The Cheapest ‘Street Drink’ in Cuba Now Costs More than the Daily Minimum Wage

Though the price marked on the metal trolley was 25 pesos per freshly poured glass, a paper sign above it now announced that the product had gone up by five pesos. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 20 December 2022 – At first it quenches the thirst but later you’re left wanting another, and then another. Granizado [English: ’slush’] is the cheapest drink you can get whilst out and about on the streets in Cuba, but in times of inflation even this glass of ice, water and syrup has seen its price arrive at a level beyond the pockets of anyone who only earns the monthly minimum wage.

Known as raspado in other Latin American countries, Cuban granizado has been there for the common people through thick and thin. Consumed with peanuts, this sugared drink was a lifesaver during long hours of waiting for the bus at dawn before any breakfast, and even in the improvised social gatherings on the Malecón in Havana when you didn’t even have the price of a shot of rum.

But even this modest sip has become unrecognisable. In only a decade granizado has become more than ten times more expensive. If a glass of it cost 2 pesos in 2012 now it’s 30 — a price that’s alienated even its most loyal customers: pensioners, those with few resources and adolescents who can’t afford a can of fizzy drink. continue reading

On Tuesday morning, a cart selling granizado appeared opposite the steps of the entrance to Havana University. With its range of flavours including strawberry, cola and ice-cream, it was noticeable that no one approached it to cool themselves down in the December heat with a cold sugary drink. Though the price marked on the metal trolley was 25 pesos per freshly poured glass, a paper sign above it now announced that the product had gone up by five pesos.

On the benches nearby dozens of people formed a long queue (line) for the buses, which, increasingly spread out now, line up from Calle San Lázaro. In earlier times they would have hung around and had a granizado first, but most of them are elderly and their pension doesn’t provide them more than 2,000 pesos a month. It’s just too much to spend more than a day’s pension on a coloured squash drink that disappears in three mouthfuls.

The sellers, however, justify the price increase. “No one sells me anything cheaply. I have to get up really early every morning and pay for the the ice at the price that it’s at on the day”. A bag of ice of between 6 and 7 pounds never goes below 80 pesos and “you have to add to that the cost of the syrup and the paper cups”. In order to get hold of the supply of most of these materials one needs to get onto the black market.

The granizado man continues with his list of complaints: “It’s increasingly more expensive for me to keep the cart in a secure place, and then there’s the fines that sometimes I get for selling on some corner where I shouldn’t be, or then some spiteful inspector wants to get money out of me… All this just adds up and adds up”. His story might sound logical enough and try to minimise the rise in prices but it doesn’t manage to change many of his customers’ decisions.

What was a drink to be grabbed in ordinary life for everyday need, to give you a swig and move you on for another half hour, has now been added to the list of things that can no longer be afforded, a bit like it all ended up with a beer, a soft drink or even a bottled water.

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.

Cuban Government Prepares the Approval of Euthanasia in its New Health Law

Cuban residents who live abroad should pay their medical bills punctually. (Calixto García General Hospital/Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14medio, Madrid, Spain, December 12, 2022 — On Sunday, Cuba’s Public Health Minister Jose Angel Portal Miranda presented a draft of a Law of Public Health in which, along with other big news, the right to euthanasia is authorized.

The text still is not known, but according to the official press, it proposes recognition of euthanasia as a “right of a person to a death with dignity and with attention to safe medical care by a health provider or a physician who will carry out the euthanasia.” “This is very revolutionary, and we should not deprive our people of this right,” said Portal Miranda.

According to the announcement, the Island will unite with seven other individual countries that have legalized active euthanasia around the world: Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain, Canada, Columbia and New Zealand.  Nevertheless, Cuba could opt to follow other models after discussing the definitive text. There are countries that have approved assisted suicide, such as Germany and Switzerland, and others in which passive euthanasia is practiced (a method much employed and present in Nordic countries, the UK and France, and in Argentina, Chile, Mexico and India).

The draft law of public health also introduces other practices, such as limits on free services. Thus, Cuban residents who live abroad should pay for their medical expenses on time. The law guarantees the right to public health, but is limited to Cubans,  foreigners with permanent residency in the country and humanitarian alien residents, as opposed to countries like Spain that maintain a public and universal system for nationals and foreigners.

Other novelties of the law would require the informed consent, to be signed by the patient or his/her legal representative in the event that he/she is not able to approve the medical proceeding to which he/she will submit.  Progress was also made for separate attention to social, sexual and reproductive health and for assisted reproductive health.

The content of the law will be disclosed in the first quarter of 2023 and will be discussed to evaluate it with the workers of the sector and the population to subsequently present it to the National Assembly. But the controversy that approval of euthanasia will cause is already foreseeable. In the debate of this Sunday’s committee first concerns were already raised, including that of a deputy who asked if it would apply to children. continue reading

José Luis Toledo Santander, chairman of the Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs, replied that many aspects have to be analyzed and the law is still in a preliminary phase. Other deputies agreed that they expected the establishment of a very specific framework of rights and guarantees for health workers.

In addition, other related issues were addressed in the committee, such as the shortage of medicines. The minister noted that there are 252 basic medicines (composed of 627) that are imported, which is 40%, while the remaining 60% is produced by the Cuban industry. He also specified that 347 are for institutional use and 280 for sale in pharmacies, of which 84 are included in the control card.

As of December 5, the lack of medicines affected 219 products (of which 28 belong to the card) and another 197 had a supply expected to last less than 30 days.

“It is very hard, and we are convinced that nothing relieves when some medicine is missing, but we have not stopped the health system from implementing actions to alleviate the situation as much as possible,” Portal Miranda said after talking about the large amount of funding that has been dedicated to the pandemic, 53% of the resources, which has decreased spending on other items.

The problems are not limited to drugs. The minister spoke of resources such as catheters, transfusion equipment, prostheses, collectors and, of course, parts of diagnostic technological machinery that reduce capacity by 9%.

After reciting all the operations and services that have been carried out on the island, the minister announced, without details, that a new model for the network of pharmacies and opticians will begin “experimentally in Havana, in search of greater control and transparency in the area of medicines and the protection of vulnerable groups.”

The commission also addressed the situation of the collection of waste, as well as the necrological services, both in frank decline. However, the most worrying data were those offered in funeral transportation.

Mildrey Granadillo de la Torre, Deputy Minister of Economy and Planning, said that 615 hearses are needed to guarantee service and 377 are currently operating. Of these, only 233 are working.

“It’s a very complex scenario, because it’s not just about parts and pieces, but that they are aging car brands. Those operating are mainly over 15 years old, with a significant degree of deterioration,” he said. At the moment, 35 new imported vehicles are expected to arrive this December, although it was not said from where.

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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 Traditional Christmas Pig in Cuba, Badly Frozen and Only with a Ration Book

The meat is, according to Havana housewives’ diagnosis, “at room temperature” and the bad smell is impossible to remove, even by frying it in very hot butter. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez/Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 16 December 2022 — The stench comes from the back of the butcher shop, from the bundle of pork that the clerks handle with sweaty hands. As he approaches the counter, having survived being shoved and yelled at while in line, Carlos discovers that the unpleasant smell comes from the reddish suet that mucks up the floor.

The transaction is short-lived. The butcher sets his hooks and knives on the mass of smelly meat, weighs it –always cheating, but even Cubans get used to dishonesty — and throws it inside the shopping bag. The manipulation of the scale does not seem to matter to the policeman who watches over the buyers and who, at the end of the day, will be paid in kind for his “indifference.”

The smell is just the beginning of the odyssey to have a bit to eat to put on the family table during the New Year holidays.

The smell is just the beginning of the odyssey to have a bit of energy to put on the family table during the New Year holidays

The meat just bought is old, gray, and almost greenish. Fat, cartilage and bone predominate. Its texture is perhaps the most unpleasant, typical of pork that has not been well refrigerated and that, when it begins to thaw, becomes slimy to the touch.

Unfortunately, Carlos thinks, he listened to the clerks who were shouting on the outskirts of the butcher shop. “Make the effort and buy now,” they said this Thursday, “this is what’s left and tomorrow is going to be worse.” There were people who were more discerning, who preferred to not buy anything.

The meat that the government puts up for sale for the end-of-year celebrations is, according to the diagnosis of Havana housewives, “lukewarm” and it is impossible to remove the stench, even when frying it in very hot butter. continue reading

The conspiracy theorists in the neighborhood have already launched their explanation: in the absence of a recent product, the government makes available for sale its mysterious “war reserve,” the secret food arsenal that has always been attributed to the regime. It is not pork that has been kept in a refrigerator, hanging on a hook, but in little refrigerated warehouses, one piece on top of another. For this reason, they say, the meat is “crushed” and has an “ugly” color.

Crackling pork rind, fried pork chunks or some roasted ribs have always been part of the Cuban New Year’s festivities, even more than holiday trees and cider. The latter, the official hatred for the Christmas festivities has made them disappear and reappear from homes, but pork meat had remained a constant despite the fact that every December of the last decade its price has risen significantly.

In private markets, a pound of steak or leg is close to 500 Cuban pesos but, as the month progresses and Christmas Eve approaches, the product’s presence decreases

In private markets, a pound of steak or leg is close to 500 Cuban pesos, but as the month progresses and Christmas Eve approaches, the product’s presence decreases. Hence, the official announcement was received with relief that the product would begin to be sold in the city of Havana in a “limited, controlled-release” manner, upon presentation of the ration book.

Silvia, Xiomara and María Eugenia have come to an understanding. Between the three of them they will buy a piece of pork that costs about 7,500 pesos. It is a leg that will be divided for Christmas Eve dinner for their corresponding families. “We’re just going to buy just one because no one has the money for the piece that is allocated to her nuclear family,” María Eugenia clarifies.

Since last Sunday, having been alerted that the sales would begin this Wednesday, the three retirees began to stand in line at the butcher shop on Ermita and Conill streets, in the municipality of Plaza de la Revolución. Since then, they have alternated the hours they spend in line, hoping that the time to go into the establishment will arrive this Friday afternoon. “We have about 80 people ahead of us, and sales are going very slowly.”

The long wait is not because the piece of meat has to be cut, since the customer must purchase the complete piece, a requirement that has made many needy people give up, since they do not have the thousands of pesos that a leg costs at a price of 250 pesos per pound. “They weighed a medium one for me and it came out at 6,800 pesos so I had to share buying it with a neighbor,” warns a nearby resident who went in “among the first” because she started standing in line last Saturday. The delay is attributed to “all the paperwork that must be reviewed before buying.”

According to the woman, it is pork meat “with a lot of fat,” it comes unpackaged, which makes her assume it’s from Cuban pigs, but the employees could not tell her if it was imported or from national farms. “The store has refrigeration problems and when I bought the leg, I ran home to put it in the freezer because otherwise it wouldn’t make it to the end of the year.”

In other municipalities, such as Arroyo Naranjo, the residents have improvised real encampments outside the butcher shops to be able to get a portion of meat

In other municipalities, such as Arroyo Naranjo, the residents have improvised real encampments outside butcher shops to be able to get a portion of meat, since it is known that what is available is not enough for all the households registered in the city’s rationed market. On social networks, some of them have shared photos of people wrapped in blankets or drinking rum to warm up in the cool early morning this December.

“I hope that the piece that I get is tenderloin, which is worth 235 pesos a pound and comes with some ribs for frying that my children love,” commented a resident of El Vedado this Thursday, who has to buy at the local store at 17th and K streets. “You can always convince someone else in line to take your piece if you don’t like it and he prefers it that way.”

However, the man fears that the meat that signals the holidays could also become a matter of contention. “Those who are buying legs for three households are not going to be able to separate it until everything is cut in their presence, because otherwise there will be a dispute due to a little extra lard that goes to one or a few chunks above what the other gets.”

Translated by Norma Whiting

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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.

Economic Inequalities in Cuba are Increasing

Fidel Castro dedicating himself to the cultivation of moringa. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 21 December 2022 — When it comes to the analysis of the Cuban economy, the same conclusion can always be reached: the communist model of intervention and maximum control of the means of production has caused enormous inequalities and injustices in society. But in the absence of a Gini index for Cuba, which would measure income inequality and other similar indicators, the regime shields itself in the positions it occupies in the United Nations human development indices.

The reality, however, is far away, and you don’t see it in what the state press reports these days. There are two news reports, and each one is more distant and different. On the one hand, we have First Prime Minister Marrero celebrating the fifth anniversary of the founding of the Center for Research of Protein Plants and Bionatural Products, an entity that, like other similar ones, was created by Fidel Castro when he became obsessed with the food properties of moringa. There is that center, which has been operating for five years like everything else in Cuba, throwing away public spending, as if the money fell from the sky.

Marrero highlighted in his speech the influence of Castro on the programs of this entity, which has as its fundamental objective to contribute to the improvement of the health and food of the people, with something as “essential” as leaves of the moringa tree. There are still those who remember Castro in his last years, walking among the trees and confirming that, even in those final moments of his life, he was not willing to leave a puppet and wanted to impose his own irrelevant ideas.

Marrero said that “Fidel Castro said that these solutions could mitigate the negative impact of food crises and contribute to the Food and Nutritional Sovereignty Program,” the same program against which Díaz-Canel lashed out in the assembly a few days ago, in one of the few moments of lucidity of the communist leader, saying that a law was useless if the farmers didn’t produce.

Marrero described the center as a model for the program of protein forage plants and stressed that, among its challenges, it tries to “bring innovation and training to the different productive scenarios for the recovery of livestock, to advance in the scientific lines linked to biomedicine and to consolidate its management model with the stable functioning of the more than 49 work groups created.” When it comes to creating structures dependent on the budgeted sector that increase the deficit, Cuban communists do not skimp on expenses. continue reading

So, even though this center must “develop sustainable value chains by obtaining new scientific results and bring innovation to the spaces and sectors of society where possible to achieve  sovereignty and food and nutritional security of the population,” the results are still far from being produced. For everything else, it is intended that “the generalization of the experiences of the center take place” assuming that its results, which have not yet taken place, will certainly be produced.

In short, a center and an act tailored to Marrero, to testify to his loyalty to Fidel Castro in times when the Castro regime is at a complex crossroads.

And here come the injustices.

Because in the same edition of Granma, there is other information that shows the enormous inequalities that exist on the Island. From the neatness of the moringa research center and the comfort of the Havana convention center, to the sad reality of the dirt floors that exist in numerous homes, especially in the rural municipalities of the interior of the country. Yes. You heard right. This is one of the challenges of housing policy in Cuba: the program for the eradication of dirt floors in the country. And they’ve been facing the challenge for 63 years and haven’t been able to do anything about it.

Now it turns out that the situation is aggravated, above all by the embargo/blockade, but also by the reduction in the production of various construction materials (including cement, sand aggregate and steel), which “has had notable effects on the program, along with structural changes and financial impacts that limit its application to numerous users.”

The information refers to the province of Granma, one of the most affected with 35,834 homes with dirt floors, a figure that may even be higher. Five years ago, it exceeded 53,000 in the territory. For this year, some 4,439 floors had been planned, of which only 1,462 had been completed by the beginning of December, a budget that does not exceed 50% of the integral financing that was initially foreseen. At this rate, not even in ten years will they solve the challenge.

To this is added the increased cost of the action to eliminate dirt floors in the last two years, exceeding 15,000 pesos; that is, the elimination of a floor in a house of about 538 square feet could be on the order of 25,000 pesos (about 138 dollars at the informal exchange rate).

Also, many of the homes are illegal and not recognized in the province’s housing fund, which limits the constructive actions on the terms indicated.

When the state organization fails, those affected try alternatives, but they are not sufficiently exploited either by the state entities, which can produce them, or by the customers themselves, through their own effort, so everything ends badly. The communists are still determined to direct and monitor the process, but it is getting worse and worse, and they are not able to efficiently take advantage of the natural resources of the municipalities, or provide local development programs that are useful. The limitations in the production of cement by the national industry condition any approach, and therefore, homes continue to have dirt floors. And the cost of repair is about 138 dollars.

What solutions do the communists offer? The furthest from reality, and all of them out of the state budget.

First, extending production to the territories, which goes against reaching the technical scale of production with larger series that would reduce unit costs to a minimum.

Second, producing alternatives to cement, such as trimmed marble or extenders, like LC3 cement and others obtained from lime and zeolite, with the aim of doubling the strength of the cement.

Third, the reality of the problem requires greater efficiency, control and agility in productive objectives. And this from the state is going to be very complicated.

From moringa research to rural homes with dirt floors. Two realities that clash in the communist economic model of the revolution, and that are presented before the eyes of society analysts as two examples of the poor coordination of the regime’s decisions under the state budgets.

Here you should ask yourself, what is the priority for a government that claims to be a defender of the poor? And then see what is really the priority. The hotel rooms? The moringa research center? The inequalities are scandalous.

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.

If He Has ‘Breached the Rules’ He Must ‘Leave the Country,’ Bolivia Says About the Expelled Cuban Activist

Cuban activist Magdiel Jorge Castro in front of the Directorate of Migration where he was summoned on December 19, 2022. (@mjorgec1994/Twitter)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio/EFE, Havana, 21 December 2022 — The Bolivian Government announced on Wednesday the expulsion of Cuban activist Magdiel Jorge Castro, made public on Monday.

The Minister of Government (Interior), Eduardo del Castillo, told the media, including the Spanish agency EFE, that “any foreign citizen who settles in national territory must comply with legal and current regulations” and that if the General Directorate of Migration has determined that the Cuban citizen has “breached the rules” then he must “leave the country.”

“Any citizen who violates our regulations, who commits offenses or  crimes, will have to comply with the corresponding sanction,” Del Castillo said.

Magdiel Jorge Castro said on his networks on Wednesday that he presented an appeal for reversal of the order, which forces him to leave Bolivia, where he now resides, within the next 15 working days. “I will wait for the response within the deadlines that Bolivian law determines,” he tweeted.

On Monday, the activist denounced his case, and told this newspaper that when he arrived at Migration, where he was summoned, “there was a whole folder with my tweets, as State Security tends to do in Cuba.” He asked which of his publications violated the law but “they didn’t know how to tell me.”

The immigration order, shown to this newspaper, indicates that Castro “infringed Bolivian regulations, altering public order through social networks.” Therefore, the text, dated December 16, 2022, continues, “he is granted the temporary mandatory exit order.”

By “acts that alter public order,” the document cites, “participation and/or incitement to unrest, confrontation between citizens and acts against morality and/or dignity.”

On Tuesday, Castro gave an interview to Cuban influencer Alex Otaola, where he described the Bolivian government’s decision as “political persecution” against him, while warning of the dangerous precedent this sets for other Cubans seeking asylum in third countries. continue reading

Bolivia and Cuba moved closer again with the Government of Luis Arce, after the suspension of diplomatic relations with Cuba by the then-interim president of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez, who is now in prison.

The Bolivian president was received last week by his Cuban counterpart, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in Havana, where he also attended the extraordinary session of the National Assembly in commemoration of the eighteenth anniversary of the creation of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Treaty of Commerce of the Peoples (Alba-TCP).

For Castro, as he stated in his conversation with Otaola, this visit is directly related to his expulsion from Bolivia.

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 Runs Out of Baseball Players: Another Five Run Away

Five players increase the bleeding of athletes before the end of the year. (Collage)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 21 December 2022 — Five more Cuban players joined the long list of dropouts in recent weeks. The experienced Héctor Miguel Ponce, Javier Camero and Edwin Vassell are already in the United States, revealed journalist Francys Romero, while Ernest Machado and Erik Matos have settled in the Dominican Republic.

Ponce is a benchmark pitcher for the Industriales team, and between 2021 and 2022 he also participated in the Italian circuit, where he played for Cagliari and Brescia. He left a mark with a pitching average of 127.2 innings, and he struck out 138 batters.

This is the second exit of this habanero, because in 2016 he was already looking for fortune outside. However, a few months later and in the face of the disinterest of foreign teams in hiring him, he decided to return to Cuba. Director Guillermo Carmona included him in January of this year on his list of pitchers, proclaiming that his staff “has 9 pitchers who are capable of throwing a 90 mph ball” and that he has assembled what was needed to “minimize the impact of some absences,” published the official media Jit.

Camero was key in the national title of Matanzas two years ago. The commentator for the defunct Metropolitanos team, Iván Alonso, called him “an elegant batter,” because he “emerged like a star from the youth world championships,” according to Swing Completo. Specialists refer to this athlete as an “explosive” man “with punch” on the baseball diamond.

“Camero intervened in two matches of the current Elite League with Centrales. After that, he made his way to the United States. He is 32 years old, and in his last three National Series he hit more than .300 with Matanzas,” Francys Romero said. continue reading

For his part, Vassell had a place within the Cienfuegos team. Like Ponce, this baseball player had already tried his luck in the Professional League of Venezuela in 2015, but unexpectedly returned to the Island. Today he is in the United States, where he is looking for a better future.

On Tuesday, the stay in the Dominican Republic of the Under-15 baseball players, Ernest Machado and Erik Matos, was also confirmed. With these departures “there are already five members of the last World Cup” of the youth category who are looking for better opportunities for sports development abroad, according to Baseball FR!

“Most likely and with the economic situation prevailing in Cuba, half of the members of this team will end up leaving the country,” Romero stressed.

In the U-15 World Cup held in Mexico, Machado launched 3.1 innings without allowing home runs or steals. This right-hand pitcher from the province of Artemis has qualities and hopes to perfect his game in the Dominican Republic.

Meanwhile, Matos, at the age of 15, has a powerful right and has scored throws of between 88 and 90 miles per hour.

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: The Other Euthanasia

Raúl Castro, during a session of the National Assembly of People’s Power last week. (Screen capture)

14ymedio bigger 14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 19 December 2022 — The approval of the right to euthanasia announced by the Cuban Ministry of Public Health hasn’t brought about, as one would suppose and desire, a wide debate between its supporters and its critics.

The idea of offering a “dignified death”, of avoiding a prolonged and painful agony, is supported when there’s scientific confirmation that the person’s illness is both incurable and lethal and when it’s the expressed desire of the patient themself (or of their closest relatives, if they should find themself incapable of expressing their will).

It’s the tenacity of the self preservation instinct that can counter the idea of euthanasia (and all forms of suicide), and it can reappear as a change of heart at the last moment, when the process of switching off life is already irreversible. On the other hand, religious considerations which leave the decision in the hands of God oppose the practice.

It’s very tempting to apply the argument in favour of euthanasia in other areas of life. When a successful farm is affected by a blight, it’s best to pull up the sown field and plough the earth; when a company becomes unproductive and despite refurbishments continues to make a loss, the best solution is liquidation; when a whole economic, social and political system doesn’t produce the hoped-for results, you need to change it.

To not beat about the bush, this moribund Cuban type of socialism deserves the application of a merciful euthanasia, above all so that it stops causing such unnecessary pain to all the 11 million patients who suffer under it. There’s an abundance of evidence that the ills contracted under the rules of this system are incurable and that sooner or later the collapse will come without warning.

It’s the self-preservation instinct of a group of people who still cling to their privileges and ideologies that counters this social euthanasia — ideologies with shades of pseudo-religion that invoke the blood spilled in arriving at where we are, from a people still committed to dead leaders of the past and continuing to believe in the blurry illusion of a prosperous future.

It wouldn’t occur to anyone, including myself, to commit suicide even if everything indicated that I were about to suffer a horrible, painful and prolonged departure, but we Cubans don’t have to go on supporting “this” and from here on I’m daring to recommend a “dignified death” for the whole process. And the only ’will’ to take into account here is the will of those who are suffering.

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.

‘The Armed Wing of Cuban State Security Acts in Bolivia’

Cuban activist Magdiel Jorge Castro, on his departure from the immigration offices where he was informed of his expulsion from Bolivia. (Screen capture)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Madrid, 19 December 2022 — Cuban activist Magdiel Jorge Castro, who disseminates information and opinions through social networks, received an expulsion order from Bolivia, where he resides, on Monday. He has 15 days to leave the country, as he said  through a direct broadcast on Twitter.

“The justification they use are my publications on social networks, publications that are basically against the Cuban government, against the dictatorship, and denunciations of human rights violations,” Castro told 14ymedio by phone.

The young man says that when he arrived at Migration, “there was a whole folder with my tweets, as State Security tends to do in Cuba.” He asked which of his publications violated the law, he says, “and they didn’t know how to tell me.”

The immigration resolution, which this newspaper accessed, indicated that Castro “infringed on Bolivian regulations, altering public order through social networks.” “Therefore,” the text, dated December 16, 2022, continues, “the temporary mandatory exit resolution is granted.”

By “acts that alter public order,” the document indicates “participation and/or incitement to riots, confrontation between citizens and acts against morality and/or dignity.” continue reading

Before the summons received last Friday, Castro says, he had not been contacted or warned.

“I want to make it very clear that my publications, which can be accessed because my public profile is there, have never alluded to Bolivian national policy and exclusively mention my country,” defends Castro, who does not yet know if he is going to appeal the ruling, for which he has three days.

What he does plan to continue doing is to report it. “It seems a hugely arbitrary, but I find it even more scandalous that Bolivia lends its public institutions to the armed wing of Cuban State Security to come here and manage at will the rule of law of a sovereign country such as the Plurinational State of Bolivia.”

There is no record of a similar case that has occurred for any other Cuban.

After the suspension of diplomatic relations with Cuba by the then-interim president of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez, who today is in prison, still without trial, for, according to her persecutors, having organized a “coup d’état,” both countries approached the government of Luis Arce again.

The Bolivian president was received a few days ago by his Cuban counterpart, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in Havana, where he also attended the extraordinary session of the National Assembly in commemoration of the eighteenth anniversary of the creation of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – People’s Trade Treaty (Alba-TCP).

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.

Scarcely 59 Percent of Passenger Transport in Cuba is Operating

Caption: In some provinces, the availability of vehicles doesn’t even reach 30%. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 12 December 2022 — Passenger transport in Cuba is in a limited situation, as revealed this Sunday in the parliamentary committee on attention to services, which took place in the presence of the Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz. The plan has been fulfilled by just 59%, said Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila, Minister of Transport, since it was intended to reach 1.733 billion passenger trips* (17% less than before the pandemic), and only 1.5 billion can be transported.

The reasons are the lack of fuel and technical capacity, which, in turn, causes losses for the sector. According to the report, the technical availability coefficient, which determines the proportion of vehicles in useful condition, is barely 42%, but there are areas where the figure sinks even lower, such as Pinar del Río (30%), Guantánamo (26%) and Santiago de Cuba (23%).

By company, National Buses is meeting 48% of the plan (and covers only 43% of interprovincial routes compared to 2019); Transmetre, is at 50%, and Escolares, is at 53%. The Turquino Plan, which connects the mountainous and inaccessible areas of the Island, has 110 of its 198 routes not in service, which is more worrying.

The railway is not going well either, and this is nothing new, since cars are missing and the infrastructure is not in good condition, which reduces capacity. According to the data, locomotives — the few there are — could carry 12 or 13 cars but must take only 11. continue reading

By sea, there are more problems. Perseverance, a modern ferry acquired for millions from an undisclosed Asian country arrived on the Island in the midst of great expectation this July. But it still cannot operate because the dredging of the port of Batabanó has not been completed.

By air, although the drop in flights has been evident, signs of recovery are seen, the authorities added.

Another fact that they highlighted as striking is the fall in transport licenses for private individuals, who move 30% of passengers. A quarter of these have suspended or cancelled their permits, something that is no surprise other than to the authorities, who seem unconcerned about the drivers’ complaints. They are tired of state price limitations, which are impossible to sustain, together with the increase in the cost of fuel and the price of parts needed to maintain their vehicles.

“Many charge high prices with the aim of meeting expenses. At the end of September, these forms of transport had only transported 44% of what was planned,” the report says.

“One of the most complex issues facing the population is prices. It is true that private carriers have to buy dollars in the informal market to acquire parts and pieces, but nothing justifies that they want to have up to three times the profits with their activity,” said the prime minister.

The Economic Affairs Committee, despite its importance, offered little data of interest, although there were many words from the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, who used the usual recipe of voluntarism** for next year. “The plan is a goal that requires effort to be fulfilled,” he said.

He also resorted to referring to the US sanctions and the international crisis that worsen, in his opinion, the country’s problems, but added that “with creative resistance we will win,” and that this is “a path that involves sacrifices.” Nothing new here.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was that generated by his words regarding inflation. According to the president, “although things are expensive there is a group that can buy them; hence the high prices continue to be maintained. How is this resolved? Producing more, but currency is needed,” he said, to support his statement about the excess liquidity that, in his opinion, exists on the Island.

Díaz-Canel also stressed the energy problems, which any country, he said, would “solve with shock measures” (that is, increasing prices, as he insinuated, ignoring measures such as European consumer protection measures to try to contain the increase), while in Cuba, each megawatt costs one million dollars, and that amount “is not generated by the Electric Union nor is it financed by the rates fixed for the population sector,” he recalled.

The parliamentary committee brought to light other worrying issues, such as the lack of food production. The goal for the new year in terms of the sugar harvest is to produce 455,200 tons, 90,000 of them for export (the contract with China was originally for 400,000 tons), but the yield is very low, according to the data presented: an alarming 7.9% of the goal.

The deputies gathered there took the floor to allude to issues that concern everyone but which will not be solved without a real will for change. Among them were the rise in prices in the state sector, the impossibility of acquiring more and more products in a place other than foreign exchange stores, the high losses of many state companies without consequences for them, and the catastrophic situation of the thermoelectric plants — despite the vaunted capital repair of the rebel Guiteras plant, which doesn’t work for a week in a row — while resources are allocated to other matters.

The deputy for Cienfuegos, Dinorah Navarro, admitted that there is dissatisfaction among the workers of the thermoelectric plants and alluded to the investments made in tourism, with an ambiguous statement: “We do nothing and continue to build hotels while the  thermoelectric plants remain in these conditions.”

Translator’s notes:

*To put these numbers in context, Cuba’s population is approximately 11.3 million. If each person took one transit trip a day, every day, for the entire year, it would total just over 4.124 billion annual trips.

**”Voluntarism” means individual effort.

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.

Delay in the Validation of Cuban Vaccines by the WHO is ‘The Fault of the Banks’

According to official data, more than 87% of Cubans have received the complete three-dose scheme of one of the three vaccines against COVID-19. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 19 December 2022 — The process of recognition by the World Health Organization (WHO) for Abdala, the Cuban vaccine against COVID-19, remains halted after the documentation was delivered to the health authorities in April. Eight months later, Eduardo Martínez Díaz, president of the BioCubaFarma business group, assures the State newspaper Granma that the problem lies in the American embargo, which forces the banks not to work with the Island.

The doctor explains to the Communist Party newspaper that “one of the components of the evaluation process is behind schedule.” BioCubaFarma announced months ago that it had decided to transfer the production of one of Abdala’s components to its new plant in the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM). WHO experts planned to visit and evaluate the factory by the end of this year, but it will not be possible to do so.

“Although the production line, where the formulation, filling and packaging operations of that complex take place are already active and producing, the line on which the recombinant products are manufactured has delays in its implementation,” says Martínez Díaz.

“This delay is due to the fact that payments have not been made to the company in charge of the commissioning of the equipment and systems of that production line. We have been trying to make payments for nine months, which have not materialized due to the refusal of several banks to make the transfer,” he concludes. The doctor is hopeful that in 2023 the study can be completed and will receive the endorsement of the health authorities, almost three years after the beginning of the pandemic. continue reading

In the interview, the expert insists that the Cuban vaccines approved on the Island — Abdala and Soberana 02 and Plus — are “safe, effective and capable of controlling the epidemic,” and that this is supported by the control of the disease in Cuba as well as in the countries that have recognized these vaccines without waiting for the WHO’s approval.

According to Martínez, eight countries have given the authorization “and others are evaluating them,” although it has only been made public, to date, that Iran, Mexico and Nicaragua have given the green light to Cuban serums. In the case of Tehran and Soberana, their manufacture is through a partnership with the Pasteur Institute. Mexico has also approved Abdala after receiving the approval of its regulator, the Federal Commission for Protection against Health Risks. Nicaragua also recognizes the two vaccines.

In addition to the previous three, Venezuela, Vietnam and Belarus have used some of the Cuban serums after receiving lots exchanged or purchased from the Island. At the moment, the number of units delivered abroad and the money obtained through their sale are unknown. The Cuban authorities announced that their vaccines would be economical, although the Nicaraguan press estimates that they cost 7 euros per unit based on a loan requested by Daniel Ortega’s government from the World Bank. However, there is no breakdown to verify the credit.

In any case, Cubans vaccinated with Abdala or Soberana — almost 100% of those immunized on the Island — have had real difficulties traveling to many countries (including the United States and the European Union) where it was mandatory to present a covid certificate or passport with one of the serums recognized by the WHO.

Martínez Díaz in his interview this Monday claims as a distinctive element of Cuban vaccines the high “thermostability” that requires less cold temperature than other vaccines (such as those of Pfizer or Moderna) and are stored at between 2 and 8 degrees. He also says that they can last up to a week at temperatures above 30 degrees celsius, “which makes them attractive for use in poor countries, where there are difficulties in maintaining the chain of refrigeration,” he adds.

The slight side effects and effectiveness that, they claim, have been demonstrated in the studies carried out on the Island, were also argued by the official despite the fact that this would not be a differentiating feature from any of the other authorized vaccines. Martínez emphasizes that the results of the research have been published in several scientific journals, which require that they be subjected to peer review. “To date, more than 20 scientific articles have been published in high-impact journals, and other reports continue to be prepared,” he says.

The doctor insists that Cuba, unlike other countries, has not suffered the onslaught of omicron, although it is hardly verifiable, since it is necessary to sequence each case to find out, something that has not been done in any country in the world and much less on the Island, where the mere diagnostic capacity was very limited at the time of the explosion of the variant. Martínez said, in any case, that this situation is due to the fact that the vaccines developed on the Island decrease their capacity against this variant by two times, while others do so by 20 times.

“This phenomenon that we are observing has its explanation in the nature of the antigen we use and the very design of our vaccines,” he explains. Martínez says that the Island’s laboratories use the RBD antigen, which produces antibodies against a region of the protein that is common in all variants of the virus.

Meanwhile, other vaccines (the ones based on messenger RNA) have used the full spike protein (S), which induces defenses against areas where there are mutations. The American Chemical Society warned at the end of 2021 of the possibility that vaccines based on protein S (Pfizer or Moderna) could fall short if the strategy was not diversified. Since then, pharmaceutical companies have been studying the situation and possible improvements.

“We defend the hypothesis that vaccines based on the RBD antigen can be a universal booster for the rest of the vaccines against COVID-19 by amplifying a protective immunity against the different variants of the Sars-Cov-2 virus, which have circulated or that could be generated in the future. Recently, several groups of scientists around the world have published articles that support this hypothesis,” says Martínez.

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 Country Ill from Chronic Laughter

Published, ironically, by a printing house on Calle Amargura (Bitter Street), the sketches in the book are by Conrado Massaguer. (Collage)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, Spain, 18 December 2022 – If oblivion had a physical form, or a symbol, it would be that of a faded photograph. From an original shaky camera shot, or just from the degrading of the resulting photographic paper print itself, a photo that has lost its sharpness doesn’t tell us very much. One is tempted to think that, just as the paper deteriorates with the passage of time or even through the work of termites, so the person depicted in the photo also ends up in the land of abandoned things.

This thought occurred to me yesterday while I was looking at a photo of Gustavo Robreño, the forgotten Cuban republican writer who joined the team at the celebrated Alhambra theatre in Cuba in 1900 and composed El velorio de Pachencho (Pachencho’s Vigil) with his brother Francisco.

I’m looking at Robreño now, in a kind of daguerreotype of image; he has all of that fresh elegance of the nineteenth century — a white hat on his head, suit and walking cane — or at least he appears to have these details from what can be made out from the fading yellowing image. The picture looks as if it’s under water and it’s difficult to tell whether he’s looking genuinely surly or just mocking, whether his face is wrinkled or even if he’s sporting a moustache.

A man scattered across two centuries, stirred by theatre and politics, he was born in 1873 in Pinar del Río and died in 1957 — perhaps anticipating how the good times were about to end. As a young man, in Spain he read and discussed with all the intellectuals of the ’Generation of ’98’. The language of his books is creole, mocking — it’s impossible for him to write a single word without it having an opposite or a calculated crosswise meaning.

In 1915, Robreño undertook a kind of ’settling of scores’ with Cuba’s past, in order to better explain the convulsive beginnings of its early Republic. If I’m not mistaken, he wrote one of the first histories of the Island in the twentieth century, possibly the only one — apart from the comic strips of Vista de amanecer en el trópico (A View of Daybreak in the Tropics) by Guillermo Cabrera Infante — in which Cuba is described as an incoherent, not very serious place, sometimes charming but at the end of the day tragic and irredeemable.

Historia de Cuba: narración humorística (The History of Cuba: a Comic Narrative) is also a rare edition. Published, ironically, by a printing house on Calle Amargura (Bitter Street), the drawings in the book are by Conrado Massaguer, a promising young artist of 26 at the time. continue reading

On the book’s cover, Massaguer has drawn an amazed Christopher Columbus holding out a nappy (diaper) to an indigenous baby there in front of him on the ground, crying inconsolably. Behind them some Spaniards peer across at a palm grove from where a nanny goat gazes out suspiciously.

The scene is a forewarning of what’s to come. Robreño launches into a hillarious revision of the Cuban story from the first arrival of this famous Admiral up to the birth of the nation. No one escapes his satire. The prologue, signed by a skeptical ’Attaché’ — a pseudonym that isn’t difficult to attribute to Cabrera Infante himself in a previous life — puts the book into context: “The time of blood and heroism over, now experience Cuba in the time of caricature, in which it governs itself, legislates, and even makes revolutions to the sound of loud guffawing”.

It was the first cautionary note: the Cuban people have a historical compulsion to “sell their soul to the devil…and then live happily, unconcerned…inebriated”, “with a firefly in their hand and a big cigar in their mouth”. Robreño demonstrates this in his book, pointing out the ridicule of a multitude of episodes in which opportunists dress up with much ceremony.

Of the burning of the indian man, Hatuey, romanticised by historiography, Robreño says that it was “an admirable case of civilised savagery…or savage civility”. According to this writer from Pinar:  the artist Velázquez “died of envy” because of Hernán Córtes the Brave — “as one couldn’t give the other up” — and Alejandro de Humbolt was a “German flora-fauna geologist who tried to show the world that Cuba was an almost habitable country and not a tobacco factory”.

In 1762 the Spanish treated the English invaders politely and asked them “if they would like [to take] anything” [meaning: to eat or drink]. The Count Albemarle’s reply was no less polite: “Havana!”. Rather circumspect, governor Juan de Prado then puts a scary warning out to Havana’s residents: “Citizens, the English are five miles away from the capital and according to reports they are all wearing ’pointy shoes’, strong and new. So have your backsides (asses) prepared because I fear it won’t only be on the ground where the invader puts his feet”.

Robreño’s book becomes positively acidic when he talks of the “patriots, traitors and loan sharks” of 1868, who argued against his “little memo” after the ’burning of Bayamo’, and even more when he refers to the first years of the republic, in a magnificent portrait of families who never will pardon neither the living nor the dead.

The history of Cuba — “A country ill from chronic laughter” — should, for Robreño, be evaluated from a higher perspective, that is, “from an aeroplane but with a handkerchief over your nose”. I wonder whether the collective rage of the nation would not have wanted to hide away Robreño’s book, deny his very existence, give him up for lost, or even burnt.

And it’s not surprising. If anyone wanted to undermine or subvert the the ’gravity’, fiction or convenient silence of all the Cuban politicians — and those of today are a grossly inflated version of those from antiquity — you only need to read Robreño’s apocryphal history to the kids.

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.

Economic Reflections on the Communist Party Plenary

“The objectives of the Economy Plan for 2022 were not achieved,” Gil summarized. “The approved measures have not had the necessary impact.” (Twitter/Communist Party of Cuba)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Elias Amor Bravo, Economist, 10 December 2022 — Cuban communists are privileged. Not only because they hold all the power in the nation, but also because they do what they want, without giving explanations, and then in their congresses they erase any responsibility. This is what happened in the recent Political Bureau of the Central Committee when reviewing “the implementation of the ideas, concepts and guidelines derived from the Eighth Congress” and the “economic, social, political and ideological measures to face the current situation in the country.” Any decent review of these issues should lead to an assumption of responsibilities and immediate decision-making to correct errors.

But no one should expect anything from this procedure. The Party  has made economic decisions like the Ordering Task,* which since January 1, 2021 has altered the lives of Cubans, throwing them into a situation of misery and poverty difficult to find in other countries. But no one has taken any responsibility for it. The so-called “accounting of the Political Bureau to the Central Committee” ends up becoming an exercise of “I wasn’t the one” that always identifies one person responsible for everything that happens to the unfortunate Antillian nation.

The Plenary of the Party is a good example of the correlation of people who lead the country with absolute power. Along with Díaz-Canel there are Esteban Lazo, Manuel Marrero, Salvador Valdés, Álvaro López Miera, representing the army, and also guests, such as Ramiro Valdés and José Ramón Machado Ventura, and the general, Joaquín Quinta Solá. A total of 108 of the 113 members of the Central Committee, and Granma says that the absences are justified. Of course.

The report of the Political Bureau, presented by Morales Ojeda, is a good example of how communists see reality and try to face it. It is as if they had a different historical time from that of society as a whole and, in a way, the problems are seen from above, as if they did not affect the single party that only understands that “we are in a scenario of progressive socioeconomic complexity, derived from the effects of the intensified blockade and the 243 measures of the Trump administration,” and to a lesser extent, “due to the erosion of the confrontation with COVID-19, the deviations from the Ordering Task and the global economic crisis, aggravated by the conflict in Ukraine.” continue reading

The Communists further explain that “to these negative elements are added the damage caused by the accidents at the Saratoga Hotel and the Matanzas Supertanker Base, the devastation of Hurricane Ian in the western provinces and the instability of the National Electricity System.”

And behind this scenario, according to the communists, appears “an aggravated situation of material deficiencies, which affects all the social and economic sectors of the country. Undersupply and inflation persist, with insufficient results in the measures adopted, which maintains a direct impact on the quality of life of the people.” No one, absolutely no one, is able to identify in this scenario of misery and poverty a self-reliance derived from the forced implementation of an economic model, the Marxist-Leninist, which is the origin of the improductivity and general inefficiency of the economy. We don’t even talk about this.

For communists, the only important thing is ideology. And instead of being interested in improving the economic conditions of the population, they warn that “the problems have been used opportunistically by the enemy, who increased the subversive and destabilizing plans, using a fierce media campaign as a spearhead, as part of a true fourth-generation or unconventional war.”

The discredit of the ruling political class in Cuba has to do with a growing detachment from society that considers that there is no measure, plan or initiative that goes well. But the communists claim that the fault lies with an alleged “external enemy” that has always been there, but that now, when the failure of the economic model is more evident, appears with more force. Don’t they realize that there’s something strange here?

The Political Bureau emphasizes above all “the intense work, extraordinary effort of the cadres, militants and, especially, of our people, trying to overcome every obstacle,” which is evidently a declaration of inefficiency, since despite that effort the goals are not achieved. But in addition, a declaration of ineffectiveness is made, because it is recognized that “not always have all the expected results been achieved,” and they announce that the solution is “unity”, the eternal communist unity that contemplates only a part of society, the communist one, as the only one able to solve problems. The rest of the options have no place in the political system. And along with unity, there  is talk of the “reserves,” which is never fully understood.

So in the face of a scenario like the current one, the communists insist that progress must be made in the improvement of the methods and styles of work of the Party; in particular, the exchanges with the population, in the workplaces, in the universities, with the militancy, of the municipalities, of the cadres, in the decisions adopted by the Political Bureau. That is, internal exchanges of communists with communists, which whitewashes any state of public opinion of the population and prevents knowing the reality. It’s like navigating a sea in fog and without a compass. Cuban communists have chosen this path for a long time, and so it goes, at least in terms of economic matters.

Alternatively, they are dedicated to controlling academia, science and research, projects in municipalities and activity in communities and society. They also want to project ideology towards health workers. There is not the slightest interest in producing more and doing it efficiently. This is the least of it.

For communists, it is a priority to “raise the responsibility and attitude of the militants, paying maximum attention to the state of militancy, and the growth and quality of new members.” They received a strong blow in the last municipal elections, with the lowest levels of participation in decades, and they fear what may happen in the general elections of 2023. The truth is that these trends will continue as long as the communists pull out all the stops and have the support of the leadership of the army to remain the only party in Cuba.

What happens is that without alternatives to the economic, social, political and ideological measures to those imposed for 63 years, there is no solution. It was seen with the Ordering Task, and they are on their way to maximum separation from the people. Young Cubans know that, much better than entering a Party that doesn’t know what to do, there is no comparison to leaving the country. That’s the reality.

Communists will remain focused on the fight against what they call crime, corruption, illegalities and social indisciplines, without wanting to recognize that these behaviors take place because of the existing economic model. And that the autonomy of the socialist state enterprise has become a mantra that is difficult to achieve, since no one believes in it anymore.

Only Guilarte de Nacimiento spoke in the communist conclave about inflation, the shortage of basic products and the increase in prices. A pity. The issue arose only at the end of the report and covertly, despite the fact that in October, year-on-year inflation was already almost 40%, the highest in the world. The loss of purchasing power of wages and pensions suffered by Cubans doesn’t allow comparison worldwide, and this is an inheritance of the communists, who demanded the implementation of the Ordering Task in their previous congress, despite all the warnings. The political bureau’s report did not take into account that the main threat to Cuban communists is what they have caused themselves: inflation. We will continue to talk about it.

*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. 

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.

More Than 17,000 Cubans Have Applied for Refuge in Mexico, Most of Them to Avoid Deportation

The Mexican Committee for Refuge Assistance (COMAR) has responded to 78,367 asylum applications in two of its offices.

14ymedio bigger14ymedio/EFE, Mexico, 15 December 2022 — The brothers José Luis and Raúl Borroto entered Mexico 40 days ago through Chiapas. “We paid the coyote $4,000 to take us to the border and he abandoned us.” These Cubans are part of the group of 368 migrants that the National Guard arrested on November 18 in the municipality of Tecpatán, in Chiapas, a state bordering Guatemala.

They spent 20 days at the Siglo XXI immigration station located in Tapachula and were released after paying a lawyer $3,700. “They threatened us with deportation if we didn’t pay; they were going to put us on a plane and return us to Cuba,” Raúl told 14ymedio. “There are many Venezuelans without documents or money. They are returning them to Guatemala.”

José Luis and Raúl left the immigration headquarters and immediately began their procedures at the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR) to apply for asylum. They must show up on January 9 to find out if they were accepted. The lawyer recommended that they process an amparo [request for sanctuary] that would cost $1,500 each so that they can move freely through the country and thus be able to reach Ciudad Acuña (Coahuila) to cross to the United States.

According to COMAR , as of November of this year, 17,487 Cubans applied for asylum. Alejandro Austria de la Vega, in charge of the delegation in Chiapas, expects 2022 to end with a little more than 80,000 applications for migrants, with Cubans being the second most important national group. continue reading

“Tapachula is the central point of asylum requests for people who transit through national territory with the intention of reaching the United States in search of a better quality of life for their families, who stayed in their countries of origin,” he told 14ymedio.

The influx of migrants on the southern border of Mexico grew by 40% in the last two weeks compared to the previous year, so the authorities doubled their attention, according to officials of the National Institute of Migration (INM) reported on Wednesday.

According to Migration records, 6,000 multiple immigration forms (FMM) have been granted in the last 15 days; that is, about 400 daily to natives from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti and Africa. They have placed tents, tables and chairs in the temporary care module to serve about 1,200 migrants a day.

Migration and National Guard agents have avoided setting up camps for migrants to stay to sleep or stand in line from the night before. “We are not going to allow them to set up tents or stay here to sleep,” an official warned the migrants who were going to carry out procedures.

Gráfico de la Comar sobre las solicitudes de asilo recibidas este año. (Comar)
Graph showing requests for asylum this year. (COMAR)

Among those who are waiting for regularization is the Venezuelan Jürgen Casanova, who travels with 15 people. “We are asking for help and sleeping on the streets to avoid spending money on rent for houses or hotels, since all this is hard,” he told EFE.

On a white poster, the South American wrote: “Hello, Mexico. We are a Venezuelan family that needs your help. May God bless you and multiply your support.” Casanova commented that the situation is difficult. “We were victims, we were robbed on the Guatemalan border with Honduras.”

A similar story is told by Ecuadorian Luis Taboada, who travels with his wife and two minors. On a poster, he asks for help to feed his family. “People who have not gone through this journey, who do not try, it is not an easy thing, especially if they go with children. At the beginning I thought that everything would be easy,” he warned.

Even so, he said that he will not give up his trip and will continue despite the shortages and lack of food, since the only option is to meet the final goal of reaching the United States.

The region is experiencing a record migratory flow to the United States, whose Customs and Border Protection Office stopped an unprecedented number of more than 2.76 million undocumented people in fiscal year 2022, a figure that includes substantial increases in Cubans and Venezuelans.

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.

An Unprecedented DNA Study Confirms and Recovers Indigenous Identity in Cuba

A minority sector of Cuba’s Tainos continued to partially and syncretically transmit their own traditions. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio/EFE, Havana, 16 December 2022 — At 87 years of age, the Cuban Francisco Ramírez Rojas began to cry before they gave him the genetic certificate that said exactly what his grandfather had repeated so many times: that they, despite everything that was said, were descendants of indigenous people.

The document accredits that he, chief of the community of La Ranchería, in Guantánamo, is one of the few living descendants of the Tainos, one of the large groups of pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Island that, according to historian Manuel Moreno Fraginals, “disappeared as a society, drowned biologically and culturally” by the European and African ethnic component.

Despite the story of the “massive extermination” of the indigenous people attributed to the Spanish conquerors — the well-known “black legend” — and although it is true that there were multiple violent encounters on the Island between the two groups during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the vast majority of Cuban Indians mixed in the new villages, died from “undeliberate attacks of pathogens from Europe and Africa, while a minority sector continued to partially and syncretically transmit its own traditions.”

Francisco is not alone. Members of 27 families in 23 communities in eastern Cuba have a proportion of Amerindian indigenous genes that on average doubles the Cuban average, according to an unprecedented study presented this Thursday by a multidisciplinary team in Havana.

The research, five years of fieldwork on the back of decades of previous investigations, adds to ethnographic, historical and even photographic studies, for the first time on a relevant scale, the scientific certainty of DNA tests.

The study “is a milestone,” says the historian of Baracoa, Alejandro Hartmann, one of the promoters of research in these communities. continue reading

The analysis of Francisco, for example, says that 37.5% of his genes are of Amerindian origin, 35.5% European, 15.9% African and 11% Asian. In the country as a whole, by contrast, the Amerindian component on average is 8%, compared to 71% for the European component.

One more detail is that all the DNA tests in this study — 91 people, 74 with conclusive results — refer to female Amerindian ancestors. All male ancestors were European and, to a lesser extent, African.

Specifically, as Cuban geneticist Beatriz Marcheco, from the National Center for Medical Genetics, explains to EFE, from these DNA studies it can be estimated that all these people analyzed descended from “between 900 and 1,000 female” Amerindians who lived in the 16th century.

They survived, hidden in the remote areas that their descendants still inhabit, the “demographic debacle of unimaginable dimensions” that, Marcheco explains, followed the emergence of the Spaniards and Africans in Cuba. There is no trace of male Amerindians.

“It’s not unusual that our own books, even the most recent ones, have discussed for years the total extermination of the Amerindian component of our population. Indeed, we do not have closed communities, but we do have these people who have retained those physical characteristics, who have that footprint on their DNA,” says Marcheco.

DNA studies have been the finishing touch on the project, which emerged five years ago as an initiative to portray descendants of the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Island.

But as Spanish photographer Héctor Garrido, coordinator of the Cuba Indígena project, explains to EFE, the initiative was evolving towards a “more comprehensive” approach that ended up including historical documentation, portraits, ethnographic studies, anthropological research and, as a cornerstone, genetic analysis.

All these perspectives underline the thesis that the DNA tests confirm. Physical features show the Amerindian component on the faces portrayed, and ethnographic studies collect indigenous traditions such as making cassava (yuca bread cakes), using the “coa” (agricultural tool), growing cimarrón tobacco and celebrating their own religious rites.

The study, according to its authors, has repercussions in multiple areas, starting with the communities investigated — Francis’s tears are proof of this — and ending with Cuba as a whole.

It has also touched them personally, after an intense coexistence with the communities with “big personal implications,” the project director says.

Garrido emphasizes that these families were “fully aware of being descendants of indigenous people” and felt “proud of what they are.” However, he adds, they had mixed feelings when at school they were taught “that the indigenous people were extinct.”

The editor of the meticulous book on the project, the Cuban Julio Larramendi, is convinced that Cuba will welcome these conclusions as “beneficial” and that now is a “good time” to make them known.

“We have this living root, a root that must be fed, watered, given the opportunity to grow and reproduce, to show what traditions have survived, to show that they are part of our culture,” he says.

Marcheco digs deeper into this idea: “All this will allow us a reflection, a new look, a reunion with our roots, a reinterpretation of our origins. And that will have an influence, not only on Cuban thought, but also on the way in which we assume our culture, our diversity, to the extent that we seek a society that includes all of us.”

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 Flight of Pitchers Leaves Cuban Baseball with a Broken Wing

Cuban Norge Luis Vera is the only pitcher with more than 30 postseason victories. (Cubadebate)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 16 December 2022 — The Cuban Norge Luis Vera, considered one of the best National Series pitchers of all time, arrived in the United States this Friday. The gold medalist at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens reunited with his son, Norge Carlos, who currently has possibilities with the Chicago White Sox, journalist Francys Romero revealed on his social networks.

He referred to Vera as “the ace that Santiago of Cuba needed in the times of Antonio Pacheco, Orestes Kindelán and Gabriel Pierre,” for his performance in international events and “classifying among the best in history in victories and effectiveness.”

With Vera’s departure, the Island loses an experienced athlete who also won the silver medal at the Sydney 2000 and Beijing 2008 Olympics, in addition to winning the national championship six times with Santiago de Cuba and being the only pitcher with more than 30 postseason victories. Most importantly, Cuba loses an athlete who was on the way to transmitting his knowledge to new generations.

Vera leaves a difficult void to fill in Cuban baseball, which continues to grow, with the escape of pitchers, so many punches that the panorama paints a resounding defeat. The native of Siboney was ahead of Yoen Socarrás, the 35-year-old from Sancti Spíritus, who was part of the first Elite League. continue reading

Francys Romero told Baseball FR! That just before leaving Socarrás Island he had “asked to leave the sports system,” so he did not rule out that he “will try to settle in the United States and then continue his career on independent circuits or in Mexico. He won’t be short of finding work.”

Sonora was also the departure place of Granma’s former pitcher and pitching coach Ciro Silvino Licea. In mid-September, the baseball player took a flight at Havana’s José Martí International Airport to Nicaragua, from where he embarked on the journey to the United States.

His departure took the Agricultores team by surprise, because he was considered part of the squad of coaches who would intervene in the first Elite League. Licea is a reference among the pitchers in the 23 National Series with 208 games won with 3067.1 innings, where he added 1,887 strikeouts, with an average of 3.69 clean runs, in addition to possessing “a slider difficult to hit and a fast ball over 90 miles an hour with a repertoire that has improved over the years,” as posted on Facebook Sports by Modesto Agüero.

Days earlier, Yanier Fernández Piedra, the former Mayabeque pitching coach, arrived in the United States. “It was a difficult decision to leave Cuba, my family was there, the economic situation was very tough,” he told Periódico Cubano.

Fernández has completed studies in Physical Culture and Sports from the Agricultural University of Havana Fructuoso Rodríguez Pérez, so his foray as a coach of youth teams may be an option.

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.