14ymedio – Page 260 – Translating Cuba

‘No to the Cuban Dictatorship’s Blackmail of Offering Exile in Exchange for Freeing Political Prisoners’

Anamely Ramos said that in the previous hunger strike by Maykel Castillo, she was by his side, although in this one she will not be able to be because he is in prison. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 26 October 2021 — Maykel Castillo ‘Osorbo’ is on a hunger and thirst strike in a dungeon at the Kilo 5 and a Half prison, in the province of Pinar del Río, according to art curator and activist Anamely Ramos. After several hours of uncertainty in which the San Isidro Movement (MSI) expressed its concern about the absence of the daily call that the artist makes to his family, the rumors that other inmates had sent to their relatives about the possibility that he was a ’plantado’ were confirmed.

“They [the prisoners] have taken care of him all this time and when they shouted Patria y Vida, when they heard about the Latin Grammy nomination, they felt that their hope resurfaced beyond the imprisoned body. ’He cannot die for us’, they repeat over and over again, calling their families and asking them to report the Maykel situation,” Ramos wrote on her Facebook profile on Tuesday.

The activist, who is currently doing postgraduate studies at a university in Mexico, has expressed her closeness to Osorbo even from a distance, emphasizing that the singer and author of the song that has become an anthem for change in Cuba is aware that he is imprisoned for having been part of “a song that inspired a people,” but he vindicated his example for other people.

“Maykel is the example that all human beings can improve and grow, he is the example that no matter how much violence they have thrown against you, you can always love and fight peacefully for freedom. Maykel alone represents all mobility that the ’Revolution’ promised and did not fulfill,” she adds. continue reading

Her words came hours after the virtual press conference called by the San Isidro Movement in which she herself emphasized the rejection of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Osorbo himself to be released in exchange for exile, a negotiation that dates back to several weeks ago, according to Tania Bruguera, and that facilitated the departure from the country of the artists Hamlet Lavastida and Katherine Bisquet to Poland.

“We do not accept the political blackmail of the exile and exile of the Cuban dictatorship as a condition to free the political prisoners in Cuba,” the group said in summary.

Although the press conference was initially called to give “unconditional support” to the Archipiélago collective and the Civic Marches for Change scheduled for November 15, the MSI took the opportunity to demand the release of all political prisoners, among whom it cited Otero Alcántara and Osorbo expressly.

Anamely Ramos reiterated the “total solidarity” of the MSI with Archipiélago and insisted that the country lives in a “situation of terror,” with continuous reprisals for those who disagree politically, which materialize in expulsions from jobs, threats to families and other bullying practices.

Fernando Almeyda, one of the Archipelago spokespeople who also participated in the conference through Zoom, considered that his organization has already achieved “something important” with this call, although he fears that the Government, prisoner of a “tremendous fear” in the face of the protests, will respond with attacks.

“We know that we can face many very difficult scenarios on November 15,” said Almeyda, who stressed that opponents face “a system that has only violence left.”

Almeyda stressed that the initiative has a peaceful nature, and encouraged those who do not feel safe to participate in the protest in an alternative way with cacerolazos — the banging of pots and pans –or on social networks.

Hours later, the head of the Ideological Department of the Communist Party of Cuba, Rogelio Polanco, directly accused the United States Government of being “the true organizer and promoter of the provocation mounted for November.”

The official affirmed that senior officials of the Washington Administration “participate openly” in promoting the march with the intention of bringing about a change in the island’s political system.

“The supposed peaceful march is a provocation as part of a strategy of a soft coup and its purposes coincide with the main lines of attacks, slander, lies and threats used by those who, financed by the US Government, oppose the Cuban political system and they are trying to destabilize it and restore capitalism,” the official stressed on the Roundtable program on State TV.

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Before November 15, Products Reappear in Cuba as if by Magic

This line this Friday in Central Havana, where products that had been missing for months had been put on sale in Cuban pesos. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 30 October 2021 — As if by magic, products that had been absent from the shelves of Central Havana for months have appeared. The neighbors, as expected, did not take long to gather around the shops in the neighborhood.

Chicken, hotdogs, shampoo, toothpaste and cologne were on sale this Friday in stores like La Mía, on Belascoain Street. “This is good today, for a long time now they didn’t have so many things for sale in the same place,” commented a man in line. “That’s because of November 15,” another man replied, “after that day, we go back to chicken one day and, if anything, mincemeat the next.”

And yes, the toothpaste, ran out first thing in the morning.

When they had collected 160 identity cards from the people in line, it was noon and 100 people were still waiting around the corner for continue reading

their cards to be taken. Several members of the “coleros confrontation brigades” at the door of the store organized the flow of customers, who, with their rationbook in hand, had overcome the last obstacle before entering the market.
“This is disrespectful, they have passed a few people ahead of everyone, I have been playing the game for a while,” lamented a neighbor of about 50 years, standing in the line. “Groups to confront the coleros for what? If the coleros are first in line; then they also all leave with their packs full and even one of them may not find anything left to buy.”

State businesses that offer products in national currency are going through a shortage crisis that is almost commonplace, which began in 2019, and that the authorities called ’temporary’, and which reached its zenith with the covid pandemic. After the protests of July 11 and, in the last month, with the call for a Civic March for Change for November 15, Havanans have seen, not without suspicion, a discreet improvement in the offer of products, especially in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods of the capital.

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Cuba: The End of the Party

Yunior García, one of the leaders of the Archipiélago, at the time he received the official response declaring the march of 15N “illegal”. (EFE)

14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Miami, 30 October 2021 — The Cuban march on November 15 has been called by Archipiélago. This group is not a political party and does not intend to replace the communists in the country’s leadership. It takes its name from diversity. It is not true that Cuba is only an island. It is a large island – larger than the Netherlands and Belgium combined – and with many habitable islets, and also the Isle of Pines and the abundant keys.

Nor are the members of Archipiélago are at the service of the “Americans” or, specifically, of the CIA. This is the classic infamy with which the regime tries to discredit and disqualify those who oppose its forced unanimity. What the many members and supporters of Archipiélago want is to express themselves and tell their truths under the Constitution’s protection.

The Constitution guarantees freedom of thought, but, simultaneously, it subjects what is said to the socialist goals designed by the institutional order of the text itself. It is deliberately ambiguous since its model is the Stalin’s 1936 Constitution and its derivatives. On one side, it establishes the fundamental rights. On the other, it suppresses them.

In the Cuban case, when Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, on behalf of the ‘Christian Liberation Movement,’ presented more than the ten thousand signatures (in fact, more than 14,000) that were required to submit to a vote a referendum on a constitutional amendment that would authorize the multiparty system, the Cuban Parliament (the ‘National Assembly of People’s Power’) did not bother to answer him.

In 2012, he was murdered along with Harold Cepero. They were too bothersome. Human Rights Watch tells it: after a confusing incident, in which only the Cubans died continue reading

, despite the fact that both had got out of the car on their own feet, unaided. This was told to me by Ángel Carromero, a young Spanish man who was driving the car on the day of the crime.

Previously, the Constitution, the communist aims of Cuban society and the role of the Party had been “armored,” so that it was highly unlikely to modify the course of Cuban events. However, it is practically impossible to prevent such changes towards openness. When will they happen? Once there is a critical mass that demands them or, otherwise, when certain people with effective power have the political will to carry them out.

Both forces converge in Cuba. On July 11, it became clear that young people want to expand society’s participation margins, but, at the same time, there are thousands of cadres from the Communist Party itself who call themselves “reformists” and are eager to initiate a substantial change that allows them to abandon collectivist and authoritarian superstitions forever. It has been 62 years of continuous failures.

In this sense, the cases of Leo Brouwer, Pablo Milanés, and Silvio Rodríguez, despite being different, are very significant. They repeated the “we have come this far” of José Saramago, when three young black men were executed in Havana on April 11, 2003. Brouwer sharply distanced himself from the Cuban regime due to the repression exercised against civil society on July 11 of this year. Hundreds of peaceful people were beaten and imprisoned, which was intolerable to this great-nephew of Ernesto Lecuona, a great guitarist and a great composer.

Pablo Milanés has lived in Spain since 1992, so his clear break with the regime, expressed in previous circumstances and now reiterated, is not surprising. More significant was the position taken by Silvio Rodríguez. He talked for more than an hour with the young playwright Yunior García Aguilera, an animator from Archipiélago, and with his wife, Dayana, a filmmaker, after García Aguilera’s arbitrary arrest. From that meeting came out a formal request from the singer-songwriter to the dictatorship to release the hundreds of detainees who had not used violence.

Silvio Rodríguez said on Facebook, “The meeting with Yunior and Dayana was good, I am not exaggerating if I say fraternal; there was dialogue, exchange, we listened to each other with attention and respect. The most painful thing for me was hearing that they, as a generation, no longer felt part of the Cuban process but something else. They explained their arguments, their frustrations to me. I tried to make them understand that at my age everything was also much slower than we expected it to be.”

Silvio Rodríguez has taught Miguel Díaz-Canel a lesson on how to deal with the opposition. But he has received another quite obvious lesson – he has heard that Yunior and Dayana “do not feel part of the Cuban process.” The story of the Sierra Maestra is so old that it’s not possible for young people to bond emotionally with those stories. Silvio was born in the 1940s. Yunior in the eighties. If Silvio were as rational as he appears he would tell Díaz-Canel to get ready for the end of the party. It’s just around the corner.

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It is Forbidden to Bring Veterinary Vaccines to Cuba Due to the Risk of “Biological Aggression from the United States”

A young man sitting next to his pet at Havana’s Malecón at the end of September 2021. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana | 26 October 2021 — Vaccines and other biological products for veterinary use “can be vehicles for building diverse and powerful biological weapons.” That is the argument of the Ministry of Agriculture of Cuba to prohibit its importation and its exclusion in Resolution 430/2021.

The agency considers that “veterinary vaccines, antisera, culture media, products obtained by genetic engineering and genetically modified organisms” may “contain in their composition strains of pathogenic microorganisms different from those that circulate” in Cuba, and that this type of aggression has been used by the United States.

Pharma biologist chemist Ernesto Mediola assures 14ymedio that he understands Cuba’s position, but does not share the bans “because the drugs are regulated and go through meticulous health protocols.”

“Strictly speaking, viruses, bacteria, toxins, to name a few, could be used to cause disease, but to state that a patented vaccine is the basis of a biological weapon is an extreme position.”

The news has not been well received by a community of animal lovers and protectors that have been waiting for months for veterinary drugs, and vaccines in particular, to reach clinics and stores in the country. Stories of critically ill or dead animals from preventable continue reading

diseases can be heard everywhere.

“We placed an ad stating that we would be willing to pay whatever it took to buy it here because last year we had another little puppy die from distemper”

Duque died of parvovirus when he was only six months of age. The vaccine that was needed to immunize him against the disease did not reach Cuba in time, after an emigrant cousin sent the owner of the puppy a dose of the pentavalent that also immunizes against distemper, adenovirus, hepatitis, and kennel cough.

“We placed an ad stating that we would be willing to pay whatever it took to buy it here because last year we had another little puppy die of distemper,” the troubled owner of the two dead animals told this newspaper. “But they are practically not selling it on the black market because, with the reduction of flights, they almost never arrive.” In addition, the vaccine must maintain a strict cold storage chain.

Roberto Miró, who runs a small place where he trims animals’ nails and treats them against scabies and ticks in Santo Suárez, explains to this newspaper that “you have to buy the vaccine only from a source in which you have a lot of confidence because, if the packaging was not at the right temperature all the time, it’s like throwing your money away.”

A dose of pentavalent exceeds 1,500 pesos in the informal market and there isn’t a constant supply. Most of the veterinarians who practice privately, seeing animals in their homes, have preferred to withdraw immunization with these antidotes from their catalog of services. “What would I have to charge to give the injection if the vaccine costs me that much? Few clients are willing to pay that amount,” Miró acknowledges.

In the main veterinary clinics of Havana, the product has been conspicuous by its absence for more than a year, even in the exclusive Almiquí, with high prices in convertible currency, the pentavalent has barely arrived a couple of times in recent months. “Animals die of diseases that would be very easy to prevent with a timely vaccine,” says Miró.

The Ministry of Agriculture also prohibited the import-export of “hormones and growth promoters, drugs, narcotics, psychotropics, blood samples, strains of microorganisms” and equipment, devices and materials for veterinary laboratory diagnosis.

In the information offered for travelers, the agency specified that the importation of antibiotics for veterinary use is permitted, as well as antifungals, antiparasitics, vitamin supplements, instruments and accessories for pets, which must be in their “original containers, duly labeled and identified with the commercial and generic name or international common denomination.”

“My dogs have not been able to go out to the street for almost two years because I have not been able to vaccinate them”

Mendiola believes that the ban is more aimed at the centralism of a government that is questionable, given the lack of medications. Cuba has reached such extremes that, in the face of the scabies plague they are experiencing, those affected have had to resort to an antiparasitic that is used in animals. “It is not recommended because it can generate adverse reactions. Before prohibiting, Cuba should open the entry of drugs in general,” warns the chemist.

In the absence of protection, many pet owners reinforce the measures. “My dogs have not been able to go out to the street for almost two years because I have not been able to vaccinate them. I already suffered a lot with the death of a ten-year-old dog who got sick with distemper and I do not want to go through that again. What we do is leave them at home and we have rags with chlorine at the entrance to clean our shoes and avoid bringing them diseases from the outside,” says a resident from El Cerro.

“We have American pentavalent, just brought from Miami,” states an ad in one of the most popular sites of classifieds sales in Cuba. I administered it to the animal at home,” it reads. “Life is priceless,” the ad concludes immediately after the price of the drug: 1,800 pesos.

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The Regime’s Two Obsessions: Preventing Protests on November 15 and Saving the Biennial

Rogelio Polanco Fuentes, secretary of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee, appeared on the TV news program Mesa Redonda (Roundtable) to condemn calls for anti-government demonstrations on November 15. (Cubadebate)

14ymedio, Havana, October 26, 2021 — Just nineteen days remain until November 15, when national protest rallies are scheduled to take place. Not a day goes by that the issue does not attract attention, both from organizers and supporters of the Civic March for Change and from the regime, which has made it clear that it will spare no effort to prevent a repeat of the July 11 demonstrations.

Unlike their strategy of years gone by of ignoring and marginalizing the opposition, officials seem to have realized that, having lost their monopoly on information with the advent of an independent press and social media, the best approach is to talk a lot. Their goal is to discourage Cubans who oppose the government because of the problems it has created and cannot solve, but who have not yet decided whether or not to take take part in street protests.

The latest salvo came on Tuesday from Rogelio Polanco Fuentes, secretary of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee, who appeard on the television program Mesa Redonda (Roundtable). His statements contained nothing new but were entirely devoted to planned protest rallies on November 15.

Defending the decision not to allow lawful public demonstrations, Polanco stated, “We are not going to legitimize imperialist interference in our internal affairs or unleash growing desires for a neo-colonialist revival that some continue reading

have been calling for and that would worsen the crisis situation. This is not an act of civic engagement. It is an act of subordination to Yankee hegemony.”

Polanco discussed demonstration permit applications submitted by Archipiélago, the group calling for the protest, claming their actions amounted a coordinated strategy. As evidence, he cited the applications’ wordings, which were nearly identical regardless of the province in which they were filed.

The organization convening the rallies is made up of groups from across the island, so it is not surprising that their actions would be coordinated. Likewise, Polanco was surprised the United States had expressed support for the protest immediately after Archipiélago’s announcement, as though Washington needed a day of reflection to express a policy of support for the Cuban opposition, a policy it has maintained for more than sixty years.

“In response to the challenge posed by protest promoters and their attempt to provocatively ignore officials’ refusals to grant them permits, on October 21 provincial headquarters of the Office of the Attorney General began issuing warnings to these citizens, notifying them that, if they failed to comply with these decisions, they would be subject to criminal charges of disobedience, unlawful demonstration, criminal incitement and other offenses proscribed by and subject to penalty under current criminal legislation,” he said. He justified these warnings by noting that even citizens who have not committed a crime can be summoned to appear before judicial bodies.

Polanca later resorted the usual rhetoric, describing the November 15 marches as a “soft coup,” claiming such actions are lifted from the “playbook of non-violent struggle” which led to the so-called Color Revolutions in Eastern Europe at the end of 20th century and the Arab Spring of 2011. He also lumped them with the anti-government demonstrations in Venezuela from 2014 to 2017.

When it came time to talk about financing, Polanco followed the same script, citing the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Center for Opening and Development in Latin America (CADAL), which he claimed had spent $200,000 on Cuba.

As the newspaper Escambray did two weeks ago, Polanco tried to link these organizations to Manuel Cuesta Morúa and Yunior García Aguilera who, it noted for the umpteenth time in recent weeks, attended a seminar organized by CADAL at a private university in Madrid. “The subversive, conspiratorial and seditious nature of these gatherings is clear. You’d have to be delusional to think you can tarnish the dignity of our invincible Revolutionary Armed Forces,” he said.

There was no shortage of references to Cuban exile organizations in Miami, which the regime has labelled as terrorist for decades. Among those mentioned were the Cuban Democratic Directorate, led by Orlando Gutierrez Boronat, the Cuban-American National Foundation and media outlets such as ADN Digital, Radio Martí Noticias and Cubanet, all described as having receiving millions of dollars to promote subversion.

Other individuals the article singled out were Ramon Saul Sanchez, whose name regularly appears in such lists, as well as Saily Gonzalez Velazquez, an activist and cafe owner who has had to shut down due to harassment by authorities. Gonzalez closed her business, Café Amarillo B&B, saying she would not reopen until “the rights to think and speak are respected in Cuba.” The article accused Gonzalez of inciting violence and accepting support from the National Cuban-American Foundation.

“The real organizer and promoter of November’s provocation is the U.S. government, as facts and statements show,” said Polanco. He stated that the march is doomed to failure and that no one will be able to stop the “explosion of pent-up happiness, joy and hugs” on November 15, when borders, tourism and schools are scheduled to reopen.

Hours after Polanco’s spiel, the government released a letter singed by a long list of foreign artists in support the Havana Biennial.

“The intended boycott has a blatantly imperialistic and destabilizing tint, hostile towards Cuba and the Biennial,” it reads. “No one in Cuba is imprisoned for his or her political beliefs or ideas, including artists. There are people, accomplices to Washington’s subversive plans, who have been imprisoned for their attacks on a constitutional order endorsed by more than 85% of the voters in 2019.”

Among the letter’s signatories are Elena Poniatowska (winner of the 2013 Cervantes Prize), Paco Ignacio Taibo II (director of the Economic Culture Fund) and Laura Esquivel (author best known for the novel “Like Water for Chocolate, on which an acclaimed film of the same name was based). All three are Mexican and supporters of the government of Manuel Lopez Obrador. The letter was written in response to a campaign launched by Cuban dissident artist Tania Bruguera and others urging artists not to attend this year’s Havana Biennial.

As for Bruguera’s initiative, as she herself reported this Wednesday on social networks, she continues to gain support*. The most recent to join it were the artists Cildo Meireles, from Brazil, the Serbian Marina Abramovic, dedicated to performance art, and the Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. “In the last hours they have joined their voices with just force and have said no to the Havana Biennial by signing the letter of support for the boycott,” said Bruguera. She also announced that the Brazilian photographer Rosângela Rennó, a participant in other editions and invited to this edition, announced he will not participate.

*Translator’s note: As of the posting of this translation, the initiative has 605 signatories.

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A Fight to Buy Washing Machines Leads to the Arrests of Two Customers in Sancti Spiritus

The line to enter the La Habana store in the city of Sancti Spíritus this Wednesday, October 27, 2021. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Mercedes García, Havana, 28 October 2021 — The sale of 12 Samsung brand automatic washing machines for $388 raised quite a stir this Wednesday in the vicinity of the La Habana store in the city of Sancti Spíritus. Everything ended with the arrest of two women and a blackout, which forced the suspension of transactions at the cash register.

“The situation was terrible. There were two lines, I was in the one that was for normal products and the other was to buy the washing machines,” explains Esperanza, a woman from Sancti Spiritus who has had hard currency (MLC) account for months, some “reserve” dollars.

“A tremendous brawl broke out” and quickly the line “was filled with policemen” but the agents preferred “not to get into the fight and stood to one side to wait for the women to finish beating each other.”

“One of the police officers initially said: ’We are going to let them be, no one is going to stab me like the one in Havana’,” says the woman from Sancti Spiritus. The uniformed woman mentioned the police officer who was wounded with a knife and kidnapped by a man for several hours last Tuesday. “Once the discussion calmed down a bit, the women were arrested and taken away,” she sums up.

Esperanza’s bad time, she says, only started with the fight. Already continue reading

inside the store she experienced the daily life of a Cuban. If she felt sorry for seeing two women “hitting each other” by a washing machine, she was more frustrated when she entered the establishment and found it “so short of supplies,” she says.

“I went through this store to see what food they were selling, what was available, but there was nothing,” she complains. “The only thing they sold was a few pieces of beef at 45 dollars and that fortune was not going to be spent,” she said, confirming that on the city’s black market this type of meat “appears” at 70 pesos a pound.

Esperanza looked the shelves up and down, over and over again, and decided to buy two cans of anchovy-stuffed olives for $1.80 each. She had to spend 40 minutes in the line due to the lack of a connection with banks to be able to approve magnetic card payments. And just when her turn came, she stumbled again with the harsh reality day-to-day life in Cuba: “The power went out. You know!”

The shop assistants were running around like crazy telling the customers they had to leave. “Until the power comes on, we cannot continue to sell, there is very little [diesel] oil left in the generator and electricity cannot be sustained in the store,” said one of the state employees.

Finally her card was accepted by the bank reader and she was able to buy “informally,” says Esperanza with relief.

Little supply, very long lines and a collateral business of resellers mark the days in foreign exchange stores, the most criticized in the country and, however, the only ones that still — given the severe economic crisis that the Island is going through — have more than a dozen of products on their shelves.

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Cuban Reporter Iliana Hernandez Released After Several Hours of Arrest

Hernández, who has Spanish nationality in addition to Cuban , is also “regulated” by the authorities, with a travel ban that prevents her from leaving the country. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 28 October 2021 — The independent reporter Iliana Hernández, a collaborator of CiberCuba, was released on Thursday night after spending several hours in police custody. The activist was arrested at noon in Cojimar, a neighborhood east of Havana, when she was a few blocks from her home, family sources told 14ymedio.

After being released, the activist told this newspaper that they first took her to the Cojímar police station and then to the Altahabana police station in Boyeros, and almost the whole time she was “inside a patrol car.”

“I made a statement because I had two accusations of defamation, one that was filed by the delegate of my constituency and the other by the owner of the identity card who appeared at my house a while ago. They wanted to put a measure of home confinement on me but I told them that is a lack of respect and I did not sign the document, only the statement I made,” explained Hernández.

“I called the Cojímar unit but they told me that she had only been there for half an hour because State Security officials had transferred her to another place,” Hernández’s mother, Maricelis Cardosa, informed this newspaper after learning of the arrest.

The reporter was detained in a police car by officers as she was continue reading

walking home from a visit to one of her neighbors. “There were two patrol cars, they were waiting for her, she hadn’t realized it but the agents were there when she turned the corner,” added Cardosa.
“She said to me, mamá, I’m going to visit my friend and she arrived safely but at the exit they intercepted her. My daughter does not tell lies nor has she committed any crime. They took her a block and a half from here, they took her because it gave them what they wanted, to intimidate the people so that no one comes out on November 15,” she denounced.

Hernández, who has Spanish citizenship as well as Cuban, is also “regulated” by the authorities, with a travel ban that prevents her from leaving the country. She was one of the hunger strikers who held a protest at the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement last November and since then has lived under constant harassment from State Security, which closely monitors her home with police operations to prevent her from going out on the street.

In recent days, Hernández was able to leave her house two or three times, but episodes such as this afternoon show that the surveillance on her continues. The reporter has also had her telephone line and mobile data service cut off for long periods of time without ever receiving a response from the telecommunications monopoly Etecsa.

The director for the Americas at Amnesty International, Erika Guevara denounced the arrest of Hernandez as “arbitrary detention.” For her part, the activist Thais Mailén Franco, who was imprisoned for almost five months after her participation in the Obispo street demonstration, wrote on her networks: “return Iliana Hernández to the people.”

The activist Saily Gonzalez also denounced the arrest, writing: “Iliana Hernández has been kidnapped a few minutes ago. But Iliana is not alone. We are all very aware and already reporting, increasingly sure that these atrocities cannot continue to happen. in Cuba.”

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Potholes on Cuban Roads Kill

The pothole in a road in Holguín, in which Octavio Almaguer Ricardo had the accident that cost him his life. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 29 October 2021 — Octavio Almaguer Ricardo lost his life last Monday due to a pothole. The day before, the man, in his 50s, had an accident with his motorcycle in Holguín, on a road near his house, which local residents assure this newspaper is “deadly” due to the number of holes it has.

“It was almost dark, late at night, he had left the house to leave some friends at the entrance of the road. He took the pothole, was thrown and the motorcycle fell on him,” a person close to the victim who prefers anonymity told 14ymedio.

As soon as he learned of the accident, which occurred in San Rafael Adentro, at kilometer 5 of the Mayarí highway, the informant approached the scene of the events, where an eyewitness told him that Almaguer “was going down a small hill and hit the pothole, and right there he fell.” In his opinion, the speed of the bike plus the momentum of the descent caused him to speed up. “That’s when the bike’s steering suffered a slight movement and the crash resulted.”

“That pothole is the first on that road, it is terrible, that is the softest but the entire road is full of potholes, the others seem like mortar holes,” says this source.

The victim, with a serious head trauma and multiple fractures in continue reading

one leg, was transferred to the Holguín provincial hospital and underwent surgery, but nothing could be done to save his life.

Octavio Almaguer leaves a wife, two children and his two elderly parents. The family was, in the words of this friend, “was in extreme pain.”

For his part, Ernesto Almaguer Díaz, the victim’s cousin, posted what happened on his networks, expressing his regret and publishing a photo of the pothole that caused the accident, while blaming the poor state of the roads for the death of his relative.

“This pothole, about a hundred meters from the entrance to the Bird Slaughterhouse in San Rafael Adentro, Holguín, is responsible for the accident that took my cousin Octavio Almaguer Ricardo,” he denounced. “Holguín and Cuba are full are full of things like this. What is the tax paid for the use of the roads in Cuba — known as the license fee — for? How many more lives in Cuba are going to be taken by the poor condition of the roads in Cuba?”

In the first four months of this year, the National Road Safety Commission reported one death every 20 hours from traffic accidents in the country. In statements to the official newspaper Granma, the Secretary General of that institution, Reynaldo Becerra Acosta, pointed out that from January to April 2021 there were 2,403 accidents that resulted in 1,804 injuries and 155 deaths.

There is an average of one accident every hour and 12 minutes, one death every 20 hours and one injured every one hour and 36 minutes. Among the main causes, the report does not mention the poor condition of the roads, but points to other causes, such as not paying attention to vehicle control, disrespect for the right of way, speeding and damaged equipment. Official data collected in Cuba for several years indicate that traffic accidents are the fifth leading cause of death.

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Yunior Garcia and Carlos Lechuga Win the Norwegian Fund for Cuban Cinema

Cuban filmmaker Carlos Lechuga during a recording. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 29 October 2021 — This Friday the winning projects of the eighth edition of the Norwegian Fund for Cuban Cinema 2021 were announced. In the list of artists published by the diplomatic headquarters of that country on the island, the playwright Yunior García and the filmmaker Carlos Lechuga stand out. García won with the proposal for the fictional short 8 minutes and Lechuga with his feature film Vicenta B., both still in production.

Thirty-seven projects participated in the event, which has been supporting independent Cuban filmmakers since 2014. The projects were subjected to “a technical review and assessment by a respectable jury” and 11 of them were selected for their “presentation, history and creativity.”

Completing the list are: Letters that no longer exist by Sheyla Pool, The intermittent forest by Lázaro Lemus Lugo, The Call of the Ciguapa by Diana Moreno Castellanos, Her in the nude by Karelis Herrera and Yenny Pérez, Julia by Sailín Carbonell, The land of the whale by Armando Capó Ramos, Libertad by Carla Rodríguez Herrera, Malena by Lisandra López Fabé and Friday the 13th in Havana by Raydel Ricardo Araoz Valdés.

“The sun has just died. Eva only has 8 minutes of light to reach her destination as she runs hurriedly through the streets of Havana and the others are also desperate to use the time they have left. Uncertainty and chaos reign. In a city that is fading, perhaps forever. Search for God or sex, hoard goods to survive, settle pending accounts, everything is concentrated and multiplied in the streets where Eva passes without stopping. Her destiny is continue reading

uncertain, but she does not stop running,” is the synopsis that García has released on his social networks about his project.
Lechuga, who also received an award last month at the San Sebastián Film Festival, contributing 30,000 euros to his Vicenta B. project, described his film as “the story of a country where there are many mothers and no children.”

According to the organizers of the Norwegian Fund, the main objective of this call “is to promote the development of filmmakers and strengthen the Cuban film sector as a cultural expression, promote the diversity of the national audiovisual scene and encourage creativity, artistic expression and innovation.”

The amounts available in the contest for the winners range between 100,000 and 250,000 Cuban pesos. “Only projects that can ensure their completion and delivery of the final copy of the film will be supported, within a period of six to 12 months, counted from the moment they receive the aid,” they specified.

The jury for the award was made up of the producers Claudia Calviño, Yumey Besú, Marisol Rodrígues, and the screenwriter and director Arturo Infante.

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The Ghost of Ayestaran Street

The building is located on the corner of Ayestarán and Estrella streets, in the Havana municipality of El Cerro. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 28 October 2021 — This week marks the 20th anniversary of the fire in the building that formerly housed the pharmaceutical and perfumery firm Warner-Hudnut, located on the corner of Ayestarán and Estrella streets, in the Havana municipality of El Cerro. Two decades after the flames devoured part of the structure, passersby avoid passing under its portal for fear of an imminent collapse of the remaining walls.

The building also housed the hotel El Sol for men and became, after 1959, family apartments full of wooden platforms colloquially called ’barbecues ’ — raised built in the rooms to increase the living space. That was precisely what happened, that fateful October 25, 2001, and it took firefighters many hours to put out the fire that spread at full speed through the beams, planks and false ceilings.

The construction housed no fewer than 60 families and, according to one of the victims speaking to Cubanet in those days, it had been declared uninhabitable ten years earlier. However, even in its dilapidated state it remained one of the most beautiful buildings in the neighborhood, with its shape sticking out like the prow of a ship with neoclassical and baroque details.

“But the only option they had given us was the shelters, none of the families agreed to move to those barracks,” said the man. “It is preferable for the building to fall on you than to spend ten or fifteen years living in those places, which according to what we have been told are unbearable.”

It was said then that one of the neighbors must have left a stove on in one continue reading

of the apartments, but there was also talk of a candle or a cigarette. The years without maintenance and the amount of wood did the rest.

Shortly after the accident, an agricultural market was set up on the ground floor of the building, ironically nicknamed “los quemados” [the burned ones] by the residents of the area, but which was closed when debris began to fall and the balconies ended up falling off into the street.

Since then, the only ones who dared to go there were the couples who used it as a free “motel” in a city where staying in a room is a luxury that few can afford, until, a few years ago, the property was completely bricked up to prevent people from sneaking inside.

Two decades later, there is still the mass, without being demolished, like an architectural ghost, with trees growing out of the holes of the windows. One more witness to the urban decomposition of the once opulent Havana.

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The Cuban Regime is the ‘Only One Interested in Yankee Money’

Until a year ago, Yunior García Aguilera was a respectable artist for the Cuban government, which now describes him as a mercenary day in and day out. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 28 October 2021 — A new chapter in the struggle between supporters and adversaries of the Civic March for Change scheduled for the 15N (15 November) in several Cuban provinces. This time, money has been at the center of criticism and the artist Yunior García Aguilera, tired of the mercenary accusations that the regime dedicates to him, has defended himself by attacking.

“The Archipiélago has even rejected fundraising among its members. The only ones interested in Yankee money, we already know who they are: those who built more hotels than hospitals in the middle of the pandemic, the creators of stores [that only take payment] in MLC [freely convertible currency], those who lied to us with that they would end the double currency,” the most visible face of the call has snapped from his Facebook profile.

García Aguilera, habitually calm in his speeches, could not contain the anger it caused him to see published in the official media a conversation he had with Ramón Saúl Sánchez edited for dissemination and in which fragments are clearly missing. The artist has challenged the authorities to present the full audio so that everything he said is clear.

During that conversation, the exiled Ramón Sául Sánchez, leader of the Democracy Movement and described as a terrorist by Havana, offers his support to Archipiélago, both through the support events organized for November 14 and for media coverage of communication inside and outside of Cuba. The fragments are enough for Cuban officialdom to claim that the US Government is behind Archipiélago — the convening platform — García Aguilera and the marches.

Yunior García recalls that he has been under surveillance for at least a year, since he addressed 15 questions to the Government, and he concludes that State Security lies when asserting that there is a relationship between him and the United States. The artist, in fact , vindicates the government’s position against the embargo, which he even expressed to Timothy Zúñiga-Brown, charge d’affaires of the United States Embassy in Havana, in a meeting held long before July 11. continue reading

With regards to that conversation, he says, “I spent most of the time explaining why I do not support any sanction that would starve the Cuban family and serve as excuses for the Government to justify its disasters. Archipiélago and the march was never discussed at that time. (… .) It focused on the need to remove the blockade/embargo, the subject of our talk on that occasion. Ironies of life … ,” he recriminates.

García Aguilera defends the purely Cuban character of the Archipiélago group and reveals that the first person to whom he commented on the project was the troubadour Silvio Rodríguez.

“Each decision made in the Archipiélago has been the result of a broad and deep debate among a group of CUBANOS (sic) moderators, of whom I am proud. The democracy that was born in such a diverse group, gives me back my hopes every night in the future of Cuba. Hopes that, inevitably, I lose every time I watch the news or listen to a speech by our stubborn leaders, trained in Soviet manuals and too convenient paranoias,” he continues.

García Aguilera also adds that he accepted an invitation to be part of Cuba Próxima, chaired by Roberto Veiga, but that he has not even been able to participate in it due to the continuous internet cuts they suffer at home.

García Aguilera is amazed that just a year ago, and even being a critical artist, he was someone taken into account by the authorities to participate in the meeting that the Ministry of Culture promoted with some participants in the protests of November 27, 2020 — an invitation that Yunior García Aguilera rejected as a farce — and now he has become a little less than a violent terrorist.

“Despite the shame caused by these gentlemen clinging to power, I will never lose my faith in my country and its people. Although, to be honest, I feel immense sorrow for all those Cubans who are still not capable of detecting lies when they have them in front of them,” says García Aguilera, who again asks for courage in the face of government threats. “The regime openly announces a crime against a beautiful generation, whose DIGNITY (sic) has become much greater than their fears. That is why the regime would never sit with us to dialogue. They have shown their panic at civility, and they do so by exercising the violence that characterizes them.”

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The Mayabeque Prosecutor’s Office Asks for up to 25 Years in Prison for Nine of the July 11th Protestors in Cuba

The Mayabeque provincial prosecutor, Yerandy Calzadilla Dávalos, calls for severe sanctions against 11J (11 July) Cuban protesters. (Capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 25 October 2021 — In another act of repression, the Mayabeque Provincial Prosecutor’s Office has requested sanctions ranging from six to 25 years for the 11J (11 July) protesters. Maikel Puig Bergolla and eight other detainees, who preferred not to make their identity public, have seen “forced some arguments to apply crimes” to them, such as attempted murder, attack and instigation to commit criminal acts, denounced the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH).

“The sentencing requests are a reflection of the vengeful spirit of the ruling regime on the island,” said the Madrid-based organization. “The use of supposed common crimes to condemn political actions is a systemic practice of the Cuban government and its repressive organs.”

The request of the Mayabeque prosecutor, Yerandy Calzadilla Dávalos, has already been submitted to the first criminal chamber of the People’s Provincial Court. The OCDH warned that the fiscal requests “are the most extreme that are known to date.”

The OCDH statement refers to “the disproportion between the crimes and the number of years in prison requested for them, a detail that also denotes the condition of Cuban justice.” And also to cases such as that of Maikel Puig Bergolla, arrested on July 12 for the crime of “public disorder,” as indicated by his wife Saily Núñez Pérez.

The request presented by prosecutor Calzadilla Dávalos with regards to Puig Bergolla, asks for a joint penalty of 25 years in prison for the crimes of instigation to commit a crime (18 years), attempted murder (10 years), public disorder (5 years) and contempt (one year and six months). continue reading

Núñez Pérez relates in a post that, during the process, things began to get complicated for her husband. “False accusations at the hands of five policemen began to appear” that allege that Puig Bergolla threw stones at the patrols, “which is not true.”

Added to the case of Puig Bergolla are several others — referred to with the initials of their names, for fear of reprisals and because the family members do not want their identity to be made public: LMVP (20 years), MDCV (20), NRC (10), YSD (15), YCP (15), DRC (5), ERL (6) and NMT (6).

The OCDH states that the repressive actions of last July have increased the number of political prisoners to numbers that have not been seen on the island since the 1980s.

Various organizations have documented more than a thousand detainees and as reported by the authorities, 62 people have been tried, mostly for the crime of public disorder — 53 of the defendants charged — although there are also accusations of “contempt,” “resistance” and “instigation to commit a crime.”

In San Antonio de los Baños, where the peaceful protests began, the Prosecutor’s Office asks, for the 17 people who are being tried, for sentences of between 6 and 12 years in prison.

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The Four Plagues of Santiago de Cuba

For hours, in the doorways and in the sunlight, the mothers are dedicated to the manual eradication of the lice that invade the hair of their family members. (El Mundo)

14ymedio, Alberto Hernández, Santiago de Cuba, 25 October 2021 — Covid-19 is not the only epidemic suffered by the city of Santiago de Cuba. Dengue fever numbers have risen so much that not even the official press can hide them. This Saturday, the Sierra Maestra newspaper reported that there is a “wide transmission of dengue in three of the nine municipalities” in the eastern city. Most of the cases are concentrated in the provincial capital and in the municipalities of Palma, San Luis and Contramaestre.

One of these cases is Antonio, a 22-year-old primary school teacher. “Last week I started to feel bad, I had a fever all day and I ended up in the Provincial Hospital, I was scared and thought I had coronavirus. I was diagnosed with dengue, which luckily was not hemorrhagic.”

The young man was ordered to remain at home for seven days. “The problem is that they prescribed polyvitamins, such as Polivit, also folic acid and a lot of liquids, especially lemon and citric juices in general.” Antonio calls it a problem because, in effect, a pound of lemons costs 40 pesos and polyvitamins are missing from pharmacies. “The only thing I could get was folic acid, and I found it on the black market: at 150 pesos for a blister pack of 10 pills.”

The situation in Santiago de Cuba is mainly due to the lack of resources against the Aedes aegypti mosquito, but also to its increase in trash containers and standing water, which, in addition, also affects the other two illnesses on the list of plagues suffered by the city: scabies and lice.

“Everyone in my house is suffering the same,” says Maritza, a 47-year-old housewife from Santiago, speaking about the itching suffered by her and the nine members of her family, which is unbearable at night, with continue reading

the heat. “When we went to the doctor they told us that it was scabies, but that there was no medication in the pharmacies.”

Scabies is not deadly like covid, or, as it is in some cases, like dengue hemorrhagic fever, but it is very annoying.

Those who are worse off, says Maritza while scratching her right arm, are two children and two older adults, “who despair of the itch.” Their doctor prescribed benzyl benzoate, even though the medicine is nowhere to be found.

Thus, they have had to resort to alternative solutions. “We have bathed with lots of leaves, including guava, isora, plum and nothing has worked.” Nothing except a remedy a vet gave them: an anti-parasitic used on animals. “A a little vial of about 10 milliliters cost us 50 pesos and this is what we have to resolve it.”

With the contents of the vial dissolved in a bullet of water (a liter and a half bottle), the family throws a small capful into the bucket of water with which they are going to bathe. “The children have almost lost their itchiness and I have improved a lot.”

Maritza has already shared more than half the bottle in her neighborhood: “On the block, most of the neighbors had the same.”

Juana, for her part, is mortified by lice. She was infected while painting nails. Offering this type of service helps to support this woman who is a dentist by profession, during the difficult economic situation.

“I work twice a week in the emergency room, the rest of the time I spend fixing nails.” How, did she imagine, she got head lice. “After a second infection, I now protect my head by wearing a nylon bag when I have a client.”

The treatment, she regrets, is very expensive. Permethrin, which is also used against scabies, is missing from state pharmacies, and on the black market prices are through the roof. “These days, 1 milliliter of permethrin (less than a tablespoon) costs 20 pesos, and for a complete cycle I need at least 6 milliliters.” To this she adds shampoo, softener and other hair products, which means that the treatment, in total, exceeds 1,000 pesos, a good part of her monthly salary.

In the absence of products to combat the undesirable plague, the people of Santiago choose to detect the nits and extract them, in the old way, a task that not only requires good eyesight and a fine-toothed comb but also patience. For hours, in the doorways and in the sunlight, the mothers are dedicated to the manual eradication of the lice that invade the hair of their family members.

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Cuban Government’s Unpaid Bills Causing Low Milk Production, Admits Official Press

Dairy farmers complain there is no feed, water or medications for their cows, which reduces their milk production and sometimes leads to their deaths. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, October 26, 2021 — By September, dairy farmers in Villa Clara had delivered only 53% of the milk the Cuban government had been expecting, a total of approximately twenty-one million liters compared to the thirty-nine which contracts had stipulated. The shortfall was reported on Tuesday by the state-run newspaper Granma in an article entitled “Defaults, Paperwork, Transport and Other Ways to ’Cut’ Milk”, which looked at the reasons for supply shortages and rising milk prices.

The problem began in Ciego de Avila where less than half of the expected eighteen million liters has been delivered. The government’s broken promises are making matters worse. In April officials announced an incentive program: it would pay dairy farmers in both hard currency and pesos for every liter they sold to the state over the contract amount. But no hard currency is forthcoming because producers cannot easily open bank accounts to receive payment so the money is not going out.

As the Granma article explains, if a dairy farmer does not meet his target, he gets only 7.50 pesos a liter. But if he exceeds it, he gets 13.00, at least in theory. In the best case scenario, however, the payment is delayed.

“In practice, what’s been happening, for a variety of reasons, is that farmers have to wait a month or more to get paid. Rather than hand it over to the state, it’s more profitable for them to sell it ’on the side,’ where they can get between 15 to 25 pesos. Or they turn it into yogurt or cheese, which also command good prices,” explains continue reading

one producer quoted in the article.

Roberto Lopez Hernandez, director of the Villa Clara Dairy Products Company, claims in the article that part of the problem is due to delays in signing invoices, which he attributes to Covid-19. According to Betsy Arroyo Rafuls, president of the National Association of Small Farmers in Villa Clara, some producers got their money forty days late, “which obviously disincentivized them.”

Of the 8,000 producers with state contracts, only 1,837 fulfilled their part of the deal. As a result, thousands of liters of milk and other dairy products did not go to the rationed market. Another statistic: of the 281 production outlets in Villa Clara, 177 (or 63%) did not meet their target.

Price increases are just one consequence of milk being diverted to the black market. The government recently decided that people on medically prescribed diets would no longer receive extra rations of milk. And other consumers are replacing dairy products with soy-based yogurt and similar alternatives.

In addition to governmental foot dragging when it comes to paying bills, Granma cites other causes for the disastrous statistics, among them transportation problems. The sub-delegate for livestock in Villa Clara, Miguel Rodriguez, claims the fall in crop prices in the middle of the harvest season caused many truck drivers to leave their jobs; 188 in the province, 36 in Placetas alone. As a result producers have had to pay drivers out of their own pockets to avoid losing their milk.

Dairy farmers also point to shortages of medications — as one farmer notes, “a cow with tick fever doesn’t produce milk” — water and feed as reasons why many cows are malnourished, do not give birth and, even worse, die. Granma argues that 7,434 cows could not be milked due to the drought in July and August.

Rigoberto Rodriguez Fuentes, president of the credit and services cooperative Efrain Hurtado in Manicaragua, is not thrilled with the decision to adopt three different prices for milk. “It was not a great idea. It has created a lot of bureaucracy and red tape, which are not great motivators for farmers who need to be paid upon delivery,” he says.

In his blog Cubaeconomía, Madrid-based Cuban economist Elias Amor breaks down the key points of the Granma article. He cites one of the farmers quoted in the piece, who sums up the situation better than any expert:

“’They thought raising the price of this product a few pesos would automatically solve the livestock problem and milk deliveries would automatically increase, which is not the case.’ As we have long said in this blog, if [President] Diaz-Canel listened to Cuban peasants more, he would find out what has to be done to produce more,” Amor writes. He adds that technical and production realities, as well as market forces, are immune to many of the decisions the government makes.

“Price controls, late payments and bureaucratic delays are obstacles impacting Cuban milk production and preventing the needs of consumers and industry from being met. Agriculture is the economic sector most dependent on the state. Has the time perhaps come for restructuring it to operate freely?” asks Amor.

The milk crisis goes back a long way. In recent decades the government has found it very difficult to provide the ” little glass of milk” it promised the Cuban consumer. The situation has grown more acute in recent months. Today it’s Villa Clara; two weeks ago it was Ciego de Avila.

Just a month ago it was reported that no dairy farmer in Camaguey province, the island’s leading livestock producer, had delivered more than eight liters of milk to the state. When the Evelio Rodriguez Curbelo cooperative in Jimguayu managed to produce one million liters of cow’s milk, state media outlets portrayed it as a great success. However, if you take into account the number of cattle involved, the result is devastating, barely 1.1 liters per day per animal compared to 25 for a cow in Spain.

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Cuba’s Political Police Threaten Nairobis Schery with Prison if She Attends the 15 November March

Schery Suárez informed this newspaper that at the beginning of the week when she was arrested as she was leaving her house. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 27 October 2021 — Activist Nairobis Schery Suárez, wife of Cuban opposition member Manuel Cuesta Morúa, who was reported missing last Monday, told 14ymedio that she was arrested when she left her home and released on Tuesday morning under threats of jail for both her and her husband.

According to her testimony, the man who questioned her made “serious threats about 15N” [November 15] and warned her that both she and Cuesta Morúa could go to prison if they do not abandon their support for the Civic March for Change.

Schery Suárez informed this newspaper that on the day of the arrest she was leaving her house at 10:00 am to visit relatives, but on the way the police stopped the car she was in near the Pan-American Village and took her out of it. “They took my belongings there and I didn’t have time to call my husband to let him know,” she said.

She was then transferred to the Guanabo police unit, where she spent approximately eight hours in an office that, according to her, the officers called ‘the theater.’ “Around eleven o’clock at night they transferred me to the cells until six in the morning, when they took me to an interview with, supposedly, one of the chiefs of the police,” she explains.

“Then they took me to my house in a police car escorted by a ‘Mariana’, as they like to call the women of the Ministry of the Interior who they use to repress activists and who they have also used for acts of repudiation,” adds Schery Suárez.

It is the second time that the activist has been arrested since the call for the march was announced and despite these warnings and threats, Nairobis Schery Suárez told this newspaper that she maintains her support for the march, called for November 15. At the end of September, Cuesta Morúa was also threatened and the political police told him during interrogations that they would not allow the demonstration.

The Archipiélago collective initiative has gathered support in the main Cuban cities, but the repression against activists and citizens who have signed the requests addressed to the provincial governments to carry out the march has increased in recent days. Added to this is a tough campaign in the official media that points to the discredit of its main organizers, accused of being “mercenaries,” and to the mobilization of the government’s repressive forces in view of that day.

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