14ymedio

Because the Cuban State Doesn’t Pay Them, Cart Drivers Stop Picking up the Garbage

The motto of the “rebel” cart drivers is eloquent concerning their exhaustion. They simply want to “earn more and sweat less.” (Tiempo21)

14ymedio, Havana, 3 March 2023 — Every morning, a fleet of 101 carretoneros [cart drivers] tries to empty the rubbish dumps and sweep up the debris of Las Tunas. This small city in eastern Cuba, with fewer than 170,000 inhabitants, produces 1,172,447 cubic feet of garbage a month. The Communal Services regrets not having more pickups — 146 additional carts would be needed to begin a thorough cleaning of the city — but they are not willing to pay the drivers more or improve the terms of their contract.

The carretoneros collect 86.2% of the garbage from Las Tunas, according to the authorities. The rest should be transported in trucks, but the provincial deputy director of Hygiene and Death Registration — Raúl Martínez Rodríguez — the same official who revealed the poor state of the funeral transport in the area — says that they don’t work either.

The hygiene of the province depends on the self-employed cart drivers, who are now fed up with the Government’s non-payments, the exaggerated taxes on their annual profit and the lack of resources to keep their carts in good condition. This doesn’t even count the difficulty of the work, which involves handling waste without the slightest protection.

The motto of the “rebel” cart drivers is eloquent about their exhaustion. They simply want to “earn more and sweat less.” continue reading

“I walk all day full of grime, with the risk of getting sick, because among the waste there are many things that can hurt you, and they check your papers over and over again,” one of the workers, who has already found an alternative in the private sector, told the official press. “Now, hired, with a couple of good carts in the day, or throwing rubble from a construction site, I’m doing well,” he says.

Workers could find working conditions more bearable if at least the Government adequately compensated them for their work. On the contrary, state taxes and controls — they must deliver 15% of their annual income — increase every year and cause a stampede into private business.

The cost of the license also went up, and the procedure has become more complex, which complicates the incorporation of workers. In addition, keeping a horse alive and fit on the Island is an “impossible” task, complain the cart drivers, who must get grass, accessories, hardware and parts to repair the cart, in addition to constantly protecting the horse from the gangs of illegal slaughterers that abound in the Cuban countryside.

Often, the State offers these types of supplies for sale, in addition to gloves, boots and work clothes, but since the drivers are self-employed, the authorities do not give them the right to buy.

The phrase, “I stopped working for Comunales,” is heard today in Las Tunas and other cities in Cuba. It is pronounced with a tone of relief and taken as a sign of prosperity in the trade.

Local officials, subjected to the national bureaucracy, are slow to contain the stampede of their workforce. The law allows, in theory, the “ability to make changes,” on which the hygiene of Las Tunas depends. Deputy Director Martínez, however, justifies himself: “To the obvious problems of lack of resources, social indisciplines are constantly added,” he says.

Martínez does not escape the rhetoric with which the bureaucracy of Communal Services describes its problems, which the cart drivers no longer want to hear. He claims to be working on a “scaled” and “progressive” payment system, although he admits to relying on “animal traction” in the face of the low “availability coefficient” of trucks. The situation, the local press admits, is “unbearable,” and the lack of flexibility toward the self-employed will cause more losses in the coming months.

With great discretion, the regime’s newspapers have addressed the “garbage crisis” on the Island in recent weeks. “Here, 50% of the garbage that is generated daily is not collected,” said an official reporter, speaking about the municipality of Habana del Este. Also, 800 workers and nine trucks — with “breaks, lack of parts, tires and gear boxes” — do not cover the hygienic demands of the area.

Other “overcrowded” municipalities in the capital have to wait 15 days before the Communal Services come to do their job. The solution, the journalist argues, is not to improve working conditions but to activate, with more severity, the “former inspectors.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuba Sells ‘Most Expensive Cigar in the World’, at 400 Dollars Each

Collectors participating voraciously at the Habano Festival during the auctioning of cigar boxes, whose prices reach absurd levels if they carry Fidel Castro’s signature.

14ymedio, Havana, 2 March 2023 — Cohiba Behike cigars, flagship product of the Habanos SA company and self-proclaimed “most expensive cigars in the world”, are priced at 400 dollars a piece. The Island’s authorities are boasting about this fact in a frenetic campaign, launched this week in the official press to attract foreign clients to the twenty-third Habano Festival, which is being held until next Friday in the Cuban capital.

Behike, which has been the most expensive of all Cohiba cigars since 2010, was created in 1966 for Fidel Castro to lavish upon international visitors and diplomats. It encapsulates the vitolas — varieties — of BHK 52, BHK 54 and BHK 56, made in the Havana cigar factory El Laguito, using superior quality tobacco leaves from the villages of San Juan y Martínez and San Luis, in Pinar del Río — in an area known as Vueltabajo in the vernacular of the local tobacco farmers.

The particular mixture of leaves for acquiring the unique Behike taste and aroma is the El Laguito cigar makers’ “best kept secret”, which, along with the air of mystery that Castro tried to create around its fabrication, boosts this cigar’s price in both international stores and national shops — a fact which horrifies Cuban people.

As well as the usual presentation in lacquered boxes of ten cigars, Cuba makes Behike cigars with special wrapping which has an impact on the price, which the “aficionados with higher solvency” — a euphemism which the Prensa Latina news agency uses to describe the millionaires who attend the Festival — are able to pay.

During the week of the Festival at the Havana Conference Centre — the same space as used by the government for important meetings — the official press has even offered lists of the “best cigars” or the “best selling” ones. continue reading

Prensa Latina publishes a top ten which includes the various makes: Montecristo, Romeo y Julieta, Partagás and Cohiba – the latter of which continues to be the most prestigious on international markets. According to this list, the three best habanos in the world are: the Montecristo Number 4, the Romeo y Julieta Churchill and Cohiba’s Lancero. These three varieties are very well known and frequently appear in films, magazines and international catalogues.

At the Habano Festival, collectors participate voraciously in the auctioning of humidores — the cedar-wood boxes which regulate the humidity of the cigars, whose prices reach absurd levels if they carry Fidel Castro’s signature (he left behind hundreds of signed ones) or that of any celebrity.

As part of the sales campaign the official press associates the act of smoking habanos with historical figures such as Ernesto (’Che’) Guevara and Winston Churchill, scientists such as Albert Einstein, actors such as Robert DeNiro and Arnold Swarzenegger — “who, a few years ago visited Cuba practically in secret in order to smoke genuine habanos“, they claim — and even American presidents, including John Quincy Adams, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton.

Some 2,000 participants from 110 countries will spend their money in Havana in the week leading up to Friday — including millionaires and collectors (above all, Europeans and Arabs), leading cigar aficionados and politicians from all over the world. The important thing, affirms Prensa Latina, is to present all the visitors not only as aficionados of cigar culture, but as “a kind of army of Cuba lovers”.

The Cuban government invested five hundred and forty-five million dollars in the cigar industry in 2022, but the outlook for its producers, whose tobacco crop was destroyed by the passage of Hurricane Ian, does not auger well, in a sector which depends, above all, on the excellence of its premium raw materials.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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With Inflation Seven Times Higher Than the Wage Increase, Poverty is Spreading in Cuba

The high cost of living and low wages push more Cuban families below the poverty line. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 3 March 2023 — Prices increased in Cuba 4.5 times more than salaries according to official data, although if other sources that measure sales in the informal market are consulted, prices multiplied by seven. This is reflected in the increasingly visible poverty in families that do not receive remittances, the only guarantee of survival in the context of the deepest economic crisis of the last 70 years.

The data are extracted from an analysis by Cuban economist Pedro Monreal, who describes a “serious crisis of family consumption, a burden for economic growth and an ingredient of inequality and poverty,” in a series of messages on his Twitter account, with self-made graphs and data from the National Office of Information and Statistics (ONEI).

The official figures, however, must be carefully analyzed. The ONEI data show an evolution of the sales of goods and services from January 2021 to December 2022 that went from 39,913 million pesos ($1.597 billion) to 51,242 million pesos ($2.050 billion), a growth of 28.3% that is a mirage — a “softened” vision of reality, the economist calls it — since they are expressed in nominal terms; that is, the inflationary effect is not contemplated.

The two curves reflect an increase in nominal and real consumption in 2021, but the latter plummets throughout 2022. “An important explanatory factor is the different dynamics of wages and inflation,” explains Monreal. continue reading

In 2021, as part of the Ordering Task,* the Government made public the salary tables, which multiplied the existing salaries up to that time. The minimum wage rose to 2,100 pesos per month ($84) and the minimum pension to 1,528 ($61). It was the only variable, as Monreal recalls, that was in the hands of the State, because the prices were not, from the first moment.

Marino Murillo himself, designer of the reforms, said before the entry into force of the Ordering Task that the minimum wage was calculated from the estimated price for the basic basket: 1,300 pesos ($52). It had not been more than a few months when the now invisible official admitted that the cost was already around 3,000 pesos ($120).

The ineffectiveness of the measures was seen very early, but even at that time sales in real terms rose, reaching a peak at the end of the year of about 51 billion pesos ($2 billion). But in 2022 the debacle begins “with an official consumer price index that grew almost 4.5 times more than the average salary and that, when other sources are used, indicate a price increase 7 times higher than the salary increase,” says the economist.

The average monthly salary went from 1,194 Cuban pesos ($48) in 2020 to 3,830 ($160) in 2021 (221%), which allowed inflation to be cushioned in spite of everything. However, in 2022, it only grew by 8.1%, to 4,142 Cuban pesos ($153), remaining completely useless in the face of the dizzying increase in the cost of living.

At the end of 2022, the official rise in prices was 39%, although the most alarming thing was the rise in the cost of food, which rose to 62.9%. Even more serious is the fact that the accounts of the informal economy place the real inflation of the year at 140%, coupled with a devaluation of the Cuban peso against the dollar of -57.65%.

Pedro Monreal is categorical: “The continuation of a contraction of real sales of goods and services, or their stagnation, would not be compatible with economic growth. Household consumption is a crucial component of demand, representing approximately 57% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product).”

The economist, in addition, adds another enlightening number, which is that more than a million workers earn less than the average salary, “so it is plausible to assume that inflation has had a great negative impact on poverty and inequality in Cuba.”

Although there are no official poverty statistics on the Island, a report by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, based in Madrid, revealed last October that 72% of Cubans live below the poverty line. In addition, of those who said they have problems even buying the most essential things to survive, 27% receive remittances and 65% do not, consolidating the class difference in a country that made a Revolution to abolish inequality.

*Translator’s note: The Ordering Task 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.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Government Price Manipulations Bring Profitable Cuban Business to the Brink of Collapse

The company, often cited as one of the most efficient in Guantanamo, reported losses of up to 300 million pesos. (Facebook/Procesadora de Cafe Asdrubal Lopez)

14ymedio, Havana, 24 February 2023 — Guantanamo’s Asdrubal Lopez Processing Company is on the verge of collapse. Though often cited by the local press for being “one of the most efficient and profitable in the province,” on Friday the company reported losses of nearly 300 million pesos. The cause: selling its coffee on the domestic market for less than it costs to produce and an inequitable distribution of its export earnings.

Its general director, Osmel de la Cruz Cala, told the newspaper Venceremos that the company is one of twenty in Guantanamo that are reporting staggering losses. The critical turning point, he says, came in 2021, when it paid 96,000 pesos for a ton of robusta coffee beans but sold them for only 46,000. Company profits had to be used to cover the 50,000-peso deficit.

The situation improved slightly in 2022, when sales figures reached 70,000 pesos. But the amount it paid to growers also increased to 102,000 pesos a ton. Though not as bad as in 2021, the total loss was 32,000 pesos.

De la Cruz points out, however, that losses cannot be attributed solely to the price the company gets. When operating costs are added in, the figure easily climbs to 52,000 peos. For example, the company must cover the cost of getting its coffee from Guantanamo to Havana. “You have to add in another 20,000 pesos for processing, transportation and labor,” he says. continue reading

The local growers who supply the company work in the Nipe-Sagua-Baracoa area, a mountainous micro-region between Guantanamo and Holguin provinces, as well as around the Holguin town of Sagua de Tanamo. More than half the coffee is of the robusta variety, a more bitter type, which is mixed with chicory and sold under the brand name Hola. Popularly known as cafetín, it is available to Cuban consumers through the rationing system. Coffee marketed under its other brands — Alto Serra, Serrano and Caracolillo — is produced for export.

De la Cruz pointed out that 497 of the 2,300 tons processed from the last harvest were destined for export, where prices turned out to be higher than anticipated. “The country came out ahead,” he noted.

The company paid 228,000 pesos per ton for arabica beans, which are fruitier and more prized on the world market than robusta, and was able to sell them for 5,000 dollars a ton. However, it then encountered problems due to the devaluation of the Cuban currency. At the new official exchange rate of 24 pesos to the dollar, the sale price fell to 120,000 pesos a ton.

De la Cruz told Venceremos that a solution was worked out at the end of last year which allows the company to sell its coffee at a higher price in the country’s hard currency stores. “We negotiated a price of 250,000 pesos to avoid the first loss we would have had since the start of currency unification. We will earn 4 million pesos, which is still not enough but at least it will allow us to reduce our losses to 118 million,” he explained.

The company would have to earn enough from sales to compensate for its losses, explained De la Cruz. “We would [also] have to match what we sell domestically with what we sell for export,” he added, without going into details. This would entail either reducing the wholesale price paid by the company or raising the retail price paid by consumers.

Despite its losses, Asdrubal Lopez remains the country’s top coffee exporter. In 2020 the Cuban government reported that Europe, Asia and Oceania are its “regular customers.” Its beans have also received certificates of quality, allowing its coffee to be sold in specialty markets, where the prices are higher than the normal rate it would get through the Contract C commodity index, an international group of nineteen coffee producing countries.

To reduce the deficit, De la Cruz proposes changing the official exchange rate for businesses from 24 pesos to the dollar to the rate for individuals of 120 pesos to the dollar. This modification would have allowed the company to collect 600,000 pesos for the 5,000 dollars it earned from imports instead of the 120,000 it received. This would have made up for the company’s losses in the domestic market, which are unavoidable given the government-mandated prices it must charge.

When interviewed by a local newspaper, Yunier Oliva Batista, provincial director of Economy and Planning, said he believes one solution would be to set a floating exchange rate of 85 pesos to the dollar — three times higher than the company’s proposal — in order to increase the profitability of exports.

De la Cruz said he beleived that the company’s “greatest suffering” is yet to come and that its financial crisis “is already taking its toll on us.” He explained that potential investors in three foreign capital projects are reviewing the company’s financial statements before agreeing to partner with it. “They don’t understand intentional losses,” he said.

The bank is also tightening the rope. He points out that it cannot honor the company’s debts until the Finance Ministry deposits the money. In the meantime, the company must pay the bank higher installment fees. As of January, Asdrubal Lopez had paid 1.1 million pesos in interest alone.

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The Enemies of Capitalism Enjoy Themselves at the Cigar Festival

Miguel Díaz-Canel was satisfied at the inauguration of the cigar festival. (Cuba Presidency)

14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 4 March 2023 — Don’t let the party stop! We’ll see later how everything is paid for. It seems like a lie. Those who have cemented a political and ideological system against free enterprise, the market, profitability and obtaining profits, do not skimp on expenses as soon as they have the opportunity to share with their hated capitalists. This time it has been shameless.

The cigar festival presented numerous examples of that double standard of Cuban Castroism. Just a hundred feet away from the luxurious hotels where the festival events such as auctions, prizes, gala dinners, concerts, etc. were held, the Cuban people suffered from the lines, blackouts, crumbling streets, uncollected garbage and other problems. It was a metaphor for the most reactionary communist system in the world that has survived for 64 years. Incredible.

The festival not only confirmed that the embargo/blockade doesn’t exist when Cuba has a competitive product and global demand, but that the splurges and ostentation of the most extreme capitalism passed like a hurricane of creative destruction through the festival organized by the communists, who had a great time with their capitalist friends.

Surprisingly, the state press published a report that offered a good idea of the dimension of the stipend. An auction of humidors to store cigars from the festival raised the record figure of 11,220,000 euros, which, according to reports, will be allocated to the Cuban public health system. We would have to ask the Comptroller General if that is true and see if it really ends up happening. It’s a lot of money, of course. continue reading

Díaz Canel attended the auction — it is not well known in what form and on what terms, but there at Pabexpo the closing of the festival was just as (or more) spectacular than the inauguration. The communist leaders wanted to have fun after two years. Five days passed in which the regime spared no expense to satisfy international lovers of the appreciated cigars, but the lines for cooking oil remain just as long, and the blackouts continue to strike like lightning. In other words, a festival like this doesn’t change the lamentable living conditions of the Cuban people.

The auction is a metaphor for how far the regime devised by Fidel Castro 64 years ago has come. According to the state press, numerous bettors participated who, in an estimated figure of a thousand attendees, witnessed the bids in euros for six lots of the most exquisite cigars of the Upmann, Hoyo de Monterrey, Montecristo, Romeo and Julieta, Partagás and Cohiba brands. Not even in the times of the great Onassis have things this tremendous been seen.

There were also awards for the best stands at the trade fair organized during the cigar festival in a ceremony at the convention palace. The awards and special mentions for the stands, which, of course, came out of the Cuban state budget, were divided into four categories: most visited, free design, modular design and integral communication. In addition, recognition was given to the novelty of the product of the Ron Legendario Special Reservation stand. A lot of people had to be rewarded so that everyone was happy, at colossal expense.

Comercial Iberoamericana SA won the awards for the most visited stand, free design and integral communication. Free design special mentions were given to Guayaberas Cohiba Atmosphere and Brascuba SA. The modular design award went to La Estancia SA, while Havana Club International SA received the special mention of integral communication.

In addition, the Cats of Greece, the team made up of Antonis Pasparakis and Efthimios Karachristianidis, defeated Sanel Haddad and Hassan Tameemi, the Falcons of Kuwait, in the final of the fourth edition of the Habanos World Challenge, held at the palace of conventions, which also came out of the Cuban state coffers (because Habanos is the same, let no one doubt it, when it comes to paying).

And then came the gala dinner with musical performance included (plus expenses on the State’s account) with the presence of former Prime Minister Marrero, well known for his culinary faculties. The Partagás brand was honored, and it presented its new Master Line made up of three cigar band signatures: Origin, Rite and Master.

The best tribute that the communist regime could make to Partagás would be to return the company to its legitimate heirs and compensate them for the confiscation carried out in the early 1960s. But no one talked about that, not even some Catalan businessmen who attended the event, and who were unaware that Jaume Partagás was their fellow countryman. Many years have passed in favor of the communist regime, so we have to take advantage of these occasions to remember and convey the truth so that future generations know the magnitude of the horror.

With the end of the festival, the regime’s commercial economic consortium gave the order to start the sale of Cuban cigars worldwide. Habanos S.A., euphoric about the success of the product last year, wants to increase sales, and even though production has been lower than expected because the farmers prefer to grow beans since they can charge more than for the tobacco leaf, Habanos is confident about increasing the price of a luxury product that increasingly has as users the profile of those great fortunes in the world that the Castro regime considers as enemies. That’s life.

In addition to the awards, auctions and gala dinners with live musical performances, the cigar festival hosted presentations of new cigars, the International Seminar, visits to tobacco plantations, tours of the Partagás and La Corona factories and the traditional trade fair. All this was financed, partly by the attendees, but with the secure and necessary collaboration of the regime, with a high-scale marketing budget. Knowing how much that necessary cooperation of the regime received from the empty coffers of the communist state would be convenient for responsibility and transparency. Nobody believes that this type of party happens for free.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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A Wave of Bedbugs Invades Santiago de Cuba’s Schools, Hospitals, and Prisons

Smiles to the World Day Care, in Santiago de Cuba. (Facebook/Provincial Directorate of Public Health)

14ymedio, Francisco Herodes Díaz Echemendía, Santiago de Cuba, 28 February 2023 — A source close to the health centers assured 14ymedio that the plague mainly affects the Materno Norte Tamara Bunke and Infantil Sur hospitals, traditionally known as La Colonia Española, and community polyclinics 28 de Septiembre and Camilo Torres Restrepo.

The epidemic is also found at the Rafael María Mendive Basic Secondary School facilities and the one at the Altamira neighborhood. There are also reports of concentrations of the insect at the Mar Verde prison, where overcrowded conditions enable the spread of diseases among inmates.

Without clearly confirming the presence of the epidemic, Santiago de Cuba’s Provincial Health Directorate published this Sunday on social networks that there had been an “exchange” with parents and educators of the Sonrisas al Mundo Child Care Center to discuss hygiene and sanitary measures in the fight against dengue and bedbugs, as well as to “avoid accidents.”

In the informal market, however, fipronil, a broad-spectrum insecticide, sells for more than 20 pesos per milliliter

While bed bugs spread throughout the province, state pharmacies do not have medications to combat the plague. In the informal market, however, fipronil, a broad-spectrum insecticide, sells for more than 20 pesos per milliliter. This price makes combating the insect more expensive since, in order to eradicate it, surfaces need to be fumigated repeatedly with a solution of the product. continue reading

At the beginning of February, Diario de Cuba published the case of the closure of the Otto Parellada Basic Secondary School for fumigation work due to an outbreak of bedbugs. In that case, a teacher complained about the precarious conditions in the classrooms, lacking mops, chlorine, disinfectant or water in the restrooms. There is also a lack of soap or medications for students.

Bed bugs look for small cracks in homes in order to hide, especially preferring bed mattresses. Their spread is rapid and resistant to extreme weather conditions, so in a matter of days they can infest an entire home, school or even hospitals that should have strict cleaning controls to prevent illnesses among patients.

In 2021, in the midst of the Covid-19 health emergency, Santiago de Cuba was on alert for outbreaks of scabies and lice, while in 2022 the province registered figures not seen in 15 years in dengue outbreaks due to the lack of resources to combat the breeding sites of the Aedes Aegypti mosquito.

Alfredo Cintra Guerra, responsible for surveillance and vector control in Santiago de Cuba, acknowledged last year that little can be done to control the spread of dengue due to the scarcity of resources, mainly the insecticide Abate to distribute among homes, and fuel to travel to see patients or fumigate the areas with the highest rates of infection.

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Maintenance Facilities in Cuba Financed by French Agency to Service Chinese Locomotives

After running for several years with Chinese-made passenger cars, Cuban trains will now also get new Chinese locomotives. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Madrid, 28 February 2023 — Though the Cuban Railway Union (UFC) has eighty-one Chinese locomotives in its fleet, only twenty-five are currently operable. The rest are out of service, in need of maintenance and repair. This information appears to have been buried near the end of an article in the Communist Party newspaper Granma. Though schemes to modernize Cuban rail transport have been announced any number of times, they have never amounted to much.

This time around the focus is to be on repair and maintenance facilities. In fact, the change is being driven by the needs of Chinese-made locomotives themselves. “It’s a technology with different characteristics than what existed before,” says Enrique Valdes Abreu, who heads the project, which began in March 2022 with the support of the French Agency for Development (AFD).

The organization, which has been active in Cuba since 2016, has five projects in the works. These involve promotion of rural development, improvement of water and sanitation services, promotion of renewable energy and modernization of public health and transport infrastructure. Its investment in all these areas to date approaches 16.2 million euros.

Previous attempts to modernize the Cuban railway system relied on large investments from Russia and China. Russia withdrew its support for one of the projects in late 2020, however, due to repeated breaches of contract by the Cuban side. On Monday, Granma reported another Russian investment deal is in the works, with Sinara Transport Machines, to repair the Chinese-made locomotives in Havana’s Cienaga workshop. continue reading

Valdes Abreu said that progress has already been made on the structural component and that part of the technological component is now in the country.

In October 2022, the UFC and Chinese Beijing Fanglian Technology signed “two letters of intent” for the gradual restoration of some of the railway’s infrastructure, an agreement that prioritized an overhaul of repair and maintenance facilities.

In even more pressing need of modernization are the Luyanó facilities (in Havana’s Tenth of October district), which were damaged by fire in December, and the San Luis facilities (in Santiago de Cuba). Both were built in the 1970s and are in serious states of disrepair, as might be expected of infrastructure built half a century ago that has not been well-maintained.

It was necessary in the case of the Havana location, says Valdes Abreu, to do a complete overhaul of the maintenance warehouse, including the building structure and lighting system. The first Chinese locomotives to arrive were the initial delivery of what will eventually total 240 machines. According to the director, the installation must be retooled to allow five trains a day to depart for the country’s interior.

A new 200-meter warehouse will be built in Luyanó to provide technology maintenance. AFD will be in charge of mitigating the impacts of pollution produced by the plant’s operations. It will rely on water treatment equipment, some of which has already been installed, to clean wastewater for reuse. The plant will also have solar panels capable able of supplying the entire facility as well as providing energy to the National Electric System.

Another new warehouse is to be built to consolidate operations currently scattered across different sites. Meanwhile, areas now in poor condition will be demolished once all their reusable materials have been salvaged.

One focus of the project will be training workers, who will have to become familiar with the manufacturer’s new technology. Valdes Abreu points out that this will create new job opportunities for transportation engineers and railroad technicians at a time when the country is finding it hard to retain talent due to low public-sector wages and poor living conditions, factors which have led certified young people to seek opportunities abroad.

The San Luis operation will also handle maintenance of the Chinese locomotives, which requires different levels of specialization. Since the current structural conditions are already optimal at this facility, new contruction is not required, a factor that will reduce investment costs.

As proposed by AFD, the plant — located in eastern Cuba — will begin operations under a pilot program. The French agency favors adopting a gradual approach, starting with the facility that has made the most progress towards modernization.

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The Embargo/Blockade and Cuba’s Cigar Festival

Havana. Source: Cuba Before Castro – Odalys Ruiz

14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 28 February 2023 — For all those who do not believe the story of the embargo/blockade and who are bored with all the pitiful complaints by the Cuban communist leaders, I recommend a visit to the 23rd edition of the Cigar Festival that is being held in Havana. It has nothing to do with an embargoed country. Quite the contrary. In addition, business is going smoothly.

At a press conference, data were offered from the productive and commercial monopoly consortium of Cuban tobacco, the so-called Habanos SA, the golden retirement of Murillo,* which generated revenues in 2022 of 545 million dollars, 2% more than the previous year.

The multinational extension of the regime’s monopoly corporation is spectacular, since it has 4,769 specialized points of sale (157 Habano, 17 Cohiba Atmosphere, 587 Habanos Terrace, 2,744 Habanos Point and 1,264 Habanos Specialist), with a growth of 10% more than in 2021. Who would have thought? Despite the campaigns, Cuban tobacco consumption continues to increase. The festival has invited 140 specialized journalists from 20 countries around the world. Who said that the Castro government doesn’t know about marketing?

Someone could misinterpret this initial tone, but it’s not my intention. The point is that anywhere Cuba has a competitive product in world markets, which sells well, at good prices, which catches investors and tobacco smokers who come to enjoy cigarettes and order their purchases, the ’blockade’ simply does not exist. It’s not even mentioned. I looked in the communist state press that covers the Havana event to see if there was any statement against the embargo/blockade by the leaders who attended. Nothing. Don’t even bother looking. It’s something for Cuba’s high society, in the most stale style of millionaires and speculators. Let them enjoy themselves, Murillo included. continue reading

The state press pursued Díaz Canel and Murillo at the inauguration in the Cuban capital of the twenty-third cigar festival that, in order to spare no expense, will go on until next Saturday, March 4. A week to enjoy, at the expense of Habanos SA and the regime, the excellence of the best product of the Island since colonial times.

Along with white gold [sugar], Cuba was internationally recognized for the quality of its tobacco from the first tobacco planters of my beloved and never forgotten Santiago de las Vegas, a municipality that stood up to the cigar stores of the metropolis, to the painstaking growers of the Vuelta Bajo region in Pinar del Río. The cigar business has survived the revolution amazingly well, and there it continues, on its feet, demonstrating what Cuba can and could do in many other areas of commerce.

So in the most triumphant tone one can imagine and with the whining far away, Díaz Canel and Murillo dedicated themselves to public relations, and at the press conference at the Palacio de Convenciones, they recreated themselves with the economic results of the Habanos SA monopoly and presented the company’s management balance sheet for 2022 with great fanfare. Some discovered a Murillo who was much more relaxed than in the time of the Ordering Task.** It’s what the elite do far from the spotlight.

As it is not an embargoed, blockaded, or besieged nation, there at the press conference the world was informed from Cuba that Spain, France, Germany, China and Switzerland were the five main markets for the cigars last year. How good it would have been to include the United States. The leaders limited themselves to saying that only the order of the nations had changed with respect to 2021. Not a reference to the northern neighbor. Neither good nor bad.

Among the activities of the festival, in addition to the visit of businessmen and tycoons from half the world, who arrive in their private jets to the besieged Island and stay in the new hotels with astronomical prices, visits to Habana factories and tobacco plantations were scheduled in the western province of Pinar del Río as the state press says, and I admit, “internationally recognized as the land of the best tobacco in the world.”

Also in that framework of a besieged and embargoed nation, the state monopoly presented the novelties of the event, basically the launches of the Montecristo Open, Bolívar New Gold Medal and Master Line (banded) products. Innovation continues to be a fundamental element of the creativity of Cuban tobacco merchants, which makes you wonder what this sector could be like if there were no communist economic model governing the destinies of the economy and the nation.

Malmierca, minister of foreign trade and foreign investment, also walked through the festival and ended up destroying the argument of the embargo/blockade by reporting at the press conference that the fair has 2,000 attendees from 110 countries, 250 exhibitors from 10 other countries and 6,459 square feet of exhibition space. Figures like these would not be possible in an embargoed country.

Malmierca welcomed exhibitors from Italy, Hungary, Spain, Panama, Mexico, Costa Rica, Canada, Ecuador and China, including Cuban exhibitors. Of the 70 stands at the fair, 59 are Cuban, who, as Malmierca said, “show the varied offers of our country in the field of crafts, cultural and musical production, fashion, tourism, gastronomy and also everything related to cigars.”

Malmierca pointed out that “this trade fair will be an ideal framework for technical and commercial exchanges between companies, suppliers and the public that will be able to have access to the exhibition,” but those exchanges will be only for certain companies, basically the state ones, those that live within the regime.

I wish that the exchanges would serve Cuban private companies, guided by the motive of profit and profitability, but the regime’s internal blockade is another thing, the worst of all.

Translated by Regina Anavy

Translator’s notes:

*Marino Murillo is the Former Minister of Economy and Planning.
**The Ordering Task 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.
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Mexico Continues to Arrest Cubans with Humanitarian ‘Parole’ and Lock Them Up in Immigration Centers

Yudith Mandina, Roberto Mario and Roberto Montero have been detained in Mexico since February 16. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Mexico, 27 February 2023 — Cubans Yudith Mandina, Roberto Montero and their son Roberto Mario have been detained at the Acayucan immigration station (Veracruz) since February 16. According to a relative, Niurka Almeida, they were taken off the bus in which they were traveling despite having proof of U.S. humanitarian parole. “There is no reason for their arrest,” he said.

Almeida told Telemundo51 that his relatives were unable to board a flight from Cancun to the U.S. due to “an inconvenience in the issuance of their travel authorization.” To resolve this situation, they traveled by bus to the headquarters of the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, but on the way were taken off the bus by Migration agents without being told the reason.

After two days without knowing about the Montero Mandinas, the relative hired an attorney, who secured an injunction to request their release. “Since Friday, we have been trying with the lawyer, but they told him on Sunday that it would take until Monday” before their situation would be defined. “They already know that the parole is real, but nothing happens and they are still imprisoned.”

A source from the immigration station told 14ymedio that the Cubans “are not detained” and that the “internment” in Acayucan is due to the fact that they “do not have a safe-conduct pass,” he said. However he refused to answer why Island nationals who have a U.S. humanitarian permit are being arrested and why it’s necessary for these migrants to have a safe-conduct pass. continue reading

Article 111 of the Migration Law establishes that the National Institute of Migration cannot detain an irregular migrant for more than 15 working days.

On the same day that this family was arrested in Veracruz, more than 355 miles away at the Mexico City International Airport, seven Cubans were forced to get off the plane that made a stopover before flying to the U.S. One of them, Dachel, informed his mother by phone that he and his travel companions Yida and Amehd were arrested and transferred to the station known as Las Agujas.

Mexican agents told Yida that they “didn’t know” about the benefit of parole and weren’t aware of “sponsorship or the flight permit or anything.” During their stay, a lawyer offered to release them in exchange for $5,000, arguing that at least one of the young women had false documents. After four days of uncertainty they were released.

Dachel specified that of the seven detainees, three, who apparently were a family, were taken to another place, and he did not know anything more about them. Luis Ángel Sánchez and Noelvis La O Pereira were also in the group and are still detained in Las Agujas. Both have humanitarian parole and safe-conduct passes.

Luis Ángel’s father, Luciano Sánchez, said that his son is desperate, has been “attacked” and “has a sore throat.” He said that an acquaintance of Noelvis’ family, another detainee, went to Las Agujas, but “they denied him information” because his surnames did not match any of the detainees.

In an attempt to free these Cubans, the relatives have shared videos requesting the intervention of the Government of Mexico, which have so far not been heard.

This Sunday Migration reported the arrest of a bus with 116 migrants on the road from Puebla to Mexico City. Among the detainees were people from Cuba, Venezuela, Honduras, Ecuador, Brazil, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti and El Salvador. This group was transferred to Acayucan.

In Florida, this Sunday the U.S. Coast Guard repatriated 64 rafters to the Island aboard the ship Isaac Mayo. According to the Cuban Ministry of the Interior, 2,431 Cubans have already been expelled so far this year.

This new group of irregular migrants – made up of 52 men, 11 women and one minor – were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard at sea and returned to Cuba through the port of Orozco, in the province of Artemisa.

Two of these migrants who returned on Sunday are now subject to an investigation “for being alleged perpetrators of serious criminal acts, which were investigated prior to their departure.”

The majority of the group are residents of the provinces of Havana, Matanzas and Granma, and they have participated in five illegal exits from Cuba. The previous week, the U.S. Government deported another 98 rafters in three returns.

Since last October 1, the Coast Guard crews have arrested more than 5,740 Cubans.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Remittances Can Now be Sent to Cuba from all Western Union Offices in the United States

One of Western Union’s offices in Florida that sent remittances to Cuba in January. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 2 March 2023 — The U.S. company Western Union announced on Thursday that it is now possible to send remittances to Cuba from any of its U.S. offices. The company, which had carried out a pilot test of transfers to the Island only from Florida, will use the payment channels of the Cuban agency Orbit S.A., which means that Cubans will receive their money in freely convertible currency (MLC) directly in their bank account.

Western Union had launched a test phase last January 4, to evaluate the possibility of extending transactions to the Island from the entire United States. With the mediation of Orbit — an agency based in Havana that allows the Cuban Government to audit remittances and transform them into MLC — Cubans will receive the amount sent loaded onto the currency cards of Banco Popular de Ahorro, Banco de Crédito y Comercio and Banco Metropolitano.

The brief note published in this regard by the official press assures that Orbit “will keep the population informed about the official channels that it is incorporating into its management.” continue reading

According to Cubadebate, Orbit successfully managed remittances from Europe and Canada. It clarifies that Western Union transfers are a “legitimate activity” that has been working for Cuba since 1995. It was stopped when Donald Trump sanctioned the processors Fincimex and AIS for their links with Gaesa, the Cuban military conglomerate then led by Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, Raúl Castro’s son-in-law, who died in 2022.

With the flexibility of the Biden Administration for sending remittances, the company activated its pilot test from supermarkets, pharmacies, small shops, cafes, telephone stores and travel agencies in 65 locations in Florida.

At the beginning of 2023, the president of the North American division of Western Union, Gabriella Fitzgerald, announced “with great pleasure” the reestablishment of service and stated that the funds could arrive on the Island the same day if they were sent before noon.

The readers of Cubadebate found the announcement of Orbit and Western Union ambiguous and demanded more details from both companies. It’s “the same as now,” a reader said with disappointment, alluding to the fact that the cash deposited in the United States would be transformed into MLC as soon as it reached the Island’s bank accounts.

The announcement has also raised suspicions about the usefulness of receiving money in MLC, when stores where that only take payment through the cards face a growing shortage of products.

“The information must be more complete,” demanded the readers, who are also not satisfied with the fact that the cash dollar does not reach Cuban households, as was done in the past. Others, mockingly, affirmed that the news “does not give or take anything away from Cubans, on the contrary.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Cuban State Receives 545 Million Dollars for Cigars While the Producers Are Ruined

Miguel Díaz-Canel was satisfied this Monday at the inauguration of the cigar festival, which has 59 Cuban exhibitors linked to that industry. (Cuba Presidency)

14ymedio, Madrid, February 28, 2023 — The Festival of the Cigar was inaugurated this Monday in the Cuban capital with the presence of Miguel Díaz-Canel, who had the peace of mind of being present at one of the few sectors that can boast good figures in Cuba.

The company, Habanos S.A., took the opportunity to show its 2022 revenues, which improved by 2% over the previous year, and totaled 545 million dollars. At today’s exchange that would be 578 million dollars, ten million more than in 2021. Last year, revenues had already grown by 15% compared to 2020, which shows the good health of a product designed exclusively for the foreign sector.

According to the information offered by the company, Spain, France, Germany, China and Switzerland are Habano’s main buyers and consolidate the European market as the first recipient, with 53.7%. It is followed by the Asia-Pacific region, with 19.3%, America (15.3%) and Africa and the Middle East (11.7%).

“These results are the reflection of the perfect combination between the passion that all of us who make up this wonderful Habano business feel and the strength of our brands, which puts the finishing touch on the unique tobacco that grows in this land and that offers unparalleled moments and experiences to fans around the world,” said its presidents Luis Sánchez-Harguindey Pardo de Vera and Maritza Carrillo González, whose appointment took place just a week ago. continue reading

The managers held a press conference on Monday in which they presented all kinds of details about the brands, products and points of sale in the world, which already amount to 4,769, almost 10% more than in 2021. They also commented on the main activities of the fair.

At the inauguration was the Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, Rodrigo Malmierca, who explained that there are 250 exhibitors from 10 countries (Italy, Hungary, Spain, Panama, Mexico, Costa Rica, Canada, Ecuador and China) in the 6,458 square feet of the exhibition.

“This trade fair will be an ideal framework for technical and commercial exchanges between companies, suppliers and the public who will be able to have access to the exhibition,” Malmierca said. The minister added that 59 of the 70 stalls at the fair are Cuban and show “the varied offer of our country in the field of crafts, cultural and musical production, fashion, tourism, gastronomy and everything related to cigars.”

But the news was not received with the same enthusiasm by the population. None of the readers of the official press who have commented on the information so far has celebrated the figures, and the vast majority ask that the income be used for the needs of Cubans.

“I would like a percentage of that money to be allocated to the purchase of medicines,” one user asks. “How many everyday problems of ordinary Cubans could be solved with that income?” another continues.

Another reader wonders about the real benefits once the expenses are deducted – “What were the expenses they incurred? That’s what says how profitable it is, economically speaking” – and one more wonders if there are more beneficiaries than the State: “The result is income less expenses. We will have to see what it is and if we don’t have to share part with a foreign partner. It is a ‘Anonymous Company.’ Who is it?”

There are also those who are concerned about the impact on health of tobacco consumption and a user who welcomes with prudent optimism a news that he considers good, but without falling into complacency. “Whatever profits the country is welcome, but don’t forget that we are an underdeveloped country, with a poor economy and also blockaded, and all sectors need oxygen,” he claims.

Among the readers, one points out in disbelief that this is the “more-than-justified moment to compensate tobacco producers in Pinar del Río for their losses in the hurricane.”

Hurricane Ian’s passage in September 2022 devastated 90% of the tobacco warehouses in Pinar del Río, where the leaf is obtained for the prestigious cigars. Tobacco producers told the foreign press that it may take “between eight and ten years” for the province, which produces 65% of the country’s tobacco, to recover.

The Cuban economist residing in Spain, Elías Amor, has analyzed in his blog Cubaeconomía the data and the Festival, which he considers “an event of Castro’s high society, in the most stale style of millionaires and speculators.” The expert points out as a miracle that the tobacco industry has “survived the Revolution” and emphasizes that this demonstrates “what Cuba can and could do in many other areas of trade.”

However, he believes that none of this will benefit the population. “I wish that the exchanges would serve Cuban private companies, guided by the motive of profit and profitability, but the internal blockade of the regime is something else. The worst of all possible things.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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‘We Young People Have to Leave the Deception That is Cuba,’ Says a Camagueyan Acccepted in the US

Oilime Esquivel spent several days at the US border in Matamoros. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 2 March 2023 — On one side of the Rio Grande, dozens of migrants set up an improvised camp from where they wait for a response to the request they made through the CBP One digital platform. Among them was Oilime Esquivel, who had arrived in the US only a few hours earlier when he applied for asylum.

“We young people have to leave the deception that is Cuba”, says this native of Camagüey to “Young people have to get out of the deception that is Cuba,” says this native of Camagüey speaking on video to Ricardo Quintana, a journalist for Radio and Television Marti. “Necessity forces us… Imagine that in Cuba you may have a family member to help you, but you have nowhere to buy food. There isn’t any,” he laments.

Esquivel left the Island and undertook the journey as thousands have done, on foot through Guyana. His route took him through Brazil, Uruguay, the Darién, the dangerous border between Panama and Colombia, where 45,727 irregular migrants have crossed to North America so far in 2023, according to official Panamanian figures.

“Migration in Cuba is not going to stop, it will always exist,” laments Esquivel from inside his “house,” a blanket, some sheets with nylon and cardboard that are held up with tree branches. “In winter it is terrible. You make your sacrifice but everything is for the well-being of the family,” he says, because on the Island “you just can’t go on.” continue reading

Emigrating “is what we can do and now that we are young we can leave the deception of Cuba,” says Oilime while showing the cans of food that they have given him in the churches: “Thanks to this I am eating.” In bags there are some shoes and clothes. Esquivel says that in Tapachula, there are many Cubans waiting for a permit to reach the southern border of the United States.

Others, such as Yudith Mandina, Roberto Montero and their son Roberto Mario remain detained at the Acayucan immigration station, in the Mexican state of Veracruz, despite having humanitarian parole from the US. Two others also have US permission and a Mexican safe-conduct, Luis Ángel Sánchez and Noelvis La O Pereira, and are in Las Agujas. Luis Ángel’s father, Luciano Sánchez, denounced that they demand 5,000 dollars each for their release

Meanwhile, as of Wednesday, Costa Rica has available the Temporary Special Category for Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans, for those who have the refugee process pending and those who were denied it. With this, people “will be able to carry out any paid work activity on their own account or dependency relationship, as well as being able to leave the country at the time they decide,” highlights the General Directorate of Migration and Immigration of the Central American country.

The agency specified that it will review the criminal and police records of the applicants, as an additional requirement to be granted that category.

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Remembering the Cuban Dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Who Died on a Hunger Strike in Prison

Orlando Zapata Tamayo was the first opposition member to die in a Cuban prison due to a hunger strike since 1972, when Pedro Luis Boitel died. (EFE)

EFE (via 14ymedio), Miami, 23 February 2023 — The mother of Orlando Zapata Tamayo — a Cuban prisoner of conscience who died in 2010 while on a hunger strike to demand more human conditions of imprisonment — demanded ’justice’ for her son this Thursday, 13 years after his death.

“Thirteen years later, we are fighting here and always asking for justice, always justice, that justice sometimes takes time, but it has to come for those murderers,” said Reina Luisa Tamayo from Kentucky (USA), where she now lives, in a statement to Radio Marti.

The death of Zapata, a 45-year-old bricklayer active in the dissidence, had great international repercussions, since he was officially the first opposition member to die in a Cuban jail due to a hunger strike since 1972, when Pedro Luis Boitel died.

Zapata was detained during the Black Spring of 2003, but was not included in the summary trials of the Group of 75, accused of conspiring with the United States to “undermine the independence and sovereignty” of Cuba. Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience at the time.

On December 3, 2009, he stopped eating food to protest against the abuses and he died on February 23, 2010, after 86 days of fasting.

For his mother, one of the Ladies in White, the organization that demonstrates every Sunday in Cuba to demand the release of political prisoners, the death of her son was a “murder.” continue reading

“They murdered him because they could not break him, just as they could not break other brothers like Oswaldo Payá, Harold Cepero, the Lady in White Laura Pollán. Since they could not break him, they murdered him. This suffering has not been easy,” she stressed.

Tamayo told Radio Martí that hhers son was initially charged with contempt, public disorder, and disobedience and was sentenced to three years in prison, after which new charges were imposed. When he died he was facing 36 years in prison, his mother said.

“Thanks to all those who commemorate and always remember my son, Orlando Zapata will always live,” she said.

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The Debate on ‘The Padilla Case’ Was the Main Cuban Cultural Event in February

Covers of the books ’Don’t talk to me about Cuba’, ’Patriots and Traitors in Revolutionary Cuba’ and ’From Red Terror to the Mafia State’, published or translated by Cubans. (Collage)

14ymedio, Havana, 28 February 2023 — Two events marked the discussions on Cuban literature this February: the Havana International Book Fair and the controversy over the documentary El caso Padilla (2022) [The Padilla Case], by Pavel Giroud. Cuban authors, editors and translators also dealt with issues such as the return to the Island from exile and the Soviet imprint on the current Russian mafia.

Like a “cursed return” is how Grethel Delgado described the story told by her novel Do not talk to me about Cuba (Suburbano). 14ymedio published the first chapter [link is in Spanish]. That return “without any patriotic concept” to “see those she left behind” imprints “very bitter taste” on the narrator, along with regret for having made a too painful a journey to her roots.

The detective novel Asesinato en el Bosque de La Habana (Atlantis) [Murder in the Havana Forest], by Rigoberto Menéndez, deals with the Arab, Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian communities in Cuba in 1940. In the words of its author, the text uses a crime to investigate a “cosmopolitan, plural Havana, inhabited by immigrants from all latitudes.”

With Patriots and Traitors in Revolutionary Cuba 1961-1981 (Pittsburgh Press), published in English, University of Florida professor Lillian Guerra examines “the structures of hegemony and control” with which Fidel Castro secured his power in the early years of the Revolution. To support her reasoning, Guerra points out that since 1959 the dichotomy “patria o muerte” [homeland or death] was imposed on Cuban society, which demarcated the division between the supporters of the regime and those who, since their “betrayal,” were stripped of all social and political weight. continue reading

Many readers have missed a reissue of Fuera del juego (1968) [Out of the Game], by Heberto Padilla, regarding the controversy that numerous intellectuals and artists have sustained over the documentary The Padilla Case. No publisher, on or off the island, has alluded to a possible update of the work to include the impact of Giroud’s film on the current reading of the collection of poems.

The Cuban writer and specialist in Russian literature Jorge Ferrer, resident in Barcelona, announced the publication of the volume Del terror rojo al Estado mafioso (Deusto) [From Red Terror to the Mafioso State*], by Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Popov. The volume, translated from Russian into Spanish by Ferrer, addresses the work of Russia’s special services as part of a “struggle for world domination.”

Also published about the culture of this country was La última artista soviética (Godall) [The Last Soviet Artist], by the Russian painter Victoria Lomasko, with a translation by the Cuban poet and essayist Ernesto Hernández Busto. According to the presentation note of the volume, it is the “involuntary testimony of how the intolerance of a regime can truncate the wishes of this artist and turn her, despite herself, into a symbol of struggle.”

This month, the critic Jorge Luis Arcos was awarded the Franz Kafka Essay Prize for his book El castigo (Relato caleidoscópico) [The Punishment (Kaleidoscopic Story)], a “fundamental contribution,” according to the jury, to the knowledge of the work of the poet Lorenzo García Vega. Another prize winner is the French translation of the novel Los caídos [The Fallen] by the writer Carlos Manuel Álvarez, recipient of the Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe et du Tout-Monde 2023, which annually distinguishes the best Caribbean book published in French or Creole.

This February, Cuban readers went to the La Cabaña fortress and other spaces in Havana to participate in the International Book Fair. During the event, which was characterized by the absence of young people and poor editorial offerings, the Literary Criticism prizes were awarded, which was obtained for several books, including El año que nieve, by Rubén Rodríguez, Subsuelos, by Leymen Pérez, and Hierro, by Carlos Celdrán.

The official press itself was critical of the figures offered by the Cuban Book Institute. According to this institution, only 710,455 copies were sold – a quantity that Cubadebate defined as “considerable” – although they did not reveal the number of new titles printed by state publishers. The average cost of each book, it says, was 17 pesos, but the real cost of the books, verified by 14ymedio, was well above that price.

Readers also found very few attractive titles. At none of the stalls was it possible to buy Personas decentes (Tusquets), a crime novel by Leonardo Padura that occupies the best-seller lists in Spain and Latin America, or La niña alemana [The German Girl], the novel by Armando Lucas Correa that as of this month had sold one million copies worldwide.

*Translator’s note: The book is scheduled to be released in English in September 2023.

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Councilors from the Left and the Right in a Spanish City Call for the Release of Cuba’s Political Prisoners

The Plenary of the Santander City Council voted on February 23 in favor of a motion for the Cuban prisoners with zero votes against. (File/EFE)

14ymedio, Madrid, 1 March 2023 — The Santander City Council (Cantabria, Spain) unanimously approved on February 23 an institutional declaration in favor of the freedom of Cuban political prisoners and advocating for the fulfillment of Human Rights on the Island.

The motion was approved by 25 votes in favor and one abstention, that of Miguel Saro, representative of the regional party United for Santander and a member of the United Left and the Communist Party.

The declaration was presented at the proposal of the Cuban Association of Santander with the support of the Cuban-Basque Association Demokrazia Kubarentzat, which represents the natives of the Island who reside in these two regions of northern Spain.

The text extols the Cubans residing in Cantabria, whose emigration “has come about due to the lack of freedoms that govern their daily lives in the land where they were born” and for which they are willing to risk their lives.

“The Cuban people live subjected to a military regime of the Single Party, an entity that decides on every citizen, what he is and what it wants him to become. The absence of freedoms, the denial of political pluralism and the permanent violation of human rights is joined by an economic model that causes a chronic shortage of food and medicine,” continues the declaration, which goes on to recite the mismanagement of the pandemic and of a political and social system that shows “in the most emphatic way the inequalities and deficiencies existing in the country.” continue reading

“July 11, 2021 [11J], was embedded in our hearts for feeling the awakening of a people who took to the streets inflamed by material deprivation and lack of freedoms,” says the statement, which continues to point out the repression that has happened to that day and which places the number of “11J” prisoners that the associations counted at 891, with a total of 1,027 prisoners of conscience. In addition, they add, relatives of the prisoners, journalists and intellectuals, see how this violence also extends to them.

The City Council of this city of 172,000 inhabitants says that it cannot remain on the sidelines of the “legitimate demands of a people that continues to demand real changes” and denounces the situation in line with other organizations that it cites, such as the Parliament of Cantabria and the European Parliament, and calls on the Congress of Deputies and the Government of Spain to do the same.

To this end, they call on the Cuban government to raise the bar and to “take firm and determined steps towards democratic and economic opening” and to carry out “the necessary reforms so that citizens can enjoy all the rights and all the liberties.”

“For this, it is necessary to support a peaceful transition to democracy in which all the people of Cuba can freely decide their political future, urge the Government to continue with its policy of dialogue and aid and cooperation, as well as its desire to restore democracy and human rights.”

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