I Will Continue Living Here in Cuba, Despite the Dictatorship

Dawn in Cuba, a country submerged in an economic crisis and an unprecedented migratory exodus. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 18 December 2022 — Those December days are approaching when we all take stock, set new goals and forecast what is going to happen. The year 2023 arrives on an Island plunged into a deep crisis, with an uncertain outlook. In the absence of certainties, I want to venture on this list (very particular, subjective and absolutely determined by my circumstances) my personal and national toeholds, what I think will happen next year:

I am going to continue living here in Cuba, in the country where I was born. I am stubborn (very stubborn) and one day my ashes will be scattered on this earth, under a guava tree.

Every morning, from Monday to Friday, I will try to record and broadcast my Cafecito informativo podcast, a modest contribution to the Cuban information ecosystem.

I will dedicate my best hours to the newspaper 14ymedio, an informational space that will be nine years old next May and that has built a reputation for being serious, constant and with people in the information field. There is still a lot to achieve, but we will achieve it with work, work and work. continue reading

I am not going to allow the political police to prevent me from enjoying the sunrises, the smell of the romerillo daisies and the waves breaking in Caleta de San Lázaro. That’s mine too.

I will try to read more, although bringing in books and printed material is still so complicated on this Island, but I am a “rare” philologist who enjoys audiobooks and reading volumes in digital format. In the absence of paper, kilobytes come in handy.
I am going to spend less time on social networks, especially on Facebook, because I have several professional projects that demand a lot of time. However, I always keep an eye on everything that is published from inside the Island be it a complaint, news or a report.

But the most important thing is that I will continue to be a happy person. My happiness does not depend on the political or economic model in which I live. I am happy because I breathe

I will plant new plants. Gardening and the urban garden are the particular forms that I have chosen so that this authoritarian system does not destroy my most sensitive side. I will watch my tomatoes grow, I will water my pumpkins, I will eat the lettuce and chard sprouts growing on my balcony while I observe the dysfunctional Ministry of Agriculture which — erected right in front of my terrace — fails to harvest hardly anything.

I will continue without saying a word to State Security. If you call me, you know, I’ll repeat what I’ve said so much: “I don’t talk to the political police.” I don’t care if they are named after the guerrilla Ernesto, the disappeared Camilo or the Pharaoh Ramses . I have nothing to tell you. Silent strike is what it takes in those cases and they already know it.

I will look more into the eyes of my dogs and my cats. In those infinite pupils there is a lot of wisdom.

My complaint about authoritarianism, the new ways of totalitarianism and the faces of generals that become managers will continue.

But the most important thing is that I will continue to be a happy person. My happiness does not depend on the political or economic model in which I live. I am happy because I breathe, because I am alive, because I understand that each breath is a miracle for me and I owe it to all those who preceded me. I am happy despite the dictatorship and living in a failed country. I am happy because that is also a form of rebellion.

With that being said, I wish you all a happy 2023. It may not be the year we are all waiting for, but it is the year we have achieved.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

With Just 1.5 Percent, ECLAC Halves the Cuban Government’s Growth Forecast

Daily life on the Island continues to experience the onslaught of the Government’s economic mismanagement, which admits that the measures have been “insufficient” to improve GDP. (14ymedio)

14ymedio biggerEFE/14ymedio, Havana, 15 December 2022 — On Thursday, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) listed Cuba as one of the countries in the region with the worst economic projection for 2023. With only 1.5% growth, the forecast of this United Nations agency is not as optimistic as the Cuban Government’s, which assured that next year the country’s GDP would grow by 3%.

The ECLAC forecast represents, in itself, a decrease in its forecasts for Cuba: its latest report, in October, had placed the increase in the Island’s GDP for 2023 at 1.8%. The regime’s analysts, of course, rejected this number.

Cuba is not the only country whose GDP will decline next year. ECLAC has pointed out that a group of Latin American nations is in a similar situation. The GDPs that will grow the least next year are, according to the organization: El Salvador (1.6%), Colombia (1.5%), Mexico (1.1%), Argentina (1%), Brazil (0.9%), Haiti (-0.7%), and Chile (-1.1%).

ECLAC guaranteed that the economic slowdown in the region will deepen in 2023 and that the growth rate will be 1.3%, 0.1% less than estimated in October. Regional GDP, it estimates, will close this year with an expansion of 3.7%, higher than the 3.6% forecast three months ago but far from the 6.7% recorded in 2021.

According to ECLAC, the slowdown began in the second half of 2022 and reflects both “the exhaustion of the rebound effect on the 2021 recovery” and “the effects of restrictive monetary policies, greater limitations on fiscal spending, lower levels of consumption and investment, and the deterioration of the external context.” continue reading

“The monetary policy responses adopted worldwide, in a context of increased global inflation, have led to increases in financial volatility and risk aversion levels and, therefore, have induced lower capital flows to emerging economies,” the institution said.

In the Preliminary Balance of the Economies of Latin America and the Caribbean 2022 presented this Thursday, ECLAC points out, however, that “the expected reduction in global inflation by 2023 will tend to moderate the increases in the monetary policy rates of the main central banks.”

The report also highlights that the process of recovering labor markets “has not made it possible to eliminate the traditional gaps between men and women,” and that during 2022, ” an increase in unreliability as well as a drop in real wages have been observed.”

In addition, debt levels continue to be high, “so it can be expected that the fiscal space will continue to condition the trajectory of public spending.”

“The risk of rising interest rates, depreciation of currencies and increased sovereign risk would make it difficult to finance governments’ operations by 2023,” the agency added.

To avoid a new lost decade such as that observed during the period 2014-2023, ECLAC calls for “innovative public policies in the productive, financial, commercial, social and care economy.”

Venezuela (12%), Panama (8.4%) and Colombia (8%) will lead economic growth this year, followed by Uruguay (5.4%), the Dominican Republic (5.1%) and Argentina (4.9%), according to the report.

In the middle of the table are the Caribbean islands (4.5%, not counting Guyana, which is experiencing an oil boom), Costa Rica (4.4%), Honduras (4.2%), Guatemala (4%), Nicaragua (3.8%), Bolivia (3.5%), Mexico (2.9%) and Brazil (2.9%).

In the line are Ecuador (2.7%), Peru (2.7%), El Salvador (2.6%), Chile (2.3%), Cuba (2%), Paraguay (-0.3%), and Haiti (-2%), according to the balance sheet.

For 2023, Venezuela continues to lead the projections (5%), followed by the Dominican Republic (4.6%), Panama (4.2%), Paraguay (4%), the Caribbean Islands (3.3%), Guatemala (3.2%), Uruguay (2.9%), Bolivia (2.9%), Honduras (2.7%), Costa Rica (2.6%), Peru (2.2%), Nicaragua (2.1%) and Ecuador (2%).

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Cuban Parliament Considers Law to Prohibit Non-State Digital Media

First day of the tenth series of sessions of the current legislature of the Cuban National Assembly of People’s Power, on Monday. (Cubadebate)

14ymedio biggerEFE/14ymedio, Havana, 13 December 2022 — On Monday the Cuban National Assembly of People’s Power agreed to put back the debate and final approval of the controversial Social Communication Law, an action which postpones for now the idea of illegality of non-state media.

The Parliament’s president Esteban Lazo explained that the Council of State requested a delay to its approval of the law on account of its “complexity” and the changes to which it had recently been subject — changes which had not yet been completely transferred over to the deputies.

Lazo confirmed that this “important” regulation, which, if approved would be the first of its kind in the country, can be debated in February or March 2023, once a larger number of specialists and citizens have offered their opinions.

The draft Social Communication Law affirms that the national media “are of socialist ownership” and that “they cannot be an object of any other type of ownership”, a statement which would lead to the illegality of independent digital media.

The law, which in its latest version contains 101 articles, prohibits content which would “propagandise in favour of war, a hostile foreign state, terrorism, violence and the justification for hatred between Cubans, with the objective of destabilising the socialist state of law”. continue reading

It also points out that the country’s system of social communication has the purpose of “promoting a consensus and national unity about the Homeland, the Revolution and the Cuban Communist Party.”

The teams that make up the independent media in Cuba — generally critical of the regime — have been decreasing in size in recent years owing to pressure from State Security. Apart from exceptions such as 14ymedio and La Hora de Cuba, they tend to be based outside of the Island, mostly in Miami or Madrid.

The new Penal Code, which came into effect on 1 December, threatens with up to three years imprisonment anyone who “spreads false information” with an intent to “disturb the peace or damage the prestige or credit of the Cuban State”.

The Assembly’s schedule of work had intended to include discussion on six new laws — among them, one concerning Social Communication — inside an overall plan to adapt national legislation to the new developments introduced by the 2019 Constitution.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

The Havana Christmas Tree: The Only Thing Lit Up at This Year’s End

Christmas Tree in Fe del Valle park in Havana this Wednesday. (14ymedio)

14ymedio biggerJuan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 15 December 2022 — The big attraction in Havana at the moment is the Christmas tree recently erected in the Fe del Valle park in central Havana, next to Calle Galiano. The fir tree, tall and not very bushy, becomes alive at night time, when its decorations are lit up.

Dozens of people, many with children, crowded around it on Wednesday, smiling and trying to get the best pose for a photo. “I know why, because we’re not used to this,” commented a woman sitting on a nearby park bench.

In all of her 45 years she had never seen such a Christmas tree like this here on a Cuban street, something so common in any other part of the world.

The German tradition of decorating a fir or a pine tree with those shiny global decorations — something which became popular throughout Europe in the nineteenth century and which was made even more universal via American culture, though with strong German roots, was not looked upon kindly from the very beginnings of the Cuban Revolution. continue reading

Those born before the beginning of the last century know very well that to have a Christmas tree in the house was seen as some kind of “ideological deviation,” a bit petty bourgeoisie, and a bit dangerously close to the ’imperial enemy’.

The fir tree, tall and not very bushy, comes alive at night time, when its decorations are lit up. (14ymedio)

In 1995 the government even put out a dictat which prohibited the installation of Christmas trees in any official or governmental buildings (an event which gave rise to the naming of Jose Ramon Machado Ventura as the “Christmas Tree Man”). However, reality does prevail and though there aren’t many independent shops that don’t have these festive decorations on show at the end of December there have not been any public displays on the streets until now.

From all that then, comes this week’s surprise in the eyes of Havana’s citizens, on seeing this giant tree in La Galiano. “Come here, you’ll look better!” “Yeah, yes that’s better!”, the people shout delightedly as they pose and take photos. The Christmas Tree in the Fe del Valle would seem to be the only shining light at this dark time of year on the Island, where inflation is making it so difficult to put any festive food on the table, and where there is  so much sadness drowning families who have lost relatives through emigration.

Dozens of people crowded around him this Wednesday, many of them with children, smiling and looking for the pose for the best photo. (14 and a half)
Dozens of people crowded around the tree this Wednesday, many of them with children, smiling and looking for the pose for the best photo. (14ymedio)

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

An Official Cuban Newspaper Recognizes That it Gets its News From the Independent Press

The report of an official state newspaper doesn’t clarify that its visit takes place more than two weeks after the denunciation in 14ymedio.

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, December 15, 2022 — The authorities of Artemisa Province have recognized that they had to destroy more than 82 acres of potatoes in Alquízar, which spoiled due to the lack of irrigation caused by the blackouts of the last months. This is indicated in a report published this Wednesday in El Artemiseño, which, however, attacks 14ymedio, the first newspaper to report on the situation of the potato crop.

As this newspaper revealed on November 28, from the residents of the area themselves, the cuts in electricity required a change in the irrigation cycles, which damaged a large part of the crop in the Cuba-Mexico Friendship Cooperative of Agricultural Production. Specifically, of the planting of 398 acres, divided into four quadrants, three of the potato crops spoiled.

In addition, the locals reported that the rotting potatoes didn’t let them breathe.

For this reporting, el Artemiseño described 14ymedio — a newspaper censured by the regime and to which there is no access from the Island without  VPN — as “fake news that flies the flag of serious journalism.”

“In search of the truth, a group from the newspaper [El Artemiseño] went to the area affected, which didn’t smell at all,” says the report of the official newspaper, without clarifying that their visit took place more than two weeks after the report by 14ymedio.

Similarly, El Artemiseño, citing sources of the regime and blaming the United States embargo, criticizes: “Those who call themselves ’speakers of the truth’ omitted in their report the damage caused by the blockade to the agriculture and energy sectors, whose losses amount to more than 270 million and 185 million dollars respectively, just between August 2021 and February 2022.”

The publication acknowledges, however, the destruction of the crop and points out: “We did know that before proceeding with the demolition of the planting, the residents of the area were allowed to enter the field to take advantage of everything possible for animal feed.” And it concedes that in the text of this newspaper “one thing bordered on reality: the energy deficit played a part.” continue reading

Quoting Fernando Ravelo Jaime, president of the cooperative, El Artemiseño said: “Five days after planting, the potato must be lightly watered and then maintain a stability between 200 and 300 cubic meters so that it germinates and does not rot under the earth.” To irrigate one quadrant, with 27 acres, he continues, “you need 18 to 20 hours of stable flow, at 250 cubic meters. That is, it was taking 80 hours to irrigate four quadrants, which was not possible.”

The result was that “only 60% of the potatoes germinated.” Officials told the official newspaper that “only after really knowing the magnitude of the problem did crop protection measures begin to be adopted.”

Now, of 205 acres planted with national seed, the newspaper says, “there are 124 standing.” In the “damaged area, high-yield corn was planted that should provide about 74 tons per acre,” which, it  explains, “allows taking advantage of the fertilized soil to harvest the tender grain in the same period that the potatoes would have needed to sprout.”

El Artemiseño points out that the director of the Electric Company has assured it that this type of incident will not be repeated, because “today the situation in the country is different, due to the increase in the maintenance of thermoelectric power plants and the diesel and fuel generators, which allow between 21 and 22 hours a day of electricity in the province.” With this guarantee, the local newspaper prophesies that “Alquízar will not stop sowing the 420 acres it has planned for the campaign. The seed is in the municipality and the sowing is ready in another machine.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

A Foreign Currency Store for Mexican Paint Supplies, ‘Proudly Cuban,’ Opens in Havana

La Casa del Pintor [the Painter’s House], the new foreign currency store on Belascoaín Street in Havana. (14ymedio)
14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 15 December 2022 — Throwing a bucket of water off the balcony, burning a doll or painting the house are some of the traditions that Cubans turn to every December so that, when January arrives, the problems of the previous year don’t pass to the new one. It is a list that in 2022 will be shorter due to the high prices involved in repainting the walls in the homes of the Island.

Just this last month of the year, a shop with paints, thinners and brushes opened its doors on Belascoaín Street in Havana. Belonging to the Pan American chain of the Cimex corporation — owned by the Cuban military — the shop is called La Casa del Pintor [The Painter’s House]. The place stands out with its shiny stained-glass windows, its new floors and the fact that all the lamps have bulbs, in the middle of a street marked by deterioration and homes in danger of collapse.

The sparkling appearance of the store caused many curious people to approach this Wednesday morning to inquire about the products it has for sale, but most left when employees clarified that it is a store that takes payment only in freely convertible currency (MLC). “It’s in foreign exchange and very expensive,” said one of the frustrated customers who had his heart set on the 5-gallon cans of interior paint.

With the Devox Caribe S.A. brand, the paint containers offered in the store have a label with the slogan “Proudly Cuban product,” which refers to an industry located in the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM) as the origin of the product for sale. However, three years ago, when the official press announced the start-up of the plant, it catalogued it as a “Mexican company” that used “superior technology for the manufacture of paints and coatings.”

“The paint is brought from Mexico, the technology of the factory is also Mexican, and the labour is Cuban,” clarifies an employee by phone from the company’s office in the Miramar Business Centre. Until very recently, the product was only marketed in mixed markets in foreign exchange, such as the 5th and 42nd shopping center, in the municipality of Playa, and the Plaza de Cuatro Caminos. “La Casa del Pintor is the first store, exclusively, for our products,” he says. continue reading

“This is where we have the largest assortment because in Cuba it’s complicated to find a variety of colors,” he continues. “It’s the  best paint being sold right now in the country,” he says, while specifying that all prices are, so far, in MLC (freely convertible money). As long as the Island does not produce the raw materials needed for manufacturing, the industry needs to buy its inputs abroad in foreign currency.

An article published in 2019 by Cubadebate said that “Devox Caribe S.A. is a subsidiary of the Mexican company Devox-General Paint, which has exported its products to Cuba for 25 years.” At the bottom of that text a foreboding comment cautioned: “I will applaud fervently when I see this paint in our stores at an affordable price, or at least one that is not so expensive.” Presently, a 5-gallon can of white interior paint costs 76 dollars on Belascoaín Street.

“It’s expensive, but the paint is good,” recognizes El Chino, a construction worker who, along with three other men, have formed a brigade to repair houses. “It’s the best there is right now in Cuba because it’s not really from here, but they bring it and package it before selling.” The self-employed man considers that “the products from the state factories are not good. They have a very limited color range and sometimes are adulterated.”

El Chino bought a 5-gallon can of white “acrylic latex with matte and anti-mold finish” for an exterior wall. “It was very thick and seemed to be of good quality, but time will tell. Anyway, the price is high, and that increases the total price we ask of the customer. If you add labour and other supplies, painting a two-bedroom apartment with living room, kitchen and bathroom doesn’t drop below 300 dollars.”

“The advertising on the label is doing more harm than good, because people prefer imported paint,” he says. “When a construction or repair product says that it’s made here, customers are frightened because they now imagine the diversion of resources, the water that was added to it to ’fulfill the plan’ and all the mismanagement.”

But even if the quality is doubtful, domestically produced paint is scarce and has high prices. A 5-gallon can of white interior paint of the Cuban brand Vitral costs $79 on an official classifieds site intended for emigrants to buy products for their relatives on the Island.

The state management company isn’t doing well because of the deficit of raw materials, and two years ago its director, Luis Alberto Suárez Ibarra, recognized that in the ZEDM they had “two competitors: Devox Caribe S.A. and Tot Color,” which motivated them to be more efficient. But their products have been diminishing in the markets instead of increasing their presence.

For families who don’t have foreign exchange income, the alternatives to start a new year with retouched walls include appealing to lower quality products such as quartz powder or whitewash, a type of coating that is not very durable and is adulterated in the informal market. However, the most popular option these days is simply to give up painting the home. “The proud Cuban thing now is to wait,” recommends El Chino.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Some 16,000 Migrants, Including Cubans, Crossed to the United States in 48 Hours

In recent days, large groups of migrants have entered through Eagle Pass and El Paso (Texas) and have surrendered to the Border Patrol. (@BillFOXLA)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio/EFE, Havana, 13 December 2022 — In just 48 hours, 16,000 irregular migrants have entered from the Mexican border to the United States, according to Border Patrol data. The officers have the order to “process faster” and take at least 10,000 people out of custody “by any means,” before Tuesday’s visit to El Paso (Texas) by the Secretary of National Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, said journalist Ali Bradley.

On Monday, the largest crossing of a single group made up of 1,500 migrants through El Paso was recorded. “The Border Patrol has more than 5,000 undocumented people in custody and left hundreds free on the streets of the city,” said journalist Bill Melugin, of Fox News. These people spent the night outdoors with temperatures below 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

For El Paso, an average of “2,460 illegal daily crossings” of groups of Cubans, Nicaraguans, Ecuadoreans, Venezuelans, Guatemalans and Hondurans have been recorded, according to officer Peter Jaquez. A week before the end of Title 42, which addresses the expeditious return of migrants, border cities and charitable organizations feared the daily and massive arrival of migrants as has happened in El Paso and have asked the Biden Government for help to receive these families.

Migrants are being processed and released, according to American journalists. (@USBPChiefEPT)

“We were asked for support and received family groups. We give them a way to work,” Ana Laura Rodela, general coordinator of the Leona Vicario Integration Centre for Migration, told EFE on Monday. “Everyone who enters can have a formal job. Right now there are three trucks arriving, with 600 people. They are families mainly from Ecuador and Nicaragua. We will have to disperse people in this shelter because they won’t all fit here.” continue reading

Last Thursday, 535 Cubans swam across the Rio Grande and surrendered to the Border Patrol in Eagle Pass, Texas. It was then the largest group that had suddenly entered the United States. The Cubans were gathered in an area near the Lehmann ranch along with 74 other migrants from Nicaragua, 49 from Colombia, three from Ecuador, three from Mexico and 12 unaccompanied children.

Speaking to the ABC channel, Lieutenant Chris Olivarez, of the Texas Department of Public Security, warned that “El Paso had never experienced anything like this massive migration. The numbers are historic. We must find a way to stop this, a policy needs to be implemented.”

Texas Congressman Henry Cuéllar, for his part, asked President Biden for greater security at the border and said that the problem is that criminals are taking the opportunity to do business by taking migrants across the border, because it is open.

On the border of Chihuahua (Mexico) there are several groups of migrants organizing their entry into the United States. In Matamoros, Tamaulipas, a Mexican border city on the other side of Brownsville, Texas, there are thousands of migrants waiting for December 21, the day Title 42 comes to an end.

Title 42 is a measure ordered by the Donald Trump Administration (2017-2021) under the excuse of the pandemic, which has allowed the expeditious expulsions of more than 2.7 million migrants.

Several media outlets have reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seeks to obtain an additional 3 billion dollars from Congress to deal with the increase in the arrival of undocumented migrants once Title 42 is cancelled.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

In Its Attempt to Seduce the US, Cuban Regime Takes Over the Private Sector

An advertisement for Fantaxy, which is presumed to be the property of Sandro Castro Arteaga, Fidel’s grandson, broadcast by the nightclub itself. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 16 December 2022 — It’s only been six years but it seems like a century. From then until now, the official discourse has been turned around, said and unsaid, confirmed and denied countless times. In 2016, an angry statement by the National Association of Small Farmers (Anap) slammed Washington’s proposal to buy directly from Cuban coffee growers. This December, however, an official almost begged for US support for the island’s private sector even if this is intended to “undermine the Revolution.”

In the time between that rejection and this request, our country sank into one of the deepest economic crises in its history. National coffers were emptied, and the interest of the international press and big companies turned the other way while hundreds of thousands of Cubans packed their bags to escape this failed system. This disaster could be due to the change of course in official oratory. Perhaps biting the dust of the popular protests of last year and not being able to sustain the expenses of its political police or its extensive internal propaganda have also taken the wind out of the sails of the regime.

However, the announcement that the Cuban authorities could accept agreements and funds destined for the island’s entrepreneurs – even if these do not benefit the ailing socialist state company or official institutions – points to something more than the current poor state of the economy. In six years, which seems a short time but is one that an authoritarian system that controls every inch of our lives can take advantage of very well, businesses with little transparency and obscure owners have been built that target the families in power or their “blessed” figureheads.

How many of those enterprises that today dominate the captive Cuban market lack a blood or obedience bond with the small group of nonagenarians that controls this Island? They have plenty of time to sweep away those who did not want to yield, to push into exile or bankrupt local businessmen who did not abide by their impositions, and create an entrepreneurial laboratory class: ready to receive the resources that arrive from abroad with full hands and pay the bribe of survival. A bribe that enters with money and silence.

Now, having created the theme park for MSMEs* that are favorable to or linked to the olive green hierarchs, they feel now is time to raise the flag for US support. For the poor coffee growers in the eastern part of Cuba, impoverished and with production in the basement, this moment has come late. But to the bars with imported whiskey run by ‘father’s sons’, and the ‘prop’ estates managed by town informers and those that bring in foreign visitors, this announcement is music to their ears.

There will always be some official who explains the change, makes use of some argument and tries to divert the gaze. As it once appropriated the concepts of human rights, democracy and freedom, the pro-government oratory has just carried out the hijacking of the term “private sector.”

*Translator’s note: Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Diaz-Canel Talks About His ‘Dissatisfactions’ Without Offering a Way Out of the Cuban Crisis

Díaz-Canel stated that he felt guilty “for not having been able to achieve, as the country’s leader, the results that the Cuban people need.” (Cubadebate)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 12 December 2022 — With a tearful speech about his “personal dissatisfactions” as the head of the Government and in the presence of Raúl Castro, Miguel Díaz-Canel was accountable this Wednesday, at the Havana Convention Center, for his management of the country during 2022.

To the usual justifications to explain the economic drift of the Island — the US ’blockade’, the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and the disasters caused by Hurricane Ian and the explosion of the Supertanker Base — he added, with care not to offend Russia, “the new problems generated by the conflict in Europe” and international inflation.

Faced with the economic crisis, he said he felt like the “main person responsible,” but nuanced this by stating that he had limited himself to assuming “continuity from a dialectical perspective.” He did not miss an opportunity to rebuke local and provincial bureaucrats and clarified that, although he knows what the problems are, he hopes that “no one will use them as justification.”

The National Assembly of People’s Power, he warned, will continue in 2023 its “important legislative work” to enact other laws that “develop the Constitution” and address the “difficult Cuban daily life.”

The president was slow to enter into economic matters, and when he did it was to repeat the opinion of the Minister of Economy, Alejandro Gil, during the plenary of the Communist Party: the situation is “difficult”; the Government no longer knows where to extract the necessary currency, and the measures of the Ordering Task* were not enough to alleviate the financial disaster. continue reading

He spoke cryptically about the “increase in the income of natural people without productive support” and was alarmed by the “partial dollarization of the economy,” which has had a significant impact on the rise in product prices.

After vaguely criticizing Washington for keeping the ’blockade’ as a “weapon of coercion, cruel, illegitimate and immoral,” Díaz-Canel praised the Biden Administration. He said he was interested in the “two million people of Cuban origin and their descendants” who live in Florida and stated that he wanted to “promote broader ties” with the US.

He mentioned the technical advice offered by US authorities during the explosion of the Supertanker Base, despite the fact that the official press initially denied the existence of such aid and then considered it “insufficient.”

Díaz-Canel also recalled that the US donated 100 fire suits, in addition to fire and protection equipment, which arrived in Cuba a week ago. It was a “welcome and accepted” initiative, he said with modesty.

In addition, he spoke of the two million dollars sent by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) — one of the US institutions that the regime has criticized with the most emphasis — after the passage of Hurricane Ian through Western Cuba. “A help without conditions,” he said, attributing it not to USAID but to the Biden Government, “for which we also are thankful and accept it.”

However, he did not miss the opportunity to regret the “open policy of subsidies and attempts to destabilize the country,” paid with “tens of millions of dollars from the federal budget.” The US “trained individuals to commit violent acts against Cuba,” he said, referring to the accusations launched by Cuban Television against alleged criminals against the State captured by the police.

Finally, he recognized that despite everything, Cuba and the US are experiencing a kind of thaw, although with “very discreet steps, aimed at directing bilateral cooperation for compliance with immigration agreements and also in other priority areas between both countries.”

About Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, he limited himself to also blaming the US and its “harmful imperialist determination to try to divide the world,” although he admitted that the war complicated the global economic situation.

Regarding his political influence in Latin America and the possibility of alliance with the governments of the Latin American “new left,” he welcomed the rapprochement of Cuba by several presidents, such as Gustavo Petro and Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The “greetings” also reached Daniel Ortega, Luis Arce and Nicolás Maduro, and discreetly pointed out the “mutual benefit” of relations with Argentina, but there was no reference to Chile, with whose president, Gabriel Boric, Havana doesn’t sympathize.

The president avoided mentioning, of course, the former president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, whose self-coup did not merit a comment from the Cuban leadership until two days later.

At the end of the speech– and without finally deciding on triumphalism or self-criticism — Díaz-Canel stated that he felt guilty “for not having been able to achieve, as the country’s leader, the results that the Cuban people need for the desired and hoped-for prosperity.”

 *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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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Sherritt is Complicit in the Theft of Cuban Resources, Denounced a Businessman

The extraction of cobalt, a resource for which demand is increasing, guarantees that the Canadian company continues efficiently managing the facilities in Varadero and Boca de Jaruco. (ACN)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 14 December 2022 — To the Cuban American Pitt-Wasmer family, the so-called “cobalt exchange” with which the Cuban government aims to settle its debts with the Canadian company, Sherritt, is not only an illegal act but also constitutes “dangerous precedent” in the economic handling of the country.

The $362 million that the regime owes Sherritt will be paid by increasing the supply of cobalt for five years, from several mines in Moa (Holguín province), which the Toronto-based mining company is expanding into an adjacent property owned by the Pitt-Wasmers and taken by Fidel Castro in 1960.

Through a pact with Sherritt, “the government is handing over one of the few domestic economic resources left in Cuba,” William Pitt, a member of the Pitt-Wasmer family, explained to 14ymedio. The government will pay Sherritt “for its physical and administrative labor at three electrical energy plants — in Varadero (Matanzas province), Boca de Jaruco and Puerto Escondido (Mayabeque province) — and it will do so “by increasing the percentage of cobalt extracted,” in the mines that partially extend into land expropriated from his family in Moa and Punta Gorda (Holguín province).

The “cobalt exchange”, says Pitt, is illegal on the part of the Cuban government, which traffics in stolen property as well as the Canadian company which is complicit in the theft of the Island’s resources.

According to Pitt, “the Cuban Government is now handing over to Sherritt even more mineral resources than it originally confiscated illegally and without compensating the legitimate owners of those mines.” “Thus, the impoverishment of the Cuban people continues,” he bemoaned.

The Pitt-Wasmers have initiated legal proceedings for the confiscation of the mine in Holguín, which abutted those of another company, the Moa Bay Mining Company, an old property of the Rockefeller family also usurped by Castro. continue reading

Pitt did not offer additional information on the lawsuit, as it would amount to providing the Cuban government with leads on the plans of the family, the heirs of business owners William Pitt Ferrer and Berta Wasmer Arnaz, who lived in Santiago de Cuba and managed the family business.

“Sherritt’s excavation of the Moa Bay mines extend beyond the Moa Bay property and into ours,” states Pitt. “Furthermore, Sherritt is preparing to expand its operation into areas that include other mines belonging to us.”

“Recently the mining investment portfolio offered by the Ministry of Energy and Mines includes areas of future expansion including other nickel and cobalt mines east of Moa and in Punta Gorda which are our property,” he explained.

The electrical facilities operated by Sherritt on the Island are, in the current energy context, especially important. The precariousness of the National Electric System (SEN) and the frequent collapses of the country’s main thermoelectric plants force the government to ensure that the facilities managed by Sherritt function well, so as to not delay the repayment of its debt.

Extraction of cobalt, a resource for which demand is increasing, guarantees that the Canadian company continues to efficiently manage the power facilities in Varadero and Boca de Jaruco “two of SEN’s best operating plants,” states Pitt. In addition, the correct functioning of the plant in Varadero, provides stable electricity to the hotel network and prevents mishaps in one of the country’s essential tourist areas.

As for Boca de Jaruco, it provides a large portion of the supply in Havana, where several protests due to power outages were confirmed this summer, protests that the government was barely able to control.

Another factor the Cuban government wants to control is the management, by Sherritt, of 11 oil wells in Varadero and another 17 in Boca de Jaruco. From these deposits, the natural gas used in three power plants is extracted. This contributes to limiting reliance on Venezuelan petroleum and reduces the risk of blackouts in strategic areas, such as Havana and the main tourist centers.

Pitt knows both dependencies well and understands the reasons for government’s diligence when it comes to paying its debt. With a potential of approximately 173 megawatts, the power plant in Varadero “has two plants for the processing of crude oil, three gas turbines and related electrical generators, a system of heat exchange to create steam at high pressure, and one steam turbine and a related electrical generator.”

Boca de Jaruco, on the other hand, has “one crude gas processing plant and five gas turbines and related electrical generators, one heat exchange system to create steam at high pressure and one steam turbine and related electrical generators,” for a potential 313 megawatts.

It is, definitely, related to two positions and almost 500 megawatts, that the regime does not have the luxury of losing. Nor is it capable of correctly managing it on its own, although officially it is the state-run Energas that is in charge of managing the gas facility, as detailed in a report on Cuban television that, nonetheless, does not at any point mention Sherritt’s intervention.

The smaller Puerto Escondido facility has “one crude gas processing plant and one gas turbine as well as an electrical generator with the potential for 20 megawatts.” The stability of the electricity at several hotels in the area depend on this one, explained Pitt.

Sherritt and Energas have “shared management, an arrangement,” believes Pitt, but neither the Cuban government nor the Canadian mining company “have made these relationships public, nor do they offer details or clarity on the matter.”

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Cuban Opponents Petition Parliament to Pass a Law on the Right to Protest

View of a session of Cuba’s National Assembly of the People’s Power, in an archive photograph (EFE/Ernesto Mastrascusa)

14ymedio biggerEFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 14 December 2022 — On Tuesday, a group of 500 citizens from opposition organizations requested that Cuba’s National Assembly of the People’s Power approve a law guaranteeing the rights to protest and to assemble, which are included in the 2019 Constitution.

Representatives of the Council for a Democratic Transition in Cuba, the NGO Cubalex, and other groups demanded that this issue be taken up during the extraordinary session of parliament planned for the first quarter of 2023.

They noted that the discussion and approval of this norm is included in the 2020-2023 legislative timeline, but was excluded “without justification” when the 2022 agenda was modified as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The inexcusable exclusion is contrary to the popular mandate given to the State’s Constitution in February of 2018, following popular consultations on the draft and through which Cuban society expressed, exceeding the limits of the consultation itself, its demands for more rights for more people,” the statement declares.

Cuban opponent and academic Manuel Cuesta Morúa is one of the signers of the petition, accessed by EFE, which was sent directly to the President of the National Assembly, Esteban Lazo. continue reading

“The approval of this law is urgent and fundamental,” state the solicitors, who denounced that many Cubans are in prison “for the peaceful exercise of their human and constitutional rights, amid the absence of judicial and legal precision to support them.”

According to the last report from NGO Prisoners Defenders, at the end of last month, there were 1,034 political prisoners in Cuba, most of them people who had participated in the antigovernment protests of July 11th, 2021. Justicia 11J has documented hundreds of arrests as a result of those protests.

The petition was published during the tenth period of the current legislative session, which from yesterday and until tomorrow discusses several laws, among them the 2023 Economic Plan.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

There is an ‘Abuse of the Adjustment Act by Those Who Return to Cuba After a Year’

“It is one thing to be exiled and another to be an immigrant, to improve life or for issues like wars and cataclysms,” says Guedes. (The New Herald/Capture)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Madrid, 13 December 2022 — Cuban physician Antonio Guedes, founder of the Liberal Union, told 14ymedio on Tuesday that the controversy generated by the presentation in Miami of the book Cuban Privilege (Cambridge University Press, 2022), by the American sociologist Susan Eckstein, was a natural response of the community of Cuban residents in the United States.

“In the face of an issue of this nature, within an exile community that has suffered so much and still suffers, it is normal and even necessary to offer answers, let’s say sociological, as long as they are peaceful,” Guedes said from Madrid.

Cuban Privilege, a study of the migration policies of the United States toward Cuba since 1959, poses — supported by archives and state documents — that Cuban immigrants have enjoyed multiple political, social and economic benefits from which other groups of migrants have been deprived under the same conditions.

Both the postulates of the book and Eckstein’s favorable vision of the Cuban regime motivated, during the presentation of the book last Friday at the International University of Florida (FIU), a protest that was held in the vicinity of the campus.

On the university campus, where the academic debate between Eckstein and Cuban politician Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat took place, several of the attendees shouted slogans of “Down with communism!” “Free Cuba!” and “Homeland and life!” in addition to expressing their annoyance with the opinions in Cuban Privilege during the question-and-answer period. continue reading

Guedes is familiar with the work of Eckstein, who is the author of several books on Cuba, among them, the also controversial Back from the Future: Cuba under Castro. “She has always been one of the many left-wing academics who, from American universities, have done and do horrible damage to the exile,” he says. In addition, Eckstein has demonstrated several times her “benevolence toward the communist dictatorship, from the apparent bourgeois equidistance.”

Regarding the presentation of the book at FIU, the doctor welcomed the fact that Eckstein found “a high-level response that demonstrates the false premises and gaps in her book,” such as the one offered by Gutiérrez-Boronat, who put in context several of the statements that the professor put “lightly.”

However, Guedes says, it is logical that a book like Cuban Privilege will awaken the anger of the Cuban-American community. The reaction is comparable to that in other contexts where people have experienced dictatorships and totalitarianism.

“What would happen in Israel if a book had been presented that remotely questioned the Holocaust?” the doctor asks. “What would have happened in Chile, if positive Pinochet things were considered? Or in today’s Spain, governed by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party and Podemos, about Franco? Or perhaps in today’s American universities, a presentation against abortion rights or gender ideology?”

However, it is also necessary to qualify. According to Guedes, there has been a “use, abuse and fraud” of the Cuban Adjustment Act for at least two decades. “If someone arrives at the U.S. border and requests that a law be applied to him conceived for persecuted people — or at least people discriminated against or marginalized for political, religious reasons, etc., and not for those who emigrate for economic reasons — and then after a year and a day they return to the ’house’ of their repressor, without apparent fear, as a mula [mule], a tremendous inconsistency is committed,” he says.

This is frequent and unjustified, although it is true that many Cubans had to leave Cuba when their properties were confiscated or nationalized. In that sense, the expropriation process executed by Castro was closely linked to the political sphere and, therefore, was a reason for reception in the United States. But this is not a frequent case, and the only reason to invoke the Cuban Adjustment Act should be “intimately linked to the lack of freedom.”

“All that is an incoherence, a fraud and a bad example for other groups and societies,” Guedes insists. “It is one thing to be exiled and another to be an immigrant, to improve life or for issues like wars and cataclysms.”

This does not mean, the doctor assures, that the Cuban Adjustment Act should be eliminated. “But it should be modified and made clear to those who take advantage of it that they cannot happily return to where the jailer is supposed to be,” he says.

Eckstein dedicates not a few pages of her book to the “false argument” of political persecution. But if Guedes and the academic agree on anything, it’s on the fact that the migration mechanisms must be applied correctly. “In this way, not only is the spirit of the act being complied with and fraud greatly diminished,” says the doctor, “but a message (an example) is also sent to the rest of the world and, incidentally doesn’t help support the repressive machinery, which is the cause of Cuban exile and emigration.”

There is much more to discuss about Cuban Privilege, such as Eckstein’s silence about the contributions of the Cuban community to American culture and even to the urban development of cities like Miami, or the “repressive nature of Cuban communism.”

There are also good reasons for revising the Cuban Adjustment Act, but “it should not be suppressed,” Guedes says. It should be modified or applied well, “because the causes for migration persist with the communist dictatorship.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

A Hotel with an Unknown Owner and Rates of up to 100 Dollars per Night Opens in Centro Havana

The Tribe Caribe Cayo Hueso Hotel opened on Saturday in Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez / Olea Gallardo, Havana, 13 December 2022 — The neighbors of the hotel Cayo Hueso, in Centro Habana, watched with intrigue, for months, the remodeling  of the building located at Aramburu 253, at the corner of Neptune. Little by little, the property — built in the 1930s and in decline, like all its surroundings — was becoming a luxurious establishment, judging by what could be glimpsed through the windows of the ground floor.

Nothing, however, reported its future use, and the only sign it displayed was the work license number written on a piece of cardboard and poorly hung on a window. The gossip  began to flow without confirmation: a yuma had bought the property and was turning it into a hotel.

And not only that, but he had bought other houses and planned to relocate everyone who lived there.

If it was true that the project was for an American, in any case he had to be influential. In this regard, several residents of the place tell another anecdote. One day a cement truck was parked in front of the building, and a police patrol car arrived to ask the construction workers for identification. One of them phoned someone, and, after having a brief conversation, passed the device to the policeman: “Someone wants to talk to you.” “The policeman changed his expression, apologized, and they never bothered the workers again,” says a neighbor who asks for anonymity.

Thus, a name began to be repeated during the last few weeks by the neighbors. They dared to say that behind the project, headed by two American businessmen, was none other than Raúl Castro’s daughter. “There the meter is running, but it’s not for the Americans. That’s not theirs, but Mariela’s,” the residents said confidently, insisting they saw her on Friday inside the building.

True or not, no one saw Mariela Castro last Saturday, when the hotel was inaugurated and several unknown people were cleared. To begin with, its name: Tribe Caribbean Cayo Hueso (Key West). continue reading

The only sign that the establishment had was the construction license number written on a piece of cardboard and poorly hung in a window. (14ymedio)

On its webpage, where you can now book a room for 150 to 550 dollars a night — booking a full floor costs 1,000 — the “founders” appear: an American investor, Chris Cornell, and music producer Andrés Levín, born in Venezuela but with a US passport. In Cuba, Levin is known for participating in several cultural projects such as the Havana Biennale, in addition to his marriage to Cuban-American singer Cucú Diamantes.

Hence, he was the most recognizable figure on Saturday, at an unusual “neighborhood” inauguration party, which lasted six hours and included an exhibition by photographer Juan Carlos Alom, the sale of items by private businesses such as the Clandestina brand and musical performances. “Here in Cuba this is not allowed for just anyone,” commented a young man, who stopped humming what they were singing on the stage: El Necio [The Fool], by Silvio Rodríguez, to the rhythm of salsa.

Levín, with a cap and characteristic dark glasses, came and went, smiling, greeting with familiarity the neighbors gathered in front of the street stage, for whose installation the traffic on Aramburu Street between Neptune and San Miguel was closed off.

Nearby was a bus with the electronic sign “PROTOCOL” in capital letters, and the various Lada vehicles with drivers normally used by public officials, parked nearby, were obvious.

A group of young people dressed in T-shirts saying “Tribe Caribe” prevented people from entering the hotel and monitored the movements of the curious.

Tribe Caribe is a company registered on April 30, 2021, in Florida, with the address 1521 Alton Road 460, in Miami Beach. Levín and Cornell both appear as directors. The company, linked to the world of music, affirms that it “promotes and distributes exceptional original Caribbean content,” according to its website, and is “a proactive force, a voice and an educator in the continuous emergence of the rich cultural offerings of the Caribbean.”

On the hotel’s page, Chris Cornell points out that he is “a long-time professional entrepreneur and investor in arts, creative businesses and impact projects, who provides momentum and entrepreneurial spirit to the project,” and who “has directed all the important decisions of restoration, construction and design of the hotel, and is deeply aware of how these decisions affect the neighborhood, the local cultural identity and the preservation of the artistic heritage of Cayo Hueso.”

Andrés Levín iba y venía sonriente, saludando con familiaridad a los vecinos congregados delante del escenario callejero. (14ymedio)
Andrés Levín came and went smiling, familiarly greeting the neighbors gathered in front of the street stage. (14ymedio)

Of that mysterious investor, with unknown biography and background, there are no traces other than his alleged signature in the office in North Palm Beach, Florida, where the Tribe Caribe company was created. Of course, his name and surname coincide exactly with those of the famous singer of the Audioslave band, the first American rock group to play live in Cuba, in May 2005, at a venue none other than in the Anti-imperialist Bandstand, and for hundreds of thousands of fans on the Havana Malecón.

Levín emphasizes that he has been nominated for 26 Grammy awards — he won one in 2009 for the recording of the musical In the Heights — and that he has “propelled initiatives and produced numerous cultural events in Cuba, including TEDxHabana.”

Founder of the Afro-Cuban band Yerba Buena, the producer has collaborated, as mentioned on the official website, with artists such as Miguel Bosé, Aterciopelados, Orishas, David Byrne, Caetano Veloso, D’Angelo, Julieta Venegas and Tina Turner.

In addition, he is the producer of several film projects such as Amor crónico, directed in 2012 by the Cuban Jorge Perugorría, with whom he has a personal friendship, according to the photographs that show them together and messages.

An actor who prefers not to give his name and who was in business with Levin years ago, tells 14ymedio that both had agreed to collaborate on several projects, but that the producer cut off all communication after the artist’s participation in the demonstration on November 27, 2020 in front of the Ministry of Culture.

At that time, the actor attended two parties organized by Levín. One, in a house that he had rented in the municipality of Playa, near 5th Avenue, and another, in Siboney, where the mansions expropriated by the main architects of the Revolution are located, to celebrate the birthday of the producer’s father.

The source did not see, on any of these occasions, “anyone who was a heavyweight in politics,” but just “plain show business.”

Nearby was a bus with the electronic legend in capital letters “protocol”, and the various Lada vehicles with drivers were obvious. (14 and a half)
Nearby was a bus with the electronic legend in capital letters “protocol,” and the various Lada vehicles with drivers were obvious. (14ymedio)

But if he is associated with Mariela Castro, it is because Levín himself appears on social networks next to her, for example, in an “anti-homophobia” gala held in 2016. The Spanish singer Marta Sánchez, who performed on that occasion, also posted on Facebook about it: “Thank you Cuba for so much love and recognition! Thanks to Mariela Castro for that support to those who choose in this country to love as they want! Thanks to Andrés Levín for counting on me!”

In addition, the producer himself mentions Raúl Castro’s daughter in an interview granted in 2016 to Tablet, a magazine on issues of the Jewish community (the producers’s roots, whose parents, “very left-wing” according to their own description, were Argentines exiled in Caracas).

“It seems to me that I was at a dinner with you a few years ago and there were secret service people there and one of the Castros was with us or something like that. What happened?”, asks the interviewer, to which Levín replies that he does not remember well, but that it would surely have to do with the TEDxHabana event, in which he collaborated with “designers, programmers, artists and scientists” of the Cuban LGTBQ community.

The “neighborhood” opening party, last Saturday, lasted six hours and included an exhibition by photographer Juan Carlos Alom, sale of items by private parties such as the Clandestina brand, and musical performances. (14 and a half)
The “neighborhood” opening party, last Saturday, lasted six hours and included an exhibition by photographer Juan Carlos Alom, sale of items by private parties such as the Clandestina brand, and musical performances. (14ymedio)

“One of the most advanced LGBTQ sex education programs in Latin America is led by Mariela Castro,” says the musician, who recognises having collaborated with her “on many projects related to culture and education.”

And then Levín unravels into praise for the Cuban people, whom he affirms “have a lot of potential and desire to prosper and are very different from what people think,” and who have “things that most of the world doesn’t have”: “Healthcare and education. Eleven million educated people. It is the most educated country in the world,” he says.

Tribe Caribe Cayo Hueso is offered precisely as a cultural project: “We continue a 25-year mission to preserve and pay tribute to Afro-Cuban culture and its musical legacy, we celebrate multi-generational artistic expression, and we come to share our exclusive access to a side of Cuba that visitors and guests could not experience on their own.” Not a word about the business purposes, nor the obvious opulence that the project exudes, nestled in the depleted heart of Centro Habana.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Cuba Runs Out of Money to Buy Enough Chicken in the United States

The value of the American chicken reached a new record in October, at 1.29 dollars average per kilo, five cents more expensive than the price recorded in September. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 14 December 2022 — The price paid by Cuba in October for chicken imported from the US reached the historic high of 1.29 dollars per kilo, 48% more than at the beginning of this year, when it was at 0.87. According to data from the US Department of Agriculture collected by Cuban economist Pedro Monreal, Havana reduced its purchases by a third compared to September.

After reaching, the previous month, one of the highest figures in chicken imports from the United States, the largest supplier of this product to the Island, in October the volume contracted 36% from 25,100 to 15,980 tons.

Cuba spent 20.54 million dollars in October for its chicken purchases in the United States, 33.9% below the amount paid in September, 31.08 million dollars. These figures are the lowest after the results of April 2022, when imports plummeted 30% against the peaks of February and closed that month with a little more than 21,000 tons, which cost about 23 million dollars. Only the month of May was worse, with the purchase of a little less than 15,000 tons.

The value of American chicken reached a new record in October, at $1.29 per kilo on average, five cents more expensive than the record recorded in September for $1.21. As a result, the economist said, the purchasing power of Cuban families is further reduced with respect to “a high-demand food with very low national production, without a productive solution in sight.” continue reading

In the group of meats, the price of chicken rose the most throughout the year, driven by the high costs of raw materials, mainly the concentrate and feed that are needed for poultry. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) warned in its latest report on the world price index, corresponding to November, that the value of this product will not relax its upward trend due to a drop in production in the large producing countries after outbreaks of avian influenza intensified.

For Monreal, who analyzes data from the U.S. Foreign Agriculture Service, the drop in poultry imports from the neighboring country was not compensated by the supply from Brazil, the second largest supplier of chicken to the Island. From the South American nation, 2,642 tons worth 2.84 million dollars were received, seven times below the volume brought in on American ships.

The economist Elias Amor also replied to Monreal’s publication: “There is no money left in the ATM,” he said, referring to the shortage of liquidity faced by the Cuban Government to fulfill its commitments.

Cuba has to bring in most of the food it consumes, and imported chicken meat has long been an essential on the tables of Cuban families due to the disappearance of other sources of protein — fish, eggs and beef — as well as the stratospheric rise in the price of pork.

While the Cuban regime continues to blame the US embargo for the lack of basic products on the Island, ships with frozen products from the United States continue to arrive at the port of Havana. The last to dock this December 11 was the Green Maveric ship from New Orleans.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

The Proposed Law on Livestock is Typical for a Meat-Producing Country, Not for Cuba

The session confirmed that the changes that have been introduced so far to improve agricultural and livestock production have failed. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 12 December 2022 — Without knowing exactly why, satisfaction reigned in the parliamentary agro-food commission for the announced Law on the Promotion and Development of Livestock, which in recent days has been the focus of several reports in the local press. The preliminary draft, without any real innovations, can influence the pressing problem of shortages in the country. The new regulations essentially foresee changes in terms of sustainability, animal welfare and meat quality control that are more typical of countries where there is meat, which is far from being the case in Cuba.

The session confirmed, in fact, that the changes that have been introduced so far to improve agricultural and livestock production have failed. “The measures and agreements are not complied with in practice, and this affects producers and makes us lose credibility,” said Emilio Interián Rodríguez, deputy for Arroyo Naranjo and a rancher himself, who urged an “immediate solution” to the problem of non-payments to producers. “Farming families depend on those profits; in addition, non-payments discourage production,” he lamented. And he didn’t have to go far to give an example.

“I recently sent three animals to the slaughterhouse, and I still don’t know when I’m going to collect that money. On the other hand, to buy a stallion, necessary to improve livestock, I must pay in cash. So, how do I do it? It’s not possible to move forward in agriculture like this,” he said, recounting his own experience.

The vice president, Salvador Valdés Mesa, recognized that Cuban laws are insufficient for the promotion of production and that, in addition, resources have not “been put” into it, but there have been recent transformations such as allowing the sale of livestock “and the privatization of part of the sector.” He forgot that there has been money for other issues and that, as the deputy of Arroyo Naranjo reminded him, the changes are of no use if there are no effects beyond the on-paper ones. continue reading

Valdés Mesa, in any case, was not very convinced about the innovations, judging by his words. “The state’s control over livestock is weakened. We have disorder in the field. There are many complaints from producers about the damage from animals to other crops and thousands of livestock holders without land,” he said.

As outlined in the commission, reality has forced some changes in the preliminary draft, although we will have to wait to see the final text to learn more. “There are elements related to food and nutrition, for example, that cannot be met, because not even  companies have that capacity. Only universities and scientific centres have it,” said the authorities, who aspire to increase the amount of livestock, something that, they admit, they won’t achieve.

“In the country, 40,000 cattle are killed illegally, and 200,000 die,” a producer told Escambray on Wednesday in a report where nothing was hidden about the serious situation. “In livestock, life cannot remain the same, applauding plans and results that barely benefit a small number of inhabitants, recycling, year after year, statistics that make society shudder.”

According to the text, among the worst problems are banditry, which, he explains, forces cows to be cooped up for too long, and emigration, which additionally causes a lack of attention to rural communities and the countryside in general.

The report follows another one published days earlier in Periódico 26, which warned that, in the province of Las Tunas, there were more than 11,500 deaths of livestock in the year, and the planned birth rate didn’t even reach 41%. In addition, and delving into the serious problem of robberies that shakes the Island more than ever, it indicated that some 2,580 cows left the production cycle due to theft and illegal slaughter.

Milk is also affected, and according to the territorial authorities, deliveries of this product and meat have not been fulfilled, and contracts for production in 2023 do not even reach 14%. The issue is not trivial, since as long as the producer doesn’t fulfill his contract with the State, he cannot sell independently. Minister Ydael Pérez Brito said that, out of more than 9,000 owners, only about 256 animals are slaughtered, and added that the measures taken by the Government are intended to “woo the producers.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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