Once Again, Long Lines at Gas Stations and Fuel Shortages in Cuba

At the gas station of G and 25th, in El Vedado, normally very crowded, they only sold regular gasoline and diesel. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 27 May 2022 — A new fuel crisis looms over the country, judging by the long lines at numerous gas stations that Havana woke up to this Friday.

In the Cupet station at San Rafael and Infanta, a line of vehicles that occupied a block and a half was waiting to be served.

Unlike last March, when due to the increase in demand – according to the government version – Cuba spent almost a week with controlled fuel sales, this time there was no official explanation or posters in the gas stations announcing any measures.

The San Rafael employee informed another guy who entered with a gas can, that these days “we are directed not to fill containers,” only to fill the tanks directly.

“What they don’t want is to create a scandal,” the kid said between his teeth as he left, “don’t you see that the owner of the oil is here?” he said ironically, referring to President Nicolás Maduro. continue reading

The longest line, surrounding the entire block, was at the Tángana gas station, on Malecón and 15th, where there was regular and special gasoline. (14ymedio)

Together with the leaders of the countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Alba), the Venezuelan is meeting this very day in Havana at the impromptu Summit called by Miguel Díaz-Canel in response to the United States’ doubts about whether or not to invite the Island to the Summit of the Americas, which will be held in Los Angeles between June 6 and 10.

The line of cars was repeated at the gas station at G and 25th, in El Vedado, normally with a large number of customers, where they only sold regular gasoline and diesel. With conditions. “Yes, there is diesel, but it can only be sold with a letter of authorization, because they are state reserves,” an employee of the establishment explained to a customer who came in to ask.

The line did not reach the dimensions of March, but it did reach 23rd Street. “It is going to be fixed,” expressed a taxi driver. “Because if here they only have the Government’s reserves for diesel, there is no special gasoline and only regular, that means that in other places there is none.”

They only sold regular at the service center on 17th and L, where there was also a respectable line of cars. (14ymedio)

This is what happened in Cupet de Malecón and 23, also in El Vedado. However, a small group of waiting cars was also visible, not resigning themselves to leaving the place despite the fact that there was no fuel for sale.

“Is there regular?” asked a customer, desperate. “I wish there was, at the moment there is nothing,” the employee replied, without giving further explanations.

The largest line, surrounding the entire block, was at the Tángana station, on Malecón and 15, where there was regular and special gasoline.

They only regular was sold at 17th and L, where there was also a respectable row of cars.

The lines at the gas stations were s long as those at the bus stops. Transportation in the capital is beginning to suffer in the face of the imminent and umpteenth new crisis.

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Several Young 11J (July 11th) Protesters Released in Havana

Outside the Jovenes de Occidente prison at the time of the release of several of the young 11J (July 11th) protesters. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 28 May 2022 — At least five young people who were tried for the July 11 protests in Havana were released after a appeals trial held this Friday at the Diez de Octubre Municipal Court in Havana. Among those released are Rowland Jesús Castillo and Lázaro Noel Urgellés Fajardo, who had been sentenced to 18 and 14 years in prison.

Also released were Kendry Miranda Cárdenas, sentenced to 19 years in prison and Brandon David Becerra Curbelo, who received a 13-year prison sentence. All of them participated in the protest in the vicinity of the Toyo corner in the Havana municipality of Diez de Octubre.

From that group, Lauren Martínez Ibáñez, 18, who had been sentenced to the same amount of time in prison, was also released.

Activist Salomé García Bacallao detailed in a Facebook post that both Becerra Curbelo and Urgellés Fajardo had their pre-trial measure changed from being interned in a penitentiary center to serving house arrest, while Castillo Castro and Miranda Cárdenas will have to spend the rest of their sentences in a labor camp.

When announcing the appeal trial this Friday, the Justicia 11J platform alerted that the modifications “are not final sentences as long as a document has not been issued that closes the criminal process.” It also insisted that “the releases related to possible modifications of non-custodial sentences are not definitive, but only temporary.”

The platform reported that five young protesters from La Güinera were also released, due to a change in sanction after an appeal trial, although “the sentences have not yet been issued.” They are Eloy Bárbaro Cardoso Pedroso and Juan Yanier Antomarchi Nuñez, both 18 years old and both sentenced to 8 years in prison. continue reading

Added to the list are Dariel Cruz García, 20 years old and sentenced to 8 years; Yurileidys Soler Abad, 20, with an initial sentence of 15 years in prison; and Liliana Oropesa Ferrer, also 20 years old, with a sentence of 9 years in prison.

Justicia 11J expressed its concern about the lack of knowledge of “what will be the final sanctions that must be complied with” by the young people who have been released in recent days. Among them are also Andy García Lorenzo and four more demonstrators from Villa Clara and another five in Havana, including Jonathan Torres Farrat and Eloy Bárbaro Cardoso.

Regarding the actions of the regime with the latest releases, the platform insisted that “false expectations not be spread within civil society and families that give rise to the consolidation of a benevolent image of the State” in relation to the release of the 11J demonstrators, since these decisions do not point “to the achievement of massive changes in sanctions or mass releases.”

“Even less is there a shift towards the granting of dismissals and acquittals, the only valid ways to solve the irreparable damage to the Cuban people by the State, which has not yet taken criminal or administrative measures against the repressive forces, which caused the confrontations in the protests,” it insisted.

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Crisis and Autophagy in Havana, the Cycle That Does Not End

A bodega (ration store) located on Calle E between 23rd and 21st in El Vedado, Havana, announces with signs that there is no coffee. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 28 May 2022 — There is a hunger that is not satisfied with food nor diminishes even if food is obtained and is not lacking again for a long time. It is the hunger that remains in the memory and makes the stomach burn even if it is full. That chronic feeling of emptiness runs through the story of a young man in the Cuba of the Special Period that the writer Enrique del Risco has published with Plataforma Editorial.

Nuestra hambre en La Habana* [Our Hunger in Havana] is a testimony that must be read after dinner and, even so, it will provoke in the reader intense bursts of anxiety about putting something in his mouth, constant trips to the refrigerator and the kitchen. The volume, of a little more than 300 pages, plunges into the crisis of the 90s and crudely portrays the national obsession around plates and pots.

Del Risco shows the exposed ribs of a society reduced to the cycle of the most basic survival, where getting around, standing in line, and trying to chew anything took up most of one’s time. With a direct, ironic style and, many times, appealing to the most stark humor, the writer allows us to accompany him along the path of voracity that took over the entire Island.

Thus, in the hands of a young man with a recent degree in History, we are witnessing the moment when the false bubble of prosperity that the Soviet subsidy allowed in Cuba during the 1980s begins to crack. Like a gathering cloud, the first symptoms of an economic crisis begin, on which Fidel Castro hung the euphemism of a “Special Period in times of peace.”

While trying to satisfy the immense appetite of a twenty-something, the protagonist of Nuestra hambre en La Habana must also deal with the ethical deterioration of a society willing to do almost anything to put food in the table. With his bicycle, which crosses the city from one side to the other, he witnesses the increase in assaults, the massive hunting of stray cats to eat them, the increase in prostitution with foreigners, and the only pursuit in which the country continued to excel and over excel throughout the Island: repression. continue reading

Upon completing his studies, the young man gets a job at the Colón Cemetery, the place that puts the lid on the dramaturgical handle of history. There he lives with the looting of tombs, the nameless niches of those who had fallen into disgrace and the juggling of a state work center where denunciations and incriminating reports were the order of the day. The necropolis inserted in that other city of the dead which, on the other side of the walls, multiplied the tragedy of the graveyard.

And with sex and distilled alcohol as the escape routes from all that oppressive reality. An impudent nation that took advantage of every staircase, every dark building to make love to each other with that frenzy with which they would have preferred to bite into a hamburger. Drink until you forget about hunger or kiss until you fall asleep so as not to have to think about the condensed milk that is no longer sold, the beef that has disappeared or the chocolate that had become a mythological product that was talked about in circles around the candles that eased the blackouts.

However, despite the detailed description of all that collective famine that left us with rags as underwear, that made our collarbones jut out until it seemed that they were going to burst the skin, and forced us to live with the muffled squeals of the pig which had undergone surgery so that it would not make a sound in the bathtub of the apartment where it was being raised, none of that leaves a feeling as overwhelming as the return of that nightmare.

Reading Nuestra hambre en La Habana right now in Cuba is like unfolding the map of scarcity that has once again taken over our country to review which seasons we have gone through and which ones we still have to live through again. The nod in the title to the novel by British writer Graham Greene anticipates that this time it is not about following the trail of spies or discovering conspiracies, but rather about pursuing jama [food] through the intricate paths of a dysfunctional system.

While my eyes traveled the pages of this book by Enrique del Risco, the rooster that my neighbor is raising on his balcony barely allowed me to concentrate. When I was already halfway through the volume, I had to interrupt it for two days because a friend called me to go “to the country to buy food” that we later hid in the trunk of an old vehicle and that’s how we managed to get it into the city. I had barely finished processing the last few paragraphs and a relative told me that he had turned his grandmother’s mahogany display cabinet into firewood because in his town “there are no blackouts anymore, only alumbrones**.”

There is a hunger that never goes away because there is always fear that it will return. Even if you have a plate at hand and chew for a while, you sense that everything has been a fiction of prosperity and that soon hunger will jump from a corner and take over your table. It is the hunger that haunts an entire country, including those who emigrate and who, in the early days outside the Island, swallow everything they can and what they could not before.

We have returned to that point that Del Risco details in his text: to the nervous autophagy of an entire people willing to leave behind nothing where they can sink their teeth.

Translator’s notes:
*The title is a play on words on the title of Graham Greene’s 1958 novel “Our Man [hombre] in Havana” and ‘hunger’ [hambre].
**Alumbrone – a word that means when the lights (and electricity) are ON, as the normal state — a blackout or ‘apagone‘ — is that they are not.

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Cuba: ‘No One Should be Forced to Choose Between Leaving Their Country or Facing Abusive Charges’

The artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara (left) with rapper Maykel Castillo months before his imprisonment. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 27 May 2022 — Just four days before the start of the trial against Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo Osorbo, the international human rights organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have issued a joint statement in which, in addition to demanding once again the release of both artists, they condemn the practice of exile used by the Cuban regime to get rid of opponents, a tactic that the two activists have rejected but that many others were forced to accept.

“No one should be forced to choose between leaving their own country or facing abusive criminal charges for which they should never have been prosecuted or imprisoned,” the two organizations reproach. In the text, they explain that they were aware of the offer made by the Cuban authorities to Otero Alcántara and Osorbo to be released and that the former publicly rejected it, while in the other case it was retracted. “This is a practice that the Cuban Government has carried out historically and with other critics in recent months and that violates the human right of everyone to enter their country of origin,” they say.

Tamara Taraciuk Broner, Acting Director for the Americas at Human Rights Watch, said that both artists “are being prosecuted for exercising their human right to criticize their own government” and has demanded that the countries of the continent take a stand in a this situation. “Latin American governments should not remain silent when there are artists threatened with prison sentences, a sign of extreme intolerance typical of the brutal dictatorships that ruled the region in the past.”

For its part, Amnesty International’s representative for the region, Erika Guevara-Rosas, demanded that if the trials continue, as they take for granted they will, the governments of Latin America and Europe be able to closely follow the trials “against these Cuban prisoners of conscience, who should never have spent a day in prison… In a country where more than 700 people, including some under the age of 18, are imprisoned simply for expressing themselves, it is of the utmost importance that these trials are subject to international scrutiny,” she added.

The organizations note that these cases are just the tip of the iceberg and that these trials are only “part of a much broader pattern of systematic abuses against Cuban artists and other critics of the Government and protesters in the country. In recent years, the Cuban authorities have imprisoned, criminally prosecuted and forced into exile dozens of Cuban artists, including those of the San Isidro Movement and the 27N [27 November], who bring together artists, intellectuals and critical journalists.” continue reading

The trial against Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo begins this coming Monday, May 30th, in Marianao, Havana. The Cuban Prosecutor’s Office requests seven years in prison for the first for aggravated contempt, public disorder and incitement to commit a crime, and ten years for Osorbo, for attack, public disorder and evasion of prisoners or detainees. Alcántara also carries the accusation of outrage against patriotic symbols, for creating a work of art, “Drapeau,” with the Cuban flag.

Otero Alcántara, declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, has been in the Guanajay maximum security prison since July, from where he sent a message on May 17. “We have endured all this and more in search of a dream and responsibility for the Cuba of today and tomorrow. And they are dreams that as of today nothing has erased,” he said, adding that for those dreams he is willing “to sacrifice the flesh of the artist, my flesh of the artist, my freedom-loving spirit.”

For his part, Castillo, who was arrested on May 18 of last year, has been in the maximum security prison of Kilo Cinco y Medio since May 31. His family, the organizations report, learned of his whereabouts days after the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances urged the Government to disclose it.

In January 2022, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that Castillo Pérez had been arbitrarily detained and said that the Cuban Government should release him immediately by determining that he had been arrested for exercising his fundamental rights and had suffered violations of due process, including abusive limitations on his right to defend himself.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch close the statement demanding that the authorities allow the presence of journalists, human rights observers and personnel of foreign embassies in Cuba in the 11J trials, which, in any case, should be annulled.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Mexican Court Agrees to Consider Injunction Against Hiring of Cuban Doctors

Mexico will send the new brigade of Cuban health workers to the “Guerrero Mountain area.” (Cubadebate)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Madrid, 27 May 2022 — A Mexican judge has agreed to consider a preliminary injunction against plans announced by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to hire 500 Cuban doctors, according to the Associated Press.

According to the Mexican press, the second district judge in matters of Civil, Administrative and Labor Protection of Puebla, José Luis Evaristo Villegas, has agreed to the injunction, refusing the provisional dismissal because “the agreement signed by the federal government contravenes provisions of public order.”

“Future acts of uncertain performance, both in their execution and in their effects, are not likely to serve as a matter for the precautionary measure; this is only appropriate if there is certainty about their performance because they are imminent acts,” the judge concluded.

The judge has given the Government a deadline to present its arguments and will decide on June 1 whether or not to grant the injunction.

The injunction indicates that the Mexican Government has not demonstrated that the doctors have the adequate capacity or training to practice medicine in Mexico and argues that the remuneration of health workers might go to the Cuban Government rather than the professionals.

The complainants argue that the agreement was negotiated “without having confirmed the quality of the doctors, and without having validated their education, as required by applicable regulations, and without proving they have knowledge of the illnesses and endemic diseases of the Mexican population.”

“Their hiring is illegal, favoring the conditions of modern slavery and even human trafficking,” adds the injunction. continue reading

During his trip to Havana on May 8, López Obrador announced the hiring of 500 Cuban doctors, in addition to buying the island’s vaccines. The Mexican president said that his country has a “specialist deficit,” and there are health workers who don’t want to go to remote areas. The Cubans will be sent to the Montaña de Guerrero area, one of the most violent places in the country, due to the presence of several drug cartels.

After the opposition criticized the hiring, stating that there are capable doctors in the country and underlining the well-known semi-slavery conditions in which Cubans work, the Mexican president lashed out at them and maintained that he would not back down.

“Why shouldn’t we have the doctors? If we’re doing this with Cuba, it’s because we need them,” said López Obrador, who took the opportunity to charge his “adversaries” of the “neoliberal period” with having damaged the public health system.

On Tuesday, and to appease the controversy, the Government announced a broader plan, which it christened “recruitment of medical specialists” and through which it seeks to hire 13,765 national specialists in order to reduce the deficit.

We don’t have the doctors we need, according to the World Health Organization (WHO),” the President said. We need internists, emergency specialists, gynecologists, obstetricians, pediatricians and anesthesiologists.

The president assured that the Government will “hire Mexican doctors as far as possible,” because “unfortunately” the country doesn’t have all the required specialists.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuban journalist Camila Acosta is fined 1,000 pesos for reporting about 11J

Camila Acosta, independent Cuban journalist. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, May 27, 2022 — Camila Acosta has avoided  trial for an alleged crime of public disorder after paying a fine of 1,000 pesos imposed by State Security. The independent journalist, who was arrested for reporting on the protests of July 11 (11J) and had been under house arrest for 10 months, reported on the resolution of the case in an article published by Cubanet, the media with which she collaborates.

Acosta relates that the Aguilera police, in the municipality of Diez de Octubre, summoned her on Wednesday and imposed a fine on her in the presence of her lawyer under a rule — relating to the criterion of opportunity — that allows proceedings to be resolved without going to court.

The fine must be paid in three days, and although she believes this is arbitrary, she is accepting it to avoid going to trial, “which, knowing the constant violations that are committed and the state of total defenselessness before the laws, is the lesser of evils.”

In addition to the fine, State Security confiscated personal property that she allegedly had on the day of her arrest on July 12: two laptops, a hard drive, two phones, five flash drives, work agendas, books, a blouse she wore on July 11, $50 and 20,000 CUP pesos. “Some of these assets were not even my property,” the journalist adds. They returned only a phone charger, a wireless computer mouse, and a recording device, which she thinks they broke, because it doesn’t work.

Acosta denies that a she committed a crime and, even less, that the confiscated objects are related to the public disorders that she was charged with. continue reading

During the four days she spent in detention, the journalist says that she was interrogated by State Security twice a day for two hours each time, and she confirmed to them that she participated in the July 11 protests as a reporter. “I don’t regret having done it, and I would do it again. Reporting is not a crime, nor is a peaceful demonstration.”

Camila Acosta says she is aware that she didn’t commit a crime, but going to trial would mean a sentence of three months to one year in prison. The criminal investigation against the journalist was opened ten months ago, and in the last five she was under daily surveillance in her home, where she was constantly harassed “with the psychological burden that this represents, both personally and for family and friends.”

The journalist predicts that her fight is not over yet. “The new Criminal Code is more criminal than the previous one and provides the regime with repressive tools that directly attack independent journalists, the opposition and civil society in general. The torment is far from over.”

Camila Acosta is a contributor to CubaNet and the Spanish newspaper ABC, and before moving to the independent Cuban press she was on local television, Canal Habana.

The transition to the private sector has cost her family break-ups, repression and the harassment of State Security, as is the case with many other reporters and activists.

The resolution agreed in this case coincides with the release of several young people who participated in the 11J protests, such as the young Andy García Lorenzo, who went from prison to an “open regime” camp; after an appeal, five others obtained the same benefit: Jorge Gabriel Arruebarruena, José Miguel Gómez Mondeja, Lázaro Alejandro Rodríguez Ruiz, Ariel Núñez Martínez, Mercy Daniela Pitchs Martínez and Amanda Dalai Matatamoros Cabrera.

Jonathan Torres Farrat was also released, as a change of pre-trial measure, after the payment of bail, while awaiting his trial.

Others released on Wednesday were Eloy Bárbaro Cardoso, an 18-year-old university student captured in La Güinera; Juan Yanier Antomarchi Nuñez, also 18 years old and sentenced in the first instance to 8 years of deprivation of liberty, and Dariel Cruz García, 20 years old, who also received an 8-year sentence.

In total, this week, 15 accused of participating in the July 11 protests have been released. Thirteen of the protesters had their sentences reduced by up to 10 years, and two were switched to correctional work, one of them without internment.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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‘I Feel Destroyed Because My Son Has to Spend Ten Years in Prison’

Migdalia Gutiérrez Padrón and her son Brusnelvis Cabrera Gutiérrez. (Collage)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 27 May 2022 — Migdalia Gutiérrez Padrón can’t stand it anymore. The nightmare that she has lived through for more than ten months has become very difficult to bear. On May 11, her hopes were pinned on the appeal trial of her son Brusnelvis Cabrera Gutiérrez, sentenced to 15 years for the La Güinera protests in Havana. But in that oral hearing they only reduced his sentence by five years. The young man has a decade left behind bars.

“The defense attorneys behaved very well,” the mother tells 14ymedio, “but the prosecutors blamed the boys and tried to make them look like criminals.” The appeals trial took place in the Diez de Octubre Popular Municipal Court, and for the relatives of the accused it was a bitter pill to swallow: “I had a lot of tightness in my chest because of so much injustice that was being committed there against them and especially against my son,” 21 years old.

Gutiérrez had the hope that the error of the first trial, which was held in March, would be corrected and that her son would be released. On that occasion, the image of a young man on a motorcycle who, with the movement of his arm, summoned the protesters, was enough for the Court to sentence him to 15 years in prison, an alleged evidence that the mother insistently refutes. “The boy in the photo has no tattoos on his arm and my son has it full of tattoos.”

However, the appeal process did not conclude as expected. “There was a big police operation around the Court,” she recalls. After the trial, more than two agonizing weeks passed and this Wednesday she had to tell her son by phone the result of the appeal. “He felt so bad when he heard the 10-year sentence that I asked him to get someone close to him to talk to, to help him process the information.” continue reading

Cabrera is being held in the Combinado del Este prison, the largest on the island, and was sentenced for the crime of sedition that has been widely used in the trials against the protesters on July 11 and 12, 2021. “I told him I was going to do the impossible to fight for their freedom but I couldn’t. But now I don’t have much hope left, I am really discouraged.”

After hearing the sentence of ten years in prison, the mother went to see the defense attorney to review the case. “As his mother I am not going to stop fighting. I am his mother and I am his voice. Right here in La Güinera several of those convicted of the protests, and who are under 21 years of age, have received, after the appeal, the possibility of going to open-regime camps, but they left my son with ten years in prison.”

Despite multiple witnesses who placed Cabrera in another location on that day of popular demonstrations, the Court dismissed this evidence and argued that “it was clear that those who testified” in favor of the accused “were not credible,” although the only action described by the youth during that day is to “drive a red moped” and with “gestures with his hands and movements with his body” summon people to join the march.

The conviction against Cabrera has shaken the entire family that lives on 2nd Street, in the Rosario neighborhood, a very poor area. For months they have had to focus on the judicial process and looking for food to take to the young man to prison. The mother’s strength is diminished: “I feel destroyed by that decision that the Court has made, because my son has to spend ten years in prison.”

In La Güinera, in the Havana municipality of Arroyo Naranjo, dozens of mothers are in the same situation as Migdalia.

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After Losing its Flavor, Cuba’s “Cathedral of Ice Cream” Loses its Lines

On the ground floor, half of the tables were also empty, something unusual in the history of Coppelia. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 27 May 2022 — Coppelia, Cuba’s “Cathedral of Ice Cream” in the heart of Havana’s Vedado district, has always been characterized, more than by the quality of its product — always far from that sixties dream of Fidel Castro of producing more and better flavors than the United States- – due to the very long lines that had to be endured before entering under the shade of its concrete ceilings.

In recent weeks, those lines, like the flavor of their ice cream scoops, which they have been making since March with soy milk instead of cow’s milk, have disappeared. “Go up to the tower, it’s empty!” employees shouted at customers who agreed this Friday to cool off in the May heat, asking them to go up to the top floor, traditionally the most frequented.

On the ground floor, half of the tables were also empty, something unusual since the place was founded, in 1966.

“It’s just that lately it has very few flavors,” argued a girl, who admits that she goes to Coppelia less than she used to. “When the price increase started, they increased the variety and improved a little bit. Now they all taste the same.” continue reading

One of the generalized complaints is the scarcity with which they distribute the ice cream scoops for the ‘salads’ – as the multi scoop treats are called. In the opinion of a young client they are only half of what they should be.

Another regret is that in the salads they offer for sale – two per person at 70 pesos – there is less and less variety of flavors (this Friday, only vanilla and guava). The chocolate, which is part of the obligatory combination, vanishes within a few hours of opening.

Niño, if you combine the salads with the same flavors, how come you run out of chocolate first?” a lady complained to one of the employees, who tried an unlikely response: “In the areas where the employees went out to lunch, they still have a little left.”

The woman was not satisfied. “Here what happens is the usual, intrigue and business,” she murmured between her teeth. “They are doing something with that chocolate*. Because if they start out with the same amount of chocolate as guava and vanilla, it cannot be that it runs out hours earlier.”

Beyond musings, the reasons for Coppelia to be emptied of customers must also be sought in the increase in competition. In recent years, other ice cream parlors, private ones, have proliferated, offering a slightly more expensive product, but of much higher quality.

Another young man, who usually frequents these businesses, is blunt: “Here in Coppelia the ice cream is bad and they have raised the price, and that’s it. This ice cream should be served to the visitors of the Cumbre del Alba [the Alba Summit], so that they know what ‘integration’ is.”

*Translator’s note: She is implying that they are selling it ‘under the table’ and/or taking it home.
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The Cuban People Have Spoken

Demonstration in Havana in protest of the repression and in solidarity with Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. (Screen capture)

14ymedio biggerAlexis Romay, New Jersey, 27 May 2022

The Cuban people have spoken:
they have voted with their feet,
they gather on any street
to talk about what’s been broken
for so long that not a token
from the government can quench
the thirst, the hunger, the stench
stemming from that institution
that some call “the Revolution,”
which digs its grave and its trench.

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Author’s note: This text is my recreation and condensation, in English, of my décimas published this week in the Spanish edition of 14ymedio. Remember, this post —part of Ideological Deviation, my weekly column— is considered a crime by the Cuban government.

Alexis Romay

https://linktr.ee/aromay

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The Price of Hard Currency Drops on the Black Market in Cuba

Until last week, the price of hard currency on the black market was on the rise. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 25 May 2022 — The price of hard currency in Cuba is plummeting on the informal market. Not only has the freely convertible currency (MLC) fallen, but also the dollar and even the euro.

“Last week the MLC rate was 125 pesos, but I could only sell at 10 to 110 pesos to a family member,” says Niurka, a Havanan from El Vedado, who receives remittances and suffers first-hand from the fall of the freely convertible currency, which de facto replaced the Cuban convertible peso (CUC) after its disappearance, dictated by the so-called Ordering Task*. “I can’t explain it to you. I can spend 1,100 [Cuban] pesos in one moment in the agro market now,” she complains.

Like so many other Cubans, Niurka usually changes much of what she receives into Cuban pesos. “In the MLC stores you don’t buy everything you need. Yes, chicken, tomato puree, some olive oil, a condiment or a jam, but I buy the rest on the street, in CUP: meats, vegetables, rice, beans… Not to mention the daily expenses, electricity, gas, the telephone,” she explains.

According to the figures published daily by the independent media outlet El Toque, the black-market exchange rates are 110 Cuban pesos (CUP) per MLC, 100 per dollar and 115 per euro. The drop is substantial compared to what was quoted last week: about 125 pesos per MLC, 115 pesos per dollar and almost 130 pesos per euro.

Until then, the price for hard currency was on the rise, due to growing demand, on one hand because of the need to buy products in MLC stores that are not found in the peso stores, and, on the other, because of the need for dollars for those who want to emigrate. continue reading

The turning point came on May 14, when the Cuban Minister of Economy, Alejandro Gil Fernández, declared that a “special” exchange rate would be established for some producers, state and private, of high-demand goods. He didn’t give details except to say that it would be between the official rate of 24 pesos and that of the informal market, which in those days was reaching 125 pesos.

The measure immediately aroused criticism from experts, such as economist Pedro Monreal, who called it “one more nail in the coffin of the ’ordering task’ and a possible source of illegality.” In any case, the collapse of the MLC this week seems to be a direct consequence of those statements.

Another factor that influenced the fall in currencies is the new measures announced by the Biden Administration last week on May 16, which include the elimination of the $1,000 per quarter/per person limit on remittances.

This restriction had been in force since 2019, when it was promulgated by then-US President Donald Trump along with other provisions that largely paralyzed the official business of foreign exchange, such as the prohibition on doing business with the Cuban military. This was the case of Fincimex, blacklisted by the US Treasury in June 2020, which managed remittances up to that time.

Remittance services, such as Cubamax or VaCuba, two of the most used, haven’t yet received official communication to eliminate the limit of $1,000 every three months, but Biden’s mere announcement seems to have had an effect on the informal foreign exchange market.

“Something is happening in Cuba with the MLCs,” says Jonathan, who emigrated to the United States last year. “The muchacho I use to send remittances to my family, for the first time in almost a year doesn’t have MLC there to pass on to them.” And not only freely convertible currency, which only works if deposited on a Cuban magnetic card, but also dollars, euros or even national currency.

Jonathan says that just a week ago, he was able to send money without a problem in this unofficial way, but it turns out “that yesterday I wrote him and he says that he has no MLC or anything. That things are bad right now. I asked him when he was going to have it and so far he hasn’t answered me.”

*Translator’s note: Tarea ordenamiento = the [so-called] ‘Ordering Task’ 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 many other measures related to the Cuban economy. 

Translated by Regina Anavy

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‘El Mundo’ Award to Luz Escobar Gives Wings to Independent Journalism in Cuba

Luz has continued to publish her articles that focus, especially, on life. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 26 May 2022 — Luz Escobar must have been “The New Man.” She boarded a train every eleven days at the Tulipán street train station in Havana to get to a pre-university course in the countryside that she hated but needed to obtain the diploma that would propel her towards university. She went through it all: bullying, lice and no water supply. She was the daughter of the Cuban social experiment from which she would end up distancing herself: the ideological alchemy did not work with her.

Luz was not born as a journalist five years ago or even a decade ago. She was practically nursed in a Newsroom. A photographer mother and a reporter father, that girl with abundant black hair grew up surrounded by the typical questions we ask ourselves every day in this guild. The “six W’s,*” or the big questions of the job, she incorporated from a young age as something natural, everyday. She didn’t become a columnist, she grew up one.

This Thursday, in the midst of the daily obstacles of life on this island, the 14ymedio newsroom was jolted. Luz Escobar has just received one of the International Journalism Awards from the Spanish newspaper El Mundo in its twentieth edition. The day’s reporting guidelines took a turn. One of ours, the one who suffered the most from repression and police operations in recent years, had just won such a prestigious award.

Then came the hugs, the tears and the congratulations. There was no lack of those who said that “son of a cat hunts mice,” because of this daughter of a journalist father who has been in the profession for more than half a century and exercising it from within Cuba. But, although the congratulations that bind her to the family may be partly right, this is not the triumph of the family tree or of blood, this is the achievement of someone who tried to fit into the official molds of indoctrination and shook them of … one by one. This is the triumph of Luz Escobar. continue reading

Luz’s daughters are two wonderful teenagers. They have grown up hearing police operations that do not let their mother leave her house. They have been harassed in all spaces, even the lowest, which I reserve in this text out of modesty and due to the necessary restraint that must be shown on information involving minors. But they have risen above them with everything and much more. The meanest and the dirtiest has fallen on them.

However, Luz has continued to publish her articles, which focus, especially, on life. She is one of those few street journalists, from corner to corner and from daily stories who remains on this Island where the iron repression has forced so many colleagues into exile. She was there , almost like the first, when a wall collapsed on the corner of Monte Street in Havana; she is seen in several photos reporting from the historic May 11, 2019 march on the Paseo del Prado, and also at the events in front of the Ministry of Culture on November 27, 2020.

Each of these coverages had its punishments and retaliation. If Luz has not told all the details about the penalties she received, it is because she has always preferred to be the source of information, someone who reports from the place, before being an object of the reporting and relating only what happens to her. She has preferred to shed light on others rather than stare at her own navel. The difference is a thin red line, but she has known who and when she should cross it or how best to do it.

Eight years ago, when the newspaper 14ymedio was founded, Luz had two little girls who absorbed almost all her time. She was unable to be a full-time reporter in those early days but she joined the team very soon after. We, jokingly, compared the first months of this Newsroom with the stage in which the foundations of the Yugoslav model building where our headquarters are located in Havana were dug.

When the excavations began to raise the building, in that distant 1981, the waters did not take long to cover the hole where the columns were going to melt. The first builders, who – besides being unintentional builders -were  those who would inhabit this ugly block and they had to submerge themselves in the mud and the miasma that drained towards the crack in the earth. Later “microbrigadistas” continued to arrive, but the initial sacrifice was unique and highly valued almost 40 years after the building was completed.

Luz was not totally dedicated to the hole, but she reached the top. She rose from the sewers of a system that only accepts their orders, to fly above all of them and all of us. She has done journalism where many believed that only obituaries could be written. She overcame the personal and collective traumas that successive economic crises and surveillance left us. She broke with the paranoia although the paranoiacs continue to watch her.

The train whistle sounds. She no longer goes to a rough concrete block where she is forced to work and pretend. It is the whistle of the profession, as pressing and unappealable as the cry of a hungry child in her cradle. Luz knows that there is no other: journalism or journalism; write or write; narrate or narrate The mice are the ones that hunt the cat in this case, the fierce feline of a regime that, although it appears to be invulnerable, is afraid of journalism.

*Translator’s note: Journalism’s key questions: Who, what, when, where, why and how.
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Cuban Luz Escobar and Russian Alexey Kovalev, Win ‘El Mundo’ Journalism Awards

The ’14ymedio’ reporter Luz Escobar. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Madrid, 26 May 2022 — The twentieth edition of El Mundo International Journalism Awards celebrate freedom of expression and the free flow of information by awarding prizes to two reporters who, from different parts of the globe, are an example of the fundamental values ​​of the profession: courage and rigor.

In the Best Journalistic Work category, the winner was the Russian journalist Alexey Andreevich Kovalev, head of research for the Meduza news project, based in Riga (Latvia). And in the Freedom of the Press category, the winner is the Cuban journalist Luz Escobar, a reporter for the digital media outlet 14ymedio, who is currently under house arrest in her country.

After the careful deliberations, the jury made the decision to announce the awards this morning and plans to deliver them at the end of the summer. Jury members are Joaquín Manso, director of the newspaper El Mundo and president of the jury; Silvia Román, editor-in-chief of El Mundo International; the novelist Carmen Posadas; Araceli Mangas, senior academic and vice president of the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences and Professor of Public International Law and International Relations at the Complutense University of Madrid, together with political scientist José Ignacio Torreblanca, director of the Office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and César Antonio Molina, former Minister of Culture and writer.

The prize, endowed with 20,000 euros and a commemorative sculpture by the artist Martín Chirino, recognizes rigor, journalistic value, ethical commitment and the defense of freedom of expression. These awards are being held in memory of El Mundo journalists Julio A. Parrado, a victim of the Iraq war, Julio Fuentes, assassinated in Afghanistan, and José Luis López de Lacalle, columnist for El Mundo assassinated by ETA, the Basque separatist group.

Last year, after the absence of the awards in 2020 due to the pandemic, the winners were Anne Applebaum, who works at The Washington Post, and Roula Khalaf, a Lebanese journalist and director of the Financial Times. continue reading

Kovalev and Escobar thus join a long list of journalism professionals who, over the last two decades, have celebrated the importance of the profession with El Mundo. In 2019, former Washington Post editor Martin Baron and The Times editor John Witherow were recognized.

In recent editions these international awards have also been given to important names in the national and international journalistic profession such as Thomas L. Friedman, Lydia Cacho, Anabel Hernández, Mark Thompson, Klaus Brinkbäumer, Manu Brabo, Santi Palacios, Salud Hernández-Mora, Rosa Montero, Arturo Pérez-Reverte or Javier Espinosa. Raúl Rivero, who died in 2021, was also one of the winners in the 2003 edition. Rivero was imprisoned in Cuba and later became a regular collaborator and columnist for this newspaper.

The newly appointed director of El Mundo, Joaquín Manso, has highlighted the worth of both winners. In the midst of the war in Ukraine, de Kovalev stressed that he “brings information to Russian citizens” and also that he was responsible for demonstrating, among other things, “Trump’s links with the Russian oligarchy… There are few sources of information about Ukraine for the Russian citizen,” he emphasized.

The award to Luz Escobar highlighted her “her work of denunciation and her courage” defending free information. Escobar is currently under house arrest. In the words of Silvia Román, editor-in-chief of the international section of El Mundo, it is important “not to forget” this type of profile and that her work “is not in vain.”

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Editorial Note: This note was originally published in El Mundo.

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Gone is “The Soul of the Revolution”


14ymedio biggerAn image of the same old man in a corner of Centro Habana, the left on May 11, the one on the right, this Thursday. The missing poster said ‘The Party is the soul of the Revolution’ (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 26 May 2022 — In a green plastic box, the kind used for bottles, and in another cardboard box, between colored paper and newspapers, the eighty-year-old man, with tobacco in his mouth and a resigned gesture, exhibited his items for sale: soap and cigarettes – purchased with the ration book – homemade tomato puree – of a dubious color – toothpaste, menstrual pads…

It was not a strange image in Cuba, where pension money is not enough for retirees and they have to make a living in order to survive . At worst, they dig through the garbage; at best, they resell what they buy in the regulated market, like this old man stationed with his chair on a corner of Centro Habana.

What was striking was the poster behind him, summoning the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, which was held between April 16 and 19, 2021, with the words: “The Party is the soul of the Revolution.” In the year that had passed since the sign had been put up, the official red color had turned pink.

This Thursday, the same old man returned to the same corner, with the same boxes and the same precarious resale products. But, this time, without the same poster. Someone decided it was time to remove it. The Party no longer watches over the old man’s miserable business. Gone from his sight is “the soul of the Revolution.”

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Fidel Castro Ordered the ‘Water Shut Off’ to Pedro Luis Boitel, Says His Former Cellmate

Valladares was jailed at the age of 21 for refusing to hang a plaque that read “I am with Fidel.” (EFE)

14ymedio biggerEFE (via 14ymedio), Miami, 26 May 2022 — Pedro Luis Boitel was forced to go thirsty during a hunger strike in prison, because “Castro gave the order that they cut off his water until he died,” according to what his cellmate, the human rights Armando Valladares, told Efe.

“You cannot write the history of political prison in Cuba without naming Pedro Luis,” says Valladares, a painter, poet and former US ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council, in an interview with Efe.

“Fidel Castro expressly hated Pedro Luis, a leader of the 26th of July Movement and exiled (by Fulgencio Batista) in Venezuela,” Valladares comments shortly before participating in a colloquium in Miami on Wednesday for the 50th anniversary of Boitel’s death.

“He was well known and the candidate with the most possibilities to win the elections (for president) of the FEU (University Student Federation)” before the Revolution, he adds about his companion in cell 64, of circular building number 4 in the Isle of Pines prison, now in disuse and from which they both fled.

In 1961 Boitel was arrested and charged with conspiracy against the state. He was sentenced in a trial to ten years in prison, a sentence that was later extended with other charges.

A kind of maximum security Alacatraz, found in a small island in the south of Cuba, the Isle of Pines was considered “impossible” to break out of, recalls Valladares, who turns 85 next Friday.

Valladares, imprisoned at the age of 21 for refusing to hang a plaque that read “I am with Fidel” and who spent 22 years in prison, during which he suffered torture and punishment of all kinds and went on eleven hunger strikes, met Boitel at the La Cabaña prison in Havana. continue reading

“When they finished my interrogations in the political police, they sent me to galley 12 in La Cabaña. At the door was Pedro Luis, thin and with very large glasses. Then we were together for years and years and years,” he recalls.

“When we escaped on October 21, 1961 – I remember it because I was released on the same day 20-odd years later – there was a guard who walked around at sunset with a dog and a rifle,” he relates about this installation, in which Fidel Castro was also imprisoned before being amnestied by the Government of Fulgencio Batista.

“We went inside the barracks dressed as soldiers, greeting the guards. They captured us on the third day because the people who were supposed to pick us up on the coast did not come, they thought it was impossible for us to escape,” adds Valladares.

“We were the only ones who managed to get out of the cordon of the prison, it will remain in history, I don’t know why there is a tendency to eliminate this heroic and almost novelistic act from the interviews,” he laments, and clarifies that the idea of ​​the escape was Boitel’s.

Upon being captured, they were taken to the punishment cell where they remained “almost a year,” says Valladares. “We went on strike to get us out of there, which was the first,” recapitulates the author of the book Against All Hope, where he recounted his memories after 22 years in prison.

According to the activist’s account, Boitel was taken to the Military Hospital (in Havana), where he was one of the first to be given civilian clothes. “He was making strikes until the last one in (the prison of) the Castillo del Príncipe.

It was a hunger strike, not a thirst strike. Fidel Castro gave the order that the water be cut off until he died,” says Valladares.

Boitel died at the age of 41 on a hunger strike on May 25, 1972 in the Castillo del Príncipe prison in Havana.

The organizers of the tribute to Boitel, among which are the “Plantados hasta la Libertad de Cuba” [Resisters until Cuba is Free], the Institute of Cuban Historical Memory against Totalitarianism and the PEN Club of Cuban Writers in exile, yesterday brought a floral offering to the tomb of the Boitel’s mother, Clara Abraham de Boitel, at Miami’s Flagler Memorial Cemetery.

In the afternoon, the documentary Boitel: Murienda a plazos, directed by Daniel Urdanivia and produced by Pedro Corzo, was screened at the Tower Theater in Little Havana, where Valladares spoke to the audience.

Next to him was “another great friend of Pedro Luis”, Richard Heredia, also an anti-communist and who was with Boitel “underground.”

“It is a well-deserved tribute. Pedro Luis is a legend for all political prisoners like me. Fortunately, we have groups within Cuba that have even adopted his name,” he stressed.

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Cuban Migration Part 10 – A Few Days in a Texas Jail and the Unknown Taste of Freedom

The author of this series of articles, with young Nicaraguans and Hondurans, minutes after crossing the Rio Grande to enter the US near McAllen, Texas. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Alejandro Mena Ortiz, 2 May 2022 — The conditions of the prison were not bad, as I was saying, and in addition you could also play Parcheesi, dominoes, chess, soccer or basketball. We turned into a huge, multinational family.

One of the Cubans who impressed me the most was a guy from Villa Clara who sold everything to be able to leave. He worked with the province’s Fund for Cultural Assets, but he was self-employed. He did restoration works in theaters, in houses of culture, and they paid him lots of dollars. He told me that the level of corruption in the Cultural Center, at least in the municipality of Santa Clara, is incalculable. But then things got bad and Covid was the last straw.

This man was never interested in politics or the situation in the country, because he says that there were months in which he earned thousands of dollars. He built a mansion for himself, houses for the whole family, established pig farms… He had a lot of money and sold it all, although he didn’t tell me a figure.

I also talked to a guy, Richard, who was a cook in Havana. He was interested in pastry and shops and bakeries, and he always wanted to set up his own business, despite being quite young, 25 years old. An aunt of his who lives in Houston told him: “Mi’jito, (Sonny) you’re never going to become anyone there. Come, I’m going to pay for everything so you can set up your own sweets and bread business.” He left a lot of family in Cuba and that hurt him. He had been in prison for 17 days (he was released from prison on March 14th). I only spent 3 days.

There was a Venezuelan who told me: “Maduro is a son of a bitch just like Fidel Castro and his entire generation.” This was one of those who went out to protest in Venezuela in 2017 against the regime there, but they harassed him so much that he ended up leaving and going to Peru. He spent four years there, and it did not go badly, but with the pandemic he lost his job and came to the United States, jumping borders from Peru.

This young man told me that the hardest part of the trip was the Darién jungle, very dangerous. In all the groups that go into the jungle, there is always a person who dies, he says, and in his group, it was a 14-year-old boy. The boy, who could have been from from India, according to what he told me, slipped down a rock, hit his head and was left there. The parents paid some natives 5,000 dollars to carry him to Panama, because the coyote didn’t care. They left them in Panama, the little dead boy and his parents. After that, he didn’t hear from them anymore. He says that if you look to the sides of the Darién trails, you’ll see decomposing bodies, because they cannot be carried. continue reading

You have to carry chlorine tablets to drink the river water, but he didn’t have any tablets and he drank it like that, untreated. Of course, then he had diarrhea and fatigue

Another thing he told me is that the water doesn’t even last a day. You have to carry chlorine tablets to drink the river water, but he didn’t have the tablets and he drank it like that, untreated. Of course, then he had diarrhea and fatigue. The coyote tried to rush them and threatened to leave them behind. In another instance, they made progress, paying about 275 dollars each to cross a river.  Paying was better, he said, because the danger of dying is much greater.

After all that, he went through Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua… and when he got to Mexico, he said that he crossed it in three days. I told him that he had been extremely lucky, but he disagreed. They had put him in a truck with a false bottom –they had a wooden floor on top, where they placed crates with tomatoes, vegetables, and things like that – and they laid below the false floor, unable to move. Sometimes they stayed like that for 21 hours while they traveled, with stops of up to five hours at the edge of the road, waiting for a checkpoint to leave. They urinated in a bottle that they threw out as best they could, but sometimes it spilled on them.

To make things worse, it either was so hot that they suffocated or so cold that they froze. On one occasion, he says that he thought he was about to die because he was very sleepy and felt nothing.

There were also three Guatemalans there, a strange thing, because they are deported quickly, but they had arrived in December. Their group was caught and they were pointed out as witnesses against the coyote. After 90 days in a prison, they were transferred there, and two had an open expulsion order and the other was given the classification of parole, because it seems that he was the only one who spoke out.

One night, they came to do a PCR test on me and six others, and they told us to be on the lookout, in case they came looking for us. And so it happened: at 4:00 in the morning, they woke us up, they gave us breakfast in a cell and they returned the money we had when we arrived, in my case, 120 dollars. They also took away our prison uniforms and we put on the clothes we arrived in. You could imagine the stink of those clothes.

They took us by bus to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and once there, an officer had me sign the papers and told me to stay out of trouble. After that, another bus, and then they took us to a church that welcomed us in a courtyard, sitting on chairs, where they called us one by one.

On that portion of the trip, I met one Venezuelan and two Cuban women. The Venezuelan one left in December and was arrested in Guatemala. The coyotes paid to release her and she was arrested again in Mexico: 30 days in a Tapachula prison. When she was let out, she again looked for someone to help her get across. In total, her family spent thousands and thousands of dollars for her to reach the US. She told me that she was very depressed, that if she had known how things were, she would not have done this. She also told me that she would like to return to her country, but that as long as Maduro was still there, she would not return.

The man asked me what was happening in Cuba, he mentioned Fidel Castro, and I told him that it was his fault that we were not free

On our arrival at the church, where they gave us food and clothes, you can’t leave if you don’t have a plane ticket, so my family tried to buy me one from Laredo to Miami, but they were over $800. In normal times, I was told, that flight is about a hundred something dollars, so we found a solution through Houston. They took me to a bus station, where I bought a ticket to San Antonio for 59 dollars. Two older men who help immigrants were waiting for me there.

I was very moved by this, because they gave me food, toiletries, a mask, and even a small blanket to cover myself. I even told them to save it for someone who was more in need than I was, but in the end, I took it, because the trip was long and my flight didn’t leave until 7:30 in the morning.

The man asked me what was happening in Cuba, he mentioned Fidel Castro, and I told him that it was his fault that we were not free. He was very sympathetic. Also, I really liked San Antonio, with its huge buildings. It seemed incredible to me, to be seeing so much beauty before my eyes.

Arriving in Houston, a cousin of mine who lives there found out and said she wanted to come pick me up. She took me to her house, where I ate, showered, and they washed the clothes I had been wearing, and at 5 in the morning they took me to the airport.

I was a little embarrassed, because the treatment was not the same as for the rest of the passengers: they separated me from the line, they searched me more vehemently, they took photos of me… But I was also amazed at the sheer size of that place: a kilometer to my boarding gate, full of shops, people, life.

I entered the Miami airport through gate 21, and my cousin was waiting for me. I grew up with him but life separated us when he left Cuba and went to Spain, when we were 17 years old; then he ended up in the US. Well, here we are, together again.

At the moment of the embrace, of the uncontrollable tears, I began to remember how long I had spent to get to this country and I couldn’t believe that I had arrived safely, that I had arrived alive. After so much waiting I was with my buddy in this land of freedom.

Alejandro Mena Ortiz in the United States. (14ymedio)

I turned 34 years old on my last birthday, as you already know, in the dungeons of an ice-cooler while I was detained. My closest family – my children, my wife, my parents, my grandmother – are in Cuba.

I was a cook for many years in a private restaurant in Havana, but for a long time I have been working as a reporter for 14ymedio. I am so proud of this that I would need a whole chapter to talk about it.

My trip lasted 26 days from the time I left Havana until I arrived on US soil. It cost a total of 10,075 dollars, including plane tickets, payment to coyotes, cash to eat, etc. This money was put up by a relative, to whom in due course, and when I have it, I will begin to return everything “invested” in my trip.

My cousin is a truck driver here in the US, so in a few weeks by his side I have already crossed 20 states. I have seen many beautiful things. Also, other very ugly ones that I didn’t like, I suppose that happens in all countries.

Now I am discovering what it is like, seeing the lies that the official media in Cuba told us. This is a country with many objectionable things, yes, yes, yes, but it is a country where one can have freedom. I still haven’t adjusted to that. I still have the ghost of fear, of anxiety, when I see, for example, a police patrol or a police officer approaching, because it reminds me of the oppressors who do not allow us to live our lives.

Up to this point this is my story, and so, just: patria y vida. Patria y Vida [Homeland and Life].

Translated by Norma Whiting

With this chapter ends the series on ‘Cuba, the Island in March.’ A pdf version has been published in the original Spanish and an English pdf will also be prepared and linked to here, along with links to the other articles on this site.

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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.