14ymedio

A Thief is Saved from a Lynching in Central Havana by the Arrival of the Police

14ymedio, Havana, Juan Diego Rodriguez, Havana, 5 May 2022 — A thief was stoned and beaten with a stick this Thursday in the middle of Galiano street, in Centro Habana, after being identified by several of his victims, a group of private workers in the area. According to the self-employed, the man, along with two others, are dedicated to stealing from stores, cafeterias and other businesses.

“About a year ago this subject staged a robbery three blocks from the La Época store and today they detected him again and recognized him,” says a neighbor who witnessed the attempted lynching.

“Several entrepreneurs followed behind him and threw stones at him. The criminal, to defend himself, also threw stones but finally they caught him and hit him with a stick,” details the neighbor. “If the police did not arrive they would have killed him. The man was bleeding from the head.”

The thief, about 55-years-old and black, had to be transferred by police officers to the Luis Galván Soca polyclinic to be treated in the emergency room.

According to witnesses, given the injuries caused to the thief, a discussion arose between the private workers and the people who came to see what was happening, who asked the victims “not to hit him anymore, not to take justice into their own hands.” continue reading

Last Tuesday, in Camagüey, another thief was captured after stealing a girl’s cell phone on the street. A video that went viral on social networks, shared by the Kuba x Inside page, recorded the outrage and the cries of people upon learning of the robbery.

A large number of residents of Calle Segunda Transversal, between San Rafael and Carretera Central, participated in the capture of the criminal, who was handed over shortly after to a police patrol that arrived at the scene and tried to calm things down.

In recent months, social networks have been filled with complaints in which citizens ask that urgent measures be taken in the face of the increase in assaults in the country. Some also complain that there are police officers to repress protests and prevent alleged crimes against the State, but not to find thieves in the neighborhoods.

The Government does not give figures for robberies and thefts or violent assaults, so it is impossible to determine when crime increases or decreases. Nor do the official media address this type of case or the possible waves of robberies, generally limiting themselves to covering only thefts in the state sector and, in many cases, magnifying those events.

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A Bus Catches Fire at a Bus Stop in Havana

Firefighters came to put out the fire at the whereabouts of the Electric Distribution. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 5 May 2022 — A bus on the P8 route in Havana burned this morning near the Electric Division of Havana, where it was parked. The news has not yet been released by the official media and the only information available is that shared in the Accidentes buses & camiones Facebook group, where the author of the images, in which the work of the firefighters can be seen putting out the fire, affirms that “an electrical short on the driver’s board” is noted.

The users of the group have been scandalized by the fact that there was no fire extinguisher at the bus stop capable of putting out the fire more quickly, although most were surprised by the fact that recently there have been more similar cases. Some comments speak clearly of “sabotage,” although without proof.

In early March, a fire burned up five school buses in Cojímar, East Havana. The event occurred in broad daylight in the area where the buses stopped, four of the Chinese brand Yutong and one Diana brand, in this case. continue reading

“Unable to put out the fire, due to the strong winds at that time, the flames spread, reaching four other buses that were stopped in the area. Work continues on the investigations, to delve into the causes that generated this unfortunate event,” the Automotive Transport business group said in a brief statement.

There were so many speculations at the time that the Ministry of Transportation had to publish a note in which the incident was attributed to an electrical failure that occurred while one of the buses was being repaired.

In September 2020, a bus caught fire in the middle of the street in the El Mónaco neighborhood in Havana, which required the intervention of the Cuban Fire Department to put out the flames, but the vehicle was left completely unusable.

Months before there was another fire, also on a street in Havana, Belascoaín, between Zanja and Salud, due to a “failure” in the engine.

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For Asking for Freedom in the Streets of Havana, Ktivo Disidente is Imprisoned in Cienfuegos

Ktivo Disidente is accused of disobedience and contempt for his protest in Havana. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 5 May 2022 — Carlos Ernesto Díaz González (known on social media as Ktivo Disidente) is accused of disobedience and contempt after climbing a wall on San Rafael Boulevard in Havana last Thursday, April 28, and demanding freedom for Cubans.

According to his Facebook account, which is managed by another person, the rapper is detained in the Unpico Technical Unit, Pueblo Grifo, in Cienfuegos, and is expected to be transferred to the Ariza prison, in that province, considered maximum security. The same account indicates that the activist refuses to have a lawyer and is ‘plantado’* (on a hunger strike).

Ktivo Disidente is a member of the Archipiélago collective and was arrested in November of last year, the day before the Civic March for Change, for putting up protest posters in Cienfuegos, where he lives. A week ago, perched on a wall in the Cuban capital, he raised his voice in a speech that lasted about five minutes.

“There must be no violence, there must be no bloodshed, but they must allow us to participate in the political life of the country,” he demanded. “He who is a communist so be it, but he who is not has to be respected,” he said, while most of those who passed by on the street looked sideways or recorded with their mobile phones. continue reading

Some also asked him to shut up, to which the activist replied: “The people are scared, the people are terrified: citations, a sector chief above you, an informer above you. How long do we have to live like this?” He also reproached those who entered the hard currency store next to the place where he was protesting: “You can buy there,” he warned.

Hours earlier, Ktivo Disidente had uploaded a video inviting Cubans to a march in favor of the release of political prisoners.

His detention was delayed until the police officers found a ladder with which to lower him from the height to which he had climbed. Later, he got down without offering any resistance and, according to witnesses, he was handcuffed and put into a car. Since then his whereabouts have been unknown.

This Monday, the activist Yasmany González Valdés, who had been arrested in the operations prior to May 1, vindicated after being released the role of some Cubans including Ktivo Disidente, who he praised for his courage against those who ignored him in his protest.

“There’s nothing clearer than the video of Ktivo asking for freedom all by himself and people telling him: ’Shut up!’ This goes for the opponents and for the whole world, Ktivo is in prison for lack of support, so draw your own conclusions.”

*Translator’s note: “Plantado’ — literally ’planted’ — is a term with a long history in Cuba and is used to describe a political prisoner who refuses to cooperate in any way with their incarceration.

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After Being Released from Villa Marista, Activist Yasmany Gonzlaez Laments the Cowardice of Cubans

Yasmany González Valdés was arrested last Thursday as part of the police operations around the date of May 1. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana 2 May 2022 — The activist Yasmany González Valdés announced this Monday that he will stop posting on social networks after being released this Sunday after four days in Villa Marista, the State Security headquarters in Havana. The young man was arrested last Thursday as part of the police operations around May 1st, Cuba’s Labor Day.

“I’m already at home with my family (…) I’m going to quit, caballero, because nobody knows what a family member goes through when you’re in there,” González wrote on his Facebook account a few hours after his release. The activist lamented the lack of solidarity of the Cuban population with the dissidents.

The young man, who works as a self-employed bricklayer, gave as an example the well-known activist Carlos Ernesto Díaz González (known on social networks as Ktivo Disidente), who on April 28 climbed a wall on San Rafael Boulevard in La Havana and asked for freedom for Cubans, but received no support from the people.

Last Saturday, González’s wife was able to send him some personal hygiene products in Villa Marista, as confirmed to 14ymedio. The guards did not specify, at that time, if the activist was going to be prosecuted for any crime and limited themselves to announcing to his wife that he could visit the detainee next Wednesday if he was still under arrest by then.

This is not the first run-in that González has had with the political police. On April 12, he was fined with the application of Decree Law 370 for his publications on social networks in which he frequently denounces the violations of human rights on the Island and demands the release of those sentenced for the protests of July 11th.

According to the Inventory Project, on that occasion González was summoned to the National Revolutionary Police, “they took him to a cell and after a while, they took him to a room before a State Security officer and two inspectors from the Ministry of Communications of Cuba,” where they applied a fine of 3,000 pesos.

“Several of my publications were printed. They told me that my posts and videos incited violence and that if I did another one they would prosecute me,” Yasmany González told Proyecto Inventario. This mason’s fine is number 56 imposed by Decree 370, according to the records published by the Inventory Project.

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Controversy Grows Within the Cuban Regime Over the Dismissal of the Director of ‘Alma Mater’

Aylin Álvarez García, first secretary of the Union of Young Communists (UJC), published this image yesterday with Armando Franco Senén, although it was taken in December 2021. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Madrid, 28 April 2022 — The authorities are addressing, at the highest level, the departure of Armando Franco Senén as director of Alma Mater; his dismissal was announced on Tuesday and has generated a strong controversy between the readers of the university magazine and the Cuban intelligentsia, close to officialdom, or not, who believe that the journalist has been expelled for the novel treatment in form and content that he gave to the publication in the three years he was in charge.

This Thursday, Rogelio Polanco himself, head of the Ideological Department of the Communist Party, met with the deposed journalist and Aylin Álvarez García, first secretary of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) as of August, who hours before had taken the floor to deny that the measure was a punishment towards Franco. The young woman maintained that “his release at the head of Alma Mater has nothing to do with an expulsion or sanction” and that it is simply “a natural process of renewal, and responds to the cadre policy of the UJC and the country.”

After the meeting, Álvarez published a post on his Facebook profile explaining the three-way conversation accompanied by a photograph in a very friendly attitude with Armando Franco that would suggest the continuation of a good relationship between the parties if the image was current. In reality, it is a photo taken at a session of the National Assembly of People’s Power, the eighth of the IX Legislature –because of the silhouette of the Capitol and the number 8 printed on the credentials that both carry – that took place at the end of last December.

In the message, Álvarez insists on what he had previously said: the results of Alma Mater are evident and the intention is to take advantage of its experience and value in other communication projects because the young people of the UJC “learn, contribute, consolidate themselves as revolutionaries to then carry out other activities in society.” continue reading

The young woman had already said that Franco “had been proposed to integrate him into another necessary communication project, which had been communicated to him a few days ago,” although it is not clear which one or whether the journalist has accepted. On Tuesday, the statement that reported the dismissal never indicated that the former director was leaving to join a new project and just said: “By decision of the National Bureau of the Union of Young Communists, Armando Franco Senén was released from his functions as director of the magazine.”

The afternoon statement, on the other hand, hints that the process is not friendly at all. Álvarez writes phrases that suggest this: “I listened to all your dissatisfactions associated with the process of your release, and the treatment of your group at Alma Mater” and “we agree on the inappropriateness of some actions,” he indicates, always while emphasizing that there are no traces of retaliation, punishment or penalty in is dismissal.

But the environment closest to the journalist does not seem to be on the same friendly terms. The father of the ex-director of Alma Mater published a post – which is not available now but which the Uruguayan journalist Fernando Ravsberg took a screenshot of before broadcasting – in which he claims to feel “freed from the ban” that his son had imposed so that he would not speak out on social networks against those who insulted him from the Cuban officialdom itself.

Armando Franco Súarez highlights the pride he feels for what his son achieved at the head of the magazine and the more than a thousand comments of solidarity that accompanied the note of his dismissal, although he also regrets those who have attacked him, a few, and he affirms that they are giving “a nice gift” to the “enemies of the Revolution.”

“Even against my son’s decision, I recently published a post commenting on the danger of ’friendly fire’, of that treacherous fire that comes from those who are supposedly in your same trench,” says Franco Suárez, who asks that the affection of those who recognize his work be remembered “because they cannot ’free’ him from that.”

Franco Senén’s departure has been followed by members of his team, including Yoandry Ávila Guerra, editor-in-chief of Alma Mater until now and who made his departure public by changing his employment status on Facebook. Also the illustrator of the publication, Kalia León, who said goodbye by sharing a collage of her authorship. “It was necessary for me to be part of it with my small contribution and I was really very happy while it lasted. Armando Franco Senén decided that the gender column was good for me and he was not wrong,” she writes.

In the midst of the controversy, Aylin Álvarez also wanted to settle the thorny issue of the autonomy of the university magazine. The decision of the UJC to meddle in the decisions of the positions raised a great cloud of dust among those who affirmed that the organization was overstepping the limits, but Álvarez confirms that the magazine is at the service of the Party and has little autonomy.

“This magazine, along with Zunzún, Pioneros, Somos Jovenes, El Caimán Barbudo and Juventud Técnica, belong to Editora Abril, which is directed by the National Committee of the UJC. The management positions of each of these media are the responsibility of the National Committee, and it is a Committee of Cadres of this instance where each movement or transit of its cadres is evaluated, as was done with Armando,” he asserts, ending the debate.

In the official blog La Cosa, by Julio César Guanche, the author had explained the connections between both apparatuses and warned that Castro’s centralizing policy had determined, even in 2006, that “the FEU (University Student Federation) would have ’organic independence ’ while subordinating itself to the PCC (Cuban Communist Party) – on which the entire Cuban political system depends – and more directly to the UJC.”

In the text, the author considers this contradiction a strict legacy of Soviet Marxism, “which never offered democratic solutions for any political system within what was then called the socialist camp,” and calls for the FEU to be granted “full autonomy” as a tribute to its centenary.

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Silvio Rodríguez Regrets the ‘Closeness’ of the Cuban Leadership and the ‘Powers of Impunity’

Silvio Rodríguez is worried that the Revolution will become a counterrevolution, he stated this Wednesday.

14ymedio, Madrid, 28 April 2022 — The departure of Armando Franco Senén, former director of the university magazine Alma Mater, continues to generate reactions, and the Communist Party has taken notice. In a message on Twitter, Enrique Villuendas Calleyro, an official of the Ideological Department of the Central Committee and in charge of the press, said that he met with the journalist, “who has a lot to contribute… I heard his concerns about the Alma Mater magazine and I ratified the PCC’s willingness to address them,” he added.

The message has been shared by Ronquillo Bello, president of the Union of Cuban Journalists and a contributor to Juventud Rebelde, who has spared no praise for Franco. “We are saddened, like so many colleagues and followers of Alma Mater, by the decision adopted in relation to Armandito and the publication. From Upec we have supported his projects, such as those of all those who strive in the press system to modernize the language, codes and aesthetics, as well as increasing its authority and scope in times when the mediacentric model is failing and audiences, increasingly fragmented, have to be conquered with unwavering professionalism and ethical heights.”

The journalist has asked that the situation be “overcome,” which has generated controversy among those who demand that it be rectified and that the removal of those who are critical be stopped, a situation that, in the opinion of several users, harms the Revolution.

The authorities will have to work to placate the outrage that has spread among the publication’s readers, including supporters of the regime such as Israel Rojas, who has expressed his admiration for the dismissed director and has even asked that the journalist be sent to be the director, for example, of Bohemia magazine. “Perhaps this is how such a historic and necessary publication is rescued.”

Silvio Rodriguez has gone much further, in what is already his umpteenth pronouncement against the Díaz-Canel government. The troubadour does not stop at the dismissal of Franco, on the contrary, the news serves to unleash an attack on the current power leadership. “What seems worrying to me is that, instead of opening up, the leadership continues to show signs of closure. And it seems very serious to me, at this point,” he accuses. continue reading

The artist, who hinted last month that the closure of his blog Segunda Cita was imminent, has continued to add content and this Wednesday the Alma Mater case broke out among its readers, who mostly reject Franco’s “liberation.” Rodríguez is not scandalized, however, that the Union of Young Communists (UJC) has made the decision, interfering with the autonomy of the publication.

The troubadour points out that the magazine has always been subordinate to the youth organization – since 1959, it appears – and this aspect does not concern him, but the fact that “political organizations insist on being so obsolete” does. “It worries me that the Revolution (or what uses its name) ends up being counter-revolutionary and that what confronts it seems or ends up being revolutionary,” he says.

Julio César Guanche, author of the official blog La Cosa, talks with Rodríguez in his space and claims the autonomy of the Federation of University Students (FEU) and Alma Mater of the UJC. The essayist reviews the trajectory of the centennial magazine and the centralizing process of the mass organizations that, according to him, were corrected in the XIII Congress of the Federation of Cuban Workers (CTC), in 1973. However, the separation is not as great as it should be.

“Specifically, the FEU would have ‘organic independence’ while subordinating itself to the PCC – on which the entire Cuban political system depends – and more directly to the UJC,” explains Guanche. In the text, the author considers this contradiction a strict legacy of Soviet Marxism, “which never offered democratic solutions for any political system within what was then called the socialist camp,” and calls for the FEU to be granted “full autonomy” as a tribute to its centenary.

Rodríguez cannot avoid intervening again in light of the comments, which do not cease, to continue charging against the system, in some aspects, since he does not hesitate to point out that the multiparty system does not seem “essential” to him, but instead calls for a diversity of spaces “where anyone can express what they think.”

“The policy regarding the press must improve a lot; this blog, until today, was always unequivocal about that. There are many freedoms that we deserve (in work and commerce) and I believe that they do not reverse the achievements of the Revolution, although they would affect the bureaucratic control and certain unpunished powers that we suffer from,” claims the troubadour. And as if he were biting his tongue, he adds: “And here I leave it.”

Silvio Rodríguez’s interventions in favor of people linked to culture or the press retaliated against by the Government have increased more and more. Almost four years ago, in June 2018, he came out in defense of the Uruguayan journalist Fernando Ravsberg, from whom the government, at that time still led by then President Raúl Castro, withdrew his correspondent credential in Havana.

“It seems that at last the Cazabrujas de Dores (Witch Hunters of Dores) feel strong and unleashed enough; so much so that they seem capable of doing what Fidel and Raúl did not do… If this materializes, if their press credentials are withdrawn in Cuba and push Ravsberg to emigrate with his Cuban family of 30 years, it could mean a turning point in this Revolution that so many of us have loved, defended and built,” he said then.

Since that date, and with the arrival of Díaz-Canel to power, the criticism has risen in tone and the troubadour has criticized recent decisions, such as the excessive sentences for those arrested for the July 11th (11J) protests in general and the case of the musician Abel Lescay in particular, but also historical measures such as the revolutionary offensive. Although the artist has not stopped demanding — and he ends the posts on his blog with this — the end of the blockade, he has also recently said that this cannot be an eternal excuse.

“If in 60 years we have not been able to develop a creativity that overcomes the blockade, we are in a bad way,” he said just three months ago.

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The Havana Book Fair: A Fair of Absences

Located in the San Carlos de la Cabaña Fortress, which is accessed through the tunnel that crosses Havana Bay, the Book Fair is a true sauna. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 4 May 2022 — The door to the shop was kept locked, and every so often someone checked to see if everything was still in order for the children’s book exhibition that would start the next morning. Despite vigilance, within a few hours hundreds of volumes disappeared. At that Havana Book Fair, 20 years ago, stealing the most coveted titles was the irrepressible desire of workers and visitors.

This anxiety has barely diminished over time. A few brilliant pages, a novel from this century or a voluminous dictionary can bring out the inner kleptomaniac of all of us on this Island. In part this is because publishing production has been plummeting in Cuba every year, due to the lack of resources for the printing presses, the ideological filters that privilege the most infamous titles and the new possibilities of publishing abroad that the digital format has opened up for writers.

But if the tendency to loot the shelves remains intact, the object of such dark covetousness becomes scarcer every day. At the beginning of this century it seemed that the most important literary event on the Island managed to break through and attract prestigious publishing houses, renowned authors and thousands of readers eager for news. But it was an illusion that did not last long. Two decades later, the Havana Book Fair is a space to buy bread with croquettes, to try to catch a piece of fried chicken, buy a poster with a Marvel hero or get hold of pencils and erasers. continue reading

And the books? They have receded into the background. The political conveniences and the international isolation of the Cuban regime led to terrible decisions when it came to choosing the countries invited to this reading festival; as well as in the selection of authors who could present their works and share space with the public. That, together with the lack of interest among publishers to pay the costs of attending an event where they obtained very little profit, definitively dried up its course.

In parallel, the national books became increasingly gray and not only because of the content. In the publishing houses, designers have long had the norm of making covers with a limited color variety, to avoid the high costs that a wider palette entails. The paper used was also becoming more fragile and yellowish to reduce print runs; while the careless printing of the children’s volumes hardly attracts a public eager for colorful illustrations anymore.

The pandemic also did its part. In 2021 the Fair was suspended, and it still had another postponement this year to move it from its traditional date of February to April. The postponement may not seem like much, just a few weeks, but in this tropical city it represents a difference of almost ten degrees in temperature. Located in the San Carlos de la Cabaña Fortress, which is accessed through the tunnel that crosses Havana Bay, the Book Fair is a veritable sauna with its narrow galleries with thick walls and hardly any windows.

A military barracks can serve as a prison and stage for a firing squad, as it was after Fidel Castro came to power, but it will rarely function as a bookstore. But it’s not the heat or the rigors of transportation, in the midst of a fuel crisis that has pushed the country back to the paralysis of the 1990s, the elements that most affect this cultural event. If is the disinterests in its offerings, on the one hand, and the daily anxieties of Cuban readers, on the other, the true causes of their agony. A death rattle from which not even the fact that this year Mexico is the guest country, with its impressive literary baggage, has been able to overcome.

Between the last closing of the event and this reopening, a century also seems to have passed in Cuba. The package of economic adjustments that began in January 2021 unleashed inflation, the convertible peso was buried, the peak of contagion of the Delta variant of the coronavirus took thousands of Cubans in the summer months and on a Sunday in July across the Island, the largest popular protests in its entire history broke out. To top it off, the mass exodus has turned the country into a constant packing of suitcases and saying goodbye at airports.

The “festival of books,” as the official media call it, is back; but the country is on the run. The lines will continue in front of the food kiosks, nimble hands will try to steal the odd book from a shelf and parents will avoid going with their children through the areas of colorful volumes that cost a week’s salary. However, the Fair is dead.

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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the cultural magazine La Lectura, of the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

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A Three-Hour Interrogation for Cuban Mother who Denounced the July 11th Trials at the UN

Ángel Jesús Véliz Marcano, 27 years old, was arrested on July 18, 2022 and sentenced to six years in prison. (Justicia 11J)

14ymedio, Havana, May 3, 2022 — R turning to Cuba from Europe — where she denounced the situation of her son who was sentenced to prison after July 11th (11J) –has not been easy for Ailex Marcano, mother of Ángel Jesús Véliz Marcano. Authorities subjected her to an interrogation for three hours and confiscated 3,000 pesos, according to the account she gave Radio Television Martí from Camagüey, where she lives.

Marcano was in Madrid and Geneva, invited by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, where she denounced the situation of Cuban prisoners before the Spanish press and the UN. The feeling of solidarity and support she received in Europe disappeared when she stepped foot in Havana’s airport.

“They asked why I went to Spain, if I went by invitation, the purpose of my trip, who I met with, what the results were, whether I believed my situation would be resolved. I told them that I had not been listened to here, that the law was not being upheld because my son is not a violent person, nor aggressive and he is currently serving a six-year sentence for assault and public disorder, that I’d continue to do what I had to do for my son’s freedom because he should not be there,” Marcano told the news outlet.

For her return to Camagüey, Ángel Jesús Véliz Marcano’s mother was carrying 3,000 Cuban pesos, which were confiscated at the airport for exceeding the current 2,000 limit in Cuba. In mid-April, the Central Bank of Cuba approved an increase to the maximum amount that can be imported to the country to 5,000 pesos but the resolution stated that it would go into effect 30 days after being published in the Gaceta Oficial [Official Gazette].

Marcano confirmed that a man dressed in civilian clothing took her before the lieutenant colonel who interrogated her. As she exited, when she was entering the car to return to Camagüey, a police officer asked the driver for identification and documents. The vehicle was detained along the route at a check point where her luggage was searched, in her view, looking for a T-shirt or other article of clothing with an antigovernment message. continue reading

Despite the trouble, Ailex Marcano feels “super strengthened, with more energy.” In Europe she has seen “the enormous contrast between one society and the other. I mean, there I am welcomed, they help me, they empathize with me and I return to my country and I am a stranger, I am terror, I am accosted, I am limited,” commented the woman, who has been one of the most firm voices denouncing the incarceration of the July 11 protesters.

Her 27-year-old son was arrested on July 18, 2022 and sentenced to six years in prison, which he is serving in the Cerámica Roja prison in Camagüey, after passing through other facilities. Marcano has revealed that in the coming days he will be transferred to another, lower-security facility.

“My son participated voluntarily and spontaneously in the demonstrations, no one incited him. It is sad, what we family members are going through only because our children participated peacefully in the demonstrations, which were necessary,” she said in Madrid.

Marcano requested “international support” for families and mothers of the prisoners and reproached “national organizations” which refused to listen to those affected. In particular, she referred to the Federation of Cuban Women, which “is not sensitive to” the prisoners’ mothers, while in other countries they are “worried and concerned” for them.

“They are doing the work of listening and supporting, we don’t have this on the Island,” she added.

Despite the harassment she experiences from the Government, Marcano assures that she will not give up for her son, with whom she was able to speak upon her return to Cuba, as she revealed to Martí Noticias. “Mama I am very proud of you, you really have taken off,” he said.

The woman did not stint on words of praise for her son and those, who like him, went out to the street once they understood “the reality… Those young people, perhaps have innovative ideas that will lead us to live in a better world and make their dreams a reality. They have made us what we are today, we have awakened, we know the reality, we no longer believe what was written in the text books.”

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Cuban Migration Part 4 – Scare in Guatemala: They Viewed Cubans with Distrust

The agents, we’d been told, had already been paid, but they’d suggested we carry a $20 bill, just in case. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Alejandro Mena Ortiz, 26 April 2022 — That day they woke us up at four in the morning and gathered us together as if it were a show at dawn, grouping and distributing us: some by car, others in vans. I was assigned to go in a hermetically closed truck, with 27 other people. I said to myself: “My God, I can’t believe they’re going to put me in one of these closed things for so long!” But luckily, the trip was ten minutes. And then, in the forest: “Run, run!” and it continued until we got on a ‘coaster’ heading to Santa Elena.

There were many children in that group. With us, there were five: a one-year-old baby and others between 7 and 10 years old. Two kilometers after we were on our way, the police stopped us. The agents, we’d been told, were already paid, but they’d suggested we carry a $20 bill, just in case. It was $20 each for 27 people, just imagine.

Then the guide got out, they spoke, and the policeman told him: “Ok, go on.” We hadn’t even advanced 500 or 600 meters, when the patrol car came behind us at full speed, with the siren on, beeping for us to stop. At that moment we said: “Well, this is screwed up,” because one of the guards got on, with a lot of gesturing and a machine gun, and told the guide: “You’re a liar, I should shoot you in the head.” The children began to cry, a woman began to scream… and the two of them kept arguing:

– Hey, no, look here, the boss…

– I don’t want to talk to your boss, you’re a liar.

Apparently, the man had told him that the chief of police knew about us, but the other said he didn’t. I don’t know if they had not given him enough money.

– I’m not going to talk to anyone, move to one side because I’m taking all of you prisoners. Turn around. continue reading

Normally the guides say that if they take us prisoner, they take care of it, but my faith was a bit shaky at that moment. We hadn’t gone back even a kilometer and a huge black truck appeared, with the famous boss. They positioned themselves in the middle and got off. The policeman would point with the machine gun and I thought: “They’re going to shoot each other here and I don’t know what’s going to become of us.”

But they managed to fix the situation by slipping him some dough, which is what Guatemalans call money, and the policeman allowed us to continue, with the black truck in front of us all the way, making way for us. Thus, every time we passed near a patrol car, those in the black truck were there and waved their hands at us to advance.

We arrived at a restaurant in the middle of a town. It was 10 in the morning, too early to eat, but we had to eat. They gave us orange juice, a tortilla, cheese, beans, beef, very tasty, with onions… They told us that wherever we stopped to eat, we should do so, because one never knew when we could do it again later.

We headed out again, and when we reached a river intersection, we parted ways. I was going to Santa Elena and the others were going to a place called El Naranjo, on the border with Mexico, further north, because they were going to Cancun, to sort out the famous fake visas and be able to fly to Mexicali to cross the border. Unfortunately, I haven’t heard anything from them or from Lauren. That was the last place we saw each other. I hope they have arrived safely at their destination.

When we crossed the river, the guide in the black van told me: “Come, Cuban, you’re going the other way.” And then he spoke with a man in a minivan, which was on route to Santa Elena, and he took me with him. I told him: “Hey, are you going to leave me alone?” And he replied: “Don’t worry, if that man hands you over to someone other than the one I’m telling him about, we’ll kill him. Him and his whole family.” He told me just like that.

He gave the man $40 and said: “Listen to what I’m going to tell you: hand him over there, and make sure nothing happens to him. And if it goes well, I’ll have more work for you.” So, the man took me to a little town, one of those typical ones that have many small markets outside the houses – there was such beautiful fruit, melons, oranges, grapes, even strawberries – and I didn’t understand it.

The man took only me, but in the end, about five more people got on board, and I had to ride while hiding my nationality, because, according to what I heard, if they found out you were Cuban, they viewed you with distrust.

Finally, the man left me in Santa Elena. Just before arriving, I contacted the person who had to pick me up and sent him my location via WhatsApp. He was waiting for me, he got in front of the truck and said: “Unload the Cuban,” as if I were a sack of potatoes.

From there, he took me to a motel, a very humble, simple little hotel, but the truth is that those were the few days I was able to rest from the entire trip, which had been quite stressful until then. In fact, I felt very safe in Santa Elena, in Guatemala.

I met Juan and Juana, the manager of the little motel and the cook, a very nice old lady, very friendly. She had lost her husband in the pandemic and she had to sell everything to go live with a son, but she was building a house thanks to the work the manager gave her.

Despite being what he was, because he was a human trafficker, I saw that man help several people in the four days that I was there. The first day I saw a Cuban couple, his name was Yasmani and he was an ambulance worker in Cuba.

On July 11^th, he took to the streets to protest, but afterwards he was so disappointed… The funny thing is that he told me that the next day they were handing out clubs to defend the ambulances’ parking lot, and to beat Cubans on the streets. “But how is this possible?” He told me. So, he came in and said, “Hey, the ambulance is smashed, it can’t go out today.” And he turned around and went home.

“Brother, after what I experienced on July 11^th, the repression, the beatings and those who were imprisoned, I said to myself: “I can’t continue in this country,” he told me. He asked his relatives for help, took out a little money that he had collected from a business and set off for Nicaragua.

They were going to take the girl and him to Los Naranjos first, and then to Cancún and Mexicali. They were charging them $7,000 each, in addition to the ticket. By the way, first they had to travel to Barbados, then to Jamaica, with a stopover in Panama and from there, to Nicaragua. Huge rounds they had to do. I didn’t see them again afterwards, because they left at dawn. And those were the last Cubans I saw in a long time.

Tomorrow:

On the border with Mexico, if you don’t pay the ‘tax’ you get shot

Translated by Norma Whiting
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Lopez Obrador Speaks With Biden About Immigration Before Traveling to Cuba

The Mexican President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his U.S. counterpart, Joe Biden, had a virtual meeting that lasted 52 minutes. (Presidencia de México)

14ymedio/EFE, Mexico, April 29, 2022 — Reducing migration at the border was the main topic of Monday’s conversation held by U.S. President Joe Biden and his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “The tone of the call was very constructive,” said White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

Psaki did not clarify if Biden made any concrete request to López Obrador to strengthen Mexico’s southern border and prevent the passage of more undocumented immigrants from going to the United States, but she wanted to distance the position of the U.S. president from that of his predecessor, Donald Trump (2017-2021).

“This was not a call in which President Biden was threatening the Mexican president in any way,” the spokeswoman said about the virtual meeting that lasted 52 minutes.

The figures show the severity of the migration crisis for both Mexico and the United States. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP) recorded 7,800 arrests of irregular migrants per day along the border with Mexico in the last three weeks, almost five times the 2014-2019 average, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

From October 2021 to the end of February 2022, the CBP reported the arrival of 46,000 Cubans by land in the United States. The five-month figure exceeds that of the 12 months of 2021, which had already been a record (39,303), and some calculations estimate that after a year about 150,000 nationals from the island will have arrived on U.S. territory, more than the 125,000 of the Mariel ’Boatlift’ exodus. continue reading

This was not a call in which President Biden was threatening the Mexican president in any way.

The conversation between Biden and López Obrador “was scheduled in part due to the Summit of the Americas (to be held in June in Los Angeles), but also because the lifting of Title 42 is approaching,” Psaki stressed.

Title 42 is a protective measure that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) imposed during the pandemic in 2020, during the term of then-president Donald Trump, and which has continued under Biden.

This measure means that the United States automatically deports the majority of undocumented immigrants who arrive at its southern border, without giving them the opportunity to apply for asylum.

The CDC recently announced its plan to rescind that measure on May 23, but that decision now depends on the decision of a Louisiana judge, who suspended for 14 days the Administration’s preparations to end that regulation.

A source consulted by the AFP agency who asked for anonymity announced that the Summit of the Americas, convened for June 8 and 9 in Los Angeles, will address the issue of migration from Central America.

López Obrador will travel next week to Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize and Cuba. Meanwhile, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard will travel to the United States next Monday to advance issues of cooperation for development and the next Summit of the Americas, as reported in the publication.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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‘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, 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)

EFE (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, 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, 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, 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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