Prosecutors Seek Up to 16 Years in Prison for July 11th (11J) Protesters in Cuba

Activist Yoandris Gutiéreez Vargas, tried in Bayamo for the July 11th protests. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, March 14, 2022–The Prosecutor’s Office of Bayamo, in the province of Granma, scheduled for last Friday the sentencing of the July 11th protesters processed in the last known trial. For the group of 17 people, accused of assault, resistance, public disorder, contempt and damages caused by alleged “acts of vandalism” against military personnel and vehicles of the Ministry of the Interior, it seeks up to 16 years in prison, informed Radio Television Martí.

Among those processed is activist Yoandris Gutiérrez Vargas, a member of independent organization Impacto Juvenil Republicano [Youth Republican Impact], who is currently in the Mangas de Bayamo prison facing an 11-year sentence. Last October the opponent spent one week on a hunger strike to denounce mistreatment in jail and the “unjust” accusations against him.

According to the legal NGO, Cubalex, the activist is denied family visits, the conjugal pavilion, and his telephone use is restricted. “He is under the most severe regimen, in an isolation cell,” they denounced on their list ahead of the trial.

Before Las Mangas prison, and since his arrest two days after the July protests, he was held in a jail in the municipality of Yara, from where he was transferred on October 18th.

Spokesperson for the Republican Party of Cuba, Geiler Flores Fonseca declared on Radio Television Marti that the July 11th protesters went out to express “all that they had kept within their hearts, and it was to demand freedom.” continue reading

In his judgement, the sentences sought by the Prosecutor’s office are “excessive” and referred to Yoandris Gutiérrez as a “loyal defender of human rights and a loyal truthseeker,” said Flores.

The Prosecutor’s Office of Bayamo accused them of committing assault, resistance, public disorder, contempt and damages; they allegedly committed “acts of vandalism” against military personnel and vehicles of the Ministry of the Interior.

Flores Fonseca maintains that “several protesters” attacked the Ministry vehicle because inside it were personnel dressed as civilians who began attacking protesters. “They simply tried to defend themselves,” added the opponent.

In addition to Yoandris Gutiérrez Vargas, the following were also tried in Bayamo: Abel Quevedo Miranda, Ariel Axel López Ramírez, Bryan Eladio Vega Véliz, Carlos Rafael Ramírez Quiñones, Emmanuel López Martínez, Javier Rafael Paneque Oliva, Jenry Osmar Sánchez Aparicio, Jorge Iván Díaz Puig, Juan Alberto Matos Masó, Levys González Piedra, Luis Arnaldo Leyva Pérez, Maikol Fabián Figueredo Carbonell, Rafael Cutiño Bazán, Ricardo Fernández Osorio, Roberto Sosa Cabrera and Yoel Consuegra Ávila.

As in previous cases, the trials have not been reported by state press and most family members of the defendants opt for silence, evidence of the pressure from the regime to silence their testimonies.

According to the Attorney General, the July 11th protests have resulted in criminal proceedings against 790 people, facing sentences of up to 30 years in jail.

Recently, writer María Cristina Garrido Garrido and her sister were sentenced to 7 and 3 years in jail, after participating in the protests in the municipality of San José de Las Lajas, in Mayabeque province, and a young woman, Reyna Yacnara Barreto Batista, went to prison in Camagüey, to serve the four years of correctional labor with internment to which she was sentenced for protesting on July 11th.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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With the Arrival in the US of a Radio Rebelde Announcer, the Stampede of Cuban Regime Spokespeople Continues

Alejandro Quintana Morales upon his arrival in Florida this Monday. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Madrid, 15 March 2022 — Alejandro Quintana Morales, a presenter on Radio Rebelde and also on Cuban television, arrived in the United States on Monday, “a country where I can finally feel free,” he said on his Facebook profile. The young man published a photograph surrounded by family and friends living in Florida who received him at the Fort Lauderdale airport.

“They say that I am already in the city of the Sun, that here I can express what I think without having to ‘speak softly’,” he explained in his post. Quintana adds, however, that he has “mixed feelings” for having left so many people he loves.

“I am happy, because I have found in the arms of this other part of my family the warmth to feed my reasons for joy,” he adds, before attributing his presence in Miami to a divine purpose.

“United States of America, here I am!” he finishes.

Quintana Morales, originally from Pinar del Río, had a program on the Educational Channel, Maneras de hacer (Ways of Doing), in addition to his radio program, and graduated from the University of Havana in Social Communication just a year ago. continue reading

His departure comes a few days after that of Yunior Smith, previously a reporter in the international section of the Information System who is highly critical of US policy towards Cuba. The journalist is on the country’s southern border trying to request political asylum and claims to have suffered censorship in his work.

Quintana Morales’ departure, less controversial than Smith’s, has not been without criticism. His post has received more than 600 comments in just 24 hours and, although most people wish him luck and success, there are more than a few who have accused the young man of complicity with the regime or insulted him, even violently.

In January, Frank Abel Gómez Bernal, another pro-government broadcaster, arrived in the United States, where he asked for political asylum, assuring that, although he had his job in Cuba, he “was starving.”

This February, the former director of the Cuban Television Information System and of the magazine Buenos Días, Yailén Insúa Alarcón, ended up stranded at the Bogotá airport when she tried to get to Nicaragua fleeing the island. In her case, she asked the Colombian government for asylum, alleging her life would be in danger if she returned to Cuba.
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Cuba State’s Message to Unpaid Artists: ‘Get to Work!’

Most of the economic income of many artists has come from informal paths. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 14 March 2022 — Cuban musicians who work for state institutions have not been paid since January, although many of them have already returned to the stage after the stoppage forced by Covid. The last payment, that month, consisted of the support in arrears for November and, partially, that for December, granted by the Government as compensation for the lack of action due to the pandemic.

No authority explained to the artists at that time why they reduced the payment and no one explains to them now why they have not been paid for two months. “We don’t know when and we don’t know if they’re going to continue paying, but get to work!” an employee from the Programming department replied rudely to Ernesto, a trumpeter in a group who asks to hide his real name for fear of reprisals, when asking for the umpteenth time a question that has him on the verge of despair.

“Artex has already opened, the Houses of Music are already working, they can no longer be protected any longer,” the official continued by way of explanation.

The truth is that, according to Ernesto, the places that have already opened their doors are not enough. “We are thousands of musicians, singers, comedy technicians and dancers,” he tells 14ymedio. “It is absurd that with so few sources of employment we can work as before, and to work in tourism you have to have leverage or a godfather and many hotels are also closed or do not have guests yet,” he continues, referring to the only sector where, although a minority, artists have been able to continue exercising.

In any case, despite the fact that the restrictions that prohibit dance performances and concerts have already been lifted, state institutions, such as museums and territorial directorates of culture, do not have the liquidity to hire artists. continue reading

“Even before the pandemic, it was practically impossible to work without paying bribes,” Martha, a solo singer who also requests a pseudonym, tells this newspaper. “In many places, the same corrupt culture officials who hire us charged us a percentage that used to be 10%, and even more, to let us work.”

Corrupt practices were “an open secret,”she asserts, although now, she says, not even those officials have money to pay. “How are we going to feed our family?” the singer asks desperately. “This is the only thing I know how to do.”

Despite not receiving payments by any means, many singers are invited to work in different spaces for free.

The reasons why musicians and singers agree to it are varied. “I’m going because they’ve asked me to and I don’t want to waste years, but they’ve told me they don’t have money to pay,” says Roberto, a guitarist, who also complains about the situation, like his other colleagues: “I’ve got a month working for free and the company that represents me doesn’t have an answer for me either”.

“I have been working with Culture for years and they have already called me to work, but without payment,” confirms Martha. “I’ve already done three shows and there’s no sign of money, they just say there’s no budget.”

Roberto doesn’t understand “our Ministry of Culture”: “Do they comb their hair or do they do little papers? On the one hand they don’t pay more support, and on the other hand they don’t put the budget to hire us, so what are we supposed to do? Wasn’t culture the first thing that had to be saved?” he says, paraphrasing the late president Fidel Castro.

However, the present situation is not new. Already at the end of the year, the artists were left without the payment agreed to with state companies to replace their salaries during the pandemic.

According to several singers and dancers consulted at the time by 14ymedio, the resolution that the authorities had to issue to renew the payment from November was not signed until the last week of December, and the banks were no longer working for the festivities of those dates.

To authorize the payments, in May 2020 the authorities implemented several resolutions from the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, and some specific resolutions issued by the Ministry of Culture. However, more recently, these regulations had to be reactivated periodically.

This aid is the only thing that artists have been receiving for two years, when theaters, clubs and houses of culture closed. Although before covid-19, most of the economic income of many artists came from informal paths, this monthly support was vital during the months of restrictions and border closures.

Life is slowly returning to the stages, but not the money for musicians and singers. “The place where I work is full of sheltered people, because a building collapsed and they have put them there without a date to relocate them to another place,” says Martha about the place where she worked before the pandemic. “Now I can’t find another job, the budget for culture is practically nothing at the moment.”

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The Toll on Cuban Roads Continues: Two Dead and Seven Injured in Pinar del Rio Crash

Image released by TelePinar journalist Yoslaine Sánchez Arronte. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 14 March 2022 — At least two people have died and seven are injured in a serious crash early in the morning in Los Palacios, Pinar del Río. The information has been disclosed by TelePinar journalist Yoslaine Sánchez Arronte on her Facebook page.

The injured are being treated at the Abel Santamaría hospital in the province and the Ministry of the Interior is investigating the causes of the incident. The crash occurred when a private vehicle with excess passengers lost a tire and, with it, control of the vehicle, according to one of the patients who survived.

Just two weeks ago since the last massive accident in Pinar del Río, which left one dead and nine injured when a private car collided with a panel van type vehicle from the Tabacuba de Artemisa company. The event occurred in San Juan and Martínez and those affected include three minors.

In 2021 there were 8,369 traffic accidents in Cuba, leaving a balance of 589 deaths and 5,859 injuries. Although the trend is downward, the figure is very similar to that of 2019, when there was a much higher level of travel as mobility was reduced in the last two years due to the pandemic.

The authorities once again attribute responsibility to the human factor, which is responsible for 94.2% of crashes while “only 5.8% was due to technical failure.” However, the error persists of ignoring that a modern vehicle and healthy roads minimize accidents and, consequently, victims.

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Cuba: The Loss and Recovery of the Caudillo

Educated for war, violence and insomnia – are we not descended, perhaps, from conquerors and navigators? – we are fascinated by the silhouette of power, we are pursued by the voice of the strong man, of the great captain. (Cubadebate)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 13 March 2022 — I examine my conscience about our dictators and warlords. Educated for war, violence and insomnia – are we not descended, perhaps, from conquerors and navigators? – we are fascinated by the silhouette of power, we are pursued by the voice of the strong man, of the great captain. It is not about obedience, about the primitive fear of the cacique, but about an almost metaphysical morbidity for authority. That morbidity encouraged and continues to drive the destiny of the nation, our political life, our literature and even our family world.

Cuban history often seems to boil down to the tension between the president and the struggle to free ourselves of him. In each case we were exhausted after a long war; disappointed – in the mambises, in the liberals, in democracy – pained by a previous tyrant – Batista, Machado, Weyler – and willing to give up anything, land, freedom, family, as long as there is a little peace, a little silence between the bullets.

I look at the photo of a great-uncle of mine in the thirties: a picket line of friends, in a T-shirt and suspenders; they pose shamelessly in a Machado prison. They laugh, the damned. They were journalists and troublemakers. City cockerals who made fun of the illiterate and obese president (’a nice fat man’, Langston Hughes said of him).

Hunched and nostalgic over a desk, I see my great-uncle again in a photograph from the sixties. After battling Machado and Batista, he was now fleeing Castro in his New York exile. I add – as an additional credential – that he was a close friend of Martínez Villena, the poet, and he kept some photographs of him that are now in my Cuban home. continue reading

His political conversion was methodical and slow, screened through the death of his friends and police repression. He was hardening, becoming more disbelieving. When Castro came, he recognized the whiff of despotism and understood – that dog had bitten him before – the cliff we had gotten ourselves into.

In other words, I come from a long tradition of being uncomfortable and distrustful of power. I carry that suspicion in my blood and I don’t believe in any of those who sit in the Palace armchair, I say this to avoid future inconveniences.

When I see myself so far from home, in the coldest and most memorable corner of Castile, wondering what remedy there is for what happens to my generation – writers, painters, philosophers, filmmakers, young people and good people, prisoners and exiles – how can we manage our national salvation, I return to my great-uncle, laughing at the Machado policeman who threw his photo in prison.

That memory gives me strength.

Physically we inhabit a space, but sentimentally – said Saramago – we are inhabited by a memory. We have the experience of our dead and a catalog of totalitarian bastards whose movements we analyze. We have culture and knowledge to avoid falling into the traps of nationalism, shouting and oblivion, which are the marks of the tyrant.

For my part – and after reading a lot about stabbings and flash fires in Asturias, Carpentier and Vargas Llosa – I am giving a public reading of my brief manual to sniff out dictators, in case it helps.

The despots understand our history and take advantage of it, they know how we functioned fifty, one hundred, two hundred years ago. They juggle time and words – they are excellent storytellers – they convince us of their logic, of the correctness of their statements. They aspire to be masters of history, which rarely absolves them.

They bring the rhetoric of the messiah, of the chosen one. Since Céspedes couldn’t, nor could Martí, since the others are corrupt or dead, I am the capable man. The one who came to save them. In their support they invoke the evil enemy: the imperialists, those from the other shore, those who are not with us, always better armed and with more viciousness.

They grudgingly tolerate intellectuals, journalists, artists, priests, military officers, diplomats, and international managers, because they need them. But if they can manipulate and educate them, the better. They don’t always show their faces. Batista or Castro is not the same as Díaz-Canel – a guy who looks more like Laredo Bru, a forgotten Republican figurehead – gray eminences scare me more, the tropical Richelieu, like the famous Orestes Ferrara or the sinister López-Calleja.

There is always something grotesque about them: a couple of severed fingers – Machado was a butcher among my people – a dirty beard and too long fingernails; an intolerable, Quevedian nose that cannot be covered with guayaberas. Or a demon appeal. There is everything.

They gave us free rein for infamy, denunciation, fratricidal crime. And even so, all of them – perhaps less so now, which is not the time for enthusiasm or open forums – were applauded or admired. Machado asked the time and they told him “whatever you want it to be, president.” Castro was the horse; Batista, the man; and so all our monarchs have had their dose of adoration, molasses, idolatry.

God, who saves the metal, said Borges, saves the slag. Tradition retains all our leaders, to give us a feast in conversation and reading; so as not to skid on the old enemy of Cubans: bad memory. And meanwhile, sitting on this balcony where I seem to see the island from afar, smoking, I wait.

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Cuban TV Journalist Yunior Smith Justifies his Decision to Seek Asylum in the US

The journalist has stood out especially in recent years for his staunch attacks on the Cuban opposition. (Capture)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 11 March 2022 — The official Cuban television journalist and presenter Yunior Smith has confirmed through his Facebook account that he is on the southern border of the United States attempting to ask for political asylum in that country. The information, initially spread by the ‘influencer’ Alex Otaola, has raised a wave of criticism.

Smith, who worked as a reporter/editor for the international section of the Information System and who was often criticized for his work related to US policy towards Cuba, claims to have suffered censorship of his work. However, on the Island he is remembered as one of the champions of official propaganda.

The journalist has stood out especially in recent years for his staunch attacks on the opposition, especially the leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, José Daniel Ferrer, imprisoned since July 11. Smith also had harsh words for Washington’s policy towards Havana and praised the attitude of the Cuban regime.

Now, in his post on Facebook, the journalist insists that “almost no one knows” that he has “a brother who is a political prisoner, Kessell Rodríguez… Early on I learned that confronting the government means going to prison, receiving blows, mistreatment, torture; it means isolated time without your family knowing about you, hunger strikes in defense of rights; family pain, worries, separation. And in the end nothing changes,” he says. continue reading

He insists that a comment he made about “Yunior Garcia after 15 November was never aired, because they censored me… Then I said that in Cuba it was necessary to deepen democratic practices, that while the economy was in crisis, other opponents would emerge (…) and it was too much for those who run that news program,” he relates.

“Everyone saw on the screen the Yunior Smith  who criticized other Governments, no one ever knew how many times I said No,” he asserts, but his explanations do not seem to please Internet users who have criticized Smith for having spread the official speech of political intolerance and rejection of any form of activism.

Specifically, one of the journalist’s most recent works before leaving Cuba was a commentary which the ruling party described as “provocation,” the proposal to carry out consular procedures at the Guantánamo naval base, a bill promoted by US congressmen María Elvira Salazar and Mario Diaz-Balart.

Smith began his comment by saying that the issue “should not even be a matter of analysis because the project is destined to fail and is not going anywhere,” but that “fulfilling the journalistic duty to inform and contextualize” he approached the subject, although his comment within the newscast lasted more than four minutes.

“While these U.S. congressmen pull the strings in search of further tightening relations between the two countries and want to put into practice all the ideas that come to mind,” continued the reporter sarcastically, “there are many relatives waiting to meet again.”

Smith, according to sources close to state television, was included in the news announcement due to an express policy of Raúl Castro when he was president, which imposed more representation of black people in the media, political and government spheres.

Last January, the arrival in the US of another official Cuban broadcaster, Frank Abel Gómez Bernal, caused much controversy in the exile community in Miami. The communicator, popular on radio and television, requested political asylum and after entering the country he told the press that, although he had his job in Cuba, he “was dying of hunger.”

Gómez was accused by Cuban-Americans of having allegedly criticized an exiled journalist for her position against the Cuban government, but the announcer denied those accusations. Once screenshots of the alleged conversation where he criticized that journalist circulated on the networks, he alleged that on the Island he could not comment on anything “or attack anyone, least of all a journalist or a colleague.”

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Recompose Cuba’s History, the Proposal of the Documentary ‘Veritas’

Image of the poster for the documentary directed by the filmmaker Eliécer Jiménez-Almeida. (Miami Film Festival)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 13 March 2022 — “How can they define you with the opposite of what you are?” asks a Cuban labeled as a “mercenary” by official propaganda after being part of the 2506 Brigade. His voice, together with that of several protagonists of the battle of Bahía de Cochinos – the Bay of Pigs — is heard in the documentary Veritas that just premiered at the Miami Film Festival.

The audiovisual, directed by the filmmaker Eliécer Jiménez-Almeida, proposes to look at that April 1961 from another angle, when hundreds of exiles tried to reach the Island and reverse the authoritarian drift of the Revolution. The defeat not only meant hundreds of deaths and more than a thousand prisoners, but also that the Cuban regime could write the history as it pleased.

Thus, several generations grew up with only one version of the events, loaded with stigmas against those who joined the war, frightened by the executions, the confiscations of properties and the delusions of Fidel Castro after coming to power in 1959. Veritas allows them to speak in front of to the camera, as they have never been able to do in the Island’s media.

With an intact Cubanness and without resorting to too many adjectives in their descriptions, several of the participants in the conflict detail the training in Guatemala, the haphazard landing, the moments in which they thought they were close to victory, the anguish when ammunition began to run out and the betrayal that they blame on President John F. Kennedy for not supporting them at the decisive moment. continue reading

In more than an hour, testimonies are interspersed that complete the chronology of the battle, an impeccable selection of archive material and current footage from the scene. Jiménez-Almeida reconstructs the other side of the story, as he discovers it, given that the filmmaker was born in 1983 in Cuba and grew up listening only to the official script of what happened.

The documentary sustains that rhythm of discovery, of exploration that brings to light what has been hidden for decades and is indebted to investigative journalism that avoids staying in common places or coined certainties. Perhaps for this reason, the choice of the title, the Latin name of the Roman goddess of Truth, already prepares the viewer for what is to come.

For example, the name used for the place of combat marks the speaker’s position. Castro never liked to refer to “Bay of Pigs,” probably because of its degrading connotations, so he preferred to use the place name of Playa Girón, a word with infinite possibilities of rhyme; and in addition he skillfully attached the slogan “the first defeat of imperialism in America.”

In that confrontation, the elements of the official narrative that would later be used in the face of each internal and external incident crystallized, the lines on which part of the subsequent Cuban political discourse ran were oiled: little David facing the Goliath of the North; labeling critics as mercenaries at the service of a foreign power; and raising the sovereignty of national soil to a sacred level that could even justify the violation of the sovereignty of the citizen.

That story was so effective that still today, people who cannot even point to the scene of the conflict on a map repeat the version at face value. Therefore, it has double merit that the person directing the documentary is a Cuban totally immersed in the institutional view of what happened, and he turns everything he was taught in school upside down.

“Fighting for the freedom of your country is not a duty or an obligation. Fighting for the freedom of your country is a privilege,” affirms another of the interviewees, his voice breaking. Showing the complexity, the nuances and all the parts of such a defining event is also more than a responsibility, it is a personal and artistic benefit, which Jiménez-Almeida assumes maturely and without fanfare.

Veritas provokes the need for another documentary: the one in which the voices of one side and the other intertwine to give shape to the full face of a battle. A conflict that six decades later continues to be one of the most manipulated and unknown passages in our history.

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

17 Cuban Rafters Who Made Land in the Florida Keys are in Custody

Between last Wednesday and Saturday, 46 Cuban rafters arrived in the Florida Keys in these two boats. (Collage)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 13 March 2022 — The United States Border Patrol placed 17 Cuban rafters “in custody” this Saturday after they “made landfall in the Florida Keys,” according to agent Walter N. Slosar. This detention corresponds to one of the “60 maritime smuggling events” recorded on the south coast.

The migrants arrived in the archipelago in a sailboat. After being detained, they were taken, as usual, to a migration center, where they were given the opportunity to show “credible fear” of being returned to the island.

If the Cubans convince the judge, they are “given a bond and can request asylum,” said immigration attorney Willy Allen. In the best of cases, they are released and given a document that legalizes their entry into the country. continue reading

On March 9, officer N. Slosar announced the “arrest of 29 Cuban migrants” after arriving in the Florida Keys in “a rustic boat” that had an adapted motor.

According to data from the Customs and Border Protection Office (CBP), in January, the last month for which records are available, 9,827 Cuban immigrants were detained, nearly 13 times more than the 732 in the same month of 2020, when Donald Trump was still in the White House.

The 9,827 Cubans intercepted on the southeastern border of the United States in January are part of the more than 153,000 immigrants detained in total that month, the latest in a wave of undocumented immigrants who, since President Joe Biden came to power, have tried enter the country irregularly or have applied for asylum.

The arrival of Cubans in the United States is also registered by sea, and since October 1, 2021, when the current fiscal year began, the Coast Guard has intercepted 730.

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Mother of July 11th Prisoner Released After a Change in a Precautionary Measure

A leukemia patient, Castro had to spend “a week in the hospital in January and it was quite serious because she fainted as a result of toxoplasmosis.” (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 10 March 2022 — Yudinela Castro Pérez, the mother of the young 18-year-old political prisoner Rowland Jesús Castillo Castro and July 11th (11J) protester, was approved this Thursday for a change of precautionary measure after spending almost 15 days under arrest by State Security in Havana.

“From today Yudinela, a cancer patient who cares for her little grandson, will continue the investigation process at home, for alleged contempt,” the Justica 11J platform reported on its Twitter account, noting that her son “continues to be held in a Cuban jail.”

Castro was arrested on February 24 in the morning hours, activist Arián Cruz, Tata Poet, reported then, who explained that she had been transferred to Villa Marista, a center known as the State Security barracks in the Cuban capital. Cruz later reported that, after six days of investigation, the mother had been presented with “contempt charges.”

Castro, a leukemia patient, had to spend “a week in hospital last January and it was quite serious because she fainted as a result of toxoplasmosis,” Cruz clarified. She also reported that every day she must take “a series of medications that they did not let her bring with her, and she has not taken them for two days.” This newspaper tried to contact her long before her arrest was known, but her mobile phone reports that it is out of service due to “call restriction.” continue reading

A day after her arrest, a habeas corpus petition in favor of Castro was delivered to the People’s Provincial Court in Havana because “her arrest and the subsequent proceedings were totally arbitrary,” Cruz said.

Since her son was taken to jail, Castro has denounced each of the injustices that have been committed against the young man and has not stopped demanding his freedom. In an interview with 14ymedio, she reported threats from State Security if she continued “demanding and protesting” in favor of the young man.

She has also denounced “the lies” of the regime told in the trial that was held against her son Rowland, accused of sedition and with an initial prosecutor’s request of 23 years, later reduced to 12.

On several occasions, Castro has been arbitrarily detained by State Security officials for interrogation, but she has always warned that “no matter what it costs,” nothing will stop her in her fight for her son’s freedom.

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Four Years of Forced Labor for a Young Woman Attacked on July 11th by a Police Officer in Camaguey

Reyna Yacnara Barreto Batista, being hugged by her father before entering the Granja 5 prison, in Camagüey, this Thursday. (La Hora de Cuba)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio,  Havana, 11 March 2022 — Reyna Yacnara Barreto Batista will serve four years of correctional work with internment in the women’s prison of Granja 5, in Camagüey, for having taken part in the demonstrations of July 11 (11J). The 21-year-old girl entered the prison this Thursday, accompanied by her parents to the door.

According to the independent media La Hora de Cuba, Barreto will have to remain in prison for a few days and then she will be transferred to “work at the camps,” where she will serve her sentence, probably in agricultural production.

The young woman was sentenced in a trial held on October 7th in which the Prosecutor’s Office initially asked for five years in prison for the crimes of “attack” and “public disorder,” and on December 24th she lost the appeal to the final sentence, four years of correctional work with internment.

Barreto has said that when she took to the streets that Sunday, like thousands of Camagüey citizens, the attitude of the protesters was peaceful at all times, and that the aggressive ones were the agents, uniformed or in civilian clothes, who confronted the citizens. continue reading

Before Barreto could say anything to him, he kicked the girl on her left thigh. “A kick from a robust man’s boot to me, a girl all skinny”

One of the police officers, she stated in an interview with La Hora de Cuba, hit an older man – which was recorded in one of the numerous videos shared on social networks around those days – and a boy threw himself on the ground to protect him. “Until that moment nothing had happened; Patria y Vida  (Homeland and Life), ‘freedom’, even the National Anthem was sung” she told journalist Henry Constantin.

Later, Barreto recounted, she also received a blow from an officer, whom she went to confront. Before she could say anything to him, he kicked the girl on her left thigh. “A kick from a robust man’s boot to me, a girl all skinny”, she narrated. All these actions were also recorded on video.

In the arrest of the young woman, which occurred on July 18th, a week after the protests, 15 policemen intervened, and she was missing for a few days. After two weeks in isolation due to Covid symptoms, she was released, but she continued to be harassed by State Security, according to the Cubalex organization in its list of 11J prisoners.

La Hora de Cuba points out that Barreto “has no criminal record” and that “the evidence and testimonies presented against her in the trials do not justify the aggression she received, much less the sentence imposed on her.”

They judge her, assures the Camagüey portal, “because ‘she has not shown repentance,’ according to Elizabeth Rojas, head of the court that presided over the trial appeal.”

Translated by Norma Whiting

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‘Cuba’s Greatest Enemy is Not Outside, But Sitting in the Presidential Chair’

Demonstration this Thursday in front of the Cuban Embassy in Washington for the freedom of political prisoners on the Island. (Facebook/Anamely Ramos)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 12 March 2022 — Luis Robles, the “young man with the placard,” still has not received his sentence despite the fact that next Wednesday will mark three months after the end of his trial. The Prosecutor’s Office requested six years in prison for him for the crimes of resistance and enemy propaganda.

Imprisoned since he was arrested on December 4, 2020 for walking down San Rafael Boulevard in Centro Habana with a sign calling for the end of repression and the freedom of rapper Denis Solís, a member of the San Isidro Movement who is now in exile, the 29-year-old has published a letter in which he reiterates his struggle and his goal: “Freedom for the people of Cuba.”

In the letter, dated March 3 and delivered to his brother, Landy Fernández Elizastigui, during Landy’s visit last Wednesday to the Combinado del Este maximum security prison in Havana, Robles returns to the reasons that led him to carry out the peaceful protest that today has him in jail.

“I decided to break the silence because I got tired of seeing how my country is destroyed and the government does nothing to fix it,” he explains, “because I think that Cuba’s greatest enemy is not outside but sitting in the presidential chair.”

Thus, he insists that his action was so that “fear and censorship do not continue to rule in Cuban society, so that expressing what you think and feel in any place is not a reason to go to jail, because I want Cuba to be a country for Cubans, no matter their way of thinking, so that the streets of my country are for everyone and not just for the communists.” continue reading

He states that going out with that banner and continuing to express what he thinks is the way to “be the voice of many who decided to remain silent,” and mentions Denis Solís – released in exchange for exile to Serbia – Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo Pérez Osorbo, “prisoners only for wanting a homeland and life for Cuba.”

Fragment of the letter delivered by Luis Robles to his brother, Landy Fernández. (CubaNet)

With regards to Osorbo, the curator Anamely Ramos offered news this Friday, reporting that the rapper’s lawyer “received a notification that the trial process would begin,” which the imprisoned man has been waiting for since he was arrested, on May 18th of last year, accused of “attack,” “public disorder,” and “escape of prisoners or detainees” for some events that occurred on April 4, in a demonstration on Damas street, in front of the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement, when the police tried to arrest him and he refused to get in the patrol car.

That process, Ramos explains in a Facebook post, “includes several procedures such as the issuance of the prosecutor’s request, which we still do not have.” The situation, she continues, “was what we feared: that the international coverage of the invasion of Ukraine would be used by the Cuban state to give the repression another twist and ’solve’ the problem with its most visible opponents.”

The curator, who this same Wednesday announced her departure from the San Isidro Movement, does not know if the process will also include Otero Alcántara, given that her case is in the same Osorbo file, but she affirms that these past few days she has been in close contact with the singer, who has asked everyone “to be aware of how we are going to face the trial.”

“It’s impressive the clarity he maintains to understand what is happening in Cuba and what is happening with him. Maykel has never been destroyed, and that is admirable after nine months in prison. He knows he is much more than a victim, much more than a prisoner. And he will behave as such until the end.”

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San Antonio de los Banos, Cuba, Without Water ‘and With the Plague in Our Souls’

The water delivery schedules are lengthened in San Antonio de los Baños starting this Wednesday. (Janeivs Reyes)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 11 March 2022 — Retired engineer, María de los Ángeles Alfonso cannot find an answer to the question that torments her: When is the water supply problem going to be solved in San Antonio de los Baños? In the municipality of Artemisa seven months after the protests broke out on July 11, the neighbors are still carrying buckets.

“My daily routine has totally changed because of this. Sometimes you have to wake up at dawn because a trickle of water arrives,” she details. “Here the people have a complete disgust, especially the women,” because they are the ones who mainly take care of the laundry, the preparation of food and the cleaning in the homes.

“There are workplaces, including Public Health, where managers have had to tell their workers that they can go home to wash and clean as soon as they find out that the water has arrived in their neighborhood,” Alfonso told 14ymedio. “Even people who never make critical comments in public are now raising their voices.”

Facebook has become, for the neighbors, a place to let off steam, but there they also found out this Wednesday about the new schedule for the delivery of water to the municipality. The Aqueduct Company published a schedule that lengthens supply cycles to every five days and justifies the measure due to the “decrease in water levels in the Ariguanabo Basin.” continue reading

“My son has not been able to go to school for three days because not a single drop has flowed here to wash his uniform, and all his other clothes are also dirty,” Ezequiel Garrido, a resident near the service center, told this newspaper. “As adults we tighten our belts, but this situation with children in the house breaks the soul.”

Garrido has decided to sell his home and move to some municipality on the outskirts of Havana. “I put the ad up months ago and, although the price is low, everyone who calls me and is interested in the house asks me about the issue of water because this is already a black mark that we have. Nobody wants to come and live here.”

Others choose to emigrate. “It is an avalanche of people who have left this town via Mexico, the Darién jungle or any other route,” laments María de los Ángeles Alfonso. “We have even lost doctors because the situation in general is very difficult and much more so at the hospital.” In San Antonio “we even have the plague in our souls”.

Through the municipality passes the Ariguanabo River, about 14 kilometers long. Traditionally, the area’s water supply has been supplied from its basin, especially springs and wells, but drought, industrial waste and overexploitation have severely damaged its flow.

The retiree attributes the ecological disaster that now prevents them from getting supplies from the river and springs in the area to malpractice. “The river is not cleaned, the springs are not protected,” she details. The deterioration of the aqueduct network, which began to be built in 1894, also contributes to the current situation.

Now, the authorities are undertaking a remodeling of the entire hydraulic system and promise that in 60 days San Antonio will be connected to new sources of supply. “No one has been able to tell me what day was Day One, and they are working with very obsolete machinery,” laments Alfonso, who speaks from his experience as an engineer.

Two years ago, this newspaper reported the problems of the municipality with the water supply. “Now we can change even our name because there is nothing left of ‘baños’,” an employee of the Las Yagrumas hotel joked at that time. “In my family we have an elderly bedridden woman and in all these days we have only received 20 liters of water for her to be able to wash her.”

When consulted now, the woman feels that no progress has been made in solving the problem, rather “everything is worse… This has become something chronic and the children in my family don’t know what it’s like to take a shower. Here everyone has to bathe with a little jug and in a basin and then use that water to clean the house.”

Agriculture is also hit hard by the drought. Root crops and vegetables are scarce in the markets and in the offers of the private cart vendors. “It seems incredible that this is a town surrounded by farms and fertile land, here the onion is as expensive as in Havana,” denounces the employee.

On July 11, the lack of water, the conditions of the local hospital and the absence of oxygen for covid-19 patients pushed popular outrage to the limit. The demonstration was spurred by the situation of “a town that is in ruins, its cinema is in ruins, emblematic buildings such as the Spanish Casino, the Circle of Artisans and La Quintica,” María de los Ángeles Alfonso is indignant.

That day, among those who protested, “there were many more women than men,” recalls the retiree. “We are the most affected.”

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Unanimous Submission on Cuba’s New Family Code from a Neighborhood Meeting in Ciego de Avila

Neighborhood meeting to discuss Cuba’s new Family Code in Morón, Ciego de Ávila. (Invasor)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 9 March 2022 — No one had read the new Family Code this Monday when the debate was held in a neighborhood south of Morón, in Ciego de Ávila, in anticipation of a referendum on a date yet to be determined. At the very least, sincerity reigned in the atmosphere at the beginning of the discussion, whose interest seemed to focus on same-sex marriage, one of the few issues that have gotten the attention of the public.

The Government opened this type of meeting to discuss the new rule on February 1 and promised that they will take place, until April 30, in 78,000 locations distributed throughout the Island.

“I haven’t read it, but I agree with what the code says,” said Marlén, the first to jump into the ring. Apparently with greater knowledge, Marcelo, another neighbor, was equally favorable. At first, it seemed that he was going to give a more explanatory vision of what the new rule includes, but he ended up referring only – again – to marriage.

Alberto, a retired prosecutor present at the meeting, affirmed that the new legislation is aligned with international standards, and maintained that the Government has consulted with a multitude of regulations from around the world, taking the best and most innovative of them. Although skepticism was visible in some of the attendees, on this point he was not wrong. According to legal sources consulted by 14ymedio, the legislation in no way falls short of those that exist in advanced countries. continue reading

This contrasts, however, with the lack of freedom in the country, reiterated after the July 11 demonstrations and the frustrated call for a protest on November 15, when the regime invoked Article 4 of the Constitution, that is, the “irrevocability” of the socialist system. On the other hand, there is the paradox that given the publicity that the Government is giving to the “debates” of the Family Code, the also imminent new Penal Code, more repressive, will be approved without discussion.

At the meeting in Morón, a colonel who lives in a building in the area, Carlos, took the floor to launch a whole series of slogans repeated for months by the official press. That the text was a one hundred percent Cuban code, born of ideas rooted in the nation, that it doesn’t copy anyone and that it was the revolutionary vanguard representing the people.

The argument did not stop, despite the fact that some attendees were beginning to tire. The military man continued arguing that the code was by and for the Cubans and, broadening the theme, that the enemy was trying to misrepresent the Cuban reality.

At that moment, a religious voice broke out, claiming Fidel Castro’s halo of sanctity. It was Amalia, a new resident in the area. Raising a sheet of paper in her hand, she stood up and proclaimed that she was a Christian and that the new Family Code is inclusive and based on the Bible, since it respects everyone, which Christ would approve of. To conclude, she thanked the Revolution, the Communist Party and the late Castro and cried out: “Long live Fidel under the gaze of Christ.”

When it seemed that no dissenting voice was going to emerge, Yunior took the floor to express his disagreement with the obligation to provide food to family members that appears in Article 27 of the new code.

Although the text stipulates that Cubans must help their close relatives as long as they can, the resident who had just spoken literally interpreted that to mean that she was obliged to assume the “custody” of as many mouths to feed as those that shared blood with her.

“I have 14 uncles and I only know three of them,” she said dissatisfied. The moderator asked her if her proposal was to eliminate or modify the article and Yunior stepped in to propose the latter, alleging that the duty should only be reciprocal, for those who had previously cared for one.

The novelty generated, finally, a shower of comments, and many expressed themselves in favor of the position of the new resident who, seeing the success, wanted to open a new topic: youth emancipation. However, everyone fell silent and the debate came to an end.

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Diaz-Canel and the Photo With Sherritt, Or Is It the Other Way Around?

Díaz-Canel meets with Leon Binedell. (Granma)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 5 March 2022 — I admit that I was wrong. Not long ago, I wrote an entry on this blog in which I came to say that I did not find it too interesting for foreign investors in Cuba to take a souvenir photograph with Díaz-Canel. Without a doubt, I underestimated the persuasive capacity of the heirs of Fidel Castro, or perhaps, I failed to understand what the top executive of Sherritt International can get out of a meeting with light and stenographers with a communist leader.

It is evident that these meetings take place, and more frequently than is thought, but this time the regime’s state press, always ready to campaign in favor of the communist leaders, has featured the meeting and flooded its digital editions with an extensive visual report.

A Spanish businessman who started doing business in Cuba during the Special Period [after the fall of the Soviet Union and the sudden loss of its economic support for Cuba] and who ended up fleeing Cuba when things were made very difficult for him, told me that in the first years of his stay in Cuba, there was a line, as they say vulgarly, of foreign investors, waiting to be received by Fidel Castro, and to take a souvenir photo with the Cuban communist satrap. continue reading

Those businessmen, Spanish, Mexican, Dutch, Canadian, were specialists in the techniques of flirting with the left in their respective countries. This businessman told me that a friend of his, also Spanish, wanted to take a photo with Castro to show it to the unions of his company, the Spanish CCOO, strongly anchored in the left. The photo with Castro was clearly visible on the wall of his office when he had meetings with the union. Then he would remove it. The man hated Castro, but he had to pay a price for doing business in Cuba. As you know, ethics goes as far as it goes.

Then came the tributes from the Cuban communists to those who had risked their money in Cuba, and the busts of remembrance began to multiply in the parks and gardens. It is not known how many there are. They end up being abandoned testimonials to unknown people; many of them, having paid a great deal, for monuments. Sad. The last one that has come to us from the Island was the “collection” carried out among businessmen, many of them Spanish, to finance the construction of the “Fidel Castro museum” in several stolen Vedado mansions that, in due course, will once again become the property of their true owners.

And so, when we had not yet recovered from the bittersweet taste of the 20 million dollars given by those businessmen to worship the communist dictator, we received this report in the regime’s press according to which the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and President of the Republic of Cuba, Díaz-Canel held a meeting with Leon Binedell, president of Sherritt International, which according to the State-run newspaper Granma is “a prestigious Canadian company in the mining and oil sector.” And I highlight the “prestigious” part, because Granma does not give this title to just anyone, and, furthermore, if it were not so, this company would not be able to take a souvenir photograph with Díaz-Canel.

As Granma adds in the brief note that accompanies the report (which seems more like a society note than anything else) “during the cordial exchange, held at the Palace of the Revolution, both parties discussed the potentialities that exist, even amid the tightening of the United States blockade, to deepen the participation of this company in the economic development of Cuba, especially in activities such as mining, oil prospecting and power generation.”

Wow, now it turns out that business can be increased with Sherritt, which is none other than Moa mining, and on the other hand, the Cuban communists shout to the heavens when they see that another Canadian company manages to re-establish the business of remittances to Cuba without having to go through the dark and lustful hands of state security and the army, who do not want to lose a share in this business that moves, dollar-up-dollar-down, about six billion a year. It is clear that with Sherritt they do not have this problem, and thus Ramiro Valdés and the Ministers of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, and of Energy and Mines, Rodrigo Malmierca and Liván Arronte, respectively, also appeared at the meeting.

Why yes with some and with others no? What are the communist leaders looking for with these types of meetings? Perhaps to drag Sherritt into the conflict with the United States that they do not want to resolve, or to show that these types of companies that are “obedient” are received by the “senior staff of the regime” while, on the other hand, those that do not behave well, will they ever receive such treatment?

The derivative is not this. You have to think what Sherritt gains from this report in Granma with the Cuban communist leadership. This company must have a top-level image department because there’s no free lunch. Obtaining a report like this, which will be seen by the global shareholders of this company, many of them restless and upset with doing business with a country as complicated as Cuba, is not easy and can have consequences.

At the moment, the president of Sherritt may have to face the corporate social responsibility committee of his multinational asking him a question about why do business with a country that does not respect and outlaws human rights. What is going to be done, the rules of compliance are what they are and if Mr. Leon Binedell wants to go to the financial markets in search of financing, he may find some clause against doing business with a political regime like Cuba.

It could be anything. Nothing happens naturally in communist Cuba. In this event there are winners and losers. They have chosen the moment (the prices of mineral raw materials are soaring in the world markets and Sherritt must be making a lot of money with Moa’s business in Cuba); and Díaz-Canel, who must have Putin screaming to high heaven because Cuba abandoned him in the recent United Nations vote on the invasion of Ukraine, siding with China, has used the occasion to improve his poor international image. I insist. In Cuba nothing happens by chance and this handshake between a top-level Canadian “capitalist” and a Cuban enemy of capitalism has to have some meaning. We will see.
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We Cubans Do Not Need Recipes, But Freedom To Produce Food

Why can this cabbage that I plant in an old can on a balcony a few meters from the Ministry of Agriculture give me more hope than the ephemeral plans of Acopio? (Yoani Sanchez)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation y, Havana, 11 March 2022 — The “experts” arrive, like the Brazilian Frei Betto, to tell us how we have to do it… but we already know. We have known it for centuries since the first ones who made cassava on this Island, passing through my grandparents who made thick corn “tayuyos” like those that could not be eaten in one sitting; to the “strained” peas that we gave our young children to make them grow despite their skinny legs and diminutive size… we already know.

It’s called “freedom” and it’s the main ingredient in every dish, every crop, every harvest.

Why can this cabbage that I plant in an old can on a balcony a few meters from the Ministry of Agriculture give me more hope than the ephemeral plans of the state company Acopio? Because this cabbage is freely watered. It doesn’t answer to anyone, it doesn’t have to pander to the statistics spouted by any leader strutting his stuff on a podium.

It is just a cabbage and we are just people who harvest a cabbage that knows that the land can give much and more, but it does not move with ideologies, nationalization or straitjackets designed by centralism. It’s a cabbage, it doesn’t understand parties, and hungry mouths need more cabbages like this.

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