14ymedio – Page 79 – Translating Cuba

Despite the Closure of the Land Border With the United States, the Flow of Cubans to Nicaragua Does Not Stop

Many of the newcomers to Managua continue their journey to countries south of Nicaragua. (Augusto César Sandino Airport/Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 17 August 2023 — The frequency of flights between several air terminals in Cuba and Nicaragua has increased significantly this summer, according to information collected by 14ymedio at the Augusto César Sandino airport, in Managua. With the closure of the U.S. border since December 2022 and the entry into force of the humanitarian parole program, the migratory flow along the Central American route decreased considerably, but that has not prevented Cubans from continuing to take advantage of the free visa to Nicaragua.

“There are up to nine daily flights arriving from Cuba,” says Julio, who has been attentive in recent years to the movements of migrants from the island. The staff of the Managua airport, who got used to the exodus of 2022, is surprised by the number of Cubans who arrive in the Nicaraguan capital every day. “If it continues like this, in two or three years the Island will have lost a million more inhabitants,” he adds.

On Thursday morning, the electronic board of arrivals from Managua airport indicated the entry of four flights from the Island, of which three originated from Havana and the last from Cancun, a city that serves as a stopover for some connections. “All charter flights come from Cuba and stop in a dozen cities, including Mérida and Cancún, in Mexico, but also in Port-au-Prince (Haiti),” says Julio.

This newspaper compared the frequencies of the route from Cuba to Managua – as announced by the Island’s airports – and noted an increase in flights on several airlines. In the case of the José Martí International Airport, in Havana, the flights of the Venezuelan Conviasa went from three weekly frequencies in July to six this August. continue reading

Another striking case is that of the Mexican airline Viva Aerobus. From Havana, the company increased its frequency with a stopover in Mérida from two weekly flights in July to seven in August, in addition to the 10 weekly routes it makes directly to Cancun. Although it is difficult to determine how many of these planes continue their journey to Managua, it is known that this airline organizes most of the flights that are made to the Central American country.

In addition, its operations are not restricted to the capital, but cover other routes, with three weekly flights to Abel Santamaría Airport, in Santa Clara, three to Ignacio Agramonte, in Camagüey, and two more to Frank País, in Holguín. Last June, these routes from the interior of the country were limited to just one weekly flight per airport.

The Dominican airline Air Century will also begin flying this August from Holguín to Nicaragua with two weekly flights, making a stopover in Santo Domingo. However, like the rest of the companies that carry out this route, it is possible that they will not declare Managua as their final destination. This is what the 14ymedio source in Nicaragua supposes: “The planes that say Dominican Republic on the airport board usually come from Santo Domingo but they can also be from Santiago de los Caballeros or Puerto Plata, because I have seen them,” he says.

Aruba Airlines and Aeromexico also fly to Nicaragua, with variable frequencies. Aeromexico makes a stopover in Mexico City.

Many of these companies do not offer their flights from Cuba to Nicaragua on their official booking pages, and in some cases, for those who intend to fly from the Island, the Managua destination does not even exist. This type of management has opened a gap for ticket resellers and several travel agencies to profit from flights between the two countries.

Currently, if a person wants to fly to Nicaragua, it is necessary to pay reservation agencies such as the Mexican Vagamundo from abroad. For residents of the Island who do not have this option, they can deal with resellers, who offer prices that in all cases exceed $1,000 per person – except for some tickets for children – and who have, at the moment, all flights covered until the end of October, according to several groups of migrants on WhatsApp and Facebook.

Ultimately, those who cannot afford what is offered by agencies or illegal merchants – who only accept transfers in dollars to U.S. banks or through Western Union for payments in Cuba – have to wait in long lines at Conviasa’s Havana offices to track down a ticket.

With the measures taken by the United States to control Latin American migration in 2022, and after offering humanitarian parole to Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans, many estimated that, given the impossibility of obtaining a sponsor, a large number of people would desist, at least temporarily, from traveling to Nicaragua.

However, for Cubans that has not been the case. According to Julio, many of the newcomers to Managua continue their journey to countries south of Nicaragua. “Something that is completely unknown in Cuba is that there is a growing number who – at least for now – do not go to the United States but to the ’rich’ south of Central America: Costa Rica and Panama,” he explains.

In addition, the constant movement of people has led to the creation of networks of already installed Cubans who assist newcomers. “A friend knows a friend’s friend, and that’s how they help each other.” “However, not everyone is leaving,” Julio says. “Some are staying here temporarily, while they decide what to do, whether they head north or go south.”

The Nicaraguan says that, in practice, almost “all Cubans are being granted asylum in those countries. The phenomenon will probably continue to increase,” he estimates.

“For a while here, I’ve had several surprises because it’s something you don’t expect, like the cashier who serves you at the supermarket is Cuban or the guy who pumps your gas,” he says.

In his case, he says, a young Cuban was recently found working in a restaurant that he frequently visits with his family and found him very “nice and attentive.” Even Nicaragua, a country allied with Havana and subjected to the regime of Daniel Ortega, has been a viable option for Cubans, who are willing to exhaust all options in order not to remain on the Island.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Advertising To Attract Consumers to Online Shopping: Another Failure in Sight

Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 16 August 2023 — The Cuban communist regime is committed to advancing banking reform — the so-called “bankification” — and now they have gotten into advertising, promoting a campaign in which state banks offer a bonus of up to 6% to customers who pay for goods and services with cards or payment gateways. We will have to wait to see if this clear incentive has the intended result and if the authorities are willing to assume costs for its implementation.

The truth is that these publicity campaigns logically have a cost, and no one will have to account for the impact on the operation, so experimenting can be an opportunity to see if Cubans will use plastic money, as the regime wants, and stop using cash.

The 6% bonus is small, considering the high inflation that currently exists in Cuba, but it has its quantitative scope and in some cases could act as a mechanism of attraction for the realization of electronic payments in shops.

The advertising campaign is aimed at the three options that exist on the Island: mobile transfer for the online payment option through the QR code, Enzona; the option to scan a QR and TPC code; and POS to use a magnetic card. In addition, the bonus of commercial banks (Bandec, BPA and Metropolitan) benefits natural persons who pay electronically without distinction of the type of ownership of the establishment or entity that makes the sale. continue reading

Will this campaign yield results? It’s not easy to predict, but it must be taken into account that success will depend not only on the discount or bonus, but on other things that in the current reality of Cuba are essential for this to work.

And what will happen if the electronic payment is made and the dreaded daily blackout occurs?

The daily reports of the Cuban Electric Union [UNE] are still calamitous. On Monday the 14th, the service was again affected by a generation capacity deficit from 7:45 p.m., although it was reportedly restored at 1:39 a.m. on Tuesday the 15th.

The electrical system continues to be affected by all kinds of events daily, some predictable and others less so, such as the unforeseen exit in the morning schedule of unit 5 of the CTE Nuevitas electrical plant and the non-recovery of fuel levels in the engines of the mobile generation of Melones and Regla, as well as the breakdown of the CTE Felton, the CTE Mariel and the CTE Renté, the latter under eternal maintenance.

The UNE continues to strictly comply with President Diaz-Canel’s order to report on the availability of the National Electrical System (SEN) every day and anticipate a possible lack of service, and people begin to get fed up because the problem still isn’t resolved, even when the whole system is in service.

That said, what could happen if a blackout occurs when making the electronic payment? What happens to bankification then, and what happens to the 6% advertising campaign? You have to think about everything so that when the “affectation” arrives due to the difference between the availability and the demand on the SEN, the customer who is going to make the electronic payment is not stuck halfway. That happens and can continue to happen.

And if upon making the electronic payment the network goes down or begins to work with the usual slowness, that would exasperate anyone.

The complaint of Cubans about the terrible services of the state telecommunications company ETECSA is providential, and if the basic services are affected by the cuts and control systems of the regime, the electronic transactions, somewhat more sophisticated, can end up creating a martyrdom of waiting for the seller and the buyer. Seen from this perspective, it may seem that the 6% incentive is too small.

And if when going to the store to buy the product, it turns out that the last unit has been sold and there is no guarantee of when the next one will arrive, even in an establishment that sells in MLC [hard currency], this is where the deficiencies begin to be distressing.

The lack of replenishment of State stores is a feature of Cuban commerce that is magnified by the shortage of foreign currency. The really necessary products are scarce, and this objective reality can be a hard blow to the bankification that the regime intends.

So in these three cases and their multiple combinations, the electronic purchase, no matter how much the bonus, cannot be made, and the consumer, disappointed, will be forced to postpone his decision.

What do you think he will do the next time he needs that product?

What he always does. He will take money from any ATM that he finds stocked, and he will go to the informal market where it will be easier for him to carry out the transaction and return home with what he needs.

You don’t have to be a commercial and marketing strategist to understand these processes. Electronic payment can work as an incentive, but other simultaneous conditions must happen for the desired operation to take place.

And then there is the timing for the launch of this incentive. In principle, barely two weeks, from August 15 to 30. Totally insufficient. But what do the authorities intend? Perhaps Cubans will be aware of these actions immediately and will be ready to carry out the operations.

Those who fear electronic means of payment do not need to buy anything, and this campaign does not interest them. Those who don’t have a means of payment, given the deadline and the shortages (plastic money is scarce because it has to be imported) also won’t have time before the 30th.

Who are the communist leaders fooling with these distasteful improvisations that strike a blow to the morale of a people who just want to be able to eat every day? Everything is very simple and at the same time contradictory. Banks, as state agents that don’t have to answer for the operating account, increase the bonus to 6% for customers who pay for goods and services through cards or payment gateways, but they do not estimate the cost that this can entail for their accounts, and what is worse, whether they will gain customers willing to continue with electronic payments.

It is an attempt to comply with the orders of the communist hierarchy, so that the regime sees that what they order is done. And it’s an embarrassing exercise that will end in absolute failure.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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‘Cuban Baseball Does Not Guarantee a Living,’ Admits an Expert From the Official Press

The Las Tunas team celebrates a victory in another catastrophic National Series. (EFE)

14ymedio, Madrid, 16 August 2023 — Just after the 62nd edition of Cuba’s National Baseball Series, with the victory of the Leñadores de Las Tunas, the newspaper Escambray published an analysis of the season in which, within limits, it doesn’t hesitate to clearly point out the serious problems that affect the national sport, which occur in full view of all Cubans without measures being taken to tackle them.

“A trend was set in previous campaigns, and most of the teams suffered from the loss of important players, not only because of emigration, but because many decided on other career paths. Baseball definitely does not guarantee a family a living,” says Elsa Ramos, author of the article and an award-winning journalist specializing in sports.

The text is published one day after the departure of Jaider Miguel Suárez, just 14 years old, to the Dominican Republic. It is not a mere coincidence; of the 20 Cuban players who participated in the U-15 World Cup in 2022, there are now 15 who have emigrated, an extreme situation since it is no longer only about the players who are at their best and looking for an opportunity abroad, but also about a future that they will never have in Cuba.

Escambray’s article speaks, precisely, of the under-23 players and the adolescents, whom they have to call on to cover the absences. They don’t have the “sufficient maturity,” which aggravates the situation in their respective categories. They not only can’t run but they also play badly, or “they can’t finish the season for logistical reasons.” continue reading

The author reviews some other nonsense that took place this season, such as the fiasco of the balls sent by the Italian company Teammate, barely mentioned in passing but remembered for their influence on the teams’ poor performance – one of the most embarrassing things of the year.

The company, linked to Riccardo Fraccari, president of the World Baseball and Softball Confederation (WBSC) and close to one of Fidel Castro’s sons, Antonio, sold the poor-quality balls at 12 dollars a unit to the regime. Seven months later and in the face of the avalanche of complaints and information in the independent press, they decided to open one and found that it was missing the core, as, in some cases, were the others.

“The unfortunate thing is that only at the end of the series and after complaints of all kinds did the National Commission release the information. The communication was lame, and [the information] didn’t come out as it should have at the Cuban baseball press conference,” reproaches the journalist.

“The prohibition by the winning team of a type of bat that was authorized for use during part of the season, and the “elimination of the clause that prohibits repatriation to play in the postseason, approved in the heat of the ’pressure’ for Yasmani Tomás to wear the blue uniform again [for the Havana team, the Industriales],” are also serious errors that add to the poor statistics of the National Series.

In summary, 288 offensive averages were reached (only 626 home runs), less than five fastballs per game and 969 defensive plays, “a figure that few leagues of respect exhibit,” she says.

As a whole, all these “deeds” affect the few remaining players, closing a vicious circle. “It puts back on the table,” adds Ramos, “the issue of how far such practices end up stimulating the emigration of athletes to the detriment of those who continue to bet on staying.”

As if that were not enough, public attendance was dismal, and not only, the journalist reasons, because of the “intense sun they played in because of the energy deficit in Cuba.” The reasons go beyond, and the players “didn’t manage enjoy playing enough to guarantee a better presence of the public, who were eager to enjoy the show.”

Before her paragraphs about the terrible season, Ramos mentions the good work of the champions, saying they deserved a victory, and she discusses the factors that led the Lildores to follow a style of play more attached to the Cuban tradition than to “the formulas of others.” But there are more shadows than light in her report.

Finally, the article ends with a warning of what is coming: the Pan American Games and other international tournaments in which numerous players from the province compete. On the other hand, there is the Second Elite League, which “seeks to attract the hearts of geographic proximity, although that will not be enough to overcome the first edition, which left much dissatisfaction.”

Last year, the competition made its premiere, but it left behind numerous troubles, among them another failure of Teammate, which didn’t send the kit on time, resulting in a postponement. Because they criticized the tournament, several official sports journalists were punished and excluded from the press conference, where explanations were given for the delay of the uniforms.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The United States Reopens an Office in Cuba for Asylum and Family Reunification Procedures

The office, administered by the Citizenship and Immigration Service, will conduct the relevant interviews and study the applications. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 17 August 2023 — The United States Government announced on Thursday that it will reopen an office in Havana with the aim of processing applications for family reunification programs and relatives of political refugees, a service that has not been available for five years. The announcement coincides with the return to the Island of 29 Cubans, deported from Miami by air.

In a statement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said that the office in Havana, administered by the Citizenship and Immigration Service, will conduct the relevant interviews and study the applications.

The objectives of this reopening, according to the US Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, are to help “reduce the number of irregular crossings” at the border, leave human traffickers without resources and “simplify access to legal, safe and orderly routes for those seeking humanitarian relief” in the United States.

The office will also provide other services, such as the processing of refugee cases and the collection of biometric data for U visa applicants, for victims of criminal acts. continue reading

While the announcement was being made public, a flight with 29 Cubans arrived in Havana from Miami. The migrants returned on this trip, the fifth of their kind since last April, tried to enter the country “without authorization,” explained a brief statement from the U.S. Embassy in Havana.

Among the Cubans who arrived on the Island is Ariel Zayas Muñoz, who escaped from the Island five years ago and whose deportation came after his arrest, three weeks ago – by virtue of a deportation order I220B – while attending an appointment of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE).

As usual in every deportation notice, the U.S. authorities officially warned Cubans not to put their safety or that of their family at risk with illegal travel.

After the resumption of repatriation flights last April, the U.S. returned 123 Cubans to the Island. The following month, a second operation returned 66 migrants to Havana.

Last June, 36 Cubans were deported from Miami International Airport. The U.S. authorities warned that “they will not be able to return to the U.S. in the next five years. In July, another 33 Cubans were expelled on a fourth flight.

The return by air was adopted by the Barack Obama Administration in 2017 as a “limited” tool to curb the number of Cubans crossing the U.S. border with Mexico, but it was suspended during the coronavirus pandemic.

Data from the Customs and Border Protection Office (CBP) specify that the number of Cubans who have crossed the southern border has increased from 38,139 in fiscal year 2021, to 220,321 in 2022 and to more than 110,000 in the first 9 months of the current fiscal year.

During the current fiscal year, which began on October 1, more than 6,800 Cubans have been intercepted and returned by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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A Florida Judge Dismisses a Lawsuit Against Several Hotel Agencies Linked to Cuba

The Starfish Cuatro Palmas is one of the hotels built in the area expropriated from the plaintiffs. (Kayak)

14ymedio, Havana, 15 August 2023 — For the third time, South Florida district judge Robert N. Scola has dismissed the claims of the heirs of several properties confiscated by the Cuban regime after the triumph of the Revolution against the travel agencies Booking, Hotels, Expedia and Orbitz. The plaintiffs, who inherited the land on which the Starfish Cuatro Palmas hotel and the Memories Jibacoa resort were built, have been trying to obtain compensation from the four companies since 2019, under Title III of the Helms-Burton Law.

In a resolution, partially published on the page of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, the judge again rejected the claim, amended for the third time, for the reasons he had previously alleged.

The magistrate points out that the plaintiffs, Mario del Valle, Enrique Falla, Angelo Pou and Mario Echeverría obtained ownership of the land by inheritance in 2004 and 2014, which excludes their right to claim in accordance with the provisions of the Helms-Burton rule approved in 1996 by then-President Bill Clinton. Title III of the law authorizes Americans affected by the Cuban State’s confiscations, who were owners before the law went into effect, to make a claim.

The judge emphasizes that due to this fact, lawsuits of this type have already been dismissed, and he cites them in the verdict. continue reading

In addition, according to the magistrate, the businessmen still have not duly proved that the agencies were aware of intentionally “trafficking” with those properties. The court considers that, for all the reasons analyzed in the resolution, there are no reasons to initiate a compensation process, and, without going into the merits of the matter, it again puts an end to the procedure.

“These findings are sufficient to resolve the amended third lawsuit, which must be rejected and, therefore, dismissed. The Court refrains from addressing the rest of the parties’ arguments related to the law, its definitions and its application,” the court said.

In February 2023, the Court of First Instance of Palma, in Spain, agreed with the Cuban State entity, Gaviota, in a lawsuit against the hotel Meliá, filed in 2021 by the Sánchez-Hill family. The judicial headquarters alleged the lack of jurisdiction of the Spanish courts in this process since the confiscation was a “sovereign act carried out by Cuba through its own laws.”

In 2019, the plaintiffs filed a legal action against the Balearic chain Meliá for the operation of two hotels, Paradisus Río Oro y Sol and Río y Luna Mares, on land that belonged to their family before 1959. On that occasion, the judge issued the provisional file of the case for the same reasons as now, but the Sánchez-Hills appealed to the Provincial Court (higher authority), considering that the tax domicile of the company made the lawsuit possible.

For its part, the State company maintained that Cuba enjoys immunity from jurisdiction and, since the lawsuit was directed against the Island, the privilege was extended to the rest of the defendants. In addition, Gaviota added that meeting the demand meant ruling on goods located within Cuba without extraterritorial effects in Spain, as well as something impossible: ruling on sovereign acts of a State.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuban Hammer Thrower Yasmani Fernandez Escapes in Paris, Prior to the World Athletics Championships

Cuban hammer thrower Yasmani Fernández in an international competition. (Escambray)

14ymedio, Havana, 16 August 2023 — The hammer thrower Yasmani Fernández, who was included at the last minute in the Cuban team that will participate in the World Athletics Championships, escaped this week. According to the information published this Wednesday by the pro-government media Jit, he “abandoned” the delegation during his stopover in Paris (France). According to the national commissioner of the specialty, Rolando Charroo, the rest of those selected are “focused” on obtaining their best results.

Fernández, according to the same media, was included on a list of 21 athletes due to his location in the ranking. His best record was achieved this year in Havana with a 249.5-foot throw that he recorded during the José Barrientos Memorial, which was held at the Pan-American Stadium.

Cuban athletics is going through a crisis, which increases with Fernández’s abandonment. Commissioner Rolando Charroo said the team of 20 athletes was “in very good shape,” and he limited himself to talking about the number of possible medals they hope to achieve.

“Lázaro Martínez and Cristian Nápoles among the men, as well as Leyanis Pérez and Liadagmis Povea among the women, are the best candidates for medals,” published Play-Off Magazine prior to the Cuban delegation’s trip to Budapest. continue reading

The Cuban team is concentrated in the Danubio Arena Hotel. So far two groups have arrived, one from Havana and another from the Spanish town of Guadalajara, where they “trained for several weeks.”

Cuba will open the competition this Saturday, when Ronald Mencía seeks to qualify for the hammer throw. From Sancti Spiritús, he arrives with a personal record of 251.5 feet from last June. In the afternoon of the same day, the discus thrower Mario Díaz will make his debut. His best record is 213.9 feet (2022), but this year he reached a maximum of 209.7.

“The triple jumpers Lázaro Martínez and Cristian Nápoles will be the ’main course’ for the followers of athletics in Cuba,” according to Jit, which also proclaimed Martínez’s record with a jump of 57.7 feet.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Unfortunate Laziness of Our Liberty

An engraving of Havana’s Plaza Vieja in 1763 during the British occupation, by Elias Durnford.

14ymedio, Yunior Garcia Aguilera, Madrid, August 16, 2023 — Why did it take Cuba so long to gain its independence? By the time most of its neighboring colonies had won their freedom, why was Cuba still known as “the ever loyal one”?

So why has the Castro regime lasted so long? Jorge Videla was dictator of Argentina for only seven and a half years, Augusto Pinochet ruled Chile for seventeen and Francisco Franco was caudillo of Spain for thirty-six. But Castro-ism has been entrenched in Cuba for more than six decades! And we are not talking just about exile, repression and censorship. These years have been marked by poverty, financial ruin and backwardness. How is it possible that we have not been able to get ourselves out of this pothole?

I try to avoid looking back on our past with pessimism, though at times it is inevitable to find some examples of history repeating itself. “Continuity” (another term for laziness), “loyalist reform” (change so that everything can stay the same), and “creative resistance” (I am suffocating but I enjoy it) are faults that have almost always been with us, making us prone to fatalism

During Havana’s eleven years under British occupation, its inhabitants never much bothered trying to learn English. In language, religion and culture, we have always felt closer to Madrid than to London. It is said that local peasants refused to sell the invaders fruit and that some even tried to poison the “redcoats” by feeding them bananas while they were intoxicated.

Nevertheless, the British never really faced much opposition. In some stately homes tea began being served at five in the afternoon, at which time more than one local official gladly offered his services to them. Their uniforms were the color of the mamey,* so tea time came to be known as “the hour of the mameys.” But, bottom line, the mamey proved to be quite a luscious fruit. A popular rhyme of the period went something like “The girls of Havana have no fear of damnation. / You can find them with the British / In the barrels at the rice plantation.” In July of 1763 the English traded us for Florida and sailed off… leaving us not much worse for wear. continue reading

It was then that Spain began to pamper us a bit, heaping enlightened despotism on top of natural paternalism: “Everything for the people, but without the people.” Cuba gave birth to one of the greatest and most brilliant men of the time, as some say: Don Francisco de Arango y Parreño. The American historian and hispanicist Allan J. Kuethe says of him, “He could have been a Bolivar, but he died like a true bureaucrat.” Beyond his contributions to trade and the island’s development, Arango y Parreño was a reformist, an smart guy, a man loyal to the crown.

Haiti was one of the first countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to obtain its independence. And today some pro-Castro ideologues claim Cuba and Haiti are two spurs from the same rooster. What is undeniable, however, is that, after the Haitian revolution (1791-1804), the Cuban elite did everything possible to keep the same thing from happening here. “Fear of the black man” was stronger than the urge to be free. Rather than showing solidarity, what Cuba actually did was take over Haiti’s position in the world market. For us, that was what” having spurs” meant.

Cuba is undergoing the worst crisis in its history and today others are benefitting from our misfortune. How many businesses in other latitudes are prospering because there is a dictatorship in Cuba?

The regime has its reformists, whose responsibility is to patch things up from time to time. But the system is more tattered than a carnival banner. Neither Murillo, nor much less Gil,** could fill Arango y Parreño’s shoes.

There are those who opt for satire or memes, like the residents of Havana during the time of the mameys. Others are more lukewarm and prudent, seeing themselves as legitimate partners. There are those who give very radical speeches but deep down prefer Cuba to remain the same, if for no other reason than to serve as a bad example. There are even those who feign a radical, extremist stance, then spend every hour of the day attacking any objective attempt, any realistic initiative, to attain democracy.

But laziness in not conducive to liberty. It has always come at the cost of blood, sweat and tears. We are up to our eyeballs in tears and blood. It’s time for us to get a little wet. Sweat is the blood of our times.

Translator’s notes:
*A tropical fruit popular in Latin America and the Caribbean.
**Minister of Economic Planning Marino Murillo and Economics Minister Alejandro Gil.

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With a Delay of Five Years and Foreign Machinery, the Baracoa Cocoa Factory Is Up and Running

The factory managers say that with the new machinery, the noise and high temperatures (up to 104 degrees F), have been reduced. (Archive/Venceremos)

14ymedio, Havana, 14 August 2023 — The Baracoa cocoa factory begins production five years after the announcement of a million-dollar investment of unknown amount. The official press puts the amount at “43,000,000 between national and foreign currency,” which in practice means not revealing the amount. Of that money, “it owes thousands in MLC to the Empresa Forestal y del Coco de Baracoa, but the authorities already dream – as Granma headlines – of “getting revenue from the delicacy,” outside the Island, of course.

The official media dedicates a report to the factory, installed in the same space where it was inaugurated by then-Minister of Industry, Ernesto Che Guevara, in 1963. Two industrial processing lines will improve the product, making it profitable, and it will be “shipped abroad at excellent prices,” says Reynaldo Mosqueda Martínez, an engineer and investor. According to his account, two containers of cocoa butter and another two containers of micro-pulverized cocoa are currently being prepared for export.

Delay, as usual, has been the tendency since the reconversion of the factory was triumphantly announced in 2017. Those responsibile in this case are “the foreign manufacturers from whom the technology was purchased,” the Swiss Bühler and the Italian Mazzetti, who delayed sending technicians to train the Cubans, assemble and test the equipment, according to Granma.

In November 2021, the local press took up the issue again and stated that the pandemic had forced the delay in implementing the start-up of the plant, especially since national workers had to return to their provinces of origin and foreigners to their countries. That stopped the assembly of the machinery and all the subsequent phases, but the confidence was finally enough to begin, coinciding with the reopening of borders (on the 15th of that month and year). continue reading

As expected, the wait was prolonged, and only in November 2022 was the new industrial cocoa processing line launched, while the other line, responsible for the production of bon bons and bars, has been in testing since April and awaits a technical validation that has not yet happened.

Granma lyrically describes the operation of the “new” machine, which had its first effect on employment. The old one needed two workers, while the new needs only one. “We had to relocate forces to other areas,” says Juan Miguel Martínez, the brigade chief.

With the new technology, the cocoa bean is peeled, ground, pulverized, separated from the butter and packaged. The raw material is also dried, toasted and rid of bacteria. There is a new laboratory that makes sure that international standards are followed, and other areas have also been improved, from administrative to logistics and transport. “In the control room there is silence, just a computer and a girl with her hand on the mouse and her eyes fixed on the desk; Yisel Ochoa Llorente does not write, she clicks,” says the official newspaper, extolling the modernity of a computer rather than pencil and paper in the middle of 2023.

But where technology really makes a leap is in the quantities to be produced, as long as the forecasts are met. Mosqueda Martínez claims that before, seven tons of cocoa were processed in 16 hours. “With these teams we do twice that volume in the same amount of time.” The powdered cocoa bagging machine also doubles the speed: 42 seconds to fill a 33-pound bag. In 16 hours, the factory produced 2.5 tons of bars and jams that will now increase to 9.6. And the chocolates, he says, will also increase the revenue, because since April, bitter chocolate paste is being sold to the factories of Ciego de Ávila, Camagüey, Baracoa, Santiago de Cuba and Granma.

The new air conditioning to preserve the product also sounds promising. “Everything before ended in the same place: the cakes came out of the press burning hot and were stored here. We had to subject them to a cooling process that sometimes forced us to wait 24 hours to begin micropulverization. The most we achieved was a hundred sacks in one day. Now we can double that; the change has been like from night to day,” Martínez adds.

In addition, the product is “more refined, with a better finish, superior in terms of taste, smell and texture; in short, more competitive.”

However, the new industry suffers an evil that the old one never stopped suffering as well. “The tablet wrapping machine faces difficulties in synchronizing, and we need foreign technicians to make the readjustment. They are expected to arrive in the coming days, the director of the UEB, Pedro Azahares Cuza, confirmed to Granma. (…) Wish us luck.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuban Rice Producers Threaten to Stop Growing if the State Limits Their Own Consumption

The norm will take into account whether the rice grower has met their cereal production targets. (EFE/Archive)

14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, August 17, 2023 — With the lack of rain, the departure of Vietnamese technicians and, now, a new state regulation that will limit the amount assigned for producers’ consumption, the rice-growing region of La Sierpe, in Sancti Spíritus, is living through difficult times. This norm, which has not yet gone into effect, is part of a new package of measures to prevent the cereal from ending up on the black market while the country is suffering a profound food crisis.

Actually, most farmers who grow rice in La Sierpe use state lands — leased to them under usufruct — hence must abide by any norms of the Ministry of Agriculture and other official entities. Disobeying any regulation of this kind could cost them their use of the land and the loss of what they have already invested in those lots.

“How can they know if the rice we separate for ourselves is enough or too much for our own consumption?” asked Daniel, one of the producers who will be affected by the new measure, which is being prepared to be applied in the coming months. “They say we are selling it on the black market but it’s that in my house, for example, each time there is less to put on the plate and rice is what we have left.”

Several officials from the area have visited the farmers to warn them of the new norm, although they have not talked about quantities for the moment. “They have come house to house and say the machete will come down in the coming months. They say that next year we will need to adjust to a smaller quantity,” explained Daniel to 14ymedio. continue reading

Authorities have warned that they will base their calculations on the number of people in the producer’s family and whether they have other crops such as root vegetables, fruits or vegetables that could complete the household food supply. They will also take into account whether the rice producer has met the cereal production targets and whether there have been previous complaints that they have diverted part of the harvest to the informal market. The formula for arriving at the total number of sacks each farmer can keep is not simple and raises suspicion.

Producers believe that the motivation for this reduction is “the low production and that people are very unsatisfied with the price of rice in the markets. Of course, now they want to punish the same people as always because the rope breaks where it is thinnest,” says Daniel. “What is going to happen with this is that farmers will leave, in the same way that the Vietnamese left.”

In 2022 a rice project began in La Sierpe in collaboration with Vietnam, which supplied equipment and machinery to producers in several regions of the Island, with the support of dozens of specialists and technicians. They bet mainly on the plains of Sancti Spíritus in this collaboration and there they made dikes, cleared canals and trained local specialists.

However, after a few years during which cereal production increased significantly, the yields of rice fields took a nose dive and was unable to meet the expectations of the Vietnamese, who also had to deal with the convoluted state bureaucracy and the inefficiency of Empresa Agroindustrial. The final blow to the project was the current fuel crisis.

“Here, most rice producers are new generation usufructuaries and a few are cooperative members,” an administrative employee of the company explained to us. “They are the ones who took the land when the Vietnamese left and the state wanted to increase production. They were fields that had been worked for this crop, which is hard and difficult, and also very dependent on rains and irrigation,” said the employee.

“Everyone knows that if producers do not have extra earnings selling some of the rice they declare as being for their own consumption, very few people would want to work in these fields because it is a lot of effort every day for the low price the state pays for each sack,” said the woman.

After the departure of the Vietnamese, the area’s productivity has gone off a cliff. If in 2015 they managed to produce up to five tons of cereal per hectare, in 2023 they barely get three. In the agricultural markets of Sancti Spíritus this week one pound of rice sells for 160 pesos and the product leaves a lot to be desired among clients due to the high proportion of split grains.

Now, with the announcement of the upcoming measure many are thinking, “pack up everything and leave the crops half way,” said Daniel. Either way, he has let his close family and friends know to purchase and store rice. “It could reach 200 pesos or more per pound before the end of the year,” he predicts.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Russia Buys 26 Tons of Medicines From the WHO for Donation to Cuba

The donation, according to the official press, includes “wide-spectrum antibiotics, analgesics, anti-inflammatories and antihypertensives.” (ACN)

14ymedio, Havana, 16 August 2023 — Some 26 tons of medicines and medical equipment purchased with Russian funding were received this Wednesday in Havana by the authorities of the Ministry of Public Health. Moscow bought the supplies from the World Health Organization (WHO), and its diplomats on the Island attended a “thank you” ceremony in medical supply warehouses in Havana.

The donation, according to the official press, consists of four containers 12 meters long by two wide, with medicines that have been absent for a long time in the Island’s pharmacies. Although the quantities were not specified, Russia sent antibiotics of various types, drugs against diabetes mellitus and heart disease, analgesics, anti-inflammatories and antihypertensives.

In addition, syringes, disinfectants, instruments, surgical equipment, suture thread and materials for sanitation were received – items that, for months, Cubans must request from their relatives abroad before going to the hospital – as well as sphygmomanometers, stethoscopes, glucometers, oximeters and other materials.

The ceremony, held in the warehouses of the Medical Supply Marketing Company, was attended by the chargé d’affaires of the Russian Embassy in Cuba, Serguei Oboznov, the representative on the Island of the Pan American Health Organization, José Moya Medina, and the director of the Ministry of Public Health, José Larronte. continue reading

Although neither Cuba nor Russia revealed the cost of the medicines, the containers arrived in the middle of a 40% deficit of the basic pharmaceutical table, according to figures from the state group BioCubaFarma.

The president of the business group, Eduardo Martínez, explained in a session of the Cuban Parliament that the country lacked almost 251 drugs. The supply crisis not only affected national production but also caused numerous difficulties for imports, for which it blamed the United States embargo.

He also added that there was a lack of raw materials needed to manufacture the 369 medications that, supposedly, would be generated by BioCubaFarma. Last May, the director of Operations and Technology of that state entity, Rita María García, told the official press that the plant – which is allocated 60% of the production of basic medicines at the national level – managed to reactivate some high-demand drug production lines with the arrival of inputs purchased by the Government and other “managements,” without specifying whether they corresponded to donations.

Among the drugs that were going to be manufactured again are the injectables of aminophylline, labetalol, fenoterol and morphine of 10 and 20 milligrams (mg), widely used in hospitals for patients in intensive care. The laboratories dedicated to the manufacture of these drugs were paralyzed for almost four months because they did not have the containers – ampules, plungers and casings – due to the shortage of glass.

In this panorama, Russia’s donation represents a temporary relief, although it is expected that Moscow will continue to send health supplies to Havana – through the WHO or its regional channels – as part of its recent alliance with the Government of the Island, the most significant since the Soviet era.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Ideological Slogans Dominate Diosdado Cabello’s Visit to Cuba

Diosdado Cabello and Miguel Díaz-Canel this Thursday in Havana. (X)

14ymedio, Madrid, 11 August 2023 — The visit to Cuba of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s number two, Diosdado Cabello, ended as it began: with a political-ideological allegation, this time by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel. Gone are the cryptic agreements signed with Ricardo Cabrisas, head of foreign trade on the Island – including the construction of a warehouse in the port of Mariel, to make way for the slogans.

The Cuban president opened the meeting, according to the official press, with a message also published on his X account (formerly Twitter): “Cuba and Venezuela, always together.” That was the framework that both leaders wanted to use in a context in which Caracas is no longer the essential partner of Havana that it was for almost two decades. The Venezuelan economic crisis has forced Cuba to look for more profitable allies, such as Russia, China and even Mexico, which is already the second oil supplier on the Island behind Russia.

Venezuela, despite the fluctuations in fuel shipments, still maintains the status of the main supplier to Cuba, but yesterday’s meeting makes it clear that the alliance, especially in ideological terms, continues to be a priority.

“Both leaders talked about everything that politicians can do in the articulation of the leftists of our time, who today face a huge media and communications war, based on lies, slander and campaigns of discredit,” says the official article, fortified by photos of the two leaders shaking hands in shirt sleeves. continue reading

Díaz-Canel made Cabello the bearer of his message of gratitude to Maduro — afflicted these days with an ear infection that prevented him from participating in the Amazon Summit — for his “permanent solidarity” with the Island and his “support in the most complex moments.” In addition, Cabello, the presenter of Con el mazo dando* – of which the Cuban declared himself a fan and spectator – was charged with giving an “extensive hug” to the entire Venezuelan government team.

The Cuban leader also resorted to his X account to proclaim the positive impact of the meeting – “embracing a brother at home is the greatest joy” – but he did not deprive himself of throwing a dart at his critics in the same message: “Now you will see our adversaries speculate. We only reiterate that whoever messes with Venezuela messes with Cuba, and vice versa.”

Then came Cabello’s turn, and he did not hesitate to re-establish the architects of the fruitful exchange of interests, the deceased former presidents of both countries. “The presence of Fidel, his legacy and history gives joy to the Venezuelan comrades, as a sign of brotherhood, unity and the perennial reminder of the friendship between two giants: Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez.”

Shortly before, the Venezuelan visited the Fidel Castro Ruz Center, along with its director, René González Barrios, who, “accompanied by all the staff,” set out “to provide all the information about the life and work of the Commander-in-Chief.” Cabello recalled “the legacy of friendship and closeness between the historical leaders of the Cuban and the Bolivarian Revolutions,” which he summarized in one sentence: “The love of Commander Fidel and Chávez is reflected in their people.”

Cabello, the first vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), told the media that among the objectives of his visit, which ended this Thursday, was laying the institutional foundations to expand the collaboration and interrelationship between the PSUV and the Communist Party of Cuba.

In addition there will be “an in-depth review” of the state of bilateral relations, “from what has been done in the past, the future potentialities and what remains to be done.”

The first vice president of the PSUV said, in a press conference, that the valuable visit will allow the two parties to deepen collaboration and economic cooperation. He stated that the Venezuelan delegation “will return to its country filled with new energy and more love” for Cuba.

“Both countries,” he said, “are marked by the same enemy: imperialism,” although the hostility is not reflected in the economic recovery that Venezuela is experiencing since the United States decided to ease the oil sanctions, the main source of foreign exchange for the South American country.

According to the latest information from Reuters, Caracas sold 877,032 barrels of oil a day last July thanks to its contracts with the American company Chevron, which since November has had a license from the Treasury Department to trade with the state PDVSA.

Among the main events of Cabello’s visit to Cuba have been the visit to Castro’s tomb, in Santiago de Cuba, the signing of the agreement for exchange and cooperation with the PCC, and the tour of the Mariel Special Development Zone, in Artemisa.

Cabello returned at night to Venezuela, where the opposition has criticized the visit to the Island, accusing the leader of going to receive “guidelines” and instructions to liquidate anti-Chavista politicians, including María Corina Machado, who has recently denounced threats.

“We still have many struggles and battles together, always together, Cuba and Venezuela always together, and no matter what they say, there is no way that they can manage to separate or divide us,” Cabello insisted. He thus closed the circle he had started when he arrived in Santiago on Monday, where he said: “Cuba and Venezuela continue under the same flag.”

*A political opinion television show that frequently accuses and incriminates the Venezuelan opposition. The phrase is shortened version of “a Dios rogando y con el mazo dando” — roughly: Pray to God but keep rowing, or God helps those who help themselves.

Translated by Regina Anavy
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Cuban Baseball Player Jaider Suarez, 14, Flees to the Dominican Republic

At just 14 years old, Jaider Suárez connected three home runs and was the leader in stolen bases in the last U-15 National Championship. (@francysromeroFR)

14ymedio/EFE, Havana, 16 August 2023 — The home run leader of the last Cuban Under-15 National Championship, Jaider Miguel Suárez, took a flight to the Dominican Republic this week. According to journalist Francys Romero, he is already training at the Javier Rodríguez Academy and is preparing to be recruited by a U.S. Major League team in the international period of 2025.

At just 14 years old, the young man hit three home runs and was the leader in stolen bases in the last championship by getting 17, in addition to finishing with a batting average of 0.33%. “He produces (results) with consistency for any part of the terrain and is aggressive and competitive when he should be,” Romero characterized him.

The journalist also stressed that with the departure of Suárez there are 15 players who have emigrated from the team of 20 players from the Island who participated in the U-15 World Cup in 2022, which represents a new record.

Before Suárez, Alex Santiago, Pedro Danguillecourt, Dulieski Ferrán, Ernest Machado, Yosniel Menéndez, Roberto Peña, Segian Pérez, Alejandro Prieto, Danel Reyes, Ronald Terrero, Jonathan Valle, Yunior Villavicencio and Cristian Zamora left the Island. All under 15 years of age. continue reading

The constant flight of baseball players has had an impact on the quality of Cuban baseball. Last March, just after the World Classic, the Island’s team was in seventh place with 3,151 points from a list of 36 teams that was led by Japan (with 5,323 points), the United States (4,402) and Mexico (4,130).

This Tuesday, according to the ranking of the World Baseball and Softball Confederation, Cuba fell one place. With 2,880 points, it is now in eighth place, following the Netherlands (3,87) and Venezuela (3,744).

The sports authorities reported last Tuesday that Cuba will attend the 2023 Baseball Champions League of the Americas, to be held in Mérida (Yucatán, Mexico) from September 28 to October 1, with a selection of 25 players.

The Island’s team will participate in the event organized by the World Baseball Confederation (WBSC) along with three other league champion teams in the 2022 season: Mexico, Colombia and the United States.

The Island’s selection will be made up of players from the Alazanes team, from Granma province, winner of last year’s National Baseball Series title. It will have 15 reinforcement players from other teams, including some players who belong to the Leñadores de Las Tunas team, which last week won the crown of the 2023 national baseball championship.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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August Doesn’t Offer Cubans a Truce: Blackouts Multiply Throughout the Island

The population of Havana continues to suffer the consequences of the fuel crisis and the failures of the electricity infrastructure. (EFE)

14ymedio, Havana, 9 August 2023 — It is one more year, just at the time of the highest temperatures, when Cubans face the growing shortage of energy and, with it, the dreaded blackouts. For this Wednesday, the Electric Union of Cuba (UNE) forecasts a deficit of 430 megawatts, with an availability of 2,650 MW and a maximum demand of 3,080 MW, so the “affectation” will be 500 MW during peak hours.

On Tuesday, the State notified that “the service was affected by a shortage of generation capacity throughout the day,” until the “affectation” was restored at 3:52 in the morning, a situation that coincided with high temperatures both day and night.

“We’re going to run out of refrigerators. One of the two I have overheated, and I had to defrost it to turn it on. The same thing happened to my neighbor, but with a few taps it turned on again,” said a resident of Key West in Central Havana, who suffered six blackouts this Tuesday. “To top it off, there were two this morning,” he says, with little hope that the situation will change.

Another inhabitant of the same neighborhood tells 14ymedio about the ordeal she had to go through when she visited the Joaquín Albarrán polyclinic in the municipality on Wednesday to get an electrocardiogram. There was no electric service at the site. continue reading

“When I arrived there was electricity, but about 20 minutes later it went out,” said the woman, who witnessed the doctors working without electricity. “I heard a doctor tell his patient that he couldn’t take his blood pressure if the light didn’t come on. That seemed strange to me because the blood pressure monitors I’ve seen are manual or battery-powered.”

Despite not knowing exactly what time the service would be restored – essential for performing electrocardiograms – she decided to wait. “If I left and the light came back on, I would have wasted all that work.”

At home, the situation was not far from that of the hospital. “When I arrived there was no service either, but it came back right away. Now you have to take advantage of it as long as it lasts,” she reasoned.

Centro Habana is not the only area that suffers the consequences of the fuel crisis and the failures of the electrical infrastructure. This week, the Havana municipality of Playa has also been one of the most affected.

On social networks, dissatisfied citizens have already uttered complaints and insults against the Electric Union due to the frequent outages and the inconsistency of the electric current. “I’ve been in a blackout for 9 hours. You can’t live like that,” one alleged while another denounced the cut at night: “It sucks when we don’t have electricity during prime time.”

In its report this Wednesday, the UNE also announced the exit of the Santa Cruz thermoelectric plant (Mayabeque) from the national system: unit 6 of Nuevitas, units 3 and 5 of Renté and unit 2 of Felton. Other units are under repair, and one of the patanas [floating generators] that produce energy from the ports was disabled due to lack of fuel.

In less than two hours this morning, the Electric Union had reported the explosion of three transformers in the capital municipalities of Plaza de la Revolución, Habana del Este and Arroyo Naranjo. Just moments before – in the early morning – it had managed to stabilize the breakdowns of the previous day.

Some of the citizens’ concerns translate into more global problems that escape the home context. People wonder, for example, the relevance of the banking reform — the so-called “bankification” — in a country that cannot generate enough kilowatts to keep ATMs, electronic collection devices or bank windows in operation. “Wanting to ’bankify’ without electricity is like building on water,” says a user who sees no future for the measure, no matter how much they “sell” it on Cuban Television.

Exactly one year ago, in August 2022, hundreds of inhabitants of Nuevitas (Camagüey) demonstrated against the long blackouts that affected the town. The event has been one of the biggest since the mass protests of July 11, 2021.

This summer has not been exempt from popular demonstrations either. At the end of July, a dozen residents of Centro Habana blocked the traffic at Belascoaín and San Lázaro in protest against the shortages in water and electricity services.

Rapper Eliexer Márquez El Funky, who shared a video of the event on his social networks, explained that the neighbors had been “more than three days without electricity” and that they would not move until the authorities took care of the problem. Some users, however, claimed that the days without service amounted to ten.

Faced with a situation that has now become unbearable, some citizens decide to raise their voices and others simply surrender to the impossibility of moving forward in a country without guarantees of well-being. “It’s very difficult to be calm here; you run in front and the problems come from behind, chasing you. There is no escape.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuban Officials Offer a Fifteen-Day 6 Percent Discount on Electronic Payments

The 6% discount is for payments made through Transfermovil, a Cuban electronic payment platform. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 15 August 2023 — As of Tuesday, August 15, Cuban banks will offer their customers a 6% discount for using electronic payment options. However, the offer will not last long, only until the 30th of this month. The vice-president of the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC), Alberto Quiñones, announced the measure on Monday in a statement on Cuban television and said customers will receive the discount regardless of the type of product or service being purchased, or the type of business, whether state-owned or private. The only requirement is that payment be done using a bank card or payment platform.

The measure is part of a program by the BCC to discourage the use cash in favor of other methods of payment. Referred to as bancarización,* the measure was approved on August 1 and took effect on August 3.

During his television interview, Quiñones discussed the problem of customers having to wait two to three hours in line at bank branches, a situation that he described as “critical.” He denied that the delays are due to the new banking measure and claimed that, on the contrary, the program is an attempt to rectify the situation by prioritizing electronic payment options.

The delays are being caused by cash withdrawals, not deposits, he said, confirming what customers already knew. For months, many of them have complained about not receiving their pensions or salaries due to a cash shortage affecting the entire country, one of the many consequences of year-over-year inflation, which official data indicates at over 45%. However, that figure does not take into account the unofficial informal market, which dominates the national economy, or the devaluation of the peso, whose exchange rate to the dollar has fallen by at least 70% since January 2022. continue reading

To deal with this situation, the Cuban government took the decision to give banking a greater role in the nation’s economy while imposing limits on customers’ cash withdrawals. “Those limits will disappear as the country’s cash situation improves,” Quiñones told the journalist Lázaro Manuel Alonso yesterday.

On Thursday, Julio Antonio Perez Alvarez, general director of Operations and Payment Systems of the BCC appeared on the television program Mesa Redonda [Roundtable] to discuss the banking measure that Quiñones and his superior, BCC president Joaquin Alonso, had already explained. Perez Alonso said that the training process for bank empoyees had already been completed though it was obvious that there was still much confusion among the public as well as in bank offices themselves.

On Monday, however, Perez Alvarez himself told the Cuban News Agency that the bank had initiated comprehensive training program aimed at bank-sector workers, the public and businesses which would lead to “the slow and gradual implementation of electronic payment systems in the country”.

He said the training, which had supposedly ended a week ago, consisted of “conferences, workshops, forums, seminars and other types of financial orientation and education” that, he claims, will benefit all institutions and governmental bodies as well as political and mass organizations at all levels.

He said that this training was intended to provide a greater awareness of the new banking measure.”

Although the government has insisted that the use of electronic payment methods is not mandatory, businesses of all types will be required to provide customers with the option to use them if they so choose. Businesses will have a six-month period in which to implement the measures by providing customers access through cell phone apps or bank cards. Those who fail to do so can be penalized by having their business licenses suspended by the Ministry of Domestic Commerce as stipulated in the statute.

Several days later the BCC’s directors asked for calm, claiming that, at least initially, businesses in sectors, such as fishing and agriculture, that lacked the necessary infrastructure would be exempt from the regtulations

*Translator’s note: An awkward term recently coined by Cuban officials that, as yet, has no English equivalent. It refers to a government effort to increase the use of digital payment options and reduce the use of cash in the Cuban economy.

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Two Cuban Players Play in Mexico with Fake Birth Certificates

Cuban baseball players Onelki García and Lázaro Alonso have fake birth certificates with Mexican nationality. (Collage/Instagram)

14ymedio, Mexico, 9 August 2023 — At least 21 foreign players, including two Cubans, who play in the Mexican Baseball League (LMB), have fake birth certificates. A report from the weekly Proceso revealed that the guantanamero Onelki García of the Yucatan Lions has a document that recognizes him as Mexican thanks to the fact that his father, Osmani García Maso, is a native of that North American country.

However, García Maso, a farmer who lives in Guantánamo, has never been to Mexico, much less seen Concordia, a small town located in the municipality of Sinaloa, where Onelki García’s birth certificate as Mexican was allegedly issued.

On the roster of the Yucatan Lions appears the infielder Lázaro Alonso, from Pinar del Río, who also has an apocryphal birth certificate that endorses him as Mexican. The Civil Registry officer, Eduardo Lizárraga, who attested to the records of these Cubans, does not exist. Nor can the book and folio of the birth certificates be found in the office.

In this Yucatán team there is a history of these cases, such as that of Josh Fuentes, of Cuban descent, who in 2022 signed a Minor League contract with the Atlanta Braves. During his stay in Mexico, he presented documents that accredited him as Mexican. continue reading

This scandal occurs at the start of the playoffs, where the Yucatan Lions, with the line-up of the designated players, beat the Tabasco Olmecas 7-1 on Tuesday. Another of the indicated teams is Tecolotes of the two Laredos. American and Dominican baseball players are also on the list of altered documents.

The case has already transcended the sport. The director of the Civil Registry of Sinaloa, Margarita Villaescusa, ordered the revocation of the birth certificates of 13 players of the Yucatan Lions and asked the National Population Registry to annul the Single Population Registry Key, an official identification document for residents in Mexico.

The fake birth certificates have home addresses in the records of Concordia (Sinaloa), Castaños (Coahuila) and La Huacana (Michoacán). Since January of this year, the LMB entrusted to the Álvaro Magaña and RCH offices of Ricardo Chew everything related to the review of passports and birth certificates, but so far there is no position on them.

Faced with the series of anomalies, the businessman and owner of the Tecolotes of the two Laredos, José Antonio Mansur, demanded a review of the birth certificates of 230 players who are part of the dual nationality group in the LMB.

This Wednesday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador acknowledged that he knew about the scandal but didn’t mention a punishment. “The teams are cheating,” he said. “They are hiring imposters” to reinforce themselves. “They got them the birth certificates and then they violate the regulations about the number of foreigners per team.” The LMB allows the hiring of seven foreign players.

López Obrador urged the teams and players to “rectify the issue of the birth certificates” and commissioned the head of the National Sports Commission, Ana Gabriela Guevara, to investigate the case.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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