteen delegates from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics traveled to Cuba to study its progress in developing sustainable food systems. We visited family farms in the Pinar del Rio Province, a large cooperative farm in the Alamar district on the outskirts of Havana, and the gardens of an ecological village in the Sierra del Rosario mountains, receiving a warm welcome everywhere we went. We met with agricultural agencies and their research counterparts. We even received an unexpected request for a meeting with the Foreign Ministry. We ate well; listened to exceptional music in the troubadour tradition; danced late into the night; and were amazed by the range and sophistication of Cuban contemporary art. We fell in love with the landscape of the countryside and the architecture of Havana. All of which gave us a chance to witness an economy and culture in transition. Greg Watson, then the Massachusetts Commissioner of Agriculture and now Director of Policy and Systems Design for the Schumacher Center, was part of the delegation.  Below are excerpts from his report on lessons learned from the trip and his suggestions for the Schumacher Center's continued exchange with the people of Cuba:

I was impressed with what I saw of the Cuban agricultural system: beautiful, healthy fruits and vegetables being grown on urban, suburban, and rural farms without petroleum inputs.  The fact that Cuba’s decades-long validation of farming without petroleum inputs was not initially driven by environmental concerns in no way diminishes its role as a world leader in ecological or organic and urban agriculture.  What that country has been able to achieve transcends politics and ideology. Much of this can be attributed to the adoption of decentralized agrarian policies that encouraged individual and cooperative forms of production beginning in the 1990s. Overly bureaucratic state-run farms were replaced with thousands of new small urban and suburban organoponicos, parcelas, and patio gardens, and millions of acres of unused state lands were made available to workers for small-scale farming. Equally impressive and more surprising were the candid conversations regarding the changes taking place in the country. People spoke openly of the economic failures of socialism while also reminding us of the ethical shortcomings of capitalism. Cuban intellectuals, government officials, and activists are searching for a new economic model somewhere between these two poles, which is certainly an over-simplification of an incredibly complex challenge. The agricultural cooperatives may offer a glimpse of such a model.   Forty-five days after we concluded our visit to Cuba, the media was abuzz with the news that the United States and Cuba had agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations.  This new relationship will unfold while Cuba is in the process of reinventing its economic system. Our original goal was to share experiences in our respective efforts to develop sustainable food systems.  The prospect that the economic embargo on Cuba might be lifted, though a bold and positive step in many ways, could place the country under pressure to revert to an industrial agriculture to meet new export markets.  What role might we play in supporting achievements already in place? Cuban farmers, researchers, and government officials have over the years developed what is arguably the most comprehensive, time-tested system of agroecology in the world. They have also refined the Farmer-to-Farmer method of communicating information. Troves of technical reports have been amassed. U.S. farmers in search of tools that can help enhance their efforts to build economically viable sustainable farm businesses could benefit from the Cuban experience. In exchange, U.S. farmers could share tips on marketing and distribution that could be helpful to Cuban farmers and cooperatives.    Sharing the lease agreements of the community land trust, as one tool in a new economics tool kit, could provide a method of achieving more ownership opportunities in buildings and crop production for Cuba's farmers without taking the land itself out of the commons.  Cooperatives are key to the survival of the Cuba’s agroecology system within a new economic environment that will unfold rapidly. The cooperative models have demonstrated that Cuba can integrate some aspects of private enterprise into their society without compromising fundamental social values – in essence an ethical economics based on the premise that people and the environment matter more than profit.

The full text of Greg Watson's report can be read here.  He will continue to connect the sustainable agriculture community in the U.S. with its counterparts in Cuba to share experiences and strengthen each other's work.  Our thanks to the Christopher Reynolds Foundation for its decades of work in Cuba that established the groundwork for this project.  Best wishes, Staff of the Schumacher Center for a New Economics

1784. How Beer Gave Us Civilization

By Jeffrey P. Kahn, The New York Times, March 15, 2015

Credit: Andres Nilsen, The New York Times

HUMAN beings are social animals. But just as important, we are socially constrained as well.

We can probably thank the latter trait for keeping our fledgling species alive at the dawn of man. Five core social instincts, I have argued, gave structure and strength to our primeval herds. They kept us safely codependent with our fellow clan members, assigned us a rank in the pecking order, made sure we all did our chores, discouraged us from offending others, and removed us from this social coil when we became a drag on shared resources.

Thus could our ancient forebears cooperate, prosper, multiply — and pass along their DNA to later generations.

But then, these same lifesaving social instincts didn’t readily lend themselves to exploration, artistic expression, romance, inventiveness and experimentation — the other human drives that make for a vibrant civilization.

To free up those, we needed something that would suppress the rigid social codes that kept our clans safe and alive. We needed something that, on occasion, would let us break free from our biological herd imperative — or at least let us suppress our angst when we did.

We needed beer.

Luckily, from time to time, our ancestors, like other animals, would run across fermented fruit or grain and sample it. How this accidental discovery evolved into the first keg party, of course, is still unknown. But evolve it did, perhaps as early as 10,000 years ago.

Current theory has it that grain was first domesticated for food. But since the 1950s, many scholars have found circumstantial evidence that supports the idea that some early humans grew and stored grain for beer, even before they cultivated it for bread.

Brian Hayden and colleagues at Simon Fraser University in Canada provide new support for this theory in an article published this month (and online last year) in the Journal of Archeological Method and Theory. Examining potential beer-brewing tools in archaeological remains from the Natufian culture in the Eastern Mediterranean, the team concludes that “brewing of beer was an important aspect of feasting and society in the Late Epipaleolithic” era.

Anthropological studies in Mexico suggest a similar conclusion: there, the ancestral grass of modern maize, teosinte, was well suited for making beer — but was much less so for making corn flour for bread or tortillas. It took generations for Mexican farmers to domesticate this grass into maize, which then became a staple of the local diet.

Once the effects of these early brews were discovered, the value of beer (as well as wine and other fermented potions) must have become immediately apparent. With the help of the new psychopharmacological brew, humans could quell the angst of defying those herd instincts. Conversations around the campfire, no doubt, took on a new dimension: the painfully shy, their angst suddenly quelled, could now speak their minds.

But the alcohol would have had more far-ranging effects, too, reducing the strong herd instincts to maintain a rigid social structure. In time, humans became more expansive in their thinking, as well as more collaborative and creative. A night of modest tippling may have ushered in these feelings of freedom — though, the morning after, instincts to conform and submit would have kicked back in to restore the social order.

Some evidence suggests that these early brews (or wines) were also considered aids in deliberation. In long ago Germany and Persia, collective decisions of state were made after a few warm ones, then double-checked when sober. Elsewhere, they did it the other way around.

Beer was thought to be so important in many bygone civilizations that the Code of Urukagina, often cited as the first legal code, even prescribed it as a central unit of payment and penance.

Part of beer’s virtue in ancient times was that its alcohol content would have been sharply limited. As far as the research has shown, distillation of alcohol to higher concentrations began only about 2,000 years ago.

Today, many people drink too much because they have more than average social anxiety or panic anxiety to quell — disorders that may result, in fact, from those primeval herd instincts kicking into overdrive. But getting drunk, unfortunately, only compounds the problem: it can lead to decivilizing behaviors and encounters, and harm the body over time. For those with anxiety and depressive disorders, indeed, there are much safer and more effective drugs than alcohol — and together with psychotherapy, these newfangled improvements on beer can ease the angst.

But beer’s place in the development of civilization deserves at least a raising of the glass. As the ever rational Ben Franklin supposedly said, “Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

Several thousand years before Franklin, I’m guessing, some Neolithic fellow probably made the same toast.

Jeffrey P. Kahn, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, is the author of “Angst: Origins of Anxiety and Depression.”

1783. Addressing Racial Discrimination in Cuba

By Pedro Campos, Havana Times, March 23, 2015

Victor Fowler speaking at the Havana forum

Another gathering sponsored by the Cuban journal Espacio Laical (“Secular Space”) was recently held at the habitual venue in Havana’s Felix Varela Cultural Center, formerly the San Carlos Seminary.

On this occasion, participants addressed the racial question in Cuba. The panel was made up by academics and experts Rodrigo Espina, Mayra Espina, Victor Fowler, Tato Quiñones and Antonio Martinez (from the Aponte Commission).

The speakers described the current state of the problem and delved into the ways it expresses itself and possible solutions. They also referred to a number of initiatives that are currently underway, aiming to advance local and State solutions.

No one who attended the gathering could have left with any doubts on this matter: racial discrimination continues to exist in Cuba. The country has not been able to overcome the problem. In fact, it seems to have become worse as a result of the social differences accentuated by the Special Period and the recent reform measures: black people continue to be among the poorest sectors of society.

The issue has not reached public awareness or received the attention from the press and government that it deserves. There is also no concerted official effort addressing the problem, even though there is an official commission (the Aponte Commission) that has convened and presented Vice President Diaz-Canel with their work on the matter.

Espacio Laical will publish the lectures offered by the panelists and the comments made by the public.

In this post, I will touch on the basic premises behind the brief and improvised comments I made as a member of the audience, with more or less these words:

After congratulating the journal for reopening this space for debate, I mentioned that, if Mayra, Victor and Tato were parliamentary representatives, these problems and proposals would surely be debated at parliament and solutions would likely be found within that context.

If the writings of Mayra, Victor and Tato were published by the official press, the issues addressed would be broadly known and debated on by the population.

If the lectures offered by Mayra, Victor and Tato at the venu were quoted by the news or addressed in a television program, people would have no doubt that they are current and relevant issues and people would offer their comments and push for solutions.

For this to happen, however, many changes to our current conception of government, State and country would have to take place.

To begin with, we would have to have freedom of expression and association, and to elect our government representatives, and this would require a change in the current political system, Constitution and electoral law. We would especially need to change Article 5 of the constitution, which establishes that the Cuban Communist Party is the guiding entity of Cuban society, something which has served to justify Party control over elections, grassroots organizations, People’s Power organizations, the printed press, radio, television, companies, industry, tourism, agriculture and the whole of the economy in general.

We would also need to change the economic conception which continues to view the State as the main owner of the means of production, and the centralized and monopolistic control over markets, part of a model that discriminates against and stands in the way of the economic empowerment of citizens, which, needless to say, includes black people.

These are the basic changes to our current, centralized political and economic system that could create the conditions needed to overcome the serious problems of racial discrimination that we still face.

I stated that I believe that, if we do not empower citizens politically and economically, we will not overcome the racial discrimination problems we have – nor will we solve the issue of poverty that also affects whites, women, people from Cuba’s eastern (and less privileged) regions or elderly pensioners, who are forced to sell cigarettes at street corners to survive.

We won’t be able to empower citizens if we do not democratize the country’s politics and socialize its economy, such that everyone can participate in and make decisions about political and economic issues at different levels of government, particularly if working people continue to be denied the right to own, administer and manage the incomes generated by businesses, be these small, medium-sized or large.

It’s not that the racial problem doesn’t have its own, particular characteristics and shouldn’t be treated in a special and delicate manner (owing to its impact on human life) or shouldn’t be addressed through race-specific policies, quite the contrary.

The point is that, in order to truly arrive at such policies and come up with a comprehensive solution, we would have to change the whole of the statist philosophy we currently have, which, to date, in the course of more than fifty years, has limited itself to eliminating the phenomenon of racism by decree, appointing a handful of black and mixed-race people to high government positions, and, more recently, tasking a commission with studying the matter and advancing proposals – proposals that will later be applied by those who have never understood the problem to begin with.

We will begin to solve the problem when the most important thing and the goal of all policies are human beings and not the State, as is the case in this distorted philosophy which has made us understand socialism as a form of State monopoly capitalism.

If this group of government officials had been appointed not on the basis of their skin color (allegedly to represent the interests of black people) but because they understand these issues, because they feel part of the problem and wish to represent those who suffer and those who have assessed the causes behind it and sincerely thought of solutions to it, then everything would be quite different.

In view of this, I believe that all who are interested in this issue ought to think about a solution to this general, political problem that colors all other specific problems faced by society, be them social, economic or cultural.

I didn’t mention this during the debate, but I wish to remind the “Leninists” in government that the Bolshevik leader once wisely said that, in order to solve specific problems, the general problems first needed to be solved.

We still have to solve the general, basic problems that affect Cuban society: the democratization of politics and socialization of the economy, such that everyone, without any kind of discrimination, can realize themselves fully and develop their individual faculties to the fullest.

Postscript:

On March 20, when I was finally able to send off this article, Cuba’s Round Table program “coincidentally” addressed the issue, in the presence of the leaders of the Aponto Commission, a journalist from Juventud Rebelde and the academic Rodrigo Espina. The panelists spoke about the activities and proposals for government made by the Aponto Commission, which “does not even have an email address.” In the course of the debate, the panelists made it clear that racial discrimination continues to exist in our country, though the debate did not delve into any of the deep economic, social or political causes of the problem. It is no accident that neither Mayra, nor Tato nor Victor Fowler were invited to participate in the debate.

1782. Venezuela Creates a Ministry of Ecosocialism and Water

By TeleSur, March 25, 2015

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced the creation of the new Ministry of Eco-socialism and Water during his weekly television program, March 24, 2015, Photo: AVN

On Tuesday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced the creation of the Ministry of Eco-socialism and Water, which will be tasked with protecting the environment in the context of the construction of 21st century socialism. 

President Maduro said the creation of the new ministry was in direct response to demands, made by environmental social movements, to take more dramatic action in the face of climate change. 

According to the Venezuelan head of state, the ministry will also be in charge of strengthening “the ecology of socialism of the 21st century.” The new body will supervise the implementation of the National Water Plan, designed to ensure public access to water, as well as the Tree Mission, which involves the community in reforestation efforts. 

President Maduro made the announcement during his weekly television program where he was joined by Guillermo Barreto, who will head up the new ministry. Barreto previously served as vice-minister for environmental eco-socialism. 

Despite being one of the world's largest produces of oil, Venezuela has made significant efforts to address climate change. In November, Venezuela hosted the summit of environmental activists in anticipation of the United Nations COP20 climate change conference, where delegates to the summit met directly with government ministers. 

Venezuela's five-year national development plan — known as the “Plan for the Homeland” — calls for the “preservation of life on the planet and the salvation of the human race.”

1781. Film Review: Omara: Cuba

By Dariela Aquique, Havana Times, March 24, 2015 

Omara: Cuba, a documentary written and directed by Cuban filmmaker Lester Hamlet, premiered on Cuban television some days ago. The film documents the 70-year artistic career of the “queen of feeling” or Buena Vista Social Club Diva, as the renowned singer Omara Portuondo is known.

Filmmaker Fernando Perez had already made a bio-pic of this talented performer in 1983. Today, Hamlet documents an additional 32 years of work by the 80-plus soloist who continues to perform.

With excellent editing, the documentary recreates different periods with peculiar caricatures that illustrate the situations described by the musician and the comments made by those interviewed, which include Eusebio Leal, Jose Maria Vitier, Pablo Milanes, Chucho Valdes, Tete Caturla, Alberto Alonso and Amaury Perez, to mention only a few.

The daughter of a black baseball player and a white woman shunned by her family, Portuondo claims to have had a happy childhood next to her parents and siblings in a Havana neighborhood. As a child, she already felt possessed by music and couldn’t help but stop and listen to a rumba when she went out to get groceries.

Little did she know that she was destined to become one of the most popular of Cuban singers and a kind of cultural icon of the nation.

At age 17, she started out as a singer for the band Loquibambia, next to pianist Frank Emilio and guitarist Antonio Mendez. In 1950, she joined the dance ensemble at Havana’s Tropicana cabaret and became a member of Las mulatas de fuego, directed by choreographer Alberto Alonso.

She would dance at many theaters before joining Orlando de la Rosa’s quartet, with which she traveled to the United States and Canada.

Omara was part of the all-female orchestra Anacaona and travelled to Haiti as a member of this band. One of the most important periods of her career was doubtless from 1953 to 1967, as a founding member of the vocal quartet Las D’Aida. Directed by Aida Diestro, the quartet was made up by Elena Burke, Moraima Secada and her sister Haydee Portuondo. The best cabarets in Havana saw their most prodigious nights thanks to their unparalleled voices. So did many stages in Venezuela, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the United States.

At the close of the 60s, she was approached by the Cuban record label Areito, an opportunity she took advantage of to launch her career as an international soloist. She took part in the Cannes Film Festival (France), the Gold Orpheus Festival (Bulgaria), Gold Lira Festival (Bratislava) and Aguas Dulces Festival (Peru), taking the stage in Czechoslovakia, Dresden and Schelager (Germany). She was followed by the journals L’Humanite and L’Unita in France and Italy, respectively.

She was always working in different projects at once. She recorded an album with Julio Gutierrez’ orchestra and Chilean singer Lucho Gatica. She went on a tour with the Cuban percussion band Los Papines. More recently, she has sung next to Brazilian singer Maria Betania and young Cuban musicians Polito Ibañez and David Blanco. She also took part in the “Vida” ballet show directed by Liz Alfonso.

In 1996, she joined the Buena Vista Social Club and was nominated for a Latin Grammy in 2001. She finally received a Grammy in 2009 in the category of Best Contemporary Tropical Album for the album Gracias, a collection of solo pieces with traditional melodies, boleros and jazz.

Omara has also had her stints in cinema. She acted in the Cuban films Cecilia (1982) and Baragua (1986), and in Disney’s 49^th film, The Princess and the Frog, directed by John Musker and Ron Clements. Omara did the voice of Mama Odie for the film’s Spanish version. She lent her voice to another animated project in 2011, when she sang in both Spanish and Portuguese for a Cuba-Brazil coproduction, El camino de las gaviotas (“The Path of Seagulls”).

No one has performed better covers of Alberto Vera’s Lo que me queda por vivir (“The Life Ahead of Me”), Silvio Rodriguez’ La era está pariendo un corazón (“The Spirit of the Times is Born”) or Amaury Perez’ Vuela pena (“Fly Away Grief”) than Omara. Her voice has traveled around the world, making her one of the unquestionable greats of the Cuban pantheon.

I believe Lester Hamlet’s homage to be fair and timely and, though I do not enjoy pointing out what I would have liked to see in an artistic product that isn’t mine, I believe the documentary tries to squeeze in too much in too little time.

I feel it needs interviews with people who live abroad, such as Haydee Portuondo. I also reproach the documentary for trying to “Cubanize” Omara, showing us a woman who does not strike any diva poses, doing house chores and walking around the city. It’s not that I doubt the humbleness of the singer, but, as it happens, one of my cousins is her housekeeper.

At any rate, it is a good documentary and I am glad I saw it.