‘I Refuse to Talk About Her in the Past Tense,’ Says Brother of Missing Young Woman in Ranchuelo

At the time of her disappearance, Rojas was working as an administrator at the Ranchuelo pre-university school. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 2 May 2022 — It has been 45 days since the laughter of Yeniset Rojas Pérez has ceased to echo within the walls of her house in Ranchuelo in Villa Clara. The 33-year-old woman disappeared, in broad daylight, on March 18 while she was returning from her work and, since then, anguish has overtaken her family and friends.

Yerandy Fleites, playwright and brother of Rojas, describes as “devastating” the impact that the woman’s absence has had on her loved ones. “She is a person with a simple life, divorced, dedicated to raising her 10-year-old girl and caring for our mother who has major health problems,” he details.

At the time of her disappearance, Rojas was working as an administrator at the Ranchuelo pre-university school. The last time she was seen was that Friday around 11:00 in the morning when she was returning from the educational center to her home, a route that runs through “an overcrowded area, full of interaction, traffic.”

When the hours began to pass and Rojas did not come home, the family knew immediately that something had happened. “We tried to file the complaint with the police on Friday the 18th, but according to the protocols, we had to wait 24 hours, so it had to be done on Saturday the 19th.”

Fleites classifies the treatment they received from the police from the beginning of the investigation as good, but criticizes the authorities who have not supported them in the hard time they are experiencing. “There has not been a much-vaunted ‘social worker’ assisting this family, there has been nothing at all,” he notes.

Rojas was the fundamental pillar of her home, “a true warrior of life,” explains her brother, who says that the woman’s absence is “a nightmare continue reading

that seems to have no end.” The playwright criticizes the official indifference towards the case: “We feel that apathy, we have felt it, feel it.”

“It seems incredible to me that we have disappeared people in Cuba and that no mass media echoes the news,” Fleites wrote on his Facebook account when 19 days passed without having a proof of life for his sister. Since then, he has maintained the demand on social networks for Rojas’ disappearance to be broadcast in the national media.

“I fear that the silence, this silence right now, this silence that accumulates dangerously, extends over ‘the case’ and it begins to be forgotten,” he wrote then and now reiterates: “we are doing what they have been unable to make the media and the official press do.”

In contrast, the solidarity of the neighbors has been present the entire time. “The people, the neighborhood, the family, the friends, formed several parties and we searched for her for several days (at all hours) around the town. The human support, that support has been fundamental and it is the thing that gives us the most strength in the world. We have had at our disposal everything from a car, through a machete, to the pill that today does not even exist in the spiritual centers.”

Although the police investigation continues, Fleites fears that a lot of time has been wasted and that “from the beginning, more could be done, much more, starting by making the case visible as a matter of Cuba, not of Ranchuelo, and that this would perhaps allow the use of research methods, techniques, resources, intelligence, etc.

Rojas’s mother and father receive little information about the course of the investigation: “They are hardly taken into account, a week goes by and no one visits” from the police to update the relatives about the process. Without new data, the anguish grows, but Fleites clings to hope.

“I refuse and I will refuse to talk about her in the past tense,” he points out and on his Facebook wall the playwright has published several photos of a girl with a mischievous face hugging her brother. In the most recent one, Yeniset Rojas Pérez, already an adult, looks directly at the camera and smiles. “She is not alone,” one can read next to the image.

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According to Amnesty International, Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara has Lost Sight in One Eye while in Cuban Prison

Otero Alcántara in front of Havana’s capital during a day of protest. (Facebook)

14ymedio biggerEFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 29 April 2022 — Cuban opponent and leader of the San Isidro Movement (MSI), Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, has lost sight in one eye in the prison where he has been held since the antigovernment protests last July, denounced NGO Amnesty International (AI) on Thursday.

Erika Guevara, Director for the Americas for London-based AI, denounced via her Twitter account that the dissident — who ended his three-month hunger strike in March — has not received medical attention and demands his immediate release.

“Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara’s situation in Cuba should be a source of shame for the Cuban government and of complete indignation for those of us who witness his decline,” said Guevara.

At the beginning of this month, activist and artist Claudia Genlui Hidalgo denounced on social media that the leader of MSI had been denied specialized care to tend to his vision problems. On April 6th, the United States Government also demanded that Cuba offer Otero Alcántara “immediate medical attention.”

“We urge the Cuban authorities to offer immediate medical attention to Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who remains seriously ill while in detention,” expressed the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Brian Nichols. continue reading

After ending his hunger strike on March 11th, sources close to the dissident communicated that he would opt for a trial, after six months in the Guanajay jail, 45 kilometers west of Havana.

The Island’s Prosecutor requested seven years in prison for Otero Alcántara — who AI considers a prisoner of conscience–for aggravated contempt, public disorder and instigating a crime for going out into the street in front of the San Isidro Movement headquarters in Old Havana to sing Patria y Vida among neighbors on April 4th, 2021.  Maykel Castillo Osorbo, for whom they seek 10 years in jail, is on the same docket.

Also weighing on Alcántara is the charge of insulting patriotic symbols, for carrying out his art work, Drapeau. The date of his trial is as yet unknown.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Cuban Migration Part 3 – Armed ‘Coyotes’, Powerful Toyotas to Cross Honduras

We left there at five-something in the morning, and they took us to some mountains in the north of Honduras, next to a steep hill, where one had to wait for the trucks. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Alejandro Mena Ortiz, 25 April 2022 –The next bus, which we boarded at San Pedro Sula, had more capacity than normal, because it had three seats on one side and two on the other, so, luckily, we were able to sit down. I think that on the other bus some people did have to stand up, but on ours they put the bags and backpacks in the aisle and people sat on top of them.

We left there at five-something in the morning, and they took us to some mountains in the north of Honduras, next to a steep hill, where we had to wait for the trucks that were going to take us through that mountain range to enter through Morales, in Guatemala.

We were there, on a muddy hill from the rain, and fear took hold of some of us, because the drivers and passengers carried pistols, some even long weapons. That stunned us, but at the same time we felt protected. We told ourselves: “Well, if these people are armed it will be more difficult for them to rob us on the road, but even if someone has a problem, they will surely shoot him in the head and throw him down a ravine.”

Then, between 20 and 25 trucks arrived and they put 15 people in each one, although there were 12 or 13 of us in mine. In the mountains, the situation was quite complicated. The truck, a Toyota with a lot of engine power, shook a lot as we went near the cliffs and the bushes. Men grabbed each other and made a mesh, protecting the women. It seemed that we were going backwards. Then, a girl from Cienfuegos began to cry; we all tried to calm her down, but she didn’t stop the whole way.

In some parts, where the hills were too steep, and everything was full of mud and stones, we had to get out of the bus, and the men ran as we pushed the bus.  The first two hills were easier and I managed to climb on the bus at the same time as the others, but the third time I thought I wasn’t going to make it.  I’m asthmatic and was thinking: oh, my God, they are going to leave me here, abandoned. Luckily, one of them helped me considerably. He got down from the bus, grabbed me, helped me up and gave me some water. In addition, they all agreed that if pushing the bus again was necessary, I would not do it. continue reading

Throughout the journey, despite being so unpleasant and having mud everywhere, we saw some very beautiful landscapes, with exuberant vegetation, and a river with transparent water. All the Cubans who had been traveling in a now disabled van were washing themselves there.

We didn’t know we had crossed the border until we saw a stone, half covered by vegetation, that indicated it: “Welcome to the Republic of Guatemala”. There, they took us out of the vans and put us in some other smaller, cramped vans. There were almost 200 of us in three vehicles. We arrived at a post where there were many Guatemalan soldiers, with their machine guns, but what they did was open the fence and let us through, no problem.

When we arrived in Morales, they left us in a house on the outskirts that was full – of course – of Cubans. We crowded into the patio of that house, because they told us to please not to stay outside so that the police wouldn’t see us. Inside the house itself, a woman had a table where they sold everything: drinks with electrolytes, to avoid dehydration, soft drinks, water, apples, bananas… A captive audience, we bought some things, although they sold at a fairly expensive price.

The intermediaries that were there said that they would contact the relatives of those who did not have money, so that they could send it to them

Coincidentally, the group of 15 Cubans who had been robbed in Honduras, at the Danlí terminal crossing, was there. Most were from Havana. According to their version, the old man who was driving the van was in cahoots with the assailants, three Hondurans who appeared from the middle of nowhere, at four in the morning, in the dark, with guns that they began shooting into the air, telling everyone to get down from the bus. Then they lined them up and searched them everywhere. They took absolutely everything; they only left them their clothes and coats. Although they had come this far because they had paid for it in advance, they couldn’t continue, because at that point they had to pay more money.

The intermediaries that were there said that they would contact the relatives of those who did not have money, so that they could send them some. At least half fell by the wayside. The rest of us were sent to a small hotel to rest and to continue the next day. They called us by the coyotes’ names. They told us: “Junior’s list, top, money”, for example, although, in many cases, the coyotes already had our money, from the relative who advanced it, so they gave it to us to pay for food and basic things.

From the house in the outskirts to the hotel in Morales, we arrived in something similar to a cocotaxi, whose driver told us: “Do you know that Ricardo Arjona is Guatemalan? I’m going to play a song by him called Mojado, (Wet) because at the end you ‘re going to get wet in the Rio Bravo and this song is about that.” I tell him: “Come on, yes, put it on”. I went with a girl and a guy, and the three of us sang it. There was an emotional moment, because one wonders: “What am I doing here? What am I doing here?” It is a little difficult.

Drivers and passengers carried pistols, some even long guns. That impressed us, but at the same time we felt protected. (14ymedio)

In that hotel there were more Cubans, two from Santiago, with whom I spoke. One of them had the loud voice of a television announcer but multiplied by ten, but it was to make a video call to his daughter and tell her that he might not see her again, because they were going to kill him on the way, and he burst into tears. That made me remember my family, call them and cry too, like them. From Cuba, my wife and my parents encouraged me, told me that everything was fine, although I knew it wasn’t, that their pain of being separated was the same as mine.

That night I was able to sleep, although there were eight of us and there were four beds, two in each. I was also able to bathe, with very cold water, which came directly from a spring.

I brought enough wet wipes from Nicaragua and I began to clean my clothes, my shoes, my backpack, full of mud, as best I could. We were also able to buy water, beer, soft drinks in a small lobby… I spent a dollar on a bottle of apple-flavored water and I didn’t like it. The others bought beer and drank it. I wasn’t in the mood for beer.

Since the food was not that good, someone suggested that we buy some pepperoni pizzas that cost 15 dollars and, since they were very large, we shared them between two. They also brought us three-liter bottles of a carbonated orange soft drink that I loved and drank throughout my stay in Guatemala. Imagine, Little Caesars Pizza… The pizza made our night a happy one; it was a moment like being with family.

Tomorrow:

Scare in Guatemala: they looked at Cubans with distrust

Translated by Norma Whiting
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Young Man With the Cuban Flag on Top of the Police Car on July 11th (11J) Shows up in Madrid

“It is my flag, with my blood, with the blood of us Cubans.” While he waved it, he shouted “Patria y vida” and “freedom,” Elías Rizo León recounted. (Collage)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Madrid, 2 May 2022 — His name is Elías Rizo León and he is 16 years old. The boy who became the symbol of the July 11 protests in Cuba by climbing with a flag onto an overturned police car  on the corner of Toyo, in the Havana municipality of Diez de Octubre, has made his identity public this Sunday, a day after arriving with his parents and his 11-year-old sister in Madrid.

He has done it, together with his mother, Ana León, in an interview with Mónica Baró for CiberCuba.  In the interview they tell how the family, after being harassed by State Security for Rizo’s participation in the demonstrations, managed to leave the island for Russia on August 25. There, León says, they were “incognito,” until they undertook the journey to Spain. The family does not explain how he managed to leave Cuba and the interviewer does not ask.

That July 11th Sunday, Elías left his house without notifying his parents just after seeing President Miguel Díaz-Canel on national television saying “the combat order is given.” He had hidden a Cuban flag under his white sweater that he had kept since the eighth grade, when he took it from his high school, César Escalante, in Santos Suárez.

“The first thing to know is that I am a patriotic Cuban and I am proud to have been born in Cuba, and that despite the history that Cuba has, that does not detract or dishonor me, the enemies are them, they are the ones who have to be expelled,” says the young man fluently, with aplomb, during the interview, while he says that he has always been interested in politics.

Seeing the images of the protests through social networks, he was moved: “I told myself it’s time, it’s now or never, we turn against them, and that’s how it was.” continue reading

His intention was to go to the Malecón, “because that was the focus,” along with several friends, but in the end he went alone. When he came across the clashes, provoked by the security forces, on Calzada de Diez de Octubre, he stayed there. “I was in the hottest spot, where (the police) were shooting, on Vía Blanca at the Santos Suárez intersection,” he says. To the aggression of the agents, the protesters, the vast majority of them young, responded with stones.

Elías shouted “down with communism, damn the communists, patria y vida, and freedom for Cuba,” cheering the crowd, and witnessing how they turned over the emblematic police car, which, he clarifies, was empty, because the police officers had previously fled in other vehicles.

The young man was injured in the right hand with the car’s window glass that he broke with a stone, and his blood stained the flag he was carrying. That was when he had the idea of ​​climbing on the overturned car with it and unfurling it: “It’s my flag, with my blood, with the blood of us Cubans.” As he waved it, he shouted “patria y vida and “freedom.”

He stoned the car because, he asserts, “it is a symbol of repression” that “has not been used for anything good, nothing more than to repress, to get money from the Cuban people, to beat people up and to let the police go wherever they want.”

Elías managed to slip away, despite being a target, with the flag in his hand, but he did not find any open door to hide in since they were all closed with bars.

Ana León knew where her son had been because she saw his image spread on social networks (“That’s Elías, I’m dying”), and it was immediately clear that she should not present him to the authorities.

“He’s my son, I gave birth to him and I’m not going to hand him over,” she told the lawyers who advised her to do otherwise. While Elías was hiding in a place that he does not want to reveal – his mother told State Security that he was in Santiago de Cuba, where the family comes from, but did not want to give the exact address – she was questioned several times by the political police.

“I never trusted them,” says Ana León, emphatically. “That is their working mechanism: they make you trust that nothing is happening, that everything will be fine, that they are simple routine questions, that you do not have to worry, that this is just a moment, a few hours, nothing more, of some questions. That’s a story. I knew perfectly well that was not what was going to happen, that from the first moment I arrived there at the police station with Elías, that was complete, and that is being seen.”

For other young defendants who were on the same corner of Toyo on 11J, the sentences have been the highest: Kendry Miranda Cárdenas, 19 years in prison; Rowland Jesús Castillo Castro, 18 years; Lázaro Urgelles Fajardo, 14 years; Brandon David Becerra Curbelo, 13 years. “Two of them, sentenced to longer than they had lived up to that moment,” as activist Salomé García Bacallao notes, who also participated in Baró’s interview and who says that she knew about the Rizo León case from the beginning.

Regarding the reasons for choosing Spain as the destination of his exile, the young man says that it is because “our community is here, apart from in the United States… Despite the fact that I am further from my homeland, I feel safe here, I feel well.”

The family states that their intention is to request political asylum, for which they will begin the process this week.

Madrid, in effect, has become in recent months a “new Miami” for Cubans who have been forced into exile, among them the playwright Yunior García Aguilera and Mónica Baró and Salomé García Bacallao themselves.

“I want to continue my studies, that’s the main thing, and lead a normal life,” Elías also says, but, he admits, “I’m really very much into politics.” He will never regret it: “I did what I did because it was born to me, and I did everything for my cause and for the cause of all of us who yearn for freedom.”

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Where is the Cuban Embargo/Blockade?

A billboard in Cuba demanding “Down with the blockade” and vowing “Fatherland or Death”

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 30 April 2022 — Where is the embargo? Day in and day out, the communist leaders parade the intensification of the U.S. embargo/blockade as the origin of all the ills of the Cuban economy. And it turns out that these leaders contradict the news published by the official press of the regime.

The State newspaper Granma boasts in the run-up to May 1st of the signing of no less than 18 agreements this past week by the Castro consortium BioCubaFarma with Cuban and foreign entities.

I insist: where is the embargo? If this fiction created by the Cuban communists to hide their responsibilities really existed, this type of agreement would be impracticable, impossible. But no. The 18 agreements between companies of the BioCubaFarma group and Cuban and foreign entities indicate that there is no restriction whatsoever for Cuba to trade, receive investments, capital or any type of aid from 192 countries in the world.

There is, however, a dispute with the United States that regulates the scope of relations between the two countries, which, moreover, has its well-defined origin in the practices of the communist regime towards its northern neighbor, which has refused from the beginning to negotiate.

Nevertheless, BioCubaFarma’s agreements are implemented, as are the agreements with Vietnam, with Spanish hoteliers, Canadian or Dutch miners, etc. The Cuban economy is one of the most open in the world, receives donations from numerous countries that support the “revolution” and establishes, when it deems it convenient, the most controversial alliances, as in this case, in the field of biotechnology.

The agreements, moreover, have not fallen from the sky. They have been well worked out, despite the “threat” of the embargo, and have been presented as one of the results of the BioHabana-2022 International Congress, which concluded last Friday. Someone from the organizing committee of the congress told Granma “we exceeded a thousand participants, including Cubans and foreigners from 51 countries, although 10% participated virtually; in addition, more than 600 papers were presented in conferences, short oral presentations and posters.” continue reading

Indeed, it is very difficult for a blockaded or embargoed country to hold this type of international congresses, even to promote conference tourism, which is catered for in the formidable luxury hotels of the capital, close to the collapsed buildings, the destroyed streets and the rubble plots of that marvel that was long ago the world’ s old Havana.

Other information published in Granma that questions the embargo is the agreement signed by Cuba and Argentina concerning the housing sector, after the celebration of the XIII International Construction Fair Fecons-2022, which concluded this Friday.

This was a convention aimed at improving the production of construction materials in Cuba, with the participation of state-owned and foreign companies, non-agricultural cooperatives and MSMEs. There they talked about goods needed for Cuba to boost its industrial and housing construction sector, such as plaster, mortars, additives, and the repair and maintenance of equipment, and new investments in technology to achieve efficiency with a rational use of the workforce, but with diligence.

But the event led to the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Argentina’s Ministry of Territorial Development and Habitat  and Cuba’s Ministry of Construction, with the reciprocal interest of promoting the economic progress and integration of Latin America and the Caribbean and collaboration in the housing sector.

Under this agreement, emphasis was given to the family of medium, fine and special pegaporcelain mortars; ceramic tiles decorated with digital printing; gray clinker for cement and the housing cell construction system. This is the embargo/blockade, one more example that the arguments used by the regime are not true.

For the record, this blog will never be against the Cuban economy maintaining its openness to the outside world and obtaining these types of agreements, and even better ones. Cuban biotechnology should advance as much as possible, since it is one of the technologies that encourage the development of the fourth industrial revolution. Betting on this sector could be an intelligent decision. And the same goes for the manufacture of construction materials, whose scarce production has forced the regime to increase its prices significantly.

What we will always denounce in this blog is that the ills of the Cuban economy are attributed to something that does not exist, the embargo/blockade, or that only exists in the imagination of a regime that lives on confrontation and provocation to its northern neighbor since Fidel Castro’s visit to the Teresa Hotel in Harlem in 1959.

A lot of rain has fallen since then, but if in anything in the expectations of the communist regime devised by Fidel Castro have been exceeded, it has been in the field of the embargo/blockade fiction, of which these Granma articles are a good example, of course, of the very opposite.

The embargo/blockade propaganda has worked for the Cuban communists for more than 60 years. It is true that when the multimillion dollar subsidies from the former USSR used to flow in, nobody remembered it, but the sign of the times shows that the relations between two neighbors, which were built by geopolitics since colonial times, were destroyed by the communist regime as soon as it came to power, and this for its own benefit, even if it was detrimental to the interests of the Cuban people.

It is difficult to find a similar process in any other country in the world.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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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.

Cuba’s May 1st Parade: ‘The Buses We Haven’t Seen for Months are Here’

Buses on Carlos III avenue and Rancho Boyeros, which transferred the attendees of the May 1 concentration. (14ymedio).

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 1 May 2022 — This Sunday, a line with dozens of buses lined part of Carlos III and Rancho Boyeros avenues in Havana while the May 1 parade took place in the Plaza de la Revolución. The Government has paid special attention to this event, after its having been suspended for two years due to the pandemic, and the first parade to take place after the popular protests last July.

Starting at dawn, the buses were transporting participants to the parade and rally for Workers’ Day, especially from the outskirts of the city and from the provinces of Mayabeque and Artemisa. Cuba officialdom has wanted to immerse itself in the crowds, in what the official call itself warned that it could be the last parade with the presence of some historical figures.

Sheathed in his military uniform, Raúl Castro, 90, accompanied Miguel Díaz-Canel and other members of the Cuban Executive on the platform of the Plaza. The event began with the words of a television announcer who addressed the message to “internal and external enemies” to whom he reiterated the slogan “Vamos con todo” [Let’s go with everything] that has become the new official motto in recent weeks.

A day earlier, Díaz-Canel called on Cubans, from his social networks, to participate in the marches throughout the island. “We are going to return to our squares and streets after two years without a march,” he wrote and also published a video message in which he added: “We are going to paint together the landscape of unity and continuity, the landscape of a revolution in power. Vamos con todo to this first of May.” continue reading

Hundreds of people gathered in a park in El Vedado to go to the parade in the Plaza de la Revolución. (14ymedio)

The events began this Sunday after seven in the morning with a message from Ulises Guilarte, general secretary of the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba, the only union in the country. After his words, the parade began with healthcare workers and the scientific sector at the forefront.

The parade was held in the midst of a deep economic crisis that has hit the food supply and the availability of public transport especially hard, a situation that made many desist from joining the official march. In the workplace and among teachers, the calls not to stay at home have become more intense in recent days and have included warnings of reprisals for those who do not attend.

“I walked 13 minutes, measured by the clock, and the line of buses did not end,” a young man from Havana who passed by the parade this Sunday told this newspaper, although in the end he did not decide to join. “They have taken all the buses that we haven’t seen here for months to the streets.”

Calls have been made from dissident circles not to participate in the parade and, if they do, use the rally to demand labor demands and freedom for political prisoners. Numerous activists and independent journalists received threats and police summonses to warn them that they could not go out on the streets during the day.

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Ricardo Alarcon Dies, the Cuban Diplomat Who Was Sidelined in His Last Years

The most intense memory Cubans have of Alarcón is that of his debate with a student from the University of Informatics Sciences in 2008. (Cubadebate)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 1 May 2022 — This Saturday, Cuban diplomat Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada passed away in Havana at the age of 84. Submerged in official oblivion, after retiring from public life, his health had deteriorated in recent months, family sources confirmed to 14ymedio.

Born in Havana in 1937, Alarcón entered the University of Havana in 1954 where he was part of the leadership of the University Student Federation (FEU). Later he joined the 26th of July Movement and later the 13th of March Revolutionary Directorate.

In 1961, two years after Fidel Castro came to power, he became president of the FEU, a position he held until 1962. That same year he was appointed Head of the Americas Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as Cuba’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations between 1966 and 1978.

Alarcón also held the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1992 to 1993, he was Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations and for 20 years, between 1993 and 2013, he presided over the National Assembly of People’s Power.

In September 1996, he starred in an unprecedented debate with the exiled Jorge Más Canosa of the Cuban American Foundation, which was broadcast on CBS to more than 20 countries, but was only seen in Cuba at that time by a handful of high-ranking figures of the regime with access to satellite dishes.

At the beginning of this century, Alarcón became the most visible face in the campaign for the release of the five Cuban spies imprisoned in the United States after the dismantling of the Wasp Network. In 2012, his advisor Miguel Álvarez was arrested along with his wife, Mercedes Arce, and sentenced to 30 and 15 years in prison respectively for the crime of espionage.

In 2013 Alarcón was relieved of his position as president of the National Assembly. Although the case of his adviser did not come out in the official press, but in the well-informed sectors of Miami it was commented that his departure was linked to the arrest of Álvarez who died of cancer in November 2020.

The most intense memory that Cubans have of Alarcón is that of his debate with the then student at the University of Informatics Sciences Eliécer Ávila in 2008. The young man asked Alarcón why the people of Cuba did not have the ability to travel to different places of the world due to the travel restrictions imposed on the Island.

The president of the National Assembly responded that if everyone wanted to travel there would be a huge congestion in the air, a response that fueled an avalanche of jokes and criticism.

Since his departure from the National Assembly, and especially in the last five years, Alarcón had been removed from the official spotlight and was barely mentioned publicly.

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Cuba: ‘My Son Has Never Smiled Again’ Since His Father Was Arrested on July 11th (11J) in Cárdenas

Samuel Pupo Martínez with his wife Yuneisy Santana González. (Courtesy)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 1 May 2022– Judges did not forgive Samuel Pupo Martínez for starring in one of the most iconic images of the protests on July 11 (11J). Climbing on top of an overturned vehicle, this then 46-year-old man shouted “Down with communism! Patria y Vida!” a few meters from the municipal headquarters of the Communist Party in Cárdenas.

That was the last time that Pupo stepped on the streets of his city. Almost eleven months after the popular protests, he is kept locked up in the maximum security prison of Agüica, in the province of Matanzas. His wife, Yuneisy Santana González, has not stopped denouncing the sentence of seven years in prison for contempt and public disorder handed down by the court.

In the trial, which lasted three days, “his lawyer made a brilliant defense but the prosecutor asked the defendants for the maximum sentence for each crime they had allegedly committed,” Santana tells 14ymedio. “The witnesses they presented were all from the Ministry of the Interior and they showed a lot of inconsistency in their testimonies,” she recalls.

The sentence was pending for a month and both Pupo and his wife felt hopeful because the lawyer had requested a change of the pre-trial detention measure. “He appealed to scleroderma, a degenerative disease that Samuel suffers from and that is not compatible with staying in prison.”

The lawyer presented a summary of the clinical history of Pupo, who in this time has been admitted twice to the prison infirmary, but they denied him the change of measure. “We realized that it doesn’t matter how brilliant the lawyer’s defense is when the sentence is already written in advance.” continue reading

When frustration overwhelms her, Santana remembers those historic protests that shook the island. “It was never seen before. So many people in many provinces asking for freedom. The world saw the reality of what we Cubans live,” she stresses. Although she regrets that “in a few hours everything turned into arrests and mistreatment by the police.”

Pupo was arrested that same day. “They violently arrested him and took him to the Party headquarters between three uniformed men and a man dressed in civilian clothes. Once inside, a ‘red beret’ took his cell phone and threw it on the floor. They also kicked him while he was lying on the ground.”

Santana only saw her husband again 103 days after that arrest. After the reunion, she learned that on the evening of July 11, he was taken in a patrol car to the police station. “While handcuffed, they hit him in the face to forced him to shout ‘Patria o Muerte!’ but he kept repeating ‘Patria y Vida!’.”

Later that night, he was transferred to another Ministry of the Interior facility on the outskirts of the city. “There a ‘black beret’ squeezed his neck so much that he collapsed. At dawn they took him to the Labiotec women’s prison, where he spent 40 days sleeping on a zinc plate without a mattress, with very little food and little water.”

During the first days, his wife went from one place to another looking for her husband. “At the police station they told me that they didn’t know anything. I explained that he was diabetic and that he didn’t have his medication, but the police only questioned why, if he was so sick, he hadn’t stayed home during the demonstration.”

In those first days, “Samuel was psychologically tortured. They woke him up at any hour of the night to interrogate him. Nine days after being detained, Pupo was able to make the first phone call to his family.

“That’s when he told me he was in Labiotec. He had spent that time in the same clothes, without being able to clean himself and with the same facemask. The first visit his lawyer was able to make was on July 28.” Pupo was then transferred to Combinado del Este, the largest prison in Cuba, but on September 11 he was taken to Agüica.

“The food in prison is disgusting and very little. They begin to serve the prisoners from a bucket and sometimes there is not enough for everyone. One day there was only one boiled egg,” the woman denounces. “The calls are once a week and the phone he calls me from is so noisy that I can hardly understand what he is saying.”

“He has lost a lot of vision in these months due to glaucoma, which he also suffers from, he is very thin and sleeps little,” she lists. However, Santana prefers to remember him as an enterprising man, who works as a self-employed person, has a good command of English and teaches that language to a group of students. “In 15 years of marriage we had never separated.”

Together they have a 13-year-old son. “He had a dream to see him graduate from sixth grade and go with him to the first day of secondary school. But he couldn’t fulfill it because he was in prison,” says the woman. “I know my husband would not have missed that moment for the world. My boy has never smiled since his father was arrested.”

However, Pupo’s greatest dream “is that Cuba is free, we have democracy and the president can be elected, that there is not a totalitarian party in power.” He came to that conclusion in part because “in his spare time he was always looking for information on history. He was on top of everything and very up-to-date.”

“I became a mom and dad all at once. Since that day I sleep very badly because I wake up at dawn thinking about how it will be.” The prison guards “tell me all the time that they are going to put me in jail if I continue to demand freedom for him and for all the political prisoners in Cuba.”

When she receives these threats, Santana always has the same question that is immediately answered: “What did Samuel do? Raise his voice, demand his rights and ask for freedom for his country. I am very proud of him.”

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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.

Cuban Migration Part 2: Caravan Through Honduras: There Were 30 Motorcycles with 30 Cubans Riding on Them

 Llegando a un retén que se llama Las Crucitas, nos pararon dos guardias, que se subieron y empezaron a pedir los documentos a todo el mundo. (14ymedio)
Arriving at a checkpoint called Las Crucitas, we were stopped by two guards, who got on and began to ask everyone for their documents. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Alejandro Mena Ortiz, 24 April 2022 — Trojes is a very poor village in southern Honduras. I stayed in a typical country house, very humble. However, the food was not lacking. In that house lived three women and a man who knew life in Cuba well, because many Cubans had passed through there before me.

That made me happy, because Cubans are also waking up their Latin American brothers about the lie that Fidel Castro has invented all his life, continued by Raúl Castro and now by Díaz-Canel. We dismantle that lie wherever we go.

They gave me typical Honduran food, some corn tortillas, dried red beans, and beef, in sort of a sauce. They also gave me “fresh” – that’s what they call soft drinks – pineapple and orange.

After resting until two in the morning, we met at a point where we found many motorcycles, about thirty, to undertake the difficult journey from Trojes to Santa María, where one boards buses to Tegucigalpa. I was very happy to see so many Cubans, whom I had not seen since I left Managua. All the stress I had felt disappeared.

Cubans are waking up his Latin American brothers about the lie that Fidel Castro has invented all his life, which was continued by Raúl Castro and now by Díaz-Canel

There was a Honduran there who seemed to be one of the brightest of the group and he told me that he liked Cubans very much because they had the best doctors in the world. I replied that Cuban doctors were also the lowest paid and he wanted to hear more about it. I gave him many examples about the health system, which is presented as an achievement and is trash. He told me that the Cuban doctors who were there on mission were given money by the locals, because they knew that the government was not giving them everything they were owed. continue reading

That also had an impact on politics there. Many Hondurans I met complained about Juan Orlando Hernández, who was recently extradited to the United States, and he told me that they are happy with Xiomara Castro for now, but that “if she started playing funny games, they would remove her.” At the end, when I got on my motorcycle, the man said goodbye to me and said: “Cuban, long live free Cuba!” And he raised a fist at me and tears came to my eyes.

We started to climb mountains, muddy paths, at night, in absolute darkness. We were a 30-motorcycle caravan with 30 Cuban riders. On the way, we also passed five vans, which normally carry at least five people in front and another 15 in bed behind them.

There was an incident on the way, because one of the Cubans fell into a ravine, but he was lucky that both he and the driver got caught in some branches and, with help, managed to get out. The motorcycle was lost, but the Cuban was put on another one and we all arrived safe and sound.

Already in Santa María, the owner of a truck, who had come by a less cumbersome road, said that he was bringing 15 Cubans when three Hondurans assaulted them at gunpoint in the middle of the road and took everything they had. I met those 15 people later, when I arrived in Morales, in Guatemala.  I will tell you more about that a bit later.

There were two yellow buses with just 10 people on them, but many more were waiting to fill the buses. Of course, almost all of them were Cuban, although there were some Nicaraguans and a few Hondurans. We saw each other’s faces and made signs to each other. I said to many: “Free Cuba.” It was very emotional.

The trip to Danlí was pretty smooth, but I had a problem because of a wrong decision I made.

The one who was taking me on a motorcycle had entrusted me to a guide who was taking three Cubans. “Hey, please, take care of this little Cuban. Help him out,” he told the guide, who replied not to worry. I had to continue on that bus, very uncomfortable, by the way, to Tegucigalpa, but the guy told me: “Hey, we’re going to change buses, because we’re very uncomfortable here. It costs five dollars, it’s not much.”

So, we boarded the other vehicle – the number of migrants in that city getting on buses to the capital was amazing – after buying something, a pizza, bread and a hamburger each and a Coca-Cola (all very cheap, like a dollar and a half). Changing buses had not been necessary. At our arrival at a checkpoint called Las Crucitas, we were stopped by two guards, who got on the bus and began to ask everyone for their documents.

– Where are you all from?

– From Cuba.

– Passports?

The man left with the passports, crossed to the station, checked them, came back and told us: “Have a good trip”. Just like that, no more. To this day, I don’t know if they paid for that or if they let us go that easily.

We went through some incredible landscapes, many crops and cattle, and we arrived in Tegucigalpa, a rather gray city. It is very developed, but there they do attack you in a dirt quarter, as we say; they rob you and take everything from you. They tried to take my phone from me when I was taking pictures, but we were able to protect each other.

Something that struck me about Tegucigalpa, something that I had not seen in Nicaragua and even less in Cuba, was the number of begging children. We are not talking about children aged 10 or 12, but of 6 or 7-year-olds. “Please, sir, buy from me, buy from me so I can bring home some water, please buy from me”. Children at that age should not have to work.

Terminal de ómnibus en Danlí, municipio del departamento de El Paraíso, en Honduras. (14ymedio)
Terminal de ómnibus en Danlí, municipio del departamento de El Paraíso, en Honduras. (14ymedio)

There, too, I was shocked to see a 40 or 50-year-old man sniffing something in a large jar.  He sniffed it hard and sniffed it again and again, and I said wow! I had only seen this once, in a documentary, that people sniff to get high. But of course, in Cuba there is no glue for everyday use, much less for that.

I took a taxi to the Sultana terminal, where the buses to San Pedro Sula are taken, and I met three Cubans – there were Cubans everywhere – who told me their stories, almost all of them, in short, the same. Some said, and that bothered me the most: “No. Political problems don’t interest me.” I have heard that everywhere. People are not interested in politics, or political prisoners, or anything.

Those three Cubans I met there were from the eastern provinces. One was from Granma, Daniel, a pre-university teacher, who had an animal business that the pandemic did away with. He left for Jamaica, where everything was very expensive, according to what he said, and then Costa Rica or Panama. Later he went to Nicaragua and here we were. The other two were from Las Tunas, one an engineer, who told me that he had parachuted. The vast majority were 40 and under, many were young people, 25 or 26 years old.

I had to give my contact at the Sultana fifty dollars more, after hearing how he argued with my coyote because the money he had given him seemed too little. After he was satisfied with the money, they took me to a place close by, where there were many more Cubans, Haitians, Hondurans, people of all Central American nationalities. There was even a Russian woman -or from a neighboring country- who came with a Cuban. There were so many people that they didn’t have enough buses to take them to San Pedro Sula.

The trip was hard, about seven hours, with many curves, and in those ‘stools’… but San Pedro Sula is beautiful

Before sitting on one of the stools I chatted with Lauren, a Cuban from the eastern part of the Island, who had lived in Havana for many years. She was about 30 years old, very alert, very pretty. Her husband paid for her trip and she went alone, although she had a child of about six years old whom she had decided not to take with her. So, we decided to go down the road together.

Every seat was taken, and there were about five or six more people sitting on buckets or plastic stools in the aisle. A man, a little older, complained often that they lied to him, because they told him that they were going to take him from Nicaragua by car. He is one of those who were going to pick up visas in Cancun and that’s what they had been told. My friend Lauren had the same thing happen to her.

The trip was hard, about seven hours, with many curves, and on those little stools… but San Pedro Sula is beautiful. There, after a taxi ride, they placed us in a motel full of Cuban migrants. There, someone played Patria y Vida, and it was very exciting to hear it: everyone sang it.

In that room of the little hotel, we were five men and three women. Two of them were brothers and were traveling to reunite with their families in the United States. They had left their mother in Cuba and that hurt them a lot. I saw them crying. One, whose occupation in Cuba was slaughtering cattle, told me: “My chest hurts, because I think I’m not going to see my mother anymore.”

Cogí un taxi hasta la terminal de la Sultana, donde se cogen los ómnibus para San Pedro Sula y allí me encontré a tres cubanos. (14ymedio)
I took a taxi to the Sultana terminal, where buses go to San Pedro Sula, and there I found three Cubans. (14ymedio)

He spoke that the future was in Yuma and not in Cuba, that he was going to work and get ahead, but he also told me that politics did not interest him. There was also another girl from Cienfuegos who told me something similar, and that she had left two children there, one 10 and the other 12-years-old.

That night people continued to arrive from everywhere, but the important thing was to get some shut-eye, because they warned us that we had to leave early. I had to sleep on the floor, there were pitched battles to charge the cell phones. We bathed as best we could, the shower was only a small cold-water trickle, and we left around four in the morning.

They had told us that we probably wouldn’t all fit, so I said: “Let’s sit near the entrance, because that way we can get a seat on the bus”. And that’s when the mafiosos (because there is no other name for them) stood up, organized us, more or less, and opened a small door through which they began to take us out three by three. We were 177 people, 170 of whom were Cubans.

Tomorrow: 

Armed Coyotes, powerful Toyotas to cross Honduras

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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.

The Castro Media Way

Empty platforms in the EJT market on 17th and K streets in El Vedado (Havana, Cuba). (14ymedio)

14ymedio biggerAlexis Romay, New Jersey, 30 April 2022

All the news that’s fit to print
radio, newspapers —their trolls!—
in a never-ending sprint
that doesn’t mention or hint
at the truth, and talks all day
and all night, and gets away
with lies, alternative facts,

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Tweet from the Minister of the Economy that inspired the author. Bold text: “Competent socialist state company”
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Author’s note: This text is my recreation and condensation, in English, of my décimas published this week in the Spanish edition of 14ymedio. Remember, this post —part of Ideological Deviation, my weekly column— is considered a crime by the Cuban government.
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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.

The Blue Bird Enters a New Stage. Fly or Fall?

Stock image of the Twitter logo. (EFE/EPA/JUSTIN LANE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 30 April 2022 — Will it fly higher or crash to the ground? The question about the future of Twitter had been around us for some time, but after the announcement that Elon Musk bought the social network for approximately 44, billion dollars, the question has gained strength. It is not only a virtual space for celebrities and politicians, but it is also the loudspeaker and protective shield of thousands of activists and journalists in the world.

I have had an account on the blue bird for 14 years, I joined in the summer of 2008 when Jack Dorsey’s legendary tweet, in which he wrote “Just setting up my twttr,” was revered as the initial branch of a nest that could shelter us all. Since then, first with 140 characters and later with the current 280, its trill has saved me from some horrors and has helped me tell the story of my country.

The first time that the official Cuban press mentioned Twitter, it defined it as “a technology created by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA, for its acronym in English).” As with any new phenomenon, the propagandists of Castroism opened fire against something they did not understand but believed to be ephemeral. Their rejection on the one hand and the need for independent activists and journalists to have an immediate publication tool, on the other, marked the flight over the Island of those blue wings.

Twitter had an anti-establishment character from the initial moments when it began to be used by Cubans. When the Plaza de la Revolución understood its true scope, the opposition groups, the alternative media and the most critical citizens had been posting tweets for months or years. Then the Communist Party of the Island also landed in the network it had renounced until recently. continue reading

That arrival of the official hosts to the network was marked by slogans repeated with formality and zero spontaneity, the creation of bots that were dedicated to harassing dissidents, and the provisioning of an entire army of cyber police officers who supervised who crossed the line with criticism of the government. Such practices have been detected by the San Francisco giant, which has frequently responded with suspensions of fake accounts and other reprimands for official threats against defenseless citizens.

The story I just told is repeated in almost any country under an authoritarian regime, with some extreme examples like China, where Twitter can hardly say a peep due to the ironclad censorship prevailing in the Asian nation. Other dictatorships, moreover, have gone from initial rejection to an attempt to use the service for their propaganda and intimidation purposes. With the new change of owner of the company, the big question is whether it will be easier for these tyrannical models to achieve their goal or, on the contrary, they will not be able to continue with their dirty digital tricks.

The richest man in the world now faces a challenge. He has promised that he will make Twitter a “better than ever” space for freedom of expression, but he has acquired the virtual world inhabited by more than 300 million identities, many real and a good part apocryphal or declared fictitious. Beyond celebrities, billionaires and presidents, the question that the most vulnerable users have is whether the blue bird will continue to carry our voice far: to the heights where a short tweet can stop the coup, open the locks of a cell or prevent the coup de grace.

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This column was initially published in Deutsche Welle for Latin America.

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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.

Cuban Regime Prohibits Activists From Stepping on the Street on May Day

This Friday, in several parks in Havana, groups of schoolchildren could be seen with rudimentary signs that read “Long live May 1!” (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 29 April 2022 –President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s invitation to participate in the May Day parade is not extended to all Cubans. The exception is the numerous activists and independent journalists who this week have received a blunt warning from State Security: do not leave your homes this Sunday.

The last of them, the writer and photographer Ariel Maceo , who this Thursday was summoned and threatened by the political police so that he would not attend the march called by the Government. “I told them they can’t control me. He says yes, but no. Because if they could control me then they wouldn’t have to cite me because they fear I’ll do something,” the young man writes in a post on his networks.

Right there, he admits that he was upset when the agent who ’attends’ him began to ask him about his private life. From how he met his girlfriend he went on to say, Maceo details, “that we believe they are like the FBI,” to which the writer replied: “You are not like the FBI, but like the Gestapo and the Stasi, leave the film, that Cuba is a dictatorship.. Explaining to a State Security agent why Cuba is a dictatorship is, Maceo reasoned, “like explaining to a child that he can’t eat the cookie on the floor, he’s going to eat it just the same.”  

The political police also summoned and warned independent reporters Yoe Suárez, from Diario de Cuba; Anay Rendon, from Cubanet; Geysi Guía, from Periodismo de Barrio, and Luz Escobar, from 14ymedio.  

Journalist Miriam Celaya was not summoned to a police unit, but on Tuesday she received a visit from ’Agent Alberto.’ “Very urbane, even forcedly courteous,” Celaya says in a Facebook post, he told her that “no street activity will be allowed on May Day.” continue reading

“Seen like this, anyone would think that they were going to suspend the march to ’celebrate workers’ day’ called by the PCC [Cuban Communist Party] and that I – as a close friend to whom I told of the brief meeting jokingly told me – I would have to keep the little flag and the tennis shoes that I would have had ready to march with the non-existent CDR of my block,” the journalist ironically wrote. “But no; against all logic, HeCallsHimselfAlberto took the trouble to come and warn me not to go where I, of my own free will, was not going to go.”

Celaya argues that “either there are those who earn salaries and benefits very easily, or they are simply very nervous: “J11” and the prisons full of political dissidents, the massive and constant exodus, the shipwreck of the system, the insurmountable economic crisis and God knows which and how many more demons are affecting the sleep of the Cerberus canines and of the maximum fat cats of Power. And, obviously, they are also affecting their decisions.”

The harassment of Cubans who in one way or another have expressed dissatisfaction with the regime contrasts with the childish enthusiasm with which the government is calling the march from the official media.

To the “ten reasons not to stop going to the parade on May Day” distributed by buildings and social networks of officials, and which include “breaking the daily routine,”,”exercising” and “taking the best live photos live,” something less friendly joins: the usual pressures in the workplace.

Thus, a worker from a state mechanical company denounces to this newspaper that his boss has warned the employees that if they do not attend the parade on Sunday “it will affect the payment of utilities,” since their absence will lower “the points of their evaluation… They are making a list and handing out a T-shirt,” explains the man. “They told us that we have to go on our own to El Vedado and there they will give us a snack. I wonder with what transport, because how is that?”

This Friday, in several parks in Havana, groups of schoolchildren could be seen with rudimentary signs that read “Long live May 1!” In the Mariana Grajales Park, at 23rd between C and D, the teachers handed out Cuban flags among them while making the children repeat: “Long live Fidel! Long live May Day!”

Some of the kids were dressed as doctors and others as peasants – the Cuban labor vanguard — although most wore their school uniforms.

Not far from there, in the Parque de El Quijote, the scene was repeated, under the critical gaze of some passers-by. “These children have not even eaten breakfast,” questioned a woman. The little ones reluctantly repeated the slogans while playing by crumpling up the poster and hitting a classmate’s head with it.

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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.

Omens of the Deaths of Historical Leaders in the Call for May Day in Cuba

Miguel Díaz-Canel and Raúl Castro, during the May Day 2019 march. (EFE)

14ymedio biggerA poster placed at the entrance of an apartment building in Havana summarizes the tone of the official call for the upcoming May Day parade. After being suspended for two years due to the covid-19 pandemic, the authorities have wanted to put a less formal stamp on the event and the result is disconcerting.

The list of ten reasons to go to the Plaza de la Revolución that day has been written by hand on several sheets that spell out reasons more similar to those used to participate in a camping trip or a family party than a political rally. As a “fraternal meeting” to “share with distant loved ones,” the list describes the first reason to attend the official celebrations for Labor Day.

The call also ensures that it will be an occasion to break the routine and take “the best photos and artistic designs directly with excellent people.” Only some of the reasons listed contain any ideological nuance, such as “showing that we are not afraid and that unity makes us invincible,” a veiled allusion to the popular protests last July, which brought together thousands of people throughout the country, or the assertion, without much conviction, that “there is socialism for a while.”

The ten reasons to participate in this May Day break down reasons more similar to those used to participate in a camp than in a political rally. (14ymedio)

However, the most striking of the reasons for participating in the parade is the one that advances the possibility that some of the octogenarians who control the threads of power in Cuba will not survive until next year’s call, warning that “perhaps it will be the last time in the presence of important people in the work of the Revolution.”

The enumeration closes with the invitation to “fill the Plaza until the Malecón dries up,” paraphrasing the lyrics of a song by Jacob Forever, a Cuban reggaeton player, currently residing in Miami, who during the day of the demonstrations on July 11 asked the people to take to the streets peacefully: “Between all of us we can achieve the freedom of Cuba,” the singer assured at the time.

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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.

Cubana de Aviacion Loses One of the Few Planes It Has Left, an Embraer 110

Image of the incident of a Cubana de Aviación plane that lost its landing gear this Tuesday. (Amantes de la aviación cubana/ Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 28 April 2022 — Cubana de Aviación last of its remaining three Embraer 110s disabled this Wednesday, after its landing gear collapsed at the José Martí International Airport while it was being towed by ground personnel at Terminal 1.

The news was confirmed by the Facebook group Amantes de la aviación cubana, which also published several photos showing the operators surrounding the aircraft and its license plate: EMB-110 CU-T1551.

It is not the first time that this plane, a Brazilian-made Embraer, has had problems, according to a source from the airport who asks to remain anonymous. “It was broken for a long time, lying in the hangar. They fixed it because there was no plane for domestic flights, and on the same day they announced there was mow domestic flight service, they had to tow it to the hangar again,” explains this source. , referring to last March, when Cubana de Aviación assured that it would resume domestic service with the connection between Havana and Holguín, with two weekly flights.

The same aircraft had its landing gear fall apart in November 2020, when touching down in Havana from Nueva Gerona, in an accident that resulted in no victims among its twenty passengers. continue reading

Last October, and just days after an announcement of new routes by Cubana de Aviación, the Ministry of Transportation announced that the state airline would keep its domestic flights canceled due to the poor condition of the planes.

“The technical availability of the fleet is not a secret; it is known that it is affected and has been very limited in the acquisition of parts to keep our aircraft in flight, so this programming will not start until the conditions created with our aircraft are in place, to start providing domestic flights,” the general director of Transportation and Tickets, Luis Ladrón de Guevara, acknowledged then on national television.

Months later, in January of this year, the state airline was involved in a controversy, when it came to light that Spain had granted direct aid valued at 200,000 euros to the branch of Cubana de Aviación in Madrid.

In any case, the serious crisis of Cubana de Aviación goes back a long way and the coronavirus pandemic only helped to seal its fate.

Last summer, the company was embroiled in a problem, when the International Air Transport Association (IATA) informed travel agencies that the state-owned airline would no longer participate in Spain’s BSP payment compensation mechanism, so the issuance of tickets, electronic multipurpose documents (EMD) and refunds in the name of the company had to be stopped.

In August, the airline maintained some international flights to Madrid with an Ilyushin Il-96, but the rest of the international destinations and several routes to the Spanish capital were operated by other companies.

In 2019, after 17 years without a single purchase, Cubana signed a contract to acquire two ATR 72-600 turboprops from the French-Italian company that had sold it two ATR 42-500 and one ATR 72-200 years before, but the operation It was canceled months later due to the tightening of the embargo during the Donald Trump Administration, which prevents Cuba from acquiring equipment that has 10% or more of its components made in the United States.

That same year, the state company had several problems on its flights, including an emergency on one of its planes due to the loss of the navigation system.

In addition, in May 2018 there was a serious accident in which 112 people lost their lives on a domestic flight between Havana and Holguín and the only survivor was  Mailén Díaz.

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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.

Orlando Carvajal, the Young Cuban Sentenced to More Years Than He Has Lived

Marylin Cabrera and her son Orlando Carvajal. (Collage)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 29 April 2022 — He went out to buy some bread for his family, found a crowd shouting ‘freedom’ and joined the protest on July 12 in La Güinera. Orlando Carvajal was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the crime of sedition, a sentence that exceeds, by a few months, the entire time he has lived to date.

Locked up in the Jovenes de Occidente prison along with others who protested in the same neighborhood of the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo, Carvajal, 19, suffers from a deep depression. His state of mind is the result not only of the disproportion of the sentence but also of the disappointment of being treated as a dangerous criminal.

Marilyn Cabrera, the young man’s mother, tries to lift his spirits every time she visits him in prison, but the possibility of spending two decades behind bars has sunk Carvajal emotionally. The boy who, until a few months ago, sold plastic cups to support his family, now counts each day of confinement.

“I had been in my house for several days, convalescing, because I had just had an operation. I heard that people were commenting on the protest, but I did not know that Orlando had been there. I found out because they told me that it was on the news, in a video filmed that day. My son was seen recording with his phone and then he would crouch down.”

“He didn’t want to tell me that he had been there, I found out from the neighbors. So I asked him and that’s when he began to tell me that he had gone to look for bread and saw people demonstrating. He got up and then they started throwing stones at them from the other side, so he bent down to pick up a stone to defend himself.” continue reading

In the sentence they insist that Carvajal lit the fuse of a Molotov cocktail that was thrown during the protests that summer Monday. The document says he is seen on video just as he sets fire to a piece of cloth protruding from the bottle and then launches another.

Cabrera explains the images that were shown in court: “In the video he appears as if he was already leaving the demonstration and at that moment another young man approaches him and asks for a matchbox, he takes out his and lights it, then the young man puts the bottle to light the fuse. Just that and they have sentenced him to 20 years.”

“We appealed. The trial was very intense and lasted three days. At one point, the mothers who were there were surrounded by guards and we couldn’t even greet our children. They arrived handcuffed hands and feet.” The image of the chained young man is something that the mother cannot get out of her mind.

“My son had never had a problem and seeing him with the chains on was very hard for me. I still have the prosecutor’s words tattooed on my mind, who made it clear that he was not going to take into account their age or whether they had prior criminal charges, that for having ‘betrayed the country’ he asked for all those years of sentence.”

“The Prosecutor’s Office initially asked for 15 years in prison for my son and in the end the sentence was increased to 20. First they accused him of public disorder and attack, but during the process they added the crime of sedition,” adds the mother. “He was in the first trial that was held against the boys from La Güinera and that was the hardest, as they intended the trial to set an example.”

In the sentence handed down by the People’s Court of Havana, to which 14ymedio had access, it reads that the defendants sought to “alter the socialist social order enshrined in the Constitution.” They also blamed them for hurling insults at Miguel Díaz-Canel “in a derogatory tone, all of which responded to the counterrevolutionary action models designed by the enemies of the socialist system.”

But that same system they were shouting against barely paved the way for Carvajal’s life. “He couldn’t finish studying because we had moved from the Isle of Youth to Havana, that is, we had returned to where I was born and we had many difficulties to be able to change the address and have an identity card from here. So my son couldn’t rejoin classes.”

Carvajal is self-employed. “He would go out with two other boys from the neighborhood to sell plastic cups in order to survive because we didn’t have the right to a ration book either to be able to buy the little that comes to the store. With what he earned he supported his sister and me, because I I’m sick.”

As a mother, she says that she had “a lot of work” since he was born: “Everything was a struggle and it was difficult for me to even buy shoes for him. In the end, when I had my second daughter, I moved with her father to Isle of Youth. So Orlando was growing up without being able to achieve a lot of the things that he needed.”

“When I arrived in Havana, it was very difficult for my son to clothe himself because he saw how other boys around him could buy a backpack or certain clothes,” she laments. “All those difficulties were destroying him emotionally but he avoided worrying me with those things, although I realized it.”

La Güinera is a very poor neighborhood. “You live with great difficulty, even the supply to the stores is worse than in other neighborhoods of Havana. Here the products arrive at the butcher shop after they arrived in other municipalities. We are the last. This neighborhood is poor and conflictive, here most young people have not been able to continue their studies.”

The mother explains the reasons for this situation: “It’s not because education isn’t free, which it is, but because they have a lot of trouble getting the things they need to go to school, so most of them I know haven’t finished secondary school, much less pre-university.

The day he learned of his 20-year sentence, Carvajal was put in a punishment cell “because he had allegedly attempted to kill himself,” explains his mother, but when she went to see him, she took his hands and begged him to help: “Mom, Lieutenant Rubén hit me because I was in pain and I couldn’t stand and I asked for medical help,” said the boy.

“I went to talk to the officer in the prison but they wouldn’t let me, so I went to the Provincial Department of Prisons at 15th and K to file a complaint. No one would help me and I got desperate and through a journalist from the Cibercuba portal I uploaded a complaint about the mistreatment of which Orlando had been a victim and the depression that this was causing him.”

The reprimand was not long in coming: “As a result of that, one day, leaving a visit to my son, the head of the prison approached me and told me not to try to upload more complaints to social networks because that only harmed my young guy.”

“Sometimes I come to the visit and see him sad. I try to cheer him up but he tells me that the only thing he thinks about is the 20 years in prison to which he is sentenced.” His mother always answers the same: “Papi, you’re not going to have to serve that time in jail.”

But although she is strong before him, the mother admits that “it is too much pain to see him like that in that situation.” She defines the current state of Carvajal with a scathing phrase: “He is mentally destroyed.” Health problems also accumulate. “He suffers from a six-centimeter cyst in his kidney and was only treated after he made numerous complaints.”

“I have hope that he will get out of there soon, but he doesn’t. Every time we talk about it, he tells me: ‘don’t believe what these people tell you.’ The disappointment he has suffered is very great because he is a boy from his home, with no record and who never had a problem. Suddenly he finds himself sentenced to 20 years in prison, that is very disappointing for him and also for me.”

And she stresses: “I think that young people should not be punished for these things but talk to them and, above all, help them. Not what they have done to them, never what they have done to them.”

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