People lined up in the vicinity of the Cuatro Caminos market, Centro Habana, this Thursday. (Facebook/Eraisi León)
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 7 April 2022 — Thousands of people formed a line this Thursday near the Cuatro Caminos market in Havana. Neighbors of the place confirmed to this newspaper the unusual line, which can be seen in videos and photos on social networks.
“A thing never seen before: the line began in Matadero, went along Omoa to the corner of Tejas and went down Monte,” a resident of Centro Habana said in surprise. A total of 16 blocks.
All of them waited, in a muffled murmur, to hand over their cards and be put on a list that determines what day they can go shopping within the next two weeks. Outside of the day they get, they can’t shop, and on the day they get lucky, there may not be what they need in the stores.
“The Special Brigade does not enter that mob,” joked a young man who witnessed the crowd. “The Cuatro Camino Revolution is drawing near.”
Another neighbor is not so optimistic: “Can you imagine if the cause of those people, instead of chicken, was democracy? Chicken has won the battle for us.” continue reading
“This line forms every 14 days, but it has been getting longer and longer for some time,” explains another resident of the neighborhood, who says that on March 24, the area was heavily guarded by the security forces.
“The never seen before: the line began in Matadero, went through Omoa to the corner of Tejas and went down Monte.” (14ymedio)
That was the day that the island suffered a general outage of internet service for about an hour, which Etecsa attributed to an “energy failure.” At that time, there were many who, on social networks and in the streets, feared that the reason for the blackout was something else, as happened during the protests on July 11, to prevent information about the demonstrations from continuing to circulate.
In the surroundings of the Plaza de Cuatro Caminos , the connection problems lasted several days, according to several residents.
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Artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara (left) with rapper Maykel Castillo ‘Osorbo’ months before his imprisonment. (Facebook)
14ymedio, Havana, 7 April 2022 — The Cuban Prosecutor’s Office has informed, after months of waiting, of the sentence request that they will make to the court that judges Maykel Castillo — the rapper known as ‘Osorbo’ — and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara: ten years for the first and seven for the second.
The information has been released by the rapper’s Facebook account. Imprisoned since May 18, he will offer more details about the crimes charged to both, as well as the other three defendants, present on April 4 when Osorbo was arrested.
“For now it is difficult to even think, but we will do all the analysis and the pertinent calls. We will not abandon you. How miserable that power that stops at nothing! How profoundly miserable the reality of death that they extend to everything they touch !” says the note.
Both artists share the same case file, in which they are accused of aggravated contempt, public disorder and instigation to commit a crime by going out on the street , in front of the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement in Old Havana to sing Patria y Vida along with the neighbors, on 4 April 2021. Alcántara also faces the accusation of outrage against national symbols, charged against him for making the work of art Drapeau. continue reading
However, neither of them was arrested at the time. Osorbo was arrested the following May 18, and was ‘disappeared’ until he was sent, on May 31, to the Kilo Cinco y Medio maximum security prison.
Until now, they have remained in preventive detention, and numerous international organizations, such as the Center for the Opening and Development of Latin America, Freedom House, International PEN or Prisoners Defenders, have demanded from the Cuban government the immediate release of both artists.
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Leodán Pérez Colón, 22 years old, was sentenced to five years in jail in Sancti Spíritus for associating to commit a crime and contempt. (Facebook)
14ymedio, Havana, April 4, 2022 — Leodán Pérez Colón, Yoel Castillo Cervantes and Yanderley Quesada Marín, sentenced to several years in jail in Sancti Spíritus for protesting on July 11, did not even set foot on the street that day.
According to the sentencing document, signed on January 18th and accessed by 14ymedio on Monday, it was proven that on that day Pérez Colón, from within his home on July 16th, streamed a video “to his contacts”–not even on social media–in which he referred to leader Miguel Díaz-Canel as a “motherfucker,” “snot-nosed dick,” “son of a bitch,, and “dickhead bastard,” which he, according to the document, “continued for several minutes.”
Along with him were his friends Cristian Enrique García Rodríguez, Ernesto Alexis Rojas Pérez, and José Antonio Rojas Pérez, who were also arrested but not convicted, and who testified against him, as per the judicial document.
That video in particular was used by Cuban national television to smear the protesters. In a post published before the trial of the three detainees, which took place on December 27th, Sancti-Spíritus-based activist Néstor Estévez denounced that the images, as well as the messages used to incriminate the defendants, “came from private audios in a WhatsApp group accessed by G2 after tapping the phones of the group’s members.”
The sentencing document states, in effect, that thanks to “the certifications of the telecommunications company,” Etecsa, “we became aware of the ownership of the telephone lines belonging to the accused, devices which were used by them in the perpetration of these events, and we learned, through the opinions of experts in criminal informatics, of the resources and content published on the internet.” continue reading
As stated in the legal document, 22-year-old Pérez Colón, created a WhatsApp group called “Todos por la libertad” [“Everyone for Freedom”], to which he invited the other two accused, 21-year-old Yoel Castillo and Yoanderley Quesada, 25, who accepted the invitation. In that group, the first convict [Pérez Colón], sent messages “encouraging the use of incendiary bottles named ’molotoff [sic] cocktails’, screws, rocks launched with bows or sharpened forks against members of the Ministry of the Interior and other institutions charged with preserving the social order in the city.”
In this way, the text continues, ” the user named ’Yuma Walter’ to whom he sent a message that said ’I am finding people to form a good team’,” and through Messenger, he wrote to user “Irete Amir Olmo Eleguasito Bernal” telling them ’I am looking for people from Bayamo Kilo 12, this is fire against the PNR, Díaz Canel motherfucker.”
Another group he created on WhatsApp, still according to the sentencing document, is “Todo por la libertad EUA” [“All for Freedom USA”], to which he added “citizens Lisandra Enrique Guerras and Pedro Amir Tanquero Bernal, both of whom live abroad.”
The woman named Lisandra, the sentencing document states, “accessed the group and published several photos in which molotoff [sic] cocktails, screws and bows can be seen and wrote, ’use this, don’t be intimidated, you don’t have weapons, but there are ways, do not allow anyone to be taken, throw arrows at them, stab them with knives, there are more of you than the lot of those police snitches.”
There is no evidence that any of those who were summoned organized any violent acts, except for, as announced in the group, heading “to Villalla’s house, everyone” (as written by Biyaya, the nickname by which Pérez Colón is known). Neither is there any trace of these accusations among those compiled in the list of prisoners maintained by Justicia 11J, according to which Pérez Colón had thrown stones at a nearby MLC (hard currency) store.
Nonetheless, Pérez Colón, who has a history of armed robbery for which he had served several years in jail, was sentenced to a total of five years for associating to commit a crime and contempt, and Quesada Marín and Castillo Cervantes, to two years and one year and ten months, respectively, only for associating to commit a crime (reduced in the cases of Castillo and Pérez for their time served in pre-trial detention.)
In addition, all of their cell phones were confiscated.
In a separate case, 14ymedio also accessed another unpublished sentencing document from Sancti Spíritus, which on October 18th sentenced Luis Mario Niedas Hernández to three years in jail for “contempt of a continuous nature.”
The events described in the document indicate that what he did was to stream three different videos on January 29, July 10 and on the following day, in which he uttered, among other phrases, “that he’d arrest all of them, that the Minister of Culture is shameless, that the State Security agents are State Insecurity and state terrorists,” “that the country’s president is a thief and a demagogue,” or referring to Cuba’s leaders, “that they are freeloaders, shameless, corrupt, they steal all of the country’s resources and deposit them abroad, the sons of bitches that rule this country, who live like capitalists.”
Niedas Hernández, as Sancti-Spíritus-based activist Néstor Estévez explained to this daily, was the only one of the 42 detainees in Sancti Spíritus who truly took to the streets on July 11th.
His sentencing document says that outside his house, he streamed a video where he said, “Díaz-Canel, motherfucker, we want a country, not a farm led by four sons of bitches,” and that, later, “he headed toward nearby buildings located in Olivos I, in the municipality and province of Sancti Spríritus and from there walked toward the multi-family buildings number 2 and 3 located near the Provincial Government offices and began loudly shouting other phrases ’down with Díaz-Canel, Díaz-Canel son of a bitch, I shit on Díaz-Canel, Díaz-Canel motherfucker’.”
The 31-year-old young man was arrested on July 11th, but he had previously been harassed and pressured for being politically active. He told the story himself in a chronicle published by Yucabyte just days before the protests that Sunday. “My activism, like that of many others, began with the pressures of the regime,” he wrote. “It was enough for me to support the causes defended by Movimiento San Isidro [San Isidro Movement] and 27N (27 November) on social media for all the weight of the arbitrariness of the dictatorship to come down upon me. Because, yes, publishing a simple Facebook post in Cuba that does not have the approval of the government, implies almost the same thing as standing in front of the provincial headquarters of the Communist Party with a sign demanding the president’s resignation. There is no freedom, not even in cyberspace.”
Translated by: Silvia Suárez
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Cilano highlights that the context for approving the new legislation is clearly marked by the July 11th protests, and its objective is to limit citizen participation. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Madrid, 23 March 2022 — If, as predicted, the draft of Cuba’s new Criminal Code is approved as is, independent activists and journalists will be “extremely exposed” to the arbitrariness of State Security. That point is stressed in a report published by the Observatorio Legislativo de Cuba [Cuba’s Legislative Observatory], an initiative of the Demo Amlat networkwhich analyzes new norms on the Island as a result of the Constitution approved in 2019.
The document, presented on Wednesday at an online event in which specialists Johanna Cilano and Carlos Hernádez participated from Mexico, highlights the tight control and the opacity of the government on the Island with regard to the Criminal Code. This contrasts with the publicity given, from the highest authorities to provincial-level state press, to the Family Code, which has been out for “popular consultation” since February 1st.
Furthermore, the document denounces the new norms which criminalize activities that are legal in any other country such as practicing independent journalism or associating with others to protest or change a law, as well as leading a civil society, which is not permitted by the Cuban State.
For example, the report mentions Article 143 of the draft norm, which establishes penalties of up to ten years in jail for anyone who receives funding “themselves or as representatives of non-governmental organizations, international institutions, associations or from any natural or legal person of the country or of a foreign State” to “defray activities against the State and its consitutional order.” This, said Johanna Cilano during the presentation, includes paying for mobile phone minutes from outside the country. continue reading
Also, denounced DemoAmlat, “it assaults the right to finance organized civil society, as well as the legitimate limitations to freedom of expression according to the American Convention on Human Rights.”
Cilano highlighted that the context to approve the new legislation is marked by the July 11th protests and its objective is to limit citizen participation in public matters.
As stated in the report, the draft “proves to be a product of the moment, offering the regime tools that will allow it to legalize arbitrariness; deepen criminalization of independent media, journalists and human rights activists; inhibit citizen participation in social activism; censor and promote self-censorship of journalists, activists and defenders of human rights.”
Similarly, as Reinaldo Escobar analyzed for this daily, the death penalty will continue to be in effect in the new norm as a “latent threat from the regime against opponents,” according to the DemoAmlat report.
The network concludes, in summary, that the draft Criminal Code, “presumed to be approved in April 2022, without public consulation, represents a danger to the citizenry.”
Translated by: Silvia Suárez
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Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro and Miguel Díaz-Canel at the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba. (Cubandebate)
14ymedio, Havana, 6 April 2022 — This Tuesday marks 13 years since Fidel Castro wrote – from the forced retirement of his illness – one of his famous “Reflections” in which he called for dialogue with the United States. Miguel Díaz-Canel recovered, for the anniversary, a phrase from that text that has been interpreted as a call for dialogue with Washington.
“It is not necessary to emphasize what Cuba has always said: we are not afraid of dialoguing with the United States. We do not need confrontation to exist either, as some fools think; we exist… because we believe in our ideas and we have never been afraid of dialoguing with the adversary.” The president wrote on his Twitter account.
Castro was responding at that time to a proposal from then-Senator Richard G. Lugar who urged Barack Obama, then US president, to begin negotiations that would bring about a thaw in relations between the two countries.
The leader of the Revolution pointed out: “The senator from Indiana walks with his feet on the ground. He does not start from philanthropic positions. He works (…) with the United States Chamber of Commerce and other business groups, other state governments and human rights groups,“ he said, in line with an article by Lugar in The Washington Post asking for an understanding between both nations. continue reading
Castro added: “I am sure that Richard G. Lugar does not fear the nonsense of being described as soft or pro-socialist.” Finally, the announcement of a certain recovery in relations finally took place in 2014, although it began to take shape some time ago.
Díaz-Canel’s intention to be open to dialogue in this case is more like crying out in the desert. Although the Cuban regime had hoped that a Democratic administration in the US would be more favorable than the Republican one of Donald Trump, who reversed some thaw agreements and imposed new sanctions, the illusion is fading like a sugar cube.
Both Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris, promised during the campaign to review some of the policies applied by their predecessor in office, such as the recovery of functions of the embassy in Havana and regarding the sending of remittances and travel.
However, once installed in the White House, the messages were directed more towards delaying that review. There was no rush in Washington when other, less controversial issues seemed more urgent to many potential voters in Florida.
Faced with the attitude of the Cuban regime after the anti-government protests of July 11, from which it imprisoned more than a thousand people and has sentenced them to prison terms of up to 30 years in some cases, the Biden Administration began to back down, stating that “circumstances changed.”
According to the Cuban Attorney General’s Office, 790 people have been prosecuted in the country for the July 11 protests, of which 55 are between 16 and 17 years old.
In the midst of a world storm that moves between the war in Ukraine and the economic problems that it will entail, with runaway inflation and lack of energy and food, Cuba may be the least of Joe Biden’s worries.
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The Coast Guard intercepted 1,067 Cubans in the first five months of fiscal year 2022, while in the same period of the previous fiscal year there were 838. (EFE)
EFE (via 14ymedio), Miami, 6 April 2022 — More than 46,000 Cubans arrived by land in the US in the five months from October 2021 to the end of February 2022, a figure higher than the 35,000 of the 1994 Rafters Crisis — which lasted five months — according to a report published this Tuesday by the newspaper Miami Herald.
The five-month figure exceeds that of the 12 months of 2021, which had already been a record (39,303), according to data from the Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP).
The newspaper, which links the increase in the migratory flow of Cubans to the hardening of economic and social conditions in Cuba and the repression unleashed after the 2021 anti-government protests, indicated that arrivals by sea are also at record levels. continue reading
The Coast Guard intercepted 1,067 Cubans in the first five months of fiscal year 2022, while in the same period of the previous fiscal year there were 838.
Most of the Cubans who arrived across the border with Mexico have been admitted to the US, unlike those who arrived by sea, who are mostly deported, says the newspaper.
The Miami Herald mentions that Cuba is in first place in the Misery Index compiled annually by Johns Hopkins University, due to rising inflation, widespread shortages of basic goods and little prospect of recovering from the economic impact of the covid-19 pandemic.
Added to all this is the “general assault on civil liberties” that the Government launched after the protests of July 11, 2021, which led to the arrest of more than 1,400 people, including minors, adds the information.
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Images released by Alberto Corzo of his state after the attack on Friday. (Iclep)
14ymedio, Havana, 4 April 2022 — Alberto Corzo, executive director of the Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and the Press (Iclep), was attacked this Friday in Colón, Matanzas, by two individuals who, according to complaints, had training in martial arts. The activist links the attack with State Security, since he was leaving an interrogation when he was beaten.
According to his wife, Martha Liset Sánchez, Corzo was treated at the Mario Muñoz Monroy hospital, where he was taken by a coach driver who found him on the road, with his left arm immobilized due to a possible injury to his collarbone and elbow, in addition to prescribed painkillers.
The statement, written by Sánchez, indicates that the medical center did not have X-ray capabilities and could not diagnose properly, so no injury certificate was issued. This Sunday, the activist was at the Faustino Pérez Surgical Clinic university hospital in Matanzas, where it was certified that he had a clavicular dislocation and he was hospitalized.
“He is in a daze, he can barely speak and can’t be understood. They have an intravenous drip and compresses on one eye and a bandaged shoulder. Last night his blood pressure rose a lot,” said Sánchez, who expressed her doubts this time due to hospitalization. continue reading
“Why do they have an IV on him? What medications are they giving him? Why is my husband barely able to speak? Why isn’t there a doctor to answer all the questions we want to ask and only a nurse who gives us very little information. Why is the person hospitalized next to my husband supposedly being investigated by the police, which means that where they have him it seems that he is imprisoned by the police presence 24 hours a day?” asks his wife.
The note published by Iclep affirms that Corzo wanted to file a complaint on Saturday, but he was not allowed to and says that both he and his wife have suffered “systematically, different types of aggression by the Cuban regime.”
In 2021, Corzo was attacked 33 times and Sánchez suffered “the repression and harassment of the dictatorship” on 25 occasions, including arbitrary arrests. According to the same note, the children of the marriage also suffer the consequences of their parents being independent journalists.
The members of Iclep have denounced the State’s actions against them on numerous occasions. In 2017, several of them experienced episodes of this type, such as the arrests of Raúl Velázquez, then its executive director, and María Mercedez Benítez, one of its activists. Also then, Corzo was threatened with being taken to prison for his reporting work and was reminded that he was accused of the alleged crime of contempt against a police collaborator.
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Alexander Fábregas with his mother Luisa María Milanés. (Facebook)
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 6 April 2022 — For Alexander Fábregas, 32, everything is a surprise this Wednesday. He has been on the street for a few hours since being released after serving nine months in prison for calling a protest on July 11 through social networks. From his home in Sancti Spíritus, he talks to 14ymedio on the phone about his time in jail and future plans.
“It is very frustrating to go to a prison to serve a sanction imposed without deserving it, for something that is not a crime anywhere in the world,” he explains to this newspaper. “I didn’t do anything to have that punishment. Until today I was in a place where I only saw walls and bars and now everything seems strange to me: the colors, the sounds, the voice of the people.”
Fabregas received no penal ‘mitigation’. “The authorities say that there are no political prisoners in Cuba, but if I had really been a common prisoner, I would have received parole in the middle of my sentence, but they did not give it to me. Only once did they allow me to go home for three days.”
“Several times the State Security officials came to visit me in prison to threaten me, but I have nothing to talk to them about. They have declared me an enemy of the supposed Revolution,” he says. “Now I am going through a difficult situation because I have a lot of stress because of the lockdown.”
“I am very worried about Luis Mario Niedas Hernández, who is like my brother, and who was denied the right to be transferred from prison to a work farm,” says Fábregas. Niedas was sentenced to three years in prison for “continued contempt of character” due to his criticism of him through Facebook against several high-ranking officials, including Miguel Díaz-Canel. continue reading
Now, Fábregas insists on the importance of the solidarity that both he and Niedas have received since the first day of their arrest: “Thank you to everyone who has contributed and I feel very honored to have been part of July 11… Patria y vida [Homeland and Life].
“I’m not going to abandon the cause, I’m not going to give up, but I have to be careful because I already have a criminal record and they will surely want to continue citing me and harassing me. But I will continue to be a defender of human rights in Cuba and, especially here in Sancti Spiritus.”
Fábregas’s mother, Luisa María Milanés Valdés, 58, also experienced this time as an ordeal. “These have been the most terrible nine months of my life,” says the woman who has maintained the complaint about the case of her son. “We have been through very difficult times and sometimes I thought they were not going to release him on the date that was planned.”
“He’s a little depressed because everything he’s had to live through has affected him psychologically, but at least he’s here, with us,” says Milanés.
Fábregas was arrested on the night of July 11 at his home, for transmitting on his social networks his call to take to the streets of Sancti Spíritus to accompany the protests that took place that day in other provinces of the Island.
Nine days after his arrest and in a summary trial, Fábregas was sentenced to nine months in prison for the crime of “incitement to commit a crime,” although he did not set foot on the street that July 11. He only managed to have a defense attorney one day before the trial, his family denounced at the time.
Although the young man belonged to the United Anti-Totalitarian Forum (Fantu), at the time of his call to take to the streets he was “an opponent on his own account,” according to his mother. In December 2020, he had already spent three days in detention, after he published a photo on social networks where he appeared with a sign that said: “No More Misery.”
Luisa María Milanés Valdés also suffered pressure from State Security and after her son’s conviction she was forced to leave the house she rented in Sancti Spíritus. The threats even made her fear that she was going to lose her job at a hospital for mentally handicapped children.
This Wednesday, the mother does not take her eyes off Fabregas, fearing that the police will knock on the door again and take him away.
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Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara during a forced stay at a hospital to which he was subjected by the Government and in images released by officialdom.
14ymedio, Havana, 5 April 2022 — After several hunger strikes, the last one between January and February of this year, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara “is trying to recover his physical constitution by putting his best effort into exercising and trying, as far as possible, to eat,” according to art curator Claudia Genlui speaking on Monday.
The curator posted a new update on the status of the artist, imprisoned for more than eight months in the maximum security prison of Guanajay, who was able to see his family last Friday after two months without having physical contact with her.
“Luis told his family that during the time he was on strike he was paralyzed and had to be urgently transferred to a hospital,” the activist wrote on her Facebook account. As a result of this latest hunger strike, the leader of the San Isidro Movement has sequelae in his sight, with the constant presence of a black spot that his loved ones are worried about.
Although Otero Alcántara has allegedly requested medical assistance that has been denied, Genlui says that he has low hemoglobin and dermatitis. “They don’t allow him to go out in the sun or have hardly any contact with other prisoners,” Genlui denounces.
The artist, however, seems to have recovered the right to phone calls and communicates twice a week. “From there he tries to transmit strength to us,” says Genlui, who is alarmed by the terrible circumstances in which Otero Alcántara finds himself, whose health is at “constant risk.” continue reading
The leader of the San Isidro Movement has been in prison since July 11, when he was arrested before he managed to join the anti-government protests, and is accused of public disorder, incitement to commit a crime, and contempt.
“Let’s remember that Luis Manuel is an artist whom the Cuban government tries to discredit and whom it keeps in prison for charges that have been built from ignorance and censorship of art. Luis is innocent and will not rest until he is released, taken to his home, accompanied by his family, which is where he should be,” says Genlui.
“Despite the circumstances, Luis Manuel continues to create. His ability to cling to art as a way of surviving and resisting is admirable. Luis is not alone. He knows it and is willing to continue the fight for Cuba’s freedom from all scenarios,” Claudia Genlui concludes.
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The official Cuban press extolling the work of the UMAP camps in the 1960s. Headline: Where work makes the man.
EFE (via 14ymedio), Jorge I. Pérez, Miami, 5 April 2022 — The forced labor camps in which, as in the Soviet gulag, dissidents, religious, homosexuals and artists were confined in the Cuba of the 1960s, left “a lot of pain and trauma” not yet healed, affirms the Cuban historian Abel Sierra Madero, who has just published an essay on this subject with the title El cuerpo nunca olvida [The body never forgets].
Subtitled Trabajo forzado, hombre nuevo y memoria en Cuba (1959-1980) [Forced work, new man and memory in Cuba (1959-1980)], the book brings together, for the first time, memorabilia, personal photos, testimonial sources and fictional literature on what was officially called Military Production Assistance Units (UMAP), “Because it must be said that I handle fiction as truth,” Sierra told Efe in an interview.
A specialist in studies of sexuality, concentration camps, the Cold War, memory and trauma, Sierra, who has lived in the US for years, interviewed more than 30 people or relatives of people who between 1965 and 1968 were in the UMAP. The interviews were conducted between Cuba, Miami, New Jersey and New York.
According to Sierra (1976) in the book’s introduction, “the UMAPs formed part of a more complex economic system within a broad project of social engineering.”
For this purpose, dozens of forced labor camps were created in the Camagüey plain, the Cuban province where sugar cane was best grown, and some 30,000 people passed through them between 1965 and 1968, according to data from the author. continue reading
“The UMAPs had a double meaning: re-educational, political and ideological, and also an economic one,” he comments.
“They were plantation enclaves. In the book I call it ’the development of the socialist plantation’, based on a colonial market which was that of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,” he says.
“The implementation of these camps allowed the State to appropriate a large part of the workforce without having to compensate them financially,” he says.
“There is still a lot of pain and trauma. An interesting part in this book is the theme of silence; you can see how silences speak. I was interested in taking the witness to that place of remembrance and denunciation,” Sierra details.
The volume shows “how the notion of the ’New Man’, which was the fundamental term to establish the revolutionary ideological structure and architecture, also served to implement forced labor camps, to manage power and create control mechanisms.”
Retrieving “los escombros,” something he prefers to call, in English, “the debris,” processing the information and writing a 528-page essay took him about a decade, he confessed shortly before presenting his book this Saturday at the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora, in Miami.
The cover is an image by Canadian photojournalist Paul Kidd taken at the entrance to one of the camps in 1966. It shows an armed soldier next to a fence of 21 strands of barbed wire.
Sierra comments that the photo is the product of Kidd’s audacity, who appeared there alone and without warning.
Hundreds of homosexuals were taken to these gulags to be “cured” according to the concept of the Cuban revolution that saw the nation as a sick body and the State as a medical benefactor, the book’s publisher, Rialta, said in a presentation on Facebook.
Benjamín de la Torre, “a boy who moved in art circles, committed suicide after that experience,” Sierra points out.
Singer-songwriter Pablo Milanés entered the UMAP at the age of 23, but according to Sierra his stay there “was an open secret until he considered it important for his career to unfreeze this issue.”
About the experience, Milanés wrote the song 14 pelos y un día, in which he invokes the wire fences, which were reduced from 21 strands to 14 when international criticism began to surface, according to 14ymedio.
Sierra was unable to interview Milanés after two attempts. “He was so traumatized that when everything was ready for the interview he canceled at the last minute,” he says.
The few available sources, beyond the official newspaper archives that “tell a different story from the UMAP,” were texts written by religious inmates of the camps “from a narrative of forgiveness.”
“Then I realized that I had to carry out a deep investigation that collected the before and after of the camps, the inside and the outside,” explains the author, who included a bonus track touching on the Mariel exodus in his essay (1980).
“An archive is created to be able to be destroyed, and that is the logic in which the Cuban regime has operated: Create a mystique around the archive, create a morbidity about its existence or disappearance to make believe reconstruction is an impossibility.”
“It has been shown how a history without an archive can be reconstructed, and that is what I have done, a history of the UMAP without an official archive. I have created my own,” says this professor at Florida International University (FIU).
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14ymedio, Havana, 5 April 2022 — Chicken exports from the United States to Cuba marked a milestone again in February. According to the Cuban economist Pedro Monreal with a source in the US Department of Agriculture, the amount that arrived on the island that month, 31,212 tons, is the third largest in the last two decades, behind those registered in July 2019 (33,842 tons ) and in March 2021 (32,755).
This represents an increase of 33% compared to the previous month. Likewise, in February there was a slight reduction in the price of the product, from 0.91 dollars in January to 0.87 per kilogram, which meant that Havana disbursed only 28% more.
Monreal recalls, through his Twitter account, that between 2001 and 2021, the US exported a total of 2.78 million tons of chicken meat to Cuba, for a total value of 2.368 billion dollars, 39.5 % of it from 2017 to 2021.
Imports of US chicken by Cuba in 2021 broke all previous records, as the economist disclosed at the beginning of the year. Never since records have been kept have there been more than 300,000 tons exported by the neighboring country to the Island, for an annual value of 279.7 million dollars, almost double, 94.64% more, compared to 2020, when the Island disbursed 143.7 million. continue reading
In quantity, 307,658 tons were imported in 2021 compared to 170,105 the previous year.
However, the increase in the importation of the product has not been noticed as much in stores that take payment in Cuban pesos as it has been in markets that take payment in freely convertible currency (MLC) and on internet shopping sites. The most-in-demand boxes of hindquarters, whole chickens or breasts have reappeared among the products on these foreign exchange portals.
The boxes, which range between 15 and 18 kilograms with prices ranging from 98 to 115 dollars, had practically disappeared at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, when it was only possible to find smaller packages. Customers prefer to purchase larger volumes at once to guarantee supplies in case of shortages.
However, the purchase of large quantities presents the danger that the frozen chicken will spoil during the long power outages that are occurring throughout the Island. Consumers must choose between two risks: that of buying a little at once and ending up with no chicken in the fridge or losing groceries after a long power outage.
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The essayist, editorial advisor, professor and film scriptwriter, Ambrosio Fornet Frutos. (Cubandebate)
14ymedio, Havana, 5 April 2022 — The Cuban film writer and screenwriter Ambrosio Fornet Frutos died this Tuesday at the age of 90, the Casa de las Américas reported on its social networks. “His work constitutes a fundamental part of the nation’s culture, which he always defended,” the institution wrote, recalling that the intellectual was “one of its closest and most beloved collaborators.”
With more than twenty texts written and edited, including El libro en Cuba; siglos XVIII and XIX (1994) [The Book in Cuba; XVIII and XIX Centuries] and Las trampas del oficio; apuntes sobre cine y sociedad (2007) [The Tricks of the Trade; Notes on Cinema and Society], Fornet won the National Publishing Prize in 2002 and the Literature Prize in 2009.
Fornet’s creative life was always linked to cinema. Among his works, the script for the film Retrato de Teresa (1979) [Portrait of Teresa], directed by Pastor Vega, stands out, in addition to his work as an advisor and professor at various academic institutions and at the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry.
He also appeared on several occasions as a jury member for the Casa de las Américas Award, and for other competitions, such as the Juan Rulfo Latin American and Caribbean Award and the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana.
Fornet is credited with having been the one who baptized the Quinquenio Gris [Five Grey Years], which began in 1971 with the censorship against the writer Heberto Padilla and his book Fuera de Juego [Out of the Game], marked by the excesses of dogmatism that the National Council of Culture (CN) imposed on letters and the arts. Many intellectuals agree, however, that it was “neither a five-year period nor gray,” but rather was a much longer and darker period. continue reading
Fornet exposed as antecedents of the Quinquenio Gris some controversies of the 60s, the closure of the cultural supplement Lunes de Revolución [Revolution Mondays] – directed by Guillermo Cabrera Infante – the Military Units for Production Support (UMAP, forced labor farms for young homosexuals and religious believers) and official hostility towards works by Antón Arrufat, Heberto Padilla and José Lezama Lima, until reaching the First Congress of Education and Culture, in 1971.
Regarding the Congress and what came later with Luis Pavón Tamayo at the head of the CNC, the writer born in the province of Granma said that a policy was carried out that reached a “sick degree” of homophobia and displaced those who did not qualify as “politically reliable.”
“Just as we must not forget that in a permanently besieged square, such as our country, insisting on discrepancies and disagreements is equivalent to ’giving weapons to the enemy,’ nor should we forget that pacts of silence are usually extremely risky,” Fornet said in a debate that was inserted into the so-called little email war of 2007, when dozens of intellectuals reacted to the reappearance in the official media of Pavón, considered one of the main executors of Castro’s censorship in the 1970s.
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The Russian rafters arrived from Cuba to Florida in a boat of about 30 feet. (EFE)
14ymedio, Madrid, 5 April 2022 — The authorities of Monroe County, Florida, are used to the arrival of boats from Cuba loaded with Cuban rafters, but this weekend they were amazed when they saw 15 undocumented Russians and Central Asians arrive on one of them, presumably part of a group of up to 40 people. “This is something different and new,” said Mayor David Rice.
According to The Washington Post , spokeswoman Alyson Crean of the Key West Police Department explained that on Sunday around 4 in the afternoon a boat chartered from Cuba docked at the southern end of the city’s tourist district. Agents quickly realized how unusual the situation was and alerted the US Department of Homeland Security and Customs.
“All we do when immigrants of any nationality arrive is make sure they are safe, but these people were not like regular immigrants,” Rice said, explaining that the matter had been treated as a national security case. “They were well dressed, on a chartered ship, they hadn’t been adrift for a week.”
“They tied up at a dock there, disembarked and went into the cafe,” Crean said.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed on Monday that the group was made up of 15 migrants (9 Russians, 4 Kazakhs and 2 Kyrgyz) and that they were being processed for deportation. continue reading
“Smugglers do not take into account the lives of migrants and too many lives are lost at sea when people make the dangerous journey in makeshift boats, rafts and other vessels poorly equipped to handle rough waters,” said Eduardo Maia Silva, spokesman of the DHS, which noted that any person who arrives in the country outside the law is subject to expulsion.
Anyone who “attempts to enter the United States by sea, without a lawful basis for entry, will be subject to removal,” he said.
According to witnesses present at the time of the migrants’ arrival, the group was much larger, about 40 people, although the DHS has not confirmed this or said it was looking for more people involved in the incident.
County Sheriff Rick Ramsay told The Washington Post the migrants were arriving with luggage and the boat was about 30 feet long. Although the official considers it premature to call this case a trend, he fears that the war in Ukraine and the tense political situation in Russia, which in recent months has increased penalties against the exercise of individual liberties, could lead some citizens of the area to look for alternative routes, like this one.
It is also unclear if the Russians had been on the island for a long time and chose to leave by boat like so many Cubans or if they had recently fled their country.
“Anything is possible, but we need more data and analysis to see if it’s something unusual, an anomaly,” the sheriff added.
Shannon Weiner, emergency director for Monroe County, said that there is also coordination with the FBI to investigate the incident, but a Coast Guard spokesman said that they are not aware to date that there are Russians or Ukrainians trying to reach the USA by sea.
On Saturday, The Washington Post also reported that there are Ukrainian refugees trying to reach the country through Tijuana, Mexico, like Latin American migrants. The Administration has urged following the legal channels, since Biden promised to accept 100,000 people, but it has yet to be determined how.
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Some of the vendors confronted the agent saying: “Hey, officer, you can’t come in here.” (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 5 April 2022 — Customers of the Youth Labor Army market on 17th and K in Havana were stunned this Tuesday when they saw a policeman riding a motorcycle enter the crowd.
Three sellers of plastic bags, routine in the place despite the prohibition on selling product, left terrified, two men and a woman, but the agent only went after the woman. The girl slipped through the crowd that was doing its shopping at the market and disappeared from sight.
Some of the vendors confronted the agent saying: “Hey, officer, you can’t come in here.” The policeman, perplexed, answered them loudly: “I don’t understand why that woman who came in disappears in here,” implying that the merchants themselves had hidden her.
Without ever getting off the motorcycle, the agent turned around and went back out into the street. He was stationed at the door of the market for a few minutes with a vigilant attitude, until another woman approached him, pointing out a path – which way did the pursued person go? – and, only then, did the man leave. continue reading
Some of the vendors confronted the agent saying: “Hey, officer, you can’t come in here.” (14ymedio)
“Luckily he didn’t come in at high speed, what if he hits someone?” said a customer in her forties under her breath, while protesting: “They feel impunity.”
Another young witness to the events reported: “This reminds me of the stories my grandmother told me about Batista, when the police pursued people and the people themselves hid them.”
The market, located on a busy street in El Vedado, has at least two entrances, which made pursuit more difficult for the uniformed man. With a nearby passport and identity card preparation office, plus a polyclinic where PCR tests are carried out for those planning to travel travel, the area is permanently full of people who come and go.
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The group, made up of 12 people, linked arms and went into the river, but the force of the current overcame them. (Capture)
14ymedio, Mexico, 5 April 2022 — Four Cubans, including a three-year-old child, were saved from drowning in their attempt to cross the Rio Grande from the border city of Piedras Negras to Eagles Pass, Texas. These migrants are part of one of the two groups that risked their lives this Tuesday to reach the United States.
Isabel, 25, Luciano, 31, Ángelo Luciano, 3, and another woman were swept away by the current of the Rio Grande, which had increased its level by almost three feet because this Sunday the gates of the Amistad dam were opened. “I was afraid that my son would drown with me, that’s why I turned back,” one of the migrants told local media.
The Cuban said that they arrived in Piedras Negras on Tuesday after a 16-day journey. They left Havana and went to Nicaragua and from there they made the journey until they reached the border with the United States. “The current is very strong, I tried to make sure he (Ángelo) didn’t end up in the water.”
The group, made up of 12 people, joined hands and went into the river, but the force of the current overcame them. Three were left in the middle of the current and received support from migrants who threw life jackets and ropes at them from the shore.
“I was trying to float,” said Isabel. “Until I managed to stand firm and now… there’s nothing else to do,” said the young woman, resigned, adding that her family was already on the other side. “I’m not afraid to die” and she continue reading
stated that she would try again.
Liaison members from the municipality and Grupo Beta took the data from the Cubans. “They know that it is a risk and they put the children at risk. Fortunately, there were no drownings, but they will not always have the same luck,” said Rodrigo, a member of the rescue group.
“The level of the river increased, we are talking about areas where the depth is fifteen feet and in addition there are whirlpools. And under the International Bridge II, where they passed, the water is up to nine feet deep,” added the lifeguard.
Minutes before, another group made up of eight Cubans jumped into the river. While on the Mexican side they asked them to return because of the flood, one of the women replied: “Go back to Cuba, no way.”
The migrants rejected the support of the group of lifeguards and decided to continue on their journey until they were overwhelmed by the flow. At that point they received the support of the Border Patrol, which helped them set foot in Eagles Pass.
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14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 7 April 2022 — Thousands of people formed a line this Thursday near the Cuatro Caminos market in Havana. Neighbors of the place confirmed to this newspaper the unusual line, which can be seen in videos and photos on social networks.
