14ymedio – Page 211 – Translating Cuba

Five Dollars for a Bicycle Tire in Havana, 4,000 Pesos in the Provinces

Store in Havana’s Plaza de Carlos III where this Wednesday they they offered rubber bike tires for sale at 5.33 dollars each. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Mercedes García / Juan D. Rodríguez, Sancti Spíritus / Havana, 4 May 2022 — The shortage of bicycle tires drives Cubans from the provinces crazy, where there are no transportation options like the ones that still exist in a city like Havana. These days, in Sancti Spíritus, acquiring a single tire can cost up to 4,200 pesos. And only in the informal market.

“Here they never offer tires for sale and everyone has a bicycle,” says Rayner, who lives ten kilometers from the center of Sancti Spíritus and, as he says, “either you go by bus, which passes by twice a day, or you go on foot.” The young man says that this same Tuesday he paid 3,600 pesos for the tire for the front wheel that he needed, his income for the entire month.

The tires of his bicycle, which is eight years old, could not perform anymore, having been repaired with bits of shoes and rubber over and over.

Four months ago, he bought the tire for the rear wheel and it cost him 4,000 pesos, “and almost crying to the man who sold it to me, because there aren’t any,” he tells this newspaper. Since then, he has been saving for the front tire.

Meanwhile, in the Cuban capital, this Wednesday, a long line formed at a state store in Plaza de Carlos III where they had put out rubber tires for sale, for $5.33 each. continue reading

The customers who came out of the store did not carry one or two, but many. “Here I never see anyone on a bicycle,” commented a woman who passed by the place, surprised. “These are most likely going to be taken to the countryside to sell.”

Tires suffer great wear and tear in Cuba, not only because of the frequent use of bicycles as a means of transportation, but also because of the poor condition of the streets and the terrible condition of the brakes in many of these vehicles, which forces their drivers to brake by rubbing the tire with the sole of the shoe.

Streets with large areas where the asphalt is missing and plenty of potholes are common throughout the Island, but in the cities and country towns the situation is even worse. Also objects on the road, such as broken bottles, pieces of metal and even nails add greater risks. Hence the need to have frequent spare parts to replace the tires that are deteriorating.

To this we must add that the bicycle is also a means of family transportation, frequently used by street vendors to cover a wider area of potential customers, or an improvised moving truck, and it is also common to add motors to increase speed, an ingenuity that is popularly known as riquimbili. [For photos, see here.]

The bicycles transformed into light motorcycles, after adding an engine, also consume the useful life of the tires more quickly. But not all the ones that are sold are of good quality, the least valued are the so-called Creole rubbers, of domestic manufacture, while the imported ones can cost much more in the informal market.

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Cuba: Mother’s Day and Amnesty

Activists and relatives demonstrating in the Juan Delgado Park in Havana, in favor of the July 11th (11J) prisoners tried in the Diez de Octubre court in February 2022. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Frank Calzón, Miami, 8 May 2022 — In the film Nadie Escuchaba [Nobody Heard] about the Cuban political prisoners by the great filmmaker Néstor Almendros, there is a segment of just two minutes with an old woman, which this Mother’s Day makes our hearts tremble. Clara Abraham, Boitel’s widow, recounts with infinite sadness the last days of her son Pedro Luis in a cell in the maximum security pavilion of the Castillo del Príncipe in Havana. The story is also collected by Guillermo Cabrera Infante in his masterful work Vista del Amanecer en el Trópico [A View of Dawn in the Tropics].

Pedro Luis Boitel, was “a student leader who had fought against the previous regime” but in disagreement with the course of the revolution he began to conspire and “was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1960, but in 1972 he was imprisoned” and died without medical assistance.

“I spent twelve years fighting to save my son, so that he would die like a dog… I didn’t know where he was… where he was buried. They beat me up. I was imprisoned for eight hours, when they told me: ’Your son he’s dead, we’ve already buried him’…45 days without medical attention. Do you know what it’s like not to give a mother her corpse? Yesterday we 12 women went to take some crowns and a mob of more than 300 people came out from behind the tombs … they came here in need, I had to throw them out of this house.”

In Almendros’ film, she is asked a question about forgiveness, to which the old woman replies: “I have to forgive. It’s very difficult for me, but I have to forgive.”

Unfortunately, in the history of the Cuban nation there have been other mothers and other prisoners. Leonor Pérez, the mother of José Martí, also knew the impotence of seeing the unjust conviction of her teenage son, and tried to obtain a pardon. To try to alleviate the pain of the sore that would never completely heal, as a result of the shackle they put on his leg, Doña Leonor made him a pillow that Martí remembered all his life. Those were other times, but then the relatives of the prisoners also arranged pardons and were allowed to bring them some supplies. continue reading

In the 20th century, Lina Ruz de Castro got the archbishop of Santiago de Cuba to intercede with the authorities of the Batista regime to guarantee the life of her son Fidel, who was hiding in a farm near the city after the attack on the Moncada barracks. After the trial, where Fidel made the statement that he would later rewrite in prison with the title History will absolve me, his mother dedicated herself to mobilizing the living forces of the country: the bishops, the press, civic, professional, artistic, and cultural organizations, and the senators and representatives of parliament to obtain an amnesty for all political prisoners, including her son who served two years of a 15-year sentence. Several governments, including the United States, welcomed the move.

Is it possible that a similar management can be carried out in today’s Cuba? Will there be bishops, embassies, international personalities, writers, artists, executives of foreign companies with representation on the island, mothers of government officials, members of the National Assembly of People’s Power who ask General Raúl Castro and President Miguel Díaz-Canel to decree a general amnesty so that the men and women in political prison are released and reunited with their families?

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Havana’s El Calvario Baptist Church Suffered Serious Damage from the Explosion at the Saratoga Hotel

State of the El Calvario church after the explosion of the Saratoga hotel. (Facebook/Adiel González Maimó)

14ymedio, Havana, 6 May 2022 — The explosion that destroyed the Saratoga Hotel this Friday in Havana has also affected numerous buildings around it. One of them is the El Calvario church, headquarters of the Western Baptist Convention, which lost its roof as a result of the explosion

In a statement made public in the afternoon, the Baptist Convention reported that they were prevented from entering their offices, despite the fact that, they say, “they have not suffered material damage.”

“We still do not have an exact idea of the magnitude of the damage to our building,” they pointed out, and were grateful that none of their employees who were in the building at that time suffered injuries.

In addition, they indicated that they await “the diagnosis of a commission that evaluates the structural damage.” continue reading

The explosion affected buildings several blocks away from the Saratoga Hotel, such as along busy Monte street. (14ymedio)

In the images broadcast from inside the temple, serious damage to the ceiling, walls and furniture of the premises is seen.

The detonation affected places several blocks away from the scene of the incident, such as Monte Street, where several stores had broken glass.

The nearby Teatro Martí, inaugurated in 1884, also suffered damage according to reports to this newspaper from local workers. The facility, restored in 2014, housed in 1901 the Constituent Convention that established the Republic of Cuba.

The damage also extends to the Yoruba Cultural Association of Cuba, located on the same block as the hotel. The center occupies a large building with a busy portal.

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A Belated Ode to the Worker’s Union

*Screen capture of the 16-second video in which workers from state-owned Prodal company, in Havana, shout: “Long live the sausages!”*

Alexis Romay, New Jersey, 30 April 2022

In Cuba, the Worker’s Union
is just a branch of the State.
It doesn’t allow debate.
It curtails any reunion
of people seeking communion
of ideas by themselves,
while there’s no food on the shelves,
and there’s widespread condemnation
of the Party as the indignation
of the Cuban people swells.

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Author’s note: This text is my recreation and condensation, in English, of my décimas published this week in the Spanish edition of 14ymedio. Remember, this post —part of Ideological Deviation, my weekly column— is considered a crime by the Cuban government.

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Havana, Cuba: Anguish Grows as Search Continues for Survivors at the Saratoga Hotel

The concern has affected even those who did not suffer direct damage but fear that the tremor has damaged other buildings in the area. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 7 May 2022 — Barely 24 hours after the explosion at the Saratoga Hotel in Havana, the area still looks like a battlefield and there are already 32 dead, 19 missing and 56 injured. A police cordon surrounds the area from the Parque de la Fraternidad to prevent pedestrians from passing through and the rescue brigades work against the clock to find survivors under the rubble.

The confusion of the first moments has been replaced by anguish. In the whole city there is no talk of anything else. In lines, at family tables and on urban buses, the theme is the explosion in a hotel that until a few days ago was a symbol of tourist glamor and has now become synonymous with tragedy.

Each one has a story to tell. Like that of the employee who left the building just a few minutes before the explosion and she was paralyzed when she felt the noise behind her back. Or the one of the woman who cries next to the yellow tape that says “PNR* Do Not Pass, Keep Out” because her godmother, 78 years old, and the old woman’s puppy are under the rubble.

List of the 26 deceased identified so far. (Cuba Ministry of Public Health)

There is also the young man who points to the building on one side of the hotel that suffered considerable damage in the explosion and fears that Juan Carlos, a neighbor on the second floor, has not given proof of life since yesterday morning. The testimonies are mixed and there is no shortage of those who reach the groups and, conveniently, release some rumor where the words “enemy” and “attack” are always present, although the official version has insisted that it was an accident. continue reading

State Security agents, dressed in civilian clothes, are also deployed throughout the area. They are detected by their incisive gaze with which they register everyone who takes photos or records the scene of a building with its beams exposed to the air, and the rescuers with their faces getting longer as the hours go by.

The independent reporter Ángel Cuza, who broadcast live from the Saratoga hotel what was happening after the explosion, was arrested by the political police along with the activist Pedro Quiala this Friday afternoon. Both were transferred to Villa Marista, a place known as the State Security headquarters in Havana. The Cuban Human Rights Observatory condemned the arrests as arbitrary. Cuza was also one of the activists who protested on Obispo Street on April 30, 2021.

In the elementary school near the Saratoga Hotel, which also suffered many damages, a side door has been set up so that parents can collect the backpacks and other belongings of their children who were evacuated after the explosion. Some have approached early but crossing the security cordon is tortuous and many fear that the structure of the Saratoga could collapse at any moment.

The concern has spread even among those who did not suffer direct damage but fear that the tremor has damaged the other buildings in the area, a neighborhood with numerous tenements packed with residents, many of which are in a deplorable architectural state. In the central street Monte, some have not even wanted to sleep at home.

María Julia, a 58-year-old from Havana, tells this newspaper that she decided to spend the night at her daughter’s house. “There was a tremendous noise and everything shook here, the paintings on the walls and even some glasses that I have in a display case,” she explains. “This house has a very bad roof and columns and now I am afraid that this shaking has made things worse.”

The feeling is that the explosion is pouring rain on the long list of calamities that have hit Cuba in recent years. “This is going to be a hard blow to tourism,” says Ismael, an employee of a state cafeteria on Obispo Street. “Now that it seemed that we were going to start attracting more visitors, this happens to us.”

The feeling is that the explosion is pouring rain on the long list of calamities that have hit Cuba in recent years. (14ymedio)

This Saturday also coincided with the eve of Mother’s Day, a very popular date on the island. The hotel is located in a very commercial area where hundreds of anxious customers have come to try to buy products for the celebrations of this Sunday, where traditionally there is a family dinner and gifts are given to mothers.

However, together with the police cordon that prevents access to a wide area around the hotel, the shortage of products in local stores was setting the tone this morning. This newspaper was able to verify the long lines around several state stores on Reina, Galiano and Monte streets to try to buy food, drinks and some gifts.

Some have approached the site since the early morning but crossing the security cordon is tortuous. (14ymedio)

*PNR = National Revolutionary Police

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Cuba: Press and Responsibility in the Face of Tragedy

The cloud of smoke from the explosion at the Saratoga Hotel was visible from the Plaza of the Revolution municipality. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, 7 May 2022 — It sounded like thunder, but when I looked out from the balcony, the sky was clear. I scanned the city with my eyes and a huge mountain of smoke was rising in the area of Old Havana. Instinctively I looked at the clock, it was 10:52 on the morning of Friday, May 6. We didn’t know what had happened, but it was serious. In the Editorial Office of 14ymedio we quickly wrote the first journalistic note that warned the world that an explosion had shaken Havana. We initially thought it was in the area around Havana Bay.

A few minutes later the first images arrived and our reporters approached the place. The event was taking shape: the Saratoga Hotel was enveloped in a cloud of dust and the surroundings were full of debris. People took pictures with their mobiles and reported from the vicinity of the building which, until recently, was an architectural beauty that adorned the city and now had been reduced to a jumble of iron and ruins. For almost an hour the official press did not react.

Citizen journalism and the independent media negotiated those long minutes very responsibly. Despite the bomb and sabotage rumors circulating in the streets, my colleagues kept a professional pulse and tried to check every sentence published. It was difficult, because when the official newspapers began to publish about the incident, they often mixed facts with speculation, truth with lies. The biggest hoaxes were from the account of the portals controlled by the Communist Party.

The television coverage was nefarious. Unprepared announcers who improvised by confusing the Saratoga Hotel with the Capitol building, who pronounced someone “dead” just by watching screen as they removed a body on a stretcher, as if they were doctors who can determine who is alive and who is not. And ideology everywhere, trying to kidnap human solidarity, painting as partisan the support that people gave to the most suffering. continue reading

To make matters worse, Miguel Díaz-Canel did not miss the opportunity in front of the microphones to attack the independent media, which he accuses of spreading rumors and lying about what happened. Instead of making a speech based on the harmony and unity that tragedy brings, he preferred to use the moment of pain for his old battle against dissidence. The mediocre man that he is once again demonstrated that he does not have one iota of the greatness of a statesman.

Without our work and that of so many citizens who reported from the place, the news would have taken much longer to be known and solidarity would have been delayed for a time that was vital for the victims. Accusing the press is a vile act of politicking in the midst of tragedy, an attempt to use emotions to denigrate journalists.

We would have preferred, of course, that this Friday morning, the news that shook us and forced us to work almost 24 hours straight would have been happy and hopeful. But in the face of the catastrophe, our journalistic policy is transparency, professionalism and respect for those who suffer, without being moved at all by the vanity of having a scoop.

Make no mistake, Díaz-Canel, the independent press has been essential in the first hours of this unfortunate event. Without admitting it, you read us, copied us and even took entire sentences from our articles. While the mouths from outside insulted us, inside their air-conditioned offices they completed many of the details of this drama through us.

We offer out condolences and we accompany those who have lost a loved one, who have a family member fighting for life in a hospital or who are still trapped under the rubble. Know that we will not rest in our journalistic duty until we publish every detail about what happened, we will insist on a transparent investigation without political manipulation. We will be, as always, on the side of the victims.
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‘My Children Believe That Their Father is in a School Not in Prison’ for Cuba’s July 11th (11J) Protests

Daniel Joel Cardenas and Marbelis Vazquez. (Courtesy)

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 6 May 2022 — Before the pandemic, Marbelis Vázquez and Daniel Joel Cárdenas managed La Guarapera Velázquez, a private business with which they dreamed of making the money necessary to emigrate. But instead of starting a new life in another country, the husband is now in prison for the July 11^th (11J) protests in Cárdenas (Matanzas).

The last name of Daniel Joel, 34, seemed predestined to merge with the municipality where he lived and not just because they were exactly the same. His acquaintances also nickname him El Cárdenas and since January he has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for demonstrating in the streets of his city where one of the most intense protests of that day took place.

That Sunday dawned calm and the family had plans to go to the beach. The afternoon would be full of sand and waves, but it turned into screams and police operations. First, Cárdenas and Vázquez learned that people were protesting in the centrally located Calle Real following the spark of indignation that had ignited that same day in San Antonio de los Baños (Artemisa).

Later, the screams came closer to his home, when dozens of neighbors raided a gas station store. The economic crisis, the lack of freedoms and the rigors of the pandemic pushed the people of Cárdenas to the limit. The most repeated cry around that gas station was “hunger!”, a roar that mixed with the sound of breaking glass.

Close to the resort of Varadero, Cárdenas is considered by the authorities to be an area with high incomes and the only stores with stocked shelves are the ones that take payment only in freely convertible currency (MLC). It also has a tradition of being “un pueblo gusano*” – a ‘worm’ town — where many do not sympathize with the system. It is not for nothing that some of the most symbolic images of 11J came from there. continue reading

When they heard about the protests, the couple weighed what to do. In a few weeks their dream of emigrating could materialize, but they decided to leave home and go to the gas station. There, Cárdenas met several friends who had come from the protest on Calle Real, the first police patrols were also beginning to arrive and stones were raining against the shop windows.

People took what they could, but the food often fell out of their hands, as Vázquez now recalls. The husband tried to carry some mayonnaise jars that someone had dropped outside the premises but finally gave them to a friend, says the wife. She adds that in the video shown by the official media she is seen throwing a stone, but on already broken glass.

The police siege continued to increase and Vázquez says that Cárdenas returned to his house. The family got ready and left for the beach. The initial plan was no longer to swim and play in the sand but to see if, after the popular protests, boats would arrive from Florida to pick up relatives. But no boat arrived and the “combat order” given by Miguel Díaz-Canel had already unleashed repression throughout the island.

Two days passed. It was around eleven o’clock in the morning on July 13 and Cárdenas was in the living room with his twin sons. The screeching of tires from a truckload of uniformed men startled him. Then came the chaos: screaming, barking dogs, shoves and gunshots. The scene was captured by Vázquez’s mobile phone, which also captured the testimony of her husband’s pool of blood on the ground.

Those minutes that seemed like an eternity have been narrated in diametrically different ways. In the woman’s version, the uniformed special troops shot her husband, who suffered a gunshot wound to the head. The projectile did not penetrate the skull but traveled through the back of the scalp on the left side, leaving a dark furrow.

In the video that Vázquez recorded and spread on social networks, shots are heard and we see one of the soldiers, who had sneaked into the house through the patio, brandishing a short weapon and entering the room where the wife is, with one of her children in her arms.

The man was also hit in the chest and back. The door of the house was seriously damaged by the violent irruption of the s0-called black wasps. “They had no mercy on my husband or my children,” says Vázquez. “I still close my eyes and remember that moment. My children carry with them a trauma that they will never forget,” she reflects.

In the version broadcast by the official newscast, the story does not include shots, but instead shows Cárdenas walking through what appears to be a detention center for a few seconds and then, already sitting on a chair, facing the camera, he affirms that he is on Friday July 16. With these images, the government sought to deny the alleged gunshot wound.

However, Vázquez replies that during the recording her husband showed his bruises on his chest, which were not included in the report, and they did not take pictures of the wound on his scalp, which, the wife details, never received sutures and measures about 12 centimeters. The physical damage would also be accompanied by an offensive against the reputation of Cárdenas.

“The trial against him seemed to be that of a dangerous criminal,” says the woman. During the three days of last December that the oral hearing lasted, the defendant was transferred cuffed by his hands and feet. “A whole circus set up with false witnesses,” she laments. The devastating sentence: 15 years behind bars for sabotage, public disorder and spread of epidemics.

The authorities tried to build a case against Cárdenas for allegedly paying minors to participate in the protests. The teenagers, neighbors who shared with the man a taste for raising pigeons, were arrested and pressured, but refused to testify against him. Now, they are still prisoners and their relatives avoid denouncing it for fear of reprisals.

“My husband’s current situation is heartbreaking.” Cárdenas is in the maximum security prison of Agüica, in Colón. “In each visit there is always a new regulation or some unforeseen change. They do not give the prisoner the opportunity to communicate with relatives because, according to the guards, the telephones are broken. They even have German shepherds inside the visiting area, sowing terror.”

“We had a very nice life and dedicated ourselves to raising our children.” In the house there is a dovecote, because the man was associated with a pigeon federation. “My husband is not a thief or a criminal as they expressed in the trial, we fought hard to put food on the table for our children.”

Cárdenas “fed the children and bathed them so that I could rest, because having twins is exhausting. Now I have to face the care of my children alone.” Vázquez confesses: “When we visit him in prison I tell them that he is there studying. They believe that their father is in a school, not in prison.”

*Translator’s note: The term gusano — meaning worm or maggot — is a derogatory first applied by Fidel Castro to ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and those who wanted to leave Cuba.

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Cuba: Explosion at Havana’s Saratoga Hotel Has Killed 22, So Far

Hotel Saratoga, in Habana Vieja, after the explosion. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 6 May 2022 — The Cuban government lamented, this Friday afternoon, the death of 22 people, “including a pregnant woman and a child” due to the explosion of the Saratoga hotel in Havana.

In a press conference held by the medical authorities, it was detailed that there are three children in critical condition, two in serious condition and nine are in care. In hospital institutions there are 42 hospitalized adults, 18 of them in serious or critical condition.

The medical report also indicates that of the 56 injured reported so far, ten adults and three children have undergone surgery.

After a preliminary report from a meeting with the main leaders of the country, the authorities said that they are focused “on the care of the people, the relatives of the deceased and also those who are hospitalized.”

At the meeting, presided over by Miguel Díaz-Canel, the situation associated with the explosion was updated, the Cuban Presidency reported on its Twitter account, adding that “work continues to assess the state of the hotel structures and surrounding buildings.”

The explosion, which occurred this Friday morning around 10:50, has destroyed the Saratoga hotel, in Old Havana. The neighboring residential building is seriously damaged and the nearby school has lost its doors and windows. continue reading

A small shop on the ground floor of the hotel was reduced to rubble.

The official media report that the injured were taken to the Hermanos Ameijeiras, Calixto García, Manuel Fajardo and Miguel Enríquez hospitals. In addition, 13 people are missing. Five elementary school children were slightly injured.

Díaz-Canel went to the scene, accompanied by the Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz, and the President of the National Assembly, Esteban Lazo.

The causes of the event are unknown. It destroyed several floors of the building, located very close to the Capitol, but the Cuban government says that it took place while liquefied gas was being loaded. “Liquefied gas was being supplied to the hotel. The cook smells gas, checks the connections and discovers that there was a crack in the supply hose,” Cubadebate published based on a source: Alexis Acosta Silva, mayor of Old Havana.

In the afternoon, a news special on Cuban television showed how the wrecked vehicle was removed from the rubble.

The Saratoga was closed for repairs and its reopening was scheduled for this coming Tuesday, May 10. One of the sinister hypotheses received by a hotel employee by 14ymedio is that oxygen tanks that were being used in welding inside the works exploded.

The president of the Provincial Defense Council, Luis Antonio Torres Iríbar, said forcefully that “we are talking about an accident” of which “the causes are being investigated” and that “we are not talking about an attack or anything like that.”

The official website Cubadebate, which had suggested that the events could be due to the “transfer of liquefied gas from a truck”, reports five dead and 25 injured, as a “preliminary” count of victims. The hospitals that are receiving the wounded are Hermanos Ameijeiras, Calixto García, Manuel Fajardo and Miguel Enríquez.

State Security deployed an operation to try to remove the hundreds of onlookers who were crowding the Parque de la India, given the risk of the structure collapsing, and several residents of the neighborhood reported the internet service being cut off.

The area is one of the busiest in Havana, with several bus stops and a constant movement of people, many of them tourists. Around the affected building, in addition, there are numerous properties that are in a dire state. The detonation reached premises located several blocks away, such as on Monte Street, where broken glass was observed.

Cuban television news showed how the wrecked vehicle was removed from the rubble. (Capture)

From the tall buildings of Nuevo Vedado, in the municipality of Plaza de la Revolución, where the noise was heard loudly, the smoke could be seen. Instantly, sirens from firefighters and military vehicles sounded in the area.

The Saratoga, founded in 1933, is one of the most emblematic hotels in the city. Located in a 19th century building, it was last restored in 2005 and is categorized with five stars. Decorated in art deco style, numerous personalities who have visited the island have stayed there, such as Madonna, Beyoncé and high-ranking officials from other countries.

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An Unpacu Activist Dies in Santiago de Cuba

Unpacu activist Alfonso Chaviano Peláez, who died this Wednesday. (Capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 6 May 2022 — The activist Alfonso Chaviano Peláez, of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu) and promoter of Cuba Decide, died on Wednesday in Santiago de Cuba.

As detailed by Ana Belkis Ferrer on Twitter, Peláez had recently been arrested, “violated and threatened by Castro hitmen.”

Chaviano Peláez himself recounted on April 15 that he had been arrested at the Unpacu headquarters when he was about to receive food for the needy. In a video shared on YouTube, the activist reported that a police officer “in a very violent way” forced him to get in a patrol car and took him to the military hospital.

“All these moves have been with pressure on my forearms and they always left me very sore,” Peláez said in his message, published two days after his arrest.

In his history, the activist had already accumulated other arrests and suffered from a lung disease that had forced him to undergo a tracheostomy. continue reading

On the other hand, the daughter of Eldris González Pozo confirmed that her father underwent emergency surgery, after suffering a heart attack on May 3 at the Boniato prison and while waiting to be transferred to the Confianza correctional facility.

According to what Evelin González told Radio Televisión Martí, while he was being treated “for his leg problem,” González Pozo vomited blood and fainted, they operated on him quickly and he is “serious, but stable.”

González Pozo is a self-employed person sentenced to three years in prison for the crimes of assault, contempt and disobedience. A member of the Eastern Democratic Alliance, he went on a hunger strike in April last year to protest his arrest.

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Yoan de la Cruz, the Young Man Who Broadcast the July 11th (11J) Protests in San Antonio de los Banos, Released From Prison

Yoan de la Cruz broadcast the July 11 protests live. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 6 May 2022 — Yoan de la Cruz was released this Friday after almost 10 months in prison, family sources and friends confirmed to 14ymedio. After the appeal, the young man’s sentence of 6 years in prison was changed to 5 years in prison without internment.

The young man, who on July 11 made the live broadcast of the first protests in San Antonio de los Baños that spread throughout the country, had received a sentence of 6 years behind bars last March after three months of the trials of the protesters in San Antonio de los Baños.

Until the day of his trial, Yoan remained almost incommunicado in Melena del Sur prison, Mayabeque, where it had been said that he would serve the rest of his sentence. “As a mother I feel like dying, it’s very sad and hard what you feel for so much injustice, but God is great and one day so much injustice will be paid for,” his mother Maribel Cruz wrote on March 22.

The case of Yoan de la Cruz caused a wide mobilization in the social networks of organizations, family and friends since he was arrested on July 23. The main argument for his defense was the strictly peaceful presence of the young man at the demonstration. continue reading

“He didn’t do anything for them to ask for that many years. The only thing he did was film,” his mother said in a message broadcast on social networks in different groups. “He is a very good boy. The whole town loves him.”

At the end of last month, six young people convicted of the 11J anti-government protests in Holguín also had their prison sentences commuted to house arrest, according to the organization Prisoners Defenders (PD).

The association, based in Spain, broke the news through a brief tweet in which it indicated that the beneficiaries are Keyla Roxana Mulet Calderón, 16 years old at the time of her arrest, Samuel Torres Durán, Yeral Michel Palacios Román, Ernesto Abelardo Martínez Pérez and Ayan Idalberto Jover Cardosa, all under 18 years of age on 11J.

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The Cuban Regime is Pursuing its New Enemy, the Dangerous DPEPDPE

On the private channels of Échate Esto, the design of that T-shirt has been announced since at least November. (Collage)

14ymedio, Havana, 5 May 2022 — The new message that the Cuban regime considers subversive is not even pronounceable. DPEPDPE, an acronym for “de pinga el país de pinga este” [which roughly translates as “fuck this fucking country”], has become the most used hashtag by activists on the island in recent days, especially since the government launched a campaign against it, considering it a serious threat.

On May Day last week, several citizens denounced on networks that State Security had carried out an operation to confiscate the T-shirts which have popularized the motto, accompanied by a cartoon doll with a childish outline, an open mouth and a resigned gesture, a garment which some activists were inspired to wear at the official march that day if they were forced to participate in their workplaces.

At the same time, Etecsa included the acronyms in its long list of censored words when sending an SMS, among which are “dictatorship,” “human rights,” “free elections” and even “Psiphon” and “VPN,” in addition to 14ymedio.

Deisy, one of the buyers of the T-shirt who was questioned by the political police, tells 14ymedio that she bought it for 350 pesos through the online store Échate Esto, dedicated to printing garments with different designs, although “there were several businesses selling that same T-shirt” and “there was someone who announced on Twitter that he was printing up to 175” of them. continue reading

The agents had a list with buyers of the garment. “I wouldn’t know if they got the list because they have the cell phone of someone from that brand or if they themselves provided them with contacts as a way of cooperation, because they are investigating them,” details the young woman, who says that they released her when they were convinced that “I did not know anything.”

“It was the clumsiness with which the regime reacted that elevated the meme,” says Deisy. “Regardless of whether or not someone called to put it on for May Day. Because that would have been a small action and of little or no consequence.”

In the private channels of Échate Esto, the design of that T-shirt has been announced at least since November, and it has not been uncommon to see images of young people dressed in the garment while on the bus or in a public place on social networks, but it was as of this last week that the matter has gone viral.

To circumvent censorship, activists have simplified the campaign in recent days and, instead of including #dpepdpe in their messages, they simply use the doll that accompanies the sweater, an original drawing by a designer who calls himself Flork of Cows [in English in the original].

The artist already boasts in his networks of being “the home of the characters that angered the Cuban government.” This Wednesday, he tweeted: “Dear new Cuban followers, thank you for your kindness in recent days. I love your drawings and I love the media-characters [yes, the doll is a media] that you are using as your profile image.”

Flork was referring, for example, to the “portraits” that the visual artist Julio Llopiz-Casal has made of numerous activists, journalists and other ordinary citizens, using that character as a basis.

“I immediately realized that it was very versatile and very effective,” Llopiz-Casal tells this newspaper, saying that he had already seen how many network users were modifying Flork’s drawing for their messages.

He began to do it almost by chance, quickly, with a phone application, at the request of a friend, identified on the networks as Guajiro Cubano, and from there, an avalanche of requests came, such as those of Saily González, Fernando Almeyda, Daniela Rojo, Luz Escobar “and even people I don’t know at all.” Although the demand exceeds his capacity, he says, he tries to tell everyone that yes, he is happy to interact in this way with other Cubans.

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

The thief was captured on Galiano street, in Centro Habana. (14ymedio)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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