Author: 14ymedio

nor do they have internet. The 21-year-old displayed the Voyage à Rabais agency’s lack of honesty: “We had no warning” about the risks of coronavirus infections.”

Regarding the food at the isolation hotel, Laurianne Gagné said that one of the lunches they gave her was “a hamburger with pink meat.” The meat was “never cooked,” Audray-Ann Lapointe said.

Added to this was the lack of tests. The tourists made it known that during their isolation, a test was carried out every five days. And that one of the nurses even asked permission to use the bathroom, which does not have soap or toilet paper. “At the end of my isolation, I was charged for a medical consultation that I never had,” said Audray-Ann Lapointe.

Laurianne, Guylaine and Audray-Ann returned to Canada on January 3. His complaint is similar to those made by several Russian tourists. On that occasion Tatyana Konkova, who came to the Island on vacation, shared her experience in an isolation center. On her Instagram account, she denounced the transfer to “a bunker” after 12 passengers on her flight tested positive for coronavirus upon arrival at the Jardines del Rey airport, in Cayo Coco (Ciego de Ávila).

“We are sitting like hostages,” said another of the tourists in a video posted by Konkova. “There is no tap in the shower and it squirts when you try to turn it on, there is no internet in the rooms, tourists are denied food.”

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over Avenida 23, from M to I. In a state of shock, I planned to go to the Malecón, where they told me the largest number of people was concentrated.

On the way there, I ran into a friend who tells me that at 4:00 pm the President will speak on National Television. It is the sadly famous speech where he calls on the revolutionaries to take to the streets and not to surrender the Revolution. In that intervention, Díaz-Canel gave, with his final words, ’the combat order’, which raised fear of a possible civil war.

The bus that takes us to Old Havana is loaded with an aura of excitement never seen before. In this environment, suddenly a girl stands up and begins to shout anti-government slogans, to applaud, to demand freedom and to recite the verses of Bonifacio Byrne in Mi Bandera. The bus becomes, by the second, the freest place in Cuba, where each and every one smiles happily at being able to say what they had choked on for so many years.

We got off very close to the Deauville hotel, the epicenter of the 1994 protests [The Maleconazo], we walked shouting slogans and telling the neighbors to get out of their houses, until we reached La Fraternidad Park, next to the Capitol.

In this section many people are joining us, young people, old people and children. In flip-flops, no shirts, just woken up or off work that afternoon. All eager for freedom. In front of the América theater, a demonstration organized by the Government, well escorted by police cars, military jeeps and agents stationed on the corners of Neptuno and Galiano, strolls without generating anything other than curiosity and laughter. It was one more sign that we have a pitifully ridiculous and pantomimic system.

The view offered by the esplanade in front of the Capitol was indescribable: around 1,500 people, maybe 2,000, chanted the word freedom. The title of the song Patria y Vida [Homeland and Life], turned into a motto, was an overwhelming roar. “Diáz-Canel Out,” “resign” and “Díaz-Canel, singao [motherfucker]” were heard all over the place.

I had already heard that Camagüey, Ciego de Ávila, Palma Soriano, Santiago de Cuba, Matanzas and other municipalities in Cuba were on their feet, facing the Police and demonstrating that freedom, no matter how much a system ignores it, is the greatest thing that exists. He was facing an unspeakable, incredible scenario: thousands of people in Cuba had taken to the streets to demand from the Government what had long been dissatisfactions.

Not for pleasure, for two days the #SOSCuba campaign had managed to be a trend on Twitter, and not only because of the call of the influential Mia Khalifa.

I am running towards a police truck when, suddenly, I feel squeezed as if by a thousand hands that paralyze me. They yell at me, throw me to the ground and hit me on the knee. The people around me try to separate them from me, but it is impossible for them and they only film, document such atrocity and disown them.

From what is stopping me, a hand squeezes my throat and says “You black shit, you scream again and I’ll crush your throat.” The hand is that of a boy no more than 20 years old, maybe less, who exudes an indescribable hatred from his eyes. It is not a legitimate or personal hatred against me: it is hatred inoculated by a system towards everyone who thinks differently. Thus, in semi-consciousness, I wish him peace and resign myself to arrest.

The patrol in which they put me goes at about 120 kilometers per hour and leaves me at the door of the Zanja station, where I enter through the entrance on Escobar street. Outside the building there is a group of people giving moral support to all of us who are entering little by little without knowing when we will leave.

I ask the officer to tell me under what crime he is detaining me, if I can file the writ of habeas corpus or call a lawyer. All this is part of the detention protocol explained in the Constitution and by the announcer and member of the Central Committee of the PCC (Communist Party of Cuba) Humberto López in the program Hacemos Cuba. Knowing in advance that it is impossible to access all this, I do so in order to be able  in the future to affirm with all conviction that my detention is arbitrary and violates the provisions of current laws.

I am stripped of my belongings and thrown into a cell measuring about 20 by 25 feet where there are about 150 people. It is 5:35 pm.

What I have experienced in that place up to the moment of my release is an unequivocal sign that we live in a State that not only violates some universal human rights principles, but also violates its own legal system, and that intolerance towards those who disagree it is greater than any other crime.

In that cell it is infectious, the air is unbreathable and the heat suffocating. In an attempt to survive, I approach the bars and stand there, imploring all the officers who pass by for some water. I receive the first glass three hours later.

It is curious how the epidemiological situation in the country was never taken into account in that cell. On the contrary, it seemed that we were being urged to contract COVID-19 and die. While each morning Dr. Francisco Durán recommended a series of measures, among which were avoiding overcrowding and maintaining social distancing, the Government locked hundreds of people in cells without conditions with the simple objective of demonstrating power.

We were all there for the same reason. There was not a single person who had entered for another reason. Some for being directly at the protest, others for supporting it with applause from outside and the least for showing curiosity. There was even a man held for giving a group of protesters a bottle of water.

Perhaps ignoring that, the station Police crashed before the integrity and brotherhood that was formed in seconds in that space full of men eager for freedom. The entry of a new detainee (which happened all the time) was a moment where freedom was applauded and shouted, perhaps with more meaning than outside, in the street.

There were people of all ages, including three minors, and also an Italian couple and a Belgian. Everyone told how they got there, and in all the stories there was one word in common: violence.

I remember the entry of several detainees held by the neck by officers, crashed to the ground, kicked, slapped and humiliated. Two cases particularly struck me. The first, a thin, bearded boy, who arrived dragged by a lieutenant twice his width who, just before putting him in the cell, slapped him until blood was drawn from his nose.  That boy was in such a state of alienation that he just looked sideways and laughed. I wonder what happened to him.

The other was a black boy, thrown to the floor and dragged towards the cell, who, on the way, shouted that he was from the UJC [Union of Young Communists] and that they please call the unit politician. They shut him up with a fist.

Around 6:40 am they take me out of the cell and take me to an office labeled “Carpeta 2″. There they take my data, they confiscate my identity card and they ask me the reasons for my arrest, reasons that I myself did not know. The interview is conducted by an official from the Department of State Security. Who is, likewise, a young boy, no more than 25 years old, with penetrating green eyes that, above the mask, do not stop judging me.

After about 15 minutes he tells me that they are going to check all the data and if I have no previous problems, that is, a criminal record, I will be released in a few hours. It is the first time I have heard that word from one of them.

They take me to another cell, five by 12 feet. That’s where I think of my family for the first time. I know they will be worried because, knowing me, they must have inferred that I was going to join the protests. I hope to leave before 9:00 pm, the time of the curfew imposed due to covid-19 by the provincial government. It’s where I smoke for the first time since I’ve been detained.

Silently, a newcomer passes me a cigarette that I inhale anxiously, wondering how intolerant and proud a government would haveto be to be unable to understand a peaceful protest and instead fill the police stations with people (there were already about 250 between the two cells, and about 60 in the corridor, heavily guarded by armed officers). Many newcomers commented that they had heard that the Zapata and C and Cuba and Chacón stations were also overflowing. Cubans continued to protest in the streets.

The hours that remained I used to memorize each moment, each action and each person that could appear in this text. The leading role was undoubtedly taken by the officer who led the cell guard that day. He was what in Cuba we call a jabao, short, burned by the sun and strengthened by constant training sessions. A brutalized, semi-primitive man, blinded by the momentary power that gives him the blue uniform and the pistol that hangs in his zambrán (holster).

With a crooked laugh, he would come over and tell us that we weren’t going to get out of there to tell about it. He was the one who, when in the neighboring cell they began to sing the national anthem and demand the resignation of the president, he withdrew the water and took out a few, beat them in front of all of them and sent them to the jail.

The dungeon, a place that I did not have the pleasure of knowing, by chance, was the women’s cell. These, although in much smaller numbers than the men, perhaps fifteen, were detained by both female and male officers. With the advantages that their sex offered at that time, they directly offended those who took them the same way towards the end of a side corridor, the end of which I could never decipher, or who left them, separated from their companions. The outer space of the cells, at the end of my stay, was occupied by almost 70 people.

After hours listening to shouts, complaints, applause, offenses, slogans (especially “Patria y Vida”) and the lyrics of the national anthem (which will have been sung about 11 times), they open my cell and say my name. It is 11:20 pm.

The officer, this man with wild movements and a cyclopean attitude, hands me my identity card and my belongings and utters the only words that sounded strangely kind in his mouth: “Get up, kid.” They did not make me sign any paper, nor levy the famous fines for the spread of epidemic and public disorder that we deduced in the cells that they were going to put on us. I suppose that the fewer records of detainees, the easier it is to show that the protests were carried out by just “four cats.”

On the street I noticed that my belt was broken, just like my shirt. That my mask had disappeared (I used the one that a cellmate gave me) and that sweat and a bad smell flooded me. I noticed the dirt on my shoes and bag, the pain in my knee (which turned out to be a sprain caused by the beating at my arrest), and the almost four miles I had to walk home.

The last memory I took with me was the sound of telephones ringing in the holding room for belongings, opposite the cell. They never stopped ringing the whole time I was there and I think it will be a memory that I will have in my brain for a lifetime. They sounded desperate. Despair from friends and family.

I made the journey in about an hour and fifteen minutes. Along the way I saw only police patrols. However, the scenario along the 10 de Octubre Avenue, from Cristina to Jesús del Monte, had prepared for me was something incredible. Stones, glass and broken bottles, shops smashed and looted. The corner of Toyo was, evidently, the center of the fight that Sunday of San Abundio.

When I arrived at my house, my parents waited for me with the expression of those families who, in the times of Batista, were looking for their children among the dead in a police fight. There were no words, no tears, no hugs. I went, limping and practically unable to speak, straight to the bathroom, processing everything that had happened in the last hours.

This was the beginning of the end. They all knew it. Whatever the president said on television, the people had already spoken. The thousands of people I had seen shouting “we are not afraid,” “freedom” and “the people united will never be defeated” confirmed it to me.

The crude and deceitful government strategies of plainclothes policemen, buses loaded with workers sent to the insurgent hotspots to be presented as the spontaneous people, and the absurd blame placed on the United States Government demonstrated such a great disconnect between the State and the people that sooner or later it will cost them,  the Revolution or a civil war.

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in Fidel Castro. Who, except for Batista, who accused him of being a communist, would doubt that he would reestablish the Constitution of 1940, which would eradicate corruption, abuse and press censorship? Fidel had promised that never again would a mother cry for a son in political prison, and the flights with the exiles were already landing in Rancho Boyeros.

Cuba was a party. The people of Havana had enjoyed another Christmas Eve with roast pork, Hatuey beer, yuca with mojo sauce and black beans. They had eaten the nougat, the coconut sweets, and the guava shells, and the flags were waving on the balconies on the eve of the arrival of the heroes.

Later, with dizzying speed, other things would come: the imprisonment and even the execution of some of the heroes that I saw on the television screen along with Fidel and the delirious people. Ideological radicalization and intolerance was imposed by force among Cubans. Our people were subjected to Soviet military interference and hatred to the death was sown on our American neighbors.

But in that first moment we were happy. Cuba seemed to have awakened from a nightmare which, however, was just about to begin. In this January of 2022, after 63 years have passed, I remember everything vividly, how we innocently changed the lights of the traffic signals: from the green of hope to the yellow of suspicion to the red of repression.

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inequalities and that point to a new scenario, not of duality, but of monetary multitude, with the formal and informal acceptance of the freely convertible currency (MLC), and of the main international currencies in all types of transactions.

In fact, although there are no official data, the circulation of currencies has reached significant proportions in the Cuban economy in recent months and the objective of the communist leaders to unify transactions in a single currency, the Cuban peso, is sailing against the wind, without realizing it. Now, in addition, the country is facing the threat of inflation, which at the end of the year will hit an interannual rate of 70% (in 2020 it was 18.5%).

So how did this situation come about?

The answer is simple and easy to understand. In a matter of months, there has been an absolute mismatch between the currencies that enter the country and the national currency in circulation.

The former is easy to understand.

Tourism, the main source of income, has plummeted from the 4.7 million level in 2019 to the 500,000 level in 2021, after the strong hit in 2020. Some communist leader has pointed out that the loss of income exceeds two billion dollars, but it is possible that it was much more. The paralysis of tourist activity is absolute and the prospects for the high season of 2022 do not seem favorable, due to the explosion in the Covid-19 omicron variant circling the world.

Foreign investments have once again had a disastrous exercise, because international capital already has two destinations in Central America and the Caribbean that are much more profitable and receptive than the Cuban communist regime: the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica. The prospects for Cuba are not good and Malmierca’s announcements of alleged reforms of Law 118 indicate that the authorities know that the model is exhausted and they have to react by opening spaces for foreign capital.

Like tourism, income from the sale abroad of medical, professional, trainers, and all kinds of services have come to a sharp stop, proving to the regime that, even in difficult times in terms of public health, this type of business has its limits and cannot grow continuously, as countries react to their shortcomings and seek more effective solutions to solve problems.

Merchandise exports have collapsed because of the uneven evolution of world markets and supply chains, in which the communist regime has never had the slightest intention of participating. In fact, Cuba has not even managed to integrate itself into Chinese foreign trade.The self-exclusion from global trade practiced by the communist leaders  and their commitment to bilateral agreements and agreements with countries of similar ideology, more typical of the cold war, is a brake on development and the external competitiveness of the economy.

Remittances have not given cause for joy either, despite the fact that they are the only component that injects foreign currency, specifically dollars, into the national economy. But even in this case, the regime, by prohibiting deposits in this currency as of the summer, has shot itself in the foot, pushing remittances into the informal economy realm or into stores in MLC using tricks to collect revenue from trade margins.

Last but not least, since debts with international creditors (the Paris Club) have not been paid, access to financial markets is closed, which prevents obtaining financing other than through subsidies or donations, the money for which goes to programs with little economic and social impact such as agro-ecology or local development.

Thus, the scarce inflow of foreign currency encounters a disproportionate increase in the issuance and circulation of the internal currency, in this case, the Cuban peso.

The uncontrolled monetary expansion, for which the Central Bank of Cuba and the Government have direct responsibility, is due, on the one hand, to the needs for the conversion of the CUC (which is exchanged at 1-to-24 on the dollar), generating an artificial expansion of Cuban pesos. This has generated in Cuba one of the highest percentages of M2 (money supply) relative to GDP in the world, 121%, and the reduction seems problematic.

On the other hand, the uncontrolled expansion of Cuban pesos has its origin in the overflow of the public deficit, which is probably close to 20% of GDP, despite the fact that investments have been reduced, recklessly and irresponsibly. The expansion of the public deficit caused by expenses that grow well above income expands the amount of money in Cuban pesos and distorts the internal balance of the economy.

To all this must be added the consequences of the inflation caused by the Ordering Task. A Cuban who changed his CUC to pesos on January 2 of last year would have obtained almost double the purchasing power for the same CUC changed to pesos on December 2.

The galloping inflation of 2021 erodes the purchasing power of salaries and pensions, and the same can be said of on demand savings deposits, time deposits and certificates of deposits in CUC, which if they continue to be held until March without being exchanged for Cuban pesos, will probably be worth much less than theyare now, because inflation will continue to advance, to the extent that there is no single measure the regime might take to solve the problem.

In fact, the inflation that is hitting and will hit the Cuban economy is a direct consequence of the mismatch between the hard currencies and the national currency in circulation. Good proof of this is that the fixed exchange rate of the 1-to-24 pesos against the dollar could not be sustained by the authorities. In the informal markets the rate for these transactions is at a much lower level, with 70 Cuban pesos required to obtain one US dollar. Maintaining a fixed exchange rate under these conditions and with a year-on-year inflation of 70% is a suicidal decision. The authorities must devalue the peso and do it with courage, imposing budget adjustments that facilitate the expansion of the private sector, the only one that can lead the Cuban economy out of this vicious circle derived from the obsolete and crisis-ridden communist social model.

Seen from this perspective, the balance sheet of monetary unification has been a real disaster in terms of its implementation. Cubans have to operate with a weak currency, in which confidence has been lost and that nobody wants, despite the fact that it continues to be the main currency in the economy as a whole (wages, salaries and pensions are paid in Cuban pesos). On the other hand, a space has been created for alternative trade in foreign exchange and MLC (freely convertible currency) that applies to goods and services that cannot be purchased with pesos and this generates an additional demand for foreign currency that, as has been indicated, is not offset by the offer. The last has been the slogan for state companies, selling their products for domestic consumption in hard currency, to customers who are paid in Cuban pesos.

What was intended to be corrected with the Ordering Task has deteriorated to levels difficult to explain or justify, and meanwhile Cubans must prepare to live dangerously in 2022. A year that, like the one that is ending now, is going to be very complicated and will have very negative consequences to the lives and prospects of families, accentuating the enormous social inequalities and deteriorating the living conditions of the vulnerable. The communist social model of the 2019 constitution has to be modified because it does not work. We will see this throughout the year. The budgets of Señora Bolaños do not give more, the plan of Minister Gil will not be fulfilled, tourism will not work in the high season, and only humanitarian aid can serve to alleviate the situation.  And so it will be seen.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on the author’s blog, Cubaeconomía.

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bars and restaurants without ventilation. In addition, single-use materials (tablecloths and napkins) should be used in these premises whenever possible.

On Monday, Raúl Leyva Caballero, director of Prosalud in the capital, made the announcement that the Santiagueras Nights are no longer being celebrated and that the food products that are sold in this traditional activity on Saturdays will be offered in the shops and gastronomic places of the city .

All facilities must have, as usual, hypochlorite and shoe cleaners, hygienic measures that, although they can be a support to the fight against coronavirus, have proven ineffective since, more than a year and a half ago, it was definitely concluded that covid-19 is spread mainly through the air.

Leyva Caballero asked that the sale of staple products be organized again in the ration stores, markets and workplaces, in addition to demanding that the acceleration of booster shots.

As for travelers, they are required to prove the complete vaccination schedule and a negative PCR in the 72 hours prior to the trip. In the case of Cubans who reside on the island and are not vaccinated, or have not completed the scheme, they must take a test upon arrival and pass mandatory quarantine in a hotel, with the cost of accommodation and transportation at their own expense. After seven days a new test will be carried out which, if negative, will allow them to leave on the eighth day.

The rebound in coronavirus cases has been shaking the world in recent months. This Tuesday there have been some record numbers in the American continent, with the US at the forefront, reporting a million cases in a single day.

Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Panama also stand out for their high contagion data, as the omicron variant spreads, which to date seems to results in less serious patients and shorter illnesses, but whose rate of spread is so worrying that, at the same time, it increases the chances of serious cases and strains the health systems again, and is causing a high number of employees to leave work, with consequences in many countries that could reach Cuba, if the trend is confirmed.

Some countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Italy and Spain have reduced the quarantine measures, as well as when verifying that the new variants have shorter infection times and, therefore,  two week or ten day isolations is not necessary, as was previously maintained.

In addition, this Tuesday a new variant of covid-19 from Cameroon was identified in France, now known as IHU by the acronym of the University Hospital Institute of Marseille that has formally discovered it, derived from another whose first cases were detected in the Republic of Congo in September.

This new variant has left a dozen cases in the city of Marseille and contains 46 mutations, even more than omicron, although there are not enough infections yet to draw conclusions about it.

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vulnerable, “not only because of machismo but because of the high level of vulnerability in which they find themselves.” They point as an example to the lack of employment that could make women financially independent, of shelters for battered women, and of preventive actions that must be carried out from childhood.

At the beginning of December, Alas Tensas reported the femicide of Yoanka, a woman who “was in her 40s and had three daughters in her care.” They detailed that she was a neighbor of the Ciudamar neighborhood, in San Miguel del Padrón, and that the aggressor was her partner.

The publication then demanded that the Federation of Cuban Women and the authorities concerned themselves “about this silent pandemic” and denounced that in 2021 about thirty women were killed in femicides.

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the end of the year dinner that the hotel had prepared, but if she thought for a second that the stumbling blocks were over, she quickly fell into a rage. The shortages that are spreading through the island’s markets has also reached the hotels.

“No pork, no food, practically, no staff to serve and supply the number of customers,” describes the young woman speaking about what she experienced in the restaurant. She also remembers that “people were anxiously waiting for apples and grapes,” because, she insists, customers paid for “a nutritional supplement that included fruits, fruits that I never saw.”

“Several people had to go into the kitchen to demand the food and fruits and then a cook came out to distribute a sad box of grapes for so many customers,” as can be seen in a video that Muñoz shared on her social networks, which she did, she said, “so that no one dares to say that it is a lie.”

“There were blows, shoves and everything never seen before over a handful of grapes, which in the end all fell to the ground because the same people broke the box trying to take them away.”

“It is unnecessary to remember that money is very hard to get to throw it away like that, it is not five pesos, it is a lot of money,” insists Muñoz.

On December 24 , another customer who identified herself as Rachel Cruz on the Tripadvisor platform, also complained about the poor quality of the food and the organization at the Grand Memories in Cayo Santa María. According to her account, her visit on Christmas Eve turned into a “nightmare,” into “complete madness.”

“My girls were knocked down to get an apple from the buffet. For my little boy there was nothing suitable for his food. We tried to go to eat and we spent three long hours in the endless lines. You asked for something and it had run out. The food was cold and poorly prepared,” she describes. “Terrible, I do not recommend it to anyone.”

Something similar happened to Gina, who worked hard all year in 2021 in her position in a Miami pharmacy with the illusion of saving for the end of the year with her family in Cuba. The plan seemed perfect: sun and sand on the most famous beach in Cuba, Varadero. Along with her brother, two nieces and her mother, the emigrant arrived in the last week of December at the Roc Arenas Doradas hotel in the Matanzas peninsula.

“I spent the four days lining up, lining up for the buffet, lining up for breakfast and lining up at the reception to leave my complaints,” Gina laments. The hotel, managed in a mixed way by the Cuban State and the Spanish chain Roc Hotels, has four stars that some clients question. “It gave me the impression that they had accepted more guests than the amount of food they had available.”

“The very limited food options and the very poor preparation, but the worst thing for me was to see that as soon as they noticed that I was a Cuban living in Miami, they treated me very differently from how they spoke to my mother, my brother and my nephews.” For Gina, “it was frustrating that I was going to get a rest and give my family a fun time but we ended up fighting for the food and stressed by the lines.”

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