14ymedio

Intellectuals, Politicians and Journalists Sign a Letter in Support of 15 November Marches in Cuba

In addition to Mario Vargas Llosa, notable among the signatories are former Presidents Luis Alberto Lacalle, of Uruguay, and Mauricio Macri of Argentina. (EFE)

14ymedio, Havana, 9 November 2021 — Peruvian author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa, former presidents, world leaders, ministers, politicians, academics, and journalists from several countries have expressed, through a letter, their support for the peaceful protests organized by Archipiélago for November 15th in Cuba.

“We support and back the peaceful demonstration on November 15th convened by different sectors of civil society,” declared the signatories less than a week before the protest, which has been declared “illegal” by the Cuban Government.

They denounced that Cubans have spent “more than 60 years” suffering the effects of “the gigantic oppression of the longest dictatorship in the history of Latin America” and have thus been deprived of “the most basic human rights.” In addition to Vargas Llosa, notable among the signatories are former Presidents Luis Alberto Lacalle of Uruguay, Mauricio Macri of Argentina, and Lenin Moreno of Ecuador.

“Since 1952, Cubans have not participated in free elections and several generations have been persecuted for exercising journalism and freedom of expression, as well as all types of human rights activists,” they write.

In the text, they note that the people of the Island “raised a cry of freedom and democracy” on July 11th when they went out to the streets to protest and thus showed the international community “that Cubans are standing up in the struggle to conquer their rights and build a democracy.” continue reading

“It is the Cuban people who demand, in much the same way that José Martí did long ago, a Republic with everyone and for the good of everyone,” they added in their missive, dated November in Madrid, Spain, and also signed by Cuban Activist Rosa María Payá and Argentinian Agustín Antonetti.

They also stressed that in the name of defending “freedom and democracy in our region and the world” and protected by international law, the Inter-American Democratic Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, they manifest their “solidarity with the Cuban people in their struggle for freedom and democracy.”

They similarly expressed that Cubans “have the right to choose their future” and that their demands “are legitimate and necessary to build the rule of law.” In addition, they stated their support for the call to the release political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, “especially those arrested for peacefully protesting on July 11th.”

Adding their signatures, among others, were Cuban journalists Mario Pentón, Yoani Sánchez and Carlos Alberto Montaner as well as Idania Chirinos, of Venezuela and Argentinians Cristina Pérez and Eduardo Feinmann.

The letter was published Tuesday, when many of the activists and organizers of the event on 15N are being harassed by State Security, which is threatening them with jail time if they attend the march, while Yunior García, one of the most visible faces of the initiative, finds himself at home, incommunicado and under the surveillance of the authorities.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez
___________

COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

In Santa Clara, Cuba, Archipielago Proposes Taking to the Streets in a Decentralized Manner on 15 November

Activist and business owner, Saily González, with a demand submitted to the Administration of Santa Clara at the end of October. (Twitter)

14ymedio, Havana, November 9, 2021 — Facing harassment by State Security and the local government, Archipiélago in Santa Clara announced this Tuesday “replacing the initial proposal” of a march on November 15th (15N). The new strategy proposed taking to the streets in “a decentralized manner from any point in the city.”

The convening will still take place at 3:00 pm and participants should wear white. The group requested that those who go out on that day join others they “recognize as supporters of the peaceful protest” and attempt to “make an offering of flowers to any of our heroes,” but “always following the principles of civility and rejecting violence.”

They also suggested avoiding confrontation with those who comply with the regime’s “combat order” and distancing themselves from repressive forces such as “policemen, special forces, Brigadas de Respuesta Rápida (BRR) [Rapid Response Brigades], and any other that the Government manages to convene on that day to repress the protest.”

Archipiélago requested that protesters distance themselves from MLC stores [those that only take payment in hard currency] to “avoid possible infiltrators” who have been ordered by the political police “to attack them,” and also “energetically sing” the National Anthem “in front of the Cuban hero.”

The group reiterated that it will go out on 15N to express themselves against violence, demand the release of political prisoners, that the rights of all Cubans be respected, and that there be a democratic resolution of differences between civil society and the Government of the Island “through democratic and peaceful means.”

Among the concerns that resulted in the modifications to the 15N activities, what stood out was that the “Department of State Security would infiltrate” the ranks of the group to “commit criminal and violent acts against continue reading

people and public property and that the BRR, responding to President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s combat order, would lash out against the protesters, thus provoking bloodshed and violent confrontations.”

This Monday, the group has called for a massive cazerolazo [beating of pots and pans] on November 14th and 15th, at 8 pm, in support of Cubans who will go out to march and for the more than 600 citizens who remain in prison and are being sentenced to exemplary penalties for exercising their right to dissent.

“Sound your pots for the needed changes in Cuba and because we deserve a dignified life,” they requested on their social media.

Since the Civic March for Change was announced, first for November 20th and later rescheduled for 15N, the members of Archipiélago have suffered repressive acts, they’ve been summoned by the Prosecutor’s Office and State Security and some have even been fired, among them, doctor Manuel Guerra and university professor David Alfredo Martínez Espinosa.

On the other hand, the Asamblea de Resistencia Cubana (ARC) [Assembly of the Cuban Resistance], which comprises over 35 associations that fight for democracy on the Island, encouraged Hispanics in Miami, and especially Venezuelans and Nicaraguans to join a caravan in support of the Civic March for Change next Sunday.

The call is for Venezuelans and Nicaraguans to participate as citizens of “two countries governed by dictatorships, as has occurred in Cuba for 61 years,” stated the organization in a communication shared Tuesday.

“This caravan is not only for Cubans, people of other nationalities, such as Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who are a part of this struggle, are also invited and have confirmed their attendance,” affirmed Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, ARC’s coordinator.

At the end of the parade of vehicles, next to Miami’s Freedom Tower, participants will be able to join a flotilla and a human chain of solidarity organized by Movimiento Democracia [Democracy Movement], presided by Ramón Saúl Sánchez, also in support of 15N.

The Civic March on November 15 provides continuity to the protests which erupted in many cities of the country demanding a democratic change; these were harshly repressed by the Government presided over by Miguel Díaz-Canel.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

____________

Cuban State Suspends Payments to Hundreds of Recyclers of Cans and Bottles

The recyclers find the door closed at the recycling center and the sign with the company’s slogan: “We recover values.” (Collage)

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 4 November 2021 — Havana does not have money for recycling. The capital’s Raw Materials Recovery company asserts that the cash has not been deposited in the bank and that it cannot pay the recyclers, who day by day roam the streets in search, mainly, of plastic, aluminum, iron, cardboard and bottles.

“What will come here when there’s silver will be tremendous. Over 15 days of people collecting and unable to be paid” says Germán, a retiree who this week tried to sell a bag with several glass bottles collection point at Benjumeda and Retiro, in Centro Habana.

Germán receives a pension of 1,700 pesos each month, with which he barely manages to buy food for two weeks. These days he has survived with the sale to individuals of bottles of rum and beer, mostly, which are reused by mini-industries to pack tomato puree, garlic paste, Creole mojito and other sauces.

There is also business with bars and restaurants, good clients of the collectors, since the state businesses where they buy beer require them to deliver two empty bottles for one full.

“It is not like before, when there were many people looking for life like this,” explains Germán. “People look for something else, it is better to be a colero [a person who stands in line for others] than to live off this, everything is expensive,” he says discouraged. Some of the recycling continue reading

collectors that remain in Centro Habana come to Benjumeda to sell the few cardboard boxes and plastic bottles that they managed to collect, but they only find the door of the recycling point closed and the poster with the slogan of the company: “We recover values.”

The collector trade is legalized as self-employment. In 2019, of the half a million licenses to practice private work, some 5,000 were for the collection of raw materials that the State repurchases in the more than 300 centers it has in the country. Waste collectors must pay around 30 pesos a month for their license, in addition to Social Security taxes.

But there are also the workers who operate without any authorization, as an extra job and sell directly to individuals. They see the garbage on the street, collect it and put it discreetly in a small bag.

Luis Carlos, 44, a resident of Cerro, in a barracks near Manila Park, made a living until about two years ago by picking up soda and beer cans from the trash. “I even invented a way to crush them without going through so much work and made good money, but now you can hardly make a living from that,” he says.

The collectors have survived by selling rum and beer bottles to individuals. (14ymedio)

“Many of the products that came in cans have disappeared. They sell a little bit more in stores when they appear, or now they come in plastic jars or glass bottles,” he says. “Finding a can of soda in the garbage now is complicated because there is very little supply, and the families that could buy that product before, no longer have enough money for that.”

Added to the shortage of raw materials are the warning letters from police and inspectors that have now increased due to the “spread of epidemics…Then the fines come and you can even go to prison for a year,” says Germán.

With the business downturn, recyclers like Luis Carlos have decided to search for plastic bottles. The farmers buy them to pack the yogurt they sell, but it is not that they find a lot of them and a lot of work is spent stomping around Havana to look for them.”

His hope is that with the reopening to tourism, on November 15, there will be more cans in the trash and the business will make sense again. “But whether or not, I’ve turned to threading plastic pipes and galvanized pipes because I can no longer live on the cans,” he explains.

The failure to pay the sellers of raw materials is not exclusive to Havana. “You arrived after weeks of work and solving the transport problem to carry the bags of cans or bottles, and the place for weighing and buying raw materials was closed, or they were not collecting due to lack of money and people began to stop going,” Niurka Primelles from Ciego de Ávila explains to this newspaper.

“My husband and I bought from the collectors, packed the cans and other metal waste and took them to sell. The recycling business helped us finish our little house and we lived without luxuries but without problems,” she recalls now. “One day we left a large lot that they never paid us for, every time we went they gave us evasions and that is not possible.”

“There was a lot of misinformation and the listings of places that buy them were not accurate, one day you would arrive and they would tell you that they were only buying ferrous materials and the next that they were only buying cardboard or bottles. The purchasing was unstable and that caused many to stop collecting because they could not guarantee that the State would buy the product from them.”

Now the family sells spices such as cumin, oregano and bay leaves that they buy in bulk and pack in small envelopes that are sealed with a small sealer they invented. “We want to go back to the recycling business but we will have to wait because here they have not been buying raw materials for a long time.”

____________

From Physics to Prison, a Professor Ends in Detention for Supporting 15N in Cuba

The professor said he intended to walk from the Caballero de París [Parisienne Gentleman] statue in Old Havana, to Quijote Park in El Vedado. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 5 November 2021–Physics professor, Pedro Albert Sánchez has been detained for over 48 hours since last Wednesday, when he was summoned to a police interrogation. The academic was arrested after announcing a walk “for freedom of thought, expression and peaceful protest.”

Following his arrest, police agents transferred him to a unit knows as “el Técnico de Alamar” [Alamar technical] where his family was informed he was being charged with instigation of a crime, a source close to the family who wished to remain anonymous told 14ymedio.

In a video posted on his Facebook page, Sánchez explained his walk would be from the Caballero de París [Parisienne Gentleman], in the municipality of Old Havana, to Quijote Park in El Vedado. He added that during the march he would not carry a sign or symbol but signaled that he’d be dressed “predominantly in blue.”

Heir to a long tradition of marchers, which include among them charismatic personalities like Andarín Carvajal, a Cuban athlete who participated in the marathon trials of the Saint Louis Olympic Games in 1904, the professor sought, through his steps, to vindicate citizen freedom on the Island.

The professor declared that this would be his fourth march and that “his motives were the same as those of previous marches, but more intense, given the situation in the country is the same, though more dangerous.” He added, “I support the peaceful demonstrations, and I fear that the repressive organizations themselves will be the ones to condition and create violence on 15N.” continue reading

The professor’s arrest coincided with an increase in harassment and repression against those who have shown support for the march on 15N and its organizers. On Friday, Vladimir Turró, an independent journalist, denounced that he was beaten in the street by three “henchmen” in the service of State Security, who threatened him saying this aggression was only “a preview,” in case he wanted to participate in the Civic March convened by Archipiélago.

Human rights organizations have shown concern at this wave of repression unleashed by the regime against citizens who publicly express their desire to participate in the demonstration.

Last Thursday, for example, Daniela Rojo, signer of the letter submitted to notify authorities of the march in the capital and one of the main organizers of the initiative, was summoned. On her social media accounts, Rojo explained that, although the summon was at the municipal “Organization for Minors,” it was clear that “the long arm of the dictatorship” was “showing its closed fist.”

After the meeting, she explained on social media that they’d asked her to “think of her children” and “the consequences for them if they were to grow up without their mother… Another thing that worried the official was that I ’mix my kids with politics.’ Here, I will make clear that I do not indoctrinate my children in the same way that I do not allow them to be used for political or repudiation acts,” she added.

In her statements to 14ymedio Rojo expressed that in this moment she is “more convinced than ever that there is a dictatorship in Cuba and that this dictatorship must end, precisely, for the well-being of our children.”

Despite the repression, platforms linked to the Archipiélago initiative continue to grow and have added over 60,000 followers, of which 17,200 live in Cuba. “The three cities where we have the most members are Havana (8,594), Holguín (1,236) and Miami (1,205) in that order,” they stated.

Meanwhile, the Government in the capital continues unleashing forces to prevent citizens from going to demonstrate. Thus, it announced this Thursday an “broad plan of cultural, recreational and sports activities” for the 502nd anniversary of the Villa de San Cristobal in Havana.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

____________

Cuba and the Protests of November 15

An image from the 11 July 2021 protests in Havana, Cuba. (Archive)

14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Miami, 7 November 2021 — I have not been able to find out, for sure, why Raúl Castro authorized the appearance of Carlos Lage asking for “deep changes.” Lage is the former Cuban vice president purged a few years ago along with former Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque. I have asked the experts in the Cuban nomenclature. Dr. Pedro Roig attributed it to Raúl’s arteriosclerosis and that he has never been accused of being intelligent. It was, of course, a boutade. If anyone is aware that the general doesn’t do something for nothing, it’s this historian and lawyer, former Director of Radio and TeleMartí.

The inquiry led me to another point. It was a proxy target. The real target was Miguel Díaz-Canel. The Cuban president is in trouble. The frighten him with Lage’s presence. If his repressive strategy against the kids of November 15 goes wrong, he will have to pay a high price. He is not backed by any individual or institution. The Party doesn’t want him. Neither do the generals. “The puppeteer Raúl Castro showed him that if he can make Lage reappear, he can make Miguel Díaz-Canel disappear.” It may be true, but that is evident. If Raúl asks Díaz-Canel to resign, he has to resign, even though he disguises himself as a patriot and pretends to be more communist than Lenin.

Díaz-Canel has no way to win that battle. Security can run over the young artists of “Archipiélago”, the association that called for the march. But what it would not be able to do is restore its revolutionary enthusiasm. That’s dead, kaputt, rotten. It happens as it did with the Communist Party of the USSR. They had twenty million members, but the institution was dissolved by a simple decree. It is impossible to convey emotions. Silvio Rodríguez met with Yunior García Aguilera and his wife and heard them say something that is the key to the phenomenon that is happening in Cuba: young people no longer feel part of the process, what are they waiting for? Raúl to die? continue reading

Huber Matos, Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, Manuel Artime, Jorge Valls, Pedro Luis Boitel, Higinio “Nino” Díaz, Payá Sardiñas, Alfredo Carrión, José Ignacio Rasco and many others died. There were thousands and they were part of the process. Opposite part, but ultimately an integral part of that process. Some died and others were killed. Cuba has the golden opportunity to find a rational solution to the current crisis. Is testicular reason going to prevail again? Will thousands of Cubans have to die when it would be possible to turn the page freely consulting the whole of Cuban society?

I continue.

“It has to do with something absolutely different – the Vatican.” Cuba has penetrated (no pun intended) Pope Francis. There are cardinals who report to Havana. The pope didn’t learn that a peaceful Cuban who prayed on his knees in the square would be expelled from the Vatican. It was an intrigue of the Cuban services in collusion with Vatican Security. The pope is surrounded. At stake is a continuation of the triangle that brought Obama to Havana – the Catholic Church, represented by Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino, Washington and Raúl Castro. The Cuban Church is no longer part of the equation. When Ortega Alamino died, and another Cuban cardinal was appointed, any vestige of “Raulism” disappeared in the ranks of the Cuban clergy.

The Havana regime has a huge interest in continuing the exchange and in having President Biden lift the sanctions imposed by Donald Trump. They invited Cardinal Patrick O’Malley to Cuba, despite his friendship with Xavier Suárez, former mayor of Miami and father of Francis Suárez, the current mayor of the city.

However, to hide the ultimate reason for the trip, they first took him to Dominican Republic, as if it were a regular route. O’Malley, who is no fool, knows the Cuban Security game, and knows that Obama was wrong to give so many concessions without receiving anything in return. He wouldn’t recommend anything like that to Joe Biden.

The Cuban regime is so interested in the US sanctions against the island being lifted, that it is willing to campaign to have Felix Varela declared a saint. Varela was a 19^th century Cuban priest, exiled, wise and pro-independence, who was a parish priest in New York during the height of the exodus of the Catholic Irish as a result of poor potato harvests.

Raúl Castro doesn’t have the same aversion to the Catholic Church as his brother Fidel had. When his daughter Mariela asked priest Carlos Manuel de Céspedes to bless her marriage to an Italian, Raúl Castro agreed… as long as it was something public and well-known. He didn’t want it to be a secret ceremony.

Clearly, the trigger is the November 15 protest. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have complained in CubaDebate, an electronic ‘rag’ that collects the “legacy” of the Castros.

____________

Number of Flights to Cuba Will Rise From 63 a Week to More than 400 in Mid November

Cuba suspended commercial and charter flights in April 2020 to curb the spread of the coronavirus and in October of that year it reopened the airports. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 2 November 2021 — Cuba will receive more than 400 flights a week as of November 15, of which 77 will arrive in Havana from the United States, Transport Minister Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila said at a press conference. The official affirmed that there are airlines that have not confirmed all the frequencies they have been granted, so the number of flights could be greater when the country opens its borders.

Regarding the connections between the US and the island, which currently only have four weekly flights scheduled, he specified that the almost 80 flights have not yet been confirmed by all US airlines and that the country plans to receive a total of 147.

In the case of arrivals to other Cuban provinces, it will depend on what the US Government has available, taking into account the current sanctions that prevent flights serving cities outside the capital. “All frequencies are approved,” said the official, insisting that Cuba’s efforts to expand connections “have been made.” continue reading

Currently the country is only receiving 63 weekly flights and, in anticipation of the increase, according to Rodríguez, the Government has carried out “intense rehabilitation work in the main terminals of the José Martí airport.” Among the renovations, he mentioned the expansion of the Customs hall in Terminal 3 and the exchange houses.

Responding to a question about the traffic jam that could occur in the air terminals due to delays in some services such as the charging of magnetic cards, something that has been happening frequently in recent months in the country, Rodríguez affirmed that “the problem is known and is actively being worked on… In the next few days it will have a definitive solution.”

Regarding domestic flights, he explained that Cubana de Aviación “has tried to hire aircraft to perform these services” without much progress due to US laws that sanction this type of lease. However, the airline, he assured, “will increase national transportation with its own aircraft” although “it will not be at the level we would like.”

Cuba suspended commercial and charter flights in April 2020 to stop the expansion of the coronavirus and in October of that year it reopened the airports, but with a minimum of flights from the United States, Mexico, Panama, Bahamas, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Colombia, after an unstoppable increase in covid-19 infections with the reestablishment of some air connections.

As of November 7, incoming travelers will not have to undergo a mandatory quarantine or present a negative PCR test, even though they will have to show an international certificate of vaccination against COVID-19, authorities said. In the case of those who are not vaccinated, they must present a negative PCR-RT certificate for the coronavirus, carried out in a certified laboratory within 72 hours prior to the trip.

On the other hand, this Monday the Frank País García International Airport in Holguín received the first cargo flight from the United States with 3.4 tons of packages for Aerovaradero customers, the air terminal reported on its Facebook page. The IBC Airways company, in charge of the operation, plans another flight to the province this month.

Last July IBC Airways and with Skyway Enterprises were authorized by the US Department of Transportation to fly non-commercial flights to Cuba. The permit, which will be in effect until November 30, includes charter flights “for emergency medical purposes, search and rescue, and other trips deemed to be of interest to the United States.”

____________

Busted Shoes for Cuban Families without Remittances

Manuel, a father waiting in line outside El Peñon, is looking for shoes for his five-year-old daughter, who starts school on November 15.

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, November 4, 2021 — Manuel is waiting in line outside El Peñon because he is looking for shoes for his daughter, who starts school on November 15. The store, located on Calzado del Cerro, is part of the state-owned Caribe retail chain and sells damaged or defective merchandise.

“I understand what you’re all saying but children are not allowed inside,” says an employee who has come outside to explain store policy. Protests break out from many of the parents in line. Just as some are about push their way inside with their little ones, the matter is resolved when, at the request of one mother, the manager gives the green light and allows children inside.

A year and a half into the country’s ever-worsening, perennial economic crisis, footwear remains one of the Cuban public’s most essential luxuries. Shoes can be found at stores selling goods for foreign currency, which most people do not have, or at privately owned businesses, where prices are also very high.

When Manuel opened the box and saw the soles of the shoes were almost completely detached, his spirits sank. (14ymedio)

In fact, Manuel had spent the morning looking at the wide variety of footwear in the display windows of the Plaza de Carlos III retail mall. But with no relatives living abroad, shopping there is an impossibility. For Cubans like him, divided into social classes based on the kind of currency they have, places like this have become symbols of a new kind of apartheid. continue reading

Having finally managed to get inside El Peñon, Manuel heads straight to the footwear section, the busiest place in the store. “Yeni, you’re not going to believe this! I found shoes for her,” a sweaty Manuel shouts into his phone. But no sooner has he hung up than he looks at the other customers and senses something is not quite right.

“Of course, they’re all detached or defective, mi amor. Why do you think they’re so cheap?” replies a saleswoman to one mother.

“Are they even worth 192 pesos?” thinks Manuel, suddenly feeling clammy.

“Mommy, I don’t want to go to school with broken shoes. My friends will make fun of me,” says the little girl. Her mother tries to calm her fears.

“Your father will take them to have them fixed and they’ll be as good as new,” she tells the sobbing child as she and her father go downstairs to pay for the shoes.

Manuel thinks the search for shoes for his daughter was over when the sales clerk cheerfully hands him the size he was looking for. But when he opens the box and sees the soles almost completely detached from the shoes, his spirits sink to the floor.

“I don’t think I can bring myself to take these home. I appreciate the service here but I find it highly insulting and inconsiderate that, at this point, I’m not able to be find decent shoes for my daughter, who I have to send to school in little more than a week,” he says calmly, with an air of powerlessness, as he slowly returns the shoes.

The situation is much the same in the rest of the store. “Have all the leaders of this country gone crazy?” asks Miguel of another customer browsing there. “An electric coffee maker that doesn’t work and is missing parts for 1,000 pesos. A broken washing machine with no motor for more than 6,000. A burnt-out flat-screen TV with a shattered screen for 3,000 pesos. This is too much!” Meanwhile, another customer is looking at clothes advertised as second-hand but which look much more like fifth-hand.

Manuel leaves the store. His steps home feel heavy. His 10-year-old daughter is waiting there for him, excited about her new shoes. “I give up. This is impossible!” he yells to her mother before explaining what happened. A curious neighbor, who overhears the conversation from another apartment in the building where they live, leans out to tell him that he has some shoe glue he could use to put them back together.

After thanking the helpful neighbor, Manuel quickly returns to the store, ready to tell the clerk he has changed his mind and now wants the dilapidated shoes. But it has already closed. “Three in the afternoon and the store is closed to the public without any explanation,” he says. “I’ll come back tomorrow. Just another day in paradise.”

____________

The Raul Rivero I Will Remember

Raúl Rivero and his wife Blanca Reyes, a few days after the poet was released in 2004 and before leaving for Spain. (Courtesy)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Desde Aqui, Havana, 6 November 2021 — A few days short of 76, the Cuban poet Raúl Rivero has died in exile. We were classmates in the University of Havana’s journalism school, and we shared a time at Cuba Internacional magazine, but above all we were friends.

In the early 1970s, while we were covering the information on the so-called Ten Million Zafra in Camagüey, Raúl Rivero wrote what he would have liked to be his epitaph at the time, or perhaps his will. I never knew why you asked me to keep that typewritten sheet without a copy. Unfortunately, the poem was lost and I only remember the festive tone with which the poet spoke from his imaginary coffin.

“Surrounded as I am by compañeros / I would like to mention my brief biography / that I was never one to ride those fast cars / that were taken from the slow legs of the people.” I am quoting from memory. For the time that was a controversial poem although the corpse appeared dressed as a militiaman.

When I asked him in June 1991 why he had signed that famous Carta de los Diez [Letter of the Ten] that led him to ostracism within Cuba, he replied: “When I read it, I thought that even Little Red Riding Hood could have signed it.” He had that sharp and sarcastic way continue reading

of saying anything, I still remember him leaning out over his balcony on Peñalver Street, in Centro Habana.

We had long conversations and more than a few discussions, especially at times when he was suspicious of almost everyone who approached him. I remember one day talking about the freelance journalist David Orrio he told me “This guy just needs to put on his uniform.” Orrio had not yet exposed himself as ‘agent Miguel’ who served as a witness to imprison Rivero during the Black Spring.

As is known, Raúl Rivero was sentenced to 20 years in prison in that 2003 process. After being released on parole for health reasons, I visited him at his home. When I asked him how hard the prison had been, he replied: “What they did to me was shitty — not even a blow.” But the bruises were internal, they marked him for the rest of his life.

That will be the Raúl Rivero that I will always remember, smiling, clever, witty, the poet of impossible loves, the chronicler who knew how to narrate the dictatorship, a journalist without a mandate as he preferred to define himself. Life even connected our families and, although in recent years we barely had contact due to the distance imposed by his exile, I always knew that I had “Gordo Rivero” by my side.

In the distant days when I thought I was a poet, I fantasized that in an interview someone would inquire about my influences. I wanted to be asked, so as to be able to answer: “First, Raúl Rivero.”

Today when I have only managed to be a journalist, I could give the same answer.

I will be, when I do not return / some sweet ghost / a dear and sweet ghost, / if I do not return. / Raúl Rivero, 1988

____________

Counter-Revolutionary Conversation While Waiting in Line in Central Havana

Some people take a break from waiting in line to get into Maisí, a store in Central Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 7 November 2021 — It’s noon on Saturday and a group of people find themselves together in a cafe on San Francisco Street in Central Havana. Some are taking a break to eat, while they wait in line to get into Maisí, a nearby store where customers can now find consumer goods that have not been available for months at stores that accept Cuban currency. After several customers arrive, the place quickly becomes a small debating salon.

A teenager complains to his father about the price of pizzas. “Forty pesos, papá. Christ! Before they cost 1 CUC* (24 pesos). You can’t live in this country anymore,” he says in a loud voice. “That’s why I’m going out to protest on the 15th [of November], to shout ’Down with communism!’” The boy fails to notice that there are also two policemen in the cafe.

His father immediately looks toward the uniformed officers, fearing the worst. Though the police have been there awhile, the staff is taking its time serving them, one of the subtler forms of resistance against the forces of law and order, whose presence has recently become more visible on Cuban streets, especially after the violent suppression of the public protests last July.

“Don’t say things like that. They’ll hear you,” warns his father, pointing to the police with a nod of his head. continue reading

“Don’t scold the boy,” interrupts another customer. “If nobody says anything, nothing will change. We don’t solve anything by staying silent. And the young always prevail.” Several faces turn away from the pizzas, fruit smoothies and ham sandwiches and towards the conversation taking place.

“Then I don’t know what we did it for. If he was there on the 11th [of July], so were you and I. The neighborhood was empty,” the youth mockingly replies, alluding to their joint participation in that day’s demonstrations. His father’s face reddens as he directs his son’s gaze towards the two officers, who are looking at the ceiling as though they have heard nothing.

A woman joins in on the conversation. “Of course we have to go to the march,” she says with determination. “Just look around. How long has it been since we were able to buy toiletries in this neighborhood? Everyone knows the only reason you can find them today is because they’re trying to calm things down. But I’ll buy them and go to the protest. Just like the first time.” Everyone laughs as they leave with their pizzas in hand, headed towards the store.

The police are virtually the last to pick up their orders.

*Translator’s note: CUC = Cuban convertible peso, one of Cuba’s two currencies, which has now been eliminated.

____________

Maduro Celebrates the 21st Anniversary of the Agreement Signed with Cuba

The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, in a file image. (EFE / Rayner Peña R.9)

EFE/14ymedio, Caracas, 31 October 2021 — On Sunday president Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela celebrated the 21st anniversary of the signing of the first cooperation agreement with Cuba, which gave rise to various common projects in multiple areas and which continue the constant bilateral collaboration to this day.

“We celebrate 21 years of the signing of the Bolívar-Martí Accords that took the fundamental step to advance in the deep, spiritual, cultural and political union of our peoples. (Hugo) Chávez and Fidel (Castro) demonstrated that a new humanity is possible. Long live the Cuba-Venezuela Agreement!” Maduro wrote on his Twitter account.

In an extensive Facebook post, the Venezuelan Presidency describes the agreement as “a show of solidarity, humanism and cooperation” that has allowed the development of 1,487 projects, in which a total of 255,300 Cubans have participated. continue reading

The statement indicates that these collaboration projects, established “in the areas of health, education, sports, culture, food, tourism, energy and science, among others” — not naming the collaboration in matters of Security and Interior — have resulted in “Reciprocal advantages and an advance in the efforts of unity that look towards Latin America and the Caribbean.”

However, specialists such as María Werlau and the journalists behind the pseudonym Diego G. Maldonado maintain that more than a symbiosis, Cuba’s relationship with Venezuela is one of dominance. Werlau, specifically, considers the agreement between the two countries as the “asymmetric occupation” of Venezuela by Cuba, “worse” than she imagined when it began in 2000. Maldonado, who titled his research book on this agreement The Consented Invasion, believes Cuba “has bled dry its goose that lays the golden eggs,” Venezuela.

The agreement between the two governments was signed less than two years after Chávez assumed the Venezuelan Presidency, on February 2, 1999, after winning the December 6, 1998 elections.

Since then, Cuba and Venezuela have maintained the accords, despite the death of the two signatories. Then Cuban president, Fidel Castro, died on November 25, 2016, although by 2008 he had already transferred power to his brother Raúl, who, in turn, delegated the Presidency to the current head of state, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in April 2019.

On the part of Venezuela, after the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013, the mandate passed into the hands of Maduro, who continued the collaboration with Cuba, both with Raúl Castro at the head of the Administration and with Díaz-Canel.

In fact, the Venezuelan Presidency asserts that for this year, both nations will advance “in the improvement and expansion of development ties as a path to emancipation and to face the historical challenges, which include overcoming the negative effects of the financial and economic persecution expresses as State policy by the White House, against the lands of Bolívar and Martí.”

____________

Without Electricity and Without Water: Thousands of Families in a Santiago de Cuba Shantytown Live This Way

A surprising detail is that the houses in these places are in high demand. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Alberto Hernández, Santiago de Cuba, 7 November 2021 — Like thousands of families on the outskirts of Santiago de Cuba, Eugenio lives in a settlement that has no electricity, water or sewage services. The houses, located behind the Micro 9 buildings in the José Martí district, are made of scraps of wood with pieces of cardboard, sheets of zinc and dirt floors.

“I arrived and ‘planted’ myself in a grassy field,” says a 29-year-old parks guard about his settling on this site with his wife Victoria three years ago. “We both needed a place to settle down because I lived with my mother in a tenement on Paseo Martí. Piled up in one room, five people lived together, and my wife’s family was going through an even worse situation.”

The houses in this neighborhood are called ‘llega y pon‘ (literally ‘arrive and put’ — a term used for a ‘shantytown’), explains Eugenio, “because you are simply looking for a space and, if you find it, you put four pieces of sticks, you tie a wire to it as a fence and build your own.” But now, he clarifies, there is hardly any place to be found: “Everything is full.”

A surprising detail is that homes in these places are in high demand. “For my own house, even with a dirt floor, built with scraps of zinc, cardboard and fenced with black sheeting, they have offered me up to 50,000 pesos,” says Eugenio, who has rejected the offers because he would have to come up with more than 150,000 additional pesos to aspire to buy at least one apartment, something impossible continue reading

for his finances.

The houses in this neighborhood are called ’arrive and put’ “because you are simply looking for a space and, if you find it, you put four pieces of sticks, you tie a wire to it as a fence and build your own.”.(14ymedio)

Working as guard in the network of parks in the city, this young man, who has qualified as a skilled lathe operator, earns a salary of 2,200 pesos. To have extra money, he sells bags made from rice sacks, hand-sewn by his wife. “In these years we have only been able to equip ourselves with a black and white television for the little ones and a radio, and we are saving to see if we can buy a Creole Cold (refrigerator), because we have a baby on the way and this equipment is important,” he says.

The housing situation in Cuba is one of the problems that the Revolution undertook to solve when it gained power. However, after 62 years, the situation is increasingly critical and, on the outskirts of the cities, these types of settlements continue to proliferate in difficult conditions.

In Santiago de Cuba there are examples of this not only in Micro 9, but also in Altamira, Marimón, Indaya, La Risueñita, El Caney and Chicharrones. From a housing stock of 159,696 dwellings, according to official data, this city counts 48,579 houses in poor condition.

In addition, this year the province this year has failed to meet its housing construction plan, which violates the provisions of Article 71 of the Constitution, which recognizes “the right to adequate housing and a safe and healthy habitat.”

Neighbors sell food and other products on the street and in stalls that they set up at the entrances of the houses. (14ymedio)

As Eugenio and Victoria do not have a property registry of the house — with an address — they also do not have access to their own ration book, and each one purchases the food allotted to them at the ration stores from their official addresses. Neighbors also sell food and other products on the street and in stalls that they set up at the entrances of the houses.

Outside of the city’s infrastructure, services such as barbershops and manicures are performed in the settlement by people at home. “This is a hamlet with several hundred houses and yet there are no shops, clinics, bakeries or anything. The closest school is about a kilometer from here,” laments Eugenio.

And how do they get electricity? “The electrical wiring here is a tendedera [‘clothesline’, as the makeshift wiring is called], which consists of illegal installations on rustic poles, connected to the electrical network. People improvise and connect cables,” confesses the young man. “All of this has created a low-voltage zone. For example, in my house, if I turn on the electric stove after six in the evening, the lights go out.”

The conversation is interrupted by a young woman dressed in black with a backpack on her back and sports shoes on the handlebars of her bicycle. “Neighbor, I have new tennis shoes, from size 41 to 44, in various colors, at 4,000 pesos,” she offers. Eugenio replies: “I’m broke, my friend, more holes than fabric.”

Victoria, who is only 23 and a housewife, is most affected by the lack of water. “Cooking and washing is a problem,” she explains. “We have two old tanks that can hold barely enough for three days. We live carrying buckets, because there is no potable water service here. We bring it from a neighbor’s house through a hose.”

“Neighbor, I have new tennis shoes, from size 41 to 44, of various colors, at 4,000 pesos,” offers a young woman. (14ymedio)

The problem with water is not only the supply, but also the drainage. When you wash or scrub, Victoria says, you have to be very careful that dirty water does not fall into the pit they have, to prevent it from filling up. “Once it overflowed and I don’t even want to think about it, the dirt floor was soaked with sewage water and the stink was horrible.”

The situation worsens these days, in the rainy season. “Everything is flooded, the road fills with mud and you have to go out with old boots or shoes, and then change to go out to the paved street. You have to carry the children to school and the older ones arrive muddy just like their parents,” says the young woman.

Not to mention security, which the Cuban government also tends to boast about as an achievement of the Revolution. Victoria denies it: “In this place a lot is stolen from houses and especially at night. I panic when my husband has to stand guard at night, I had to get a dog, at least to bark.”

“What we are experiencing is not poverty or misery; it is a ruin!” exclaims Eugenio. He reproaches the authorities for their indifference towards all these “young people like us” who live in neighborhoods abandoned by the State. “We want a change and we are going to say so on November 15.”

____________

Cuban Homes Won’t See Limes for Awhile, Officials Warn

Infestations and lack of financing have impacted production of citrus fruits on the island. (ACN)

14ymedio, Havana, November 2, 2021 — Drought, the high costs of cultivation and diseases such as yellow dragon* are all contributing to the decline of citrus production in Jagüey Grande, a town in Matanzas province. “Two years from now, you might not find any here. If someone tells you otherwise, he’s lying,” a resident of the village of Torriente told the state newspaper Granma on Monday.

The article mentions “impoverished plantations and dried-up fields” adding that “nothing remains of the perfectly delineated citrus groves.” A local woman, who together with her husband dedicated most of her life to citrus cultivation, is quoted as saying, “What’s happening is that the citrus is sick and there’s no way to cure it. That’s the simple truth.”

The dearth of financing and investment has had an impact on nation’s citrus crops. At the end of October 2020, the Ministry of Agriculture reported that, of the fields under cultivation, 11,907 hectares were devoted to citrus groves: 3,847 hectares to oranges, 5,439 to grapefruit and 2,000 to limes and lemons. A far cry from the 100,000 hectares planted with citrus trees in 1990.

Lemons now have to practically be beaten before they can be cut and, when squeezed, release little more than a few drops of juice. Market stalls which once featured oranges, grapefruits and mandarins several months a year are now bare or have been restocked with sweet potatoes, chives and cabbages, a sign of the precipitous fall of continue reading

the citrus sector.

Locals in Jagüey Grande, one of the areas most reliant on citrus production, blame a lack of treatments for the dreaded yellow dragon. “We need financing so we can access the technology and the wide array of chemicals needed to fight this infestation,” admits Michael Gonzalez, deputy director of the Victory of Giron** Agro-Industrial Complex.

In a 2020 report, the Cuban Conflict Observatory warned that the lack of investment has had an impact on citrus production, forcing the country in 2019 to import oranges and limes from Mexico to supply tourist hotels.

Faced with a lack of funding, Farm-Based Business Unit #2 has shifted from its reliance on citrus to other crops such as pumpkin, cucumber, okra, cassava and banana.

This model has also been adopted by the Victory of Giron operation, which has turned to guava, mango, mamey, pineapple and avocado. Gonzalez estimates that production output will soon reach about 50,000 tons, most of it destined for industrial processing.

It seems that enjoying a glass of orange or grapefruit juice in Jagüey Grande will soon be virtually impossible. Producers such as Daniel Oliva now prefer to plant only small areas with citrus fruit to insure higher yields and avoid crop losses from insect infestations and diseases.

Citrus used to be a big deal. In the 1970s and 1980s an extensive citrus-based development plan was put in place on the Isle of Youth, where grapefruit, lemon and orange groves were interspersed with boarding schools attended by students from Latin American, African and Asian countries on scholarships.

This management model spread, offering an alternative to “work-study” programs, but went into decline with the fall of the Soviet bloc. Today, its wide fields are covered in weeds, its buildings abandoned. Now, daily consumption of citrus has become a luxury in Cuban homes.

Translator’s notes:
*Also known as “citrus greening disease,” yellow dragon disease is caused by a bacterial pathogen spread by insects feeding on the fruit.
**What Cubans call “Playa Giron” (Giron Beach), Americans call the “Bay of Pigs.”

____________

‘Tourists Who Come to Cuba Sick, We Will Heal Them’

Juan Carlos García Granda, Cuba’s Minister of Tourism (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Madrid, 3 November 2021 — Cuban Tourism Minister Juan Carlos García Granda has praised the courage of Gabriel Escarrer, CEO of the Spanish hotel company Meliá, and Miguel Fluxá, president of the Iberostar group, for facing US sanctions by continuing their business in Cuba.n Carlos García Granda,

The official spoke with Diario de Mallorca during a visit to London on the occasion of the World Travel Market tourism fair, where he went to promote the Island as a safe country and even as a destination to cure covid-19.

“Miguel Fluxá and the Escarrers show courage. They and their employees are sanctioned by a cruel and unjust blockade against my country, the great obstacle that prevents the development of the Island,” García Granda told the journalist who asked him about the investment of Mallorcan businessmen in Cuba.

“Gabriel Escarrer was vetoed from entering the United States by former President Trump for, supposedly, benefiting from land expropriated in the Revolution, is that correct? I should not get involved in that, but during the lawsuits the evidence has been shown in favorable judgments on the legality of the processes. It is part of the strategy to discourage foreign investment in Cuba,” continues the minister.

Justice to date has not ruled on the legality of any process such as those mentioned by García Granda, who also improperly mixes the lawsuits in the United States under the Helms-Burton Act and the sanctions of the Trump Administration on “foreigners who have confiscated property continue reading

of US nationals or trafficked in such property” with the complaints filed in the courts of Spain, where Washington’s rule cannot be applied.

A complaint filed by the Sánchez-Hill family, heirs of the land on which the Paradisus Rio de Oro and Sol Río and Luna Mares hotels are located, has been making its way in the Palma court for three years with the demanding that Meliá compensate the family for enrich itself with their properties, confiscated without compensation. The case, which has had many twists and turns, is awaiting new allegations from the Cuban State, which is required as an interested party, but there has been no judgment in favor or against on the merits of the matter, which is the responsibility of the Spanish Justice.

In the interview, the reporter asks the minister if, as the slogan of Cuba’s booth at the fair says, there is on the island “tranquility”, to which García Granda replies that “it breathes,” after a complex situation with the pandemic that has weighed down the tourism sector.

The official assures that 100% of the “target population” has been vaccinated with at least one dose and that by the end of the year all of them should have completed the series of doses. Although the Cuban Government has never clarified what it refers to as the target or able-to-be vaccinated population, it can be deduced that it has discounted the percentage of people who reject immunization. According to the latest data from the Ministry of Public Health, more than 65% of the population (7,326,707 Cubans) have received the complete series from the Soberana or Abdala vaccines.

García Granda excuses himself when the journalist urges him to talk about the approval of the emergency use of the World Health Organization (WHO) and explains that the authorities are still waiting for recognition, but that the decrease in covid infections, hospitalizations and deaths endorse the operation of the Cuban antidotes.

“Our tourism is safe and responsible. We have the guarantee that people will not get sick, and those who arrive sick, we will cure them. We only ask for the vaccination certificate or a negative PCR 72 hours in advance. And we have a great fortress, in each hotel there is a doctor, a nurse and an epidemiologist. We are going to take advantage of offering in the tourist package the opportunity to get vaccinated,” he says, despite the fact that vaccination in most countries is free, especially among the main sources of tourists.

The minister also wanted to avoid commenting on the repression in Cuba and cut the journalist’s last question: “The social tension that erupted in the street against the Cuban government …? [He comes forward to answer],” says the article in Diario de Mallorca. “That was something that happens in the world on a daily basis, however when it happens in Cuba, no matter how small, it is manipulated,” interrupts García Granda. “There is one Cuba on social networks and another Cuba in reality. We advocate that each citizen has their own opinion. Visit it.”

____________

My No to the Havana Biennial is for the Freedom of Luisma and All Cubans

Fragment of the Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara poster designed by Julio Llópiz-Casal.

14ymedio, Julio Llopiz-Casal, Havana, 1 November 2021 — Me, I like to run away from common places (because what I want is to be happy and to not be pedantic), an idea has come to mind.

The most interesting artist of the 60s and 70s in Cuba is not Umberto Peña, it is not Servando Cabrera Moreno, it is Alfredo Rostgaard.

All three are great artists. But Rostgaard had the opportunity to practice his creativity in an area of global cultural production, which in the Cuba of those years was forbidden due to the conservatism that Revolutions also suffer.

As in the Cuban artistic avant-garde of the first half of the 20th century, where the most authentic echoes of the global avant-garde were found in caricature, design and other arts considered minor, in the first years of the Cuban Revolution the designers of posters wandered, scampered and frolicked on the grounds of systems of reference that for the conventional arts of the time were outlawed. That is why the influences of psychedelic graphics, Pop Art or Op Art, are seen more clearly on a poster or a book cover than in a painting from those years. continue reading

The conceptualism and minimalism that apparently we did not have in Cuban art are found in some works of design made for Casa de las Américas in the 70s, but especially in Alfredo Rostgaard’s posters: that beast of composition, typographic sensitivity and referential grace. In the rose of Canción Protesta, in the smoking chamber of the tenth anniversary of ICAIC, in the alien Lenin and the Nixon who becomes a werewolf and other posters are contained some of the most enduring and ambiguous aesthetic successes of the national artistic production. The person in charge is that man.

My personal gallery of artistic references is heterogeneous almost to the point of obscenity. My work ends up not looking much like theirs because the overlaps and combinations end up being too many. I am more like my contemporaries because vices, bad and good, stick together.

Rostgaard is among the creators I always return to. Recently I have been able to honor this tune like never before.

When I designed the image of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, with the red stripe that comes out of the lower eyelid and runs along the cheekbone and cheek, I especially thought of Rostgaard’s Angela Davis, but also of all the solidarity hemorrhage of Cuban graphics before his imprisonment.

Alfredo Rostgaard poster to Angela Davis.

I have always admired the visual acuity and daring in the political and solidarity graphics of the 60s and 70s in Cuba, especially that produced by the Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America (Ospaal). I feel that in it there was a sense of emergency and the desire to make a viral image that was enviable, even though my way of understanding the world and Cuba are very different from those of those poster artists. I am not a designer; I am simply a conceptual artist who is interested in design as a tool. As a result of 27N (27 November) I have had the opportunity to use my knowledge in this regard in a way that I never had before.

I am sure that Alfredo Rostgaard felt a real need to sympathize with the imprisonment of Angela Davis, a black intellectual, communist, American, anti-racist activist, feminist, for the rights of the LGBTIQ+ community, linked to the Black Panthers. And in addition her works were commissioned by the Cuban State. My solidarity with Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, for the brutality unleashed on him by the same state that commissioned the Angela Davis posters from Rostgaard, is just as authentic. The difference is that no one asked me for my image of Luis Manuel.

I don’t know if Rostgaard ever met Angela Davis. I not only know Luis Manuel, but I share with him aesthetic and experiential complicity. I saw him become an artist, and he me as well. We disagree and find our common ground. Today he is in prison for disagreeing politically with the Cuban government (like Davis at the time) and has suffered abusive violence for this.

The Havana Biennial is like the Ospaal. They are two institutions that emerged for cultural and political purposes and that ended up having only the latter, always state and never political-participatory. Today, Ospaal cannot afford the printing of the Tricontinental magazine (the publication from which Rostgaard’s posters were known worldwide), nor does the Havana Biennial apparently have the resources to financially support the projects of the artists who will participate in its fourteenth edition.

My no to the Havana Biennial has nothing to do with my being against the existence of the Biennial; I am not against the Biennial being used as a whitewash for violence that is the exclusive responsibility of the Cuban State and that will end up reaching us all if we do not react. Me is not written with L. L of Libertad [Freedom]: for Luis Manuel, for Maykel Osorbo, for José Daniel Ferrer, for Felix Navarro, for Yoan de la Cruz, for political prisoners, for all Cubans… everyone.

Among Angela Davis, Alfredo Rostgaard and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara confirm this to me.

____________

The Sad Life of a Cuban Retiree Who Never Imagined Going Hungry

Stories like Paco’s abound in today’s Cuba. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 2 November 2021 — “Sometimes I want to give up, every day it is more difficult to survive in this situation.” Paco is 72 and has invested 43 of them in working, but his pension of 1,700 pesos is just over half of the 3,000 pesos that the basic food basket has reached in Cuba with the implementation of the ’Ordering Task’* in January of this year.

The reform czar, Marino Murillo, admitted last week that inflation had skyrocketed and the basket had risen to approximately double what was expected, 1,528 pesos. The average salary of a worker is around 5,000 pesos and it is already difficult to do more than survive, but for retirees, like Paco, the problem is suffocating.

“What bothers me the most about all this is that they know that we do not have enough money from the pension to survive, but they do nothing to fix it,” denounces Paco, a resident of the Cerro municipality in the Cuban capital, who insists on using this fictitious name so as not to be identified by people close to the Government.

Food is Paco’s first problem, but by no means the last or the most serious. His house has considerable damage due to lack of maintenance and he cannot even think about renovations, when he barely has enough to eat or buy medicine. “In my good old days I used to do over the house, plaster, paint … But now it’s impossible, because everything is too expensive or in freely convertible currency stores, where I can’t buy. The only thing I can do is pick up the rubble when a piece of plaster falls from the ceiling,” he laments. continue reading

Paco’s house needs maintenance, but the money is not enough for food and medicine. (14ymedio)

Gas, water and electricity bills also play havoc with Paco’s checkbook, as he tries to save on those utilities as much as he can so he will pay less. “It’s not just the monthly bills. Recently the building’s motor broke down and I had to call my son to take care of paying the 300 pesos they collected per apartment. Then my stove broke, and I bought a small and repaired one, which they gave me in installments. The grace cost me almost three months of suffering, because I stopped buying food to be able to pay that,” he explains.

Now he is worried about something apparently minor, but sad for the life of the retiree. Paco acquired his Panda brand television with the stimulus he earned at his last job. Although he recently finished paying for it, the device is about to be useless. “When it breaks I definitely don’t know what I’m going to do, but there is also the mess of digital television. The Government thinks that I can spend 1,200 pesos to buy the famous box – he says in reference to the digital decoder – but I prefer to eat versus watching TV.”

Another front opened in Paco’s difficult domestic economy is clothing. Both this and his footwear have exploded in such a way that it is impossible for him to renew his clothing. His worn out and unique shoes and a hole in the sweater he is wearing attest to that. “It is inconceivable that I don’t have anything to wear either. Many times I have had to turn to relatives to leave me some old clothes or shoes. I feel totally helpless by the Government, and also afraid of complaining, because we already know well how they treat those who disagree.”

But at his age, perhaps the most worrying thing is the lack of access to medicine. In the midst of the pandemic, he had to stop taking some drugs that were simply lacking, and he has had to endure pain caused by two nodules in his liver because there are no pills. “When I can’t take any more, I go to the doctor to get injections, but sometimes not even that, because the lack of drugs has also happened in hospitals.”

Fortunately, he has had the help of some neighbors who shared some painkillers with him, although there have been those who tried to charge him a fortune taking advantage of the shortage. “My soul breaks when a vendor shows up and offers me a a little bottle with 50 ibuprofen in 1,000 pesos, I don’t know where we’re going to stop.”

Paco is content to pick up the rubble that sometimes falls from his roof. (14ymedio)

Paco is one of many retirees who suffer the same problems every day, even some of those with social benefits. Luckily, he has the support of his children, but things are not easy for the youngest. “My children help me as much as they can, although they also have it difficult, and that’s how I’m making do, a little from here, a little from there,” explains Paco.

In this last year, and at the risk of catching the coronavirus, he has had to line up to resell the odd product, with the money earned, he goes to the agricultural market to buy some food, vegetables or seasoning. “Before I did not stand in line nor die, now I have no choice.”

Paco regrets that retirement is harder than he thought and has considered doing some work to supplement it, such as collecting raw materials, acting as a courier or cutting the lawn of a garden, but he admits that he is no longer healthy for that and feels dependent on a few pesos that his nephew sends him “from the revolted and brutal capitalism that those here criticize so much.”

When asked if he still trusts the Cuban system, Paco is clear: “If what we are experiencing is the socialism promised by Fidel in the 1960s, I don’t want it. I don’t even know what will happen to me next month. I only think about how I will survive in my near future and I will leave this world one day with a thorn stuck in my heart, because I regret a thousand times not having been able to leave here when I had the chance.”

*Translator’s note: Tarea ordenamiento = the [so-called] ‘Ordering Task’ which is a collection of measures that includes eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and others.

____________

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: