The billboard advertised phone recharges in Cuba, but this Thursday it was removed after pressure from opponents in Miami. (Collage)
EFE (via 14ymedio), Miami, 15 July 2022 — A billboard announcing telephone recharges with the logo of the Cuban state telecommunications monopoly Etecsa was removed from a Miami highway due to pressure from activists and exiles, local media reported this Friday.
The removal occurred this Thursday after a campaign on social networks in which the content of the billboard placed on one of the busiest highways in Miami and Hialeah, a city populated mostly by people of Cuban origin.
“It is incredible that this has happened in the cradle of the exile,” Esteban Rodríguez, an exile, told the Telemundo channel. Several users published photos of the billboard today on social networks without warning of the controversy, in which the actress Tahimí Alvariño, the advertising face of the Katapulk company, which sells telephone recharges to Cuba with the Etecsa logo, was seen.
“Cubans respect each other, they removed the advertising of the Castro regime,” wrote Ileana Leiva Reveron to accompany the billboard without advertising content. “Don’t be amazed at the poster, be amazed at your fellow citizens in that city who make this announcement possible,” wrote a Cuban resident in Israel on Twitter. continue reading
The owner of Katapulk, the Cuban-American businessman Hugo Cancio, responded to the controversy in a written statement sent to the Telemundo channel, in which he stressed that Etecsa is not sanctioned by the US Government: “This is an activity authorized by the regulations from OFAC (an office of the US Treasury),” he said.
“Etecsa is the Cuban telecommunications company where all Cubans inside and outside the island process their recharges and buy their data packages for internet use and other services,” he said. “The idea is not to cause attention or controversy. We decided to offer this much-needed service to our clients and being new, we wanted to give legitimacy to this management,” he added.
Activist Esteban Rodríguez declared before the Telemundo cameras that the fence was “an insult to the people, to exile and Cubans” and stressed that “with pressure” anything can be achieved.
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Mexico has been a historic trading partner for Cuba, especially due to its geographical proximity. (ACN)
EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 16 July 2022 — Cuba and Mexico closed a bilateral business forum this Friday in Havana with the signing of 12 agreements, after the business rounds held in the last two days in Havana with the main objective of expanding Mexico’s investments on the island.
The more than 80 Mexican and 150 Cuban companies examined the possibilities of relationships in the textile, food, information technology, renewable energy, biopharmaceutical, transportation, and tourism sectors, among others.
On this last day of the meeting, a group of Mexican businessmen visited the Mariel Special Development Zone, the business center and merchant port where the Cuban Government plans to locate a large part of technological innovation projects and industrial concentration, with a view to increasing exports.
The opening of the event on Thursday was attended by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, and Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz, along with First Vice President Ricardo Cabrisas and the Ministers of Economy, Alejandro Gil, and of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, Rodrigo Malmierca.
The Mexican delegation was headed by Héctor Guerrero, Undersecretary of Industry and Commerce of Mexico and the ambassador in Havana, Miguel Díaz Reynoso.
Currently, 11 Mexican firms — mixed ownership and private — operate in Cuba, among which there are three companies based in the Mariel Zone. continue reading
Mexico has been a historic trading partner for Cuba, especially due to its geographical proximity and the historical links between the two countries.
Both nations have an economic complementation agreement in force, through which tariff preferences were granted to the import of various goods.
According to 2019 data from the National Office of Statistics and Information of the Island (Onei), Mexico is among the 10 main trading partners of Havana, but far from Venezuela, China and Spain.
This business meeting has coincided with the celebrations for the almost 120 years of establishment of uninterrupted diplomatic relations between the two countries — which will be fulfilled in 2023 — and which included the visit of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at the beginning of May.
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The deterrent power of the police and the Criminal Code have pushed many protesters into exile. (EFE)
14ymedio, Manuel Cuesta Morúa, Havana, July 13, 2022 — The protests of July 11th and 12th, 2021, or the ’July Days’, defined some “firsts” in Cuba. It doesn’t matter how far back in history we search, we will not find protests of such magnitude.
For the first time, strictly spontaneous demands were made, but with a conscience; and,
for the first time they occurred and spread throughout the whole country;
for the first time in a public space, people of all social circles, of all generations and identities joined together;
for the first time social action against a militarized regime was fundamentally civic;
for the first time foreign influence or actors did not appear in the relaying of demands;
for the first time the idea and the reality of the people were genuinely in contrast with the regime’s narrative about the people;
for the first time the legitimacy of civil society was validated under totalitarian pressure itself;
for the first time the official discourse about the crisis was overtaken by the clear social conscience of those authentically responsible for it;
for the first time the identity between Cuba and Revolution, in capital letters, was massively refuted;
for the first time the demand was not only a substitution of power, but rather a change in its rules;
for the first time a visible social minority, expressing to the still silent majority, exposed — with clarity and through overwhelmingly peaceful means — a minority regime in power; and…
For the first time we demonstrated that Cuba is an exception in the Americas, this one will not pass for the tacit “pact of political non-participation” that many media outlets and political sectors believed had been signed between Cubans and the government.
Harshly repressed as it was, especially the disproportionately long sentences of the protesters and by the political orchestrations of the judicial system in punishment mode, as opposed to any minimal notion of rule of law, this deep citizen revolution which continue reading
was not prepared in Mexico and did not land in Las Coloradas, emptied the contents of the totalitarian state’s political hegemony to conclude the slow process of the Cuban revolution’s ideological erosion, very visible since the 1990’s.
It was a political revolution from the bottom, aborted in its demands, which dislodged, above, a barracks revolution with tired offerings. Although they are reinstated on the surface, nearly a year after those events, a type of loud calm in society alongside a mass exodus of Cubans — a result of the deterrent power of the police and the Criminal Code — the political dimension of 11J (July 11th) summarizes the rupture between a self democratized society and an ever increasingly autocratic regime.
Civil society’s response to 11J have been diverse. However, all converge on demanding freedom for political prisoners, most of them young, sentenced to between 4 and 25 years for exercising their constitutional rights and their recognized universal human rights, in essence, freedom of expression, association, assembly and protest.
But, following 11J, does it have to do only with freedom for political prisoners and prisoners of conscience? I believe not. The demands of freedom for all those who have been jailed for political reasons and for conscience requires first establishing and laying down the pillars and creating the climate to exercise these and other rights, but in liberty.
This time, what is under discussion is the possible and necessary release from prison resulting in the closure of Cuban political prison. This, unlike in times past, during which more than 3,000 political prisoners were released in 1977 and in 2011 those 75 prisoners of the ill-named Black Spring of 2003, only to reproduce and increase political prison.
The probable success of the political demands and strategies to establish democracy and respect for human rights is a path to close this loop, one that is not very short.
I participate, along with those who believe that these are times for amnesty for liberty. The amnesty, in a vision shared by organizations such as the Council for a Democratic Transition in Cuba and by independent attorneys in Cuba and abroad encapsulates in a single process, here and now, seven essential cumulative claims of Cuban society:
The release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, a matter of highest human sensitivity which touches thousands of families;
The end of political prison itself;
An official acknowledgement of dissent;
The prevalence of human and constitutional rights;
The institutional opening of a democratization process with an emphasis on the preeminence of the law;
The establishment of a climate of national reconciliation for an inclusive democratization, in a venue beneficial for all parties where justice, rather than a rematch, will prevail and political realism;
All in a context where the conversation about freedoms extends beyond elite circles.
This is how the Draft Law of Amnesty and Decriminalization of Dissent, shared by the CTDC on March 30, 2022, is described and, for what can be referred to as the closure of political prison, involves the modernization of a new Criminal Code related to colonial times, which decriminalizes, once and for all, ideas and their civic consequences.
This draft is backed by the Constitution and the law. If 10,000 citizens sign the draft, the proposal will have the required citizen legitimacy, allowing it to be presented to the National Assembly for legislative procedures.
Is the government obligated to consider this or other citizen proposals? Morally yes, politically no. For this reason it would be necessary for us to establish a political benchmark: the number of signatures necessary of Cubans and friends of democracy on the island, within Cuba and abroad, to achieve restorative justice. Faced with a government that does not listen, the legal benchmark is not enough to get it to act rationally, with a concept of justice and a focus on rights. In this sense, the gathering of signatures becomes a citizen platform for excellence, in the midst of state criminalization of the right to protest, for the legitimate expression of the civic will of Cubans and the support of those in the international community that wish to accompany us.
With four additional values: the strengthening of citizen networks; the creation of a framework of solidarity and social indebtedness to Cuban political prisoners; the creation of a proactive climate against the social and political violence engulfing society — we refer to this climate as the Orange Country; and re-legitimizing the civic demands expressed publicly during the July Days.
The support of the international community will be decisive. Globalization of rights is the only answer to the globalization of autocracies. As confirmed by the brutality of Russia’s illegitimate invasion of Ukraine, the doctrine of international realism without moral idealism is an assault against realism itself. The liberal order, which is the order of rights, is the only one in which the stated goal of the states — good governance for wellbeing — coincides with the means to achieve them: the exercise of freedoms within the rule of law.
Democratic governments and civil society could renew their urgent and mature commitment to freedom in this hemisphere, definitively supporting the peaceful demands of freedom for political prisoners, along with those in their countries: Cuba, historically one of the chronic sources of migration issues in the region. Human rights, migration, political prison all form a critical vortex the solution to which requires a systematic and global effort. Support for amnesty is an excellent political expression of that dual commitment: to democracy and to human rights.
Translated by: Silvia Suárez
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Ermes Orta, one of the young people arrested in Sancti Spíritus because of 11J, offers his testimony to ’14ymedio’
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, On 16 July 2021, five days after the massive protests throughout Cuba, State Security forcefully entered a house on Calle Independencia #77, in Sancti Spíritus. There, they detained several young people, none of whom had gone out on the streets on 11J.
Ermes Orta Bernal was one of the ones who testified. Almost a year after those events, Ermes spoke with 14ymedio by telephone from the United States, where he now resides, to offer his version. The story reveals the regime’s strategies in jailing boys who did not even protest publicly.
“No crime was committed, it was just a punishment they wanted to inflict on the residents of Sancti Spiritus,” confirms the 20-year-old
“No crime was committed, it was just a punishment they wanted to inflict on the residents of Sancti Spiritus,” confirms the 20-year-old
Ermes tells that, after July 11th, a group of friends from Sancti Spíritus decided that they had to demonstrate peacefully once again, to demand the freedom of political prisoners Luis Mario Niedas Hernández and Alexander Fábregas. To that end, they joined a WhatsApp group called “Todos por laLibertad” and agreed to march as soon as possible.
That July 16th, at Leodán’s house, he says, “there was never a weapon, a machete, nothing, just a thermos of coffee on the table.” The police knocked on the door and entered without the residents’ consent. The boys turned their phones on and began broadcasting directly through their social networks. “We have nothing to talk about,” they told agent Orelvis Pérez Díaz, who had “taken an interest” in them for some time.
More strangers began to enter the house. Apparently, according to Ermes, State Security knew the purpose of the meeting, and had brought more people to support the arrest. “When we asked them to see an arrest warrant, they told us that it was not necessary, that they just wanted to talk.”
The atmosphere began to heat up when one of the officers discovered a recording phone and violently slammed it against a table. The boys remained calm in the face of the agent’s attitude and agreed to leave the place.
His phrase of choice was “They are ready to be transferred to Nieves Morejón,” referring to the maximum-security prison in Sancti Spiritus
“When we left the house there were a lot of people outside,” recounts Ermes, “there was police presence, many cars, people with sticks and stakes yelling “delinquents!” at us. Those people had been taken from their workplaces for an “act of revolutionary reaffirmation” against the young men, under the pretext that they had stoned the windows of a foreign exchange store. continue reading
They were transferred two by two to the Sancti Spíritus Bivouac. The cars: a police car, a Jeep and a black Geely. “We know the type of people they are, and they have been followed up,” snapped the officer who received them.
The first thing they did was to isolate them for an hour in personal dungeons less than 22 square feet in size. They were then led through a gated courtyard to the infirmary, where they were weighed and measured. They repeated the process later, with new officers, but this time they recorded them with cameras and “worked on their psychology,” according to Ermes.
Their phrase of choice was, “They are ready to be transferred to Nieves Morejón,” in reference to the maximum-security prison in Sancti Spiritus. After the medical check-up, they were kept in their cells. Little by little, they were called to interrogation rooms.
“We began to shout from dungeon to dungeon. Then an officer would come and silence us by hitting the bars hard. At night, they did the same thing with tin cans, they wouldn’t let us sleep. The interrogations were even done at dawn.”
“We did our business in a hole, a latrine, from which water came out twice a day, to be flushed. The stink was nauseating”
When Ermes read the order of disturbance in his precautionary disposition, he noticed that the document accused him of protesting on July 11th. It was difficult for him to rectify that manuscript, which also stated that they had thrown stones at the stores and had offended Díaz-Canel.
“On the third day of being locked up, they fumigated us with chlorine,” recalls Ermes. “A man came, an old man, with a chlorine gun, and he sprayed the liquid on us. I got intoxicated and told the officer: ‘I’m going to die, I’m allergic to chlorine, look what’s happening to me’. The old man replied that he didn’t care, he just did what he was told. ‘And if they send you to kill us, will you kill us?’ The policeman’s response was withering: “Probably.”
According to Ermes, the prison food was not as bad as might be expected, but the hygienic conditions were appalling. We did our business in a hole, a latrine, from which water came out twice a day, to be flushed. The stink was nauseating”
“There was a time,” he says, “when the showers were not working and we had to take some bottles that our relatives brought us. We filled them up with collected water from the trench to be able to wash ourselves.”
As the days went by, they were transferred to other cells, forming pairs with alleged 11J protesters. According to their new condition, they were assigned a number and the interrogations continued.
“They asked us who was paying us. They made us fight among ourselves. The questions were violent. They confronted each other.” The police frequently carried out nasal tests to verify if they were infected with covid-19, fumigated them with chlorine again and demanded the passwords of their phones.
“They asked us who was paying us. They made us fight among ourselves. The questions were violent”
“With all that pressure we had no choice but to deliver them.” From that moment on, the Police had access to the detainees’ messages and private photos.” They showed us naked photos of some of us, our text messages, they continued with the abuse.”
Ermes states that every day they asked the agents: “When are we leaving?” “Tomorrow,” they said, without the promise being fulfilled. Despite frequent chlorine intoxications, they were denied medical assistance.
The initial period in prison was the hardest, particularly for Yoel Castillo, who was 21 years old and is still in prison. Yoel attempted suicide twice. “After the first attempt, they took him to the infirmary where he tried again, hanging himself with a sheet. It was too much pressure for him.”
“They assigned a single lawyer to us, since “they were being so kind to us,” because the office was not working. When you went to find out who the woman was [Dunia Mariana Rodríguez del Toro], it turned out that she had been a State Security prosecutor. She ended up being the lawyer for Yoan and the others. Everything was ‘fixed’. She told us, cynically: ‘Don’t you want me to defend you?'”
Ermes Orta had a lawyer close to him: his own father, but at first, they did not allow him to serve as his attorney. Then they relented, and when he demanded to see the file, they tried to delay at all costs. Examining the documents, he realized that there was nothing of substance written, no real cause formed.
“Someone sent some photos of some machetes and some arrows through the WhatsApp group, but they immediately removed them. We did not send them. That boy was never detained, he was never in court.”
They were released a few at a time, each with a different mandate. Ermes was accused of contempt and conspiracy to commit a crime, without any evidence of violent acts. “It was a mousetrap, to teach everybody a lesson,” he concludes.
“On the record, they even accuse us of wanting to attack a police station in Sancti Spíritus. Six boys! No one believes that”
As a requirement for his phone to be returned, he had to pay a fine. The trial, held in January of this year, was a farce. The accused were called one by one, and the alleged witnesses did not even know them. The courtroom was filled with State Security officers, informers and policemen.
“On the record they even accuse us of wanting to attack a police station in Sancti Spíritus. Six boys! No one believes that. It’s a joke.”
Since he was in high school, in 2019, Ermes Orta was in the sights of State Security. When the long lines began during the pandemic and he denounced the situation on his social networks, an officer began to “observe” him. He was kicked out of boxing training for having “the Statue of Liberty tattooed on his ribcage.” They sanctioned him and, after the events of July 16th, warned him that he was “regulated.” [Ed. note: A euphemism meaning forbidden to travel.]
“You put up with jail, but when you get out, your friends’ parents ask you not to see them anymore. Then, since no business in Cuba is clean, the people you work with tell you: ‘Don’t come here anymore, because you’re going to have me marked.’ And one needs to understand.”
State Security began to harass him with the idea of leaving the country. They put pressure on his mother, who ended up crying every day. “The only way we are going to leave you alone is if you leave,” they told him.
His brother spent a lot of money from the United States on two flights through Copa Airlines, but the company canceled his ticket days before Ermes could board. Finally, he left the Island on January 27th, through Aruba, on a charter flight. He had to leave his 8-month-old son behind.
“What happened in Sancti Spíritus to us and with those who are still imprisoned was an injustice. After 11J Cuba has gotten much worse and they knew it. That’s why they turned on the valve. But people are no longer afraid because they have children and they don’t want the same for them.”
In exile, where he is preparing to debut as a professional boxer, Ermes says that he has understood what freedom, democracy and the possibility of having a future means. “That same freedom,” he asserts, “is what I want for Cuba.”
Translated by Norma Whiting
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Protest in El Curita park, in Centro Habana, early Friday morning. (Screen capture)
14ymedio, Havana, 15 July 2022 — The state telecommunications monopoly, Etecsa, kept the internet cut off for at least half an hour in Cuba, coinciding with two protests that took place almost simultaneously, in the early morning this Friday, in the capital and in the west of the country.
In Los Palacios, Pinar del Río, the population showed it was fed up with the constant blackouts and power outages they have been suffering for months, aggravated by the summer heat. A group of people took to the streets in the middle of the night banging pots and pans and shouting “we are hungry” and “Díaz-Canel singao!” [motherfucker], as could be seen in videos broadcast on social networks.
Shortly after, official accounts published images of the streets of the same area in complete calm to deny not the information, but that the protests had been significant.
The same operation occurred in Centro Habana, where a woman who was protesting in El Curita park, for being homeless, was joined by dozens of mothers who showed solidarity with her cause. “11:54 at night, a Cuban mother with 2 girls and one in a wheelchair claims that they have nowhere to live because their house is in poor condition,” said a Facebook user.
According to a social network account related to the regime, La Página de Mauro Torres, the protest was dissolved when the first secretary of the Party in the municipality attended the woman personally. continue reading
“You need to have kettledrums and be on the people’s side in order that, when there is a protest, a government official comes forward and looks for solutions. Good for her, she is a short woman, but with a tremendous heart. And also for those who, in their eagerness to solve problems, can find a light in the attention,” said the page owner.
Next, they posted several photographs of the place located between Galiano and Reina street, all calm.
Despite their apparent transience, the protests confirm the pressure cooker that the Island has become, whose citizens no longer hesitate, despite everything, to go out and complain to the rulers about their situation.
The internet outage was also brief, as was confirmed by the page Inventario, with data from Internet Outage Alerts, with a graph showing a sharp drop in connectivity, although the connection has been intermittent in the hours since, according to different people in various provinces of the Island. The service interruption, which was not announced for any technical reason and for which Etecsa has, so far, given no explanations, shows the regime’s commitment to control information, as it fears a new outbreak like the one of July 11th last year, commonly called “11J”.
Translated by Andrea Libre
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Three Cuban Catholic priests offer ’14ymedio’ their experience of the 11J (July 11th) protests a year later. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 14 July 2022 — The oldest man in the cells wears a clerical shirt and a bandage on his head. Four stitches have been sewn over the wound. In the midst of the tumult of 11J in Camagüey, between the sweat and the cries for freedom, a hitman unloaded a bat on his forehead. With the same impetus, the aggressor returned to his group: it is not for nothing that they call this stampede of enraged proletarians rapid response brigades.
Dizzy, hungry – he had not been able to eat lunch – with a bloody head, the man called for help. Police, who take his reputation as a saint and a Samaritan seriously, escorted him to the hospital. There they patched up the wound as best they could and took him, of course, to prison.
That night, Cuba understood that the government was willing to go where it had not dared to go before in order to punish the 11J protesters: attack and imprison a priest. It was not until the following day – and with much pleading from the archbishop – that Castor Álvarez was released.
“That day everything was a party, all that was missing was the drum,” the priest tells 14ymedio, without rancor, a year after the protests. “There were many young people and the elderly came out of their houses astonished, to see that, as if to say: ’Is it true?’.”
When it all started, Father Castor was at the home of actress Iris Mariño. Seeing the vehemence with which that woman accepted the news, he fell to his knees and begged for a little enlightenment. He had to leave.
He walked three hours with the young people until the encounter with the military. “I told them no, that they weren’t there to hit the people. They had to let the people speak.” The police, he assures, were not as aggressive as the furious “cordon” of civilians, who were already wielding sticks to carry out Díaz-Canel’s “combat order.” continue reading
In the dungeon, the boys – of all colors, religions and ages – asked him if God had crossed Cuba off the map. “I told them that the opposite was true, and we began to pray together and talk,” adds the priest. “I was able to understand those young men, what they were risking. And I knew from their expressions that they would not stop risking.”
From the Special Period, the Cuban began an unstoppable “path of liberation”, reflects the priest. However, the most urgent challenge is “to believe in politics, to believe that a human association can be made with certain rules. We cannot think only of the family, which is perhaps the group to which Cubans advance in association, but also in the country.
For this priest, 11J was a “bright day,” which awakened the old happiness of Cubans. However, some hope gained in the protests “was frustrated by what happened around 15N [15 November].”
“We cannot despair,” he adds, “because the path through violence may be quick, but less durable. The peaceful path is slower, but having the conviction of the hearts and the agreement of men and the wills of all is more successful, more harmonious.”
In Havana, another priest, Jorge Luis Pérez Soto, was also moved to walk with the people during 11J. “I remember that afternoon I left the streets for an hour to go celebrate mass. It was a mystical moment, because spiritually accompanying this people is also urgent.”
The social networks, the growing burden and the generational change are transforming the Cuban reality, he thinks. In addition to light, 11J brought a lot of pain, both for those who “did not know how to peacefully claim their rights,” and for those who were supposed to be “guarantors of citizen order” and ended up calling for “brother against brother” violence.
Several photographs show the priest standing at the entrance to the police stations in Havana, demanding proof of life from the disappeared. Many of the prisoners were Catholic lay people, people of faith and culture, and minors, people about which the establishment in which they were detained was not even known.
It was decisive then, recalls Father Jorge Luis, that the Conference of Religious Men and Women of Cuba organized an accompaniment service for prisoners and their families. In a year of work, the Conference has provided numerous legal, psychological and counseling resources to families who have felt helpless in the face of the harsh sentences of 11J. This service has put the Catholic Church, regularly monitored at all levels, in the sights of State Security.
However, “the repression has been very harsh. Certainly international and media pressure have managed to reduce some sentences, but even so, they continue to be unjust and morally unacceptable for the most part.”
Father Jorge Luis agrees with his colleague from Camagüey that “the Cuban people must learn to listen and welcome each other. Individual agendas must be postponed by common agendas. Violence cannot be viewed in any way as a way to solve anything. The civic education of the people is urgent.”
11J surprised Alberto Reyes outside of Cuba, but this priest would have liked to “experience the protests in the first person.” It is no secret that the G2 has a particular viciousness towards him and that his surveillance file must be extensive and thorough. Despite this – and many other misunderstandings, even within the ecclesial environment – Father Alberto is a voice of resistance and radicalism.
“From a distance, I experienced 11J with a mixture of emotions, with joy and hope that the demonstrations would open a path of definitive change,” he tells 14ymedio. Then came the “profound sadness,” “concern and anger at the repression that was unleashed, and at the opportunity that the government was once again missing to start a dialogue with civil society that would lead to change.”
Although it does not publicly acknowledge it, the power leadership is also experiencing “a situation of continuous wear and tear.” According to the priest, this political system “has more than demonstrated its inability to build a society that is not only prosperous, but also capable of responding to the most basic aspirations of human beings.”
“We are a tired and worn-out people,” he continues, “we are a people whose life is running out in the struggle for survival; we are a people who have learned to defend ourselves as best we can and who go out to parade and applaud energetically while preparing our definitive emigration from the country. We are a people submerged in misery and precariousness where it becomes increasingly difficult to cultivate the values of the spirit. And we are a people who no longer believe in the empty promises that their rulers insist on repeating.”
A burning issue around 11J has been the attitude of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba, accused of weakness in the face of government pressure. Father Jorge Luis, however, assures that “the bishops have interceded a lot, from silence, to help the detainees; they have also spoken in various messages. Their action has been discreet, from anonymity, but they have been present.”.
“In my case,” Father Castor agrees, “my bishop was there both days to get me out of prison,” adding that “many of our laity were also arrested. Many people have expressed approval of our attitude in confronting the authorities in favor of justice, respect, freedom of expression.”
In these three priests a critical spirit and civic roots coexist that they share with many priests and nuns, such as Rolando Montes de Oca or the superior of the Daughters of Charity in Cuba, Nadieska Almeida.
“It is true that not all the pastors have been involved,” recognizes Father Castor, “but you also have to understand the charisms. I believe that there has been a light within the pastors of the Church towards the people. And the people know that they can always find support there.
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 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.
Leonardo Padura offered a press conference this Tuesday in the Canary Islands. (Angel Medina/EFE).
EFE (via 14ymedio), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain), 14 On Tuesday, the Cuban writer Leonardo Padura, literary father of the detective Mario Conde and winner of 2021’s Princess of Asturias Award for Letters, said that throughout his career he has never had the feeling of escaping from censorship, but rather rather of looking for it.
“I don’t escape censorship, but rather I look for it,” said Padura at a press conference in Las Palmas (Canary Islands), where he is participating in the “Literature from the Islands” meeting at the Maspalomas Summer University.
He addressed the publication of his next novel, Gentes decentes, in which he reprises detective Conde, which will hit bookstores at the end of August.
Padura said that the situation in Cuba is “economically very tense and socially very complicated,” because added to the effects of the pandemic on economic assets such as tourism, there is a series of economic deficiencies “carried over for years.”
The writer, who has Cuban and Spanish nationality and resides in Havana, was critical of the “severe trials” of people who demonstrated to protest against the Cuban government just a year ago in Havana.
“I believe that the judicial extreme of such high sentences should not have been reached for many of these people. The Government had the possibility of having a much more humanistic gesture,” he said, and insisted on the “fight for survival” that the most people on the island. continue reading
“I have the sense that the themes and manners of Cuban society have an international projection, but always starting from Cuba and returning to Cuba. I need to hear people speak in Cuba, to be able to know their hopes and frustrations and that is a process that is always in progress,” reflected the author.
For Padura, the best place to follow these processes of transformation of society and assimilate social changes is his neighborhood in Havana, where he has lived since he was born, surrounded by people “who are not even interested or care that he is a writer.”
On why he chose the noir novel as a mode of expression, he said that it seems to him a “generous genre” that allows a lot of freedom.
“I think that the most radical political documents that have circulated in Cuba are probably my novels. There has always been a critical look and I have touched on very deep, very complicated issues. I am interested in everything related to the search for utopia,” he assured.
Regarding the difficulty in finding his novels in Cuba, he believes that it relates — more than to censorship — to the economic situation since, in general, the books in his country “circulate little and poorly… there is a policy of not promoting them and not making my work visible,” he said, although he does not consider himself politically persecuted.
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Workers from the Jobabo Urban Farm, in Las Tunas, during a meeting in which they demanded their salaries. (Capture)
14ymedio, Havana, 14 July 2022 — The workers at the Jobabo Urban Farm are beginning to tire. After two months without pay, the employees ask why they should pay the union and what is it doing for them.
“They constantly tell us that we have to demand more from the administration for their interests, and yes, we do, but these problems are not resolved,” says Adriennis Vega, union representative of this agricultural farm, located in Las Tunas. The 94 workers that make it up have not received their salary for May nor are they expected to do so for June. All that is expected is that it will be until after the middle of this month when they can access credits that allow them to start catching up.
“We work to harvest and support the family. We understand the situation of the company, but this problem has to have a solution,” one of the employees told Radio Cabaniguán. A debt of almost seven million pesos was transferred to the farm from the Empresa Integral Agropecuaria [Comprehensive Agricultural Company], which, in the words of the official press, made it possible to foresee “this tense wage behavior.”
Iryás Arenas Buitrago, director of the farm, explained that everything is due to the combination of two factors. On the one hand, the transferred debt prevents them from accessing bank loans, which makes it impossible to carry out any operation that generates income with which to support the workers’ salaries. continue reading
And then comes the other important question: the orchards produce, but they are far from supporting the almost one hundred employees. “We maintain the Base Business Unit [UEB] with marketing,” explains the official.
The factory, he continues, has 16 workers and is in the investment process, so they need the workforce, but there are no profits to generate wages. In addition, the fuel shortage has led to barely 145,000 pesos from sales instead of half a million.
The official maintains the hope that the reconversion of the farm will allow him greater independence to make his decisions, being of municipal subordination, a recipe, that of decentralization, that the Government is promoting and that, conveniently, helps them to distribute responsibilities.
The case, says Esteban Ajete, president of the League of Independent Farmers of Cuba, is not isolated. The farmer tells 14ymedio that solvency problems affect all kinds of companies, not just agricultural ones, and he even claims to have recent news of at least two businesses in the field of forestry whose employees are not paid. “They don’t have raw materials and poor business management has caused them to go bankrupt,” he says.
Ajete recalls that this is linked to the non-payment of the stimulus in MLC (freely convertible currency) which the Government promised to the farmers and that has not arrived. “They tell them that there is no solvency on the part of the bank,” he maintains. According to the farmer, part of the freely convertible currency that is collected in the country through tourism or hard currency stores goes to a bank in national currency that is completely impoverished. As a consequence, there is none of the promised money nor are there credits for the harvest.
“Sometimes, the farmer has to play it by ear, selling things to be able to plant.” According to Ajete, the loans, when they exist, are also suffocating the farmer. “They have to repay the credit, it’s for supplies, and when the harvest ends the government keeps the amount to repay the loan, from the money they should receive. That’s why many are committed to the bank,” he adds.
The farmer also reveals that one of the worst examples is tobacco. If the harvest spoils because the farmer does not have fertilizers or any other necessary input, the Government harvests it and sells it, not as first class tobacco, but as a lower category. “The government takes something out of him, but the farmer is pawned.”
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On Wednesday, a group of 250 migrants was gathered in an orchard in Eagle Pass (Texas) (Twitter/@BillFOXLA)
14ymedio, Havana, 13 July 2022 — Hundreds and hundreds of people in a line, from one side to the other of the Rio Grande, in an incessant flow like the waters that cross. The images, recorded on the river border of Piedras Negras (Mexico) with Eagle Pass (Texas) and shared this Monday by the American journalist Bill Melugin, illustrate the cold numbers.
According to the Fox News reporter, last week there were more than 13,000 illegal crossings in the same area: “That’s almost 2,000 a day.” A federal source told him that 2,258 illegal immigrants arrived on Wednesday. Matías, a source from the Mexican prosecutor’s office in Coahuila who prefers not to give his last name, told 14ymedio that between Sunday and Tuesday more than 8,000 people crossed the border strip of about 90 kilometers between Ciudad Acuña and Piedras Negras, among them, “several families”.
The official also says that the Northeast cartel has taken over the traffic of Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans in the place. “They have hawks – children, vendors, bartenders – who inform them about free points to cross migrants through the Rio Grande,” he details.
Two coyotes were seen in the images shared by Bill Melugin, revealing the way they operate: once the coyotes leave one group, they return to Mexican territory to guide another.
The arrival of Cubans in the US has reached unprecedented numbers during the Joe Biden Administration. Data offered by the Department of Customs and Border Protection show that in the last eight months a total of 140,602 Cubans have entered the United States by land, an number that already exceeds the Mariel Boatlift exodus of 1980, when 125,000 people reached the United States in seven months. continue reading
Matías knows that the undocumented immigrants who come in a caravan “reach their limits and some residents near Rio Grande support them free of charge so they can reach their American dream.”
Those who arrive by bus are “detected by the hawks, who notify the coyotes about the places where people are. Either under threat or extortion, but they end up agreeing to cross the river with these smugglers,” says Matías. “They charge them between 600 to 1,000 dollars to pass them and they leave them there.” This network also brings migrants from Tabasco and Yucatan.
The Northeast cartel – a split from the old Gulf cartel – is a bloodthirsty group that is not only dedicated to transporting drugs, but also to extortion, kidnapping, homicides, fuel theft, bank robbery and human trafficking.
The Cuban Francisco Torné Martínez is not part of the group filmed on Monday, but he could have been. He stepped on US territory this Wednesday. “They took names and divided the group of more than 200 people, the Peruvians and the Guatemalans were put on a bus to return them over the bridge,” he refers to this newspaper.
Torné was taken along with 22 other Cubans, 39 Venezuelans and 9 Nicaraguans to a church. “Texas is returning those from El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti and Guatemala, but this could change as a result of Texas Governor Greg Abbott intensifying his campaign,” says official Matías.
Translated by Andrea Libre
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The mothers of the 11J prisoners are not going to give up. (Facebook)
14ymedio, Havana, 12 July 2022 — “State Security visits us and harasses us, but we are going to continue asking for the freedom of our children.” The words of Migdalia Gutiérrez Padrón, mother of a 21-year-old young convicted because of the 11J protests [July 11, 2021] without even proof that he was there, explain why among more than 1,500 detainees in the anti-government demonstrations a year ago, there are barely only about twenty families who dare to raise their voices.
Warned and threatened, the mothers, wives, and sisters of the prisoners have become the weakest links for State Security, the easy target to ask for silence not to make things worse. But the political police did not count on the fact that links are also iron made. The political police lack the necessary expertise to understand that they would not be the first mothers in the world who fought for their children and managed, sooner or later, to bring genocides, traffickers and murderers to the dock.
Over several months, with the patience required to gain the trust of those who feel fear, the director of 14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, was able to interview the mothers of some of the 11J prisoners and the wife of one of them, who also suffers the consequences of having a son now fatherless. continue reading
These women agreed to tell where their loved ones were that Sunday, when the demonstrations began, how their arrests and grotesque trials took place, the painful days in prison, and the frustrated hope of a useless appeal. Some affirm that their children did not even participate, others claim that they marched peacefully asking for freedom, others cannot believe that even if they had thrown a stone, they have been sentenced more harshly than murderers and rapists.
They have all suffered having to bring food and clothing to their children and seeing them locked up in unworthy conditions. And although they all know that their fight is almost against a wall, they do not plan to abandon it. María Luisa Fleitas, one of our interviewees and the mother of a young man sentenced to 21 years in prison, wrote: “A son in prison is a dead mother.” But they are alive enough to keep fighting.
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El Faro, one of the state stores that was completely empty this Monday. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 11 July 2022 — The harassment of independent activists and journalists since last week already foretold that this Monday, the one-year anniversary of the historic 11J demonstrations in Cuba, would be a day without disturbances. This is the case, at least in Havana, where numerous police officers, uniform and civilian, are deployed in the streets of the center. In their effort to maintain order, the authorities have even done what seemed impossible: they made the lines disappear.
“There’s nothing available in the neighborhood stores that always have lines in front, such as El Rápido, the Cupet de Infanta or Maisí. It seems that they’ve chosen to avoid the food lines today,” a neighbor of Central Havana tells this newspaper, surprised by the empty shops, the semi-deserted streets and the environment of surveillance.
In the Maisí store, located on Infanta Street, two other women commented that “there’s nothing for sale because, you know, today they don’t want people on the street.” Nor was there anything to buy at H. Upmann, on Zapata and Infanta, and Las Columnas, on Galiano.
At the doors, of course, there were individuals with an inquisitive attitude, who were clearly not there to buy, since nothing was offered. “Today there are more police than people on the street,” a boy murmured when he saw them. continue reading
The police operation was especially visible on Carlos III Street, which was full of officers. In the Plaza of the same name there was one business operating, with chicken and detergent for sale in pesos. On any other day, the line would have been massive; however, on Monday, there were only three people waiting.
Uniformed and civilian agents guarded the streets of Central Havana. (14ymedio)
“Here, here’s the line, they replied to an old man who asked, surprised by the low number. “And why are there so few people?” he asked. “They’ve only allowed the bodegas (ration stores) to be open today,” they explained.
On the door, a sign announced the distribution of the bodegas for the People’s Council of Pueblo Nuevo, the only one that has been open from June 22, without any modification to the rules of last May 20. Since then, purchases have been restricted by municipality and “cycles,” a controversial measure not only to distribute scarce products but also to avoid turmoil in the lines.
“It’s a shame there isn’t even one place open, not even one line, in all of Havana. It’s incredible,” exclaimed a boy also from Central Havana who, in vain, was looking for a place where he could shop paying in national currency.
The strategic points of that neighborhood, one of the emblematic scenarios of last year’s 11J demonstrations, were full of officers on Monday. A woman summarized the situation when passing a group of four Black Berets [Special Forces] walking along Boulevard San Rafael: “Not even one fly is flying here today.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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The biologist and Cuban activist Ariel Ruiz Urquiola, this Monday in front of the offices of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.
EFE (via 14ymedio), Geneva, 11 July 2022 — On Monday, the Cuban biologist Ariel Ruiz Urquiola, an environmental and LGTBI activist, completed eight days on a hunger strike in front of the headquarters of the UN Office for Human Rights in Geneva, which he is demanding intervene to stop the harassment suffered by his family in Cuba.
“The only thing left for me is to ask the high commissioner (Michelle Bachelet) to adhere to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which has been violated against my sister [Omara Ruiz Urquiola] and me through medical torture and crimes against humanity,” the Cuban activist, resident in Switzerland since 2019, told EFE.
Ruiz Urquiola accuses the Cuban regime of having expelled him and his sister from the University of Havana for their political activism, of trying to confiscate the land they work, after not being able to dedicate themselves to teaching, and now of preventing his sister from returning to Cuba after traveling to the US to treat breast cancer.
In addition, the activist affirms that Cuban authorities inoculated him with the HIV virus in 2019, when he was on another hunger strike, and that they have given his sister placebo treatments on several occasions instead of the medicines she needs against her cancer. continue reading
“Now that my sister is prohibited from entering Cuba, my mother is left alone and they are going for her: they want to confiscate our farm,” said Ruiz Urquiola, who has been sleeping outdoors in a Geneva square since July 4, and assured that it will remain there “as long as the body lasts.”
“The Geneva medical services and the police have been very concerned about my health, but my choice is to continue,” he said, and blamed the UN Office for the medical consequences that the current strike, the fifth it has carried out in almost 20 years of activism.
The Cuban expert added that just one person in charge from the office headed by Bachelet has been interested in his health these days, for which he considered “disastrous” the response of an institution before which he had already done a shorter strike hunger in 2020.
Translated by Andrea Libre
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The regulation says that “freedom of the press constitutes a right of the people”, yes, but that this is exercised “according to the aims of the socialist society.” (Capture)
14ymedio, Havana, 12 July 2022 — On Tuesday, the Cuban government presented a preliminary draft of the Social Communication Law and opened, according to the official Granma newspaper, a “specialized consultation process” to support “the knowledge and study of the population regarding this norm.”
The 32nd version of the law was signed on April 15, but it was made public one day after the anniversary of the historic 11J (July 11th) protests throughout the island. Although the official press posits the law as an instrument to “regulate” the content in the press, already from its preliminary dispositions it makes its character clear: it says that “freedom of the press constitutes a right of the people,” yes, but that this is exercised “according to the aims of the socialist society.”
The text does not recognize any other type of ownership of the local media that is not state, as indicated in the 2019 Constitution.
At a press conference, Onelio Castillo Corderí, vice president of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT) and member of the document’s drafting commission, highlighted as the most important aspect of these consultations “being able to collect the opinion of the citizens, who constitute the core of all the communication processes that the standard describes.” continue reading
The document will go through a consultation starting this Tuesday that should end in September, commented the vice president of the state Union of Journalists of Cuba, Jorge Legañoa, without offering more details about the legislative path prior to its eventual approval. For the consultation an email address as been established an email, as well as “telephone numbers and other channels, through social networks, in many communication media, in organizations and institutions in the country,” Granma said.
The journalist, accompanied by two other press and social communication officials, stressed that the regulation covers the institutional, media and community spheres, and that it is the result of several months of investigation.
Legañoa described the preliminary project as “unprecedented, robust and as an opportunity to educate the public in matters of communication.”
The regulation announced this Monday, which contains 69 articles, includes a regulation that prohibits the use of content “to make propaganda in favor of war, of a foreign state hostile to the interests of the nation, terrorism, violence and the apology of hatred among Cubans, with the aim of destabilizing the socialist rule of law,” among others.
It also points out that the country’s social communication system has the purpose of “fostering consensus and national unity around the Homeland, the Revolution and the Communist Party of Cuba.”
It also recognizes the income generated by advertising as one of the ways for the economic management of the media, as long as it does not go against “the principles that govern” the “socialist society” of the Island.
There is no recognition of independent media critical of the government and operating in a legal vacuum.
Last May, Cuba approved its new Penal Code in which, among other things, it sanctions with one to three years in prison “whoever spreads false news” with the purpose of “disturbing international peace, or endangering the prestige or the credit of the Cuban State.”
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Miguel Díaz-Canel doing “voluntary work” this Sunday with young people on an agricultural farm. (@PresidenciaCuba)
14ymedio, Havana, 11 July 2022 — The official Cuban press has also made an 11J [July 11th] “special.” It is a series of opinion and analysis pieces, including an editorial, dated this Monday to talk about what it calls a “soft coup.” The roll-out began this Sunday, with a conference dedicated to young people, supporters of the Government. “We have full confidence in the Cuban youth, and we feel the shows of support every day in the fight against the media war and the active participation in the development of the country,” said Miguel Díaz-Canel.
The president, guataca [hoe] in hand, appeared at an agricultural farm in Bauta, Artemisa, to participate in “voluntary work” and talk about the demonstrations of a year ago. The demonstrators were, for the most part, young people, many of them today in prison, many others in exile, and the few that remain, warned so that today they do not think of repeating the feat.
“I want to remind you that it is true that (on July 11) we experienced unpleasant events, which we do not want to happen in our country. There were acts of vandalism, some with cruelty and with tremendous vulgarity and aggressiveness,” Diaz-Canel said.
However, the president celebrated that day that “the people took to the streets to defend the Revolution, the young people took to the streets to defend the Revolution, and in less than 24 hours, in much less than 24 hours, there were no more disturbances and the acts of vandalism and totally denigrating crimes against facilities, against people, had been extinguished.
Surprisingly, the leader decided to appropriate the spirit of 11J stating that “if there is something to celebrate this Monday, it is the victory of the Cuban people, of the Cuban Revolution, in the face of the attempts of those who wanted to turn (that) into a soft coup.” continue reading
The message plays in the editorial this Monday in the official newspaper Granma, entitled Un Girón en Julio*, although it contradicts a certain tone with Díaz-Canel. The president gave a long dissertation in Bauta on how love is always in the essence of Cubans and the Revolution loves love. Amid so much sweetness, he identified the J11 (July 11th) protesters and those who supported them with hate and evil. “Now, from the call they make, they are also calling for ruptures from positions of vandalism, from positions of events against citizen stability, against the stability of life in the country.”
In its editorial, the Cuban Communist Party’s newspaper, however, contemplates July 11 as one of the many battles that, according to the text, the Revolution has faced since its birth and against which it emerged victorious. “Because the dangers are true,” it says, “it is that the Cuban people have always been in the throes of combat. This was demonstrated on July 11, when they crushed that skirmish in a few hours,” it says, without being very clear if, finally, the prevailing belief is that the demonstrations were a serious coup attempt or an insignificant disturbance.
The newspaper also believes that there is an interest in “generating the false idea that material shortages and difficulties respond to inefficiency in the management of the revolutionary government, and to cover up its real cause: the inhumane economic siege of the United States.”
For its part, the official website Cubadebate opens full page with an analysis in which several specialists participate to address the “skirmish” or “soft coup.” In it, reference is made to how the complicated circumstances that Cuba was going through a year ago — and which now are far from having improved — were used to “intoxicate” and “thus generate citizen mobilization in the street.”
There is also space on the web for Reinaldo Rosado Roselló, responsible for logistics at the University of Informatics Sciences, who suffered a wound to the forehead on July 11 and has become a preferred witness of the ruling party, which uses him as a victim of “violent” protests.
There is no mention of Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, killed by a police shot. Nor to the hundreds of detainees, many of them sentenced to more than twenty years, nor to the combat order of Miguel Díaz-Canel to take to the streets to defend the system, with weapons if necessary.
*Translator’s note: Un Girón en julio — A Girón in July — references what the US calls the ’Bay of Pigs.’
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Zinédine Zidane Batista with his father Yosvany Batista, in a photo taken in May of last year. (Facebook/Yosvany Batista)
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 12 July 2022 — When Zinédine Zidane Batista Álvarez was born, 17 years ago, his own father, Yosvany, wrote his name, that of the renowned French footballer, on a piece of paper, so that they would not make a mistake in the certification. “Then it turned out that he liked baseball more than football.”
Yosvany Batista, 43, speaks to 14ymedio with bitterness and without fear. He has been devastated since his son’s life was taken from him on July 1 in the El Condado neighborhood, in Santa Clara, where the family lives.
The images, which immediately spread through social networks, are brutal. The young man lies on the ground, handcuffed and with blood oozing from a gash in his thigh. A policeman approaches and kicks him in the abdomen. Then he fires a second shot into the chest, and the body stops moving.
Zidane had been experiencing an intense neighborhood conflict for months in which the authorities had hardly mediated, despite the complaints made by the family. His father is blunt: the uniformed men who should have protected him ended up killing him.
“That same morning, July 1, my son and I went to the 5th police station because we had a citation,” recalls Batista. The family was immersed in a dispute that had escalated in recent months, with occupants who broke into the house where the young man, his wife and his children had sneaked in some time before. “It is a house that has been empty for five years because the owner left for Spain and died there,” explains the man.
They spent two hours at the police station with the prosecutor who was handling the case. Upon returning, the man lay down for a while and his son played video games. “Around half past two in the afternoon we got the news that that other family, with whom we had already had many problems, had attacked the cousin of my son’s wife, who was in the La Latina store,” he says. continue reading
They immediately returned to the police station to report this new attack, but they were told that they could not do anything “against these people who entered the house one day when they took advantage of the fact that my son went to take one of the girls from his wife to the hospital, and after that they didn’t want to go out anymore.”
Faced with what he denounces as inaction by the authorities, he urged his son to resolve the conflict on his own. “I told the occupants to get out of the house and that this problem had to be resolved and we stopped in front of 217 Rodolfo Valderas Street, in El Condado,” he details ,with the Batista address.
“After about 20 minutes waiting for the other family,” he recalls, they started down the road in another direction, when, suddenly, “they hit us from behind. They threw stones at us and we also responded with stones. I received a flat blow with a machete and a stone on the forearm. When the police arrived, more or less an hour after the conflict began, everything was more of a verbal fight.”
Batista says that his son had a machete and he himself had a knife, and that he gave Zidane both weapons when he heard the sirens of the patrols, telling him to return to the house. And he insists: “The police did not try to calm the situation, but rather intensified the violence. When they arrived, they immediately went upstairs to beat me. My son was already leaving, seeing me on the floor he comes back.”
The policemen who pounced on Yosvany to hit him took the young Zidane out of sight. “I only heard him shout that no one was going to hit me and then I felt the shot. It was the second, because I didn’t hear the first one. I got the strength from I don’t know from where and got up, but I already saw him handcuffed on the ground and bleeding while they continued to beat him.”
Yosvany tried to help him, carrying him, but he couldn’t: “He was already almost dead.” The forensic report confirmed after one shot entered through the thigh and the other through the upper left area of the thorax. “They took him to the hospital because people started yelling at them to help him. His wife’s cousin was the one who put a tourniquet on his leg.”
“I started chasing the policeman who had shot him and he fired two shots at my feet. Luckily, none of them hit me.” At that moment, says Yosvany, his youngest son, 11 years old, crossed his mind, and that was what prevented him from killing the agent: “Now I would not be doing this interview, but in the cemetery.”
Batista believes that, since he was already wounded and could not flee, the second shot was not necessary. “When he was already on the ground, handcuffed, they shot him again. That’s the image you see in the video. They finish him off on the ground, without having any chance of defending himself. I saw the blood on his pants, but I I thought it was a small wound.”
Zidane Batista’s parents have been married for 19 years and have five grandchildren, they are pastors of the Apostolic and Prophetic Ministry. (Courtesy)
The man continues: “The second shot lodged in his lung and by the time he got to the hospital and they tried to revive him, he was already dead. My wife didn’t have the courage to dress the body when it was handed over to her for the funeral. Now we’ve been told that there is an investigation. I am going to make statements this week to see if we can prosecute the police officer who killed him.”
Zidane, recalls his father, was born on Calle Martí, in El Condado Norte. “He liked horses and he was a good son.” He loved animals and raised pigeons. Both Yosvany and his wife, who have been married for 19 years and have five grandchildren, are pastors of the Apostolic and Prophetic Ministry.
“When she and I met we had housing problems and we occupied an empty Medical Office, we lived there for almost ten years,” he details. “Later we moved to Camajuaní as shepherds. Zidane was asthmatic, also very intelligent, although he did not like school very much. He had a great memory for historical events.”
“When Zidane met his partner, she was already pregnant and he gave the baby girl his last name. He adored that girl,” he says. “They have told many lies about my son, but most of what they say about alleged crimes is false. He was detained because he witnessed the July 11, 2021 protests and they fined him 2,000 pesos for violating sanitary measures*.”
On the day of the historic demonstrations last year, Batista insists, Zidane “went to bathe in the river and then to get some yogurt for the girl. They stayed as spectators looking at the people who were protesting and for that he and his wife were fined. They arrested him, mistreated him, beat him up and only released him after seven days. From then on he had to go sign in at the fifth police station.”
Although the father insists that Zidane was surprised by the protests on the road, “I told the police that if he shouted something, at least he had the courage to express what he felt, because Cuban youth have no choice at all, no possibility of developing themselves. Parents spend a lot of work to be able to support them.”
The pain, now, is unbearable for him. He could not go to his son’s funeral because he was detained at the time after the fight. “I haven’t been able to go to the cemetery because I don’t have the courage to see his grave.”
*Translator’s note: “Violating sanitary measures” most likely means not wearing a facemask.
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EFE (via 14ymedio), Miami, 15 July 2022 — A billboard announcing telephone recharges with the logo of the Cuban state telecommunications monopoly Etecsa was removed from a Miami highway due to pressure from activists and exiles, local media reported this Friday.
