14ymedio – Page 304 – Translating Cuba

The Failure of an Operation: I Continue to Do Journalism in Cuba

State Security agent who was part of the State Security surveillance operation on March 8 and 12. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 15 March 2021 — “You can’t go out today.” It is the ninth day in a short span this year that I get the same blunt message from a State Security agent who prevents me from crossing the threshold of the building.

Decried by various international organizations, besieging independent journalists and activists has been the dominant repressive strategy in recent months, along with arbitrary arrests lasting several hours.

I’m one of those who has suffered from it from time to time since December 2014, when artist Tania Bruguera called for a performance without permission in the Plaza of the Revolution. In addition, since May 2019, a ban on leaving the country has been weighing on me, and I have been the victim of several arbitrary arrests, suspension of my cell phone line and threats to my family members. continue reading

However, the harassment escalated since last November. During that time, almost a score of artists from the San Isidro Movement (MSI)were imprisoned and some of them went on hunger strikes for the release of rapper Denis Solís, sentenced in a summary trial to eight months in prison for an alleged crime of “disrespect”.

Decried by various international organizations, besieging independent journalists and activists has been the dominant repressive strategy in recent months

But the State Security agent who identified himself as Ramses did not provide any reason last November 23^rd to prevent me from leaving my building with my two daughters. He didn’t know why he was doing it, he told me. He was only following orders.

“We are not going to allow you to influence the public space”, he told me on November 25^th, once again blocking my way.

The following day, the political police, disguised as cleaning men, violently evicted the MSI activists from their headquarters, and on the 27^th, a peaceful demonstration of 300 artists in front of the Ministry of Culture ended in a meeting of about thirty of them with the vice minister Fernando Rojas.

Since then, they have not given me a break. In December, they didn’t let me leave the house for a whole week. “You can’t go out”, they repeated every day. On the 10th, fed up, I told the officer on duty: “Tomorrow I’m going to leave whether you like it or not, this is turned into an abuse”, and he remained silent. On December 11^th I was able to hit the street.

In December, they didn’t let me leave the house for a whole week. “You can’t go out,” they repeated every day

On January 27^th, two months after the demonstration, a new “siege” of my front door began that would last four days in a row. That Wednesday, several members of the 27N group once again planted themselves before the Ministry, located in El Vedado, to attend a meeting with Rojas and demand the release of some of his colleagues who had been arrested early that morning. Within hours they were violently evicted and transferred by bus to a police unit.

On February 2^nd and 22^nd, the operation was repeated for no apparent reason. That time, they also cut my mobile service. In no case do the officers give explanations, but repressive acts do not fail to take place on significant dates, such as International Human Rights Day or the anniversary of the death of Fidel Castro.

“Luzbely, you can’t go out today.” Again, the order was issued on March 8^th, International Women’s Day, which is why the agent on duty, a skinny man she had never seen before, felt compelled to cynically say goodbye: “Congratulations!”

On March 12^th, I ran into the same guy. The night before, on national television, the presenter Humberto López denounced, during his spot on the News program that some opponents had planned a protest in the Plaza de la Revolución, something completely false.

This March 15^th is the third day of this month that I am under surveillance. This Monday’s agent is accompanied by two female officers and he refused to show me his ID. He says that I have already seen him “at other times”.

Translated by Norma Whiting
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New Information Comes to Light About Cuban Medical Missions in Mexico

Five hundred doctors arrived in Mexico in December and 160 of them returned to Cuba at the beginning of March. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Havana, March 16, 2021 — Mexico has paid over six million dollars for 585 Cuban doctors who were working in the country from April 24th to July 24th last year.

In total, it wasn’t only the 135 million pesos, as stated by The Secretary of State for Health, Oliva Lopez Arrellano, nor the 135,875,000 which was indicated afterwards by the head of government in the capital, Claudia Sheinbaum, but actually nearly 15 millions more. Altogether, they paid 150,759,867 pesos (over seven million, five hundred thousand dollars).

The information was provided by the Mexican digital media La Silla Rota (The Broken Chair) following a request through the transparency website InfoCDMX – in which public institutions are, in theory, legally obliged to respond – after a delay of half a year (the application was made September 8th, apparently).

According to this media, the figures provided by the city did not include the Cubans accommodation and food, which were also charged to Mexico: a total of 14,844,785 pesos (some 744,000 dollars). continue reading

The InfoCDMX response also set out that the Henry Reeve Brigade contingent was accommodated in 292 rooms in two hotels: the Benidorm, in Colonia Roma district, and the Fiesta Inn, in the Central Historic area.

The Silla Rota was surprised to note that “Although the Cuban doctors left on July 24th, according to official information, the billing dates are different… In the Benidorm, the bill was produced on July 10, 2020, and in the Fiesta Inn, on July 29”.

That’s not the only inconsistency in the contractual data relating to the Cuban missions in Mexico. For a start, the latest data publicised only refers to 585 nurses who worked in the capital, not to the nearly 200 more who went to Veracruz on the same dates, about whose costs nothing is known.

Nor is it known how much the Mexican government paid for the five hundred doctors who came from the island in December. 160 of them went back to Cuba this March, but nothing is known about the rest of them.

Neither is it known which government department paid the money. The transparency response named the Secretary of State of the Mexican capital city, but we know that both the postholder, Lopez Arellano, and the head of the City government Sheinbaum emphasised that the Cubans were hired “through an agreement with Insabi”, the Institute of Health and Wellbeing set up by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and which has been widely criticised in the country over the distribution of drugs for children suffering from cancer.

Given the opaque way in which both governments have dealt with this matter, the only recourse for the Mexican media has been to go to the government transparency websites. Last September, Latinus (a digital platform in Mexico) managed to find out there that all of the nearly 700 doctors who arrived in Mexico in April to help fight the Covid-19 pandemic, 585 of them in the capital, and the rest in Veracruz, were working without immigration permission.

This digital medium, based in the United States, indicated that there is no evidence of these doctors having a “proper documented” stay in Mexico, such as “temporary residence documents, or temporary or permanent study permits”, nor any document indicating a legal status for the health workers in the National Migration Institute (INM) database, nor could they find “details of Cuban nationals, in May this year, having obtained any of the documents cited, and in which they had entered information that they were in the health and support services sector”, as communicated by the INM Director.

Getting into the transparency websites is not infallible, but nevertheless, La Silla Rota explains that it made various requests for information which were not replied to by InfoCDMX.

Last November, they say, the site removed the inspection process, and so, it did not provide the itemised information requested by the digital medium “by date of arrival, speciality, medical institution or investigation centre to which they were sent (federal entity), as well as what were their duties, pay and benefits, and, as applicable, their date of exit and exit location from the country. Also, if their stay is extended, for how long and the documentation for that.”

Translated by GH

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Tania Bruguera Denounces a Six-Hour Kidnapping by Cuban State Security

In a live broadcast on her social networks after her release, the activist said that “Cuba is not the same”, “things have changed” and asked the regime to also change its repressive methods. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 16 March 2021 — The artist Tania Bruguera denounced, this Tuesday, that she was kidnapped for almost six hours by State Security when she was walking with a friend near her home in Havana. In a live broadcast on Facebook after her release, the activist said that the purpose of her communication was to denounce what “many Cubans who lose their fear” are going through with the regime.

Bruguera insisted on pointing out that what she experienced is nothing more than a sample of how the Government, with all the strength and power it has, attacks a human being for thinking differently.

“I am quite careful when I use words, in this case I will consciously say that what happened to me today was a kidnapping,” she said when she began the story of how she was approached by four plainclothes officers and taken to the Infanta police station in a private car that “did not have any sign of belonging to any organization.” continue reading

“I am quite careful when I use words, in this case I will consciously say that what happened to me today was a kidnapping”

At the police station, according to her account, State Security “spoke to themselves”, she preferred to spend those hours in silence, while the agents wanted to “create division, fear and mistrust among the different people who, today, are working so that things change.”

She stressed that the important thing is to understand “what is the system that the Government is using” to scare people who “are doing what they think should be done” and are not afraid to make their positions known. In this regard, Bruguera told 14ymedio that the methods the regime uses to coerce and “scare people are no longer working.”

“Today we have people who are being threatened that they wull lose their jobs, friends whose children are harassed at school because their parents think differently, people who have been mistreated and defamed on Cuban television. What happened today is not an isolated case, it is a mediocre, absurd exercise of power and belongs to the 20th century and not the 21st,” she said at another point in the video posted on Facebook.

The artist made it clear that “Cuba is not the same,” “things have changed” and asked the regime to also change its repressive methods. “We must stop, once and for all, the political violence that exists.” She also advocated starting work “on a law against political violence against citizens. Here everyone has the right to think as they want and to be respected as such.”

Bruguera took the moment to call for the union of civil society: “Today’s Cuba depends on us, that we are above this silly disunity and those little egos and that we are all together to build that Cuba that we are beginning to experience, a Cuba with democracy where everyone has the right to exist. ”

The artist told this newspaper that what the Government fears the most is “the union between different groups, between people who think differently and the possibility that very diverse people can reach common points of agreements to work together. There is a history of more than 60 years where, each time this has happened, they have attacked to create discord and division between the groups, because it is what they fear the most.”

“I will continue working for that Cuba, I will continue to do what I believe is necessary so that the abuse and political violence in Cuba cease and so that the right to have rights is respected.”

“I am going to continue working for that Cuba, I am going to continue doing what I think is necessary for the abuse and political violence in Cuba to stop and for the right to have rights to be respected,” the artist said at the end of the broadcast on her social networks.

When Bruguera was kidnapped by State Security she was with the artist Juliana Rabelo to show her a delicatessen on the corner by her house. Rabelo asked the agents who they were and where they were taking Bruguera and only received the answer: “Keep your distance, Yulaisy.”

After learning that the activist was missing, Carolina Barrero, Camila Lobón and Rabelo filed a writ of habeas corpus in favor of Tania Bruguera before the Provincial Court of the capital.

Bruguera was one of the artists who stood on November 27 in front of the Ministry of Culture to demand dialogue after the arrests of Denis Solis and the strike by the San Isidro Movement. Since then she has been arrested and interrogated several times for hours. In addition, she has been prevented from leaving her home, which is why the artist has considered herself to be on “house arrest without any explanation” during those days.

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Private Activities in Certain Areas Will Need Permission from Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior

Notary Office at 20 de Mayo Street, Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana | 1 March 2021 — The Ministry of the Interior will have the last word in carrying out some social, economic and political activities in certain areas of Havana. The authorities justify the creation of the rule based on the need “to guarantee the protection and fulfillment of the missions related to security and internal order”.

With this decision, taken by the Council of Ministers and published in the Official Gazette on February 24, technical installations, construction, repair or work maintenance, and licenses for the exercise of the different forms of non-state management will require a ministerial authorization, as well as changes in use, transfer and transmission of real estate, homes, premises, land and spaces.

The standard defines two categories to be applied in the different areas it establishes: “to consult” and “to inform”. continue reading

In the case of those that are subject to consultation, there are productive and service, political, cultural, sports, recreational and religious activities when they are carried out on public roads. In the second case, it will be enough to report the fulfillment of the activities according to the established norms.

The largest number of government, political, tourist and diplomatic entities are concentrated in the affected areas and roads of interest.

The largest number of government, political, tourist and diplomatic entities are concentrated in the affected areas and roads of interest

The largest number of government, political, tourist and diplomatic entities are concentrated in the affected areas and roads of interest. The areas are located in the popular councils Siboney-Atabey, Cubanacán, La Coronela, Plaza, Vedado, Príncipe, Colón Nuevo Vedado, Ceiba-Kohly, Vedado-Malecón, Sevillano and Tallapiedra, as well as others in the municipalities of Marianao, La Lisa and Boyeros.

The new regulation means a return to the practice of requiring an authorization to exchange or acquire a home in what in previous years were called “frozen areas”. At that time, the entity that gave the go-ahead was the Directorate of Personal Security of the Ministry of the Interior.

The decree does not specify whether the procedures to open a privately owned business in the so-called areas to be consulted can be carried out in the “single window” created to streamline paperwork and bureaucratic processes and defined as “an innovative tool” for the management of the private sector.

In addition, it is determined that the urban nucleus of Antilla (Holguín) also has special regulations, since the place “constitutes an area of high significance for tourism and is located in the municipality of Antilla, in the province of Holguín.” Currently, Gaviota is building a luxury hotel in this area, at the entrance to the Great Bay of Nipe.

Translated by Norma Whiting

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Should the Opposition Dialogue with the Cuban Government?

Left: Yes, because we don’t have the capacity to wage war. / vs / Right: I don’t criticize someone who wants to dialog, but I don’t dialog with murderers.

The moment in which thirty artists left the Ministry of Culture after meeting with Vice Minister Fernando Rojas for almost five hours. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 15 March 2021 — Since last November 27, when some thirty artists managed to force a meeting with the Vice Minister of Culture, Fernando Rojas, after the unprecedented demonstration of some 300 people before the ministry, the question has divided activists: should the Cuban opposition recognize the Government as an interlocutor in a dialogue that guides the country towards a transition to democracy?

The promise offered by Rojas that day was broken by the same authorities days later, refusing to recognize the conditions set by the artists, already organized as 27N (27th November). At the same time, State Security has not stopped monitoring and harassing independent journalists and activists in recent months.

Even so, that demonstration, organized in support of the San Isidro Movement (MSI), several of whose members had been staying in the group’s headquarters and on hunger strike for the freedom of rapper Denis Solís, and who on November 26 had been violently evicted from their headquarters, generated a new hope.

The last episode was the premiere of the song Patria y vida, on February 16, by the duo Gente de Zona, Yotuel Romero, Descemer Bueno, Maykel Osorbo and El Funky, whose motto has been endorsed by the main opposition organizations, within and off the island. continue reading

It is under the name of Patria y Vida, that the MSI launched a platform this March to convene a “national dialogue” with all actors in society, including the Government, and build a Cuba that represents “a safe home for all,” in addition to overcoming the serious crisis that the nation is suffering through “peaceful and civic solutions.”

However, not everyone agrees to include the government as a negotiating party.

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, leader of the MSI, put the dilemma on the table, declaring to 14ymedio that “there cannot be a dialogue in Cuba without the systemic part, without the regime part,” but that this “has to be with character.” From an official account, the following day, the MSI clarified that “the Cuban government has never wanted to speak with Cubans” and that the dialogue proposal “does not include it.”

“This is a citizen dialogue to debate among ourselves the future of our country,” they pointed out.

In a press conference offered last Friday, Alcántara himself and other members of the MSI, Michel Matos, Iris Ruiz and Amaury Pacheco, expounded on the subject, clarifying that the Government would not be the main interlocutor.

“I don’t see any other way to transition towards a democratic rule of law other than by dialoguing at some point with the current Cuban totalitarian authorities,” said Matos, who recalled that, in other countries, “every time a dictatorship has ended it has been under the parameters of agreements, negotiations, road map protocols or a dialogue agenda, where an understanding is reached on a key point that involves the transition.”

“I have heard expressions like ’pack your bags and go’ directed towards the communists, and I ask if this is realistic,” he said. “The other alternative that remains to get out of such a terrible situation is one that we cannot afford and are unable to do, which is basically war.”

Similarly, Amaury Pacheco expressed: “As a civil society we have put dialogue on the table and the Government has backed down. This exchange is needed to have a program of how we are going to travel because the Communist Party is not going to pack their suitcases and leave. We have to plant conscious programs and let the public know them.”

Within the San Isidro Movement itself, one of the most forceful in rejecting the dialogue has been Maykel Osorbo, who in a live feed on his Facebook profile was very clear: “I do not criticize anyone who wants to dialogue, but I do not dialogue with murderers.”

Osorbo, one of the authors of the song Patria y vida, and who has suffered several arrests in recent weeks, believes that the right circumstances are not present and he puts himself as an example of being harmed by the repressive policy of a government with the whom he does not contemplate sitting down.

“I do not dialogue because my life is in danger. There is no dialogue with dictators. I say it from personal experience. They beat me every day, they harass me, they threaten me. With that violence they do not dialogue with me. We went to dialogue on January 27 and we all saw what happened,” he points out in reference to the day that the Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso, ended up slapping the protesters who approached asking for a conversation.

The artist also doubts that sittingdown with the regime is actually being considered as an option and indicates that the references to other sensibilities must refer to the opposition that he calls traditional, citing José Daniel Ferrer as an example.

Martha Beatriz Roque, who belongs to that traditional opposition, has also established her position through an article published on Cubanet in which she details other historical moments of calling for a national dialogue, as Oswaldo Payá proposed in his day with the initiative of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), which ended up being shipwrecked with the tragic death of its Payá, its founder.

“It has always been said that dialoguing with the dictatorship is the same as speaking with the deaf, without sign language. In fact, those who vote for dialogue, in some opposition circles and also in exile, have been called by the derogatory noun: ’dialogueros’,” says the politician and member of the Group of 75.

In her opinion, the public debates between defenders and detractors of the dialogue only benefit the Government, which sees the disunity among the opponents and so she believes that any difference should be aired in private, but above all proposes that it can be based on a premise to talk about dialogue , the only common point that in her opinion unites the opposition “and that should be the basis of any understanding: the freedom of political prisoners.”

Meanwhile, the harshest statements have come from exile. The influencer Alex Otaola has cried out against dialogue with a short and direct phrase: “You cannot dialogue with the repressor.”

In a video on his YouTube channel, the popular communicator mocks those who ask to sit down with the Government to start the process and accuses them of being collaborators of the regime. “Maduro has gained years in power due to the softness of Capriles, of this and the other, while Venezuelans continue to die,” he denounces.

Otaola considers that these calls to talk are cosmetic and the Government launches them to influence Washington by making it appear that it is willing to negotiate within the island. “With whom is this platform going to dialogue? Among all Cubans of all political currents, all thoughts … Smoke and mirrors, no more. You can not dialogue with dictators,” he says.

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Even the Stores Selling in Dollars are in Crisis in Cuba

A line this Monday outside the MLC store on Boyeros and Camagüey streets, in Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 15 March 2021 — Not a year has passed since their opening and the stores that sell food and cleaning products in foreign currency are already going through a crisis. Little supply and very long lines mark the days in the most criticized shops in the country, the only ones, however, that still have more than a dozen products on their shelves.

“It is not worth coming here, among the resellers and the shortage of supplies, this looks like a bodega,” as the ration stores are called, a customer told 14ymedio, this Monday, while waiting on the outskirts of the market that sells in freely convertible currency (MLC) on San Rafael Street in Havana. “I arrived at 5:15 in the morning and the line was was doubled back. Where were so many people going out to if the curfew is until five?”

The markets in MLC have become the new modus vivendi of thousands of Cubans who have a magnetic card with foreign currency. They buy grains, meat products, dairy products and preserves that they then resell in the informal market. Eager customers pay others to wait for them in the long lines, to avoid contagion by Covid-19 and also because they don’t have access to hard currency. continue reading

“They are out of stock, but if you compare them with the stores that sell in Cuban pesos, they seem luxurious,” a customer reflects on the outskirts of the Boyeros and Camagüey markets. “Everyone who has gone out today, the only thing they have is peas and malt, but I’m here because I need to buy yogurt and flour,” he says. “A few years ago I didn’t have to stand in a line for beef, but now you have to stand in line even for bouillon cubes.”

The resellers do not use the official exchange rate for the dollar, set at 1 in 24, but instead are guided by the price of the fulas [dollars] in the informal market. “People complain that the merchandise is expensive but I’m selling this large can of concentrated tomato puree for 800 pesos because it costs me about 18 dollars, plus a whole morning. I put the dollar at 47 CUP [Cuban pesos] so I’m almost giving away the merchandise.”

Currency stores have caused deep discontent among broad social sectors. Faced with the avalanche of popular complaints about the social differences that these markets deepen, the Minister of Economy, Alejandro Gil, tried to calm things down last December and assured that the opening of foreign currency stores for the sale of food and cleaning products was “a decision of social justice and socialism.”

“An undersupplied market does not attract foreign currency,” the minister explained then, referring to what many Cubans have classified as a “monetary apartheid” that divides society between those who have dollars to buy products in these shops and those who must meet their needs in the network of stores that sell in national currency.

However, to the same extent that a large part of Cuban society criticizes the opening of these shops, others have seen their resources grow, serving as a bridge between merchandise in dollars and anxious customers who cannot find these products in the stores that sell in Cuban pesos or convertible pesos.

“Call me for more details on what I’m getting tomorrow. Top-notch merchandise from the dollar stores,” reads an ad. “Leave the Line to me and avoid leaving the house, from the market to your table,” adds the classified. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,” specifies the short text that invites you to follow “the offers on WhatsApp.”

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Cuba’s Private Sector Has Become an Example of Resistance

The preparation and sale of food remains one of the most attractive choices in the private sector according to the OCDH. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Madrid, March 12, 2021 — Cuba’s private sector, whose workers are referred to as cuentapropistas, suffered a 25% decline in 2020 compared to the previous year. This was mainly due to impact of the Covid-19 pandemic but also partly because of the crisis caused by the country’s economic system.

The island’s calamitous situation is analyzed in depth in an article, “Environment, Private Enterprises and Economic Rights,” published on Thursday by the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH).

For starters, it confirms the official data: private businesses employ around 30% of the country’s active labor force and contribute 13% to state coffers in the form of taxes. continue reading

From 2010, when the regime legalized self-employment, until January of 2020, the private sector grew 59%, with 459,234 legally registered cuentapropistas throughout the country. However, 158,000 of them have since gone out of business. The causes, according to Rosello Consultores and confirmed by the OCDH, are “losses resulting from Covid-19 [65%], the country’s economic crisis [30%] and other factors [5%]”

“The failures of the Cuban economic system are becoming increasingly obvious,” says the OCDH in its report. “The various issues and ongoing crises have only aggravated and simultaneously made more explicit the shortcomings of the Cuban economy, which is still tied to the primacy and monopoly of the state, its commitment to centralized planning and the rejection of prosperity, which the Communist Party calls ’accumulation of wealth.’”

Against this backdrop, the report continues, self-employment has been one of the few “ruptures” with the “Stalinist economic model,” becoming not only “an example of efficiency” but also “an example of resistance” in the current “adverse” environment.

According to the report, the most attractive activities in the private sector continue to be the preparation and sale of food, transportation of cargo and passengers, leasing rooms in private homes and telecommunication services, which represented 22% of operating licenses in 2020 and 78% of the 127 approved self-employment categories.

The organization states that last year saw “increased economic rights violations, persecution and surveillance of the self-employment sector.” Authorities also carried out 1,400,000 “control actions” while fines amounted to 32 million pesos, 44% more than in 2019.

“Given its entrepreneurial nature, the private sector expresses a repressed pluralism and constitutes a countercultural platform for civic reflection,” says the OCDH, which counted forty-seven public protests and demands for economic rights by Cuban cuentapropistas. “Despite their legitimacy, they were ignored by the media and the seventeen official national unions,” it adds.

The Madrid-based organization highlights that Cuba has been in a “a deep economic and financial crisis” since 2019. Among the causes it cites are a drop in oil prices and “breach of supply contracts” by the Venezuelan national oil company PDVSA, the three billion dollars set aside to pay the foreign debt, and sanctions imposed by the United States under the Trump administration. Contributing factors include a decline in foreign tourism as well as purchases of agricultural products from the United States.

In addition, “certain elements of Cuba’s legal and economic system itself, which, although they are not temporary, are seen as partof the permanent crisis,” for example the high taxes,” which, according to the OCDH, in 2018, were above the average for Latin America and the Caribbean and above the average for the OECD countries themselves,” notes the Observatory.

The report concludes, “Self-employment generates half a million jobs, and makes significant contributions to the state budget and to GDP. Given how important it is today, it even more crucial to create conditions to encourage its development. A strong and healthy business network would create a multiplier effect which would benefit everyone, especially the people.”

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Patriotism and Mediocrity

Screen capture from the video clip of ’La Bayamesa’. (Juan Carlos Borjas / Cubadebate)

14ymedio, Eloy M. Viera Moreno, Havana, 13 March 2021 — A few weeks ago a group of Cuban artists composed a song under the suggestive title of Patria y Vida (Homeland and Life) and disseminated it through the networks. The Cuban government gave a meteoric response, and in a matter of a few days it has released three songs, with their corresponding video clips, worthy of that “revolutionary intransigence” ordered by the Communist Party in the 1970s.

Of mediocre workmanship and rather bad taste, these productions aim to associate national symbols with our national traditions, without subtlety and with little aesthetic value. When Cubans sang to their nation, did they do it the same way? Let’s look at examples.

At the beginning of the Ten Years’ War, the love song La Bayamesa, composed more than a decade earlier by three young people, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Francisco Castillo Moreno and José Fornaris, dedicated to the then girlfriend of one of them, was turned into a hymn of praise to our sovereign land in the imagination of our mambises. It was widely performed, both the original and the version with lyrics attributed to José Joaquín Palma and its popularity reached Europe, while inside borders we continue to enjoy it like the first day. continue reading

At the end of the 19th century, a white Cuban just 18 years old and his brother, Eduardo and Fernando Sánchez de Fuentes, composed Tú, one of those “round trip songs”, as habaneras — a popular genre of music — were called then. Soon the emigrants supporting independence appropriated its melody and lyrics, feeling in it the description of the dreamed of free Cuba, especially in its final statement: “Cuba is you.” It is a true “tobacco label turned into song”, according to the journalist Orlando González. Of enduring value, today connoisseurs include it among the three best-known habaneras of all time.

A Dutchman, Hubert de Blanck, who settled down with a Cuban woman, improvised on the piano for six minutes , with the best of his virtuosity, a melody by Perucho Figueredo when even that march was only the promise of a national anthem for a long-awaited country. Such is the excellence of this musical composition, which today resonates permanently in the Tomb of the Unknown Mambí of the recently rebuilt National Capitol, reminding us of genuine Cubanness.

Two black musicians, Lico Jiménez and José White, put their lives and heritage at the service of a nation in need of a homeland. The latter composed La bella cubana, a song frequently sung at many independence parties since the mid-nineteenth century. It had such acceptance that authorized voices consider it one of the three most emblematic songs of Cuba and it was used in the past as a musical theme by the CMBF Radio Musical Nacional station, a distinguished promoter of good music in Cuba.

With the above examples still in the ear, it is difficult to judge the texts of the three “response songs” to Patria y Vida. The songs included barricade jargon, their quality diminished by urgency. Appeals to be intolerant of opposing opinions, as if this land does not belong to all of us, are the continuation of the “revolutionary violence” of the last six decades. To promote this intimidation now is to promote once again acts of repudiation and the actions of the notorious “rapid response brigades”, the result of which would no longer be the same as in other times of citizen meekness.

On the other hand, as far as I know, none of the Black Cubans belonging to any of the multiple sides that fought against discrimination, and for the inclusion of blackness ,ever publicly wore expensive African clothes. Without a foothold in Cuban tradition and history, it seems to me that this visual metaphor, so abundant in recent years, responds to commercial interests. Mixing that clothing with the national symbols and selling the multimedia result as a sample of Cubanness is an unforgivable show.

For the discerning, I answer why I do not also judge the piece Patria y Vida. The reason has nothing to do with the music or its aesthetic appreciation. Quite simply, none of the patriotic testimonies of imperishable quality mentioned were made with public money or under the patronage of any government.

On the contrary, in most cases the money of the authors and performers were devoted to a sovereign and dreamed of better homeland. For the time being, consequently, I criticize those songs made with the resources of the State, resources which would have been better invested in solving the many deficiencies in the lives of Cubans today.

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Finger Amputated Due to Lack of Antibiotics in Cuba

The only solution to prevent the hand from becoming gangrenous was amputation of the phalanx. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 10 March 2021 — “Mommy, where did you leave the tip of your finger?” asked Yuneidis Cabañas Rivera’s three-year-old son when she returned from the hospital. The young woman lost a phalanx of the middle finger of her left hand after an infection could not be treated in time due to the lack of antibiotics in Cuban pharmacies.

Cabañas was cleaning a frozen chicken last January when she pricked her finger on a bone splinter. At first it seemed only a small wound, but little by little the inflammation and pain began, she told 14ymedio. Cabañas is a resident of the Martí neighborhood, in the Cerro municipality, in Havana.

Four days later, Cabañas could no longer bear the discomfort and decided to go to the emergency room at the Joaquin Albarrán Clinical Surgical Hospital, near her home. The doctor checked the young woman’s finger and recommended that she apply cold water creams and also start a cycle with the antibiotic ciprofloxacin. continue reading

But, to the pain suffered by the advance of the infection was then added the discomfort of not finding the necessary medicine in any pharmacy. “We spent three days visiting various pharmacies, but nothing,” laments Mercedes, Cabañas’ grandmother who helped her in the search for the missing antibiotic.

“The government says that we are a medical power but they are incapable of supplying antibiotics,” says Cabañas. “I went to the hospital three more times to change the prescription for another type of medicine, but I didn’t find those either,” adds the young woman who always encountered the same responses in pharmacies: Antibiotics are not coming in.

To avoid crowds in pharmacies, hospital managers have warned doctors that they should not prescribe drugs that are unavailable, but every day it is more difficult for doctors to find a drug that the patient can later buy without major setbacks.

Two weeks after the incident, a friend with medical knowledge who visited Cabañas recommended that she return immediately to the hospital and demand that she be treated “properly”: “If you have to get tough, you get tough but you’re going to lose your finger.”

Back at the Albarrán hospital, the young woman, accompanied by her grandmother, staged “a giant fit.” At first the doctors tried to save the entire finger and admitted her to try cures. There was no type of pain reliever or local anesthetic for the treatments and they were very harsh. “I couldn’t sleep the night before thinking about the procedure.”

Finally, on February 16, doctors could not avoid amputation of the upper phalanx of the middle finger on her left hand, because the infection did not recede and the entire hand could become gangrenous. Along with the loss, Cabañas suffered severe pain without any treatment.

Last December, amid a severe drug shortage on the island, Dr. Emilio Delgado Iznaga, director of Medications and Medical Technology of the Ministry of Public Health warned that the problem would continue for the next 12 months. The country will have “a very tight basic table of drugs due to financial tensions,” the official said, a prognosis that has worsened over the weeks.

Almost two months after the onset of the infection and three weeks after the phalanx was amputated, the area is still red, swollen and painful. Now, the great concern of Cabañas, who has not yet been able to find antibiotics in pharmacies, is that the infection will return and even spread to the entire hand.

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Cuba Postpones Rollout of the Soberana Vaccine

Phase III trials of the Soberana vaccine will involve 44,000 people.

14ymedio, Havana, March 8, 2021 — Rollout of the Cuban vaccine will begin later than had been expected. At the end of December Vicente Verez, director of the Cuban Finlay Institute, predicted that vaccinations could begin in the first half of 2021 but scientific realities have forced him to temper his optimism. He now admits that the vaccinations will probably not begin until the summer.

In an interview on Saturday on the Peruvian radio and television program “Exitosa”, Verez discussed the development of Soberana [Sovereign] 2. The vaccine has just begun Phase III trials, which are scheduled to last three months. The director of the Finlay Institute calculated that it will take another month to certify and produce the vaccine at a higher volume and that vaccinations would begin sometime around July. Asked if he believed it would be possible to be marketing it by August, he indicated he thought that was a realistic date.

Hopes of vaccinating the Cuban population in the first half of this year or, as had been previously predicted, to begin the process in March, have been dashed. The postponement also calls into question the government’s decision not to participate in the COVAX program, an international funding initiative designed to allow countries to acquire cheaper or donated vaccines. Although some wealthy countries have joined the effort, most are contributors to the fund and, as such, have agreed forego any of its benefits in order to allow cash-strapped nations to acquire vaccines at market-rate prices. continue reading

Cuba has not offered an official explanation as to why it decided not to participate in an initiative that would have already allowed it to begin immunizing its high-risk populations — the first COVAX vaccines began arriving at the end of February — as it continues to develop its own treatments.

The interview turned to the topic of exports when the moderator asked about possible shipments of Soberana 2 to Peru. Verez confirmed that the vaccine would would certainly be ready to ship by August. He declined to discuss the purchase price, which is covered by the terms and conditions of the contract negotiated by the parties to the agreement and based on different variables, though he assured the interviewer that it would be very competitive, much more so than vaccines currently on the market.

Clinical trials of Soberana 2 are now beginning simultaneously in Havana and Iran, where they are being conducted by the Pasteur Institute. Verez explained that 44,000 people in the Cuban capital have been chosen to participate, a very large sample size given to the relatively low prevalence of coronavirus on the island compared to the worst-hit countries. This trial’s participants will be divided into three groups. One of will receive only a placebo, the second group will get two doses of Sovereign 2 while the third will be given two doses of the vaccine as well as one dose of Sovereign Plus, a complementary medication announced last week as the fifth vaccine but that, according to Verez, is actually intended to act as a booster.

Though he declined to quantify the efficacy of the new vaccine candidate while Phase III trials are still ongoing, preliminary Phase II results are showing an immune response rate of 84% after two doses (administered twenty-eight days apart). After an additional dose of Soberana Plus, the rate could climb to as much as 95%, though he added, “We have to wait awhile before we know the final results.”

Verez explained that studies to create a new vaccine candidate in Cuba began nine months ago. It uses recombinant protein technology, which involves the reproduction of viral proteins found in the tips of the coronavirus and introduces them into the human immune system so that it learns to defend itself.

Among the questions left unanswered are how well it works in children, a population in which Soberana 02 will also be studied, and how well it responds to the variants strains emerging around the world.

Verez added that analysis of Soberana 1 results is also moving forward quickly though he did not provide any further information. This vaccine is currently in Phase II.

Cuba is also working on Abdala and Mambisa, two vaccine candidates being developed by Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB). The Abdala vaccine is awaiting authorization to begin Phase III trials while Mambisa, which is administered through the nose, is in Phase I.

Covid-19 remains uncontained and the infection rate is not trending downward, as might be expected after a slight tightening of restrictions which, now several weeks later, were obviously insufficient. On Sunday, 858 infections and four deaths were reported, for a total of 5,101 new cases at the end of the first week of March, according to the Ministry of Public Health.

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Cuba’s Poorest Find it Impossible to Pay the Gas Bill

As of January 1st, 2021, and as part of the Ordering Task, manufactured gas service went from 0.11 pesos per cubic meter to 2.50. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Serafín Martínez, Havana, 9 March 2021 — The times when all the burners were lit in a kitchen or of simmering beans for hours are over for many Cubans. Increases in the rate of manufactured gas has redesigned culinary practices and has also put in check the families who cannot pay the new prices, in force since January.

Enma Quiala Povea, 31, a single mother of three and pregnant with another, does not know how she will be able to pay the cost of the “street gas” that she supposedly consumed during the second month of this year. She just received a 1,000 pesos bill, more than 50 times what she paid last December, and she gets social aid that barely covers the purchase of basic products.

As of January 1^st, 2021, and as part of the Ordering Task, the cost of manufactured gas service increased from 0.11 pesos per cubic meter to 2.50. However, the increase is part of a package of increases that also includes new costs for electricity, transportation, and products from the rationed market, which further strains people’s pockets. continue reading

Quiala, a neighbor who lives at Velázquez #514, between Guanabacoa and Melones, in Luyanó, Havana, explains to 14ymedio: “I live with my father and my children and we usually pay between 14 and 19 pesos a month for the gas bill, which is a hundred and some cubic meters per month according to the meter reading”.

Surprisingly, “this February, the gas reading according to the meter rose from the usual one hundred and some cubic meters to 400. That seems impossible, because my father is a Covid essential worker who is always mobilized and there was no additional consumption”

“I am aware that if I had spent it, I would have to pay for it, but I am not going to pay 1,000 pesos to allow a collector’s error. I receive 2,860 pesos from social assistance to take care of my children, which is not enough for my living expenses, and I cannot work outside my home. I can’t afford all that money in gas”.

While other rates such as electricity, the cost of contributions to the official press and liquefied gas have been ‘rectified’ after popular complaints, the price for manufactured gas that is consumed in Cuba, especially in Havana, has remained as established in the new economic adjustment policy.

“We are two adults and two children here,” Moraima Ríos, a resident of the Cerro municipality in the Cuban capital, explains to this newspaper. The youngest of her children has cerebral palsy and is bedridden, requiring continuous care, special food preparation and hygiene requiring high gas consumption.

“In this house, our income has practically not changed, because although the fees for the mechanical services my husband performs as a business owner have increased, the resources he needs for his work have increased as well, so now his earnings are practically similar to before but we pay more for everything, including gas.”

“I had to go to complain, but before doing so, I needed to pay the bill, because they told me that the case cannot be reviewed unless the bill is paid in full.”

During the month of February, the family received a bill for 1,260 pesos for the consumption of manufactured gas that month. On the street where they live in the Cerro neighborhood, most of the neighbors “got the same surprise” when they reviewed their accounts. “I had to go to complain, but before doing so, I needed to pay the bill, because they told me that the case cannot be reviewed unless the bill is paid in full.”

Since March began, Ríos barely lights the stove. “I have become afraid of the kitchen because one does not know how much the gas bill will be later,” she explains to this newspaper. “With these cold days I have had to prioritize heating the water to be able to bathe my son, but I cannot turn on the oven in the kitchen or do anything that is not basic”.

When she went to claim the February invoice, a worker from the Manufactured Gas office, managed by the state-owned Cuba-Petróleo warned Ríos that “the country is going through problems with manufactured gas and she needs to save,” so the rise in price was going to “help avoid waste”.

However, the head of domestic fuels at Cupet, Lucilo Sánchez, recently assured the national press that “there are no difficulties” for consumers of manufactured natural gas, which is processed from existing oil deposits in Cuba’s north western strip.

Cuba produces 3.5 million tons of oil per year (22 million barrels), of which 2.6 million tons (16.3 million barrels) of crude oil and approximately 1 billion cubic meters of natural gas are obtained, covering 97% of what is used to generate electricity and domestic gas consumption in Havana.

“I do not understand that one day they say that manufactured gas is guaranteed and that most of it is produced nationally, and the next day they charge us these prices,” claims Ríos. “I can understand that this happens with an imported product, such as food that is not produced in Cuba, but this is something that comes from our own soil, which is owned by the people.”

“Since the new rates for manufactured gas were established, there has been a notable increase in the influx of customers”

At the Cupet office for collections to the population at Paz Street in the municipality of Diez de Octubre, an official acknowledges the problem. “Since the new rates for manufactured gas were established, there has been a notable increase in the influx of customers,” she says.

The employee, who prefers to remain anonymous, insists that the high bills are mainly due to customer ignorance and to bad practices in the daily use of gas. “The population has not become familiar with the new tariff of the Ordinance Task of 2.50 pesos per cubic meter of manufactured gas, where there are meters installed”.

“It will take them time to adjust, but each case will be analyzed promptly. If a customer does not have money to pay, they can request the presence of an inspector to check for leaks. But in the end, you will have to pay for your consumption because the objective is to eliminate undue freebies and promote energy savings and efficiency in the population”, advises the employee.

“If I pay this money, I don’t have anything left to buy food for my children, but if I don’t pay, I run out of gas to cook the food they need. What do I do?” Moraima Ríos wonders. “While I make the claim and they check my meter, I run out of money for everyday expenses.” The solution that she has created for the moment is “to trash some of her furniture and build a wood fire in the yard”.

And she concludes: “The neighbors are already complaining about the smell of smoke, but I don’t want to use gas at those prices and with those surprises. Nor the electricity, either, which is also very expensive”.

Translated by Norma Whiting

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“The National Dialogue Will Allow Us to Move from Complaint to Strategic Action”

San Isidro Movement members Iris Ruiz, Michel Matos, Amaury Pacheco and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara spoke at the press conference. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 12 March 2021 — The San Isidro Movement (MSI) explained during a press conference details about the National Dialogue initiative proposed by the Patria y Vida [Homeland and Life] platform, inspired by the song by Yotuel Romero, Gente de Zona, Descemer Bueno, Osorbo and El Funky.

Iris Ruiz, Michel Matos, Amaury Pacheco and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara participated in the press conference, responding to the question of what they understand as dialogue “in the context of hostility” experienced on the island from the “Cuban dictatorial regime.”

All agreed to call for the exchange but at no time did they point to “the Government” as the main interlocutor. Asked about it by this newspaper, the artists expressed their opinions.

Michel Matos said that “understanding that Cuba is a sore nation with deep scars” he agrees that “a civilized and logical way to carry out a restoration is to dialogue among ourselves.”

“The other alternative that remains to get out of such a terrible situation is one that we cannot allow nor are we qualified to do, which is basically war,” he added. Matos explained that to reach democracy, very diverse processes must be gone through. “I have heard expressions like ‘pack your bags and go’ directed towards the communists and I ask if this is realistic,” he said. continue reading

“How do we expect them to leave? By magic, by their own will, by the intervention of a foreign government, how is that going to happen?” he asked. “In the references that I have in historical terms, each time a dictatorship has ended, it has been under the parameters of agreements, negotiations, road map protocols and an agenda for dialogue where an understanding is reached on a key point that it implies the transition,” he said.

At another point, Matos was more decisive when he said: “I don’t see any other way to transition to a democratic rule of law other than by dialoguing at some point with the current Cuban totalitarian authorities, I can’t conceive of it, we have to be open to the idea of that there can be such a dialogue.”

Matos also mentioned the November 27 demonstration in front of the Ministry of Culture and recalled that on that day “the majority” asked to dialogue with the Cuban authorities. “When that meeting was held, the specific words were said, they spoke of State crime, repression, totalitarianism, kidnapping of the country by State Security, that was mentioned in the framework of a dialogue.”

For his part, Amaury Pacheco said that dialogue “is important” because “it allows us to go from the complaint to the demand, from the demand to the proposal, from the proposal to a program, to a route, to a strategic action.” For the poet “dialogue is conscience, it is freedom, it is restoration, transparency, it is to maintain the character of a position in front of the regime.”

“I think this is a step that has demonstrated the incapacity of the regime. As civil society we have put dialogue on the table and the Government has backed down. This exchange is needed to have a program of how we are going to move because the Communist Party is not going to pack its suitcases and leave. We must plant conscious programs and let the citizens know them, “reflected Pacheco.

For Otero Alcántara there is an extreme radical, which is the Government, “which does not want to dialogue.” As for the “other extreme”, which is also opposed to this process, the artist says that it will be heard. “We know there is a lot of pain,” he declares, while hoping that “the tendency is not to rip off the heads of the communists.” “We have to learn that we all own the word dialogue” because “the national dialogue is happening,” he said.

At another point in the press conference, the members of the MSI referred to the talks on Human Rights that the Cuban government has with the European Union. In this regard, Matos stated: “If Europe is in dialogue with the Government, the island’s civil society must be recognized and be part of that process. Our names must be pronounced at those tables because we are the ones who are constantly suffering the violations of human rights, and we need to be recognized as valid interlocutors.”

Otero Alcántara firmly believes that “change in the country will come from the Cubans” but it should be accompanied “by international factors that are important” and can “form part of that dialogue.”

And he demanded, “the regime does not know what to do with those of us who are pacifists but we have the support of citizens, Europeans have to recognize us as civil society.”

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Major Deployment of Cuban Police to Prevent a ‘Secret’ Demonstration

Surveillance on the street where María Matienzo resides, who was detained for a few hours by State Security. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 12 March 2021 — A dozen activists and journalists woke up to find their homes under surveillance and themselves prevented from going out. The reason: an alleged protest action while, they say, they have not called. In Old Havana, around the Capitol, there is a large presence of police and patrol cars, as there is in the vicinity of the Plaza of the Revolution.

The Government thus intends to repress an alleged demonstration denounced on Cuban television news this Thursday by the newscaster Humberto López. The alleged demonstration was reported to have the objective of demanding the release of Luis Robles, a young man who was arrested for holding a sign with the messages “freedom”, “no more repression” and “free Denis,” alluding to rapper Denis Solís.

The activity, according to López, was organized “secretly” from the United States to be carried out by “counterrevolutionaries” in what he described as a “provocation” scheduled for this Friday in the Plaza of the Revolution. continue reading

The presenter recalled, in his usual threatening tone, that resistance, the established crimes of disobedience to authority and contempt, as well as public disorder and enemy propaganda can be charged against citizens who come out to demonstrate. The penalties associated with each of these crimes in the Penal Code — ranging from three months to eight years in prison, in addition to fines — were also shown on screen.

López noted that these crimes are “dormant”, although, as several international NGOs have pointed out, the Cuban authorities resort to them to convict opponents or activists, as happened recently with Luis Robles.

The presenter called out those responsible for this “secret action,” naming pointed to Omara Ruiz Urquiola, Yasser Castellanos, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, Abu Duyanah Tamayo, Esteban Rodríguez, Héctor Luis Valdés and Maykel Osorbo. Among this group are those who staged a hunger strike at the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement and are the constant target of defamations in the official media.

Ruiz Urquiola, who is currently in the United States, wrote on his Facebook profile: “I am not planning anything that I cannot take part in. I would have liked to have thought about taking the street for Luis Robles.” In the same vein, Otero Alcántara expressed himself, insisting to 14ymedio that none of the members of the San Isidro Movement or those who had been at the headquarters had plans to go to the Plaza of the Revolution today.

The artist also took the opportunity to denounce that both he and his companions have been under surveillance by the political police from the early hours of the morning.

In addition, Carolina Barrero, Luz Escobar and Yamilka Lafita woke up besieged in their homes. When trying to go out into the street, Héctor Luis Valdés, Maykel Osorbo and María Matienzo, whose homes were also under surveillance, were arrested.

“María Matienzo, a journalist from CubaNet, has just been arrested as she left her home. She does not answer the phone. I consider her missing,” denounced the activist Kirenia Yalit, who also published a photograph in which a patrol care is seen standing guard in the block where the reporter lives.

Upon being released, Matienzo declared: “I am an independent journalist and I will cover the news as I understand it. My house is not a prison. Every time they put surveillance on me, I will go to jail.”
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Cuban Society Is Becoming More Critical and Diverse

An act of repudiation against activist Anyell Valdes Cruz and her family is cited in several articles on human rights.

14ymedio, Havana, March 5, 2021 — More repression, more prisoners of conscience and more protests in Havana in February. That sums up the results of data collected last month by various human rights organizations such as the Cuban Conflict Observatory (OCC), which counted 159 public demonstrations in that time period. Not only is the figure higher than the 137 recorded in January but, unlike those that took place before the middle of last year, 70% of them were related to political and civil rights issues.

In a statement released this week, the OCC expressed surprise that only 30% of the demonstrations focused on economic or social rights “considering [the severity of] the socio-economic crisis plaguing the country.” In the organization’s view, these protests were, in large part, a response to increases in the cost of living resulting from the country’s recent currency unification.

According to the OCC, the main cause of the increased number of protests in February was “the stubborn suppression of them by a regime that has lost all credibility with an increasingly critical and diverse civil society.” continue reading

Behind the protests is a growing array of key players, says the Miami-based organization. Artists, independent journalists, animal rights activists, self-employed workers, filmmakers and private farmers are being joined by workers from other sectors who have been, “until now, mostly passive.” These include lawyers, architects, doctors, teachers, scientists and accountants, all part of a list of 124 professions whose members are prohibited from being independently employed.

The OCC believes that, given the increasing number and diverse nature of the protests, there is a growing awareness “both inside and outside of Cuba” that “the state no longer assumes any responsibility for the general welfare [of its citizens] or has any respect for basic civil rights.”

By way of example, the statement mentions several former military officers, quoting them as saying “there is no revolution or socialism to defend.” It also mentions the song “Patria y Vida” — released on February 16 by the musical group Gente de Zona, whose members incude Yotuel Romero, Descemer Well, El Funky and Maykel Castillo Osorbo — which quickly went viral.* According to the OCC, the six musicians managed to express “the feelings of ordinary people on the island.” The song’s lyrics state, “And we are not afraid, the deception is over, it is over, there are sixty-two [years of] damage.”

The OCC claims the government “is unable to muster popular support” and “insists on resorting to counterproductive acts of repression and smear campaigns without allowing its critics the right to reply.”

In its February report by the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH) provides an accounting of the repression: at least 373 actions against human rights activists and independent journalists, of which 120 were arbitrary detentions, sixteen of them involving violent use of force.

State Security’s preferred strategy is to besiege people in their homes, which it did recently to ninety-eight activists. It also routinely relies on threats, harassment, fines, physical attacks, searches, subpoenas and acts of repudiation.

The Madrid-based OCDH stated that “permanent violence continues against the opposition leader Jose Daniel Ferrer, who was the victim of several incidents” including a raid on his house by State Security agents on Friday, February 26.

The organization also condemned an act of repudiation against the family of Anyell Valdes Cruz at her home in Havana, whose facade was painted with the slogan “Patria y Vida”. The participants, who included Kirenia Pomares, the mayor of the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo, attacked the house, throwing objects at it in the presence of several minors.

Cuban Prisoners Defenders, which is also based in Madrid, has come up with its own list of prisoners of conscience based on data from February, raising the number of cases to nine. They include Luis Enrique Santos Caballero (a nember of the Opposition Movement for a New Republic and the Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Civic Resistance Front), and Yasser Fernando Rodriguez Gonzalez (who has no political affiliation).

The organiztion counted 135 political prisoners, both accused and convicted, as of March 1. When it began compiling these reports one year earlier, there were 127 prisoners on its initial list. Sine then, 53 new cases were been added (an average of 4.4 new cases per month), for a total of 180. Of those, 45 have already been released, the vast majority being prisoners who had completed their sentences. The rest were released due to special or extenuating circumstances.

The situation in February is also the topic of a report by the Cuban Center for Human Rights, which is based in Havana and headed by Martha Beatriz Roque**. Among other things, it notes the presence of local and foreign-based artists at an online event sponsored by the European Parliament which denounced prohibitions against free expression and violations of human rights violations by the regime.

The report’s assessment of the economic situation is blunt. “Currency unification has not had, nor will it have, a positive effect on employment. The country’s economic system has adversely impacted the labor market and limited any positive outcomes it might have had for the population. As a result, neither the elimination of subsidies nor the increase in wages is likely to bring workers back into the state labor market,” says Roque.

Translator’s notes:

*The words, which translate as “Fatherland and Life,” is a play on the well-known Cuban communist slogan “Patria o Muerte” (Fatherland or Death). Also please note, if you are searching for more information on this topic, also search on “Homeland and Life” — the translation of ’Patria’ varies among sources.

** Martha Beatriz Roque is also commonly spelled Marta Beatriz Roque, on this site and elsewhere.

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Cuba’s Marino Murillo: Nothing More to Lose

14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 8 March 2021 — Cuban Vice-President Marino Murillo, has returned to the forefront of current affairs to talk about what he considers to be the positive effects of the currency unification and exchange. He insists on the same arguments, and of course, it is his opinion, and of course, respectable, but if he had read any of the nearly 2,000 comments from the Cubadebate survey, he should remain silent in relation to economic matters and the Ordering Task.

More or less the same as his leader, much more concerned with burning himself with the state and the evolution of the economy. One has the feeling that Murillo has been left alone, and that he has no choice but to defend himself by attacking. It will be seen if it is successful.

Cubans know that Murillo is not telling the truth when he insists that the currency unification and exchange is a fundamental measure to encourage the development of the country’s productive and business sector. Raúl Castro never imagined that what began to be talked about in the so-called “guidelines” could end like this. In fact, the currency unification and exchange could have been a good thing for the economy, but it should have been done well. continue reading

Perhaps for this reason, many are convinced that before, with the two currencies, people lived better, within the precarious scarcity that characterizes the Cuban economy. Even companies that have seen their balance sheets become insolvent from one day to the next, miss the times of the fictitious parity, the dollar, the Cuban peso and the convertible peso.

Nor is it true that in these two months the currency unification has served to highlight the innumerable distortions that existed in the national economy, which were not noticed before, and now, with the Ordering Task, they are identified as problems and conditions are created to solve them. Murillo is not telling the truth on this matter either.

The problems from before have continued, and gotten worse, and the Cuban economy and society, accustomed to living with them, has been shocked to see that the changes could be made and that things could get worse. Murillo should speak clearly, identify what international pressures are behind the Ordering Task, if any, and above all, because the decisions of the Communist Party are put before the needs of the population. With statements of this type he would ensure his political future much more than with what he is doing.

It is also a surprise that all this information provided by Murillo has come out on his Twitter account and then later, the official press takes charge of continuing the dissemination. The order of factors, in this case, may be altering the result, because no one doubts that it is an action by Murillo directed at his colleagues from the Communist Political Bureau which, after the publication of the Cubadebate survey, is possible. The normal thing for a minister with the power that Murillo has had is not to go around entangling with social networks, but to call a press conference or any other formal act, which would surely achieve a quorum of international press delegates.

But again, going back to the core of the information, the monetary and exchange unification of the Ordering Task could have been implemented without the need to muddy the aspects related to subsidies and gratuities, salaries and pensions or price setting. The one that comprises a lot, little squeezes, and the bet on the centrifugation of so many elements in what should be a simple process of currency exchange, has led Murillo to a critical situation because everyone blames him for the failure. Releasing him from his position could be a gift, thinking about what may come next.

If it had been limited to facilitating the circulation of the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), with its corresponding collection period of six months, and the establishment of a single exchange rate of 1 dollar for 24 Cuban pesos (CUP), it would have had much more success in reordering the economy, and the results would be much better (for now, inflation need not have skyrocketed in this way). Acting with prudence and rigor, the objective of encouraging the development of the productive and business sector of the country would have been more achievable, without the need to put many companies into insolvency.

On the contrary, the state business system and the majority of private entrepreneurs have been shaken by the regime’s decisions regarding the Ordering Task, making it difficult to transfer production costs to prices and thereby further limiting the productive supply. The general opinion of the companies is that now they are in a much worse situation than before, and the feeling “each man for himself” has spread like wildfire through the weakened Cuban economy. Most people also believe that it is much worse now than it was at the end of 2020.

Murillo is pleased with the rate of collecting the CUCs that were in the hands of the population, because the process is proceeding at a higher rate than expected; to date, 57% of the total has been collected. And why isn’t it going to go fast, when the only thing that people want is to get rid of their CUCs because they are no longer worth anything. Another merit turned into a bungle by a lousy design of the devaluation process that has ended up dragging to the CUP the weaknesses that the CUC had and that are now visible.

And to top it all, Murillo says that an important achievement of the Ordering Task has been the increase in people seeking work and the fact that most find it where wealth is generated, citing that 72% have been employed in the business system. We have already had occasion to comment on this issue. That people have to look for a job, as it is, says little about a favorable economic situation, since it indicates that the economic situation is difficult and all family members have to pitch in and contribute a salary.

This is anything but positive. Especially if half go home without a job, because the provincial directorates have not been able to facilitate the search task. Against Murillo, this increase in the active population, which clashes with the trends of recent years, is not at all favorable, and good proof of this is that less than 35% of those who find employment do so in companies, because that 72% has to be calculated on the 50% who get a position, which is half of those who go to the provincial directorates.

So not so fast. The only labor market result that Murillo cites leaves much to be desired. Higher wages, moreover, are already being driven by inflation and will soon cease to be attractive. For how long can the staff of the bloated state companies be maintained? Murillo does not know. Perhaps because he does not intend to be there when that happens. Nothing more to lose.

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