More Cuban Rafters Arrive in Mexico Because of Difficulties Entering the United States

A group of 34 Cuban rafters detained on the high seas awaits a response to their request for asylum. (Semar)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico, 13 April 2023 — The crew of the Mexican Navy ship Comet notified the captain of Puerto Juárez last Tuesday about a “raft” drifting 90 miles north of Isla Mujeres, one of the illegal landing points for Cubans in recent years, a fisherman told 14ymedio.

According to a statement from the police, 34 Cubans were traveling on the home-made boat, including a woman and 33 men, who were trying to reach Mexico when they were intercepted by two coast guard boats.

The Cubans were treated by naval health personnel, who indicated that they were all in good health. They were transferred to the naval station of Puerto Juárez, where they were handed over to agents of the National Institute of Migration.

A municipal security officer identified as Horacio Márquez, confirmed that the Island’s nationals requested asylum. Migration picked up their identity cards and seven passports. “When applying for asylum, the law allows them to remain in Mexico until the case is resolved.” Article 7 of the Law on Refugees, Complementary Protection and Political Asylum emphasizes that “no sanction will be imposed” for illegal entry.

Márquez specified that this group of Cubans is the first known to arrive in Isla Mujeres this year. “The last week of October 2022, a similar group arrived. On that occasion, 30 rafters, who were linked to coyotes, were detained, but nothing was verified. Most continued on their way to the United States.” continue reading

The Migration Law establishes in article 69, paragraph V, the possibility of “regularizing their situation,” but several Cubans have denounced extortion, arbitrary detentions and imprisonment in Mexican immigration stations.

This arrest of 34 Cubans comes a week after journalist Fátima Vázquez said that at least 15 nationals of the Island had disembarked on San Miguelito beach, located near kilometer 13.5 of Kukulcán Boulevard, the main avenue that connects with the hotel zone of Cancun.

Municipal security officer Horacio Márquez said he did not know of any investigation by the Attorney General’s Office on the routes taken by migrants. “There is nothing out of the ordinary. We see it with this group, which was sighted by sailors on the ship Comet, but not through surveillance.”

Another rescue of rafters was recorded this Thursday. The Norwegian ship Bow Summer provided assistance to seven Cubans whose boat was adrift 100 miles from the Yucatan. “They were without food or drink, about to be swept even further offshore. We took them on board and provided them with dry clothes, food and drink,” said Captain Tor-Gisle Bjerknes.

The arrival of these 49 Cuban rafters in Mexico occurs just when the United States Coast Guard has reiterated that the borders are not open. The agency specified on its social networks that “a strong maritime presence is retained to detect and intercept anyone who tries to migrate illegally by sea.”

This Thursday another group of 28 people were returned to the Island aboard the ship Isaac Mayo. According to official figures, in the last six months the United States has returned more than 2,200 Cubans.

Translated by Regina Anavy

COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

The Center for a Free Cuba Denounces the Use of Emigration ‘As a Political Weapon’

A group of Cuban migrants in northern Honduras on their journey to the United States (14ymedio)

14ymedio biggerEFE (via 14ymedio), Miami, 1 April 2023 — The Center for a Free Cuba, an organization of the Cuban exile in the United States, affirmed that the round of immigration talks between Cuba and the United States “will only encourage Havana to continue weaponizing migration to increase its influence on the Administration of President Joe Biden.”

“Cuba’s problem is not emigration, it’s the dictatorship,” the organization, based in Washington D.C., warned in a statement in response to a new round of immigration talks between the two countries.

This migratory round, which was held yesterday in Washington, D.C., was marked by a sharp increase in the arrivals of Cubans to the U.S. coasts.

The number of Cubans detained (6,202) when they tried to reach the United States by sea since last October 1, already exceeds that of the entire previous fiscal year (6,182), according to information from the U.S. Coast Guard.

The country’s serious economic crisis has intensified an unprecedented mass immigration exodus, especially to the United States, where authorities detained more than 313,000 Cubans on the southern border with Mexico, which represents about 3% of Cuba’s total population.

According to the statement of the Center for a Free Cuba, an organization whose objectives are to “promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights and political and economic freedoms,” Havana has used Cuban emigration “as a political weapon to repeatedly leverage negotiations with Washington.” continue reading

According to the organization, after the first round of talks on migration between the Biden Administration and Havana, in April 2022, “the State Department announced a series of unilateral concessions” that included “the expansion of authorized travel and educational exchanges.”

“The first benefit is to the Cuban Army through its conglomerate, the Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (Gaesa), and its sub-entity Gaviota, which supervise and benefit from Cuban tourism,” the statement says.

The second, he adds, “benefits the Cuban intelligence service, which has used educational exchanges to recruit spies, insert intelligence officials into academic conferences and compromise  visitors to the Island.”

He also affirms that all the migratory crises in Cuba “have occurred during administrations that sought to improve relations with Havana,” and cites among other crises the mass exoduses of Camarioca (1965), Mariel (1980) and the so-called “Crisis of the  Rafters” of 1994, in addition to the current one.

“No negotiation with the Cuban dictatorship, manipulated by Havana and using migration as a weapon, can succeed for the Cuban people or the interests of the United States, while the Castro regime imposes an internal blockade on Cubans and more than a thousand Cubans are imprisoned for exercising their right to express their desire for a free Cuba,” said John Suárez, executive director of the organization.

The United States defended on Wednesday that the measures it has taken have allowed the reduction of irregular immigration from Cuba, but this country considers, on the contrary, that Washington is “stimulating” illegal immigration.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Cuba’s Diaz-Canel, Five Years as Hand-Picked Dictator

Díaz-Canel’s international policy has placed Cuba on the side of the most infamous causes (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 5 April 2023 — That April 19, 2018, when deputies had to “elect” the president of the Republic, there was only one name on their ballots aspiring to the position. Raúl Castro himself cleared away all doubts by declaring that his appointment was not a coincidence, that it was planned and foreseen by the Party’s leadership. Díaz-Canel was the only survivor of a dozen “test-tube” leaders who had been training to inherit the throne.

The electronic engineer and lieutenant colonel had slowly climbed from the Union of Young Communists. His ascent was meticulously calculated, without haste, so as not to repeat the mistakes they had previously made with Roberto Robaina, Carlos Lage, Feliz Pérez Roque and Jorge Luis Sierra Cruz.

The “star of Placetas” fulfilled an international mission in Nicaragua. He next became the highest authority of the Party in Villa Clara, his native province, and then was given his litmus test: Holguín. In the “city of parks” he earned the nickname of Miguel Díaz-Condón [condom] for preventing peasants from smuggling milk. And it was also there that he met Lis Cuesta, broke up his marriage and fearing that his promotion would be frustrated.

I remember that on one occasion they both attended the premiere of one of my works. At the end of the show, they stayed for the toast and told us about the adventures of their romance. The then-first secretary of the Party in Holguín feared that the scandal would affect his image and asked for advice from the most experienced boss in the province.

The old man, Miguel Cano Blanco, was familiar with local customs and situations and suggested to his namesake that he grab his lover by the hand and take her everywhere. For a couple of weeks there would be no talk of anything else in the city, but over time, the gossip would run out, people would end up getting used to the new normal, and his career would not be affected. Creative resistance, is what Cano Blanco recommended. Lis Cuesta would take his advice to the letter, to this day. continue reading

There’s not even a shadow left of that guy I once met in Holguín. His face has hardened, giving him a robotic appearance. Paranoia has made his hair turn white in a very short time, and his belly increased at the same rate as his blunders. Pigeons never landed on the new dictator’s shoulder, only vultures. The crash of a passenger plane, a tornado in Havana, the pandemic, the explosion of the Saratoga Hotel and the fire at the Supertanker Base at Matanzas are just a few examples of the unluckiness (salao) that is Díaz-Canel, according to his own words.

But not everything has been a consequence of misfortune. His obstinacy in giving continuity to a perverse and dysfunctional model makes him a direct culprit for the destitution suffered by the Cuban people. The Ordering Task* was a catastrophe and plunged the country into unbridled inflation. And his international policy has placed Cuba on the side of the most infamous causes, such as Putin’s imperialist war and Daniel Ortega’s criminal extremism.

This has also been a five-year period of protests. On July 11, 2021, more than 40 cities took to the streets in a domino effect, and Díaz-Canel decided to stain his hands with blood. His combat order unleashed violence that left a young man shot in the back and killed, several wounded and more than a thousand political prisoners. The 11J was a definitive watershed moment, and the dictator earned the worst nicknames in Cuba’s history.

Then would come the biggest migratory wave of all time in the archipelago, a mass exodus that has left the country without young people and without a future. The popular disenchantment has been clearly reflected in the polls. The regime’s placebo votes have recorded the highest rates of abstention, apathy and rejection.

It is clear that his government has been disastrous. Not even in healthcare, which has always been the regime’s banner, can they boast of anything. His plan to build 1.7 homes a day per municipality went by the wayside. And Parliament itself gave him a standing ovation when he confessed that his management was a disaster.

In any democratic country, someone with his record would have already resigned or would be swept from power at the polls. But Cuba is a dictatorship. Díaz-Canel has received the order to hold the fort as long as Raúl is alive. And no one would be surprised if his name, on April 19, is again the only option on the deputies’ ballot.

*Translator’s note: The “Ordering Task” [Tarea Ordenamiento] is a collection of measures that include eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and a broad range of other measures targeted to different elements of the Cuban economy.

Translator: Hombre de Paz

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Jorge Edwards in Cuba: A Spy in the Land of Slogans

From left to right, Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Edwards, Mario Vargas Llosa, the literary agent Carmen Balcells and José Donoso. (Those ‘Boom’ Years)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 9 April 2023 – The apathy of Cuban intellectuals after the death of Jorge Edwards contributed to the fact that the regime’s censorship managed to render him invisible.

The machinery of the Cuban press lives by a certain law of fiction, and that fiction selects, redacts, patches over and twists the reality of any news story. When the Chilean novelist Jorge Edwards arrived in Havana as a diplomat in December 1970, he discovered that the predictable workings of journalists, photographers and spies were already up and running. The regime’s newspapers received him with a scattergun of allusions towards an ‘Edwards clan’ – protagonists of the ‘reactionist conspiracy’ against Salvador Allende.

These were the veiled instructions for Cubans (smart people, when they want to be) in how to deal with this visitor — a literate man, disguised as a negotiator, representative of a socialist government, but one which Castro viewed with suspicion: Allende had committed the tactical error of achieving power through the ballot box, not, as Castro had done, through war. 

A few weeks ago, upon Edwards’ death (in Madrid), the business of rewriting history began all over again: despite being one of the foremost writers in the language (winner of the Cervantes Prize), not one official Cuban newspaper published an obituary, the columnists and critics all fell silent, and the bureaucrats of Casa de las Americas — he was even one of the judges for their award in 1968 — were finally able to delete him from their list of undesirables. 

Nevertheless, the most troubling aspect of his death was that even Cuban exiles — apart from the odd exception — neglected to pay their respects towards Edwards’ memory. There was a certain indifference, a certain mental laziness which obliged them to leave on the bookshelf his Persona non grataan assessment of Castro’s perversions just as thorough as Before Night Falls or Map Drawn by a Spy.

It was also odd that neither was he properly mentioned in the work of Chilean writer Pavel Giroud — that is, in any depth, and aloud, rather than in private reflection — during the tensions which produced El caso Padilla (The Padilla Affair). His presence in the film came to shed light on the era — it provided an external viewpoint on Castro’s reign and his authoritarian anachronism in a world which demanded more democracy. Edwards, who had travelled to Havana as Allende’s envoy, left the country proclaiming it to have converted itself into a ship of fools.  continue reading

Persona non grata makes certain progress, via digressions, as a volume built entirely from personal memories. The narration dithers, and forms a hypothesis, falls down through paranoia; it thrills, and it mulls things over. Edwards believes that, in 1970, Castro had drilled down into all the excess opened up by the Revolution and had managed to submerge the country into a destiny of collective obfuscation. His crazy delusions were already evident in his physical appearance — bags under the eyes, unkempt beard, a compulsion for clouds of tobacco smoke — and he aspired to the achievement of perfect surveillance/security, which the Chilean interprets as being one of his “Jesuit disorders” — a hangover from his Belén* schooldays.

As Castro diverted the course of history in Cuba in 1959 — says Edwards — he thought he could twist the country’s destiny time and time again, and also its laws of nature. The image of the Leader as mad scientist à la Victor Frankenstein, who dreams of practising genetic recombination in cows whilst he harpoons sharks in his private paradise at Cayo Piedra — is one of the most grotesque in the book.

A re-reading conjures up new questions about another spectre, Manuel Piñeiro, the ubiquitous Barbarroja [redbeard] whose microphones and spies — chauffeurs and beautiful secretaries from Havana — didn’t miss a single move made by Edwards. Piñeiro’s authority over the secret police, his influence over where even Castro could or couldn’t go, turned him into the leader’s confessor, and, without him realising it — the author notes — his puppet-master. Perhaps this suppressive control, which lasted right into Fidel’s decline, might be the key to explaining Barbarroja’s unusual death — he crashed his car into a tree in 1998.

In the midst of all of the tale’s tremors we find Padilla and his wife, Pablo Armando Fernández, Norberto Fuentes and César López, the first Miguel Barnet and the ghost of Cabrera Infante. The spring in the trap which power held in reserve for them was triggered when the Chilean abandoned the Island for Paris, where his teacher, Neruda, awaited him.

“Fidel Castro’s repression didn’t have the Steppe-like coldness (with simultaneous convent-like coldness) of Josef Stalin’s”, Edwards summed up in a commemorative prologue in Persona non grataNevertheless, he knew how to quickly identify the enemy — “the ladybirds, along with the poets, the long-haired, the mystics and the mystic-types, and all variety of social scourges” — who deserved, in his olive-green hell, “a slow death, though, in some cases, a less slow one”. Edwards, traveller to an irreconcilable Havana, understood first and foremost what others derived from Cuba and he anticipated what someone called — with an anesthetic malice – a Grey Five Years.

*Translator’s note:

Belén Jesuit Preparatory School was founded in 1854 in Havana. Fidel Castro attended this school, an institution renowned for its strict Jesuit discipline.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso
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Drivers Assaulted, Houses Looted and Cattle Stolen: Insecurity Grows in Villa Clara, Cuba

In such an isolated enclave, the horse-cart drivers maintain an indispensable link with the neighboring towns. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yankiel Gutiérrez Faife, Camajuaní, 9 April 2023 — Jinaguayabo is near the sea. To the north are the luxurious keys of Villa Clara; to the south, Remedios, at the end of a run-down road, where the horse carts circulate, at a slow pace and under the sun. It is a poor, rural town, with fewer than 700 inhabitants and from which everyone ends up leaving. In such an isolated enclave, the cart drivers maintain the indispensable link with the neighboring towns, but their routes, usually quiet, are now infested with assailants.

Gerónimo, who owns a passenger cart, leaves for work at seven in the morning. “At that time it’s easy,” he explains to 14ymedio. “It’s when the people of Jinaguayabo travel to Remedios, to study or to work. Then I have another route to bring them back, from three to seven at night, when they return to town.”

Several weeks ago, he says, he found three people waiting on the side of the road, and they asked him for a ride to Remedios. They got into the cart, two in the back seat and one next to him. “When we were coming to the bridge, the one behind me put a belt around my neck and forced me to park in a ditch,” says Gerónimo, who immediately obeyed his attacker.

The others were in charge of checking his pockets: they took his  phone, some bluetooth headphones, his watch and the proceeds of the day, 2,500 pesos [$100]. “At least they left me the horse and the cart,” he says with some relief. “Now I have to see if I can buy what I lost again, because the police are not going to find the thieves.”

Despite the isolation and poverty, Jinaguayabo has always been close to the most tense events in Cuba. Located near the first settlement of the Spanish conquistadores in Villa Clara, besieged by corsairs and pirates and centuries later by insurgents, the town has not been oblivious to violence. However, its inhabitants complain that the atmosphere is electric, and they feel afraid being on any road at night. continue reading

“You can no longer go by bike to Remedios, as before,” complains Daivel, a 19-year-old whose parents have banned him from traveling at night the three miles that separate Jinaguayabo from the so-called “eighth village” of the Island. “I used to pedal there on weekends, but now they won’t let me go for fear that something will happen to me along the way. If I go to Remedios, I have to sleep with friends and come back in the morning,” he says.

The situation is repeated in other rural towns, such as Taguayabón — to the west, between Remedios and Camajuaní — where thieves prey on people during the November carnivals. At two in the morning, when everyone is drunk and their senses dulled in the dark, it is easy for bandits to take a wallet or watch, or to corner a clueless villager.

They also manage to force the doors to houses, which are less protected because, as Maria points out, “in the countryside everyone knows each other.” She and her husband returned from the festivities in the early morning and discovered a broken window in their home. Inside, she says, “everything was a disaster. They had taken a cell phone and cash, which I had hidden in the closet.”

Crime is so widespread that you can no longer trust even the workers you hire. Daniela, a housewife from Remedios, hired a bricklayer known by the family, 26-years-old, to change the tiles and the sink in the kitchen. “He came to work for a single day and didn’t finish. He told me that he had a fever and a cold,” she says. That same night she was robbed of a powerful LED light that she had in the yard. “My husband, who knew that the boy was in bad company, went to his house. He himself had stolen the lamp, taking advantage of the fact that he knew the house, and exhibited it very brazenly in his yard,” the woman says.

In the marginal areas of the cities or in the rural towns the situation is unacceptable, but it is even more serious in the homes of the farmers. Francisco, a guajiro whose farm is in the vicinity of Rosalía, near Taguayabón, had two oxen with which he worked on his plot.

After working and taking a bath, Francisco used to have lunch and take a nap, while the animals grazed near the house. “In short,” he says, “when I was sleeping very peacefully, the bandits had been ’paying attention’ to me for many days and knew my routine. They had studied me.” At nightfall, he saw that the oxen had disappeared.

A television program funded as propaganda by the Ministry of the Interior, “Behind the Footprint”, shows a police squad that quickly solves criminal cases. “But real life is not like that,” says Francisco, who didn’t wait for the authorities to take action on the matter.

Some neighbors helped him organize a search party, and they found a broken fence and tracks. Beyond, near the town of Palenque, they discovered a scrub where the drunken thieves were butchering the animals. The second ox, tied to the fence, tried in vain to free itself.

“We caught three thieves and the police took them,” says Francisco. “But they have already freed one of them. Usually they are released for lack of interest in the investigation, or the police don’t even bother to come.”

Woman talking on the phone in front of a motorcycle workshop that was robbed last month. (14ymedio)

No one is safe. Not even in the center of big cities like Santa Clara. Ernesto, owner of a motorcycle repair shop not far from Etecsa’s offices — just one block from Vidal Park — was robbed of one of the vehicles he had in the warehouse at nine at night, while his family was watching the telenovela.

The thief broke the fiber cement roof of the workshop and took a motorcycle with just two and a half years of use, which needed paint and a new battery. However, he did not realize that Ernesto had installed cameras and did not have his face covered. “It wasn’t difficult to identify him,” he says. “A week later, the police caught the thief and recovered the motorcycle. However, I know I was lucky.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Cuba’s 2022 Accounts Confirm That the Country Spends 16 Times More on Building Hotels than on Healthcare

Five star hotel under construction, on First and B streets, Havana (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 13 April 2023 — The two sectors on which the Cuban regime has founded its popularity since 1959, health and education, combined received in 2022 one tenth the budget dedicated to business services and real estate and rentals. The area, considered a mixed bag that includes tourism, received 33% of the budget last year (23.360 billion pesos, almost one billion dollars at the official exchange rate), compared with the other two, which taken together barely received 3.3%.

The accounts are even worse if these two areas are separated. The health and public services received 2.1% of the budget (1.520 billion pesos or 63.4 million dollars), education received 1.2% (820 million pesos or 34 million dollars), that is 16 and 27 times, respectively, less than the so-called “business and real estate services.”

The poor investment in health contrasts with the gigantic income the Cuban state obtains from exporting medical services, the country’s main source of hard currency. According to official data, collected from annual statistics published by the National Statistics and Information Office (Onei), in 2021, they collected 4.349 billion dollars from the export of health services, although between 2011 and 2015 they were able to obtain more than 11.500 billion, according to the information provided by the former Minister of Economy José Luis Rodríguez.

That imbalance in the budget for that sector, which is diverse and non-specific but associated with hotel construction, has been going on for many years; in 2021 the pinch was even greater, it received 35% of the total budget, though the total amount was smaller. continue reading

The only area that dares to approach it, although still far behind, is the manufacturing industry, which receives 17.3% of the budget, totaling 12.304 billion pesos. The sugar industry is excluded from that, with its own budget line which allows us to see the ruinous budget assigned to that notable product of Cuban industry — barely 0.6%, with 410 million pesos.

With a percentage in the double digits, the transportation, food and communications sector received 10.3% (7.316 billion pesos).

In fourth place, though barely noticeable to Cubans, was the provision of water, electricity and gas, which received 6.988 billion or 9.8.% of the total budget. Although the figure seems padded when compared to some of those already mentioned, it continues to be less than one third of what was budgeted for real estate.

Two other sectors that fared well were mining and quarries, an area in which the government has placed a lot of hope for the supposed benefits of exporting nickel, among other minerals. Those rceived 5.066 billion pesos. Hotels and restaurants — the portion of tourism not related to real estate — received 3.226 billion pesos, and commerce and repair of personal effects received 2.506 million pesos, ahead of what should be a priviledged sector, agricultural production.

To this area, specifically designated by the government as a “priority”, a mere 1.855 billion pesos were budgeted, only 2.6% of the total budget. “Amid a situation of food insecurity, it is worrisome that the relative weight of investment in agriculture remains stagnant at a leven which is 12 times lower than the relative weight of investment in business services and real estate,” stated Cuban economist Pedro Monreal on his Twitter account Wednesday.

The expert reminds us that the agriculture sector employs more than 17% of Cubans, the sector with the most employment, but the low level of investment makes it a beacon of low productivity that weighs down economic growth for the entire country.

“It is probably understood, but worth repeating — without a major investment in agriculture it will not be possible to overcome food insecurity in Cuba, nor to mitigate inflation, nor poverty, nor will there be national development. The slogans they come up with matter very little,” he said.

The data provided by the National Statistics and Information Office (Onei), which are for last year, lay bare not only the (now) old evidence that tourist construction is disproportionate compared to other sectors at a time when it is not on par with profits. It also reflects the constant contradiction of the government discourse that stops investing in pillars of social justice such as food (fishing uses 0.7% of total investment) health or education, to capture foreign currency which, to make matters worse, does not arrive.

The small amount budgeted for the agriculture sector, moreover, serves to bring down tourism. As the reproaches come from the ranks of officialdom itself, tourists spend more on food when they come to Cuba than on paying for hotel accommodations, but if there is no food, the country loses out on that income as well and informed travelers lose the incentive to come.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Cuba Says It Will Address ‘Important’ Issues in Wednesday’s Immigration Talks With the United States

The mother of the Secretary of Homeland Security of the United States fled from Europe because of Nazism and, years later, from Cuba because of Castroism. (EFE)

14ymedio biggerEFE / Moncho Torres (via 14ymedio), Havana/Panama City, 12 April 2023 — Cuba and the United States will discuss “important and determining” issues in the round of immigration talks that take place this Wednesday in Washington, according to the Deputy General Director for the United States of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX), Johana Tablada. She states that the delegation, lead by the Deputy Minister of MINREX, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, will have on its agenda matters “of concern for the Cuban government that are not resolved.”

Among those issues, Tablada referred to “incentives” that remain for irregular emigration, such as “the continuity of extreme, inhuman, siege measures, that directly influence the socioeconomic living conditions of the population of Cuba” and that make many Cubans seek to emigrate to the United States.

The Government of Cuba, Tablada added, blames the United States for “those high migratory flows and those extreme measures that have caused a direct threat to the well-being and livelihood of our population.”

“Regular migration will not be achieved, and this issue will not be resolved as long as there is that policy of asphyxiation against Cuba,” she said in statements reproduced by state media, although she acknowledged that last year there were “positive steps,” such as the resumption of the issuance of visas at the U.S. Embassy in Havana and the granting of the visas established in the migration agreements.

The Island’s delegation will also denounces “the admission of people who arrive irregularly in the United States,” which it considered “a stimulus for others to adopt that unsafe route,” and gave as an example the case of Rubén Martínez Machado, who stole a plane, fled to Miami and was granted political asylum, an “explicit violation of the migration agreements” and a “danger to the air safety of both countries,” she said. continue reading

Cuba will also reiterate its request for the re-establishment of non-immigrant visa programs so that the citizens of the Island can visit their relatives in the United States.

This round of talks will be marked by a sharp increase in the arrivals of Cubans to the U.S. coast, where the Coast Guard has intercepted some 5,000 Cuban rafters since last October.

Cuba’s grave economic crisis has intensified an unprecedented mass exodus, especially to the United States, where authorities detained more than 313,000 Cubans on the southern border with Mexico, a figure that represents about 3% of Cuba’s total population.

In this context, the Secretary of National Security of the United States, Alejandro Mayorkas, held a meeting in Panama with the foreign minister of that country and of Colombia and Mexico, to discuss migration through the dangerous Darién jungle. He insisted that migrants must use “legal means” or  be “returned” to the other side of the border.

“There is a very important message to send in addition to the fact that we are building legal avenues so that people do not have to risk their lives in the Darién, and that is that we are enforcing our border laws,” the secretary remarked.

“It is so tragic to see people risk their lives, undertake the dangerous journey, suffer the trauma, put the savings of a lifetime in the hands of traffickers who only seek their own benefit, only to be returned,” said Mayorkas, who is of Cuban origin.

The Darién jungle is one of the most dangerous border crossings for migrants, who have to cross swollen rivers and risk the attacks of armed men who steal and rape. There is also a lack of drinking water, which is often contaminated by excrement and corpses.

Most migrants, when they have left the jungle and are exhausted and out of breath, say that they regret having taken that route, calling on their compatriots to choose another option, in vain.

This year alone, about 400,000 migrants are expected to cross the jungle, almost double the more than 248,000 who did so in 2022. In the first three months of 2023 alone, about 87,390 migrants crossed the Darién, seven times more than the same period in 2022.

“And those are the individuals, the human beings who survived to tell the trauma of the trip. We also think about the people who didn’t make it. That is exactly why we are generating legal avenues so that they can come to the United States in a safe and orderly way in search of a better life,” he explained.

Mayorkas highlighted as “the most powerful example of the success” of this legal path the creation of the program for nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, a measure that recently led to a 95% reduction in the arrests of individuals from these countries at the border.

“We have already received thousands and thousands of people in this way,” he said. The program can reach 30,000 humanitarian permits per month, “360,000 people per year.”

The U.S. official also warned that they are “expanding” the legal avenues. “We will be revealing in the coming weeks the additional avenues that people must take,” he announced.

The Secretary of Homeland Security also noted that migrants have at their disposal other ways to travel legally to U.S. territory, such as visas for seasonal workers, or for agricultural or non-agricultural workers for limited periods to “gain money lawfully and send remittances.”

In addition, next month the government of President Joe Biden will lift the controversial Title 42, a health measure imposed by the government of former President Donald Trump (2017-2021) that allows immediate expulsions of migrants at the border.

“We are concerned that there may be an increase in the level of migration” due to the lifting of that measure, Mayorkas acknowledged, recalling that the basis of the country’s immigration law, in Title 8, will remain fully in force.

In the meeting with EFE, Mayorkas was accompanied by Samantha Power, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She highlighted the important role played by countries that were initially going to be only transit routes for migrants.

In Colombia, “more than two million Venezuelans” are settled, she said, and it is “a very important and laudable decision” that the Colombian authorities have offered them “a temporary protection status.”

“When that happened, USAID hurried to support the Colombian government to establish that system, the registration, the mechanism, but also to support the Venezuelans who entered to make sure that they did not overload the host communities,” said Power, who remarked that they are dedicating “more than 200 million dollars a year” to that mission and seek to increase it by 34 million.

The U.S. official insisted that it is the “responsibility” of the United States to support the countries south of the Darien — Colombia,  Ecuador and Peru — “that are doing everything possible to absorb these migrant populations.”

For Mayorkas, the need to leave his country for political or economic reasons is not something foreign. A native of Cuba, he arrived with his parents and sister in the United States as “political refugees” when he was a child. “It was the second time, by the way, that my mother was a refugee,” having fled the Nazis in Europe.

“I understand very well the fragility of life, the vulnerability of people, the importance of humanitarian aid; and at the service of that fragility, at the service of that vulnerability, we generate  legal avenues and urge people not to take such an costly risk. But it is also very important to remember that we are not alone in this. The migratory challenge that our region is experiencing is a challenge to which we must all respond together,” he said.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

The Arrival of Potatoes Disrupts a Havana District During Easter Week

The first thing to avoid is the ditch that cuts through the queue. If you’re wearing flip flops or leaky shoes you’re going to get filthy water between your toes. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 8 April 2023 – The potatoes have arrived. This sentence, written on a notice and pinned up in a food store or shouted aloud in a yard, is enough to set Cubans onto a war footing. Hunger, shortages, and the possibility of arriving at the back of an interminable queue are enough to drive anyone crazy. Nevertheless, with potatoes there’s an additional stress: you have to actually watch out for the truck and follow the prized tuber even faster than your other neighbours can.

Whoever has to confront the queue knows the routine: a bag or a shopping trolley, a fully charged phone, water and some kind of pill to calm the nerves – although this latter is already almost impossible to get hold of. Already there’s a considerable number of customers in Calle Arango, in Luyanó. Now it’s just a question of luck and a lot of patience.

When your eyes have adapted to the sunlight and your body has found a place in the shade — all without losing your place, always in dispute from “confused” people who try to push their way in — you can better appreciate the view of run-down Calle Arango, the many times patched-up sunshades and the peeling walls.

The first thing to avoid is the ditch that cuts through the queue. If you’re wearing flip flops or leaky shoes you’re going to get filthy water between your toes. The people who are already approaching the counter — predominantly older people and people who queue-up by profession — comment indignantly that the price “on the street” is already exceeding 250 pesos a pound.

Rationed potatoes, sold by the State at 11 pesos a pound, are of very poor quality. An elderly woman sniffed one of them in the impassible gaze of the seller and couldn’t hide her disgust. “How bad they smell”, she blurted out, putting the wrinkled and dirty potato back in its place. continue reading

In Calle San Miguel / San Nicolás / Manrique where they’re also selling potatoes, the workers took advantage of the Good Friday holiday and announced that they were only going to stay open until midday. “We’re only going to serve 50 people!” they shouted, “And not a single one more”.

The majority of customers dream of cooking chips (fries) — one of the “impossible feasts” of Cuban cuisine — but only if they can get hold of the cooking oil required. Others intend to boil them, to use in some other recipe. Still others, however, intend to resell, at a much higher price, the quantity they’ve managed to obtain.

As the relentless Central Havana sunshine begins to recede, one of the lucky ones heads for home almost dancing, a modest little shopping bagful in his hands, and sings in an improvised reguetón: “Potatoes! Let’s go eat mashed potatoes!”

Translated by Ricardo Recluso  

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

‘Even Tourists Are Stranded on the Road Because There Is No Fuel in Cuba’

Traffic jam at Santa Ana and Boyeros of taxis waiting to get gasoline. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 10 April 2023 — Marta and Manuel, two Spaniards who arrived in Havana this Good Friday on the Air Europa flight, pass through the door of the José Martí international airport and come across a dark esplanade full of people holding signs with the name of a tourist. The taxi stand is empty. The lack of fuel has hit the strategic tourism sector, and the Madrid couple spends two hours waiting for a vehicle to take them to Old Havana.

“This is not how tourism can be recovered,” says the employee who manages the taxi stand. The man calls again and again on his mobile phone to the possible taxi drivers who relieve the long line that has been formed after the arrival of the European flight. But the answer he receives is almost the same: “I don’t have fuel.” After half an hour, a yellow Citröen arrives in front of the line of desperate travelers. “This is my last trip because what I have left of gasoline is not enough for another,” he says.

Several tourists hurry to get on the buses that will take them to Varadero and other resorts. “We are making the trips to leave the customers in the hotels but we have had to cut the excursions,” explains a driver who begins to read a list of British surnames to confirm the travelers he will take in his vehicle. “For almost a month we have only had fuel for transfers to and from the airport,” he emphasizes.

On the other side of the street, in the shadows, the drivers of several private vehicles load luggage into trunks and shout among themselves the coordinates to find fuel. “The Santa Catalina gas station has none; neither does Boyeros and Ayestarán although they told me that they saw a tank unloading an hour ago at the one on G and 25.” continue reading

The information, more valuable for filling the tank of the vehicle than the money itself, has created networks of solidarity among drivers who, in addition to spreading the word about where the supply has arrived, help each other in the lines in front of the gas station, which can last for days. “We are four taxi drivers and we take turns in line. The station that had fuel last week doesn’t have it anymore. We wouldn’t have a life if we had to be in line all the time,” explains a young man who rents a cab from the Taxi-Cuba Company.

“The tourists who arrive don’t know this, and some rent a car to go to the provinces; then they get stranded on the road because they can’t fill the tank,” the driver tells 14ymedio. “At first, passenger cars had priority, but if there is no gasoline, it doesn’t matter if you have priority. If there isn’t any there isn’t, and they can’t invent it.”

Marta and Manuel managed, after a long wait, to get into a vehicle on the way to a private rental house in the historic center of Havana. “Can we meet tomorrow for an excursion to the Zapata Swamp?” they inquired of the taxi driver. The payment proposal, an interesting amount of euros, would have been absolutely irresistible a few months ago, but the driver declines. “I can’t, this is the last gasoline I have left. Tomorrow I have to take care of getting more, and that will take me all day or all week.”

Rumors are circulating among taxi drivers that fuel problems will be solved on the 18th. In March, the British agency Reuters announced the shipment of oil from Venezuela that was going to be the largest in memory in a long time. The Nolan oil tanker, Panamanian-flagged and sanctioned by the United States, was in the Venezuelan port of San José loading 1.53 million barrels (400,000 barrels of oil and 1.13 of diesel), destined for Cuba.

Although the ship was supposed to arrive at the end of March, the shortage, visible at the Island’s gas stations, suggests that it arrived late or that the unloading has been slow. Radar positioned the Nolan for the last time off the coast of western Africa, but that was 111 days ago, and the sanctioned tankers travel with the transponder turned off to hide their location. The Venezuelan government opponent María Corina Machado said last week that the oil tanker was in the port of Antilla, in Holguín, according to a satellite application.

But the effects of the lack of fuel are not only noticed by tourists and Cubans who want to fill their tank. The blackouts are already back, and national television announced that a “complex” day is expected this Monday. Yesterday, Sunday, the deficit reached 368 megawatts (MW) at around 20:20, coinciding with peak time. Although the Unión Eléctrica de Cuba (UNE) assures that “this weekend it managed to meet the demand,” many Cubans have complained about more than three hours without power in different parts of the Island.

“Last night there was a blackout here from 10:27 pm until a little more than 1 am. I couldn’t rest well, and today we face the day to day to see how to survive,” lamented a woman from Cienfuegos. “I have just seen the list, and during the day there should be no problem, but in Remedios there is a deficit from 9 to 3 in the afternoon,” added another.

For today, UNE predicts a deficit of 200 MW, but 550 MW is expected to be missing at the peak. In its statement, the electricity monopoly speaks of a shortage in the distribution because of “failures and lack of maintenance,” correcting the information provided on television, which said that the lack of availability is due to “problems” in the distribution of fuel, which has not yet arrived.

“They don’t have oil because they don’t buy it, and they don’t pay for what they buy. Period.” says a user when reading the forecast for the day.

Meanwhile, the recovery work of the Antonio Guiteras de Matanzas thermoelectric plant continues after the accident that cost the lives of two people this Friday and injured two more when they were trapped by the collapse of a 23-foot high wall while cleaning the soot in the chimney of the plant. La Guiteras is the largest thermoelectric plant in the country, but last year it was out of service for more days than it produced energy.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Cuban Writer Jorge Fernandez Era Says He Was ‘Surrounded’ by the Political Police in Havana

The journalist and writer Jorge Fernández Era. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 7 April 2023 — On Friday, the Cuban writer and journalist Jorge Fernández Era offered  a detailed account of the arrest he suffered the day before, for six hours, at the hands of the political police in Havana. In a text published on his Facebook page, he said that the ambush by the agents unleashed a wave of solidarity throughout the country and exposed the clumsiness of State Security.

Fernández Era reported that the harassment had begun on Thursday morning, when a series of “wrong number” calls to his home was intended to locate him. The explanation of that “check,” he says, had to do with the publication of a recent “column-caricature” he wrote in La Joven Cuba, which ridiculed the nomination of octogenarian candidates to the Cuban Parliament, in addition to an interview he gave to the filmmaker Ian Padrón.

At noon, when he left his house to go to El Vedado, he was intercepted by several motorcycle officers in the vicinity of San Indalecio and Rabí streets. He was on his way with his wife and a friend, and they told him to “stop walking.”

The agents — one of them identified himself as the head of sector of the Tamarindo neighborhood — demanded his identification and, when returning the documents, informed the writer that he was “surrounded.” Arrested and taken aboard one of the motorcycles, Fernández Era was transferred to the Aguilera police unit.

After crossing a “perfectly caged” staircase to the basement, he was forced to stand for 45 minutes. Then they took him to a closed room, where an agent — who said he wrote poetry “for years” — was in charge of “taking care of him” until he was received by Eivesgney Vilarte, “badge 10034, first lieutenant and second head of Crime Prosecution,” says Fernández Era. continue reading

There they read him a complaint for the crimes of “failure to offer assistance and disobedience” and tried to impose the payment of a fine of 3,000 pesos for “not responding to the two summons that I received previously.” The writer argued that he did not have to pay the required amount until a claim that he had filed on January 30, successively, with the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office, the General Military Prosecutor’s Office of the Ministry of the Interior and  Counterintelligence was resolved.

In addition, he criticized the irregularities of the document containing his accusation, which also contained — “in violation of the Criminal Procedure Law, the Law of National Symbols and the Law of Military Secrecy” — sensitive information about another detainee outside his case.

Faced with his refusal, Vilarte indicated that a “precautionary measure of provisional detention” would be imposed on him. He was held for an hour and a half without being offered food or water. When he demanded that he be allowed to call his wife on the phone, the officers replied: “It won’t be necessary. You’re leaving now.”

Vilarte informed him, he says, that they had decided to replace the provisional detention with another precautionary measure: the “prohibition of leaving the country while the Municipal Prosecutor’s Office has not pronounced,” which would define his legal status. In the vicinity of the station, his wife and several friends were waiting for him; they had “planted” themselves until Fernández Era was released.

The writer’s post concludes with an “epilogue” where he thanks Professor Alina Bárbara Hernández, who demanded his release in the Matanzas Freedom Park, where she was “cowardly harassed by three agents,” he said. In addition, he recognized the thousands of people who protested on social networks against his “run-in” with State Security.

Finally, Fernández Era informed his captors that “neither the ban on leaving the Island, nor the provisional detention, nor the house arrest, nor the cash bail, nor the obligation to appear, nor prison” were going to silence him.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

About Twenty Cuban Doctors in Mexico, Rejected for Lacking Professional Credentials

A group of the 610 Cuban doctors who were hired by Mexico to work in marginalized areas. (Twitter/@zoerobledo)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico, 11 April 2023 — The Cuban specialists who arrived last January in the Mexican state of Morelos and proclaimed their experience in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Guatemala and Pakistan, “are not in position” because they lack a professional identification card. According to the president of the Federated Colleges of Medicine A.C., María Reyna Bárcenas Hurtado, “about 20 health workers” have already been returned to Mexico City.

Bárcenas Hurtado told 14ymedio that during monitoring by the health centers of Axochiapan, Ocuituco, Tetecala and Temixco, it was found that the specialties of the Cuban doctors “do not correspond to what is needed in these hospitals, especially in the Temixco region.”

The last week of March, the leader of the Union of the Ministry of Health, Gil Magadán Salazar, said that the specialists “had no experience” and stressed that “the official Mexican regulation requires doctors to have a professional credential to practice, and they don’t meet the requirement because they don’t have the document from Cuba.”

Magadán Salazar spoke of three cases: “One said he was an anesthesiologist, but he didn’t want to work. We have a dermatologist who has never given a consultation, and the others seem to be gerontologists, areas that we do not require.” That’s why they were enrolled in a training program. continue reading

According to Bárcenas Hurtado, the specialists “were supposed to go to meetings but never showed up.” In addition, he says that it is up to the federal authorities to let them know what is going to happen to these doctors.

Despite the fact that there is a letter signed by the Union of the Ministry of Health of Morelos noting that “they should not be hired” due to a lack of certification, a source confirmed to this media that “no payment has been stopped” to the Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos, S.A. For each specialist, the Cuban company, which is accused of human trafficking and forced labor, receives $2,042 per doctor each month.

The places that were left vacant, Bárcenas Hurtado explained, should be covered with specialists, but “we are waiting for the response to the letter presented to the state Ministry of Health.”

Meanwhile, in the state of San Luis Potosí, Governor Ricardo Gallardo Cardona confirmed last March, without specifying the number, the arrival of specialists from Cuba. On Monday, the state Ministry of Health and the Mexican Social Security Institute indicated that there are 113 places available, but it has not been defined how many will be filled by foreigners.

The College of the Medical Profession of the State of San Luis Potosí affirmed that Cuban health workers “are not prepared, and before being hired they must be certified by the Medical College.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

A New Type of Business Springs Up in Cuba

On Monday, in the same place, the same guy and the same sign. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, 11 April 2023 — The writing, in capitals and painted in green on the wall at 464 Calle Belascoaín / Zaina in Central Havana, caught the eye. “I buy women in poor condition”, read the astonished passers-by.

With all the security about, that wouldn’t last long, we thought, here at the 14ymedio office when we saw it for the first time last Thursday — given the speed with which the authorities get rid of spontaneous signs on the streets. Nevertheless, three days later it was still there. On Sunday, an old man was sitting on the ledge just underneath the writing — on a wall belonging to a hardware store, and covered in carpenter’s marks. He seemed to be just resting there, whilst, just further up, the street vendors were spreading out their wares under the arcades.

“I buy women in poor condition”, read the astonished passers-by. (14ymedio)

On Monday, in the same place, the same guy and the same sign. The old man was dressed just the same — in light blue teeshirt and jeans, with the same bag he’d carried days earlier. Is he selling something? Is he some kind of link with another seller por la izquierda’*? Building materials? Or, quite the opposite, does he have something to do with the actual sign? Is he guarding it? Is he waiting for its “author” to turn up?

“Is he the one who buys women in poor condition?”, commented a young girl sarcastically, to what appeared to be her mother, as they passed by. “I don’t know, my girl, but he ain’t gonna find them here. It’s him that’s in poor condition, along with the whole country”.

On Sunday, underneath the writing, an old man was sitting on the ledge which formed part of the wall. (14ymedio)

Despite the misogyny of the sign, neither the Federation of Cuban Women nor Mariela Castro — official  champion of the cause of equality — have commented on the matter. Apart from that, clearly the capital’s government itself hasn’t seen the necessity of removing it. Obviously because it doesn’t say: “No to the Communist Party“, “Down with the dictatorship“, “homeland and life“, or “Diaz-Canel motherfucker“.

*Translator’s note: ’Por la izquierda’, literally ’on the left’, is the equivalent of the English ’under the counter’.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Cuba: Putting Makeup on the ‘Setbacks in Victory’

Instead of turning setbacks into victory, Cuba is living in a time of total make-up, of crude cosmetics applied to reality. (14ymedio

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 11 April 2023 — Few phrases are as illustrative of Cuban voluntarism as the one that calls for “turning setbacks into victory.” Fueled by the whim of Fidel Castro, the maxim has summed up, since 1970, a way of doing politics in which boasting of victory was more important than achieving the results. It doesn’t matter if people lose their lives in the fight, if the country sinks into crisis or the economy is destroyed, but each failure must be transformed into a new, more ambitious goal to celebrate at full speed.

There was a time when that ideological compass was oriented towards delirious campaigns that presented the passage of a hurricane as a battle against nature, in which we pretended that we had the upper hand in the face of strong winds that left houses collapsed and fields devastated. After the passage of a meteor, one had to boast that the houses would be rebuilt, even more spacious and beautiful than when the cyclone knocked them down. We stuck out our tongues at the gusts and taunted the downpour with a one-finger salute.

Before each blow or setback, the response was revolutionary arrogance insisting that that misfortune was nothing compared to the “strength of a people.” Thus, we accumulated misfortunes for which we were not even allowed to mourn because we had to raise our fists and laugh from ear to ear as if we were engaged in eternal revelry. The failure of the sugar industry, the successive mass exoduses, the deterioration of the housing fund and the economic crisis received, indistinctly, the arrogant response of the ruling party and its consequent strategy to make the fiasco invisible.

Over time, this obsession with winning at all costs has led to putting makeup on the disaster in a more clumsy and ridiculous way. Thus, we have heard the Cuban leaders assure, after the explosion of the Saratoga Hotel, that the building will be rebuilt “better than before,” although from the results of the expert investigation that determines responsibilities for the death of 47 people, no one has had any more to say. Something similar to the tragedy in the Matanzas supertanker base, where the disaster has been covered with the triumphalist headlines about the reconstruction of the tanks. continue reading

The excesses of conceit came to celebrating the Team Asere players as champions, after they lost in the game against the United States in the World Baseball Classic, with a score of 14 to 2, or ensuring that the result of the recent electoral process to ratify the deputies to Parliament was a boost to the system although there was a marked abstention. Each time, the distance between what is applauded and what actually happened widens more and more. Instead of turning setbacks into victory, we are living in a time of total make-up, of crude cosmetics applied to reality. But, unlike a few decades ago, the regime no longer even wants us to believe it.

With smeared mascara and grotesque lipstick, Castroism does not want us to see it as a triumphant system, but prefers that we fear it. In the end, it is a repressive machine capable of crushing lives while pretending to save them, of sinking a country while pretending to have rescued it.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

‘El Gato de Cuba’ is Freed After Two Years in Jail, ‘They Did Not Extinguish Me’

El Gato de Cuba, during his livestream on Wednesday. (Captura)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Madrid, 6 April 2023–Yoandi Montiel Hernández, known as El Gato de Cuba, left prison on Wednesday after obtaining a pass to visit his family last weekend.

He shared the news himself immediately via a livestream. “They thought they’d extinguish someone and they did not extinguish me”, said the influencer who was sentenced to two years in prison for contempt after lobbing criticism against the regime on his social media livestreams.

“I just bounced and I’m overwhelmed,” apologized Montiel in the video in which he was grateful for all the support received from outside and stated that it wasn’t easy for him inside prison. “The didn’t give me the slightest conditional freedom, they didn’t reduce my sentence by two months as they were supposed to, nothing, I served every minute.”

In the video the activist asserted that he will “speak with everyone” and “will tell all.” “They didn’t change me, I came out the same,” he repeated. “I didn’t give in.” continue reading

The influencer was arrested at his home on April 12, 2021 during a Ministry of Interior operation that included about twenty police officers. The trial took place a year later. At that time, there was the possibility that the attorneys and the Prosecutor might reach an agreement to release him in three or five months, but that never materialized.

Montiel was initially at Villa Marista, the general quarters of State Security in Havana, and was later transferred to the Valle Grande prison, where he remained until Wednesday. During that time, the regime rejected efforts by his family for him to be released conditionally and, instead, in May 2022 they appealed his case to increase his sentence.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

In Guantanamo, Cuba, Crowded Bus Stops and Empty Buses With Signs Saying ‘Leased’

These buses are subject to the same difficulties experienced by the entire transport sector, such as the need to replace tires and lack of spare parts. (Venceremos)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 29 March 2023 — The leasing of 26 “underutilized” state vehicles, with which the Guantánamo Urban Bus unit planned to cover the transport deficit in the province, has been ineffective. The drivers often fail to comply with schedules and skip mandatory stops, and managers have threatened more than once to terminate their contracts, according to the local press.

Rubén Pico Judiones, director of this organization, lamented the origin of the problem: of the 74 buses that Guantánamo has, only 33 work. This forces the them to look for alternatives and to request the rental of “paralyzed” buses from several companies — under Resolution 207/2021, which facilitates the rental of vehicles — to cover several routes in the city and others that lead to the peripheral towns of Paraguay, Cecilia, Maqueicito, Maquey, La Jabilla, Boquerón, Cayamo and Hatibonico.

In addition, Pico details, four “private sector” vans were rented to connect some areas, and help was requested from various sectors to “support” the transportation of workers. “All that is still insufficient,” the manager admitted.

Pico indicates the conditions under which the drivers of leased vehicles operate. They must charge a fare of five pesos and make three trips in the morning and three in the afternoon. In addition, they have the duty to cover certain routes at a set time. “Once they comply, they have the freedom to perform other work to increase their income,” he says. continue reading

However, that kind of gap in their obligations allows them to treat the work schedule with “flexibility.” Ómnibus Urbanos began to take measures, such as inspections and “intermittent” controls, Pico says, aimed at surprising the drivers during their non-compliance. But even that hasn’t solved the problem. “They were warned about the possibility of losing their jobs if violations of the regulations persist, but we are certainly still dissatisfied with the results,” he says.