14ymedio

Cuban Writer Eduardo Heras Leon, ‘Counterrevolutionary’ and Loyal to Fidel Castro, Dies

Heras’ definitive approach to Castro took place during the Special Period, as the head of one of the televised courses of the “University for All” project. (Trabajadores)

14ymedio, Havana, April 13, 2023 — Cuban writer, journalist and publisher Eduardo Heras León, National Prize for Literature in 2014, passed away this Thursday in Havana at the age of 82. Founder of the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Literary Training Center, he was one of the intellectuals “parameterized”* during the so-called Grey Quinquennium, the Five Grey Years defined by cultural censorship, despite which he always defended Fidel Castro’s cultural policy.

Heras, known from a young age as El Chino, was born in the Cuban capital in 1940 and had different jobs until 1958, when he entered the Normal School of Teachers in Havana, where he participated in different conspiracies against Fulgencio Batista organized by the 26 of July Movement.

In 1961 he joined the militias and fought as a volunteer gunner in the Bay of Pigs, about which he wrote the book La guerra tuvo seis nombres [The War had Six Names] (David Award, 1968). After the tension of the first years of the Revolution, Heras began to study journalism at the University of Havana and continued to write short stories, then collected in Los pasos en la hierba [Footsteps in the Grass] (Honorable Mention of Casa de las Américas, 1970), which received disapproval from the magazine El Caimán Barbudo [The Bearded Caiman], where he was accused of being “counterrevolutionary” in the article Otra mención a Los pasos [Another Mention of The Steps],” by Roberto Díaz.

After the example-setting arrest of the poet Heberto Padilla by State Security in 1971, the regime began a witch hunt against all the authors and works that departed from ideological orthodoxy and homosexuals involved in cultural positions. From the National Council of Culture, directed by Luis Pavón, the abrupt dismissal of numerous intellectuals was organized, including Heras himself, whose stories showed the “human” and unheroic side of the Castro guerrillas. continue reading

Decades later, in an interview in a confessional tone offered to the singer-songwriter Amaury Pérez, Heras tried to attenuate the story of his desperation during the Grey Quinquennium, when he was expelled from his journalism career and sent to work in a steel foundry.

A former colleague of Heras at the School of Journalism of Havana, evoking his expulsion, told 14ymedio that, during the summer of 1971, the secretary of the Union of Young Communists, Arsenio Rodríguez, went through the classrooms explaining that the writer “was no longer the school’s candidate for the elections of the University Student Federation (FEU), and that he had, in addition, been expelled for being a counterrevolutionary.” Faced with the disagreement of several students, Rodríguez explained that the announcement was merely “information and was not subject to discussion.”

In those years Heras began to think about suicide — using the revolver that Fidel Castro had given him after his time as a militiaman — and he encrypted his experience in the volume Acero [Steel], which was not published until 1977.

After a partial rehabilitation in 1976, Heras served as director of the narrative section of the newly founded publishing house Letras Cubanas [Cuban Letters] in addition to serving as director of the Casa de las Américas Editorial Fund and vice president of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC).

His definitive approach to Castro took place during the Special Period in the 1990s, at the head of one of the television courses of the University for All project. There, Heras led a course in narrative techniques that later led to the creation of the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Literary Training Center, in which numerous storytellers from the Island received advice.

In 2007 he was involved in another cultural controversy, during the so-called “little war of e-mails.**” During the convalescence of Fidel Castro, who had left the political arena the previous year, and in a climate of political tension, Televisión Cubana issued several interviews with the cultural commissioners in charge of the 1971 parameterization. The debate of hundreds of intellectuals and artists who had suffered the harassment of characters such as radio and television censor Jorge Serguera or Pavón himself set off the alarms of State Security and motivated the transfer of the controversy to a more “controlled” environment.

Heras, along with the critic and editor Desiderio Navarro, in addition to other “victims” of the Grey Quinquennium such as Fernando Martínez Heredia and Ambrosio Fornet – author of the expression – were appointed to bring the debate towards orthodoxy and absolve the regime, giving a conclusion to that period and freeing Fidel Castro from all responsibility.

The lectures at conferences offered during those days were gathered in the volume The Cultural Policy of the Revolutionary Period: Memory and Reflection (Theoretical-Cultural Criteria Center), which did not see its second volume edited. Heras said then that his whole life, including the episodes lived in the seventies, constituted the “testimony of a loyalty” to the Revolution and to Fidel Castro, of which he was proud.

In the last two decades of his life, Heras won numerous distinctions and medals awarded by the Cuban government, in addition to the National Publishing Prize in 2001 and the Literature Prize in 2014.

Translator’s notes:

*Fidel Castro’s “Words to the Intellectuals” in 1971: “Within the Revolution everything, against the Revolution nothing.” A year later came ’parameterization’ (enforcing rigid cultural parameters): “It is not permissible that through artistic quality homosexuals gain influence that affects the formation of our youth.” Outside these parameters, artists, intellectuals and homosexuals were considered “misfits” who must be parameterized, or “marginalized.”

**English translations of these emails can be found on Wikimedia Commons in Cuba: The Intellectual Debate, or The Little War of Emails, 2007. The original Spanish emails are on the Consenso website.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Continuity in Cuba Will Continue

The first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and former president Raúl Castro raises the arm of Miguel Díaz-Canel after his appointment in 2018. (EFE/Alexandre Meneghini)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 14 April 2023 – “If they remove the one who is there, who are they going to put in?”

In these terms of interchangeability, as if talking about a spare machine part, many people consulted by 14ymedio venture to discuss whether Miguel Díaz-Canel — will be re-elected on April 19 – or, more accurately, re-appointed — to occupy the position of President of the Republic.

When asked if this is what is most likely to happen, most of those consulted agree that it is, that repetition seems inevitable. But nuances arise when the question is raised regarding whether it is convenient for the interests of the dictatorship.

On the one hand, it is argued that “up there” they must be aware of the degree of discontent that the population has with the management results of the current occupant of the job, even though the majority of the dissatisfied have the perception that he is not the one who decides the measures but rather the one who meekly executes them. continue reading

To put in another person could open the hope of substantial changes, but for that the new figure would have to refrain from pronouncing the word ’continuity’, which has been due north in the compass of the job’s current occupant. In any case, the designation of a new character would not be to make changes, but to buy time.

On the other hand, there is a perception that removing Díaz-Canel would be an acknowledgment of the resounding failure of his administration and, therefore, of the decision of Raúl Castro, who was ultimately the one who put him in office. Díaz-Canel’s success is summed up in having opted for continuity. He has gotten on well with Raúl, although he has gotten on badly with the population. And if Raúl Castro continues to be the voice that calls the shots in Cuba at this level of decision-making, Miguel Díaz-Canel will begin his second presidential term, despite everything.

If Díaz-Canel falls, it is said, it could be a sign that Raúl Castro is no longer the one who decides or that, despite his 91 years, he has the capacity to realize that the ’baby of the family’ has not managed to achieve the prosperous and sustainable socialism that he promised when he was left in charge of the ship.

But the most disturbing question remains: if they remove the one who is there, who are they going to put in his place? According to the constitution, the person must be a deputy and under 60 years of age. The list is short and putting in an unknown person would show even more that we live in a country where citizens find out who is going to be their president without first having known who the candidates were.

In these so-called elections there will be no winners. We will all be defeated.

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‘It Would Never Occur to Me to Put My Dollars in a Cuban Bank’

Customers waiting in line outside a bank in Central Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, April 12, 2023 — None of the many people waiting in line outside a bank in Central Havana on Wednesday were there to deposit dollars, something they had been able to do since Tuesday thanks to a decree by the Central Bank of Cuba. On the contrary, they were suspicious of the government’s new measure, which does away with a temporary ban on dollar deposits issued in 2021.

When a young man in his thirties mentioned he was there to deposit a hundred dollars, an elderly man in line tried to dissuade him. “Once it’s deposited, it’s automatically converted to MLC [freely convertible currency] at a one-to-one exchange rate,” he explained, adding that the black market offers a much better rate for the U.S. currency. “An MLC is a virtual dollar; it’s not the same. For me at least, it would never occur to me to put my dollars in a bank. I exchange them on the street for pesos and use that to buy food.” Convinced, the young man left the line, but not before the older man joked, “The dollar was taken prisoner and now it’s been set free.”

Meanwhile, over on San Rafael Boulevard, black-market currency traders are doing a brisk business, as were the official Cadeca currency exchage bureaus like the one on Neptuno Street. “I don’t know if it’s because of that measure or what but nothing like this was happening here before,” observes one neighborhood resident. “It’s like everyone is desperate to buy dollars from foreigners.”

The experts, for their part, have criticized this most recent monetary about-face by the Cuban government and attribute it to the failure of the 2021 currency unification process which, during the early months of its implementation, included a ban on dollar-denominated deposits. “The components of this ’regulation’ (monetary and exchange unification, macro-devaluation of the peso, the end of subsidies, increases in wages and prices) ended up enhancing the effects of the pandemic and leading the country to ’stagflation,’ for which there is no end in sight,” writes Cuban economist Pedro Monreal in a Twitter thread. “Capped prices, partial dollarization, online import rackets, atrophied exchange markets, inspectorates, and now re-acceptance of the USD at banks are actions that are not only marginal but also at odds with the accepted model of regulation,” he says. continue reading

Several economists consulted by the Spanish news agency EFE have expressed similar doubts. “What sense did currency unification make given the associated economic and social costs?” asks Madrid-based Cuban economist Elías Amor Bravo.

Mauricio de Miranda, a tenured professor and researcher at the Javeriana Pontifical University in Cali, Colombia, states, “Currency unification has been a complete failure. [It was] poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly implemented.”

Monreal believes there never was a true monetary unification. As evidence, he points to the opening of MLC stores in 2019. “It is a very serious problem because the population is paid in one currency (CUP) which they cannot use to buy many of the goods being sold. This is unacceptable from a social and political point of view,” he says.

Officials claimed that currency unification, which began taking effect in January 2021, would end the dual currency system which, at the time, was made up of the Cuban peso (CUP) and the convertible peso (CUC), which was artificially set at one-to-one to the dollar.

Both the ban on greenback deposits and the reform itself gave a boost to the informal hard currency exchange market. The exchange rate on the street went from 70 pesos to the dollar in mid-2021 to 185 on Wednesday, a far cry from the official rate for individuals of 120 pesos to the dollar.

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Cuba’s Central Bank Reverses Course and Accepts Dollar Deposits in Cash Once Again

Economists warn that the dollar will cross the 200-peso threshold. (EFE)

14ymedio, Madrid, 11 April 2023 — There has been another sudden change of course in economic policy. As of Tuesday, Cuban banks will once again be accepting dollars in the form of cash. News of the Central Bank’s decision was published in the Official Gazette a few hours earlier. Independent experts worry that the new policy, which takes effect immediately, could lead to higher inflation.

This action overturns a June 2021 resolution that prohibited banks and other Cuban financial institutions from accepting cash deposits in U.S. dollars. The previous policy was initially intended to be a temporary measure but, in the intervening two years, the black-market currency exchange rate reached as high as of 200 pesos to the dollar before settling down to a level between 160 and 180 pesos. Meanwhile, the official exchange rate for individuals went from 24 to 120 pesos.

The Central Bank’s action is attributed to a change in the “current circumstances and priorities of economic policy.” Things have changed since then. The country is past the worst phase of the pandemic, when the measure was introduced, tourism and industrial production have improved slightly and, most importantly, Western Union resumed wiring remittances to the island in early March after the Trump administration had suspended the company’s operations in Cuba in 2020.

The bank defends its decision “even though pressures from harsh sanctions related to the economic blockade remain in force, particularly those intended to impede Cuba’s foreign cash flow and U.S. dollar deposits overseas.”

The bank’s announcement mentions “the exchange market established in August 2022, a reference to the exchange rate of 120 pesos to the dollar for individuals. The exchange rate of 24 pesos to the dollar for companies remains unchanged. That decision did not have the intended effect. The government had been hoping to capture some ot the dollars circulating in the informal market at a rate that was rapidly climbing and about to reach 200 pesos to the dollar. continue reading

Although the announcement claims that the “confidence generated by this step will be beneficial for national economic activity and for the population,” it adds a plot twist: warning that given that the underlying problem — the U.S. trade embargo – has not been resolved, “it will be necessary to monitor the evolution of banking and financial activity.”

Madrid-based Cuban economist Elías Amor notes that the most obvious potential consequence of this action is that it could threaten the revolution’s stated commitment to social justice.

“From this moment on, Cubans with family members overseas need only collect money in the form of remittances from a wire transfer company, or informally from foreign toursits, to enjoy a higher quality of life, and more spending opportunities, than those who only receive their income in the form of Cuban pesos. And no matter how you look at that, this is inflationary,” he writes in his blog, Cubaeconomía.

The expert admits that these anomalies existed before, but that they will now become visible. He is sorry to see the 2021 currency unification measures being questioned again without anything happening. He also warns of the risks of this decision in a climate of runaway inflation that is approaching 70% annually in some essential sectors such as food.

Also pointing the finger at currency unification is economist Pedro Monreal. In his Twitter account he mocks the governments policy lurches. “Luckily they studied monetary unification for ten years,” he writes, describing the measure as a “laundering” of the black market exchange, which led to “partial dollarization resulting from an increasing use of the dollar in private transactions.”

This decision has not gone unnoticed by news consumers, who have inundated government media outlets with comments. Many ask critics not to question decisions by the government which, in their opinion, is trying to deal with a very complicated economic situation. For this alone, they argue, we should be thankful for any action officials take, no matter how misdirected it might be. But a significant number of readers stress that the dollar deposits should never have been banned in the first place, as evidenced by this about-face.

“Dollar deposits should never have been prohibited in the first place but, at this point, the decision creates problems. First, the official exchange rate is much lower than the unofficial rate. Seondly, people have recently needed to withdraw dollars from the bank but this hasn’t been possible because the bank itself doesn’t have them. Consequently, this leads to a loss of confidence among bank customers. Lastly, dollars are in high demand from privately owned companies, which need them to pay for imports. But the banks don’t have them, which forces [customers] to look for them in other markets,” reads one post.

This loss of confidence is echoed in other posts. “A serious question borne of personal experience: What guarantee do individuals who have made dollar deposits have that tomorrow they will be able withdraw that money from their bank accounts if ’conditions’ change?” asks one commenter whose doubts are quickly echoed by someone else: “That’s the real question. And what if they change their minds? The dollar has been an erratic presence in Cuba’s economic landscape in an unstable, illegal way. They gave it the okay, then later it was no cash. Now it’s being welcomed again. In my opinion, this is not a measure that will build confidence. Changing course abruptly is not the way to stabilize the economy.”
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Will Tour Cuba and Other Kremlin Allies in the Region in the Second Half of April

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Sergey Lavrov, on April 7, 2023 in Ankara. (EFE/EPA/NECATI SAVAS)

EFE (via 14ymedio), Moscow, 13 April 2023 — The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, announced on Thursday that he will carry out a Latin American tour in the second half of April that will take him to Brazil, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, the Kremlin’s main allies in the region.

“We advocate for strengthening Russian-Latin American cooperation on the basis of mutual support, solidarity and our interests,” Lavrov wrote in two articles published by the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo and the Mexican magazine Buzos de la Noticia.

In his articles, reproduced by the Russian Foreign Ministry on its website, he highlighted, in particular, the strategic relationship with Brasilia, Caracas, Havana and Managua.

“The rapidly changing geopolitical landscape opens up new possibilities for the development of mutually beneficial cooperation between Russia and Latin American countries. The latter play an increasingly prominent role in the multipolar world,” he stressed.

Lavrov insists that Moscow does not want Latin America and the Caribbean to become a source of discord between the powers, since it bases its foreign policy not on ideology, as was the case with the Soviet Union, but on pragmatism. continue reading

As an example, he highlighted that, despite sanctions and political pressures, Russian exports to the region increased by 3.8%, while wheat supplies increased by 48.8%.

Lavrov highlighted that at the moment 27 Latin American countries have signed visa-free agreements with Russia, in addition to the fact that the number of Latin American students studying in higher education centers in Russia has skyrocketed.

The Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, showed Putin his support in his confrontation with the West by visiting Russia in December 2022, and he also condemned the arrest warrant issued against the head of the Kremlin by the International Criminal Court.

Recently, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, and the head of the largest Russian oil company, Igor Sechin, traveled to the Island.

At the beginning of the month, Russian President Vladimir Putin invited his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to Moscow upon receiving a visit from the special adviser for International Affairs of the Brazilian Presidency, Celso Amorim.

Subsequently, Lula said that during his visit to Beijing he will propose to the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, to promote dialogue to restore peace between Russia and Ukraine.

The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Madurdo, offered Putin “all my support” since the beginning of the Russian military campaign in Ukraine in February 2022.

On March 14, Russia and Venezuela celebrated the 78th anniversary of their diplomatic relations, ties that were strengthened with the arrival of the so-called Bolivarian revolution in 1999.

At the end of March, the Nicaraguan Foreign Minister, Denis Moncada, met with Lavrov and defended Moscow’s right to guarantee its “integrity and security.”

Lavrov also decorated Laureano Ortega Murillo, son of the Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega, with the Order of Friendship.

In the new Russian foreign policy, marked by the growing political, military and economic antagonism toward the West over Ukraine, Latin America is one of the priority regions.

In that sense, Lavrov’s tour is part of Lavrov’s recent trips to twenty countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, from the Maghreb to the Sahel and the south.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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More Cuban Rafters Arrive in Mexico Because of Difficulties Entering the United States

A group of 34 Cuban rafters detained on the high seas awaits a response to their request for asylum. (Semar)

14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico, 13 April 2023 — The crew of the Mexican Navy ship Comet notified the captain of Puerto Juárez last Tuesday about a “raft” drifting 90 miles north of Isla Mujeres, one of the illegal landing points for Cubans in recent years, a fisherman told 14ymedio.

According to a statement from the police, 34 Cubans were traveling on the home-made boat, including a woman and 33 men, who were trying to reach Mexico when they were intercepted by two coast guard boats.

The Cubans were treated by naval health personnel, who indicated that they were all in good health. They were transferred to the naval station of Puerto Juárez, where they were handed over to agents of the National Institute of Migration.

A municipal security officer identified as Horacio Márquez, confirmed that the Island’s nationals requested asylum. Migration picked up their identity cards and seven passports. “When applying for asylum, the law allows them to remain in Mexico until the case is resolved.” Article 7 of the Law on Refugees, Complementary Protection and Political Asylum emphasizes that “no sanction will be imposed” for illegal entry.

Márquez specified that this group of Cubans is the first known to arrive in Isla Mujeres this year. “The last week of October 2022, a similar group arrived. On that occasion, 30 rafters, who were linked to coyotes, were detained, but nothing was verified. Most continued on their way to the United States.” continue reading

The Migration Law establishes in article 69, paragraph V, the possibility of “regularizing their situation,” but several Cubans have denounced extortion, arbitrary detentions and imprisonment in Mexican immigration stations.

This arrest of 34 Cubans comes a week after journalist Fátima Vázquez said that at least 15 nationals of the Island had disembarked on San Miguelito beach, located near kilometer 13.5 of Kukulcán Boulevard, the main avenue that connects with the hotel zone of Cancun.

Municipal security officer Horacio Márquez said he did not know of any investigation by the Attorney General’s Office on the routes taken by migrants. “There is nothing out of the ordinary. We see it with this group, which was sighted by sailors on the ship Comet, but not through surveillance.”

Another rescue of rafters was recorded this Thursday. The Norwegian ship Bow Summer provided assistance to seven Cubans whose boat was adrift 100 miles from the Yucatan. “They were without food or drink, about to be swept even further offshore. We took them on board and provided them with dry clothes, food and drink,” said Captain Tor-Gisle Bjerknes.

The arrival of these 49 Cuban rafters in Mexico occurs just when the United States Coast Guard has reiterated that the borders are not open. The agency specified on its social networks that “a strong maritime presence is retained to detect and intercept anyone who tries to migrate illegally by sea.”

This Thursday another group of 28 people were returned to the Island aboard the ship Isaac Mayo. According to official figures, in the last six months the United States has returned more than 2,200 Cubans.

Translated by Regina Anavy

The Center for a Free Cuba Denounces the Use of Emigration ‘As a Political Weapon’

A group of Cuban migrants in northern Honduras on their journey to the United States (14ymedio)

EFE (via 14ymedio), Miami, 1 April 2023 — The Center for a Free Cuba, an organization of the Cuban exile in the United States, affirmed that the round of immigration talks between Cuba and the United States “will only encourage Havana to continue weaponizing migration to increase its influence on the Administration of President Joe Biden.”

“Cuba’s problem is not emigration, it’s the dictatorship,” the organization, based in Washington D.C., warned in a statement in response to a new round of immigration talks between the two countries.

This migratory round, which was held yesterday in Washington, D.C., was marked by a sharp increase in the arrivals of Cubans to the U.S. coasts.

The number of Cubans detained (6,202) when they tried to reach the United States by sea since last October 1, already exceeds that of the entire previous fiscal year (6,182), according to information from the U.S. Coast Guard.

The country’s serious economic crisis has intensified an unprecedented mass immigration exodus, especially to the United States, where authorities detained more than 313,000 Cubans on the southern border with Mexico, which represents about 3% of Cuba’s total population.

According to the statement of the Center for a Free Cuba, an organization whose objectives are to “promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights and political and economic freedoms,” Havana has used Cuban emigration “as a political weapon to repeatedly leverage negotiations with Washington.” continue reading

According to the organization, after the first round of talks on migration between the Biden Administration and Havana, in April 2022, “the State Department announced a series of unilateral concessions” that included “the expansion of authorized travel and educational exchanges.”

“The first benefit is to the Cuban Army through its conglomerate, the Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (Gaesa), and its sub-entity Gaviota, which supervise and benefit from Cuban tourism,” the statement says.

The second, he adds, “benefits the Cuban intelligence service, which has used educational exchanges to recruit spies, insert intelligence officials into academic conferences and compromise visitors to the Island.”

He also affirms that all the migratory crises in Cuba “have occurred during administrations that sought to improve relations with Havana,” and cites among other crises the mass exoduses of Camarioca (1965), Mariel (1980) and the so-called “Crisis of the Rafters” of 1994, in addition to the current one.

“No negotiation with the Cuban dictatorship, manipulated by Havana and using migration as a weapon, can succeed for the Cuban people or the interests of the United States, while the Castro regime imposes an internal blockade on Cubans and more than a thousand Cubans are imprisoned for exercising their right to express their desire for a free Cuba,” said John Suárez, executive director of the organization.

The United States defended on Wednesday that the measures it has taken have allowed the reduction of irregular immigration from Cuba, but this country considers, on the contrary, that Washington is “stimulating” illegal immigration.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuba’s Diaz-Canel, Five Years as Hand-Picked Dictator

Díaz-Canel’s international policy has placed Cuba on the side of the most infamous causes (EFE)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 5 April 2023 — That April 19, 2018, when deputies had to “elect” the president of the Republic, there was only one name on their ballots aspiring to the position. Raúl Castro himself cleared away all doubts by declaring that his appointment was not a coincidence, that it was planned and foreseen by the Party’s leadership. Díaz-Canel was the only survivor of a dozen “test-tube” leaders who had been training to inherit the throne.

The electronic engineer and lieutenant colonel had slowly climbed from the Union of Young Communists. His ascent was meticulously calculated, without haste, so as not to repeat the mistakes they had previously made with Roberto Robaina, Carlos Lage, Feliz Pérez Roque and Jorge Luis Sierra Cruz.

The “star of Placetas” fulfilled an international mission in Nicaragua. He next became the highest authority of the Party in Villa Clara, his native province, and then was given his litmus test: Holguín. In the “city of parks” he earned the nickname of Miguel Díaz-Condón [condom] for preventing peasants from smuggling milk. And it was also there that he met Lis Cuesta, broke up his marriage and fearing that his promotion would be frustrated.

I remember that on one occasion they both attended the premiere of one of my works. At the end of the show, they stayed for the toast and told us about the adventures of their romance. The then-first secretary of the Party in Holguín feared that the scandal would affect his image and asked for advice from the most experienced boss in the province.

The old man, Miguel Cano Blanco, was familiar with local customs and situations and suggested to his namesake that he grab his lover by the hand and take her everywhere. For a couple of weeks there would be no talk of anything else in the city, but over time, the gossip would run out, people would end up getting used to the new normal, and his career would not be affected. Creative resistance, is what Cano Blanco recommended. Lis Cuesta would take his advice to the letter, to this day. continue reading

There’s not even a shadow left of that guy I once met in Holguín. His face has hardened, giving him a robotic appearance. Paranoia has made his hair turn white in a very short time, and his belly increased at the same rate as his blunders. Pigeons never landed on the new dictator’s shoulder, only vultures. The crash of a passenger plane, a tornado in Havana, the pandemic, the explosion of the Saratoga Hotel and the fire at the Supertanker Base at Matanzas are just a few examples of the unluckiness (salao) that is Díaz-Canel, according to his own words.

But not everything has been a consequence of misfortune. His obstinacy in giving continuity to a perverse and dysfunctional model makes him a direct culprit for the destitution suffered by the Cuban people. The Ordering Task* was a catastrophe and plunged the country into unbridled inflation. And his international policy has placed Cuba on the side of the most infamous causes, such as Putin’s imperialist war and Daniel Ortega’s criminal extremism.

This has also been a five-year period of protests. On July 11, 2021, more than 40 cities took to the streets in a domino effect, and Díaz-Canel decided to stain his hands with blood. His combat order unleashed violence that left a young man shot in the back and killed, several wounded and more than a thousand political prisoners. The 11J was a definitive watershed moment, and the dictator earned the worst nicknames in Cuba’s history.

Then would come the biggest migratory wave of all time in the archipelago, a mass exodus that has left the country without young people and without a future. The popular disenchantment has been clearly reflected in the polls. The regime’s placebo votes have recorded the highest rates of abstention, apathy and rejection.

It is clear that his government has been disastrous. Not even in healthcare, which has always been the regime’s banner, can they boast of anything. His plan to build 1.7 homes a day per municipality went by the wayside. And Parliament itself gave him a standing ovation when he confessed that his management was a disaster.

In any democratic country, someone with his record would have already resigned or would be swept from power at the polls. But Cuba is a dictatorship. Díaz-Canel has received the order to hold the fort as long as Raúl is alive. And no one would be surprised if his name, on April 19, is again the only option on the deputies’ ballot.

*Translator’s note: The “Ordering Task” [Tarea Ordenamiento] is a collection of measures that include eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and a broad range of other measures targeted to different elements of the Cuban economy.

Translator: Hombre de Paz

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Jorge Edwards in Cuba: A Spy in the Land of Slogans

From left to right, Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Edwards, Mario Vargas Llosa, the literary agent Carmen Balcells and José Donoso. (Those ‘Boom’ Years)

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 9 April 2023 – The apathy of Cuban intellectuals after the death of Jorge Edwards contributed to the fact that the regime’s censorship managed to render him invisible.

The machinery of the Cuban press lives by a certain law of fiction, and that fiction selects, redacts, patches over and twists the reality of any news story. When the Chilean novelist Jorge Edwards arrived in Havana as a diplomat in December 1970, he discovered that the predictable workings of journalists, photographers and spies were already up and running. The regime’s newspapers received him with a scattergun of allusions towards an ‘Edwards clan’ – protagonists of the ‘reactionist conspiracy’ against Salvador Allende.

These were the veiled instructions for Cubans (smart people, when they want to be) in how to deal with this visitor — a literate man, disguised as a negotiator, representative of a socialist government, but one which Castro viewed with suspicion: Allende had committed the tactical error of achieving power through the ballot box, not, as Castro had done, through war.

A few weeks ago, upon Edwards’ death (in Madrid), the business of rewriting history began all over again: despite being one of the foremost writers in the language (winner of the Cervantes Prize), not one official Cuban newspaper published an obituary, the columnists and critics all fell silent, and the bureaucrats of Casa de las Americas — he was even one of the judges for their award in 1968 — were finally able to delete him from their list of undesirables.

Nevertheless, the most troubling aspect of his death was that even Cuban exiles — apart from the odd exception — neglected to pay their respects towards Edwards’ memory. There was a certain indifference, a certain mental laziness which obliged them to leave on the bookshelf his Persona non grata — an assessment of Castro’s perversions just as thorough as Before Night Falls or Map Drawn by a Spy.

It was also odd that neither was he properly mentioned in the work of Chilean writer Pavel Giroud — that is, in any depth, and aloud, rather than in private reflection — during the tensions which produced El caso Padilla (The Padilla Affair). His presence in the film came to shed light on the era — it provided an external viewpoint on Castro’s reign and his authoritarian anachronism in a world which demanded more democracy. Edwards, who had travelled to Havana as Allende’s envoy, left the country proclaiming it to have converted itself into a ship of fools. continue reading

Persona non grata makes certain progress, via digressions, as a volume built entirely from personal memories. The narration dithers, and forms a hypothesis, falls down through paranoia; it thrills, and it mulls things over. Edwards believes that, in 1970, Castro had drilled down into all the excess opened up by the Revolution and had managed to submerge the country into a destiny of collective obfuscation. His crazy delusions were already evident in his physical appearance — bags under the eyes, unkempt beard, a compulsion for clouds of tobacco smoke — and he aspired to the achievement of perfect surveillance/security, which the Chilean interprets as being one of his “Jesuit disorders” — a hangover from his Belén* schooldays.

As Castro diverted the course of history in Cuba in 1959 — says Edwards — he thought he could twist the country’s destiny time and time again, and also its laws of nature. The image of the Leader as mad scientist à la Victor Frankenstein, who dreams of practising genetic recombination in cows whilst he harpoons sharks in his private paradise at Cayo Piedra — is one of the most grotesque in the book.

A re-reading conjures up new questions about another spectre, Manuel Piñeiro, the ubiquitous Barbarroja [redbeard] whose microphones and spies — chauffeurs and beautiful secretaries from Havana — didn’t miss a single move made by Edwards. Piñeiro’s authority over the secret police, his influence over where even Castro could or couldn’t go, turned him into the leader’s confessor, and, without him realising it — the author notes — his puppet-master. Perhaps this suppressive control, which lasted right into Fidel’s decline, might be the key to explaining Barbarroja’s unusual death — he crashed his car into a tree in 1998.

In the midst of all of the tale’s tremors we find Padilla and his wife, Pablo Armando Fernández, Norberto Fuentes and César López, the first Miguel Barnet and the ghost of Cabrera Infante. The spring in the trap which power held in reserve for them was triggered when the Chilean abandoned the Island for Paris, where his teacher, Neruda, awaited him.

“Fidel Castro’s repression didn’t have the Steppe-like coldness (with simultaneous convent-like coldness) of Josef Stalin’s”, Edwards summed up in a commemorative prologue in Persona non grata. Nevertheless, he knew how to quickly identify the enemy — “the ladybirds, along with the poets, the long-haired, the mystics and the mystic-types, and all variety of social scourges” — who deserved, in his olive-green hell, “a slow death, though, in some cases, a less slow one”. Edwards, traveller to an irreconcilable Havana, understood first and foremost what others derived from Cuba and he anticipated what someone called — with an anesthetic malice – a Grey Five Years.

*Translator’s note:

Belén Jesuit Preparatory School was founded in 1854 in Havana. Fidel Castro attended this school, an institution renowned for its strict Jesuit discipline.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso
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Drivers Assaulted, Houses Looted and Cattle Stolen: Insecurity Grows in Villa Clara, Cuba

In such an isolated enclave, the horse-cart drivers maintain an indispensable link with the neighboring towns. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Yankiel Gutiérrez Faife, Camajuaní, 9 April 2023 — Jinaguayabo is near the sea. To the north are the luxurious keys of Villa Clara; to the south, Remedios, at the end of a run-down road, where the horse carts circulate, at a slow pace and under the sun. It is a poor, rural town, with fewer than 700 inhabitants and from which everyone ends up leaving. In such an isolated enclave, the cart drivers maintain the indispensable link with the neighboring towns, but their routes, usually quiet, are now infested with assailants.

Gerónimo, who owns a passenger cart, leaves for work at seven in the morning. “At that time it’s easy,” he explains to 14ymedio. “It’s when the people of Jinaguayabo travel to Remedios, to study or to work. Then I have another route to bring them back, from three to seven at night, when they return to town.”

Several weeks ago, he says, he found three people waiting on the side of the road, and they asked him for a ride to Remedios. They got into the cart, two in the back seat and one next to him. “When we were coming to the bridge, the one behind me put a belt around my neck and forced me to park in a ditch,” says Gerónimo, who immediately obeyed his attacker.

The others were in charge of checking his pockets: they took his phone, some bluetooth headphones, his watch and the proceeds of the day, 2,500 pesos [$100]. “At least they left me the horse and the cart,” he says with some relief. “Now I have to see if I can buy what I lost again, because the police are not going to find the thieves.”

Despite the isolation and poverty, Jinaguayabo has always been close to the most tense events in Cuba. Located near the first settlement of the Spanish conquistadores in Villa Clara, besieged by corsairs and pirates and centuries later by insurgents, the town has not been oblivious to violence. However, its inhabitants complain that the atmosphere is electric, and they feel afraid being on any road at night. continue reading

“You can no longer go by bike to Remedios, as before,” complains Daivel, a 19-year-old whose parents have banned him from traveling at night the three miles that separate Jinaguayabo from the so-called “eighth village” of the Island. “I used to pedal there on weekends, but now they won’t let me go for fear that something will happen to me along the way. If I go to Remedios, I have to sleep with friends and come back in the morning,” he says.

The situation is repeated in other rural towns, such as Taguayabón — to the west, between Remedios and Camajuaní — where thieves prey on people during the November carnivals. At two in the morning, when everyone is drunk and their senses dulled in the dark, it is easy for bandits to take a wallet or watch, or to corner a clueless villager.

They also manage to force the doors to houses, which are less protected because, as Maria points out, “in the countryside everyone knows each other.” She and her husband returned from the festivities in the early morning and discovered a broken window in their home. Inside, she says, “everything was a disaster. They had taken a cell phone and cash, which I had hidden in the closet.”

Crime is so widespread that you can no longer trust even the workers you hire. Daniela, a housewife from Remedios, hired a bricklayer known by the family, 26-years-old, to change the tiles and the sink in the kitchen. “He came to work for a single day and didn’t finish. He told me that he had a fever and a cold,” she says. That same night she was robbed of a powerful LED light that she had in the yard. “My husband, who knew that the boy was in bad company, went to his house. He himself had stolen the lamp, taking advantage of the fact that he knew the house, and exhibited it very brazenly in his yard,” the woman says.

In the marginal areas of the cities or in the rural towns the situation is unacceptable, but it is even more serious in the homes of the farmers. Francisco, a guajiro whose farm is in the vicinity of Rosalía, near Taguayabón, had two oxen with which he worked on his plot.

After working and taking a bath, Francisco used to have lunch and take a nap, while the animals grazed near the house. “In short,” he says, “when I was sleeping very peacefully, the bandits had been ’paying attention’ to me for many days and knew my routine. They had studied me.” At nightfall, he saw that the oxen had disappeared.

A television program funded as propaganda by the Ministry of the Interior, “Behind the Footprint”, shows a police squad that quickly solves criminal cases. “But real life is not like that,” says Francisco, who didn’t wait for the authorities to take action on the matter.

Some neighbors helped him organize a search party, and they found a broken fence and tracks. Beyond, near the town of Palenque, they discovered a scrub where the drunken thieves were butchering the animals. The second ox, tied to the fence, tried in vain to free itself.

“We caught three thieves and the police took them,” says Francisco. “But they have already freed one of them. Usually they are released for lack of interest in the investigation, or the police don’t even bother to come.”

Woman talking on the phone in front of a motorcycle workshop that was robbed last month. (14ymedio)

No one is safe. Not even in the center of big cities like Santa Clara. Ernesto, owner of a motorcycle repair shop not far from Etecsa’s offices — just one block from Vidal Park — was robbed of one of the vehicles he had in the warehouse at nine at night, while his family was watching the telenovela.

The thief broke the fiber cement roof of the workshop and took a motorcycle with just two and a half years of use, which needed paint and a new battery. However, he did not realize that Ernesto had installed cameras and did not have his face covered. “It wasn’t difficult to identify him,” he says. “A week later, the police caught the thief and recovered the motorcycle. However, I know I was lucky.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuba’s 2022 Accounts Confirm That the Country Spends 16 Times More on Building Hotels than on Healthcare

Five star hotel under construction, on First and B streets, Havana (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 13 April 2023 — The two sectors on which the Cuban regime has founded its popularity since 1959, health and education, combined received in 2022 one tenth the budget dedicated to business services and real estate and rentals. The area, considered a mixed bag that includes tourism, received 33% of the budget last year (23.360 billion pesos, almost one billion dollars at the official exchange rate), compared with the other two, which taken together barely received 3.3%.

The accounts are even worse if these two areas are separated. The health and public services received 2.1% of the budget (1.520 billion pesos or 63.4 million dollars), education received 1.2% (820 million pesos or 34 million dollars), that is 16 and 27 times, respectively, less than the so-called “business and real estate services.”

The poor investment in health contrasts with the gigantic income the Cuban state obtains from exporting medical services, the country’s main source of hard currency. According to official data, collected from annual statistics published by the National Statistics and Information Office (Onei), in 2021, they collected 4.349 billion dollars from the export of health services, although between 2011 and 2015 they were able to obtain more than 11.500 billion, according to the information provided by the former Minister of Economy José Luis Rodríguez.

That imbalance in the budget for that sector, which is diverse and non-specific but associated with hotel construction, has been going on for many years; in 2021 the pinch was even greater, it received 35% of the total budget, though the total amount was smaller. continue reading

The only area that dares to approach it, although still far behind, is the manufacturing industry, which receives 17.3% of the budget, totaling 12.304 billion pesos. The sugar industry is excluded from that, with its own budget line which allows us to see the ruinous budget assigned to that notable product of Cuban industry — barely 0.6%, with 410 million pesos.

With a percentage in the double digits, the transportation, food and communications sector received 10.3% (7.316 billion pesos).

In fourth place, though barely noticeable to Cubans, was the provision of water, electricity and gas, which received 6.988 billion or 9.8.% of the total budget. Although the figure seems padded when compared to some of those already mentioned, it continues to be less than one third of what was budgeted for real estate.

Two other sectors that fared well were mining and quarries, an area in which the government has placed a lot of hope for the supposed benefits of exporting nickel, among other minerals. Those rceived 5.066 billion pesos. Hotels and restaurants — the portion of tourism not related to real estate — received 3.226 billion pesos, and commerce and repair of personal effects received 2.506 million pesos, ahead of what should be a priviledged sector, agricultural production.

To this area, specifically designated by the government as a “priority”, a mere 1.855 billion pesos were budgeted, only 2.6% of the total budget. “Amid a situation of food insecurity, it is worrisome that the relative weight of investment in agriculture remains stagnant at a leven which is 12 times lower than the relative weight of investment in business services and real estate,” stated Cuban economist Pedro Monreal on his Twitter account Wednesday.

The expert reminds us that the agriculture sector employs more than 17% of Cubans, the sector with the most employment, but the low level of investment makes it a beacon of low productivity that weighs down economic growth for the entire country.

“It is probably understood, but worth repeating — without a major investment in agriculture it will not be possible to overcome food insecurity in Cuba, nor to mitigate inflation, nor poverty, nor will there be national development. The slogans they come up with matter very little,” he said.

The data provided by the National Statistics and Information Office (Onei), which are for last year, lay bare not only the (now) old evidence that tourist construction is disproportionate compared to other sectors at a time when it is not on par with profits. It also reflects the constant contradiction of the government discourse that stops investing in pillars of social justice such as food (fishing uses 0.7% of total investment) health or education, to capture foreign currency which, to make matters worse, does not arrive.

The small amount budgeted for the agriculture sector, moreover, serves to bring down tourism. As the reproaches come from the ranks of officialdom itself, tourists spend more on food when they come to Cuba than on paying for hotel accommodations, but if there is no food, the country loses out on that income as well and informed travelers lose the incentive to come.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Cuba Says It Will Address ‘Important’ Issues in Wednesday’s Immigration Talks With the United States

The mother of the Secretary of Homeland Security of the United States fled from Europe because of Nazism and, years later, from Cuba because of Castroism. (EFE)

EFE / Moncho Torres (via 14ymedio), Havana/Panama City, 12 April 2023 — Cuba and the United States will discuss “important and determining” issues in the round of immigration talks that take place this Wednesday in Washington, according to the Deputy General Director for the United States of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX), Johana Tablada. She states that the delegation, lead by the Deputy Minister of MINREX, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, will have on its agenda matters “of concern for the Cuban government that are not resolved.”

Among those issues, Tablada referred to “incentives” that remain for irregular emigration, such as “the continuity of extreme, inhuman, siege measures, that directly influence the socioeconomic living conditions of the population of Cuba” and that make many Cubans seek to emigrate to the United States.

The Government of Cuba, Tablada added, blames the United States for “those high migratory flows and those extreme measures that have caused a direct threat to the well-being and livelihood of our population.”

“Regular migration will not be achieved, and this issue will not be resolved as long as there is that policy of asphyxiation against Cuba,” she said in statements reproduced by state media, although she acknowledged that last year there were “positive steps,” such as the resumption of the issuance of visas at the U.S. Embassy in Havana and the granting of the visas established in the migration agreements.

The Island’s delegation will also denounces “the admission of people who arrive irregularly in the United States,” which it considered “a stimulus for others to adopt that unsafe route,” and gave as an example the case of Rubén Martínez Machado, who stole a plane, fled to Miami and was granted political asylum, an “explicit violation of the migration agreements” and a “danger to the air safety of both countries,” she said. continue reading

Cuba will also reiterate its request for the re-establishment of non-immigrant visa programs so that the citizens of the Island can visit their relatives in the United States.

This round of talks will be marked by a sharp increase in the arrivals of Cubans to the U.S. coast, where the Coast Guard has intercepted some 5,000 Cuban rafters since last October.

Cuba’s grave economic crisis has intensified an unprecedented mass exodus, especially to the United States, where authorities detained more than 313,000 Cubans on the southern border with Mexico, a figure that represents about 3% of Cuba’s total population.

In this context, the Secretary of National Security of the United States, Alejandro Mayorkas, held a meeting in Panama with the foreign minister of that country and of Colombia and Mexico, to discuss migration through the dangerous Darién jungle. He insisted that migrants must use “legal means” or be “returned” to the other side of the border.

“There is a very important message to send in addition to the fact that we are building legal avenues so that people do not have to risk their lives in the Darién, and that is that we are enforcing our border laws,” the secretary remarked.

“It is so tragic to see people risk their lives, undertake the dangerous journey, suffer the trauma, put the savings of a lifetime in the hands of traffickers who only seek their own benefit, only to be returned,” said Mayorkas, who is of Cuban origin.

The Darién jungle is one of the most dangerous border crossings for migrants, who have to cross swollen rivers and risk the attacks of armed men who steal and rape. There is also a lack of drinking water, which is often contaminated by excrement and corpses.

Most migrants, when they have left the jungle and are exhausted and out of breath, say that they regret having taken that route, calling on their compatriots to choose another option, in vain.

This year alone, about 400,000 migrants are expected to cross the jungle, almost double the more than 248,000 who did so in 2022. In the first three months of 2023 alone, about 87,390 migrants crossed the Darién, seven times more than the same period in 2022.

“And those are the individuals, the human beings who survived to tell the trauma of the trip. We also think about the people who didn’t make it. That is exactly why we are generating legal avenues so that they can come to the United States in a safe and orderly way in search of a better life,” he explained.

Mayorkas highlighted as “the most powerful example of the success” of this legal path the creation of the program for nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, a measure that recently led to a 95% reduction in the arrests of individuals from these countries at the border.

“We have already received thousands and thousands of people in this way,” he said. The program can reach 30,000 humanitarian permits per month, “360,000 people per year.”

The U.S. official also warned that they are “expanding” the legal avenues. “We will be revealing in the coming weeks the additional avenues that people must take,” he announced.

The Secretary of Homeland Security also noted that migrants have at their disposal other ways to travel legally to U.S. territory, such as visas for seasonal workers, or for agricultural or non-agricultural workers for limited periods to “gain money lawfully and send remittances.”

In addition, next month the government of President Joe Biden will lift the controversial Title 42, a health measure imposed by the government of former President Donald Trump (2017-2021) that allows immediate expulsions of migrants at the border.

“We are concerned that there may be an increase in the level of migration” due to the lifting of that measure, Mayorkas acknowledged, recalling that the basis of the country’s immigration law, in Title 8, will remain fully in force.

In the meeting with EFE, Mayorkas was accompanied by Samantha Power, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She highlighted the important role played by countries that were initially going to be only transit routes for migrants.

In Colombia, “more than two million Venezuelans” are settled, she said, and it is “a very important and laudable decision” that the Colombian authorities have offered them “a temporary protection status.”

“When that happened, USAID hurried to support the Colombian government to establish that system, the registration, the mechanism, but also to support the Venezuelans who entered to make sure that they did not overload the host communities,” said Power, who remarked that they are dedicating “more than 200 million dollars a year” to that mission and seek to increase it by 34 million.

The U.S. official insisted that it is the “responsibility” of the United States to support the countries south of the Darien — Colombia, Ecuador and Peru — “that are doing everything possible to absorb these migrant populations.”

For Mayorkas, the need to leave his country for political or economic reasons is not something foreign. A native of Cuba, he arrived with his parents and sister in the United States as “political refugees” when he was a child. “It was the second time, by the way, that my mother was a refugee,” having fled the Nazis in Europe.

“I understand very well the fragility of life, the vulnerability of people, the importance of humanitarian aid; and at the service of that fragility, at the service of that vulnerability, we generate legal avenues and urge people not to take such an costly risk. But it is also very important to remember that we are not alone in this. The migratory challenge that our region is experiencing is a challenge to which we must all respond together,” he said.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Arrival of Potatoes Disrupts a Havana District During Easter Week

The first thing to avoid is the ditch that cuts through the queue. If you’re wearing flip flops or leaky shoes you’re going to get filthy water between your toes. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 8 April 2023 – The potatoes have arrived. This sentence, written on a notice and pinned up in a food store or shouted aloud in a yard, is enough to set Cubans onto a war footing. Hunger, shortages, and the possibility of arriving at the back of an interminable queue are enough to drive anyone crazy. Nevertheless, with potatoes there’s an additional stress: you have to actually watch out for the truck and follow the prized tuber even faster than your other neighbours can.

Whoever has to confront the queue knows the routine: a bag or a shopping trolley, a fully charged phone, water and some kind of pill to calm the nerves – although this latter is already almost impossible to get hold of. Already there’s a considerable number of customers in Calle Arango, in Luyanó. Now it’s just a question of luck and a lot of patience.

When your eyes have adapted to the sunlight and your body has found a place in the shade — all without losing your place, always in dispute from “confused” people who try to push their way in — you can better appreciate the view of run-down Calle Arango, the many times patched-up sunshades and the peeling walls.

The first thing to avoid is the ditch that cuts through the queue. If you’re wearing flip flops or leaky shoes you’re going to get filthy water between your toes. The people who are already approaching the counter — predominantly older people and people who queue-up by profession — comment indignantly that the price “on the street” is already exceeding 250 pesos a pound.

Rationed potatoes, sold by the State at 11 pesos a pound, are of very poor quality. An elderly woman sniffed one of them in the impassible gaze of the seller and couldn’t hide her disgust. “How bad they smell”, she blurted out, putting the wrinkled and dirty potato back in its place. continue reading

In Calle San Miguel / San Nicolás / Manrique where they’re also selling potatoes, the workers took advantage of the Good Friday holiday and announced that they were only going to stay open until midday. “We’re only going to serve 50 people!” they shouted, “And not a single one more”.

The majority of customers dream of cooking chips (fries) — one of the “impossible feasts” of Cuban cuisine — but only if they can get hold of the cooking oil required. Others intend to boil them, to use in some other recipe. Still others, however, intend to resell, at a much higher price, the quantity they’ve managed to obtain.

As the relentless Central Havana sunshine begins to recede, one of the lucky ones heads for home almost dancing, a modest little shopping bagful in his hands, and sings in an improvised reguetón: “Potatoes! Let’s go eat mashed potatoes!”

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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‘Even Tourists Are Stranded on the Road Because There Is No Fuel in Cuba’

Traffic jam at Santa Ana and Boyeros of taxis waiting to get gasoline. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 10 April 2023 — Marta and Manuel, two Spaniards who arrived in Havana this Good Friday on the Air Europa flight, pass through the door of the José Martí international airport and come across a dark esplanade full of people holding signs with the name of a tourist. The taxi stand is empty. The lack of fuel has hit the strategic tourism sector, and the Madrid couple spends two hours waiting for a vehicle to take them to Old Havana.

“This is not how tourism can be recovered,” says the employee who manages the taxi stand. The man calls again and again on his mobile phone to the possible taxi drivers who relieve the long line that has been formed after the arrival of the European flight. But the answer he receives is almost the same: “I don’t have fuel.” After half an hour, a yellow Citröen arrives in front of the line of desperate travelers. “This is my last trip because what I have left of gasoline is not enough for another,” he says.

Several tourists hurry to get on the buses that will take them to Varadero and other resorts. “We are making the trips to leave the customers in the hotels but we have had to cut the excursions,” explains a driver who begins to read a list of British surnames to confirm the travelers he will take in his vehicle. “For almost a month we have only had fuel for transfers to and from the airport,” he emphasizes.

On the other side of the street, in the shadows, the drivers of several private vehicles load luggage into trunks and shout among themselves the coordinates to find fuel. “The Santa Catalina gas station has none; neither does Boyeros and Ayestarán although they told me that they saw a tank unloading an hour ago at the one on G and 25.” continue reading

The information, more valuable for filling the tank of the vehicle than the money itself, has created networks of solidarity among drivers who, in addition to spreading the word about where the supply has arrived, help each other in the lines in front of the gas station, which can last for days. “We are four taxi drivers and we take turns in line. The station that had fuel last week doesn’t have it anymore. We wouldn’t have a life if we had to be in line all the time,” explains a young man who rents a cab from the Taxi-Cuba Company.

“The tourists who arrive don’t know this, and some rent a car to go to the provinces; then they get stranded on the road because they can’t fill the tank,” the driver tells 14ymedio. “At first, passenger cars had priority, but if there is no gasoline, it doesn’t matter if you have priority. If there isn’t any there isn’t, and they can’t invent it.”

Marta and Manuel managed, after a long wait, to get into a vehicle on the way to a private rental house in the historic center of Havana. “Can we meet tomorrow for an excursion to the Zapata Swamp?” they inquired of the taxi driver. The payment proposal, an interesting amount of euros, would have been absolutely irresistible a few months ago, but the driver declines. “I can’t, this is the last gasoline I have left. Tomorrow I have to take care of getting more, and that will take me all day or all week.”

Rumors are circulating among taxi drivers that fuel problems will be solved on the 18th. In March, the British agency Reuters announced the shipment of oil from Venezuela that was going to be the largest in memory in a long time. The Nolan oil tanker, Panamanian-flagged and sanctioned by the United States, was in the Venezuelan port of San José loading 1.53 million barrels (400,000 barrels of oil and 1.13 of diesel), destined for Cuba.

Although the ship was supposed to arrive at the end of March, the shortage, visible at the Island’s gas stations, suggests that it arrived late or that the unloading has been slow. Radar positioned the Nolan for the last time off the coast of western Africa, but that was 111 days ago, and the sanctioned tankers travel with the transponder turned off to hide their location. The Venezuelan government opponent María Corina Machado said last week that the oil tanker was in the port of Antilla, in Holguín, according to a satellite application.

But the effects of the lack of fuel are not only noticed by tourists and Cubans who want to fill their tank. The blackouts are already back, and national television announced that a “complex” day is expected this Monday. Yesterday, Sunday, the deficit reached 368 megawatts (MW) at around 20:20, coinciding with peak time. Although the Unión Eléctrica de Cuba (UNE) assures that “this weekend it managed to meet the demand,” many Cubans have complained about more than three hours without power in different parts of the Island.

“Last night there was a blackout here from 10:27 pm until a little more than 1 am. I couldn’t rest well, and today we face the day to day to see how to survive,” lamented a woman from Cienfuegos. “I have just seen the list, and during the day there should be no problem, but in Remedios there is a deficit from 9 to 3 in the afternoon,” added another.

For today, UNE predicts a deficit of 200 MW, but 550 MW is expected to be missing at the peak. In its statement, the electricity monopoly speaks of a shortage in the distribution because of “failures and lack of maintenance,” correcting the information provided on television, which said that the lack of availability is due to “problems” in the distribution of fuel, which has not yet arrived.

“They don’t have oil because they don’t buy it, and they don’t pay for what they buy. Period.” says a user when reading the forecast for the day.

Meanwhile, the recovery work of the Antonio Guiteras de Matanzas thermoelectric plant continues after the accident that cost the lives of two people this Friday and injured two more when they were trapped by the collapse of a 23-foot high wall while cleaning the soot in the chimney of the plant. La Guiteras is the largest thermoelectric plant in the country, but last year it was out of service for more days than it produced energy.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuban Writer Jorge Fernandez Era Says He Was ‘Surrounded’ by the Political Police in Havana

The journalist and writer Jorge Fernández Era. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 7 April 2023 — On Friday, the Cuban writer and journalist Jorge Fernández Era offered a detailed account of the arrest he suffered the day before, for six hours, at the hands of the political police in Havana. In a text published on his Facebook page, he said that the ambush by the agents unleashed a wave of solidarity throughout the country and exposed the clumsiness of State Security.

Fernández Era reported that the harassment had begun on Thursday morning, when a series of “wrong number” calls to his home was intended to locate him. The explanation of that “check,” he says, had to do with the publication of a recent “column-caricature” he wrote in La Joven Cuba, which ridiculed the nomination of octogenarian candidates to the Cuban Parliament, in addition to an interview he gave to the filmmaker Ian Padrón.

At noon, when he left his house to go to El Vedado, he was intercepted by several motorcycle officers in the vicinity of San Indalecio and Rabí streets. He was on his way with his wife and a friend, and they told him to “stop walking.”

The agents — one of them identified himself as the head of sector of the Tamarindo neighborhood — demanded his identification and, when returning the documents, informed the writer that he was “surrounded.” Arrested and taken aboard one of the motorcycles, Fernández Era was transferred to the Aguilera police unit.

After crossing a “perfectly caged” staircase to the basement, he was forced to stand for 45 minutes. Then they took him to a closed room, where an agent — who said he wrote poetry “for years” — was in charge of “taking care of him” until he was received by Eivesgney Vilarte, “badge 10034, first lieutenant and second head of Crime Prosecution,” says Fernández Era. continue reading

There they read him a complaint for the crimes of “failure to offer assistance and disobedience” and tried to impose the payment of a fine of 3,000 pesos for “not responding to the two summons that I received previously.” The writer argued that he did not have to pay the required amount until a claim that he had filed on January 30, successively, with the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office, the General Military Prosecutor’s Office of the Ministry of the Interior and Counterintelligence was resolved.

In addition, he criticized the irregularities of the document containing his accusation, which also contained — “in violation of the Criminal Procedure Law, the Law of National Symbols and the Law of Military Secrecy” — sensitive information about another detainee outside his case.

Faced with his refusal, Vilarte indicated that a “precautionary measure of provisional detention” would be imposed on him. He was held for an hour and a half without being offered food or water. When he demanded that he be allowed to call his wife on the phone, the officers replied: “It won’t be necessary. You’re leaving now.”

Vilarte informed him, he says, that they had decided to replace the provisional detention with another precautionary measure: the “prohibition of leaving the country while the Municipal Prosecutor’s Office has not pronounced,” which would define his legal status. In the vicinity of the station, his wife and several friends were waiting for him; they had “planted” themselves until Fernández Era was released.

The writer’s post concludes with an “epilogue” where he thanks Professor Alina Bárbara Hernández, who demanded his release in the Matanzas Freedom Park, where she was “cowardly harassed by three agents,” he said. In addition, he recognized the thousands of people who protested on social networks against his “run-in” with State Security.

Finally, Fernández Era informed his captors that “neither the ban on leaving the Island, nor the provisional detention, nor the house arrest, nor the cash bail, nor the obligation to appear, nor prison” were going to silence him.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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