14ymedio – Page 235 – Translating Cuba

The Acquittal of Three July 11th Protesters on the Isle of Youth Suggests a Shift in the Prosecutor’s Office

Police operation outside the Santa Clara court that tried 11J protesters on January 10. (Capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 28 January 2022 — The Municipal Court of the Isle of Youth has acquitted three July11th (11J) protesters for whom the Prosecutor’s Office requested three years in prison for a crime of public disorder. They are Ramón Salazar Infante, president of the Pinero Autonomous Party (PAP), Martha de los Ángeles Pérez Acosta, head of the same party’s human rights department, and Francisco Alfaro Diéguez, leader of the March 13 Movement (M13).

According to the sentencing document, provided to 14ymedio, the events that involved them “do not typify the crime of public disorder provided for and sanctioned” in the Penal Code.

The trial was held on December 29 and, according to what Salazar Infante told the newspaper Cubanet, the ruling has been a relief and has taken them by surprise, in view of the excessive and exemplary sentences that the courts are imposing throughout the country.

A fourth protester charged in the municipality, Juan Luis Sánchez González, was sentenced to three years in prison for the crime of “attack,” compared to the five requested by the Public Ministry. The activist was in preventive detention in El Guayabo. continue reading

The sentence was issued on January 10, although it was not made public until the 22nd, so it was not clear whether those affected, in particular Sánchez González, can appeal it, since both he and the Prosecutor’s Office have 10 days to do so.

The account of the events states that Sánchez González was passing through the place of the demonstration at the time that Loisel Castro Herrera (arrested and released a month later with a fine) was running pursued by two officers, José Rafael García Salazar and Reulis Piñón Pileta, and there, “the accused Juan Luis placed himself between the agents and the aforementioned citizen and without saying a word, he hit officer Reulis on the chin, causing a bruise, an injury that did not require medical treatment.”

The sentence details that Sánchez González denied having dealt the blow to the agent, but that this was confirmed by the testimony of the agent and by at least two witnesses. Both the relatives who have attended the trials and various civil organizations have warned that the witnesses provided by the Prosecutor’s Office lie, exaggerate or distort the facts.

In addition, neither the prosecutor’s petition nor the Court’s ruling refers to the beating that Juan Luis Sánchez González received by the agents after they arrested him.

As for the three acquitted, the document emphasizes that they acknowledged their participation in the demonstration, but that “there were no crowds of any people in the park where the defendants went,” and that “no disturbance was generated in the few minutes of these acts” and that the three defendants “stopped their behavior as soon as officer Iraimis Durán took them out of the group of people and peacefully walked to where they were told they were being arrested at that moment.”

Salomé García Bacallao, a member of the group Justicia 11J, which supports the families of the detainees with legal advice and shares the information available on the trials, sees in this court’s decision “a pattern”: that “the sentences are being delayed.” On the other hand, says the activist, “we also do not know if in those 15 days (between the oral trial and the publication of the sentence) they modified the sentence due to the international pressure that is being exerted.”

García Bacallao recalls that the trial against 36 young people present at the protest at the corner of Toyo, the place that became the most iconic image of that Sunday, when the protesters overturned a police patrol car, begins on Monday in the Provincial Court of Havana. The activist has the impression that this process, unlike what has happened so far, will be covered by the official media.

Among the defendants are six minors under 18 years of age, for whom the Prosecutor’s Office requests sentences of between 13 and 23 years in prison:

– Rowland Jesús Castillo Castro (17 years old), 23 years in prison
– Kendry Miranda Cárdenas (17), 20 years
– Brandon David Becerra Curbelo (17), 18 years
– Nayn Luis Marcos Molinet (16), 17 years
– Lázaro Noel Urgelles Fajardo (16), 13 years
– Giuseppe Belaunzaran Guada (17), 13 years

On February 7, in the same trial, the following defendants will also be prosecuted:

– Juan Emilio Pérez Estrada (27), 25 years in prison
– Asley Nelson Cabrera Puente (39), 25 years
– Donger Soroa González (30), 25 years
– Yoanky Báez Albornoz (27), 25 years
– Alexander Ayllón Carvajal (23), 23 years
– Ronald García Sánchez (28), 23 years
– Jorge Vallejo Venegas (35), 22 years
– Alexis Borges Wilson (57), 22 years
– Henry Fernández Pantera (40), 22 years
– Francisco Eduardo Soler Castañeda (49), 22 years
– Lauren Martínez Ibáñez (18), 21 years
– Duannis Dabel León Taboada (22), 21 years
– Adael Jesús Leyva Díaz (24), 21 years
– Dayan Gustavo Flores Brito (22), 20 years
– Óscar Bárbaro Bravo Cruzata (23), 20 years
– Yussuan Villalba Sierra (31), 20 years
– Daisy Rodríguez Alfonso (38), 20 years
– Ricardo Duque Solis (55), 19 years
– Edel Cabrera González (28), 19 years
– Luis Armando Cruz Aguilera (21), 18 years
– Kevin Damián Frómeta Castro (19), 18 years
– Yunior García Vizcay (27), 18 years
– Adrián Oljales Mora (23), 17 years
– Yunaiky De La Caridad Linares Rodríguez (24), 17 years
– Oriol Hernández Gálvez ( 48), 17 years
– Rafael Jesús Nuñez Echenique (21), 16 years
– Brayan Piloto Pupo (18), 16 years

This Thursday the trials in San José de las Lajas and Quivicán (Mayabeque) and Havana concluded. However, the sentences have not yet been announced.

The fourth process carried out this week, in Jovellanos, Matanzas, where the opponent Félix Navarro and his daughter, the Lady in White Sayli Navarro Álvarez, were tried, among others, ended on Tuesday.

In an audio released by former political prisoner Ángel Moya, Sayli Navarro explained that his trial went the same as others held to date (with only one companion allowed per defendant and the room “full of soldiers”), and denounced that both his father and other prisoners were handcuffed, with the cuffs known as shakiras, the entire time.

“These handcuffs have chains that are attached to the waist, and they also have other chains that go directly to other cuffs that they put on their ankles, and that’s how they walk,” said the opponent’s daughter, who was concerned because the friction of the cuff on the ankle of her diabetic father, can cause an injury and worsen his ailments.

“There was a boy who said that here at the police station they had beaten him” and even pointed out which officers were there, but the young man, she says, was denied, several times, the medical care he needed after the beating he received.

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The Cuban Minister of Health Corrects his President: Vaccination Is Not Sufficient

José Ángel Portal Miranda, Minister of Public Health, and Miguel Díaz-Canel in a teleconference with international Cuban Brigades (Estudios Revolución)

14ymedio, Madrid, 25 January 2022 — Miguel Díaz-Canel got cold water poured on him. His Minister of Public Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda, has come out to correct him just 24 hours after the leader said proudly in Cienfuegos that Omicron has not “behaved in Cuba as in the rest of the world” thanks to the high rate of vaccination. The top health official on the island has written an opinion column published in the pro-government media in which he states that it is a mistake to believe that vaccination will be enough to eradicate the pandemic.

“The threat from the virus, let there be no doubt about it, continues to be constant in the country and it does not allow us to lower our guard at any time. Those who think that the level of immunity we have achieved with the vaccination campaign is enough to make the epidemic disappear are mistaken,” Portal Miranda states forcefully.

In an exercise of realism that clashes with the fantasy statement of the President, the Minister of Public Health states that there are many countries with their health systems in check due to the high infectivity of the Omicron variant, officially detected at the end of November in South Africa. Portal Miranda gives some data: recently one million infections were reported in the world within 24 hours; a few days later the figure became 3.8 million within one day. “These are worrying statistics that confirm the real magnitude of this new wave of the virus in all latitudes of the planet.” continue reading

The minister points out that Cuba is no exception, and last January 15 added 3,562 cases of Covid-19 to the Cuban list within just 24 hours, a figure close to the 3,845 that were recorded in all of December. It also puts Camagüey, Holguín, Las Tunas, Pinar del Río, Matanzas, Artemisa, Mayabeque and Cienfuegos as the most affected provinces so far this year, accumulating 64.7% of the cases.

Moreover, in the last week there were 22,919 infections, the fifth consecutive increase in cases and the sixth increase in hospitalizations. This figure leads him to conclude that any triumphalism is a mistake.

The minister indicates that 92.8% of the vaccine-eligible population has been immunized and that while this is a great advantage, it is not enough, since the virus continues to spread, even to those who have been vaccinated; and the greater the number of infected people, the more patients susceptible to negative outcomes there will be. “Each death is still regrettable.”

Diaz-Canel had boasted the day before, that the forecasts in Cuba estimated an exponential growth in the number of infections, calculating that currently there would be 6,000, but they have stabilized between 3,100 and 3,600. These figures have led to update the forecasts, which predicted that the new wave of Covid would not start to decrease until March, while calling for caution.

Portal Miranda wanted to curb the enthusiasm of his boss, and he has every reason to do so. Among the countries with the highest vaccination levels in the world are Spain and Portugal, which are close to 90%, and yet have been devastated by the Omicron wave. While the latter imposed new restrictions to contain the daily number of infections, the former reported more than 300,000 cases per day.

Although the system for recording data in Spain is different from that of Cuba, the incidence with Omicron has exceeded 3,000, an infection rate never seen before in Spain, despite being one of the countries most devastated by Covid-19 (with its high number of naturally immunized population) and having a universal and free health system.

Regarding the official nature of the data, Spain has experienced underreporting, since most of the autonomous communities legalized home antigen testing as a diagnostic method (resulting in a lack of official notifications); but in Cuba this distortion also occurs, as many people do not go to the health services for testing.

The Omicron variant, for the time being, continues to be studied and, despite the record figures it is leaving in the world, it seems to be confirmed that the severity of the infection is less severe and hospitalizations are less severe and prolonged. But deaths continue to occur: there are more than a hundred a day in Spain (with a population of 48 million), in spite of everything.

At the international level, efforts to contain the pandemic are now focused on increasing vaccination in the poorest countries, all of which have very low numbers, and on developing “sterilizing vaccines.” So far, the serums that have been found can enhance immunity by producing antibodies that fight against the contracted virus and defend against a severe form of the disease. Sterilizing vaccines prevent contagion, something that Omicron has shown to be very necessary.

Although many laboratories have been working on sterilizing vaccines for some time, still none have been tested that work. The USA, India, the UK and Spain have been testing intranasal vaccines for months (acting on the nasal mucosa, they could sterilize the upper respiratory tract, preventing the entry of the virus) and some attempts have failed to replicate in humans the response achieved in animals.

However, the director of Cuba’s Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), Marta Ayala, on Monday described as “challenging” and “novel” the intranasal vaccine candidate Mambisa, in which the authorities have placed hopes that it will sterilize, something that is still far from being proven, since the serum is still in Phase 1 of trials on the island.

The remaining Cuban vaccines, which passed national trials months ago, are still awaiting validation by the World Health Organization. Ayala said just yesterday that Cuba and the WHO maintain a “close” exchange, although the organization says that the meeting that must happen prior to the sending of the information has not yet taken place, nor has the information been accepted for review.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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The Political Prison in Cuba, From Pepe to Luisma

Between José Martí (Pepe) and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara (Luisma) there is more than a century, but their stories are too similar. (Collage)

#DiarioParaLuisma day 70

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Havana, 28 January 2022 — Luisma and Pepe, it is January 28 and the situation seems so dark that I can only imagine them together and committed. I put in writing in this diary some images that come like flashes to my mind while I keep hearing news of friends leaving and spaces that are closing in Cuba:

He is 17 years old and also 34. The shackle is leaving a mark on the skin of his ankle that will remain for the rest of his life. The phone calls he makes from prison are increasingly spaced out. He was born in the Havana neighborhood of San Isidro and has a wide forehead and a mustache. His street is called Damas but it could be Paula.

“The pain of prison is the harshest, the most devastating,” he writes. When he scribbles those words he is full of hope. How can a teenager forced to break stones in the quarries of Havana maintain his hopes? Perhaps he believes that in the future, the country for which he sacrifices himself will not have young people captive for demanding freedom. He is wrong.

They call him Pepe. If he knew of someone named Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, perhaps he would stop to find out who bears those surnames that sound like knocks on a door. Action is not his thing, many criticize him, but in his brief life of 42 years he will leave a deeper mark than that of continue reading

certain scowling belligerents. His is the word.

More than a century passes for one, a few decades for the other. It’s Friday and once again their stories intertwine

An old gas cylinder converted into an alarm sounds to wake the prisoners. During the early hours of the morning he dreamed that he was making an impassioned speech in Tampa and then brandishing a sledgehammer against the window of an expensive boutique in the Cuban capital. He came to believe that he was going on a hunger strike and, immediately afterwards, he heard the laughter of those who called him “Captain Spider” behind his back.

He does not understand where these images come from. He draws the same thing on the wall of his daydreams as he poses for a photo hiding the worn elbow of his coat. He is lean and strong; white and mulatto; Creole and universal. He’s not good at swear words, but when he utters them they turn into songs. What he would most like right now is to walk again, unwatched, through the city where he was born.

He wakes up and those dreams are lost in the urgency of screams of the jailers, the lament of Lino Figueredo, almost lifeless after the rigors of prison, and of Yunieski, the teenager from Romerillo who doesn’t even know why he ended up behind bars. He helps them up, he starts the worst part of the day in any prison: the vigil.

More than a century passes for one, a few decades for the other. It’s Friday and their stories intertwine once again. “I will not hate you, nor will I curse you,” they clarify and point out, and although they bet on life, it has to be “a dignified life.” “If I hated someone, I would hate myself for it,” they manage to say. “Either you are barbarians, or you do not know what you are doing,” they add.

But yes, they are barbarians. The mediocre power that has locked them up in Cuba is, unfortunately, made up of barbarians.

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A ‘March of the Torches’ in Havana With a Huge Deployment of Security Forces

From very early in the afternoon, uniformed men guarded the entrances to the University of Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 27 January 2022 — Cordons of uniformed men and plainclothes agents guarded all the streets through which the official delegation that participated in the March of the Torches on the eve of José Martí’s birthday passed this Thursday night in Havana. But the strong security operation began two days ago in El Vedado and Centro Habana, neighborhoods where the University of Havana is located, site of the act that began at around 8:30 pm with the presence of Raúl Castro and Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel.

“And what is happening here today, is someone big coming?” asked a woman on Thursday as she was waiting to buy refreshments in a snack bar on Hospital Street in Cayo Hueso, Central Havana. “It seems so, someone big and with a big belly is coming,” answered another woman who was in the same line and everyone present burst out laughing.

Neighbors wondered what all the fuss was about as they watched rehearsals for the march of the Torches, one of the largest that Central Havana residents remember before the July 11 social uprising.

The March of the Torches is a military and political act that takes place every January 27 on the eve of the celebration of the birth of Jose Martí. The pilgrimage, which is a symbolic act for the Cuban regime, rather than a tribute to Martí, is always presided over by the highest leaders of the Communist Party, the University Student Federation and representatives of other political organizations. continue reading

Historically, the Government summons, under pressure, university students to attend, although many young people make an appearance for only a few minutes and then end up escaping through the alleys as the caravan passes by.

Caption 2: Starting at noon on January 25, hundreds of soldiers took practically by storm part of El Vedado and Central Havana. (14ymedio)

Starting at noon on January 25, hundreds of soldiers took practically by storm part of El Vedado, where the university steps are located and the march begins, as well as a large part of the Cayo Hueso neighborhood, mainly the surroundings of La Fragua Martiana where the march ends.

A few meters away, another large group of soldiers from the Directorate of Immigration and Aliens climbed the stairs of another building and rehearsed how to act this Thursday night. Some lamented because they had gone long hours without food, because they had come from a rally where details about the operation were explained to them.

“I can’t take it anymore because I’m hungry,” one of the agents complained, to which others of his companions replied in a mocking tone: “Drink plenty of water, so you can fool your stomach.”

On Hospital Street, high-ranking officials from the Ministry of the Interior reviewed the instructions he had given to State Security agents dressed in civilian clothes. “The two of them are going to join you here,” ordered one of the chiefs who, previously, had placed the uniformed men in the houses that border San Lázaro street so that they can watch the development of the official act from the balconies. A few minutes later, the young people were seen leaning out of balconies and windows that overlook the streets through which Miguel Díaz-Canel and his entourage will pass tonight.

The coffee shops in the area were also not spared the avalanche of green uniforms. In the A tu tiempo cafeteria, which is located on the corner of Hospital and Jovellar streets, dozens of cadets from the Ministry of the Interior bought all the cookies and sticks on Tuesday afternoon before the astonished gaze of the customers waiting in line . Then they quickly retreated to the Parque de los Mártires where they were concentrated for several hours.

In the last two years, several tragedies have mourned the country in the days leading up to this same celebration. A tornado caused great destruction in areas of the capital in 2018, leaving in its wake eight dead, 200 injured and more than a thousand homes destroyed. In 2020, the collapse of a balcony caused the death of three girls in Old Havana, but the protests of civil society did not prevent the Government from maintaining the official act.

The first March of the Torches was organized on January 27, 1953 as a tribute to José Martí on the 100th anniversary of his birth. Although the Government of Fulgencio Batista did not grant permission to carry it out, the students marched without the police intervening.

Ironically, this year’s march takes place when hundreds of citizens are being sentenced to long prison terms for marching on July 11 in a peaceful act of social protest through the streets of the entire country calling for political changes and freedoms.

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‘The Times of the Fat Cows are Over’ for the DiTu Cuban Businesses

The bottles of water of the national brand Ciego Montero are practically the only product that is to be found on the DiTú counters. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 26 January 2022 — What one day was, will not be. A song by José José says it and it was repeated this Tuesday by a peanut vendor looking nostalgically at the remains of the DiTú located at Zapata and C, in Havana. The decline of these establishments, which once shone for their wide range of products available for convertible pesos, has been visible for a few years, but the ’Ordering Task’* has given them their final coup de grace.

There were hundreds of establishments belonging to the Empresa Extrahotelera Palmares SA throughout the country, which in the past were popular for their sale of fried chicken, croquettes, sausages, carbonated soft drinks, ice creams, beers and cigarettes of different brands. Now, those that remain standing sell only a few products for Cuban pesos.

The bottles of water of the national brand Ciego Montero are practically the only product that is to be found on the DiTú counters. They rarely sell cigarettes and only in the most central ones are ice creams or bottles of rum sold, generating huge lines and selling out instantly. A few sell natural juices and even “timba cubana” (a guava bar with cheese), at the initiative of the same clerks who are looking for a little extra.

Workers spend long hours sitting, surfing the internet or making video calls with their families. “It’s horrible having to spend all day here doing nothing,” says a DiTú saleswoman on Calle 23, between 28th and 30th, in the Vedado neighborhood of the capital. “Hours go by without anyone coming to buy and it’s very boring having to be here just to sell sparkling water and a brand of cigarettes that no one smokes,” she lamented. continue reading

“The days of fat cows are over for us,” Rafael, a former worker at another DiTú, tells 14ymedio, adding that they used to make very good profits thanks to the variety of merchandise in their inventories. “In good days we could make up to 60 CUC (Cuban convertible pesos), but now everything has changed, and ’inventions’ can be expensive,” he says.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Rafael decided to use the money he had collected to leave the country. “I had two paths: go to another country or invest my money and not spend it.” But the flights were suspended and he never liked the idea of crossing the 90 miles of the Florida Straits in a rustic boat. “I opened my electric motorcycle repair shop, and to this day I make a living from it,” he adds.

In the midst of the economic crisis that the country is going through, the Government has transferred many of the products that used to be sold in the DiTú to stores that only take payment in hard currencies, which has caused discomfort and protests among the population, who longingly remember the “abundance” that could be found in these small premises.

In Havana’s early mornings and especially on weekends, the DiTú were greatly frequented by night owls who came to get a cold beer and something to snack on, since they offered 24-hour service.

“Before, I would go at any time and with 3 CUC I would buy cigarettes, an assortment of croquettes and sausages, a Tukola, and they would give me change,” recalls Adrián, a resident of the municipality of Marianao. “Even so, before we used to complain because nobody was paid in that currency, but at least one could go to the bank and buy CUCs with Cuban pesos. We were rich and we didn’t know it,” he laments.

With its metallic structure painted white and red, the DiTú became the lifesaver of countless lunches. On Tulipán street in Nuevo Vedado, one of them supplied its products to parents who came looking for something cheap to add to their children’s snack at the José Luis Arruñada school, but shortly after it opened the quality of the products plummeted.

“They used the frying oil countless times to be able to steal the rest [i.e. sell it on the black market],” laments the mother of two girls who was a regular customer of the place that was closed several years ago. “The croquettes were good at first, but later they were pure flour and gave you a terrible acid stomach. People made jokes about it: that you had to go with a little baking soda in your wallet if you were going to buy them.”

Among the most demanded products of these striking kiosks was the canned beer produced on the Island, which consumers accompanied with the freshly fried food that came out of their stoves. In the DiTús that had more space, the tables located outside were often full of groups of friends who, not infrequently, provoked the annoyance of the nearby neighbors by talking loudly until late at night.

The DiTú name was one of the first to appear in a family of state-owned stores that also brought the DiMars, specializing in fish and shellfish, and the DiNos, which offered pizzas and sandwiches. There is not much left of those relatives either, converted into other types of snack bars, closed or with a very poor offerings.

Now rust has taken over the metal plates that make up the few DiTús that remain in operation in the Cuban capital. That smell of fried food that came from them disappeared, the side tables show their age with their deterioration and the pandemic finished them off with its distancing measures. The croquettes that were once the target of ridicule now populate the nostalgia of those who tried them.

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

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Cuban Prosecutor’s Office Justifies Charges of Sedition Against Protestors for ‘Attacking the Socialist State’

Since the end of November, the 11J (July 11th) detainees have been processed in different cities on the island. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Madrid, 25 January 2022 — The Cuban authorities know that they are being observed and, for once, have felt the need to offer explanations “to the people and to international public opinion” about the trials that are taking place as a result of the 11 July (11J) protests. In a note published in the official press, the Attorney General’s Office justifies the serious accusations of sedition – and the sentences of up to 30 years in prison – with which is has charged a large group of demonstrators for “attacking the constitutional order and the stability of the Socialist state.”

After a preamble in which the Prosecutor’s Office levies the accusation of manipulation against those who say that the State violates human rights, and insists on attributing the 11J demonstrations to discontent generated by the context of the world crisis and “re-intensification of the blockade [i.e. the US embargo]” to “destroy the Revolution,” the data and justifications begin.

The Prosecutor’s Office places the files for the most serious cases at 117 and counts 790 people involved in “acts of vandalism” and attacking authorities, people and property, in addition to disturbing order. According to their data, 21% of the defendants already had a criminal record, although what type is not specified.

Of all these investigations, 110 have been brought to court, covering a total of 710 accused, of which 490 are in pretrial detention (69%). In addition, 115 are between 16 and 20 years old. In this group are the adults, numbering 60, of whom 41 await trial in prison, while another 55 are minors. continue reading

The criminal age of majority in Cuba is established at 16 years and the Prosecutor’s Office considers that 55 of the people between that age and 18 should be tried for the “serious acts” committed. Of these, half are in pretrial detention (28) and there are 18 who, “as a result of taking evidence in the oral proceedings, acknowledgment of the facts, the repentance shown and their position as students,” have seen how the Public Ministry lowered its request for a sanction for a minor.

To date, the note continues, 84 trials have been carried out, in 44 of which the courts have already sentenced 172 people.

The Prosecutor’s Office admits that the penalties it has requested are high and serious, but considers that the protests took place with a high “level of violence” that endangered the safety and physical integrity of citizens, officials and members of the security forces. In addition, it considers that in parallel there was vandalism against commercial establishments, fuel depots, means of transport or exchange houses, among others, and in this allegedly violent climate there was looting, causing considerable damage.

For all this, the Prosecutor’s Office considers that there was “serious disturbance of public order and deliberate purpose of subverting the constitutional order” that justify the accusation of sedition.

Although there have been many cases in which irregularities and manipulated witnesses or lack of evidence have been reported, the Prosecutor’s Office alleges that “compliance with constitutional rights and guarantees” has been verified. The Office insists that the accusations are verified and the videos have been examined, which allowed identifying those accused of “public disorder, instigation to commit a crime, damage, robbery with force and violence, attack and sabotage,” in addition to the aforementioned serious crime of sedition.

The Public Ministry also maintains that the defendants had the right to a defense in which the lawyers provided evidence and had access to the proceedings. However, several lawyers have alleged in these months there have been difficulties in being able to consult the files and obstacles when presenting appeals. The Prosecutor’s Office, despite this, claims to have processed 238 complaints and covering 508 citizens.

Aware that international organizations have placed special emphasis on minors who were prosecuted, the Prosecutor’s Office recalls that minors under 16 are not subject to Criminal Law and that of the 27 young detainees who were in this situation, 10 were interned in comprehensive and behavioral training schools and 17 received “individualized attention” in their own schools.

The Prosecutor’s Office again insists on closing the note stating the correctness of its actions and adherence to legality and insists that it ensures “the protection of the interests of the State and respect for the rights of all citizens.”

In addition to Cubalex and Justicia 11J, international organizations such as the UN and its UNICEF division for children, as well as human rights associations such as Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have warned of the irregularities that occurred around to the 11J demonstrations which were repressed “brutally” by the Cuban authorities, according to a HRW report.

Amnesty International, which also investigated the protests and subsequent arrests, asked Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel and the Prosecutor’s Office in August for a detailed report on the number of people detained on July 11, their place of detention, and the charges filed against them. The NGO, based on some sixty videos, documented several “crimes under international law and serious human rights violations” and named several prisoners of conscience.

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Rebound of Covid-19 in Cuba Forces a Postponement of Havana Book Fair

Image taken at the Rosario Castellanos bookstore, located in Mexico City, in October 2021, when it was reported that Mexico is the Guest of Honor Country for the Havana Book Fair. (Government of Mexico)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 23 January 2022 — Cuba’s Ministry of Culture has postponed the Havana International Book Fair to the month of April, due to the rebound of covid-19 on the Island since the arrival of the omicron variant. The thirtieth edition of the event has had to be postponed according to institutional sources.

“The measure responds to the epidemiological situation facing the region, where the largest number of visitors to this cultural event come from each year. Related to this, it has been taken into account that this important event is the one with the largest popular attendance of those sponsored by Cuba’s cultural institutions,” the note points out.

It also explains that the postponement was made in response to a proposal from the Cuban Book Institute.

This year, Mexico is the Guest of Honor Country and the original dates announced were February 10 to 20. With the change in date, the dates for the book fairs in all the provinces of the country will also be changed.

At the close of this Friday, January 21, Cuba there were 3,401 new cases of covid-19 and five deaths, as detailed this Saturday by the Ministry of Health in its daily report. A week ago the country exceeded one million cases of coronavirus since the first contagion was detected in March 2020. continue reading

In November, given the improvement in the epidemiological situation, schools were reopened and international tourism, a key sector for the economy, was reactivated. Some services were also reactivated and cultural activities in cinemas and theaters resumed. However, in recent weeks some events have had to be canceled or postponed.

The National Meeting of Troubadours Longina Canta a Corona also postponed its twenty-fifth edition due to the current incidence of the pandemic. The event was scheduled for January 6 to 9, but all face-to-face activities were postponed until further notice.

According to official data, more than 87% of the country’s total population — 11.2 million inhabitants — have received the complete schedule of three doses of one of the three Cuban-made vaccines against covid-19: Abdala, Soberana 02 and Sovereign Plus.

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The Cuban Government Sells Cayo Coco as a ‘Safe Destination’ Despite the Omicron Wave

In mid-November, around 27 weekly flights arrived at Jardines del Rey, which rose to 35 during the month of January. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 26 January 2022 — The Cuban authorities have taken advantage of the slight increase in flights to the Jardines del Rey airport (Ciego de Ávila) to advertise Cayo Coco, one of the main tourist enclaves in the country, as a “safe destination for travelers of different nationalities despite the epidemiological complexities in the world”.

As published by the Cuban News Agency, after the start of the high season and with the end of a large part of the restrictions due to the covid-19 pandemic, in mid-November, around 27 weekly flights arrived at Jardines del Rey, which were raised to 35 during the month of January.

The official of the Provincial Delegation of the Ministry of Tourism, Lubia Olivera Espinosa, stated that most of the aircraft came from Canada and Russia, although there were also flights from Mexico.

In line with the announcement made last week in Madrid by the Cuban Minister of Tourism, Juan Carlos García Granda, to make more hotel rooms available to travelers in 2022 Olivera Espinosa announced that Cayo Coco has reopened new hotels, adding up to a total of 15 establishments. continue reading

Among them are Kempinski Cayo Guillermo, Iberostar Daiquirí, Iberostar Selection Esmeralda and Coral Level, belonging to the Gaviota Hotel Group. The official note points out that “the development of hotel facilities, planned out to the year 2030, continues with the construction of new accommodation sites in Cayo Paredón Grande.”

The Cuban government, which has minimized the impact of the omicron variant on the island, emphasizes the control measures carried out with tourists. “As part of the insurance for tourist operations, up to 500 daily samples are processed for PCR-RT,” said Tatiana Artiles Herrera, head of the laboratory at the Roberto Rodríguez hospital in Morón.

The official press does not mention that Air Canada, although it maintains its connections with Cayo Coco, Holguín, Santa Clara or Varadero, will suspend its flights to Havana until April 30. The decision, made public on January 5, was due to the wave of covid-19 in the world caused by the omicron strain.

Nor do they mention the tourism debacle in Cuba; in the first 11 months of 2021the country received just 6.5% of the travelers it received in the same period of 2019.

The pandemic, which caused harsh restrictions around the world between 2019 and 2020, ceased to be an excuse last year, as other Caribbean destinations recovered much of their tourist trade. The Dominican Republic, specifically, achieved 73% of the tourists it received between January and November 2019, and Mexico ended 2021 with the high figure of 12.5 million visitors.

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Huge Police Deployment for a Sign Against Miguel Diaz-Canel in Santos Suarez, Cuba

“Abajo Canel singao,” (Down with Canel Motherfucker), was read in gigantic letters on General Serrano street, almost on the corner of Vía Blanca

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 26 January 2022 — A mob of police, military and plainclothes agents on Suzuki motorcycles, plus a Criminalistics vehicle, gathered this Wednesday on General Serrano street, almost on the corner of Vía Blanca, in Santos Suárez, Havana. It was not for any blood crime: rather the latest graffiti against Cuba’s hand-picked president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, has appeared there.

“It looks like someone’s been killed,” a local resident commented sarcastically, while a group of officials in white coats rushed around in front of the wall, which said in gigantic letters: “Abajo Canel singao” (Down with Canel Motherfucker). “I guess they’re collecting fingerprints, because they can’t be doing anything else there,” the man continued, looking at the entire display in astonishment.

Posters with phrases against the government, and especially against Díaz-Canel, are becoming more and more frequent on Cuban streets. Not a day goes by without the Cuban president being the target of a meme, a mockery, a joke or a graffiti, something unthinkable when new technologies had not reached the island and the terror instilled by Fidel Castro dissuaded so many from scribbling his name on a wall. continue reading

The place chosen for this graffiti could not be more symbolic. Popularly known as “the Malecón without water,” the wall separates the busy Vía Blanca from the nearest houses, but also draws a well-marked border between very poor neighborhoods, such as El Canal, and others with greater purchasing power, in the style of Santos Suarez.

Some neighbors and drivers who passed through the place published images on social networks in which an entire criminalistics team is seen photographing and trying to obtain prints around the sign, an action that has sparked criticism in a city marked by robberies and assaults where, for the most part, the perpetrators are never investigated or caught.

Allusions to television programs such as CSI and its official Cuban copy, Behind the Footprint, were not lacking among Internet users, who also satirized about the presence of a tanker truck with water to help with the cleaning and removal of the letters, in the middle of a city where the water supply is a headache for hundreds of thousands of inhabitants.

Passers-by were particularly struck by the size of the graffiti. With letters over a meter high, something that implies additional courage for the authors, who must have spent a lot of time in the area to complete their work, a job that the lack of public lighting that characterizes the place must have facilitated.

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Cuba: The Revolution’s Forgotten

In the busy streets of Central Havana, it is increasingly common to see homeless people selling objects collected in the garbage. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, 26 January 2022 — With threadbare and dirty clothes, grubby and smelly, a woman was rummaging through the garbage this Wednesday in a dumpster on Neptuno street at the corner of Infanta, in Central Havana. She is not the only destitute person in the place, where by day and by night, slow figures prowl, dragging their feet, in search of alms or crumbs.

Some of them sleep in a doorway in front of the Carlos III veterinary clinic, others outside the church of Nuestra Señora del Carmen. “No one does anything for them, they should pick them up and take them to a home or health institution where they can be seen to,” says the person in charge of cleaning the portal of the church, who says that the beggars relieve themselves right there. “Every day in the morning, what I have to clean up is a lot of urine and excrement,” he laments.

At the same time, the man feels sorry, especially these days, when meteorologists announce a marked drop in the temperatures starting on January 29: “What are they going to cover themselves with?”

It is increasingly common to see beggars sleeping on a sidewalk or on a park bench, selling objects collected in the garbage on the busy streets of Central Havana, or cleaning windshields at traffic lights and begging for alms.

For more than 60 years, the Cuban regime has boasted that “the Revolution leaves no one defenseless.” These citizens, cut off from society due to alcoholism, mental illness or extreme poverty, are victims of the indifference of the authorities.

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Mother of Cuban Doctor Kidnapped in Haiti Confirms Her Release to ’14ymedio’

Dr. Daymara Helen Pérez Alabedra, on the right in the image, was kidnapped in Haiti on January 13. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 23 January 2022 — Cuban doctor Daymara Helen Pérez Alabedra, who had been kidnapped in Haiti on January 13, has already been released, as confirmed this Sunday to 14ymedio by telephone from Las Tunas by her mother, María Alabedra.

“They have already released my daughter. She is already at home. They did not harm her physically,” Alabedra said in a brief communication, also noting that she had spoken “three times” with the doctor. Hours later, the Cuban embassy in Haiti announced through its social networks the release of the health worker and that she had already communicated with her relatives on the island.

Pérez was intercepted by armed men who demanded “100,000 dollars in exchange for her release” but the mother of the health worker did not comment on the details of the negotiation.

As Alabedra had explained in an interview with this newspaper on January 21, Fred Jasmin, director of the Notre Dame hospital, in the city of Petit-Goave, was personally dealing with the negotiation to free her daughter. This Sunday, the local media Haiti24 announced that as part of the negotiations, the healthcare worker’s family paid $10,000 to the kidnappers, but they did not release her at that time. continue reading

Pérez arrived in Haiti with the Cuban medical mission, of which she was a part for three years. She then returned to the island for nine months and, according to her mother, returned with a work contract at the Notre Dame hospital. “She came on January 29, 2020 and left on October 19. This Thursday marked 15 months of that separation.”

“The place where she worked is stopped, there are many demonstrations to demand her release. Here in Chaparra, the town where she was born and lived, in the province of Las Tunas, everyone is in the same, very attentive. Friends that she has in other countries, too,” Alabedra said then.

According to Le filet info, with sources close to the medical brigade, the Government of Cuba decided to reduce the delegation of doctors deployed in that country and repatriated 78 health workers after hearing the news of the kidnapping.

This information was refuted by the Haitian Minister of Health, Lauré Adrien, who assured that the repatriated group was made up of people who had completed the mission or were going on vacation.

Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry acknowledged a serious problem with armed gangs, which have increased kidnappings and massacres in popular neighborhoods. According to official records, at least 1,000 people were deprived of their liberty in 2021.

In mid-December of last year, Cuban engineers Andrik Alfredo Abad Reinosa and Enides Galano Silva were kidnapped on their way to do paperwork at the Immigration Office in the Haitian capital. At that time it was reported that the Autoplaza company was negotiating with the kidnappers and, according to the Sputnik agency, their release was achieved on January 3.

In Kenya, surgeon Landy Rodríguez Hernández and general medicine specialist Assel Herrera Correa continue to be held by kidnappers. The Cuban doctors were intercepted by alleged members of the Somali jihadist group Al Shabab on April 12, 2019, when they were on their way to work at the hospital in the city of Mandera, in northeastern Kenya and on the border with Somalia. There is no news of their condition, beyond the promise of the Kenyan government to guarantee a “safe release.”

Cuban doctors have worked in Haiti since 1998, when a first brigade was sent after Hurricane George. They were part of the team deployed to support the victims of the 2010 earthquake and care for patients infected by the cholera outbreak that emerged months later. And they have also been supportive after Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

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Protesters’ Trials in Cuba: ‘Black Berets, Red Berets, It’s Like They’re Going to Bring in Bin Laden’

Justice 11j has denounced that in the trials carried out to date, one of the repressive patterns is the police operations at the courthouses. (Santa Clara Court/Saily Gonzalez)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 25 January 2022 — Despite the harassment to which they are subjected by State Security and the strong operations at the doors of the courts where the July 11 protesters are being judged, many of their relatives have made it clear that they will not stop asking for justice in loud voices. One of them is Marta Perdomo, the mother of Nadir and Jorge Martín Perdomo, whose trial began this Tuesday in Quivicán, Mayabeque.

“This is full of red berets, black berets, State Security agents and police, as if they were going to bring Bin Laden,” the woman told 14ymedio outside the municipal court, moments before an officer snatched her cell phone from her hands. “Yeah, they’re going to take my phone away, so I can’t do anything else,” she managed to say.

Perdomo is one of those who have joined the initiative proposed by several activists to carry out cacerolazos — protest by banging on pots and pans — and broadcast them on social networks in support of political prisoners. “My children are innocent, I ask for freedom for my children,” the woman cries out in a video as she beats on a pot.

Nadir and Jorge Martín are the only defendants in that trial, and they face, respectively, eight and ten years in prison. “Jorge is accused of double contempt while Nadir is accused of attack,” explains his mother, insisting that these are “fabricated accusations.”

Perdomo expected to see her children enter the building, but it was not possible. According to what another close relative told this newspaper, “no one could see the kids from afar,” because “the truck turned the corner and they took them in the back way.” continue reading

In the week of January 24 to 28, the authorities have scheduled four trials in the provinces of Havana, Mayabeque and Matanzas. “Thirty-nine protesters will be tried for the crimes of sedition, sabotage, public disorder, contempt, assault and sexual assault,” the Justice 11J platform summarized on its Facebook page .

Among those to be tried is the musician Abel González Lescay, who is facing the weight of the prosecutor’s request for seven years in prison.

The siege of family and friends who wanted to approach the courts has been the trend in these trials. In regards to them, the Attorney General’s Office published a statement on Monday to justify itself, saying that the accusation of sedition for the protesters – the main reason why some face sentences of up to 30 years – is for “attacking the socialist state.”

On Tuesday, Michael Valladares, husband of the writer and political prisoner Maria Cristina Garrido, another of the 11J detainees, denounced that he was preparing to give his support to Marta Perdomo outside the court, but State Security did not allow it. “The place is full of State Security agents,” he tells 14ymedio. “There are about four blocked blocks, full of soldiers, and 100 meters away there is a cordon. They threatened me with a fine and that they would arrest me if I insisted on going through.”

The scenario was similar this Monday in Matanzas, where the opponent Félix Navarro and his daughter, Saily Navarro, are being tried, among other detainees, according to Annia Zamora, mother of the Lady in White Sissi Abascal, who also participated in the protests and who was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment.

“Yesterday they did not allow us to leave the town of Carlos Rojas, there is a strong operation,” said Zamora, who also said that the trial was prolonged, and that at seven o’clock at night “they were still in court, with the accused sitting on the bench.” For her, it is something “incredible” that even at that time they wanted to continue the trial. “A lawyer from the neighboring province of Mayabeque said no, that she had to return home” and they stopped until today when they have resumed,” she explained.

Zamora denounces that she has suffered this harassment since Sunday. That day, she says that she and her husband were arrested when they were leaving to go to mass. Taken to the Jovellanos police unit, they were kept until seven at night. “They are violating all our rights for only wanting to go to mass to pray and ask for the freedom of our political prisoners,” she protests.

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Cuba’s ‘Weekly Packet’ Rises in Price While the Censorship of its Content Increases

In its beginnings, the ’weekly packet’ gave Cuban officialdom numerous headaches and enormous gratifications to the viewers, who came to be counted by millions throughout the island. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 25 January 2022 — The weekly packet, that compendium of audiovisuals, music and digital material that for more than a decade has been an alternative to official television, has risen in price this January and in Havana it will cost 70 pesos each week. Customers are alarmed by this increase and also the loss of quality, due to excessive censorship, which marks the content.

“Important information to all Mega Vision clients, weekly packet,” starts a note included in the product that is being distributed this week in various points of the Cuban capital. “Due to economic changes” linked to the new dollar rate in the informal market, there is a “weekly packet price adjustment starting Monday: 70 CUP (Cuban pesos).” In neighborhoods like Centro Habana it even reaches 100.

The notice has sparked the annoyance of many consumers, who until now paid about 50 pesos for all the folders divided by theme that make up the compendium. A price to which the cost of the courier could be added in case the client preferred to receive it at home.

“I’m not going to pay that amount because it’s getting worse and worse,” laments Manolo, a retiree from Cotorro who had already noticed “the loss of quality” of the materials collected. “Many documentaries have bad subtitles, the copies of the films are bad and to top it all, they have fewer and fewer things that have to do with history and politics.”

“It’s not a matter of twenty pesos difference,” he continues. “It is the enormous difference between what was received in the beginning and the current sloppiness. Until recently they had at least the newscasts of many channels in Florida but they removed them. They have already gone past being servile, they can’t count on me to keep them in business.” continue reading

In its beginnings, the weekly packet was a source of numerous headaches to Cuban officialdom and enormous rewards to viewers, who came to number in the millions throughout the Island. Being able to access documentaries, films and television series that were not broadcast on national television consecrated this audiovisual compilation above the official grid.

From its early years, the managers of the business instituted the “zero politics, zero violence, zero pornography” rule that allowed them to circumvent official censorship, although the weekly packet was never appreciated by cultural institutions, which accused them of promoting frivolity and tastelessness.

La mochila, (the backpack) was the official antidote that the authorities found against the “poison that they are putting into the heads” of the young people in the packet. However, the underground offer won the pulse. The alternative prepared by the Cuban State and distributed through the Computer Youth Club, despite its enormous resources, hardly found an audience.

During this time, there have been several attempts to raise the initial price, which was then one convertible peso (25 Cuban pesos). “They tried to put it at 75 CUP a year ago, but people threw a tremendous tantrum and they had to lower it to 50. Overall, with the same amount of money they lowered it, quality also fell and censorship grew,” explains Manolo.

A messenger linked to the Mega Vision production house assured 14ymedio that “the previous price could not be maintained.” Distributed to private businesses, the packet also survives by advertising restaurants, photo studios and musicians who pay to be included in its popular compilations. “Paid ads fell with this pandemic because many stores were closed, we can’t make ends meet with what each customer pays just to watch.”

But the packet does not seem to be hit only by the flight of advertisers and the disappointment of the audience. “Since internet access arrived on mobile phones in December 2018, more and more people consume materials directly from the internet. They watch programs through Facebook, they do a lot of tricks to lower the megabytes and there are even more and more families who pay for their Netflix subscription from Miami,” says the messenger. “With that it is very difficult to compete.”

And he explains: “Many Fire Stick and Roku are arriving that anyone can hook up to their television and access a wealth of audiovisual material. They share it through Wi-Fi between several families and that’s where I think the business of the future is coming, because the packet, more and more, is serving people without an internet connection.”

Others consider that it still “does business and you can take advantage of it.”

“I have a good clientele who are looking for soap operas and reality shows, they are not interested in politics,” acknowledges Barbarita, another distributor of the packet in the municipality of Playa. “These are people who want to turn on the television in the morning and watch that type of program.”

“Cooking courses, music videos and video games are in high demand,” he says. “My clientele has not complained about the lack of newscasts or other topics, rather they would like it to include more music and spaces for participation, such as singing contests.” Barbarita believes that “70 pesos a week is still cheap, it costs less than a pound of beans.”

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‘Many in Cuba Haven’t Even Heard About the Hundreds of Political Prisoners’

The musician Abel González Lescay, one of those prosecuted for 11J. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 25 January 2022 — When his trial was postponed in December, Cuban artist Abel González Lescay, arrested after demonstrating peacefully on July 11 in Bejucal, Mayabeque, thought he would end up being released. Paradoxically, that seemed to him “bad news,” because it could, in his opinion, “overshadow” the denunciation of the rest of the prisoners and those sentenced for the protests.

But that his process would be dismissed was an illusion. The young musician, a second-year student at the University of the Arts in Havana, currently under house arrest after spending a week in detention in July, will be tried this Wednesday in San José de las Lajas. Before that municipal court he has summoned to gather, that day, “everyone who wants to demand justice for Cuban dissidents.”

“We must not stop expressing ourselves at such a serious moment for the Cuban nation,” he wrote on the networks, hoping that his trial could “mark a turning point in the future of this horrible story.”

In a conversation with 14ymedio, Lescay says that despite the fact that “there is a movement in support of political prisoners that is growing quite a bit,” it is a minority phenomenon, and that “if you go out into the streets and talk to people,” there are few who at this moment who are aware of the prisoners. “Many haven’t even heard of the hundreds of political prisoners,” he laments.

The artist faces a sentence of seven years in prison (according to his file, three years for “public disorder”, three years for “aggravated contempt of a continuing nature” and one year and six months for “contempt of the basic figure of a continuing nature”). The Justice 11J platform, which keeps a record of those arrested, imprisoned and convicted of the demonstrations, has confirmed what the musician suffered when he was arrested on July 12: “They took him out of his house naked, humiliated him and beat him.” continue reading

“When they took me out of my house, it was done by some policemen who did not have an arrest warrant or anything,” he tells this newspaper. “They forced me into a car without telling me where we were going.”

The six days he spent behind bars the young man remembers as “a rare experience,” in which he suffered “many injustices” that he tried to take in the best way, “as a spiritual retreat,” as a means of survival.

“To say what was the worst thing that happened in prison is complex because it is something compact, one thing feeds the other,” he argues. “It’s not just that the head of the prison wanted to kill me and that in front of all the prisoners he shouted that he’s going to kill me: it’s a guy who’s injecting something into your shoulder without you wanting him to, and you don’t even see the person’s face. He comes with the syringe and puts it in your shoulder while telling you that it’s obligatory and that’s it.”

And he continues listing horrors: “It’s that when you turn on the faucet, the water that comes out is disgusting, you have coronavirus and there is no doctor to see you. Being locked up for four days without talking to anyone, sick and without medical assistance is torture.”

After being released, on July 18, “complicated” days arrived. “It’s ugly what happens in prison, and then on the street you continue for a while feeling as if you’ve been poisoned,” he says. Those days he was very nervous: if, for example, someone parked a car in front of his house, he would run to the window to see what it was about. “I remember that one day I was walking down the street and I saw the moment when they picked up three kids and punched them as they put them in a police car. When I saw them, their whole faces were deformed.”

Despite everything, he is proud to have taken to the streets that Sunday. Since the “events in San Isidro,” he explains, referring to the hunger strike of the MSI artists in November 2020 to ask for the freedom of the anti-establishment rapper Denis Solís, “I was already wanting to do something.” He was not at the artists’ sit-in on November 27, 2020 before the Ministry of Culture “because he was far away,” and he felt “very powerless” that day.

For this reason, on July 11 in Bejucal, after seeing online what was happening in San Antonio de los Baños and Havana, the young man did not think twice.

“I saw that the people who were in the street were my buddies and that there were thousands of people, and I went out into the street,” he recalls, “to unload, to shout freedom.” And he continues: “People went out on the street, for the first time in their lives, to express what they felt. The situation was serious at that time, they gave us electricity for only four or five hours a day in the middle of the quarantine, and the covid was going up every day, with new cases. There was no way not to go out on the street. “

For Lescay, almost all of the 11J protesters are in disagreement “with the things that are happening in Cuba politically.”

A shocking moment for him was when he found out about the prosecutor’s request, in October, when he thought the worst was over. “I had to get serious not to succumb,” he narrates. “When they tell you something like that, reality is destroyed, because six months, a year, is one thing something that one can even endure… but seven years? When I looked ahead and calculated that I would come out of prison at age 30, it was very hard.

In the meantime, however, he has tried to get on with his daily life. “They haven’t told me anything else since I got out on July 18, not how I have to behave nor what I have to do,” he says, surprised. “I am under house arrest, but they have not told me to go sign any paper that follows up that I am complying with the measure, and they have not summoned me either.”

He hasn’t had any problems at the university either. In fact, he says, when he started this semester he went to talk to the rector, who referred to him as “a talented student” and even gave him psychological help to recover from the impact of those days he spent in prison.

This Wednesday, together with Lescay and also Bejucal, they will process six other detainees, four of them “very young,” between 17 and 21: Ángel Miguel Martín Caro, Jorge Luis Reynoso Barrios, Omar Valenciano Donatien, Raúl Xavier Díaz Pérez, Alain Yamil Sánchez Baluja and Livan Viel de la Peña. Regarding them, whose cases are not as visible as his, he insists on drawing attention: “It is useless for me to ask people to go to my trial to pressure them to release me, but not the others, nor does it helps me to keep my mouth shut and try to go to trial waiting for them to shake my hand.”

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Yunior Garcia Will Request Asylum in Spain Because ‘It Would be Suicide’ to Return to Cuba Now

Yunior García Aguilera at a press conference after his arrival in Madrid. (EFE/Fernando Villar)

14ymedio, Madrid, 24 January 2022 — The playwright Yunior García Aguilera will request asylum in Spain, where he arrived in mid-November 2021, after leaving the island forced by the siege around his apartment that he was subjected to by Cuban State Security. The founder of the Archipiélago platform traveled to Madrid with a tourist visa granted by the Spanish Government, valid for 90 days and not valid travel to another country. However, more than two months have passed and the opposition figure admits having realized that he cannot return as soon as he expected, he said in an interview with the newspaper El País that was published this Sunday.

“Since my arrival in Madrid, my theater group in Cuba has been closed and the actors have been fired. My works are prohibited. The case against me is still open. As soon as I set foot in the Havana airport they have excuses to send me to jail for 27 or 30 years, as they have done with other protesters. Going back now is not a real possibility. It would be suicide,” he says from his new host city.

On his arrival in Madrid, García Aguilera said that his intention was to exhaust the duration of the visa, recover mentally and physically from the wear and tear suffered in the weeks prior to the Civic March for Change, of which he was one of the promoters, and return to the Island willing to continue advancing the demands for freedom for political prisoners and the dialogue to initiate a change towards democracy in Cuba.

However, since he left, his Trébol Teatro group has been closed and he notes that before leaving Cuba, State Security threatened him with 27 years in the Combinado del Este prison. continue reading

In the interview, García Aguilera talks about his landing in Madrid’s daily life. After an arrival under the spotlight, with spaces in the Spanish news and pages in the newspapers, the playwright has had to start an ordinary life and says that he survives “honestly” thanks to some collaborations with the media and the support of the Cuban exile. As he explains, the coat he was wearing during his conversation with the El País reporter was given to him and he is willing to work at whatever is necessary to maintain the small apartment where he lives in Lavapiés.

García Aguilera says they he must tae some precautions, such as keeping his exact address secret – “State Security has tentacles everywhere” – but he is delighted with his host neighborhood. Less than a kilometer from Puerta del Sol, Lavapiés is an area in which more than 88 nationalities coexist and which, despite the gentrification process that has been going on for a few years, preserves the tradition of the oldest residents of the capital, together with the multiculturalism of its new inhabitants.

“On Sundays, the Blacks take out their drums and play them. That reminds me of my land,” says the playwright, who emphasizes that he feels very grateful for his current austere life, because he has had the warmth of the Cuban community, which has even helped him to protect himself from the cold Madrid winter, which these days registers temperatures between 28 and 48 degrees Fahrenheit.

“In politics, what is real is what is not seen” he says to describe the “discreet” work which, he maintains, he has continued to carry out for democracy in Cuba. This links to one of the most unpleasant episodes that he has experienced since he arrived in Spain, an act of repudiation that he suffered in the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Complutense University of Madrid when he tried to relate his experiences in a presentation organized by an association of the same Faculty.

García Aguilera attributes the action to “young people from the United Left” (one of the member parties of the United We Can coalition, currently in government) and considers that many of these people preserve the unreal myth of the Cuban Revolution as an ideal of justice and equality. The playwright urges people “of good will who dare not call Cuba a dictatorship” to “understand that this romantic vision is doing Cubans a lot of harm” and asks the international community to abandon its “hypocrisy” and its “lukewarmness” toward “that brutal and cruel dictatorship that rips out the hearts of Cubans,” as he did since the most recent column published in 14ymedio, where he has a fortnightly collaboration.

Despite this bad time, García Aguilera is happy in his new city and confesses that he is happy when he can give himself a little treat such as buying a chocolate bar, some pork or visiting the bookstores in his neighborhood, always with caution, since some Cuban media have come to spread images of him buying cheap clothes with the aim of painting him “as a consumer who is happy eating ham,” he says.

At night, sometimes until 5 in the morning, he speaks with Cuba through video calls with his 10-year-old son, who continues to live in Havana, with the Archipiélago moderators and the relatives of the political prisoners.

Although his exile is expected to be longer than initially announced, García Aguilera insists that “he will never give up returning to his country. Being Cuban is a chronic condition that has no cure. I cannot forget that I am a Cuban who wants to return to Cuba.”

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