The investigations of the Ministry of the Interior have required the “ingenuity” of the officers, who have had to explore the digital platforms used by scammers. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Havana, 17 February 2023 — The Cuban Police arrested 126 people last year and deactivated 12 networks linked to the scam in the sale of foreign currency. According to a report published in official site Cubadebate, the Ministry of the Interior detected another 17 criminal plans and charged 67 suspected criminals, currently in pretrial detention, on whom, it assures, “severe sentences of deprivation of liberty” will fall.
It is not known how much money Cuban families have lost due to scam networks, but the number, the note suggests, is considerable. The Police warn that thieves are versatile when it comes to changing their modus operandi and constantly vary their strategy to avoid investigations.
The criminals, the report states, have a variety of methods to “hunt” the victims through social networks, in which they provide telephone numbers and offer attractive prices for the sale of dollars.
During the call, they appear to be people “supposedly correct, with impeccable vocabulary and they gladly agree on the address” for the exchange. Some criminals even use the victim’s home as a meeting point, passageways or multi-family buildings, and then carry out the violent robbery, with the help of knives or firearms. continue reading
The authorities do not report fatalities, but they acknowledge that there are people who have been seriously injured when they tried to confront the criminals.
Cubadebate warns that scammers make people believe that they are looking at a good deal, but do not identify themselves by their real name or give the victim clues as to where they can be located in the future. Contacts almost always occur on digital platforms, where there are “numerous candidates” due to “the lack of legal offers.”
As usual, the Government attributes the ultimate culpability for these events to the economic sanctions of the United States. The financial “suffocation” of the Island, they justify, produces little availability of exchange in state banks and the need to resort to the informal market to get dollars.
Most of the people accused of fraud, the report says, have criminal records and the Police attribute “terrible social behavior” to them, in addition to “being very violent to steal the money.”
The investigations of the Ministry of the Interior have required the “ingenuity” of the officers, who have had to explore the same digital platforms that fraudsters use to discover profiles of suspects.
People who are dedicated to selling foreign currency usually hang around the ATMs or exchange houses, where they offer a much more favorable exchange than does the State for dollars or freely convertible currency (MLC).
The illegal sale of currency is also the only way that some families have to obtain basic necessities that are scarce on the Island and are only sold in MLC.
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14ymedio, Havana, 16 February 2023 — The National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (Inder) still has not managed to connect a good hit with the “new forms of economic management” that they have intended to implement in the Latin American Stadium since October 2021. According to the vice president of Inder, Omar Venegas Echemendía, the objective is to recover strategic spaces that have been lost at the headquarters of Havana’s baseball team, the Industriales.
Venegas spoke this Wednesday of the “step from the Latin American Stadium, to a budgeted unit with special treatment,” a management model in which the Coloso del Cerro, as the property is known, must generate 30% of its budget, while the other 70% will be provided by the sports organization.
The official did nothing more than summarize part of the speech from almost 16 months ago by the president of the Cuban Baseball Federation, Juan Reinaldo Pérez, about an “experimental” model that will now be applied for a year to “evaluate its feasibility.” continue reading
For this strategy, according to Venegas, “various services will be hired,” without indicating which ones, “a store specializing in sports paraphenalia will be opened” and they intend to “link the Latin American Stadium with tourism.”
Almost two years ago, there was talk of “opening the door” to ” MSMEs (small and medium sized private businesses) and cooperatives to present projects focused on shared benefits,” but apparently the hook was not as attractive as the sports authorities thought.
With the 62nd National Baseball Series, which will begin on March 22, with the first stage ending on June 3, the Latin American Stadium must show the management changes and improve the food and drink on offer for Cuban baseball fans, currently reeling from the lack of results in tournaments abroad and the flight of players.
The Latin American Stadium, which last October was declared a National Heritage, was built in 1946 and remained for more than 60 years with hardly any modifications. It was in 2014, according to a construction worker speaking 14ymedio, that the poor conditions of “the sanitary services, the hydraulic system and especially the roof” forced its remodeling.
During the repairs, new warm-up areas were defined at the bottom of the dugouts, the old batting cages were removed and the foul ball area was expanded.
On the other hand, the Island continues to lose players. Ronald Elías Terrero, who was part of the Cuban team in the Under-15 World Cup that took place in Mexico last September, is already in the Dominican Republic. According to the journalist Francys Romero, the athlete is from Isla de la Juventud and is 15 years old. “After September he will apply for free agency” in search of a major league team.
The baseball player is training in San Pedro de Macorís at the renowned Fernando Tatis Academy. With Terrero there are now nine Under-15 baseball players who have left Cuba. The other eight are Alejandro Prieto, Segian Pérez, Ernest Machado, Dulieski Ferrán, Alex Acosta, Jonathan Valle, Christian de Jésus Zamora and Yosniel Menéndez.
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Matanzas thermoelectric plant, Antonio Guiteras. (Courtesy)
14ymedio, Havana, 16 February 2023 — The fragility of the Cuban electrical system was evidenced once again. Now “an electrical failure in the use of the plant” has left the Antonio Guiteras de Matanzas Thermoelectric Power Plant out of service since shortly after noon this Thursday. According to a brief statement from the Unión Eléctrica that caused annoyance among users, it was stressed that work was being done on the solution.
With the failure in Antonio Guiteras, there are already five thermoelectric plants that have “faults.” The others are units 6 and 7 of CTE Mariel, unit 4 of CTE Nuevitas, units 1 and 2 of Felton, and units 4 and 6 of the CTE Renté, which are “under maintenance.”
For peak hours, the Unión Eléctrica confirmed the entry of unit 2 of Energas Boca de Jaruco, the completion of unit 6 of this same plant, the entry of unit 4 of Energas Varadero, but these additions will provide only 110 megawatts (MW) of power.
With this forecast, an availability of 2,588 MW and a maximum demand of 2,720 MW are estimated for the peak hour, for a deficit of 132 MW, so if the conditions forecast are maintained, more blackouts will occur throughout the Island.
Six days earlier, the Antonio Guiteras power plant had been synchronized with the National Electric System, which together with unit 5 of the Máximo Gómez CTE, led the Electric Unit to proclaim that there would be “affects due to capacity deficit in generation.”
This new failure comes 14 days after the eighth Turkish floating plant, the Suheyla Sultan, with a capacity of 240 MW, arrived in Cuba. This coincided with the increase in blackouts of up to six hours in various regions of the Island.
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Elián González (center) and his father, Juan Miguel González (right), also occupied a place in Parliament. Elián sees this “coincidence” as another responsibility to Fidel Castro. (EFE)
14ymedio, Havana, 17 February 2023 — At the age of 29, with a position as manager in a military company in Varadero and his recent appointment to be a candidate for the Cuban Parliament for Cárdenas, the once “niño” Elián González has a high concept of himself. In an interview published this Thursday in the communist youth newspaper, this father of a two-year-old girl says he is proud that the voters of Matanzas have finally noticed his “qualities.”
Clearly, González is laying his best card on the political table: the reputation given to him by the media campaign launched by Fidel Castro in 2000 to achieve the return of the “little rafter” to the Island from the United States. That episode is, for the young man, a “responsibility” that he owes to Castro, for having “mobilized” the same people who voted for him.
“I will always have Fidel and Raúl’s hand on my shoulder,” insists González, who now is enjoying in advance the “simple fact of being nominated,” even without “being a deputy” yet. Should he occupy a seat in Parliament, of which the young man has absolute certainty, he plans to “approve the most just and equitable laws,” represent the “concerns” of his territory and be “faithful” to the legacy of the Castros. Even so, González does not commit to anything: “Many times we will not have the resources nor will we have an immediate response,” he warned.
At no time in the interview did he mention Miguel Díaz-Canel or the other members of the current government. Nor did he mention that the area of Matanzas that he will have to represent has been characterized in recent years by a fall in tourism, inflation and the loss of purchasing power. In addition, it was precisely in Cárdenas where one of the most notorious popular protests in history on the Island occurred on July 11, 2021, and where police repression fell the hardest.
His appointment to occupy a seat in the National Assembly of People’s Power (ANPP) leads González, rather, to evoke the past and resurrect his obsession with Fidel, who made him a standard-bearer of the “Battle of Ideas” and forced him to be at his side in public.
His father, Juan Miguel González, also occupied a place in Parliament. Elián sees this “coincidence” as another responsibility to the regime. “I know that the training I have, the support and admiration that I enjoy from the people of Cuba, even this responsibility, I owe to Fidel,” he says. continue reading
Despite his meteoric rise in the economic administration of the Island and, soon, in the Government itself, González alleges that he never aspired to any position, although he clarifies this by saying that “I will always be willing to assume it as long as it’s required. I am proud to know that I’m going to share in a part of the historic direction; knowing that Raúl will be there redoubles my happiness,” although he regrets not being able to be “in that room” with Fidel Castro.
Both leaders, he admits, urged him on more than one occasion to follow “that path” of politics. His entry into Parliament, he says, is a sign that “I followed that path and have done it well.”
González devotes several paragraphs to reflecting on the impact that his position will have on his family. “I wouldn’t be a good Cuban if I didn’t take the problems home,” he says, while warning that the work will “steal my time.”
Asked about Cuban democracy, González avoided assessing the system in general and offered a vague answer: in Cuba there is democracy because among his friends are both “a division general” and the “president of the Council of Churches of Cuba.”
As expected, he referred to the “blockade” of the United States as the cause of all the ills of Cuba and detailed his idyllic vision of the Island, “a country [in which] there are so many gratuities [’freebies’] and social benefits.” In addition to the embargo, González assumes that the Cuban economy has a failing for allowing those who “do not contribute anything” to receive the “same benefits” in health and education. “That damages us,” he complained.
He asked that, despite the obvious economic crisis, people “do not lose confidence in their leaders” and to express their problems “without fear.” He did not clarify whether among the ways of being heard by the leaders was that of peaceful protest, for which hundreds of Cubans have been tried in recent months.
González, a member of the Union of Young Communists and with a military education, is one of the regime’s great bets to rejuvenate its image. The election of young deputies has been, at least since the last legislature of the Parliament, a way to appear updated, which echoes the traditional policy of “continuity,” the slogan of Díaz-Canel.
Victimization by the United States and “politically correct” self-criticism characterize the discourse of young people close to the regime. Despite his fifty years, the official singer Israel Rojas repeated last Tuesday in an interview the same ideas about the young people that Elián González had.
In short, Rojas said he defended “the Cuban cause, beyond the government. Because the government also fucks up.” He quickly qualified his statement and said that he did not mind being branded as an “official” musician, because “all speeches are official.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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The recently dismissed president of the Central Bank of Cuba, Martha Wilson González, on television together with the official journalist Randy Alonso. (Cuban Presidency)
14ymedio/EFE, Madrid, 16 February 2023 — On Wednesday, the Cuban government dismissed the president of the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC), Martha Wilson González, after four years in office. Her position will be occupied by Joaquín Alonso Vázquez, until now president of the state Exchange Houses (Cadeca).
Without giving explanations about this movement, which takes place while awaiting a ruling by a London court on a debt of 72 million dollars from the Cuban State, the official site Cubadebate praises the figure of Alonso Vázquez, age 59, saying that “during his career he received postgraduate preparation, which technically and professionally qualify him to hold this position.”
Before starting to preside over Cadeca, in 2017, the official served in different positions in the state banking sector, from provincial deputy director of Banco Popular de Ahorro in Havana to vice president of Banco Popular de Ahorro.
In addition, he has held political positions, as a delegate of the National Assembly of People’s Power and vice president of the National Association of Economists and Accountants of Cuba in Havana, “with positive results,” reports Cubadebate.
As for Wilson González, who was appointed president of the Central Bank of Cuba in 2019, the official media outlet limited itself to saying that “the effort made was recognized and, consequently, other activities will be assigned to her.” continue reading
She is the second minister president of the BCC since the election as president of Cuba of Miguel Díaz-Canel, who this 2023 concludes the five years of his first term and is eligible for a second.
Joaquín Alonso Vázquez was, until now, president of Cadeca. (Havana Tribune)
Dismissals of ministers are not common in Cuba. Parliamentary elections will be held this March and the new Legislature will nominate a president who will in turn form a new Council of Ministers.
At the beginning of the year, it came to light in an article in Cubadebate that the country’s international reserves had fallen by 2.55 billion dollars in two years(2019 and 2020), while international reserves amounted to 11.528 billion in 2018. The figures from the International Bank for Payments indicate that the deposits of Cuban banks, including the Central Bank, fell by 1.95 billion dollars between 2018 and 2020, a figure close to that disclosed in the official press.
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The context in which the complaints appear is worrying: the situation of public health in Cuba is precarious. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Frank Calzón, Miami, 17 February 2023 — The complaint on social networks this week regarding 13 patients killed at the Holguín Psychiatric Hospital, if confirmed, reproduces the tragedy of 2010, when 26 Cubans died in the Mazorra Psychiatric Hospital of Havana, which, according to Granma, was due to low temperatures in the capital from a cold front.
What forced Granma to report on the matter on that occasion were the photos that arrived abroad of the victims, reminiscent of those of the Nazi death camps. We will have to wait for what independent journalists, who continue to be harassed by the regime, will report on the situation in Holguín.
But the context in which the complaints appear is worrying: the situation of public health in Cuba is precarious. The regime maintains a medical apartheid system by which foreigners are treated in air-conditioned hospitals, where they lack nothing and enjoy the necessary diet and medicines. Meanwhile, Cubans suffer from all the shortages of food and medicines.
The Island suffers from epidemics of dengue, scabies and other diseases that had been eradicated before 1959, and an extraordinary increase in pestilence, flies, mosquitoes and rats that did not occur before the Revolution, as a result of the lack of maintenance of the aqueducts and sewer systems, the rationing of food and the poor collection of garbage that piles up in the streets of the poorest neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the Government builds luxury hotels for foreigners. continue reading
That the regime has abused psychiatry for political purposes is undeniable. In 1991, the prestigious University of Rutgers published The Policy of Psychiatry in Revolutionary Cuba, a study of more than 200 pages sponsored by Freedom House and Of Human Rights, presided over by Dr. Elena Mederos and the exiled bishop Eduardo Boza Masvidal.
In a devastating introduction, Vladimir Bukovsky, the Soviet dissident and intellectual that the KGB tortured in a psychiatric hospital, wrote: “One cannot be surprised. . . Cuba in this matter is only different in that it achieved in thirty-two years what the USSR achieved in seventy-three. During a single generation, Cuba advanced from ’revolutionary justice’ to ’socialist legality’, from ’the liquidation of class enemies’ to ’political re-education’ and to ’psychiatric treatment’ of ’those disaffected with socialism’.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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The crisis is aggravated every year by the lack of Abate pesticide, insecticides and even fumigation fuel. (Minsap)
14ymedio, Havana, 16 February 2023 — BioCubaFarma hopes that this year they will finally have the first vaccination candidate against dengue, after almost a decade of research, Eduardo Martínez Díaz, president of the state pharmaceutical group, told the official press on Thursday.
In 2013, Cuba began the first studies to develop a vaccine against the virus transmitted by mosquitoes of the Aedesaegypti species. In an interview with the official newspaper Granma, Martínez Díaz justifies the delay in the research, saying “it is a complex process,” because dengue has four serotypes and each one must be immunized against at the same time for the drug to be effective.
Although the Government in Havana reiterates that there is currently “no effective and safe vaccine,” in December 2015 the World Health Organization (WHO) approved the first dengue vaccine with the trade name of Dengvaxia, manufactured by the French company, Sanofi Pasteur. This serum has been approved in 20 countries but is not available in Cuba. WHO points out that this drug is aimed at people aged 9 to 45, living in endemic areas and who have had at least one episode of a previous infection.
Guadalupe Guzmán Tirado, director of the Research Center of the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK), also said that Cuban scientists have dedicated “decades of work” to controlling the disease. An example of this, she continued, is that Cuba contributed to the new classification of dengue with or without warning signs from the WHO. continue reading
The president of BioCubaFarma said that by 2023 a rapid dengue diagnosis system will also be launched, developed by the Immunoassay Center, which will identify if a patient is infected with the virus from the appearance of the first symptoms. This will facilitate a differentiated treatment for patients and prevent the worsening of the disease, the executive insisted, without committing to a date for its application.
Martínez Díaz believes that these measures “will have a significant impact” on Cuban families, overwhelmed by the lack of medications and shortages in the hospital network, which doesn’t have the supplies needed to care for patients.
The highest peaks of dengue infections occur between September and November of each year, coinciding with winter on the Island. The disease is a public health problem for most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, although the Government maintains that dengue hemorrhagic fever was introduced in 1981 by Eduardo Arocena, a Cuban convicted of terrorism in the United States who was released in 2021 after almost 40 years in prison.
The Cuban regime kept the number of active cases on the Island a secret in 2022, but the provincial press gave clues to the severity of the disease. One of the provinces with the highest incidence was Santiago de Cuba, which reached figures not seen in 15 years and the highest number of outbreaks from the transmitting mosquito.
The majority of confirmations of deaths associated with the virus transpired on social networks, and among the deceased there were also several health professionals. The crisis is aggravated every year by the lack of the Abate pesticide, insecticides and even fuel to fumigate or transport doctors to the areas with the greatest presence of the mosquito.
Even health care centers have not been spared the proliferation of outbreaks. A patient from the 14 de Junio Polyclinic, in Havana, told this newspaper that the rooms with electric beds, which are supposed to be dark rooms and free of infection, are populated by these insects. The woman arrived for an evaluation of her feet, but at the end of the exam “there were five mosquito marks. The mosquitoes nest in the bottom of the machines in the room. When they turn them on, they come out,” she said.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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The soot from the fire in the garage had reached part of the floor immediately above and the sign spelling out the name of the building, which has long been missing letters. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 16 February 2023 — The explosion of an electric motorcycle caused a fire in the early hours of this Thursday in the garage of the Hermanas Giralt Building, in El Vedado, Havana. The event occurred around one in the morning, according to local residents speaking to 14ymedio.
“Thanks to the fact that the firefighters came immediately it was put out, but it was scary to hear the screams. It felt like saying ’fire, fire, help, help!’” recounts a woman residing near the damaged property. Another young man commented, referring to the frequent accidents with this type of vehicle: “The motorcycles are tremendously dangerous, they are time bombs, wherever you put them, you are playing with people’s lives.”
The neighbors, who reported that the electricity was cut off during the early hours of the morning in the vicinity –including the Habana Libre hotel and the so-called Torre K – feared for the electricity cables and gas pipes, but apparently, they were not affected. There were also no injuries.
The Havana fire department itself published on its Facebook page images of its actions at the building, located in the heart of the once luxurious Calle 23, between D and E.
Around noon, agents from the Ministry of the Interior were still at the scene collecting evidence. The soot from the fire in the garage had reached part of the floor immediately above and the sign spelling out the name of the building, which has long been missing letters.
In fact, the building, visible with its 17 floors from many parts of Havana, has been falling apart for years, despite having been one of the most luxurious in the capital.
Construction started in 1958 onthe project by the architect Óscar Fernández Tauler – who was inspired by the clean style of Frank Lloyd Wright. Under the Vazarta Territorial company, construction ended in 1961, two years after the triumph of the Revolution, when, already in the hands of the National Institute of Savings and Housing, the building was baptized with the name of Hermanas [Sisters] Giralt*, a symbol of the fight against Batista.
Its spacious apartments and its view of the sea made it a privileged enclave, and various cultural and entertainment personalities resided in its homes. When private accommodations began to be allowed in Cuba in the mid-1990s, it was also a magnet for tourists.
However, the deterioration of the façade and the balconies has turned it into a danger, and there have been complaints from the residents themselves, who published on social networks, last October, that the previous May the repair of the property had begun property, although the post regretted the “interruptions due to lack of allocations of economic resources.”
“The only thing missing is that the Copextel SA Technical Management entity fulfills the legally established commitment in a contract to repair the deteriorated roof terrace and its perimeter wall, a place where they have facilities and work equipment,” the post denounced. “For a year now they have been failing to comply despite the alerts from the owners’ board, who are already considering going to a legal claim.”
*Translator’s note: The Giralt Sisters were famous for having been tortured and killed by the Batista regime. Currently, some of the units in the building are in use as luxury vacation rentals.
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A space like the Havana Zoo could be the propitious scenario for spread between species and possible contagion to humans. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 16 February 2023 — “You approach and it seems nice, a green rectangle, but it immediately jumps out that it’s a place with many hidden things,” says María Elena Valdivia, designer and neighbor of the 26th Avenue Zoo in Havana, the place where lions roar and the first case of avian flu has been detected. If someone had thought about the worst point on the Island for the virus to land, reality has just surpassed it.
This Thursday the main entrance of the park remained closed, although the movement of workers could be seen inside. A faded poster with a painted zebra welcomes people, but there is no sign of the line of families with children that is usually nearby. The park has been in quarantine since the H5N1 subtype of avian influenza was detected in wild birds.
“This has been a health problem for our community for a long time and we are very concerned about this,” says Valdivia, who lives a few meters from the bus stop near the main entrance of the zoo. “I grew up in this neighborhood and went to the zoo many times as a child. I have pleasant memories, but living nearby is something else; this place has to be closed.”
She lists the problems. “The animals are hungry, overcrowded and cry all the time. We live 24 hours a day with roars, bellows and bleats that make you sad. It’s very difficult to sit at your table at home and eat hearing those sounds of beings that are starving. I can’t do it anymore.”
Overcrowding and the presence of mammals near the areas intended for birds or in contact with wild birds increases the risk posed by the Havana zoo of a jump of the virus between species. The disease, first detected in 1996, has spread among free birds and those in captivity, but in recent decades it has also affected humans.
Migratory birds carry the four strains of this influenza that has already reached Central and South America. Avian influenza is still rare in people “but we cannot assume that this is always the case, and we must prepare for any change in situation,” warned the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Between 2003 and March 2022, there have been 864 cases in humans and 456 deaths. continue reading
Recently, the alarm went off even more when in Peru it was confirmed that the death of hundreds of sea lions was due to the virus, and researchers warn that there may already be contagion among mammals. “What happened in Peru is the first case in all of Latin America of massive mammal mortality,” acknowledges Víctor Gamarra-Toledo, an ornithologist and researcher in the Andean country.
A space like the Havana zoo could be the ideal scenario for the spread among species and possible contagion to humans. The authorities have not updated the situation and insist that everything is controlled, but the traditional secrecy of the official Cuban media generates more suspicion than certainty. In previous epidemics, reality has far surpassed the information disseminated by the national media.
A few years ago, the presence of the giant African snail was detected at the 26th Avenue zoo. After being closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the park reopened with a panorama of malnourished animals, without water, with their cages full of dirt and excrement, in addition to the prominence of the snail, one of the 100 most invasive species internationally.
People focused on Covid and masks, but we have also had to live with the African snail; no one told us that they eat everything.” A neighbor close to the Zoo says that he has seen how his small garden with succulents and banana bushes has been devoured by “slow but crushing beings like the elephant.”
Apes confined in tiny cages, employees who profit by taking out lion cubs for photographs, workers who sell anything from peacock feathers to hyena excrement, in high demand in certain religious rituals: the zoo on 26th Avenue is old-style, with caged animals and lack of hygiene.
However, fears that the virus will affect national poultry production seem much lower in a country with decimated production due to the lack of animal feed, the deterioration of farms and the increasing import of chicken meat from nations in the region, especially the United States. The “disease” that seems to have ended the poultry industry on the Island does not spread among birds but is born from the inefficiency of the system.
The main fears with the current situation are focused, then, on the impact on wild birds and the possible zoonotic jump, a scenario that would aggravate the delicate situation of the public health system, which has a deficit of professionals and drugs and a very deteriorated infrastructure.
This week, private sellers of trinkets and toys have disappeared. The zoo, a state-run monopoly, is a frequent target of resellers who take advantage of their increasingly poor subsidized offers to buy and then offer those same products to the families who come to visit the premises. But between the closure and the fear of contagion, visitors are dissuaded from even approaching their kiosks.
It’s funny because you can hear a lot of birds singing, most of them passing through or wild. They like this area because of the many trees in the middle of the city,” says another neighbor whose patio is barely separated by a street from the back of the zoo. “This sound has always been there, but now with the arrival of avian flu, you notice it more because you don’t know what’s going to happen to the birds.”
Through one of the trees whose branches come out of the zoo and almost touch the roof of this resident’s house, an agile mockingbird jumps and sings his song, a melody of hope in the midst of worry.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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Reports are still coming in from the Cuban capital to the editorial desk of this newspaper, confirming that the mobile telephone service is still not operating. (Perioódico Cubano)
14ymedio, Havana, 16 February 2023 – An outage of internet and mobile data was reported in Cuba this Thursday afternoon at 6.45pm, according to reports to 14ymedio from various parts of the country, after a mass gathering at the Grand Packard Hotel in Old Havana, where the American rapper ’Tekashi 6ix9ine’ was staying.
“Only landlines were working, and, in some places Nauta Hogar (Cuban telecoms company), but there was no data or mobile signal”, a phone user from Sancti Spíritus told this newspaper at 7.40pm when the signal returned to his phone.
“We inform our customers that at the present moment there is a problem with mobile services. We are working as fast as we can to identify and fix the problem”, said the Cuban Telecommunication Company (Etecsa) after the service had been down for an hour.
Reports are still coming in from the Cuban capital to the editorial desk of this newspaper confirming that the mobile telephone service is still not operating. continue reading
Before the regime cut off the service, there were reports on social media of a mass gathering in front of the Grand Packard Hotel, mostly of young Cubans who had heard about Tekashi’s arrival there.
Several sources reported the moment when dollar bills were thrown from the hotel and this was video’d by a number of people.
Tekashi has gone viral on several occasions for throwing dollar bills to his fans or for giving large sums of money to poor families.
Translated by Ricardo Recluso
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In the last two years, Cuba received several donations from Russia, the United States, Japan, Nicaragua and Vietnam. (Prensa Latina)
EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 15 February 2023 — On Wednesday, Cuba received 25,000 tons of wheat donated by the Russian Government for food production on the Island, which is going through a serious economic crisis.
The Cuban Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, Ana Teresita González, thanked Russia for the donation, which arrived in Cuba by ship and joined other shipments from Moscow in recent months.
“This donation is a demonstration of the Russian nation’s historic support for the Cuban people in complex moments like the one our country is experiencing today,” González said in an act of gratitude at the port terminal located in Regla (Havana).
She added that the aid “reaffirms the bonds of brotherhood and the mutual commitment to strengthen economic and cooperative relations.”
Meanwhile, Russia’s ambassador to Cuba, Andrei Guskov, stressed that his country continues to “support the brotherly people of this heroic country in the extremely complex situation it is facing.” continue reading
“I am sure that this wheat, in addition to being a symbolic gesture, will be a support for many people in Cuba,” he said.
The Russian diplomat mentioned in the reception of the cargo that “the unprecedented resurgence of the inhuman and criminal blockade (embargo) imposed by Washington” is one of the causes of the crisis.
“Another negative factor is the global food and energy crisis largely caused by the unilateral and illegitimate sanctions of the West against Moscow,” he said, referring to the measures taken in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine.
Guskov stressed that “despite everything, Russia and Cuba continue to develop their strategic relationship based on the historic foundation of friendship, solidarity and mutual sympathy.”
In this regard, he said that “Russian companies will continue to participate in bilateral projects that contribute to the fulfillment of the Island’s national economic and social development plan until 2030.”
In the last two years, Cuba received several donations from Russia, the United States, Japan, Nicaragua and Vietnam, among other countries, from both the governments of those countries and from private groups.
The island has been going through a serious crisis for more than two years due to the combination of the COVID-19 pandemic, the tightening of the US embargo and failures in national macroeconomic management.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
Frame from the music video for the song Te pienso [I Think of You], by Beangel, Randy Malcom and Kelvis Ochoa. (Screen capture)
14ymedio, Madrid, 15 February 2023 — Since this Tuesday, Te pienso is part of the list of songs dedicated to Cuba and its situation. Composed by the duo Beangel, formed by Beatriz César and Ángel Pututi, the theme, they say in a press release, is “a declaration of love” for the Island.
“We pay respect to the rafters, to those who never arrived and died at sea,” say the Beangel musicians, who have composed for, among other singers, Marc Anthony and the duo Gente de Zona.
Member of this ensemble and special guest in the video clip, Randy Malcom adds: “The song is dedicated to the land that I love so much and where I cannot perform.”
Cuban singer-songwriter Kelvis Ochoa, author of Hidden Havana and winner of a Goya Award in 2006 for the best original music for the film Havana Blues, also participates in the song, which is available on all digital platforms.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
Cuban children remain with their parents in Panama to wait to continue the route to the US. (Silvio Enrique Campos, a Cuban immigrant in Panama)
14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 15 February 2023 — For some time, Cuban communists have been facing a serious problem that, due to its permanence and worsening, they don’t know how to address. We are referring to the rapid demographic aging that has made Cuba, with more than 20% of the population over 65 years old, into one of the oldest countries in Latin America, and possibly in the world.
The Cuban demographic winter, the aging of the population and a simultaneous decrease in birth and growth with a fall in population is not a recent phenomenon, but has been part of a long-term dynamic in Cuba since the 1950s. That the authorities now wake up in amazement and consider doing something is anecdotal.
By the mid-twentieth century, Cuba had joined the demographics of advanced countries, without the negative consequences of today. Since then, external migration compensated for the lower internal growth. The revolution disrupted this process, and except for specific oscillations in certain years, the trend was the same again, with the aggravating circumstance that foreign migrations disappeared while the nation bled with more than two million Cubans abroad.
These guidelines have been exacerbated recently, and this has led Díaz Canel to declare that “we have to give a blow to all these issues of demographic dynamics that affect us so much.” The question is the same as always, how do they plan to do it, with the paradigm of the communist model? Failure is inevitable.
The diagnosis is clear. In 2022, demographic dynamics showed that Cuba continues with an accelerated demographic aging process, which is also present in all sectors of society, with a negative total and natural population growth, which has its origin in an increase in the number of deaths and the decrease in live births. continue reading
Indicators have caused the alarm, in the face of what is described as an increasingly complex situation (another one) in the words of Cuban Prime Minister Marrero, who, to this end, has announced the creation of a “governmental commission to look into it.”
The situation is aggravated by other coincident and surprising factors, such as the decrease in the working-age population and the economically active population, the increase in urbanization, despite the decrease in the urban population, and the increase in the average number of people per household.
The combination of factors is so negative that now the communist leaders also recognize that “in many places there is a lack of attention, beyond the absence of resources, and these are extremely sensitive issues.” There is the feeling that, once again, they arrive late for problems and will not succeed if they don’t make a 180-degree turn in their performance.
Because getting out of the demographic winter in a nation as economically committed as Cuba is not just a matter of pulling public spending and having material and financial resources incorporated into the state plan and budget, by agencies and territories. Those who think that the 2,113 million pesos, recorded in the public accounts for 2023, will be of some use are wrong.
But when you look at the destiniation of that money, the immediate question is: What does it have to do with the recovery of the population that is needed? Let’s see. There is public money for “resources for stomatological prostheses, hearing aids, care for the infertile couple and modernization of equipment for assisted reproduction centers.” Also for the training and attention to the education of the elderly, development of workshops, events and other improvement actions. Are there resources? Yes, of course, the earnings and salaries of employees who serve people. And little else. Current expenditure.
This plan of the regime coincides with the one that aroused our attention a few days ago when the recovery was announced by territorial governments of childcare centers, nursing homes, maternal homes and grandparents’ homes, the construction of homes for mothers with three children or more, as well as housing needs in rural areas, taking advantage of abandoned communist infrastructures such as schools in the countryside.
Who can think that the increase in children’s facilities can be used to increase the birth rate, when the Cuban woman knows that it makes very little sense to bring children into a country where they will have no other future than fleeing into exile when they are older? Despite the systemic waste of expenses, the regime is to blame for having only met half of the requests for childcare centers. The solution is easy: stop building hotel rooms.
The initiative of the opening of children’s homes in labor entities, that is, companies, will be subject to inequalities because it will only be possible for those workers who provide their services in those companies with the capacity to create these classrooms. Before incorporating companies into the service, availability must be ensured for everyone. Communists think of companies rather than of setting up a form of self-employment as a childcare assistant. A formula that they don’t like because they say it’s unfair according to their ideological code. One yes, the other no.
At the meeting of the authorities, an evaluation kit in geriatrics and gerontology was also presented for use in health institutions, to address aging, which contains a glucose meter, a digital equipment to take pressure and an oximeter, among others, prepared by the company Combiomed Digital Medical Technology. It is thought that this is a basic module that should exist in any population care center, because it is not only for the sick, it is also for studying population, early diagnosis and follow-up.
At the meeting, the proposal for the improvement of care schools was also presented, which will have the responsibility to train caregivers, paid or unpaid, to provide them with the knowledge, skills and aptitudes, that allow them to provide care with the highest possible quality.
Flailing around. Not one on the target. The fight against the fall of the population does not depend on these kinds of laboratory initiatives, but on the basis of a prosperous economy in which everyone takes part. Curving the depressive dynamics of the population does not depend on public spending, but on the creation of powerful and solvent private activities and sectors that pay good wages and improve the quality of life and prosperity of the people. Communists entertain themselves with their resource objectives, pecking here and there, but in this type of action, the only thing that matters is the results.
However, the leaders assure that demographic problems will be solved in the medium and long term with some euphoria, but they also say that “the fight will be difficult and discouragement must be avoided if the population patterns are to be changed” to which the governors, the mayors and the councils of the administration of municipalities and provinces must remain attentive. More work. Will it work?
Translated by Regina Anavy
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
The writer and director of the Mexican publishing house Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE), Paco Ignacio Taibo II, in Mexico City (Mexico). (EFE/José Méndez/Archive)
EFE/14ymedio, Havana, February 15, 2023 — The director of the emblematic Mexican state publisher Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE), Paco Ignacio Taibo II, gave an interview to EFE in which he asked the official journalism of the Island to “increase the critical level that expresses what people say on the street.”
The writer, a militant of the Mexican left, who is in the Cuban capital within the framework of the Havana International Book Fair, considered that there is a “disconnection” between the discourse related to the Government and the vision of the common Cuban.
“We have to lose fear of critical capacity,” continued the journalist, who gave value to “the criticism to the left from the left.”
For Taibo II, author of titles such as Ernesto Guevara, también conocido como el Che [Ernesto Guevara, also known as Che], the digital transition of Island magazines, books and newspapers “has stopped” the “critical spirit” that “unfolded, for example, in the eighties.”
The Cuban Constitution establishes that the media of the Island can only be of “socialist property” and its Criminal Code punishes with up to three years in prison “whoever disseminates false news” for the purpose of “disturing international peace or endangering the prestige or credit of the Cuban State.”
Regarding the economic situation in Cuba, a country he has visited numerous times, the director of the FCE believes that it will be “very difficult to get out of” the crisis, which he directly links to the blockade (the US economic embargo) and the pandemic.
“As much as I look and see initiatives, it’s not easy at all. And I lack the Cuban perspective, which I don’t have. After all, I am a Mexican who comes to Cuba,” he told EFE. continue reading
Taibo II inaugurated last August the Tuxpan bookstore of the Economic Culture Fund in the well-known Havana area of Vedado. Originally, the opening was going to be in April, after the closing of the last Havana Book Fair, in which Mexico was the guest country of honor, but an inexplicable delay in the works also delayed the inauguration.
The director of the FCE sees the operation of the branch in the Cuban capital as a “success,” although he admits that “the only problem is to maintain it with those prices.” Unlike other foreign publishers, the Fund decided to sell its copies at affordable prices for Cubans.
This Tuesday, the writer led a talk in Old Havana about the “Vientos del Pueblo” collection, with short books with an average price of 40 Cuban pesos ($0.32 at the official exchange rate).
“I can’t see the Cuban branch as a branch to produce money. I have to find ways (to compensate for the losses),” he told EFE, the precise reasons for which previous Mexican administrations did not finish opening a Fondo bookstore in Cuba. Taibo added that for this he is looking for agreements such as the purchase of copyright translations made on the Island of books in Eastern Europe. “We are bartering, imagine,” he says, laughing.
The writer also took the opportunity to criticize foreign publishers present at this year’s Fair, such as those in Colombia — a guest of honor this time — with prices that most Cubans cannot access, even in foreign exchange. “Compadre, that’s not worth it. Do you work for buyers or for readers?” he asked.
Last Saturday, López Obrador decorated his counterpart Miguel Díaz-Canel with the order of the Aztec Eagle, the Mexican State’s highest recognition of a foreigner, during the Cuban’s visit to Campeche.
The opposition National Action Party (PAN), as well as other politicians and intellectuals from the democratic left, criticized the decoration of the Cuban president, whom they described as a dictator.
“The act is deplorable and denigrating for Mexicans and Cuban citizens who live under a regime that keeps them in oppression,” said the right-wing party.
Regarding this controversy, Taibo II said that “the Mexican right no longer knows what to say.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
A group of Cuban doctors is received in Mexico, hired by the Government of Andrés Manuel López. (IMSS)
14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico, 13 February 2022 — The Government of Mexico announced the purchase in Cuba of medicines for anesthesiology, pulmonology, ophthalmology and cancer treatment. According to the Secretary of Health, Jorge Alcocer Varela, for the “already consolidated” acquisition, the Island will receive 84,425 dollars as part of the new health agreement that was ratified with Miguel Díaz-Canel’s visit to Campeche.
This agreement also provides for the extension of the hiring of Cuban specialists. The plan, which has not yet been detailed, foresees that another 100 health workers will arrive in Mexico this year, in addition to the more than 641 doctors for which the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador disburses $1,308,922 per month.
The state company Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos S.A. is in charge of managing the shipment of doctors. For each specialist, the Cuban Government receives $2,042 per month, while for the services of general practitioners, $1,722 per month enter its coffers. Health professionals are only granted a stipend in Mexico that will be kept by the Cuban Government during their year of service.
Although there are intentions to continue with the purchase of the Abdala vaccine against covid-19, this has not yet been ratified by Mexico. 14ymedio was able to confirm that, of the 9,000,000 doses already sent to Mexico, less than 3% had been used up to February 7.
About the Cuban specialists who have been distributed in various states, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard proclaimed this Sunday on his social networks that thanks to these professionals “162,000 Mexican lives have been saved.” And so he said goodbye to Díaz-Canel. continue reading
However, one day before the enthusiasm of the Mexican chancellor, the data provided by the Mexican Secretary of Health, Jorge Alcocer Varela, reveal something else. Cubans had provided 242,000 services as of Friday, of which, he stressed, 110,246 were specialty consultations.
In detailing part of the activities of physicians in Mexico, Health Secretary Jorge Alcocer explained that Cubans have “coordinated laboratory services”; that is, they have taken samples for the performance of 46,191 clinical analyses and performed 41,418 X-rays for radiological studies.
The general director of the Mexican Social Security Institute, Zoé Robledo, explained that Cubans who arrived in Mexico have a specialty in internal medicine, pediatrics, general surgery, family medicine, ophthalmology, nephrology, intensive care, imaging, cardiology, dermatology and otorhinolaryngology.
Robledo mentioned that doctors are currently in large general and civilian hospitals, as well as in small community health centers “where their arrival often meant the first time there was a specialist available.”
He mentioned that they are located in the most remote areas such as La Mesa del Nayar, (Nayarit), the Costa Chica (Oaxaca), the desert of Baja California Sur, Cananea (Sonora), Tlaxcala, Colima, Tierra Caliente (Michoacán), in the Huasteca Alta (Veracruz), in Zacatecas, Morelos, Campeche and La Montaña de Guerrero, where 11 specialists arrived just this Sunday to make a total of 29.
“There are no ’acceptable left-wing dictatorships’ and ’abhorrent right-wing dictatorships’,” they said in a public statement, signed by members of the opposition party Movimiento Ciudadano, including Martha Tagle Martínez, as well as the Party of the Democratic Revolution, Cecilia Soto González, and the academics, Diego Petersen Farah, José Woldenberg, the Cuban academic based in Mexico and Armando Chaguaceda, among others.
“We condemn the president of Mexico for turning a deaf ear to the repression that the citizens of Cuba endure on a daily basis and even for hanging on the chest of the Cuban dictator the highest distinction that a foreigner can receive from our country,” the signatories endorsed.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
14ymedio, Havana, 17 February 2023 — The Cuban Police arrested 126 people last year and deactivated 12 networks linked to the scam in the sale of foreign currency. According to a report published in official site Cubadebate, the Ministry of the Interior detected another 17 criminal plans and charged 67 suspected criminals, currently in pretrial detention, on whom, it assures, “severe sentences of deprivation of liberty” will fall.
