14ymedio

Counter-Revolutionary Conversation While Waiting in Line in Central Havana

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.

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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.”

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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.”

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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.”

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‘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.”

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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.

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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.

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Cuban Rapper El Funky Arrives in Miami and is Received by Yotuel Romero

Yotuel Romero hugs El Funky upon his arrival in the US (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 1 November 2021 — Cuban rapper Eliexer Márquez, El Funky, one of the performers of Patria y Vida, arrived this Sunday at the Miami international airport, where he was received by Yotuel Romero. Both will be present at the Latin Grammy gala on November 18, where the song, already known as an anthem for change on the island, is nominated for song of the year and best urban song.

El Funky told Yotuel, upon arrival at the terminal, that Maykel Castillo ’Osorbo’ , who is imprisoned in Kilo Cinco y Medio, in Pinar del Río since May 31, expressed his happiness that he was able to leave Cuba and “continue forward “and participate in the prizes. In addition, in the meeting, captured by Univisión cameras, the artist tells Romero: “They are up there above you and telling you that you may not come back. We let you leave but you may not come back … I have to my parents, I have my son.”

A few hours later, the rapper explained the situation on his social networks.

“I’m in Miami, yes, and the question of some is: ’Did they let you leave?’ No, the question is if you can go back. Now be clear that my objetive is called Maykel Castillo Pérez (El Osorbo) my brother and I will do everything possible and impossible to support their freedom as well as that continue reading

of all imprisoned unjustly, I am here today on behalf of the San Isidro Movement and without forgetting my brothers Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Esteban Rodríguez and Anyelo Troya because I am in a country of freedom and it is a right to express yourself, this begins now,” he says.

The artist has received hundreds of comments on this message in which he is welcomed to the United States and good wishes are sent, although there are also those who have pointed out the work of expulsion that the regime is slowly carrying out against its critics.

“The dictatorship is doing what it does best, a guerilla of attrition, separating and silencing those in Cuba who raise their voices, to empower themselves even more. Little by little, removing the thorns that bother them and leaving the troops turned off without their most rebellious voices. I hope that for every Cuban who leaves the island a thousand will rise in rebellion for freedom, for homeland and life,” writes a user.

The photographer Anyelo Troya, who took the images of the video clip Patria y Vida filmed on the island, told this newspaper after hearing the news: “For me it is happiness, a lot of happiness, since he is another brother of mine who has suffered firsthand the price of making free art in this country.”

From Villa Clara, rapper Omar Mena “El Analista” told 14ymedio: “I am very happy that he has managed to leave and above all that his departure implies his presence at the Latin Grammy Awards, and that seems well deserved. Hugs for him.” He also considers that his presence at the event, of great international scope, has a symbolic power because “it will be the only face that managed to get from Cuba to there, if it has the possibility to speak, it will speak from the pain itself, from which it takes inside for real experiences.”

Shortly before leaving, El Funky received a call from Osorbo to tell him that he had abandoned the hunger and thirst strike that began days ago. “He is weak but fine. He wanted to notify us soon so that people did not continue to worry. He knows they love him. That is his greatest pride,” they said from the Facebook page of the artist who follows his case.

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The Palace of Bread and Sweets in Santiago de Cuba Has Neither Bread nor Sweets

Bread cannot be baked in Aguilera because there is no wheat and sweets cannot be made because, among other things, there is an egg shortage. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Alberto Hernandez, Santiago de Cuba, 4 November 2021 — “There’s no bread, ma’am. We sold what little there was first thing this morning and we don’t have the ingredients to make more.” This is what an employee at the newly opened Palacio del Pan y el Dulce (Palace of Bread and Sweets) told Julissa, a security officer, who arrived at the bakery before 9:00 AM on her day off.

The establishment Julissa visited was officially opened by Lazar Exposito Canto, former Communist Party secretary in Santiago de Cuba on October 21. “I don’t understand how a place called ’Palace of Breads and Sweets’ can have neither one nor the other only twelve days after it opened,” she says in disgust. Julissa was facing the reality that state-run establishments like these only operate well for their first few days in business. “It’s screwed up, like everything else in this country.”

“They’re lying to you, amiga. I got here half an hour ago and they weren’t open then either. I came back because I figured they’d be open around 9:00 but it’s just the same as before, closed,” declares Pedro, a father who was also hoping to buy bread for his family from the new bakery. continue reading

The Palace of Bread and Sweets first opened on October 21.

But Julissa was not deterred. Determined to find bread to make afternoon snacks for her two children, her mother and her husband, she walked the 400 yards separating her from another bakery, in this case Ferreiro. When she arrived, however, there there was no one behind the counter. An employee, who happened to be leaving just then, noticed her and told her, almost mechanically, that no one was working because they were no supplies. “This is crazy! Where can you get bread in this town?” the enraged woman snapped before leaving.

Under the leadership of Exposito, who left office last week, several cafes, bakeries and sweets shops were opened in downtown Santiago de Cuba, many of them located on or near Enramadas Boulevard. Today, almost all are struggling.

“I’ve been traipsing up and down Enramadas. At the Marilyn pizzeria, on the corner of San Pedro, there’s no pizza. A few blocks away El Marinero, which sells sandwiches, is closed. At The Hot Dog House, on the corner of Barnada, the only things they have are Coracan sodas and plastic bags,” says Miguel, an area inspector and collector with the local electricity provider.

The Champion cafe, which was designed to sell items in which eggs are the main ingredient, has no eggs. “I used to be a regular customer at this place but the eggs disappeared months ago. I don’t know if Covid ate them or the chickens moved away,” Miguel says sarcastically.

At Cafe Mama Ines, a specialty coffee shop located across from Plaza de Marte, the only things for sale are plastic bags and some very pricey, slow-moving items such as canned guayaba paste, which no one is buying. “And to top it off, the sweetshops around here no longer even bother to open because there’s absolutely nothing to sell,” Miguel adds with a gesture of disdain.

Workers at many of these establishments sit idle outside, their arms crossed. Kiko, an employee at one such place — Aguilera 601 on the busy corner of Aguilera and Barnada streets — who does not want to give his name for fear of being fired, explains: “We can’t bake bread because there’s no wheat. And we can’t make sweets because, among other things, we can’t get eggs. The thing is, when we do have eggs, we don’t have sugar. Or we don’t have electricity. So no matter what, we can’t serve the public.”

Ferreiro does not even have anyone behind the counter.

Elena and Mario are a married couple whose son is in prison and who needs food items with a long shelf life, such as cookies. Normally, they would buy them at a place called Galleta Frita (Fried Cookie), located on San Felix between Aguilera and Heredia streets, as well as at La Brasa, located on Aguilera, one block off the end of Emramadas, but both places have been closed for a long time. “We [finally] had to buy bread from ’behind the curtain’ at one bakery and toast it but the quality is terrible,” they say.

Enrique tells a similar story. The 78-year-old retiree was leaving El Sol, a dessert shop. “On my pension I can barely afford to feed myself but my wife Elena turns 69 today so I decided to get her a cake, even if it’s the cheapest one. But the shop was closed,” he says. “I later went to Kilometro 969, at the intersection de Garzon y La Central, and they didn’t have anything either.”

Enrique, who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s, never thought his country would sink so low. “I’m sure that Marti, Maceo and all those who gave their lives for a free and dignified homeland would do it again today to get rid of fat slobs running this country,” he says as he returns home empty-handed.

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The Causes of the Protests in Cuba are More Valid Than Ever

This coming November 15 is the day on which several independent organizations have called for a civic march in several Cuban cities. (Archiépelago)

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, 6 November 2021 — Yunieski’s mother is going to have to “tie him up in the house” so that he does not go out on the street on November 15, a day in which several independent organizations have called a civic march in different cities of Cuba, the first after the protests of July when thousands of citizens took to the streets demanding freedom.

Yunieski is 35-years-old and lives in Centro Habana, one of the poorest areas of the capital. At least two of his best friends have been in prison for more than three months. They are among the almost 600 people arrested during and after the popular protests on July 11 who are still behind bars or are being prosecuted. The prosecution requests sentences of up to 27 years in prison for some of the protesters.

That Sunday, which seemed like a day like any other, dozens of kilometers from Yunieski’s house, the residents of the town of San Antonio de los Baños took to the streets, fed up with the continuous power cuts, the poor hospital management of the pandemic and lack of freedom. The spark of that protest, transmitted through the social network Facebook, spread throughout the country.

The echoes of popular action reached the capital and surprised the ruling party which, in the first moments, believed that it was something specific and easy to control. Miguel Díaz-Canel went to San Antonio de los Baños to try to placate the discontent. But as he was traveling by road continue reading

, thousands of people gathered outside Havana’s Capitol building.

The social explosion came at a time when it seemed that the Cuban dictatorship could extend its control over the country for many more years. That false mask of popular unanimity that the ruling party built for decades was broken in one day. The Plaza of the Revolution responded with a repressive wave that brought the images of coups and excesses to the front pages of every newspaper in the world.

The repression was not only against the citizens and the participants in the protests, but the independent press also suffered the official onslaught with a particular fury. Telephone services cut off, house arrests, threats to families, police citations, fines and retaliation have increased since that day and as the next civic march draws near.

But, the disproportionate repression and the hardening of the official discourse experienced in these more than three months have not been able to prevent the causes that led thousands of Cubans to the streets from continuing to be present day. The lack of freedom, the desire for a democratic change and an economic opening were the main fuel of those protests and they continue to be conquests to be achieved.

Yunieski’s friends who took to the streets are under 40 and grew up with the dollarization of the economy that Fidel Castro imposed after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. They have nothing to lose, not even freedom, because in their day-to-day lives they feel trapped by the controls, the absurd prohibitions and the impossibility of choosing a party, expressing themselves without being gagged, and improving their standard of living.

They had never been freer than that day in July when in the streets they sang the musical theme Patria y Vida (Homeland and Life), which has become the anthem of change in Cuba. That day they used their mobile phones to record others like them who wanted a democratic transition on the island and who believed that the dictatorship was ending at that very moment. For 24 hours they inhabited the future.

For their part, the leaders of the Communist Party know that their system constitutes a political, economic and social anomaly, they are only trying to buy time. That time that the young people like Yunieski have plenty of and that Castroism lacks.

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Editor’s Note: A version of this article was originally published in Crusoé magazine .
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Two Cuban Prosecutors Contradict the President of the Supreme Court on the 15 November March

The Archipiélago group cites as an example of State Security harassment those who have expressed their desire to demonstrate on November 15 and the case of Dr. Manuel Guerra from Holguin, who has been expelled from his workplace and sent to another province. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 3 November 2021 — Today the limits of the law are at the center of the debate between the authorities and the Archipelago collective, promoter of the Civic March for Change on November 15 (15N). While the organizers of the protest argue that they are complying with Cuban legislation point by point, the Government published an article this Wednesday in the official newspaper Granma entitled Against law and order: the failed script of November 15, in which it details why it considers the march illegal.

Archipiélago published a letter addressed to the president of the Supreme People’s Court, Rubén Remigio Ferro, whom he reproached for not actually fulfilling the words he pronounced last July, when he declared: “Diverse political opinions, even those with a political sense different to that prevailing in the country do not constitute a crime, thinking differently, questioning what is being done, that in itself does not constitute a crime. Moreover, speaking out far from constituting a crime constitutes a constitutional right of the people.”

The group considers that his opinion is not that of any citizen, but that of the head of the law enforcement in Cuba and, therefore, their words are binding or should be, since those who have requested permission to march on 15 November — or even barely sympathized with the cause — is being harmed in different and very serious ways.

Among them, they allude to harassment, subpoenas and interrogations and threats from the State Security to both the promoters themselves and their families, some of the signatories, they recall, have lost their jobs, continue reading

as is the case of Dr. Manuel Guerra from Holguin, who has been expelled from his workplace to send him to another province.

The Archipiélago collective also notes that the Prosecutor’s Office called people linked to the 15N to warn them that they were exposing themselves to a criminal process if they went ahead, so instead of looking out for the interests of citizens as the Public Ministry that they are, they exert pressure on people to not exercise their rights. In addition, their mobile phones suffer continuous network cuts but the authorities refuse to take any responsibility, nor will the state communications monopoly, Etecsa.

The letter also reproaches the president of the Supreme Court for not only denying the right to march but also for stating that it is illegal because it lacks legitimacy in its objectives. “Which is equivalent to declaring that demonstrating is illegal if it contravenes the interests of the Government. In what part of Article 56 does it say such a thing?”

Archipiélago reiterates that the marches have been communicated in accordance with the law and that they will respect health regulations and respect for public order, so there is no basis to reject them and, on the contrary, it is to violate the Constitution to deny that right.

“The Constitution of the Republic establishes in its Article 1 that Cuba is a socialist State of Law and social justice, and this implies that the rights of citizens are respected and protected. If the authorities and organs of the State do not properly protect the rights, with respect to equality, justice, and legality, then not only are state interests being placed above public and citizen interests, but it is acting outside the constitutional mandate,” they affirm, to finally demand a response from Ferro.

But the authorities are far from giving their arm to twist in the legal aspect either. The Communist Party newspaper has interviewed two jurists who substantiate the alleged illegality of the March: Ana Hernández Mur, chief prosecutor of the Information and Analysis Directorate of the Attorney General’s Office (FGR), and Dimas Alfredo Herrera Gandol, prosecutor of the Secretariat of the same entity.

Experts argue that, like everything established in any Constitution, the rights of assembly, demonstration and association have limits that are established in the laws that develop them and that will be clearer even when the decree-law is drafted to regulate them, but that, in short, they are subject to article 45. This section establishes that citizens have the right to “collective security, general welfare, respect for public order, the Constitution and the laws.”

Hernández maintains that the promoters of the Civic March for Change declare that their objective is to provoke a political change on the Island, something that makes it unconstitutional, since, he points out, “Cuba is a socialist state of law and justice. social, democratic, independent and sovereign,” according to Article 1, and Article 4 “enshrines the irrevocable nature of the socialist system and the right of Cubans to fight by all means, including armed struggle, anyone who tries to overthrow the established political, social and economic order.”

According to the jurist, the Cubans had the opportunity to debate the constitutional text for months in work centers, communities and other meeting places. “There were more than 1,700,000 suggestions, from which around 783,000 proposals were derived, and as a result of popular input, almost 60% of the draft was modified,” he reviews. Subsequently, the Magna Carta was endorsed by 86.85% of those who voted, 90% of the census. In his opinion, this validates the system and it is not possible, not to modify it, but even to protest against it.

Herrera Gandolf focused more on discrediting of the organizers, whom he once again accused of ties with the United States for the mere fact of having been supported by different administrations of that country. “The opposition is the set of organizations or people who dissent and criticize the acts of the dominant political force, but who do not seek the destruction of the State, but its reform, without in any case being linked to the actions of people supported by a foreign power, in accordance with its interests and against nationals,” said the official.

The secretary added that in the Archipiélago “they use the Constitution as a shield for their acts, interpreting at their convenience what is endorsed by the text. They demand, he continued, guarantees with ignorance of the duties they must fulfill as citizens, placing individual rights above those of collectives and also committing acts that are in violation of the Constitution itself and constitute serious crimes.” The warning of applying the Penal Code, again on the table.

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Agent ‘Fernando’ Insisted on Approaching Felipe Gonzalez and Gave Him Cuban Cigars

Agent ’Fernando’ of Cuban State Security insisted on meeting the former Spanish president Felipe González. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 3 November 2021 — Dr. Carlos Leonardo Vázquez González, agent Fernando of Cuban State Security, insisted on meeting former Spanish President Felipe González while he was participating in a workshop at Saint Louis University in Madrid. The oncologist gave the socialist politician a box with cigars that he brought from Cuba.

Vázquez entered Spanish territory in September 2019, allegedly to attend the workshop “The role of the armed forces in a transition process,” sponsored by the Madrid branch of the American university. But in reality, as Cuban Television revealed last Monday, he was doing intelligence work.

The doctor gathered information about the event and especially about the playwright Yunior García Aguilera, whom he now accuses of being a manufactured leader outside the island and of having committed in Madrid to dedicating himself to “the counterrevolution” after his return to Cuba.

The official press reports the presence of Felipe González, a former ally of the Cuban regime, now presented as the creator of a criminal group dedicated to physically eliminating ETA’s Basque terrorists in the 1980s. continue reading

During the workshop Vázquez showed great interest in getting closer to González. “It was the last day and I was in another room talking when the doctor came and insisted that I introduce him to the former president,” recalls journalist Reinaldo Escobar, editorial chief of 14ymedio, who also participated in this workshop.

On the left, the journalist Reinaldo Escobar, in the center Felipe González and on the right, agent ’Fernando’. (14ymedio)

“He knew that I knew Felipe González from previous trips and he strongly insisted that I introduce them,” he explains. “His persistence caught my attention because during the previous days it was an open secret in the group that Vázquez behaved strangely and was always taking photos of others. We even made jokes when he approached, nobody trusted him.”

Escobar took the oncologist to meet the former Spanish president, introduced them, and lent his camera to a third party to take pictures of the moment. “I did the same thing to him that he had been doing to the others: I took numerous photos of him,” he explains. Vázquez then gave González a small cardboard box with 10 mini Cohibas.

“Felipe González was a bit surprised because that gift was not given by the group but was something personal from the doctor and that he had not previously mentioned to the others. It was very strange and the former president kept the box in his hand without knowing very well how to react. A somewhat uncomfortable situation.”

“Afterwards, the doctor did not leave him, it was evident that he had a great interest in González and even suggested that he smoke a cigar right there — I was struck by the fact that an oncologist encouraged him to smoke — but the politician only smiled. It was a closed place and smoking was forbidden, but the insistence with which he told him to try them never ceased to amaze me, they were one of the best in Cuba. “

In retrospect, after watching the Cuban Television program, Escobar wonders if the undercover agent Fernando was acting on his own account or if he was obeying orders from the island’s intelligence services when he approached the former Spanish president.

Yunior García Aguilera, who has mocked the alleged agent, has indicated in his Facebook account that, when a year ago he began to be attacked for his presence at this event, the doctor wrote to him asking him not to mention his name “for anything in the world,” about which he reassured him.

Although he does not remember his presence very specifically, he does point out as striking that he was dedicated to taking multiple photos and was silent, which led to some jokes among the attendees.

The playwright does not wish him any harm, but he does hope that he is a “better doctor than an undercover agent” and that he does not “go around betraying the doctors and nurses at his hospital and that his colleagues do not stray too far when they are going to be honest about the terrible situation of our hospitals.”

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They Beat a Cuban Journalist and Warned Him: ‘This is a Preview of What Can Happen if You Go Out on 15 November’

In August, Vladimir Turró Páez was summoned and intimidated by State Security. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 5 November 2021 — The journalist Vladimir Turró, a contributor to CubaNet , denounced this Thursday the aggression he suffered in the middle of the street at the hands of Cuban State Security agents. “Three henchmen of the Castro dictatorship hit me in the eye,” the reporter wrote on his social networks. “They told me: ‘This is a preview of what can happen to you if you go out on November 15 to be doing the filthy journalism that you do’.”

Summons, threats and intimidation of activists, opponents and independent journalists continue to be the constant, with 10 days remaining until the Civic March for Change, convened by the Archipiélago platform.

Turró was taken by surprise this Thursday morning when he was near his home, located in Párraga, in the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo. Regarding this attack, the reporter María Matienzo Puerto warned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights: “Between this and the fact that they begin to assassinate us there is only one step.”

The attack on Turró occurred on the same day that the Cuban Ministry of Justice reiterated the illicit nature of the 15N (November 15) march with the argument that “it is not carried out in harmony with the constitutional continue reading

assumptions and principles,” and follows the line of terrorizing any attempt at peaceful demonstration. In October the authorities had asserted that “crimes of disobedience, illegal demonstrations, instigation to commit a crime” would be punished.

Last August, Turró was summoned by State Security agents to the Sixth Unit of the Marianao Police, where two officers who identified themselves as Michel and Dominic tried to intimidate the journalist by initiating “a judicial process.”

Attempts by the political police to scare the reporter included threats of “fatal consequences” and of being “severely punished” if he did not quit his job, which they consider “illegal” and “paid by a foreign government.”

In his social networks, Turró has expressed his support for journalists Esteban Rodríguez and Lázaro Yuri Valle, who remain unjustly imprisoned. Rodríguez is a contributor to ADNCuba and has been imprisoned since April 30 for his participation in an act of solidarity with the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara on Obispo Street in Havana.

Yuri is accused of “contempt and enemy propaganda” for covering the distribution of leaflets from Havana, he was arrested on June 15. Rodríguez and Yuri, Turró pointed out on his social networks, “suffer the weight of injustice from a regime that treats journalists as criminals.”

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Fines of 1,500 pesos for Cuban Retirees Who Sell Plastic Bags on the Street

Many elderly people supplement their meager pension by selling plastic bags. (14ymedio)

Plastic bags are rarely seen in the State’s network of retail stores, but they are also in short supply in hard currency stores

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 5 November 2021 — A commotion this Thursday at the corner of Hospital and San Lázaro in Havana. Residents and passersby reacted with outrage when they saw the police carting off retirees who were selling plastic bags.

“I’m pissed off!” exclaimed a customer who walked into a nearby barbershop to get a haircut. “They have taken the old men on the corner just for selling bags. How evil! I had to bite my tongue to not say anything to them. Why don’t they take the managers of the neighborhood stores? It’s easier to abuse the elderly,” he said annoyed.

The pushcart sellers are located in front of the El Lazo de Oro bakery and the residents know that if they need bags for their shopping they should go there, where they will find the retirees who offer the jabitas, as the bags are popularly known, and also their coffee ration from the bodega or a few pounds of sugar.

The police operation surprised vendors this Thursday. Some were able to get away and escape, but not all were so lucky. “This is what sparks sadness and grief. Those poor old people sell their bags and any other nonsense to be able to eat. Before they also sold continue reading

homemade butter, but since the milk disappeared, not even that,” says a man at the exit of the bakery with bread in hand.

“They said they were going to apply fines of 1,500 pesos. I was saved because I was late today,” a local saleswoman tells passersby who ask.

Nylon bags are rarely seen in the state’s network of retail stores, but they are also in short supply in foreign exchange stores, and customers have to carry their own to avoid having to carry the their purchases in their hands.

Some retirees buy them at the few points of sale where they are available, to later resell them at the door of agro-markets, bakeries and other businesses, as a way to get extra income at a time when pensions cover less than ever. If possible.

According to area residents speaking to 14ymedio, on October 25 there was also a police operation in which the pushcart sellers who sell food and vegetables were fined.

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A Brief Chronology of Disregard and Intolerance in Cuba

The Ladies in White is another group that has been repressed for decades for marching peacefully on Sundays. (EFE)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, November 2, 2021 — The dictatorship’s most frequently recurring formula to impede or interfere with changes that do not align with their interests has been to incarcerate.

They’ve raised the bar in two ways: first, by presenting as apocalyptic the results of anything they consider a “return to the past,” and second, making those who dare to dissent pay disproportionately for “daring.”

The most recent expression of this authoritarian eagerness has been displayed in the aggressive response to the Movimiento San Isidro, the protesters of November 27 in front of the Ministry of Culture and the members of Archipiélago who intend to organize a peaceful march on November 15th.

However, those who comb their grey hairs and treasure their scars will recognize in these acts of power the same processes that have been practiced for the last 60 years. With only a superficial retelling of certain moments in which they’ve responded with excessive brutality to those who, in a civilized manner, submitted divergent proposals, including some from within the ranks who displayed their disagreement with the ways the revolutionary project was being carried out.

The list must begin with the resignation letter sent by Commander Huber Matos to Fidel Castro in mid-1959, which stated: “I do not wish to become an obstacle to the Revolution and I believe that having to choose between adapting and being cast aside, the honorable and revolutionary thing to do would be to leave.”

He was tried and sentenced to 20 years in jail. Fidel Castro, in his role as witness, declared that the principal offense of the accused was to malign the Revolution by describing it as communist. continue reading

In January of 1961, cameraman Orlando Jiménez Leal and editor Sabá Cabrera Infante presented a documentary titled PM (post meridian) where instead of showing the people as fired up and willing to die before the “imminent invasion of imperialism,” showed some from Havana as fun-loving — drinking beer and dancing rumba. [See also.]

Toward the end of June that same year, before the reactions that resulted in the censure of the documentary, Fidel Castro announced his so-called Palabras a los intellectuals [Words to the Intellectuals], where he consecrates in a single phrase not only the cultural politics of the country but also the intolerance to all possible discrepancies: ” Against the Revolution, no rights.” [See also.]

Between 1966 and 1968 a group of communists, led by Aníbal Escalante, who had served in the Popular Socialist Party and joined the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations, had the audacity to criticize the direction of the country, arguing, among other things, that the leaders of the 26th of July Movement were bourgeoise with plans to exit the Muscovite sphere of influence and return to the arms of Washington.

That phenomenon, named “microfracture”, ended with 35 of those implicated being tried. The most prominent figures received sentences of up to 15 years in prison.

In March of 1968, to confront the last vestiges of private property, the Revolutionary Offensive was decreed. Entrepreneurship, viewed as a remnant of the past, was punishable by confiscation of the means of employment and the prohibition of self-employment.

In October of 1968, poet Heberto Padilla won the Julián del Casal poetry prize sponsored by the Cuban Union of Writers and Artists (Uneac) for his book Fuera del Juego [Out of the Game]. The panel that awarded the prize stated that “its strength and what gave this book a revolutionary feel was, precisely, the fact that it was not apologetic, but rather critical, controversial, and essentially linked to the idea of the Revolution as the only possible solution to the problems the author obsessed over, which are those of the times we are living.”

The response to those disobedient verses was to add a prologue to the book that described it as counterrevolutionary. Padilla was subsequently jailed for 35 days and forced to provide a public retraction. Later, he went into exile. His work is not studied in Cuban schools.

Few will remember those “democratization assemblies”, following the failure of the Ten Million Ton Harvest, during which citizens were asked to express their complaints without fear. Barely any data exist (there was no internet in 1970) of the workplace firings and the expulsion of university students which resulted from that unleashing of honesty, or better yet, naivete, in which some came to define the regime as an autocracy and others described the volunteerism and lack of citizen consultation as the worst of the worst.

The First National Congress on Education and Culture was held from the 23rd to the 30th of April 1971. This event launched what historians refer to as the Five Grey Years. They conducted a purge to eliminate from cultural centers all those who “appeared homosexual” or who displayed what they called “ideological weaknesses”. This resulted in the disappearance of Pensamiento Crítico [Critical Thinking] magazine, which provided an academic viewpoint, less orthodox than the practice of socialism. [See also.]

On the scale of intolerance, the well-known events of 1980 must be mentioned, when the state sponsored “acts of repudiation” against those who no longer wanted to partake in the experiment launched by the communists.

On June 13, 1991, Daniel Díaz Torres’s movie, Alice in Wondertown, premiered. That day, hundreds of militants from the Communist Party and the Union of Young Communists were mobilized to repudiate the screening of the film, which provided a sarcastic view of the absurd reality.

That same month a group of intellectuals published a document known as the Letter of the Ten, in which they demanded democratic changes and the release of prisoners of conscience.

The signatories of the declaration, Raúl Rivero, Manuel Díaz Martínez, Nancy Estrada, Lorenzo Fuentes, Bernardo Marquéz Ravelo, Manuel Granados, Fernando Velázquez Medina, Roberto Luque Escalona and Victor Manuel Serpa, were subjected to all kinds of reprisals and harassment.

Poet María Elena Cruz Varela, the author of the letter, was publicly accused of being a CIA agent for having created the dissident group Criterio Alternativo [Alternative Critique], which was branded “a small counterrevolutionary group”. Her house was raided and she was beaten and dragged out of her building and forced to, literally, swallow her documents. Cruz Varela was sentenced to two years in prison.

In February of 1992, Cuban writer Jesús Díaz participated in a public debate in Zurich with Uruguayan intellectual Eduardo Galeano. There, Díaz read a text titled Los anillos de la serpiente [The Serpent’s Rings], which caused profound displeasure among state media because, among other things, it questioned the motto of ’Socialism or Death’ pitched by Fidel Castro.

Jesús Díaz was expelled from the Cuban Union of Writers and Armando Hart, the Minister of Culture at the time, distributed a pamphlet which accused him of having committed an enormous crime and included the following threat: “Laws do not allow the death sentence for your infamy; however the morality and ethics of Cuban culture will punish you more harshly.”

On September 8th, 1993, Cuba’s Conference of Bishops issued a message titled El amor todo lo espera [Love Hopes All Things], which was subsequently read in all Catholic churches and severely criticized the economic, social, and political situation in the country.

One columnist, who is sadly remembered, published an editorial titled El amor todo lo espera siempre que no venga de Caín [Love Hopes All Things, as Long as They Don’t Come from Cain] where he stated that Cuban bishops were “historic accomplices of all the nation’s enemies,” and that the pastoral message could be considered “a stab in the back, at the most difficult, decisive and heroic moment faced by the Cuban Revolution.”

In March 1996, during the plenary of the Party’s Central Committee Raúl Castro announced the decision to close the Centro de Estudios de Américas (CEA) [Study Center of the Americas], a Cuban center of ideas comprised basically of young researchers who had dared to mention novel ways to build socialism. They were accused of being “fifth columnists” and dispersed to different places of employment.

On June 19th, 1997, members of the Grupo de Trabajo de la Disidencia Interna [Internal Dissidence Working Group] published a document titled La patria es de todos [The Homeland Belongs to Everyone] in response to the scheduled Fifth Congress of Cuba’s Communist Party (PCC), where they were analyzing the main complaints of the population and developing recommendations. A month later, the signers of the document, Vladimiro Roca, Félix Bonne, René Gómez, and Martha Beatriz Roque were detained and processed in summary trials. On May 5th, 2002 the last of them, Vladimiro Roca, was freed after serving close to five years in a maximum-security prison.

In May 2002, protected by Article 88 of the 1992 Constitution, Movimiento Cristiano Liberación [Christian Liberation Movement], led by Oswaldo Payá and supported by other opposition organizations, presented Project Varela as a legislative initiative endorsed and signed by more than 11,000 citizens. This proposal advocated for economic and political reforms.

The government’s response was to amend the Constitution of the Republic, creating the concept of the irrevocability of socialism. In March 2003, in the middle of what is now known as the Black Spring, 75 human rights activists were arrested, including 25 members of Project Varela; they were condemned to long prison sentences.

This extensive yet incomplete account succinctly includes only peaceful acts and their disproportionate responses between 1995 and 2003. Obviously missing are the many specific cases that demonstrate that these abuses of power are not exclusive to the present, but rather, practically habitual over the last six decades.

What occurred in the 18 years since is perhaps more well-known to those who today ask themselves what can be done to change things in Cuba. Among the most notable reprisals to those who have peacefully attempted to do something, several stand out: the permanent harassment of the Ladies in White, who base their struggle on the release of political prisoners, attacks of all kinds against Unión Patriótica de Cuba [Patriotic Union of Cuba] or any other opposition movement.

Arbitrary detentions, prohibitions on travel outside the country, even outside their own homes, confiscation of means of work, and threats of judicial procedures have also befallen bloggers and independent journalists, cultural activists, and defenders of human rights.

The political structure which today governs the country assumes continuity, for which it takes on the responsibility of all the abuses committed to date. The current victims, thrown into the same old sack of discredit as always, understand that there are no scruples that justify distancing themselves from those demonized yesterday. As the poet would say, “We are sewn by the same star.”

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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