According to a document that Torres shared on her social networks, the Havana Provincial Prosecutor’s Office determined that it was not necessary to submit her case to the Court, although she was fined 3,000 pesos.
“I’m not satisfied with the fine they gave me,” the opponent, a former prosecutor of the Supreme Court and member of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), argued in a live broadcast, because paying it implies acknowledging “that I committed a crime, which I did not commit, but already, it is preferable to be free than to be in prison.”
Torres Cruz spent ten months in jail during the criminal process, after being accused of an attack in May 2021 by Lieutenant Colonel Kenya Morales, of State Security, according to what she herself told this newspaper. In the street, she had rebuked presenter Humberto López, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, who aggressively tried to take away the phone with which she was filming him. The activist learned of the accusation against her when she went to the police unit to report López for assault. continue reading
In the document made public this Thursday, the Prosecutor’s Office specifies that it took into account in this decision “the low social harmfulness of the event,” “the illuminating position” that the accused showed, which assumed “an attitude of repentance” and the family situation “being a mother of two children” and currently being “pregnant.”
That, Torres Cruz asserted in her video, is a lie: “They gave me my freedom because of all the kidney problems I have.” In any case, the opponent appreciates being at home with her family and insists that we must continue fighting for “the thousands of innocent political prisoners who are in prison.”
After the altercation with López, last year, the activist assured that the official spokesman hit her and tried to take her cell phone, a scene that was partly broadcast live through the social network Facebook. At that time, Torres recorded López leaving a building in Havana.
“Humbertico, how are you doing? Can you explain to the world why you are here in the house of a dear [lover] who has a wife?” Torres asked López. Then the presenter asks the woman to identify herself, which is followed by a struggle to, presumably, take her mobile from her and from which only voices and sounds are heard.
Yeilis Torres Cruz was arrested a few days after this incident when she responded to an official citation to appear at the police station 100 and Aldabó. She was then transferred to the Mujeres de Occidente prison, in El Guatao, in the Havana municipality of La Lisa.
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With the start, this Thursday, of the “municipalization” of sales in pesos, the lines to shop have been shortened. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 21 April 2022 — The area outside the Cuatro Caminos Market looked very different this Thursday, compared to what usually occurs every two weeks, and especially what happened on April 7th.
That day, thousands of people gathered in a line that reached almost 20 blocks, where they waited to present their ID card and be entered on the list that determines what day they can go shopping over the following two weeks.
With the start, this Thursday of the “municipalization” of sales in pesos, what some customers sarcastically called “the mother of all lines” has been diluted. Only a few dozen people were waiting at the doors of the establishment. Under the return to the older system, Cubans will only be allowed to shop at stores in their municipalities where they reside.
A police colonel explained to this newspaper that “the ID cards were not collected today” and that those who are waiting are “those who were pending from the other time.”
The collection of documents will be done next Tuesday, this time, following the new regulations, only for residents of El Cerro and Old Havana. “Once they shop they cannot shop again until next month,” explained the agent, who acknowledged that before, even people from Mayabeque, Artemisa and Pinar del Río used to go there.
The inhabitants of the areas furthest from the center are the most affected by the return to rationing by municipality, announced on Monday by this newspaper and confirmed by the official press the following day; the measure was previously in force to avoid contagion of covid-19 and was repealed in early November. continue reading
In the municipalities on the outskirts, the number of state businesses is much lower, which reduces the opportunities for residents in those areas to buy food. In some neighborhoods of Rancho Boyeros, Cotorro, the lack of stores is dramatic and the residents see their situation as part of a discriminatory distribution policy.
The authorities acknowledged that the decision was made “taking into account the existing situation with the availability of products and with the aim of making sales more viable, achieving greater equity and therefore reducing the crowding of people in establishments.” In short: because of the shortages of products and to avoid the long lines.
It remains to be seen whether rationing improves the former, but it has been shown that, for the latter, it works, at least with regards the longest line of all.
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The Delsa ship, chartered by the state-owned Cubametales, carries 200,000 barrels of fuel oil and 190,000 of diesel. (vesselfinder.com/D.Jorritsma)
14ymedio, Madrid, 20 April 2022 — After seven months without sending diesel, the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA is preparing 190,000 barrels for Cuba, according to a company document seen by Reuters.
According to this information, the Delsa ship, chartered by the state-owned Cubametales, loads 200,000 barrels of fuel oil and 190,000 of diesel to take to Matanzas, where there is a storage terminal. This latter product has not arrived on the Island since September 2021, which has forced Cuba to buy on the international market at high prices.
But PDVSA has sent, explains Reuters, jet fuel and gasoline at the beginning of the year.
Crude throughput at Venezuelan refineries has stabilized in recent weeks at around 230,000 barrels per day (bpd), according to independent figures, well below their 1.3 million bpd capacity.
Venezuela’s own production problems have led to limits on exports, but receiving this diesel now is essential for Cuba and Venezuela has decided to give its political ally a breath of fresh air now that summer is coming, when it most needs this fuel to limit blackouts. continue reading
Cuba depends on imports to cover more than half of its fuel demand and in recent months the population has become concerned about the spiral of breakdowns in power plants that further threaten reserves. This concern also grips the Government, which fears that the situation of last year will repeat itself, when fuel shortages, blackouts and heat ended up imploding a population that is also tired of the pandemic, lack of food, oxygen and freedoms; a population that took to the streets to protest on July 11.
Cuba needs around 100,000 bpd on average to cover national demand, of which, until now, it imported some 70,000, almost a third of it from Venezuela. The rest is acquired mainly from Algeria and, to a lesser extent, from Russia, Italy and the United Kingdom, according to areport by Periodismo de Barrio.
On average, the Venezuelan state-owned PDVSA has provided Cuba with some 60,000 bpd since 2019, when the crisis was already serious in Caracas due to US sanctions. But in 2020 the amount was reduced to 44,000 bpd and in 2021 to only 21,000 bpd.
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Cuba approved 16 new federal inspection-type establishments and renewed another 14 for the purchase of meat in Mexico. (Anetif)
14ymedio, Madrid, 22 April 2022 — Cuba is already the main destination for Mexican chicken meat and the cooperation will go further. Representatives of the Island’s Ministry of Agriculture visited thirty slaughterhouses that will supply beef, pork and poultry to Cuba, according to the local press.
The Cuban authorities renewed the endorsement for 14 and authorized, for the first time, 16 federal ’inspection-type establishments’, as the facilities regulated by the Ministry of Agriculture for the slaughter of animals, as well as their processing, packaging, packing, refrigeration, and industrialization for human consumption are called in Mexico.
Of these, some are in Jalisco, others in Yucatan, Mexico City, State of Mexico, Michoacán, Guanajuato and Veracruz.
Unable to produce meat for domestic consumption, after having been a net exporter in the 1950s, Cuba is forced to seek it abroad to import it, which entails a high economic cost. Its main supplier is the United States, against which the quantity acquired in Mexico pales in comparison.
According to Mexican data, last year 8,600 tons of pork and poultry products were exported to Cuba. In the same year, 307,658 tons of chicken alone were purchased from the United States, despite the fact that the embargo forces the island to buy under conditions unusual in international trade, specifically that Havana must make the payments in cash and in advance.
Since Andrés Manuel López Obrador came to power in Mexico in 2018, his country’s cooperation with Havana has increased in all areas. This Wednesday, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel highlighted “the endearing ties of friendship, history and culture” that unite both countries. continue reading
In addition to kicking off the Havana International Book Fair this week with Mexico as the guest of honor, several cultural agreements were signed this Tuesday. One of them refers to the cooperation, preservation and access to digital heritage, and the other addresses collaboration for the conservation, preservation and dissemination of bibliographic collections.
A statement published on the official website of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs explains that the fundamental purpose of the agreements is to expand and strengthen bilateral ties in terms of preservation and protection of documentary and bibliographic heritage.
Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Laura Beatriz Moreno, present in Havana, said that the purpose of these agreements is to preserve the historical memory of both nations and to highlight “their historical relations of friendship and cooperation.”
The gesture was reciprocated by Díaz-Canel, who was full of praise for the “most worthy country in Latin America when the whole world closed doors to us in the first years of the Revolution” and has maintained “that friendship, that affection and support.”
“These are the bridges that are stronger than any other type of relationship, they are the bridges that we must continue to aspire to rebuild, to strengthen, that can be an example for a world that in the midst of the pandemic is thinking about wars when it should be thinking about how all our efforts were focused on saving human lives,” he added.
López Obrador will visit Cuba between May 5 and 9, as a part of a tour that will also take him to El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Belize, and where the Mexican president plans to address the issue of the wave of migration in the region.
Díaz-Canel has been to Mexico three times. The first, at the inauguration of López Obrador, in 2018, the next in 2019, and the last in 2021, to attend the CELAC summit and the celebrations for the independence of the neighboring country.
Cuba and Mexico have maintained uninterrupted diplomatic relations for 117 years, although with ups and downs, especially during the mandate of the conservative president Vicente Fox (2000-2006).
The subsequent return of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to the presidency, led by Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), improved ties between the two countries and with the arrival of former ’priista’ López Obrador to power they have gained a new impulse.
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The last photograph of Elián López Cabrera before he left Cuba. (Facebook)
14ymedio, Madrid, 22 April 2022 — Elián López Cabrera, the diving instructor who arrived in the US at the end of March on a windsurfing board, thought he was going to die on his way to Florida, but today he is safe and staying at a friend’s house in Miami. The migrant, who left the island for health reasons and to give his daughter a better future, has recounted his odyssey to Atahualpa Amerise, former EFE correspondent in Havana, who currently reports for BBC Mundo.
López, 48 years old and originally from Varadero, was a diving instructor for tourists in the resort and is passionate about nautical activities. The migrant relates, as his cousin already reported, that in 2008 he was diagnosed with colon cancer for which he was treated in Cuba with chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery.
In 2009 he underwent a permanent colostomy, something that particularly affected him because of his profession. The solution to be able to continue practicing these sports was in the use of some patches that were recommended to him, but since they are not available in Cuba, his mother made them for him with a sewing machine. Nor were the classic bags available.
“I know people in Cuba who use a plastic bag with adhesive tape and it’s terrible because of the bad smell and irritation,” says López, who recounts his experiences in the first person. The discomfort caused by coping with his condition in Cuba and the desire to give his daughter Nicole a future without shortages were decisive for him to make the decision to leave the island.
López explains in great detail how his unusual exit was organized. He first chose the material, a board on which his relatives learned to navigate, including his wife and daughter, because it was wide and stable. “If there was an unexpected thing, it was that I could actually rest on it a little bit, almost lie down,” he says. His knowledge of the sea no doubt saved him, and now the board is in the attic of a Hialeah workshop. continue reading
He also added spare parts in case something went wrong. However, what he could not foresee was the change in the wind compared to what was announced, which that day was weaker than expected. Despite this, he does not regret it, and he affirms that, perhaps if he had not gone out that day he would never have done it.
The first part, his story continues, was to evade the Cuban border guards and other large ships: a costly operation due to the scarce wind. But the worst came later because, although due to his specialization he is not afraid of big waves, the currents were unpredictable. “It looks like a river in places, because the current comes from one direction and in 500 yards it comes from the other.” In addition, the wind speed dropped still more and at that moment he realized that he would not arrive that day.
López details that at night it is impossible to follow the route he planned, because the sea worsens and the darkness makes it impossible to see. A blow of the waters can be deadly and there is no one who can help you. Those hours were terrible for him, he tried to relax – impossible to sleep – on the board, but holding on to a rope so as not to fall; a wave threw him into the sea and he lost his glasses, which prevented him from seeing the GPS and, worst of all, at dawn he realized that the little water he had left had mixed with the seawater.
In the morning, he continues his story, the wind had changed his location, so he had to change the route to enter a more distant point but that day his phone, with an American SIM, began to have coverage and he was able to inform his acquaintances of the situation. His fear was that the Coast Guard would rescue him at that time, an option suggested by his friends in Florida. “There is a possibility that they will send me back to Cuba and everything will return to zero, or even worse, because this would probably mean losing my job and being classified by the authorities.”
At that point, however, he feared he would die because the shore was still far away and he was losing the strength to keep his balance or set a course. In addition, he had no food or water, so he ended up giving in to the coastguard being notified.
The Coast Guard rescued him as the sun was setting and took him to a hospital, at which point López realized he could stay in the US. The nurse who treated him couldn’t believe the colostomy patches, he explained, and even asked him if his mother was a nurse.
“My mother is a mother, a mother from Cuba, who has to be creative, who has to be innovative and looking for solutions for her son, how can she not be?” he told her.
After his stay at the hospital and processing at Immigration, he was released and is now studying how to organize his life: his legal status, a job and, above all, how to reunite the family.
“Bringing my wife and daughter over is my number one priority: my wife is my right hand, left hand and both feet, she is my nurse, she is my dietician; she is my partner in life during my illness, in the years afterwards and in this latest madness,” he says.
And, about his daughter, he only asks that she have opportunities for the future. “That she is in a place where she can develop as a person, as a professional, lead a different life than the one we led in Cuba.”
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Díaz explained that the film portrays the story of Simona, a centenarian Spanish woman. (20minutos)
14ymedio, Havana, 22 April 2022 — Cuban filmmaker Rolando Díaz has just premiered his latest film, An Elephant on a Spider’s Web, at the Seattle Film Festival in the United States, a look at old age with touches of comedy.
“Living 110 years is no small joke,” the director told the Spanish newspaper 20minutos, in an interview in which he explains that with his film he intends to expose “the inaccessible meaning of life” based on the testimony of Simona Hoyo, a woman who just turned 110 years old.
Díaz says that the film is a “metaphor of the weight of life,” where he tried to maintain comedy and drama, because “you have to know how to laugh” about human existence.
“What’s the use of worrying about death? After all, if we have to die, it’s better to do it smiling,” reflects the 76-year-old filmmaker who, to delve into the history of the centenarian traveled to the town of Villar del Humo, in the Spanish province of Cuenca, where she is originally from.
The production company Quatre Films explained in a statement that the film aims to “give prominence to women who washed dishes, worked and took care of their own” and who have been “secondary characters”; In addition, it addresses the issue of advanced old age and the fear of growing old: “What will happen when we can no longer fend for ourselves?”
After being premiered at the Seattle Film Festival in the United States, continue reading
the production will open the Festival de Cine Documental Docs Valencia on May 6.
Díaz entered the story of the long-lived Simona through the actress Ángela Bermúdez, the musician Cristina Ases and the plastic artist, Alejandra de la Torre.
A Cuban living in Spain, Díaz left the island in the mid-1990s and among his films is Dossier de Ausencias, winner of the Best Production Award at the Ibero-Latin American Festival of Trieste, in Italy, in addition to Los pájaros tirándole a la escopeta, En tres y dos, Los camino de Aissa, Cercanía and Melodrama, his first film made after leaving Cuba, in 1995.
“Those without a voice have the right to have it,” Díaz dared to say in Havana, in December, during the presentation of the Festival of New Latin American Cinema. “I consider myself part of the national cinema, especially what young talented filmmakers such as Carlos Lechuga, Miguel Coyula, José Luis Aparicio, Fernando Fraguela, Carlos Quintela, Heidi Hassan and Patricia Pérez are doing and have done. The last three names are already in exile.”
Thus, the director asserted that ignoring “the courage of those who only ask for the right to speak, think differently and demonstrate peacefully” would be “a cowardly act” for not recognizing those truths.
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Liss Echevarría González, the property owner, points to the garage from which the motorcycles were stolen. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Havana, 21 April 2022 — A family from Nuevo Vedado, in Havana, still does not know if they are living inside a movie with a lousy script. A thief has broken into their home twice, and the alleged perpetrator has yet to be arrested or brought to justice. Desperate, the victims have chosen to make known publicly the irregularities of their case.
It all started when Radiel, 26, entered Omar Díaz Escaurido’s and Liss Echevarría González’s house at dawn on July 29th, 2021. Accompanied by other accomplices, the young man picked the exterior gate lock, entered the garage and stole two motorcycles. He took advantage of the fact that the couple was sleeping and that 38th Street and Zoo Avenue, where they live, is located in an area of the city with little traffic.
After noticing the vehicles’ absence, the couple knew who the culprit was, since they knew him as a client of the mechanic shop that Díaz runs in his home. In addition, one month earlier, the impatient thief had posted on social networks an ad for the sale of those motorcycles. With that suspicion, they reported him to the police. The uniformed men arrived at Radiel’s house, found the vehicles and recovered them.
It seemed that the situation was over, but an unexpected turn of events awaited the family. The investigators accused Radiel of a crime of reception (concealment of stolen goods) and not that of robbery with force in an inhabited house. The difference is one year in prison in the first case, 30 years behind bars in the second. In addition, the defendant was able to be released pending trial. continue reading
Barely three months later, the same criminal broke into the house for a second time and stole again.
The padlock on this outer fence was broken to get into the house. (14ymedio)
The victims would still have to live a disturbing déjà vu. After just three months, the same criminal entered their house for a second time and stole those two motorcycles again, plus a third one.
The same day of the robbery, Radiel had an accident while driving one of the stolen vehicles. He ended up in the hospital with a broken leg and his victims saw in that mishap the opportunity to call the attention of the police authorities. Now the thief was not going to be able to escape the iron hand of justice, or so they thought.
But the response of the uniformed men was not what they expected. Since the suspect was convalescing, the police officers at the Zapata y C Street station in El Vedado argued that they could not interrogate him in this condition and that they were not going to include all the documentation obtained when analyzing the scene of the traffic accident in the investigation file.
Dissatisfied with the police process, the couple managed, after much pressure, to have the case transferred to the Technical Department of Criminal Investigation on Picota Street, in Old Havana. But the transfer of the file did not start off on the right foot. The new investigators refused to prosecute the offender, citing his state of health.
Radiel took advantage of that time and sold the vehicles for parts, according to what his victims denounced to 14ymedio. The complaints to the municipal and provincial prosecutors, to the Department of Attention to Citizenship of the Ministry of the Interior and, much less, the letters sent to the Council of State were of little use. So far, all those claims seem to have fallen on deaf ears.
“There has been negligence and, in some way, abuse of power, especially when we, who are the victims, have been treated like criminals”
Diaz keeps his clients’ motorcycles that are undergoing repairs in this garage. (14ymedio)
The family also complains of the mistreatment received during their complaints. “There has been negligence and, in some way, abuse of power, especially when we, who are the victims, have been treated like criminals,” says Liss Echevarría forcefully.
To highlight the absurd situation, the family has sent a lengthy complaint to all official or independent media outlets that they know. Last Sunday, Echevarría showed this newspaper the garage of the house where both robberies occurred. The motorcycles of clients whose vehicles Diaz repairs are kept in the place, so it is not uncommon for there to be several of them every day.
Echevarría clings to a miracle: that the publication of his complaint reaches the ears of high-ranking police officers in Havana. “We have tried to arrange an interview with Colonel Moraima Bravet Garófalo, head of the General Directorate of Criminal Investigation of the Ministry of the Interior, who we have been told is very strict, but we have not been able to get her to assist us,” he lamented.
“I’m hopeful that when her name comes up in the media, she’ll know we want her to listen to us.” The couple is tossing a bottle into the turbulent sea of so many reports of theft that are heard throughout the city.
Translated by Norma Whiting
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Luisa Fleita Bravo and her son, Rolando Vázquez, sentenced to 21 years in prison in La Güinera. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 22 April 2022 — Until a few months ago, María Luisa Fleitas Bravo’s main concern was to repair the roof of her house in the Havana neighborhood of La Güinera, which was damaged by Hurricane Irma, but now her mind is occupied with another drama. Her son, Rolando Vázquez Fleitas, was sentenced to 21 years in prison for sedition after the popular protests last July.
This Thursday, Fleitas reviewed for 14ymedio that day nine months ago in which her life and that of her son were twisted forever. Vázquez was 32 years old at the time and that July 12 “he wanted to have a drink, so he went to a kiosk that his brother has where they sell that kind of thing,” the mother recalls.
“They stayed for a while talking and when he went to return home, people were already on the street,” she details. “There is a video in which he is seen crossing the street, going through the crowd, and then continuing on his way. Just because of that image, in which Rolando is not seen joining the protest, they condemned him.”
“My son did not participate, there is not a single proof that he was in the demonstration. He was not even arrested that day, but on July 21 they summoned him for an interrogation at the Capri police station [ Arroyo Naranjo municipality],” she explains. “He was calm because they told him it was just to ask him a few questions, but he didn’t come back from there.”
In the file that was presented before the People’s Court of Havana, to which this newspaper had access, it is stated that Vázquez and several of the defendants in the same case threw stones at “local government officials and residents of the neighborhood, who were defending the Revolution and counteracting the advance of the accused,” before the demonstrators. continue reading
But the videos presented at the trial do not confirm this sequence, according to family members consulted by14ymedio, witnesses to the protest and people who attended the oral hearing in the courtroom. The attacks began from the side of the defenders of the government who tried to prevent the demonstrators from continuing to advance and more neighbors joining them.
After the first interrogation, Vázquez spent about two weeks in the Capri station, then he was taken to the 100 and Aldabó detention center where he was kept for about two months. Later he was transferred to the Valle Grande prison until, after the trial held last December, he was confined in the Combinado del Este, the largest prison in Cuba.
Without a criminal record, before his life was confined behind bars, Vázquez was dedicated to construction as part of a brigade of private workers. “His dream was to help me repair my house because Hurricane Irma, five years ago, left it in disarray,” adds Fleitas.
The family has lived in La Güinera for two generations, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the Cuban capital. After the partial collapse of the house, its six residents, including a baby, live in a piece that miraculously remained standing. The mother worked as a domestic worker but since last July she couldn’t take it anymore: “I don’t have the strength to do that while my son is in prison.”
Rolando Vázquez Fleitas was born in the convulsive year of 1989, shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He did not get to know the time of certain prosperity that the subsidy of the Soviet Union underpinned during that decade on the Island. Since he was a child, he lived with the dual currency system and the need to have dollars to buy shoes or toys.
“Here you live very badly because it is a very unhealthy area. There are many people whose houses have fallen. There is no future here in La Güinera, that is why the young people took to the streets that day. After the protest they came and they fixed three or four streets, but that’s not enough,” the mother now insists.
“A few days before the demonstrations, my son had returned from his first trip to Russia and was hoping to help me solve the situation at home. He told me, I’ll be able to make some money to help you. He had everything planned to return to Moscow in September, but they stopped him before he could go,” laments Fleitas.
“I managed to enter the last day of the trial because his wife entered the day before. There were 17 people from La Güinera who were being tried in that group, including women.” In the same case, a father and a daughter, Fredy Beirut, 64, and Katia Beirut, 35, were tried. “The relatives even fainted when they left the Court after seeing what was happening there.”
“Many lies were told,” asserts the woman, including that in La Güinera they had assaulted the police station. “There is a lot of falsehood in that, because how could they attack that place with just their hands, in the images you can see that they don’t have anything on them.” Fleitas adds that in the videos it is seen that those who began to throw stones at the people were “them,” that is, the pro-government supporters.
“The defense attorney performed well but in many moments of the trial they did not let him speak,” she laments. “Many injustices have been committed against my son and against the other detainees in that case. I know young people who were only in the doorway of their house and from there they made a video of the demonstration and they have sentenced them to a lot of years.”
After receiving the sentence, the family began an appeal process from which they are still awaiting a result. “As a mother, I am hopeful that he will be released soon, but I am not optimistic. I only know that he cannot spend so many years in jail, because there is no evidence. He is innocent.”
With a son in prison, the family’s economic situation has become more difficult to cope with: “Once I went to visit him in prison and I couldn’t bring him anything to eat because I didn’t have anything. His wife sometimes brings him food, but I sometimes I can’t.”
“We can hardly talk on the phone because they have him under close surveillance. The letters we send him are all read,” laments the mother. “When he calls me we talk very quickly, he asks me how I feel and he almost has to hang up. Because they give him a few minutes and he also has to call his wife and his brother in that time.”
“In prison my son spent several days locked in a cell from which he could not leave for an ‘operational’ issue, so the guards told us. But when I went to find out, they told me it was for protection but they did not give me details. Something must have happened to him for that but they didn’t want to tell me and that worried me a lot,” she adds.
The mothers of the detainees that day in La Güinera “are not so united. Sometimes yes, other times not.” Last Wednesday, Fleitas was summoned by State Security to warn her not to film more videos of denunciation to post on social networks. “I told them that I was going to continue doing them because that is my son. I am going to continue demanding Rolando’s freedom.”
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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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14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 21 April 2022 — The figures do not say everything, nor does the news, the official reports, the terrifying images in front of the current of the Rio Grande or the thickness of the Central American jungles. In every Cuban who emigrates there is a dramatic inventory that counts what he carries in his luggage and what he had to leave on the Island.
They carry with them everything they learned in school, the vaccinations they received as a child, their work experience, their academic titles; what their parents invested with love and patience so that they would be a good person, what the country (not the Government) invested in subsidizing their precarious diet.
They also drag along the perhaps useless tangle of tricks and simulations that allowed them to evade surveillance, sneak into a line, invent a medical certificate for not going to work, an excuse to miss a fashion show, waste time at the office, get a snack to facilitate an appointment at the dentist.
They leave behind that part of their family that could not or did not want to accompany them on the adventure. They had to get rid of books, clothes, shoes, music records; the posters, paintings and ornaments with which they decorated their most intimate surroundings. They abandoned love letters, childhood photos; they left promises to keep, appointments to keep, thousands of things to do. continue reading
Many of those who emigrate will have to bury a past that they once felt proud of and that today makes them ashamed: medals, diplomas, the cards that identified them as members of a party (the only one allowed), of mass organizations, of unions. At the foot of that past that they bury, they formally renounce an uncertain long-promised future.
In the baggage, backpack or suitcase with which an émigré manages to leave this country, squeezed into a corner, is his Cubanness, the one that makes him shed a tear when he listens to the national anthem; traveling with him is the arrogant belief that this is, despite everything, the most beautiful island that human eyes have ever seen, where the most beautiful women on the planet live and the best music in the world is produced.
They will arrive at their destination and celebrate the success of their journey. When they check their luggage, they may discover, like an unwanted object, the bitter feeling of defeat that comes from having to leave the place where they were born without having done everything possible to change it.
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The colorful decoration, the neatness of the tables and Fress’s fully stocked shelves attracted the attention of those who passed by. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 22 April 2022 — A new store that takes payment in Cuban pesos opened its doors this Friday in Carlos III Plaza, in Centro Habana. The private business, named Fress – which until now provided its services through various online shopping sites with home deliveries and payments from abroad – not only offers a variety of food products, but also has cafeteria service. In addition, it has two peculiarities: very high prices and a foreign manager.
Sources from the shopping center confirmed to this newspaper that the state premises were rented to a Spaniard, something unusual in Cuba for an establishment of this type. The manager himself cordially welcomed his first customers this Friday.
Already in the early hours of the morning, a score of people gathered at the doors of Fress. The colorful decoration, the neatness of the tables and the large shelves called the attention of those who passed by.
However, two women waiting to enter commented loudly that the prices were not that attractive. “For example, a can of condensed milk, which is in state stores for 35 pesos, is sold for 250,” said one of them.
As the hours passed, the line began to grow, and the employees of the place had to establish an order of entry.
“Is this on the ration book?” An older man asked him, approaching the line, to which they replied: “No, sir, if it were the normal price, there would be a crowd of people here.” continue reading
Before opening this place, Fress offered its services through several online shopping sites to deliver at home and with payment from abroad. (14ymedio)
Inside, the disappointment was directly proportional to the expectation raised by the opening of Fress, especially considering that almost all the premises in Plaza de Carlos III — since it reopened after months of being closed due to the covid pandemic — accept payment only in freely convertible currency, with the exception of the food market with very long lines.
“The pizza is cold and the drinks are hot, you tell me,” a girl complained, getting up from the table. “And the potatoes and croquettes are hard,” pointed out another young man sitting at a table in the cafeteria area.
Faced with the complaints of a couple of elderly women, who regretted that there was no differential treatment with the vulnerable, the head of the café told them that eating there was “a luxury and not a necessity.”
Many of the curious did not go beyond looking in the windows, from where they could see a box of Pringles potatoes at 350 pesos, Toblerone at 380, a box of 24 cans of soft drinks at 2,640 or a little more than three kilograms of Gouda cheese at 4,000 pesos.
Many of the curious did not go beyond leaning into the windows, from where Fress’s high prices of could be seen. (14ymedio)
“It’s the same prices as resale on the street,” a Havana woman protested before walking past.
The resellers, along with the coleros — people who stand in line for others, for pay — are the key targets of the authorities since the Government authorized the sale of goods for payment in foreign currency, first of food and cleaning products and later, of other essential items, such as clothing or footwear.
Without going any further, in a speech made public only a few days ago but delivered on April 9, President Miguel Díaz-Canel denounced “some phenomena that cause there to be a certain way of distribution through channels that deviate from the concepts of justice that defends our socialist construction.”
On a first visit, it does not seem that social justice is among Fress’s objectives, which does not look very much like ‘socialist construction’ either. After spending more than half an hour in line, a young man who managed to get in came out empty-handed said, “Forget it, this is a reseller store authorized by the dictatorship.”
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“This year things are worse than last time,” observed a woman from Havana while covering herself from the sun with her hand. “There are very few buses.” (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodriguez, Havana, 21 April 2022 — The line this Thursday to take a bus to the fortress of San Carlos de La Cabaña, the venue for the XXX Havana Book Fair (FILH) until April 30, was long and crowded. The wait for transport was almost an hour, as transit is, once again, experiencing a crisis in Cuba.
“This year things are worse than last time,” observed a woman from Havana as she covered herself from the sun with her hand. “There are very few buses.”
During the wait, the visitors were filling the bags they carried in their hands with food. They would eat upon arrival, in the gardens surrounding the fortification, from where one can see, in the distance and with the sea in between, the advanced construction of the so-called “López-Calleja tower” competing for the first time in more than 63 years with the profile of the emblematic Habana Libre hotel.
At the gates of the fairgrounds, the waiting time multiplied: hundreds of people waited in line for up to two hours. “Fortunately there is something cool,” commented an old man with a snort.
At the gates of the fairgrounds, the waiting time multiplied: hundreds of people waited in line for up to two hours. (14ymedio)
Once inside, visitors milled around and crowded around the counters, but they didn’t buy much. In the first FILH after the launch of the so-called Ordering Task*, complaints about high prices were widespread. Miniature books (ranging from literary classics such as The Little Prince to titles with jokes for adults or self-help) at 650 pesos, glitter at 400 pesos, markers at 1,200 pesos… “Not to mention, even water and soft drinks,” protested a young man who asked about the price of a backpack. continue reading
The featured guest country, Mexico, aroused some expectation, judging by the line of people waiting to enter its pavilion, located in room A. However, people left soon, dissuaded by the more than 400 pesos average cost for the books, almost all of them edited by the state publisher Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Once inside, visitors milled around and crowded around the counters, but they didn’t buy much. (14ymedio)
Among the few Mexican private publishers represented were Planeta, Almadía and Sexto Piso, all of them at small tables covered with a precarious table cover and colored “papel picado” – elaborate paper cuts – typical of the traditional Day of the Dead in Mexico.
It was the books of these publishers that were offered at a more accessible price, which was understood by looking at the publication dates: none was new and there were titles from 2012 and 2013. Unsold inventory.
One of them stood out: Commander. The Venezuela of Hugo Chávez , by Rory Carroll from the Sexto Piso publishing house (2013). It is a report that illustrates the rise of authoritarianism in Venezuela and the failure of the social programs of Bolivarism, something that would surprise the Cuban authorities who allowed it to be offered if they knew. Such a thing is doubtful: the two copies on display were closed, and the public passed by when they saw the face of the deceased president.
Among the few Mexican private publishers represented were Planeta, Almadía and Sexto Piso. (14ymedio)
Outside the fairgrounds of La Cabaña, in the Casa Benito Juárez (known as Casa de México), in Old Havana, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, director of the Mexican state publishing Fund for Economic Culture (FCE), presented Nueve noches con Violeta del Río [Nine nights with Violeta del Rio], by Leonardo Padura.
The Havana author was not present in person but he sent a video message from Madrid, where, he said, he is “for work.” In the message he thanked the FCE for the presentation and expressed his wish that the Fair be successful and bring reading closer to the Cuban public.
Taibo, for his part, highlighted the relationship between the two since they met in the International Association of Police Writers in the 1980s and referred to Padura as a “author critical of the Cuban reality that he lives.”
Attendees in the gardens that surround the fortification, from where one can see, in the distance and with the sea in between, the advanced construction of the so-called “López-Calleja tower.” (14ymedio)
The director of the Fund explained that the new book, which he defined as a “long love story,” will be included in the Vientos del Pueblo collection, a series of books launched by the Mexican state publisher at very low prices (and published at very low quality).
*Translator’s note: Tarea ordenamiento = the [so-called] ‘Ordering Task’ which is a collection of measures that include 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 other measures.
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The updated list of minors less than 18 years of age imprisoned in Cuba for 11J grew to include 36. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Madrid, 18 April 2022 — Prisoners Defenders (PD) stated that in Cuba, there are children even as young as 13 and 15 years old in jail for having participated in the peaceful demonstrations last July 11th (11J). The cases of these 13 minors, which have received less visibility, are included in the NGO’s report published Monday and presented to the United Nations on Friday .
In the report, PD denounces the systematic violation of Children’s Rights on the Island, focusing on two points: on one hand, the arrest of minors less than 18 years old following 11J, a total of 36; and on the other hand, the forced disappearance of thousands of parents and children that result from the internationalist brigades.
Thus, it states that 13-year-old Erik Yoángel Héctor Plaza, is in pretrial detention in the Helpi prison in Matanzas, for the crimes of assault and public disorder. “The accusation is very flimsy,” explained Prisoners Defenders, “and there remains the possibility that, like the majority of accusations we’ve analyzed, it is false.”
Furthermore, the report continues, “in Matanzas, the State Security forces have a record and plenty of evidence that they behaved with extreme aggression against the peaceful protesters, and we also know that there could be some isolated cases, of a response of legitimate self-defense.”
Along with Héctor Plaza, the organization took up the cases of Alexander Morejón Barroso, a 15-year-old resident of La Güinera, who they state was “arrested and taken to the 100 y Adalbó torture and interrogation center”; he is also in pretrial detention accused of public disorder and contempt. So too are Leosvani Jiménez Guzmán (age 15) held at the maximum security prison of Guanajay, Artemisa, and Rubén Alejandro Parra Ricardo (age 15) taken to the juvenile prison in Holguín after being “disappeared” for three months; his mother has only visited him once during this time. continue reading
The remaining 13 cases include young people 16 and 17 years of age, though PD clarified that they have not been able to verify all of the data. Among them are two girls, Katherine Martín Taquechel and Gabriela Zequeira Hernández, both from Havana. The first, the organization denounced, was “repeatedly beaten” in El Guatao prison “despite having epilepsy.” Following a “summary trial” held on July 20, she was sentenced to a year in jail which, upon appeal, was reduced to one year of house arrest.
For its part, before the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child, Havana insisted that they do not have any detainees younger than 16 years, which is considered legal age in the Island’s criminal code. “Currently, 662 inmates between 16 and 18 years of age are held in penitentiaries. Two hundred sixty-four are between 16 and 17 years of age, while the rest have already turned 18,” stated the Government in its response.
The minors arrested in Cuba in the last several years, the regime continues, “are mostly boys between 14 and 15 years of age, mestizos and black,” whose “family situation” is characterized as “incomplete (primarily, absentee fathers); dysfunctional; with failures in the use of educational methods and in controlling the activities of their minor children; as well as the presence of indicators of domestic violence such as arguments, mistreatment and alcohol consumption.”
In any case, with 13 new cases, the updated list of political prisoners younger than 18 years of age exceeds 36. Of those, 22 cases are detailed in the Madrid-based NGO’s report.
In the second point of the complaint, the report offers testimonies of more than 1,000 Cuban professionals who have suffered the so-called “8 year law,” the period during which the regime does not allow anyone who ’deserts’ an international ’mission’ to return to the Island; this implies that there are between “5,000 and 10,000 children” in Cuba forcibly separated from their parents.
Translated by: Silvia Suárez
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Some residents consider that the now restricted product could no longer even be called “bread”. (Escambray)
14ymedio, Havana, 28 March 2022 — The excuses of Cuba’s Provincial Food Industry Company (EPIA) about the poor quality of the bread sold through the ration book do not convince even the official press. This Monday, the newspaper Cinco de Septiembre published a long article against what it calls “the prevailing impudence in the production of the valuable food.”
The local newspaper refers to, specifically, an EPIA statement published on Facebook where the state-owned company claimed, while defending itself from criticism received from consumers’ criticism, that what affects the “correct preparation of the final product” is the wheat flour that it gets, which “has weak quality characteristics.”
In spite of the efforts of master bread makers, workers and directors striving for creating a quality product,” EPIA acknowledged that, “The bread that is obtained is coarse, uneven, it crumbles to the touch and has little volume, darkened color, strong musty smell and an acid taste caused by the longer-than usual fermentation time in order to obtain the dough.”
Similarly, they predicted that this situation would continue, “taking into account that the wheat flour in reserve for the coming months has the same characteristics.”
The note in Cinco de Septiembre, entitled El Infortunio del Pan (The Bread Misfortune), a “soap opera reruns” says that such a response from EPIA “stoked the fire,” and states that “around 75% of users” questioned “the arguments presented,” considering them “excuses,” “regrets,” “unjustifiable justifications” and a “script that no one believes any more.” continue reading
“They are fodder wheats from second and third harvests from nations such as France, and occasionally from Argentina and Germany,” the official details
“The wheat we receive today is not ideal but it’s what the country can afford to buy,” Esther Arbolay Escobar, head of the Cienfuegos Cereals Base Business Unit Laboratory, told the provincial newspaper. “They are fodder wheats from the second and third harvests from nations such as France, and occasionally from Argentina and Germany,” the official details, admitting: “They are of terrible quality, with a high percentage of impurities, because they contain seeds from the field, corn, and sometimes they even have a mixture of green peas.”
However, the report continues, the certificates issued by the National State Inspection Office (ONIE) of the Ministry of the Food Industry in Villa Clara, “validate the levels of confidence” of the flour produced in Cienfuegos, and certify that “it is in perfect condition and meets the conditions in terms of smell, color, and other parameters.”
The poor quality of the material is not the only problem with bread, they argue from EPIA in the note. Thus, another official of the company, Jeny Hurtado Alejo, alluded to the fact that “we have not won in workers individual improvement,” that is, that the workers also have more responsibility.
In addition, “the technological conditions of the bakeries” are influencing factors. The director of EPIA, Magaly Torres Abreu, says that “the 48 installed Chinese modules” are deteriorated, and that “the breakages cause some to assume the load of others, but they no longer have the capacity for that.”
Laments abound not only among consumers, but also among bakers, such as Julián Alberto Brunet Abreu, who says that, at the Santa Elena bakery, near the Paquito González Cueto Pediatric Hospital in Cienfuegos, “even the carts to move the bread are in poor condition, and we run the risk of dropping the product when moving it from the oven to the stove.”
According to data from the ONIE in Cienfuegos, during 2022, some 14 bakeries – 11 from EPIA, and three from the Cuban Bread Company, which supplies outside the regulated basket and whose product has a slightly better quality – have been fined, “fundamentally, due to the low weight of the product,” says Cinco de Septiembre, which, they add, “has nothing to do with the quality of the raw materials.”
Translated by Norma Whiting
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Armed members of the AIC followed the Coahuila migration plan to precent crossings of the Rio Grande from Acuña to Del Río (Texas). (Facebook/Coahuila State Attorney General’s Office)
14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico, 20 April 2022 — The Government of the Mexican state of Coahuila, bordering the United States, this Wednesday integrated elements of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC), a body created in 2013 to combat crime, with the Migrant Containment Plan, with which seeks to prevent undocumented immigrants crossing the Rio Grande.
The operation began in the Braulio Fernández park, in Ciudad Acuña, through which dozens of migrants pass daily to Del Río (Texas). “This site is one of the key points,” a rescuer from Grupo Beta tells 14ymedio, which is used by “Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Hondurans, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans” to cross to US soil.
“In mid-March, 1,500 migrants arrived in the US in one day. They returned 800. And a wave of foreigners is expected before the end of this month,” estimates the rescuer. “The plan is to stop the groups before they reach the banks of the river.”
The Department of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) registered the arrival of 80,000 Cubans in the US between October 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022. And in Mexico, on April 16 Migration reported the arrest of 15,907 people originating from the Island. “The figures are from this year, in less than four months, about 1,800 of these arrests have been registered in Coahuila,” the source from the Grupo Beta shares. continue reading
The rescuer assures that at all times “the human rights of migrants will be respected and they will only be prevented from crossing the Rio Grande,” but he did not know how to respond to the carrying of weapons, visible in the images posted by the Coahuila Attorney General’s Office.
The Migrant Containment Plan is among the agreements reached on April 14 by the Governor of Coahuila, Miguel Riquelme, with the Texas Republican Governor, Greg Abbott, who at the beginning of the month announced the placement of barbed wire in the lower areas of the river Bravo to contain the migration.
Riquelme, on the other hand, opted for the deployment of 200 agents, including armed municipal and state police officers and members of the AIC, who hide in the undergrowth of the Braulio Fernández park, lying in wait for migrants who manage to evade the patrols located in the streets surrounding the river. As soon as the operation began, six Haitians were arrested and handed over to Immigration.
Minutes after the operation began in Ciudad Acuña, the arrest of six Haitians was reported. (Facebook/Coahuila State Attorney General’s Office)
Close to this area. six days ago, Grupo Beta warned Daniela Anaya, a 26-year-old Cuban with her 7-year-old son Dismel Arce, not to cross the tributary to the United States due to the strength of the current and the danger it represented for them.
And it was here in the Braulio Fernández park where Guillermo Alan Matos was found in shock after losing his wife Alexa Nadine, a Uruguayan national, and his son Ismael. They both drowned.
Wilmer Mantos, who is heading to Piedras Negras, and spent 37 days in the migration center of Acayucan, Veracruz, says that the Government of Mexico “wants to pass us off as criminals, when what we are doing is fleeing from a dictatorship, but they’re going to stop these people.”
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14ymedio, Havana, 21 April 2022 — The activist Yeilis Torres Cruz was freed from charges this Thursday after spending almost a year under investigation for the crime of attack after she herself was attacked by the official announcer Humberto López.
