Not comfortable viewing, but gripping throughout with a fine use of visual techniques especially when transmitting the feeling of chaos. It started by portraying the crazy jazz age high life in the luxurious clubs of Havana where wealthy American males went to have fun, but left the upbeat side behind by showing the degradation of the poverty of the ordinary Cuban and the consequential slide of the attractive bar girls into prostitution. Showing graphically how a hard working small scale tenant farmer lost every thing, his living and his home, and was driven to suicide, when the land owners sold out to a giant United Fruit Company. How students supported the peasants in this revolution and how a student leader and an ordinary peace loving farmer were gradually drawn into the armed struggle as a reaction to the atrocities of those in power.
A film with a visual and moral impact that I will never forget.
Emrys Roberts from Cymru Cuba (joint organisers with ALAS) gave a notable introductory speech which reminded me of the widespread support for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War in his undimmed enthusiasm for socialism and Cuba in particular. He drew a strong link between the Welsh political champions of socialism and that displayed against all odds in Cuba, and contrasted Cuba's success in providing good health care and universal schooling in a country which had not previously enjoyed these essential rights against a background of the failure of both communism and now capitalism.
I look forward to this afternoon's discussion and a film to show how Cuba survived the oil shortage and of necessity developed a sustainable organic agriculture and way of life. No doubt I will return to this theme before completing this posting.
EMAIL ADDRESSES
I failed to assign the correct email address to just 10 members who included their email addresses with their membership applications. There could be various reasons such as a subsequent change in email address or even insufficient legibility or precision (computers are totally unforgiving in this respect! The following people will not receive this blog but if any of you know them perhaps you would arrange for them to sent me the briefest of emails thus confirm their actual address on
becorbett@ntlworld.com
Marie Cairns
Gill Paramore
Gyneth Gittoer
Ken Dorman
Ron Strawford
Sharon Giltinan
Yvonne Greenleaf
It would be helpful if the correct address was sent to complete the Swansea U3A contact records in a way of increasing importance in the immediate future. The U3A have held this information but I doubt it has ever previously been verified by actual use. So far just 4 members (out of over 250) have asked to be deleted from my blog reader list, which I am obligated and happy to do. Thankfully that number is minuscule in comparison with the thanks and expressions of interest which I receive daily.
MOTO
A group of which is progressing very well with many enthusiastic members and many new ideas. Janet Eileen Jones and Pam Williams decided to go on a short cruise and are attracting a fair bit of interest as they encourage others to join them. Janet, janeteileenjones@hotmail.com , sent me the following details.
Mini Baltic cruise from Stockholm to St Petersberg from £695 for two sharing inside state room (cabin) or £995 for single occupancy. Six nights in total.
Fly Heathrow to Stockholm and spend 2 nights there
Then Royal Caribbean Shipping Line ship 'Vision of the Seas'
Choice of 4 start dates, 6 and 22 June, and, 4 and 16 July 2009
Janet and 3 others have booked for 6 June, they will travel to Heathrow by National Express and stay overnight as flight leaves at 11am 6 June. Others, singles or couples, would be welcome, but should make their own bookings etc. You need to find a partner to share a cabin in order to qualify for the £695 each rate.
For further information phone and booking phone Travelsphere on 0800 112 3329 quoting the reference numbers for this special holiday CE1X/ORSS/09 and orvsp.
SUMMARY OF THIS WEEK'S NEW GROUP ACTIVITIES
MONDAY 2 March
CHESS GROUP and ITALIAN GROUP sharing the Craft room from 10am.
CONCERT GOERS on Dvorak symphony 8 in Civic Centre at 2pm
CLIMATE CHANGE meet at 10am in The Waterfront Museum on the topic 'Our Environment'. Note the new Venue, Date and Time for this group.
TUESDAY
LITERATURE GROUP at St Mary's vestry 2pm
WEDNESDAY
JIVE GROUP in Monkey Cafe at 10.30
St DAVID'S DAY LUNCH at Pennard Golf Club (ticket only)
THURSDAY
FRENCH GROUP at Hazel Court 10am. Photograph 'Rupert, Son Jouet Favori' the topic of the week.
FRIDAY
TAI CHI in Hazel Court 10.30am, numbers are still growing leading to thought of a second group.
GARDENING GROUP
Joan tells me there was a particularly big attendance of around 45 for the lecture last Thursday on 'How does Your Garden Grow' in which the lecturer dealt with important matters like the choice and use of fertilisers and soil quality. She considers I would have been very interested, and I am sure she is right for I would like nothing better than to turn my vegetable garden into a real success - which it is not yet. But Thursday afternoon is when I do my taxing homework and think about a topic for free conversation ready for my early evening Spanish class at Tycoch - something has to give and I sometimes fear it will be me.
BOOK GROUP 4 will share the Craft Room with ITALIAN on Monday 9 March.
POLITICS and CITIZENSHIP
Meet at 2pm a week Tuesday, on 10 March in the West Cross Community Centre with the subject of 'What should be the qualifications for British citizenship?' with Delyth Rees to lead the discussion.
CREATIVE WRITING 2
Also meet a week Tuesday, 10 March, in Hazel Court Craft Room at 10.15am
CARDS FOR PLEASURE at 11am in Taliesin bar/restaurant
St HELEN'S BRIDGE
Keith Roberts belongs to a group petitioning Swansea Council to oppose the cancelling the Right of Way across this bridge. They see it as the first step to demolishing the stone pillars. They want a new span installed of modern design, maybe the third sail bridge in Swansea. His contact details are
keith.roberts3@sky.com
CUBA AGAIN, Saturday in the Dylan Thomas Centre
I was rather confused by the program and not at all certain of the point of the afternoon session, which was a great shame for I think it would have been of interest to many members of the U3A discussion groups, particularly Climate Change, Politics and Civilisation, and maybe Roly Govier's Discussion group. It all goes to show the importance of organisations explaining their activities properly. In the event it was left to the Italian Group to represent the U3A for Mervyn was also there, and I know tutor Carolina was very disappointed at not to be able to attend Sunday's poetry reading in English and Spanish.
I had not realised that the huge challenge the Cuban nation faced included surviving many years with a minute oil supply. I was aware of the trade embargo lead by the USA and friends from 1962 which would in itself have lead to major supply problems, but I had not realised that in consequence of that embargo they depended on Russia for 80% of their trade, and particularly for supply of oil and oil/gas based products. When Russia collapsed economically in the late 1980's and early 1990's Cuba was left in crisis, with frequent electricity outages of twelve hours or so a day, lack of reliable water supplies, without the fertilisers and insecticides on which they were then dependent. They were suddenly unable to feed their population adequately. It was said the average citizen lost 20lbs of body weight during this period, and one speaker related that even in a good tourist hotel in 1992 they could provide only a starvation diet. Several speakers emphasised the magnitude of the Cuban achievement, as the only left wing government to survive in Latin American in the face US and CIA pressure.
Part of the solution was to turn much of the waste ground in urban areas like Havana into intensively and organically farmed allotments of green (above ground) vegetables. The state provided the seed and helped with the production of compost and small plot farmers, due to the warm climate, could grow four or five crops a year. They had to sell 80% at a fixed price to the state for schools and hospitals etc, but were allowed to sell the rest in their own shops, thus providing an entrepreneurial incentive to the plot holders.
The government provided households with free pressure cookers and imported tens of thousands of bicycles from China to help reduce the oil demand for cooking and transport. Small scale power generation was encouraged from wind, solar panels and biomass. Slowly they adapted to a life with very low oil consumption.
What they did have was a population with the second highest rate of literacy in the world, with one of the lowest rates of infant mortality, a large well educated population with such an oversupply of doctors so that they were able to send twenty thousand doctors to help Chavez with his reforms in Venezuela in return for a regular supply of oil. They are said to have the finest Health Service in the world, with near zero waiting times.
Part too of their success, I surmise, came from encouraging tourism and setting up a two tier currency, thus attracting foreign currency for trade on international markets. That has now bred real problems in that a taxi driver earns more in the tourist trade than a Consultant earns in the Health Service. Equally a motor mechanic earns more by cultivating a plot as an entrepreneur than from pursuing his own trade.
But years of external pressure and adversity have left a population with strong sense of national service, of unity and pulling together across the population, to add to the Caribbean way of doing everything with a smile, enjoying life' s diversions of rum, rhythm, music (Son) and salsa. Perhaps we should make it the U3A way!!
The afternoon's discussion was well chaired by Kate Bennett and led informatively and passionately in turn by, Plaid MP and socialist Adam Price, Dr Fransisco Dominguez a London University economist with an impressive grasp of Latin American politics and economics, Steve Garret who has studied the urban growing in Cuba, and finally by a documentary film 'How Cuba Survived Peak Oil' introduced and discussed by Wendy Emmett from the Cuban Organic Support Group. Peak Oil being the point of maximum possible production after which world oil supply inevitably diminishes, something we shall all have to come to terms with - perhaps sooner than we realise. For decades I have had the feeling that we were the lucky western generation, the one that lived through the peak of prosperity in Britain.
Sunday confirmed the confusion spread by the enigmatic program and Joan thought she was going to see on the Condor, a bird about which she raves, but in fact it was a two hour documentary on Operation Condor, the co-operation of South American military dictatorships in the 70's, backed by the USA, to eliminate by mass torture and assassination the promoters of socialist ideals, and the overthrowing of popularly elected governments like that of Salvador Allende in Chile when General Pinochet seized power. For me it also emphasised for how long our governments, of both major parties, have turned a blind eye to torture. It showed how all the countries except Brazil have brought the perpetrators to trial and achieved some sort of closure.
ALAS started these festivals six years ago in the Dylan Thomas Theatre as a weekend film festival. This one was focused on the politics, past and present, including the friendly cooperation between the newly emerging left wing governments across the region. It finished with a session of Cuban poetry, and a piano recital. Saturday evening was a Salsa Party, which unusually we did not attend.
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