Cuban Regime Withdraws Press Credentials of Spanish Agency EFE

The provision was adopted a month and a half after the accreditation of Efe’s editorial coordinator in Havana was withdrawn. (Eph)

14ymedio biggerEFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 13 November 2021 — The Cuban authorities today withdrew the press credentials of the EFE Agency journalists in Cuba, on the eve of the civic march on Monday the 15th to demand a political change on the island, a march the authorities have declared illegal.

Those responsible for the International Press Center urgently summoned the Efe team currently accredited in Havana — three editors/writers, a photographer and a TV camera person — to inform them that their credentials were withdrawn without clarifying whether the measure is temporary or permanent.

The provision was adopted a month and a half after the accreditation of Efe’s editorial coordinator in Havana was withdrawn.

The authorities warned the Efe team that they cannot carry out their journalistic work from now on, and did not clarify the exact reasons that led them to make this decision.

The resolution occurs at a delicate moment in Cuba with a civic march called by the opposition for this coming Monday, in order to demand a political change on the Island. The march has been outlawed by the Government. Tomorrow, Sunday, the country is opening its borders to tourism.

This is the first time that Cuba has withdrawn the credentials of the Efe Agency and we have no evidence that this measure has been adopted on any other occasion with an international news agency on the island.

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Cuba: ‘Some Offer to Walk with a Rose in Hand, and Others are Prepared with Bats and Death Slogans’

Catholic clergy have declared themselves against the violence with which the Government threatens protesters. (Marcos Evora)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, November 12, 2021–In addition to the letter from bishops calling for “the changes necessary” in Cuba and from several priests demanding “respect for those”  who would like to join the Civic March for Change scheduled for Monday, more Catholic clergy have declared themselves against the violence with which the Government threatens to respond to the initiative.

The Superior of the Daughters of Charity in Cuba and former president of the Cuban Clerical Conference (Concur), Nadieska Almeida Miguel, on her social media launched an open call where she cries “enough”.

“Since the peaceful march was proposed, planned in advance and with respect, with a clear invitation to freedom of expression, the right of any citizen anywhere in the world,” the nun says in her publication, “we’ve witnessed completely contrary responses, including arbitrary ones: acts of repudiation, threatening phone calls, beatings by police officers, who are supposed to accompany and protect all people, summons as warnings, youth detentions, defamations in state media.”

The nun asks herself: “Is it so difficult to allow a march that in and of itself is legitimate? Isn’t is easier to allow each person to express their feelings? How is it possible that, while some offer to walk with a rose in hand, recalling our beloved José Martí’s poem, others are prepared with rifles, bats and death slogans?”

Thus, she requests, among other things, to stop the violence “of which many are victims” and the “deployment of police everywhere,” as well as avoiding that “these people continue to be submerged in poverty” and “placing the responsibility upon those who do not have it.”

“Enough of trying to make us believe that all is well in our country. Enough of portraying an untrue image of the reality. Enough of ignoring the cries continue reading

of mothers whose children are incarcerated with long sentences for saying with courage: this is not what I want,” states the nun.

Sister Nadieska, who last year published a letter denouncing the “unjust” dollarization of the Island and holding the Government responsible for the shortages of food, she concludes by praying to God she will “see the yearned dream of unity and freedom that is there in the heart of every Cuban.”

For its part, Concur’s Board of Directors also expressed itself in a public message. Thus affirming to join, “with faith and hope, the diverse voices of the Church which have expressed themselves with humility and courage throughout the week” inviting “respect for freedom of expression, avoiding all forms of mistreatment or violence, to generate peace, listening to the dissatisfaction of the most impoverished and vulnerable, to promote the changes which will favor a dignified life, a reduction in social tension, a review of cases and the liberation of the many unjustly detained.”

“The path can never be violence, the only response to coexistence is love,” says the Clerical Conference, which asserts this is the moment “to unite efforts in search of a better future for all Cubans,” and concludes: “Let’s begin clearing paths to achieve the dream, not yet reached, of a Homeland with everyone and for the good of everyone, without any type of exclusion”.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Yunior Garcia Aguilera Will March ‘Alone’ on 23rd to Malecon this Sunday the 14th’

Yunior García Aguilera individually assumes the option to march on November 14. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 11 November 2021 — The playwright Yunior García Aguilera, promoter of the Archipiélago collective that called the marches scheduled for November 15, will march alone on Sunday through Havana on behalf of all the people who are prevented by the Government from demonstrating. His walk will be carried out in silence at 3 o’clock in the afternoon along Avenida 23 del Vedado, from Parque Quijote to the Malecón in Havana, and he will carry a white rose. “This is not an act of heroism, it is an act of responsibility.”

In a long statement that the activist addresses to the entire nation, he expresses his respect for whoever decides to continue with the Civic March for Change called for Monday, but calls “respectfully, not to do anything that puts your physical integrity at risk, or that of other people.”

García Aguilera writes a preamble in which he calls attention to the violent path that the Government has chosen, trying to dissuade the protesters through subpoenas, threats from the Police, insults on social networks, acts of repudiation and, most seriously, showing images of armed civilians and haranguing children in schools.

“It is the regime that has threatened to unleash violence in the streets on November 15. Not us,” warns the playwright. In his opinion, not only are the families worried, but there is a reasonable fear of thinking that the government may organize some violent act to attribute to protesters to “provoke anger and indignation in the segments of the people that they still control.”

Faced with this situation, García Aguilera expresses that his objective is to end violence and not multiply it, reduce the list of political prisoners and not increase it. “We are not the same as them. We do care about the life and freedom of Cubans,” he proclaims. continue reading

Although he does not explicitly call off the march, on the contrary, he invites whoever wishes to do so from prudence to continue, and he announces that he personally assumes the representation of all the people who adhere to his position in his walk on the 14th, after having consulted, he says, with members of the Archipiélago.

“May everyone find ingenious and peaceful ways to express themselves without giving rise to violence against themselves, against anyone, absolutely. Several proposals have already been announced. And I am convinced that many more will appear, with courage, patriotism and civility. Rosa Parks, on that bus in 1955, found her own way of protesting against unjust laws,” he writes.

García Aguilera also thanked the Cubans who will gather on November 15 in more than 100 cities “where freedom of expression, assembly and peaceful demonstration is respected. We know that our emigrated and exiled brothers are not going to leave us alone,” he added

The author claims the year that Archipiélago has been asking for dialogue, since on November 27 of last year, several people who ended up forming the group demonstrated at the door of the Ministry of Culture.

“I know that, although it may not seem like it, there are some decent and honest people within the Government. I appeal to their sense of responsibility and their humanism,” he says.

In the statement, the playwright insists that there is absolutely no link with the United States Government and that Archipiélago’s purpose is for “conflicts, our internal conflicts, to be resolved without interference,” although he also considers it lawful to ask the international community for protection if the authorities of a country flout the international treaties they have signed, and human rights.

“Honestly, none of us aspires to power, nor do we intend ’soft coups’ or ’fraudulent changes’. We want each citizen of this country to become aware of their power to transform their reality,” he says before calling the entire population, without exception, to create an inclusive homeland. “There is no more time. It is up to us to achieve it. And the path has to be full of light, courage, brotherhood, good vibes, full of peace and full of firmness. This will not be my last hug,” he concludes.

The risk of serious violence has been the trigger for García Aguilera and Archipiélago to officially end the call, leaving the individual expression of adherence to a movement for change in the hands of each citizen.

A few hours earlier, the Pen Club of Cuban Writers in Exile had expressed its fear of an increase in “repression and violence” due to the use of armed civilians in the images disseminated on networks.

“The regime is unpredictable, the biggest measure it is going to take is to post agents at the doors of the houses and not let the citizens out. In the event that there is a deployment of people without being able to control it, it will brutally repress them,” said Luis de la Paz, president of the organization.

According to this Cuban narrator and poet exiled in Miami, “they do it to pretend that it is the enraged people” who are taking the initiative to stop the demonstrations.

“When you see the images (on the internet) you are amazed that those who arrest and repress the protesters are people in civilian clothes. What the police do is lead the paramilitaries to the station (police station), something typical of the communist regimes,” said De la Paz.

In a statement, the Pen Club of Cuban Writers in Exile warns that “the use of troops, military and paramilitaries to overshadow the announced march, this time is made more dangerous by the widespread images of civilians in the streets armed with assault rifles.”

In this regard, De la Paz details that the organization launched the statement out of “a capital concern” about the repression that the Cuban government is announcing, which “even shows civilians with long weapons in the media, something that the world does not allow.”

“The fact of showing people in the streets dressed in civilian clothes with long weapons is a warning of what can be reached, that is why we express our solidarity with the protesters,” he adds.

“Some of the recent events that have taken place in Cuba have a strong presence among intellectuals and artists, from the San Isidro Movement, the protest of November 27, 2020 in front of the Ministry of Culture and the convocation of the Archipiélago Project for November 15,” explains the statement.

The text points out that “these are not only episodes promoted by the intelligentsia, but a genuinely nationalist and spontaneous current, inspired by the hope of a change for a better Cuba.”

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Three Years and Two Days to Fix Leaks in Sancti Spiritus

Node 24 is located on First Street of the Kilo-12 district. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 10 November 2021 — After three years with leaks that lost up to 60 liters per second, Node 24, as the interconnection point of the supply network in the city of Sancti Spíritus is known, is finally being repaired. The work is planned to be solved in just two days despite the fact that it has been classified as “capital” by the authorities.

The intervention should have been carried out years ago, although it was announced for this July and finally occurred in November because other breaks in the hydraulic network compromised the arrangements, according to the local press. Now, the authorities have affirmed that “all the necessary resources are already in the province” to seal the breaks.

It is not the first time that repairs have been made at Node 24, located on First Street of the Kilo-12 district, although they are always superficial, acknowledge the Aqueduct and Hydraulic Resources officials. The “technical state of this system has worsened” and requires a major repair “considered highly complex and which will be developed without interruption to improve the supply to some peripheral areas and highest in the city.” The workers have had to work night shifts to complete the repairs. continue reading

It is not the first time that Node 24 repairs have been made, although always superficial, acknowledge the Aqueduct and Hydraulic Resources officials. (14ymedio)

“Every time you passed through First Street, you saw a large stream of water, it looked like a waterfall. They spent too long to fix that break,” a Kilo-12 neighbor told 14ymedio. “This line that is being repaired travels all over the city and it has been more than two years since it was going to be fixed but another break that left us without water for a week prevented maintenance,” he recalls. “Then the pandemic arrived and it was postponed.”

Despite the speed with which the Government intends to undertake the great work, for the residents it feels like eternity, since the supply of water by tanker trucks has not been guaranteed. 70% of the city’s residents will not have this alternative, which will only reach health care units and other centers classified as essential.

Most of the residents, who have been without service for more than 24 hours, had to store water and those who do not have many containers or tanks have to buy the liquid from other individuals to be able to do their housework.

“The Government has not developed a strategy for this interruption,” complains Yuli, a resident of the area who, like hundreds of people from Spiritus, must buy drinking water from people who have wells in their homes and sell water for 100 pesos a gallon of 55 liters.

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A Harangue Against July 11 (11J) to Start the School Year in Havana

The stage was not the same as always, this time the uniformity of the wardrobe was missing. Many students had to attend school this Monday in “street clothes.” (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 8 November 2021 — For more than half an hour, the students of the José Luis Arruñada school, in Havana, waited standing in the courtyard for the activity to begin to mark the restart of the 2020-2021 school year. Already at the parents’ meeting, held last week, the teachers had informed everyone that the school had been selected to celebrate “the central act” in the capital and warned: “Television is going to come and everything.”

During the wait, songs by Silvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanés were played over the loudspeakers, while the image of the Cuban flag alternated with that of Fidel Castro on a huge screen.

The setting was not the usual one. This time, the uniformity of the wardrobe was missing: many of the students had to attend this Monday in “street clothes” because the educational authorities have not been able to coordinate the making and sale of new uniforms in time with industry and commerce. During the long months of the pandemic, children have grown or gained weight and the one they were wearing before the order to pause classes and stay home no longer fits them.

The parents had to settle for watching the event from the gate. Due to the protection measures to avoid the contagion of covid-19, family members were prohibited from entering. The conversation of the group that gathered at the entrance revolved around the economic juggling that everyone has had to do to get clothes and shoes so that the children could attend the classrooms on this day. They also complained about the delay in starting the ceremony and the lack of distance between the children. continue reading

The parents had to settle for watching the event from the gate. Due to the protection measures to avoid the contagion of covid-19, family members were prohibited from entering. (14ymedio)

“I don’t know why to have them standing there for fun, all on top of each other. Nor do I understand what they are waiting for if all the children are already in place and have been ready for a long time. It is not correct for them to stand around waiting for so long with those backpacks full of books,” says one mother to another, who also complains for other reasons.

“For two weeks I sent some clothes that I do not wear to a friend who has a garage sale at her house on weekends. I earned 3,000 pesos from that and I sold a coat from a trip I made to Russia two years ago, before the pandemic. Thanks to that I was able to raise the 6,000 pesos I needed to buy my son’s tennis shoes, otherwise it would have been impossible because my [monthly] salary is 4,800.”

Another of the mothers comments, “Luckily mine is still the same size, she did not grow that much in this time and she still has a uniform and even her shoes fit well. The drama at home was getting something to prepare for breakfast and a snack. Do you know what my daughter had for breakfast? A banana. She always has a glass of milk for breakfast because she does not like to eat bread early and does not drink juice, but I have not been able to buy milk since September. There is no milk, I can’t find it at any price,” she laments.

A father who listened in silence, the only one among so many mothers, said that in his house, where there are two children, one 11 and one 5, they buy on the black market for breakfast and lunch.

“Before we could stretch the milk that they are still selling  on the ration book for the smallest children, but now they are only giving half of the amount,” he complains. “We went from buying a kilogram a month to only half a kilogram and nobody knows how long it will be like that.”

The man points out that, in the absence of milk, during all this time his son, who is in the sixth grade, has had an ice cream waffle for breakfast that they sell on the corner from his house. “Now it is impossible to solve that way. When he leaves for school the cafeteria is closed and he has had to leave with only toast in his belly, and for a snack he takes an omelette, because there is nothing else. I know that this is going to be a headache every day.”

The conversation is interrupted when strident music plays that announces the beginning of the morning. Three girls solemnly walk and leave a bouquet of flowers on José Martí’s bust, the national anthem plays and everyone sings it. Then a teacher arrives who gives the reading of some words that served as gratitude “for the efforts of our scientists and doctors” that allowed the vaccination stage “that today encourages the reunion of teachers and students.”

She also lists several reasons that “motivate” the start of the course: “The 502nd anniversary of the founding of the town of San Cristóbal de La Habana, the 96th anniversary of the birth of our greatest pioneer, Fidel Castro Ruz, the 60th anniversary of the Union of Young Communists, the 61st anniversary of the José Martí Pioneers Organization, and the 60th anniversary of the Literacy Campaign.”

Then she welcomed everyone present and announced the presence of officials from the Communist Party of Cuba, the People’s Power, the Ministry of Education, the Workers Center of Cuba, the Union of Young Communists and “community factors.” Later, the parents learned from Tribuna de La Habana that the central act of the province had taken place at a school in La Lisa.

At that moment, a young man with black hair of medium height, with a press credential hanging around his neck, approaches the fence with his camera to take a picture. Noticing that the gate is open, he enters to take the portraits more closely.

A lady among those who until that moment were chatting animatedly jumps up and says: “And that one who came in now, who is he? Is he a real journalist? He looks like the stupid one who wants to march on the 15th,” says the woman with a high tone of voice and a noticeable alteration. “I’m not going to take an eye off him because this is like him carrying a bomb, but the way he wants, no; against the revolution, no. I complain and criticize everything, there is no milk for the children, you have to line up for five or six hours but the revolution is not touched.” Another lady who was looking her in the face told her: “The revolution has given us everything.”

Five minutes later, the young reporter leaves through the same door through which he entered and leaves, but not without the angry lady first asking what medium he works for, to which he replies: “I am a journalist for Juventud Rebelde,” a state newspaper.

Some mothers were left commenting on the angry reaction of the woman and one of them said: “She is Raúl Castro’s niece, I know her, and her nerves are not well.”

The rain arrives and almost interrupts the act but it is only a few drops. Even so, the teachers rush the end and send the children to the classrooms. The parents gradually withdraw from the gate, but first a woman’s voice is heard saying: “Now the other battle begins, figuring out what to invent for lunch, we live on a nerve, it is an endless fight and it is not against the enemy, it is against ourselves.”

Hours later, when they got home, the high school students would tell their families what happened indoors. The first thing, they received a harangue from the Civic Education teacher against the day of protests on July 11: “I did not come to brainwash you but you cannot be carried away by bad influences, none of those who went out to the on the street that day have a job, they are all puppets of the empire, ungrateful ones. The country does not betray itself.”

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Where Are the Buses?

Public transport in Havana is inadequate and inflation has made private commuting options unaffordable. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodriguez, Havana, 11 November 11, 2021 — It is 2:30 on Wednesday afternoon and a long line of people is waiting to board one of the buses, the P11 or P18, that stop here on Monte Street. Few buses pass by and those that stop fill up quickly.

“I’ve been waiting here for an hour and a half and still haven’t been able to get on,” complains one woman in line. “There are too many people on the street and not enough buses. It must be because of the embargo.”

“The buses will show up on November 15 to carry protesters.* That’s what they’re saving them for,” adds another passenger in the same ironic tone.

At Curita Park another group is waiting next to the taxi stand used by almendrones, as vintage 1950s cars — often used as taxis — are known here, to catch the P7 to Cotorro.

“I won’t be taking a car today. I don’t make enough money. I’m waiting for the bus, no matter how long it takes,” complains a young man in the crowd. “Public transport gets worse every day. Yesterday, I was late for work.”

At the stop next to the emergency hospital on Carlos III Avenue, many people are waiting for the P12 to take them to Santiago de las Vegas. Some are there after  having giving up on the Russian-made Gacela minibus at 27th and O streets, which was already full.

References to the long waits can also be found on social media. Yesterday morning, one Cuban left a post on Facebook: “When they give their hearts to Cuba, let’s see if they give us a little more public transportation too.”

*Translator’s note: A nationwide protest march, organized by a dissident group called Archipelago, is planned for that day.

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November, This Time In Cuba

Will the tombstone of Castroism also display November as a month of farewell? It depends on us. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 11 November 2021 — Monica’s daughter studies piano and will not go to school on Monday. Raudel has planned to miss work and his sister plans to hang a sheet from the balcony, while Maykol and his grandmother already have their white clothes ready to go out on the streets. Everyone is preparing, in one way or another, for the Civic March on November 15, a call to action which no one on this island us unaware of.

The Cuban streets, so overwhelmed with daily complaints, have begun to speak in a different way since July 11th, when crowds ran through them shouting for freedom. It is as if after that day the script of the conversation that had featured in lines, markets and bus stops, for decades, could not be revived. The poor quality of the bread, the heat, what happened on the soap opera, all took a back seat.

Nobody is surprised when someone mentions the call to march, everyone seems aware of it. The public discussions do not even recognize the false dichotomy that the national media tries to present, between those who call to take to the streets to demand respect for human rights and those who still feel identified with the official discourse. The dilemma is something else: how to protest, what is the best way to join #15NCuba. continue reading

The official arguments about a conspiracy orchestrated from outside the borders hardly penetrate the spontaneous street conversations and, when they appear, they are met with ridicule

From the most daring gesture to the most timid. From those who feel that they no longer have anything to lose and will put their bodies in the avenues, to the retired lady who will not be able to leave her prostrate mother alone but who will hang the only two white pillowcases she has left on the clothesline. From the father who has warned his children that they will not go to school that day to avoid being used as shock troops, to the young girl who will bang on a pot from the roof of her house at three o’clock in the afternoon.

Never before has an independent call to action so penetrated the national soul. The reason is not only in the feeling of suffocation that this failed economic political model has spread among Cubans, but in the campaign carried out by the television and newspapers controlled by the Communist Party to kill the reputations of the main promotors of #15NCuba. The demonizing of them has made them all the more attractive.

Even among those who fear that day the most, because they have a son in the Military Service who will be used to repress the protesters, or they cannot miss their workday, even if people get on the bus to put a stick in their hands, the feeling is one of finality. They know that the system is in its death throes and that now it is only possible to stand on the side of those who will help the birth of the new creature that the Nation needs, or that of those who will make the regime’s frayed heart beat artificially.

The official arguments about a conspiracy orchestrated from outside the borders hardly penetrate the spontaneous street conversations and, when they appear, they are met with ridicule, fake smiles and an avalanche of responses that leave the promoter of these justifications at a clear disadvantage before the majority. The discourse of victimhood is already exhausted; people no longer believe in these bizarre plots.

The civic march has served part of its purposes by forcing the Cuban authorities to show their own face

Fears and doubts about the future dominate every family table, but conviction springs from that collection of apprehensions that has caused Cubans to lose sleep. It is now or never. Castroism is wounded, threatened on all sides, and the gash is fatal. The Civic March has fulfilled part of its purposes by forcing the Cuban authorities to show their own face, a face that many of us already knew for having suffered directly from the repression, but which they skillfully masked with the rouge of social justice, sovereignty and equality for all.

They also use that layer of cosmetics to make us believe that they can do anything, that they have every millimeter of Cuban soil under control, that they will viciously chase the retired woman with the white pillowcases on her balcony, the young woman who bangs on a pot on the roof of her home, and the father who will not allow his children to go to school to prevent their being used in Rapid Response Brigades. They want us to believe that they have time left for all that.

In November 1989, the Germans brought down the Berlin Wall. The Soviet bear was not amused by this boldness, but it had many other concerns. That same month, a general strike paralyzed Prague and accelerated the fall of the communist regime, thus breaking another link in the chain that, controlled from the Kremlin, tried to keep the socialist bloc united by force.

Havana’s Plaza de la Revolucíon is no fiercer than the Soviet Union, which even had nuclear weapons; nor does Cuban State Security work more efficiently than the German Stasi, imbued with a discipline and tenacity little seen on this island. If both grotesque creatures no longer exist, why believe that Castroism will be eternal. Will its tombstone also display November as a month of farewell? It depends on us.

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Archipielago Provides Participants with Guidelines for November 15 Demonstrations in Havana

A group of artists protesting in front of the Cuban Ministry of Culture on November 27, 2020. (Reynier Leyva Novo)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 11 November 2021 — On Thursday the dissident coalition Archipiélago released a list of recommendations for those who would like to participate in the Civic March for Change in Havana, which is scheduled for Monday. The group issued the recommendations in response to threats by the regime, which has indicated it considers any such actions to be illegal.

After insisting on Cubans’ right to free speech, the group offered alternatives for those who would like to demonstrate their support for the march. These include collective applause, the banging of pots, the wearing of white clothing on Monday and a “massive blackout” of national television news programming on November 15, 16 and 17.

The group proposes a 3:00 PM start time for the march in locations originally proposed for each city. It suggests that, in the event participants find these locations “militarized,” they move to parks with friends and trusted acquaintances to talk about the kind of Cuba they would like to create.

In the event the chosen park is also occupied by military personnel, or there are children’s activities taking place, the initiative’s organizers suggest looking for yet another space.

“If they militarize the city, they will only be demonstrating the fear they have of citizens’ dreams for change,” the group states. It recommends that those who are able to meet form circles or groups with others they know to “avoid being infiltrated by forces of the regime.” continue reading

The group recommends taking a photo or recording a video with the date and sending it to Telegram with the user: @ggarmendiac, a platform whose access may be compromised if authorities impose a network blackout similar to the one they implemented after the protests on July 11.

Archipiélago has said the demonstration in Las Tunas would begin at 3:00 PM at Martiana Plaza and would proceed to Cultural Plaza, where participants would lay flowers at the statue of Jose Marti in the middle of the park before beginning a sit-in.

In the event this gathering cannot be carried out as described, the group says participants can instead head to First of May Avenue. It urges people to wear white clothing, carry white flags or display white handkerchiefs. It also suggests carrying a single flower, a Cuban flag or a blank cardboard placard to avoid causing offense.

“We reiterate that this march is peaceful, that what we are calling for is an end to violence, respect for human rights, the release of political prisoners and a resolution of differences between Cubans through democratic means”

Videos of similar protests were shared on social networks, including those in  CamagüeyPinar del RioCienfuegos and the Consolación del Sur district en Pinar del Rio.

The Center for Legal Information (Cubalex) has also made available to demonstrators a set of recommendations. Among them, it advises that they share any information they might obtain about a person detained during the protests. It also advises that, before leaving home, they provide a trusted contact outside Cuba with general information that can later be used to file a complaint and a demand for habeus corpus. Cubalex provides detailed instructions on how to file such demand.

The organization also advises that anyone recording videos or livestreaming indicate the date, time and exact location of the particular event, with the realization that internet access could be cut on the day of the demonstration, as happened after the July 11 protests.

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‘We do not want to see the police beat their own people again,’ Say Cuban Priests

Hundreds of Cubans were detained during the July 11 demonstrations. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 10 November 2021 — “We do not want to see the police beat their own people again,” 15 Cuban Catholic priests say in a letter released this Wednesday, with less than a week remaining before for the Peaceful March for Change. “We do not want blood to be shed again,” or “to hear gunshots again,” insist the priests, “that is not the path that will take us to the Cuba we need and that we all desire.”

“Do not hit the protesters because both you and they live amidst so much scarcity and misery,” they say in the letter addressed to “the civil and military authorities,” the National Revolutionary Police, State Security and “all those who in these days they have been summoned to repress the citizen march of November 15.”

The priests ask that the the protesters not be prevented from protesting peacefully because Cubans “want to live without fear of saying what they think, without fear of being watched, without fear of ’falling from grace’… Both you and they have fathers, mothers, friends, acquaintances, who gave everything for an ideal and who today have nothing.”

In the letter, signed by, among other religious, the priests Rolando Montes de Oca Valero, Lester Zayas Díaz and Jorge Luis Pérez Soto, they argue that the Government “is doing the impossible” so that the population desists from the demonstration, although it carries out “a mass call for violent confrontation.’’ continue reading

They also set out as a precedent the protests of July 11 (11J) last when thousands of Cubans “took to the streets with a cry that for many years was a muffled cry: Freedom! Freedom.” In this regard, they point out that many of the protesters “were beaten, detained, denigrated” and hundreds “are being harshly tried and sentenced without having done wrong.”

Regarding the new march on 15 November (15N), they warn that “there are summons and warnings to many people who have expressed their support for this call,” so they make it clear that they do not agree with the intimidation of the authorities. “We do not want violence, we reject the order of combat” and “the sticks delivered in the work centers.”

Camagüey priest Alberto Reyes is also among the signatories. The priest has previously questioned that in Cuba there can only be one ideology, a single party, a single way of educating, and has denounced the “great theater” that the Island is today, “where we lie to each other as part of a play that no longer needs to be rehearsed.” Another of the uncomfortable voices for the Government who has signed the letter is Father José Conrado.

The priests call for a 15N with “respect, care, peace… We are all Cubans, all brothers. Let us give an example to the world by saying yes to peace, freedom and civility.”

“When what happened on November 15 is written, there will only be two alternatives: to talk about those who were summoned to beat and repress but decided to protect and take care of their compatriots; or to relate how you hit your brother and how you repressed the one who he was demanding what many others long for “

They insist that “no Cuban should raise his hand against his compatriot for the mere fact of thinking differently” and much less the police “who by vocation have the duty to set an example of civility to the entire population, who exist to take care of citizens and protect public order.”

“May the Virgin of Caridad del Cobre, Mother and Patroness of all Cubans, intercede for us before her Son Jesus Christ; He is our peace. At his feet we entrust the efforts and desires of those who dream and work for a Cuba of all, with everyone and for everyone,” they conclude.

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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.

Twenty-Two Cuban Companies in Ciego de Avila Report Losses of 438 Million Pesos

The Pork Company reported losses of 74,000,000 pesos. (Invasor)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, November 4, 2021 — Marino Murillo, the man behind the government’s currency unification reforms, had warned last February that 426 state-owned businesses could close this year due to financial losses. As of September the actual number of entities operating in the red was even higher: 541, or 30% of the Cuban business network, according to the official newspaper Invasor.

Murillo, whom the foreign press has dubbed Cuba’s “reform czar,” made his prediction during an appearance at the Ceballos de Ciego de Avila Agro-Industrial Company. Considered one of the state’s economic crown jewels, the company was already reporting negative numbers last January when, with no profits, it employed 5,000 minimum-wage workers.

Eight months later, another twenty-two of the province’s state-owned businesses were spending more than they earned, a total loss of 438,000,000 pesos (about $18,000,000). Among them were La Cuba, Ruta Invasora, Acopio, Carnico, Farmacias y Opticas, Integral Agropecuaria, Pesquera Industrial and Biopower S.A.

At the end of October, the head of Economy and Planning, Alejandro Gil, acknowledged that, between 2020 and 2021, the Cuban economy took “a really hard hit,” with losses amounting to 13% of GDP. continue reading

At the time, Gil described the challenge of food production as “very complex.” He acknowledged production targets had not been met in almost every category,  specifically citing rice, corn, beans and milk, which was 63 million liters less that had been expected.

In Ciego de Avila, Empresa Porcina (Pork Company) reported losses approaching 74,000,000 pesos, which company director Yandira Sanchez blamed on low pork production. The company was already having problems back in 2020, when it owed more than 6,800 tons of feed — a combination of cassava, sweet potato and taro — to breeders.

Evidence of the pork shortage can be seen at food markets and on restaurant menus. Cubans are now being offered croquettes, ground meat and hamburgers made from flour and vegetable protein.

The poor results have led to questions about Cuba’s abrupt transition from its dual currency system in January. By June, 488 businesses were reporting losses, a figure higher than what had been foreseen as a result of the reforms.

“Currency unification has not fulfilled its promises. Long lines and [black market] resellers are everywhere. There was only one lone security guard at the Eklo grocery store in Playa. Where’s the state comptroller? Nowhere to be seen. Nothing’s changed, same old story,” commented one person on the impact of currency unification in a post on Cubadebate On October 18.

Volodia, a public-sector worker, said, “The only thing this policy has done is pass the government’s economic mistakes on to the little guy. Now he’s the one who has deal with the consequences.”

Another such case is Lacteo, which did not meet its targets in September and reported a loss of almost 8,000,000 pesos. Its production of cheese fell short by 200 tons, ice cream by 150 gallons and butter by 20 tons. Production was affected by the government’s failure to pay producers in hard currency.

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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.

Cuba: Jose Daniel Ferrer Denounces ‘a Constant Noise in His Head, like Crickets’

José Daniel Ferrer (right), during a brief visit to the prison by his son (left), on October 8. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Madrid, November 8, 2021 — Cuban Prisoners Defenders (CPD) has requested that the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borell, intercede “immediately” in favor of dissident José Daniel Ferrer, leader of Unión Patriótica de Cuba (Patriotic Union of Cuba — Unpacu), imprisoned since July 11th.

In a communication published on Monday, the organization, headquartered in Madrid, denounced that Ferrer is being “tortured, is sick and intoxicated with psycho-pharmaceuticals” in Mar Verde prison in Santiago, Cuba.

In their document, CPD noted that the dissident was detained on 11 July before he was able to reach the protest that, similar to those in dozens of cities across the Island, took place in Santiago, and that he was not permited to call his wife, Doctor Nelva Ismarays Ortega, until October 19.

During the call, noted the communication from the NGO, Ferrer denounced that his cell, where he has been held during almost four months of confinement and from which he has not left to get sun (he is only taken for 10 minutes into the hallway, the activist says), it is “completely shuttered,” painted white, and in it “air does not flow, there isn’t a window to the outside, you cannot see absolutely anything outside.” continue reading

Furthermore, he denounced “a constant noise in my head as if there were crickets chirping constantly in an unbearable manner,” which produces a constant headache. CPD asserts that during that call and also in a second call, which occurred on November 5th, they could hear “a constant noise very similar to crickets.”

“Their reluctance to move him to another cell, as well as his treatment within it,” denounces the organization, “indicate that this particular cell may be technologically prepared for torture.” According to Ferrer, as told to his wife, his cell is surrounded by two empty punishment cells which do have windows.

The dissident, continues the text, “began a hunger strike after the first call, so they’d transfer him to another cell with some ventilation,” but instead of transferring him to one of the neighboring cells, the prison guards called a crew of masons who opened a hole and put in a small window.

“Going through that effort of masonry, compared to the alternative of transferring him to a neighboring cell, suggests that his cell could be fitted not only with cameras, but also with any technology designed to create noise and waves, to which José Daniel attributes his very intense and recurring headache,” claims the NGO.

It is important to note that one hypothesis of the origins of the so-called Havana Syndrome, to which CPD refers in its document, which has caused 200 American diplomats and their family members headaches and other neurological disorders, is that a sound “like crickets” serves to camouflage some type of attack with radio frequency energy.

Prisoners Defenders also denounces that, in addition to recurring headaches, Ferrer suffers from oral bleeding, shortness of breath and loss of vision, and has not been given proper medication.

On the contrary, explains the NGO, he is being given Alprazolam, “one of the three most potent oral benzodiazepines on the market, which has been shown to cause suicidal tendencies and slowed respiration, two of the symptoms experienced by Ferrer, among other serious side effects of the drug.”

They also injected the dissident, against his will, with the Abdala vaccine, assuring him that the World Health Organization had approved it. “Faced with these blatant hoaxes, it is not even possible to know if it was truly the vaccine, or another drug,” says CPD, which signaled that the family fears that “causing him altered states of consciousness will provide an excuse for the regime to seclude him in an psychiatric institution, which would allow them to cause harm further injuries.”

In addition, the organization states “these practices against political prisoners have been used on other occasions,” as in the cases of Óscar Peña and Adrián Cedeño.

In addition to the request to Josep Borrell, Prisoners Defenders addressed “the European Commission, the Government of Canada, the Government of Norway, and any governments through which the regime continues to benefit from financial and political assets, and thus have the space and the tools to demand respect for human rights,” so that “they will collaborate immediately to prevent this slow and cruel assasination of a notable defender of human rights.”

Until now, the only family member who has been able to see Ferrer in prison has been his son, José Daniel Ferrer Cantillo, on October 8th, for only 20 minutes and always under surveillance. At that time, the dissident’s family denounced that he was in a “minuscule isolation cell where he remains under inhumane and degrading conditions, semi-nude” and that he was “in very poor health.”

“He could barely to speak to his son,” his sister, Ana Belkis Ferrer said, because since the day before the meeting, the dissident has been experiencing “severe headaches, chills, body aches, and shortness of breath, to such a degree that he requested another Diclofenac [an NSAID] injection.”

José Daniel Ferrer is serving a four-year prison sentence imposed by a tribunal in February of 2020 for the alleged crime of “injuries and deprivation of liberty” against a third person. Up until the moment of his arrest, Unpacu’s national coordinator had been serving his sentence as amended, in 2020, to allow him to serve it under house arrest instead of in prison.

The Popular Provincial Tribunal of Santiago de Cuba justified its decision, on the grounds that Ferrer maintained an “attitude contrary to the requirements to which he must comply” because he had not secured employment and, on various occasions engaged in, “incorrect and defiant behavior toward authorities who were fulfilling their functions.”

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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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.

Who Does Your Revolution Serve ‘President’ Diaz-Canel?’

It is time to show the world two things: that this dystopia that they still call revolution has nothing to offer the ordinary Cuban and that there is the potential to organize a better government. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yamil Simón-Manso, Gaithersburg, 8 November 2021 — Some time ago a Cuban friend asked me: “And you, why do you continue to be interested in Cuban affairs?” And immediately afterwards he added: “It’s sickening, the same problem, rhetoric, frustrations, over and over again.”

What to say? It is true, but I have not forgotten Cuba. Although it has very little to offer me, the Island is, of course, bigger than me. She will be there when I am gone and I will remain attached to her until the end of my days. Why make unnecessary excuses? If I had to offer a larger reason, I would say tying me to Cuba is her pain. It hurts to perceive the orphanhood that Cuba experiences in situations such as those of July 11. Tyrians and Trojans are silent*, whether due to ignorance, laziness, omission or opportunism.

It is time to show the world two things: that this dystopia that they still call Revolution has nothing to offer the ordinary Cuban and that there is the potential to organize a better government. The negative (or positive) impact of that Revolution on those I met shows me that today both assumptions are undeniable, here are some examples.

My apologies in advance for some personal references; although it seems pretentious, I conform to the idea that it is the most honest way of arguing. Also for the scant details, the abrupt changes in the narration for the sake of brevity and some incomplete names to protect identities.

I was born in Cuba in 1963, in a small valley in the central region between hills. We were poor peasants and also happy dwarves, so this memory still makes me nostalgic. As a child I liked to think that it was an important place, the place where the sun would hide when we did not see it, it would appear in the morning on the hill La Campana and in the evening it would slip away through the hills of Piedra. I told my first teacher, Rosa, this one day and she said: “That’s right, Yamil, we are the center of the universe.” She smiled and from then on I loved her until the day she left this world, poor and disappointed.

Rosa was trained at what was then called a ‘normal school’ as an elementary school teacher, and the neighborhood identified her as a synonym for a good teacher. When I met her, she was still living in the little house continue reading

attached to one of those rural schools that were built during the Government of Grau, or was it the first Government of Batista? Under the pretext of enlarging the school, they stripped her of her house and offered her a hut owned by a “gusano” (worm) who had emigrated and which adjoined some stables for the shipment of cattle.

Before leaving Cuba, I went to visit her for the last time, without much refinement already, and while she was trying to feed some starving chickens with a little cooked rice she told me: “The stink of shit and the politicking made me leave the teaching profession.” She considered that the Revolution had massified education and that now rural people, like me, could aspire to something more than a sixth grade education, but that they had been wrong to prioritize politics and not education.

Early on, the Revolution taught us that society was divided into classes and that the class struggle was the driving force behind progress. We were taught that Cuba before 1959 was backward capitalism, dominated by large estates and gringo companies. In Punta Diamante, as my neighborhood is called, I got to know three large landowners, the kind the propaganda was constantly reminding us about how bad they were. I did not identify them as such; ultimately, they were all decent people, they had stayed in Cuba and did ordinary jobs. Orestes Castellón herded cows to the slaughterhouse, Justo Batista herded pigs and Patricio Catano tended to the little piece of land that had been left to him.

Over time the cows, the sows, the stables, the colorful gates were lost, the jetty was closed; in all, no one raised cattle any more. It was of no use to Rosa, since she had already moved to another neighborhood.

On the farm of Chamán Milla, another large landowner whom I did not know personally, two large dams were built that ended up filling up with an invasive weed that stank and drying up all the streams in which we used to swim as boys.

When the “food plan” came in, supposedly to plant vegetables, they destroyed the last thing that was left standing, an avocado that many people harvested in season. Nothing more was heard of the aforementioned plan, and there wasn’t a single pumpkin to break the news.

My father benefited from the agrarian reform when he received a little under 200 acres from the Chamán estate, with a permanent commitment to plant tobacco. Each year he planted between 60,000 and 80,000 positions, and the government paid him 32 Cuban pesos for every 100 pounds of “main” tobacco, at a time when the dollar was priced on the street at 120 Cuban pesos. Ironically, one day passing through Heathrow airport in London, I found a business offering a single Cuban cigar, barely 10 grams, at 22 pounds sterling.

My father never enjoyed any privilege, nor did he take vacations, he worked every day of his life from four in the morning until the sun went below the horizon, and he died of a heart attack. Due to lack of transportation, he reached the hospital on foot, five kilometers. There they told him that his condition required that he be taken to the provincial hospital but that there was no ambulance available. If it hadn’t been for one of my sisters, who is a nurse, he would have died right there. Those were the times of “31 y pa’lante” — onward!

There were two stores in my neighborhood, one previously owned by Honorato and the other by Piñero. Honorato lived for about a hundred years, patient and circumspect, every day he sat in the little park in front of what had been his store, confiscated in 1968 and now turned into a tobacco warehouse, I think to catch the morning sun and see how it collapsed board by board.

Piñero was less lucky, or more? He did not survive the interventions. The revolutionaries put a loudspeaker on him in front of his house to shout “paredón, paredón” [literally ‘wall, wall,’ meaning the wall before the firing squad] at him day and night with the support and complacency of the poorest people in the neighborhood, the same people who benefited by buying on credit from his store.

Years later I asked one of those poor people who was there then and now, without a doubt, he was even poorer: “How bad was Piñero?” He was surprised by my question; apparently he couldn’t find much to say and after a while he said to me: “Well, he deserved it. Berta (his wife) overcharged and he played dumb.”

The neighborhood was left behind when they sent me on a scholarship at the age of 11. At first it felt like I was a prisoner, but over time the human animal gets used to everything. I did high school and pre-university in unspeakable schools. Even so, it was not uncommon to find good teachers that I still remember, almost all by nicknames such as El Butano, Newton, La Meiótica, El Manco, El Peón and a long etcetera. I was never a very diligent student and it wasn’t until college that I really started paying attention to my education.

While in my neighborhood, under threat of accusing them of the “crime” of dangerousness, they forced the girl Maria Antonieta and the cross-eyed Agustín to climb into a boat and go out through the Mariel, the first for “fag” and the second for “bisnero” — hustler. I was going to college. I was lucky enough to arrive at the Central University of Las Villas (UCLV) in the fall of 1980, a magical time for many, tragic for some. As a result of the communist assemblies, several students had been expelled from the university, including one of the best students from the Faculty of Chemistry, surnamed Cervelló.

No surprise, at the entrance of the university there was a huge sign where you could read a clear and exclusive message — “The University is for Revolutionaries” — and Cervelló wanted to leave Cuba.

On the other hand, the time for improvisations by technical personnel had passed, even many professors had graduated from Soviet universities or from other countries of the socialist camp. There I met exceptional students and teachers. There were mediocre ones, but who cared?

I also met Díaz-Canel at that time, although I barely spoke words with him. While he was in the UCLV he seemed a reserved and intelligent guy, something rare among the excitable Cuban leaders. After he passed to the Provincial Party, I began to hear horrors from him. As a friend said, “this one had his brain transplanted by a poplar.” It seems that 11J (July 11) proved my friend right.

During those years, an atmosphere of discussion and exchange was developed at the UCLV that was quite productive for everyone. We were disconnected from the world, but somehow people managed to gather information. We moved from one faculty to another either for a computer talk, a cultural, sports or scientific activity. We exchanged forbidden books wrapped in newsprint and laughed at bureaucracy and political foolishness.

However, if questioned, most of us would feel like revolutionaries, with a few exceptions. We did not intend to end the Revolution but to transform it. Finally, many of us discovered a dark background in the process and found those turning points that led us to change our point of view.

I could cite many similar experiences, or much worse, but I will only refer to one. One day, going to the Chemistry Department, I stopped to say hello to a colleague, I’ll just call him Jorge. He worked in the computer center, an entity that in turn had become a benchmark for all of us who did something in the science area. This colleague had been a medalist in a mathematics Olympiad and his name along with that of my friend David were obligatory mentions when talking about the calculation center.

It turns out that that morning he was working in the green areas of my building and I joked that he was doing “voluntary” work. He replied: “No, no, I’m being punished because my sister complained to me and I have to do this to get permission to leave.” It seemed to me what it was, a stupid and unnecessary humiliation. I remember asking him if he wasn’t sad about leaving Cuba and he answered something like this: “It would be sad for me not to take advantage of this opportunity because of an ideological commitment.”

My father-in-law was the director of the Santa Clara bread and candy company during the agonizing years euphemistically known as the Special Period. Anyone would say that being a leader, he would not have as bad a time as others. I was a witness to the thousand and one nights of sleeplessness that this kind gentleman dedicated to the company that finally led him to his grave at the age of 53. I frequently saw him get up at two in the morning to travel to Havana and get them to give him some flour from the “commander’s reserve” to take to Santa Clara and prevent the distribution of the piece of bread from the quota.

With his natural intelligence and the work my father-in-law did for that government, he would have lived comfortably anywhere else in the world. He died of a massive heart attack during volunteer work. I was no longer in Cuba, but I learned that Díaz-Canel went to say goodbye at the wake. That in burying and giving speeches there is no one who has the upper hand.

I’ll leave it there. As the poet said, “it hurts the cojones of the soul” to see a country that was about to make the leap to modernity move rapidly towards the abyss, consumed by the ideological mange of Marxism. What hurts the most is that a government that was supposed to create conditions for individuals to develop fully sees their human resources drained from day to day and does nothing to correct it, and, on the contrary, encourages it with the sole interest of staying in power.

The owner of everything is named, the university, the street, the land, the air, I ask? But who does the Revolution serve? It definitely did not serve Rosa, Orestes, Justo, Patricio, my father, Honorato, Piñero, Cervelló, Jorge, David, my father-in-law, the artists of 27N (27 November), those who protested on 11J (11 July) and many others. Who does your Revolution serve, “president” Díaz-Canel?

You could say, as the Americans say, that my article is tainted with cherry picking, that I have chosen certain unfortunate facts to validate my opinion. That there are peasants who are still grateful for the agrarian reform, that professionals like Ricardo, Mateo and others remained in the calculation center (well, I don’t really know if Mateo is still there, so many have left Cuba). Not so, convince yourself; my stories continue to show a cross section of the Cuban reality.

If you have real power, prove it and we will restore the dignity of your office without putting the word president in quotation marks; let the Cubans demonstrate peacefully on 15N (15 November), call for harmony, let the talent from here and there come together for the benefit of Cuba.

Insisting with outdated economic recipes, ideological precepts and an obsession with power is stupid and condemns Cubans to live as beggars. I can admit that you think you are not doing things out of evil, but as Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned, “stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of good than evil itself.”

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Editor’s Note: The author was a professor of Chemistry at the Central University of Las Villas between 1986 and 1994.

*Translator’s note: A quote from Cervantes’ Don Quixote. From the Aeneid, Tyrians and Trojans represent irreconcilable enemies.

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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.

Hard-Currency Debit Cards: Much More than a Waiting List

Harvesting crops in Cuba. (Bohemia)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Elias Amor Bravo, economist, November 1, 2021 — If there is one sector of the Cuban economy with no reason to be grateful for the changes the revolution brought about, it is agriculture. It employs almost one fifth of the nation’s workforce but contributes only 5% to GDP. Productivity is 80% below the economic average. As a result it cannot meet the food needs of the entire population.

None of this was the case before 1959. Responsibility for this serious problem lies with the communist economic model adopted by Fidel Castro. After pushing through a disastrous agrarian reform program, he expropriated all private-sector land and handed it over to an indolent and inefficient state bureaucracy, which is directly responsible for the chaos.

Then Raul Castro came along, acknowledged it was disaster and leased back the land (without granting property rights) to farmers who agreed to play by the new rules. Things still did not work.

Then came the era of agricultural experiments. All kinds of communist tomfoolery was tried without any acknowledgement of what actually had to be done. Many new amendments have been added to the 2019 communist constitution but not the one it so urgently needs. Land cannot be collectively owned by everyone.

It’s absurd to think the state is capable of managing farmland for the public good. It will never be able to produce enough. The experiments were continue reading

nothing more than patches on faulty marketing, contracting and scientific applications. They did not yield the expected results. Agriculture has remained stagnant, waiting for opportunities to open up in the private sector and for property rights to be restored. Vietnam provided these opportunities and, in little more than five years, famine was a thing of the past.

Recently, the State newspaper Granma has been reporting on the latest experiment. The government now says that agricultural producers whose crops are exported will be guaranteed a percentage of the proceeds in the form of hard currency. This is part of a package of measures (no less than sixty-three) that, the government complains, “farmers do not know about because they do not read them.” Meanwhile, Cuban farmers ignore the new regulations and go about tilling their fields, trying to find a solution to the many obstacles the system puts in their way.

Granma stated, “Some eight months after these measures took effect, changes are beginning to be seen in agricultural and livestock performance, with better numbers in the supply of milk, meat, fruit and honey… yes, though still far from satisfying current demand.” Curiously, however, the economics minister, Alberto Gil, looked at his balance sheet for the first nine months of this year and acknowledged a few days ago that no agricultural production targets were met. So who’s right?

But back to the issue at hand. According to Granma, the measure that has had the greatest impact is the one that gives farm producers a percentage of the proceeds in freely convertible foreign currency (moneda libremente convertible or MLC), which they can use to buy supplies to increase production and support their families.

The question is, why do they only get a portion of the proceeds and not the full amount? What is preventing producers from being able to reap the full rewards of their time and effort? Why is the state extracting all the income and wealth rather than relying on the tax system?

The Granma article describes a situation in Guantanamo where — and here comes the good part — there has been a significant “decline in the number of MLC debit cards issued to farmers who, without these cards, cannot receive the hard currency they have earned from the export of their products.”

Damn! So who has that money now? To provide some idea of the scope of the problem, Granma reports that, of the 20,000 fruit, vegetable and livestock farmers in the province, only 300 have these cards. The numbers speak for themselves.

The regime now requires MLC cards be used for a growing number of retail transactions to prevent foreign currency from circulating freely as cash, as farmers would prefer. One would assume, then, that the regime would see to it that its inefficient state-run banks would get the cards out quickly. Though the cards are essential to the whole MLC operation, that is not happening.

They trot out the usual excuses, which boil down to two things: reduced operational capacity due to Covid-19 and low interest on the part of consumers, who have made little effort to acquire the cards since efforts were made to streamline the process in November 2020 as part of currency unification reforms.

Anything that could stimulate agricultural production, though we have serious doubts this is even possible, is always delayed or stymied by the inertia of the government sector. The same could be said of the banking sector as well, which also has no incentive to make sure things work.

On the one hand, the banks do as they are told. They require farmers to open  accounts in person, in spite of the threat from Covid-19. Small farmers open bank accounts without a clear idea what they will get out of it. When they later encounter roadblocks, chaos is unleashed. Imagine how that turns out. Very badly indeed.

So far, only a few bee keepers and those who pay taxes to the Milk Company have been issued cards. And as Granma points out, many have not gotten them because bureaucratic rules require producers to provide copies of their lease and their ID cards to open an account.

Then the merry-go-round begins. The communists always manage to entangle everyone in their problems. On the one hand, officials say the country wants everyone to get what he or she deserves for his or her time and effort while at the same time claiming that MLC cards will help the economy.

To achieve that objective, every agricultural producer will need extra support because not all farm cooperatives have the computers and infrastructure needed to achieve this. In other words, farmers toiling in the fields will have to be computerized. How many Cuban peasants do you think have access to this technology?

Producers are more interested in being left alone to do what they do, which is tilling the fields. It is not clear to them why they would need a plastic card — many, in fact, are using the cards they already have to run their operations — especially when they are being told from on-high to get one even though it does not address their specific needs.

Add to that the banks’ complicated and cumbersome management of the cards, and delayed payments from the state. The benefit of the new card is that it would allow farmers to receive something from the sale of their exports. But if they are not receiving the full proceeds from those sales, why would they be interested? Then there are the payments producers have still not received for the crops they have already delivered. This further erodes confidence in the state, which has a reputation of not paying its bills and currently runs a deficit equal to 20% of GDP.

Officials should be encouraging economic actors to focus their attention on the things that really matter to them, not on red tape and communist craziness. If there are entities that are selling things online and generating significant hard currency income that they can later use to buy things in government-run MLC stores, let them keep doing it.

If economic actors benefit from entering into joint ventures or other cooperative business relationships, let them do it if they serve the interests of all parties. These are the keys to a functioning economy, which Cuban communists have made impossible for six decades. A return to rationality and efficiency is necessary but it is not enough to overcome backwardness and supply shortages.

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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.

Intellectuals, Politicians and Journalists Sign a Letter in Support of 15 November Marches in Cuba

In addition to Mario Vargas Llosa, notable among the signatories are former Presidents Luis Alberto Lacalle, of Uruguay, and Mauricio Macri of Argentina. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 9 November 2021 — Peruvian author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa, former presidents, world leaders, ministers, politicians, academics, and journalists from several countries have expressed, through a letter, their support for the peaceful protests organized by Archipiélago for November 15th in Cuba.

“We support and back the peaceful demonstration on November 15th convened by different sectors of civil society,” declared the signatories less than a week before the protest, which has been declared “illegal” by the Cuban Government.

They denounced that Cubans have spent “more than 60 years” suffering the effects of “the gigantic oppression of the longest dictatorship in the history of Latin America” and have thus been deprived of “the most basic human rights.” In addition to Vargas Llosa, notable among the signatories are former Presidents Luis Alberto Lacalle of Uruguay, Mauricio Macri of Argentina, and Lenin Moreno of Ecuador.

“Since 1952, Cubans have not participated in free elections and several generations have been persecuted for exercising journalism and freedom of expression, as well as all types of human rights activists,” they write.

In the text, they note that the people of the Island “raised a cry of freedom and democracy” on July 11th when they went out to the streets to protest and thus showed the international community “that Cubans are standing up in the struggle to conquer their rights and build a democracy.” continue reading

“It is the Cuban people who demand, in much the same way that José Martí did long ago, a Republic with everyone and for the good of everyone,” they added in their missive, dated November in Madrid, Spain, and also signed by Cuban Activist Rosa María Payá and Argentinian Agustín Antonetti.

They also stressed that in the name of defending “freedom and democracy in our region and the world” and protected by international law, the Inter-American Democratic Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, they manifest their “solidarity with the Cuban people in their struggle for freedom and democracy.”

They similarly expressed that Cubans “have the right to choose their future” and that their demands “are legitimate and necessary to build the rule of law.” In addition, they stated their support for the call to the release political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, “especially those arrested for peacefully protesting on July 11th.”

Adding their signatures, among others, were Cuban journalists Mario Pentón, Yoani Sánchez and Carlos Alberto Montaner as well as Idania Chirinos, of Venezuela and Argentinians Cristina Pérez and Eduardo Feinmann.

The letter was published Tuesday, when many of the activists and organizers of the event on 15N are being harassed by State Security, which is threatening them with jail time if they attend the march, while Yunior García, one of the most visible faces of the initiative, finds himself at home, incommunicado and under the surveillance of the authorities.

 Translated by: Silvia Suárez
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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.

In Santa Clara, Cuba, Archipielago Proposes Taking to the Streets in a Decentralized Manner on 15 November

Activist and business owner, Saily González, with a demand submitted to the Administration of Santa Clara at the end of October. (Twitter)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, November 9, 2021 — Facing harassment by State Security and the local government, Archipiélago in Santa Clara announced this Tuesday “replacing the initial proposal” of a march on November 15th (15N). The new strategy proposed taking to the streets in “a decentralized manner from any point in the city.”

The convening will still take place at 3:00 pm and participants should wear white. The group requested that those who go out on that day join others they “recognize as supporters of the peaceful protest” and attempt to “make an offering of flowers to any of our heroes,” but “always following the principles of civility and rejecting violence.”

They also suggested avoiding confrontation with those who comply with the regime’s “combat order” and distancing themselves from repressive forces such as “policemen, special forces, Brigadas de Respuesta Rápida (BRR) [Rapid Response Brigades], and any other that the Government manages to convene on that day to repress the protest.”

Archipiélago requested that protesters distance themselves from MLC stores [those that only take payment in hard currency] to “avoid possible infiltrators” who have been ordered by the political police “to attack them,” and also “energetically sing” the National Anthem “in front of the Cuban hero.”

The group reiterated that it will go out on 15N to express themselves against violence, demand the release of political prisoners, that the rights of all Cubans be respected, and that there be a democratic resolution of differences between civil society and the Government of the Island “through democratic and peaceful means.”

Among the concerns that resulted in the modifications to the 15N activities, what stood out was that the “Department of State Security would infiltrate” the ranks of the group to “commit criminal and violent acts against continue reading

people and public property and that the BRR, responding to President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s combat order, would lash out against the protesters, thus provoking bloodshed and violent confrontations.”

This Monday, the group has called for a massive cazerolazo [beating of pots and pans] on November 14th and 15th, at 8 pm, in support of Cubans who will go out to march and for the more than 600 citizens who remain in prison and are being sentenced to exemplary penalties for exercising their right to dissent.

“Sound your pots for the needed changes in Cuba and because we deserve a dignified life,” they requested on their social media.

Since the Civic March for Change was announced, first for November 20th and later rescheduled for 15N, the members of Archipiélago have suffered repressive acts, they’ve been summoned by the Prosecutor’s Office and State Security and some have even been fired, among them, doctor Manuel Guerra and university professor David Alfredo Martínez Espinosa.

On the other hand, the Asamblea de Resistencia Cubana (ARC) [Assembly of the Cuban Resistance], which comprises over 35 associations that fight for democracy on the Island, encouraged Hispanics in Miami, and especially Venezuelans and Nicaraguans to join a caravan in support of the Civic March for Change next Sunday.

The call is for Venezuelans and Nicaraguans to participate as citizens of “two countries governed by dictatorships, as has occurred in Cuba for 61 years,” stated the organization in a communication shared Tuesday.

“This caravan is not only for Cubans, people of other nationalities, such as Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who are a part of this struggle, are also invited and have confirmed their attendance,” affirmed Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, ARC’s coordinator.

At the end of the parade of vehicles, next to Miami’s Freedom Tower, participants will be able to join a flotilla and a human chain of solidarity organized by Movimiento Democracia [Democracy Movement], presided by Ramón Saúl Sánchez, also in support of 15N.

The Civic March on November 15 provides continuity to the protests which erupted in many cities of the country demanding a democratic change; these were harshly repressed by the Government presided over by Miguel Díaz-Canel.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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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.