14ymedio – Page 242 – Translating Cuba

Two of Cuba’s Obispo Street Protesters Are Released After Eight Months in Prison

Protesters on Obispo Street in Havana on April 30, 2021. (Capture)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 4 January 2022 — The activists Inti Soto and Ángel Cuza, two of the six protesters arrested after the April 30 sit-in on Obispo Street in Havana, were released on Tuesday, after eight months in prison, confirmed Mary Karla Ares, an independent journalist also arrested during the protest, told 14ymedio.

Cuza was in the Combinado del Sur prison in Matanzas. “I just spoke with him, really he hasn’t even come home, he’s on his way. I’ve been in contact with him all this time and now he called me to break the news,” Ares said.

For her part, Soto’s wife, in conversation with this newspaper, said that the activist was released on Tuesday afternoon and has been in the Taco Taco prison, in San Cristóbal, Artemisa. “We are happy, but very nervous. We are on our way to pick him up because he called us to go and get him,” she explained. Last September, activists Thais Mailén Franco Benítez and Yuisan Cancio were also released. Previously, in May, Mary Karla Ares had been released from prison. They are still keeping reporter Esteban Rodríguez in prison; his family has no news about when he will be released.

In their protest, the protesters tried to approach the house of the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who was then on a hunger strike, when the Police tried to prevent them. At the time, they sat down to protest against what they saw as a limitation of their right to free movement and were detained.

The video, broadcast live from the house, sparked broad solidarity with the detainees of that day. Amnesty International was one of the first international organizations to call for the immediate release of these protesters.

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Fights for the Food Mark New Year’s in Cuban Hotels

A group of customers reaching for grapes at the Grand Memories Hotel in Cayo Santa María, Cuba. (Collage)

14ymedio, Havana, 4 January 2022 — “Scammed.” That’s how Giselle Muñoz feels after spending the end of the year at the Hotel Grand Memories in Cayo Santa María, north of the province of Villa Clara. The Cuban woman tried to break out of the routine on December 31st and only found shortcomings and disappointments at every step in the state-owned hotel, as reported on Facebook in a text accompanied by a video.

Organizational problems were added to the supply problems of the five-star and all-inclusive hotel, as it describes itself on promotional pages. After waiting hours for the room to be available, Muñoz says on her Facebook profile that when she entered she found that it was occupied. “Luckily no one coming out of the bathroom naked or in another more embarrassing situation.”

“I quickly left and went back to the desk,” continues Muñoz, adding that she was able to settle in with her family at 7 pm in another room. “The air conditioning did not cool, the refrigerator did not cool, the shower did not have hot water, the television did not have a remote control nor was it watchable because it had a split screen, and the bedding smelled like a mouse nest,” she describes.

The young woman, a resident of Sancti Spíritus, went back down to the reception and asked to speak to the hotel managers: “So that they would give me my money back because it was December 31st and I had not yet settled in the hotel. They told me they couldn’t do it, the most they could do was give me a few more hours to stay on the day of my departure.”

Even with much disgust, Muñoz had no choice but to go to continue reading

the end of the year dinner that the hotel had prepared, but if she thought for a second that the stumbling blocks were over, she quickly fell into a rage. The shortages that are spreading through the island’s markets has also reached the hotels.

“No pork, no food, practically, no staff to serve and supply the number of customers,” describes the young woman speaking about what she experienced in the restaurant. She also remembers that “people were anxiously waiting for apples and grapes,” because, she insists, customers paid for “a nutritional supplement that included fruits, fruits that I never saw.”

“Several people had to go into the kitchen to demand the food and fruits and then a cook came out to distribute a sad box of grapes for so many customers,” as can be seen in a video that Muñoz shared on her social networks, which she did, she said, “so that no one dares to say that it is a lie.”

“There were blows, shoves and everything never seen before over a handful of grapes, which in the end all fell to the ground because the same people broke the box trying to take them away.”

“It is unnecessary to remember that money is very hard to get to throw it away like that, it is not five pesos, it is a lot of money,” insists Muñoz.

On December 24 , another customer who identified herself as Rachel Cruz on the Tripadvisor platform, also complained about the poor quality of the food and the organization at the Grand Memories in Cayo Santa María. According to her account, her visit on Christmas Eve turned into a “nightmare,” into “complete madness.”

“My girls were knocked down to get an apple from the buffet. For my little boy there was nothing suitable for his food. We tried to go to eat and we spent three long hours in the endless lines. You asked for something and it had run out. The food was cold and poorly prepared,” she describes. “Terrible, I do not recommend it to anyone.”

Something similar happened to Gina, who worked hard all year in 2021 in her position in a Miami pharmacy with the illusion of saving for the end of the year with her family in Cuba. The plan seemed perfect: sun and sand on the most famous beach in Cuba, Varadero. Along with her brother, two nieces and her mother, the emigrant arrived in the last week of December at the Roc Arenas Doradas hotel in the Matanzas peninsula.

“I spent the four days lining up, lining up for the buffet, lining up for breakfast and lining up at the reception to leave my complaints,” Gina laments. The hotel, managed in a mixed way by the Cuban State and the Spanish chain Roc Hotels, has four stars that some clients question. “It gave me the impression that they had accepted more guests than the amount of food they had available.”

“The very limited food options and the very poor preparation, but the worst thing for me was to see that as soon as they noticed that I was a Cuban living in Miami, they treated me very differently from how they spoke to my mother, my brother and my nephews.” For Gina, “it was frustrating that I was going to get a rest and give my family a fun time but we ended up fighting for the food and stressed by the lines.”

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2022, The Year That Forecasts Will be Useless in Cuba

Twelve months ago, on another January 1st in 2021, no one could calculate that the Cuban streets were going to be filled with a river of people demanding freedom, on June 11. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 1 January 2022 — Cubans have said goodbye to one of the most difficult years in their memory, to enter, this Saturday ,into a period full of many uncertainties. Hundreds of political prisoners, the economy bottoming out, a massive exodus in process, and a pandemic that has not yet ended complete a gloomy outlook for the Island. With these variables, the scenario is unprecedented and any exercise of prediction is useless.

Twelve months ago, on another January 1 in 2021, no one could calculate that the Cuban streets were going to fill with a river of people demanding freedom. July 11 (11J)was the largest and most extensive popular demonstration that has occurred in the history of Cuba. Neither the mambises in their independence struggles, nor the students in their confrontation against Gerardo Machado nor Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra had a similar number of followers.

However, the spontaneity and horizontality of the 11J, which was its greatest virtue because it prevented it from being aborted or beheaded in its first hours, was also its greatest weakness. Lacking a script and leaders, the protesters of that day were cornered by the police forces, they did not manage to reach the nerve centers of power and they did not summon the military and police to join them.

However, the regime went into “panic mode” and responded in the only wat Castroism has known how to do in its more than six decades of clinging to power: with repression, trying to rewrite the narrative of what happened and shielding the streets of the entire country with uniformed men. Any illusion that mass protest would force the regime to open up economically or politically has been dissolving as the months go by.

Instead of preparing a program of flexibilities, decreeing an amnesty for political prisoners and launching a program to unlock the productive forces, the Communist Party has preferred to entrench itself. Miguel Díaz-Canel has become one of the most unpopular rulers in national history, some even place him in the first place of the bad ones. continue reading

Can an economically exhausted regime, forced to be in a permanent state of emergency to avoid another uprising and devoid of any political mystique, survive for long? The answer varies depending on the degree of consideration for its people that each group in power has. In the case of the Cuban leaders, it has become clear that nothing stops them in their clear obsession with maintaining power.

That stubbornness and lack of grandeur are a combination that does not herald a peaceful end to a system that in 63 years has destroyed the nation, generated a bloated diaspora, lobotomized millions of students through school indoctrination programs, and sunk the economy to unbearable levels. They are not going to let go of the helm of the national ship to make things better, that is the message that they have sent with force in the last months.

But the current model has no future. Even if they manage to prolong its life artificially, it is doomed. The possibility of a sponsorship, in the style of the Soviet Union or Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, is not on the horizon. The loss of young professionals that will accelerate in the coming months will further undercapitalize the labor force in an aging country and Díaz-Canel will not be able to reverse the animosity that people have towards him with his clumsy rhetoric.

Will this be the first day of the last year of Castroism? Many wonder in the streets and houses of this Island. It is possible, but right now we cannot know.

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A Leather Goods Store with Two Employees and One Pair of Shoes in Central Havana

At La Reina leather goods there was only one pair of sandals for sale this Monday. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 3 January 2022 — The “special offer” was actually the only one and flawed. In the La Reina leather good store, belonging to the Caribe chain of stores and located in Centro Habana, they only sold, this Monday, one pair of female platform sandals with a broken strap. The rest of the displays, dozens of them, were empty.

Located on the popular corner of Reina and Galiano, the place occupies a large air-conditioned space surrounded by elegant stained glass windows that remain deserted.

“There they sold some Brazilian Piccadilly brand shoes, they were a bit expensive, but they lasted because they were strong,” Marta, a former client of that business, told 14ymedio, who sold her products in the now defunct convertible pesos. “There were for all types of people, from the smallest to the highest numbers and they also sold umbrellas, bags and other merchandise.”

Located on the popular corner of Reina and Galiano, the place occupies a large air-conditioned space. (14ymedio)

Now, in the center of the store, two workers use their mobile phones to kill the hours that pass without interacting with the public.

“We only have that pair that you see there, it’s size 40, so they don’t work for you,” said one of the shop assistants to a lady who came looking for an offer. The woman asked when merchandise would come again. “God only knows,” replied one of the shop assistants.

Leaving the establishment, the woman complained: “What is the logic of keeping this place open paying for air conditioning and electricity and the salary of two people, just to sell a pair of half-torn shoes?”

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US Government Fines Airbnb for Violating Cuban Embargo

As of April 2016, Airbnb had a network of 4,000 rental homes visited by more than 13,000 Americans. (EFE)

14ymedio, Havana, 3 January 2022 — The United States government will collect a fine of $ 91,172.29 from the home rental company Airbnb for violations of the embargo against Cuba, according to a statement published Monday by the Treasury Department.

The company agreed to settle the amount due to “its potential civil liability for apparent violations of the sanctions against Cuba administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC),” the document said.

Although OFAC explained that the violations were not serious and have already been clarified, they included apparent payments related to American guests traveling for reasons other than the 12 categories authorized by OFAC, as well as the failure to maintain records associated with transactions with Cuba.

After reaching an agreement, Airbnb reported that it will address “its deficiencies in compliance with the sanctions” and implement “additional commitments designed to minimize the risk of the recurrence of similar conduct in the future.” continue reading

Among the immediate actions, it will implement an IP blocking regime for the granting of permits to people located in Cuba who act as hosts on the platform and thus prevent transactions with that category from being carried out.

The company also proposes to collect information on the country of residence and the payment instrument of its users, in order to determine if “they are nationals or residents” of the Island, as well as guarantee that the hosts certify that they are private entrepreneurs and not “Cuban government officials or members of the Communist Party.”

After the start of the thaw between Havana and Washington, the US-based platform began its operations on the island in April 2015 with homeowners and private rental rooms. At first, it began with reservations for American or Cuban-American travelers and, 12 months later, it expanded its market to tourists from all over the world.

As of April 2016, Airbnb had a network of 4,000 rental homes in Cuba visited by more than 13,000 Americans. According to company data, they have leases in 40 cities and towns on the island, with a third of their supply outside of Havana, in cities such as Trinidad, Viñales, Santiago de Cuba, Matanzas and Cienfuegos.

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Cuba Archive Demands Justice and Freedom for Prisoners on the 63rd Anniversary of the Revolution

A young man is arrested by police and State Security agents during the July 11th protests in Havana. (Capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 2 January 2022 –This Saturday, the organization Archivo Cuba (Cuba Archive) launched a petition on Change.org in solidarity with the Island, in which they demand justice for the July 11th prisoners and freedom for the Cuban people.

The initiative was published, intentionally, on the first of January, the sixty-third anniversary of the Revolution, “the regime which has unleashed fierce injustice, repression, misery, and desperation upon the Cuban people,” said the Miami-based NGO in a statement shared Saturday.

In it, they request “three minutes”, the time it takes to read and sign the petition on Change.org, “for 63 years of dictatorship.” They celebrated that another initiative on the same platform, one which advocated for reducing the sentence of Cuban truck driver Rogel Aguilera, sentenced to 110 years in prison in the United States for an accident in which four people died, had resonated and that finally, Colorado’s governor, Jarid Polis, reduced the young man’s sentence to 10 years. “Evidently people sympathize with victims of injustice,” offered the organization led by María Werlau.

The petition states that faced with “the largest public anti-government demonstrations in the last half-century” in Cuba, on July 11th, with thousands of citizens spontaneously demanding freedom and improved living conditions, the Cuban State responded with “fierce repression: arbitrary arrests, trials without due process, layoffs from work, forced exile, and all sorts of persecution and threats.” continue reading

At the same time, they considered the work of the Work Group for J11 Justice, which reported “at least” 1,334 detentions on that day, including 45 minors between 14 and 17 years of age, and 708 people remain incarcerated. “Around 200 have been sentenced to long years of prison, many for up to 20 to 30 years, and hundreds more face similarly absurd punishment,” states the petition.

“Cuban laws discriminate politically in open violation of fundamental rights and thousands more Cubans are incarcerated for alleged common crimes or crimes against State Security and for ’pre-criminal social dangerousness’* [sic] with the purpose of maintaining social-political control,” denounced Archivo Cuba, which exclaimed, “It’s time for this to end!”

As a result, from the Cuban Government they demand, to begin with, the unconditional release of all political prisoners and the dismissal “of all judicial and investigative processes for political reasons.” In addition, they request information on those in custody, “for public demonstration, pre-criminal social dangerousness, and other political causes, as well as access to the public records of tribunals and detention facilities.”

They also request that the United Nations Special Rappoteur on Torture and international human rights organizations have access, for inspection, to detention centers on the Island, selected “without prior notice.”

Lastly, they demand the “dismantling of the repressive apparatus,” the “repeal of all laws and regulations penalizing the free exercise of civil and political rights,” and the “urgent start of a transition process toward a multi-party democracy that guarantees the free exercise of the people’s sovereignty under the rule of law.”

They also ask governments around the world to impose on the Island an embargo on the sale of arms and “equipment used to repress,” as well as sanctions on Cuban officials “including prosecutors and judges,” who lend themselves to repression, and that they cease any actions “that legitimize, fund and support the dictatorship.”

Finally, they request the international community send humanitarian assistance to Cuba “without intermediation of the government until it becomes a legitimate representative of the people,” and they conclude the petition with the motto of the protests, taken from the song with the same name: “Patria y Vida“.

*Translator’s note: ’Pre-criminal social dangerousness’ is the ’crime’ of being someone who may commit a crime in the future.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Cuban Brigadier General Humberto Francis Pardo, in Charge of Fidel Castro’s Security, Dies

General Humberto Francis Pardo, who died this Monday in Havana. (Archive)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar / Natalia López Moya, Havana, 28 December 2021 — Reserve Brigadier General Humberto Omar Francis Pardo died this Monday in Havana, as 14ymedio confirmed on Tuesday. His body, which will be cremated, is at the Calzada y K funeral home, located at Calzada number 52, in El Vedado. A source close to the family told this newspaper that the military man had suffered from Alzheimer’s for years.

He was born in Santiago de Cuba in 1945 and studied in the Soviet Union between 1965 and 1969, according to the Internet forum Secretos de Cuba. “When he returned to Cuba, he carried out military missions, at least in Angola, Ethiopia and Nicaragua,” says this website.

As brigadier general, Francis Pardo was in charge of the the Ministry of the Interior’s Personal Security Directorate, the invisible apparatus with the most power on the island, and was in charge of Fidel Castro’s security. He had under his command the “elite” brigade that has more than 3,000 troops, “shock troops” to face protests.

Considered one of the most powerful Cuban military personnel, Francis Pardo was replaced from his duties as Head of the General Directorate of Personal Security (DGSP) in August 2016. Raúl Castro replaced him with his grandson Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, son of Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, the “czar” of the State company Gaesa. continue reading

Until that moment, within the military scheme, General Francis at the head of the DGSP commanded an anti-attacks brigade that was made up of snipers and experts in all types of explosives, in addition to the counterintelligence service, which in coordination with other State agencies controlled all the information of that brotherhood, the family circle and friends. Vice Minister of the Interior under Abelardo Colomé Ibarra, the military man was also in charge of an international relations department that coordinated with other secret services visits to Cuba by persons of interest and personalities.

General Francis was awarded the Order “June 6” of the First Degree in recognition of 55 years of accumulated service in the ranks of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior. His “consecration, skill and reliability performance, fundamentally in the organization and direction of protection activities for the main leaders,” of the Cuban regime was highlighted.

All the official reactions after the death of Francis Pardo were published long after 14ymedio reported the death of the soldier. The first communiqué was released by the Interior Ministry, which specified that Francis Pardo had “a brilliant record of service in protecting the physical integrity” of the main Cuban leaders and “in defense of the Revolution.”

It also noted that “his remains were on view” at the Calzada and K funeral home, “for a subsequent ceremony with the corresponding military honors.”

For his part, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez on his Twitter account described Francis Pardo as “a brave combatant of Personal Security,” who was “head of that troop of loyalists during 30 of his 56 years of service in the Ministry of Interior, under the orders of Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl.

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Cuba Acknowledges High Transmission of Omicron Variant and Decrees New Restrictions for Travelers

The Ministry of Public Health recognizes that “the trend is an increase in infections,” specifically a 34.8% increase in Cuba in the last week. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 30 December 2021 — The Cuban health authorities have decided to establish new restrictions due to the increase in infections in recent days. Some 241 new cases of covid-19 were reported yesterday, almost 100 more than the previous day, and this Thursday the trend continues, with the record 328 cases.

In addition, after several days without deaths related to the coronavirus, there is a reported victim, although he had testicular cancer with brain metastasis, a serious comorbidity.

The Ministry of Public Health recognizes in a statement published this Thursday that “the trend is an increase in infections,” specifically a 34.8% increase in Cuba in the last week, and notes “the high power of dissemination” of the omicron variant , “which has the capacity to double the number of cases in just two or three days,” and which has expanded to 110 countries.

On the island, 72 people who are reported to be infected with this strain have been identified, spread over 12 provinces. “Most are imported cases, although patients who have had contact with these people have already been diagnosed,” says the Health Ministry’s text. continue reading

For this reason, from January 5 there will be new regulations, which mainly affect international travelers.

Now, they will have to present a complete vaccination scheme upon entry to Cuba, in addition to a negative PCR within a maximum of 72 hours.

For travelers “from high-risk countries,” the statement said, “random” surveillance will be increased.

The most restrictive measures, despite the fact that in the United States and Europe the infections are growing exponentially, will affect those who come from South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, Malawi and Eswatini, who will be subjected to a PCR upon arrival to the Island and will have to do a mandatory eight-day quarantine in a hotel “destined for that purpose.” Travelers will have to pay for it out of pocket along with transportation. On the seventh day, a new test will be performed, which, if negative, will allow them to be discharged from quarantine.

The same is established for Cubans residing on the island who do not have a vaccination scheme, the regulations specify.

If a traveler who arrives on the island tests positive for covid-19, he will be admitted to a health center, and all his direct contacts, isolated in special centers or “at home, as long as the necessary conditions exist and compliance is guaranteed.”

As for the rest of the population, “mass activities that generate crowds of people” will be prohibited, without specifying whether this includes the daily and very long lines to buy food.

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Charges Dropped Against Artists Over July 11 Protests in Front of the ICRT

“We are fighting forcefully and intelligently to put fish on the Cuban table,” an official told Cubadebate. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, December 30, 2021 — The artists charged with public disorder for protesting in front of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT) on July 11 learned on Thursday that the cases against them were being dropped. In essence, they were being acquitted.

The situation remains unclear, however, for playwright Yunior García Aguilera and curator Solveig Font, both members of the group, are both outside of Cuba.

Actor Reinier Diaz told 14ymedio that when he went to the police station at Zapata and C streets to sign the legal document dismissing his case, he inquired about the status of García Aguilera and Font and they told him, “Their situations are different,” without giving any further information.

García Aguilera tells 14ymedio that he knows nothing about the status of his case and that Font “is looking into it.”

“I just signed the document dismissing the charges over the July 11 protest in front of ICRT. I was not intending to make a public announcement but I feel indebted to many people for this outcome,” wrote historian Leonardo Fernandez Otaño on social media. continue reading

In the post he thanks friends who helped him support himself during this period and those who were subjected to interrogation because of their closeness to him. He also thanked his parents for “all their suffering,” which he says is ongoing, and neighbors who “ferociously” defended him from assault and attempted acts of public repudiation.

The young historian says he is “grateful” that the charges have been dropped “because no one can hide the truth” but also admits to feeling sad that it was “the privileges of being white and intellectual” that saved him. “The young people from La Güinera were not so lucky,” he writes. In late December thirty-two people from this impoverished Cuban town were sentenced to up to twenty-six years in prison for their participation in the July 11 protests. Fernandez Otaño describes their sentences as “unjust and politically motivated.”

Other ICRT protesters who had effectively been placed under house arrest as a precautionary measure included Edel Carrero, Javier Perez Rodriguez, Juan Carlos Saenz Calahorra, Raul Prado, Gretel Medina, Daniel Triana and Aminta Calzado.

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Cuban Police Detain Motorcycle Thieves as Government Calls Theft ‘Fake News’

Some profiles on social networks and especially groups such as motorcycle clubs have reported some of the violent thefts of electric motorcycles. (14ymedio)

For the Cuban government, the robberies reported in recent days and the growing violence on the island do not exist. The Ministry of the Interior published a statement this Friday in which it insists that events reported on social networks, in particular those related to the theft of electric motorcycles, “are events that occurred in previous years or fake news.”

This, according to the Ministry, is intended “to generate a climate of impunity and public insecurity in the midst of the end of the year festivities.”

However, in the same text it is acknowledged that there have been people arrested for this crime, and that “they have faced the corresponding penal consequences.”

The note, which was read on the national television news, says that “receivers,” some shop owners and mechanics, as well as “citizens who have been warned or fined for trusting the unscrupulous,” have been prosecuted.

The note also claims to have established the modus operandi of these seizures: “Taking advantage of the victims’ neglect, the lack of protection of the property in the public thoroughfare, the commercialization of parts, pieces and accessories or the use of false property documents.” continue reading

Regarding the complaints made to the authorities that have not yet been cleared up, the ministry explains that “they are working hard,” and details that in some of the investigations carried out “there are concrete elements that will allow the arrest” of the guilty and the recovery of the stolen goods.

“Citizen tranquility constitutes a conquest of the Cuban Revolution, and it will continue to be so. There will be no impunity and there will always be vigorous action against criminals,” the note concludes in a triumphalist tone.

The reality shown by social networks and testimonies collected by this newspaper is something else. “On the corner they assaulted a friend of my mother to take her phone,” “in my building they broke the gate over the door to steal but the dog barked and the men ran away,” “they left my sister without her wallet when she got off the bus,” are some of the stories of violence that have been heard in Cuba in recent weeks.

Now during the New Year’s celebration, which has been marked by shortages and high prices, there were also a series of reports of assaults that have put many Cubans on alert.

Thefts with a knife, theft of gold chains or cell phones, theft of electric motorcycles, have been some of the most frequent complaints about the lack of security that exists on Cuban streets.

Some profiles on social networks and especially groups such as motorcycle clubs have reported some of the violent thefts of electric motorcycles. “The best thing is to avoid the red lights,” they warn. In one of the videos that circulated, you can see the moment when a man who is riding one of these vehicles is assaulted at a traffic light and is thrown in the street while the thieves ride away on the motorcycle.

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Cuba: The Continuity of Triumphalism

Mural in relief at the entrance to the Youth Labor Army market on Tulipán street, in Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 1 January 2022 — On the last day of 2021, the directors of the Youth Labor Army market (EJT) on Tulipán Street surprised their regulars with a mural in relief that reproduces an old icon of triumphalism: the image of a peasant carrying a succulent bunch of bananas, taken from the back of the 20 peso bills in circulation.

The curious thing is that this image already appeared on the banknotes of the 1990s with the label “Food Program” and in the current ones the foot of the engraving says “Agricultural Development.” Accompanying the guajiro, in both cases, are some furrows that stretch into infinity and some sugarcane workers on a combine in full swing.

The image is taken from the back of the 20 peso bills in circulation. (Collage)

Without the intention of aesthetic pedantries and without pretending that behind the innocent mural is the hairy hand of the ideological apparatus, the reproduction of the banana picker at the gates of a market offers signs that the same triumphalist vision of a controlling State that “guarantees” food to the people continues to be projected.

It doesn’t matter that the bananas they sell on the other side of this gate are no longer those “microjets” from the 90s that made the fat splash up in the pan due to their excessive water content; and even less important is that the price has multiplied by ten today, since the last issue of those bills.

There he is with his slight and sweaty smile, this peasant whose skin has been darkened in the artistic endeavor and to whom, without hidden ideological intentions, they passed the bunch from the left hand to the right. A matter of design.

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The US Has Returned 1,019 Migrants to Cuba in 2021

The US Coast Guard returned 39 migrants to Cuba on Friday. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 27 December2021 — A total of 1,019 Cubans have been returned to the island this year by U.S. authorities, according to data provided by the State newspaper Granma on Sunday. The report also mentioned the return of other groups from Mexico, Bahamas, Cayman Islands and Russia, without specifying the number of people.

On December 24, the U.S. Coast Guard returned to Cuba 39 rafters intercepted in various operations. One of the groups used “a sport fishing boat taken from its owner” whose whereabouts are currently unknown. The 39 returned migrants arrived on the Coast Guard Cutter Raymond Evan in Orozco Bay, Artemisa.

The first of the interceptions occurred on Sunday, December 19, 10 nautical miles off Stock Island, according to a statement issued by the Coast Guard. A day later and at different times, authorities stopped three smaller boats near Key West. continue reading

Last weekend, another 25 Cuban rafters were detained after making landfall at three different locations in Key West, Officer Thomas G. Martin reported Monday on his Twitter account. The Border Patrol provided assistance to the migrants, who were reported in good health.

One of these arrivals was captured on video by Cuban artists María Karla Rivero Veloz and Jean Michel Fernández. “We just saw some rafters who have just arrived, right where the 90-mile buoy is from here to Cuba,” the actress said. The group, made up of six rafters, including a 10-year-old girl, said they left last Saturday at 2 p.m. from Playa Baracoa.

The Cubans were taken into custody and will be able to apply for asylum by demonstrating to an immigration officer that they are afraid to return to their country. If they convince the judge, they must then post a bond. In the best case scenario, they are released with a temporary stay permit in the U.S., known as Parole.

The mobilization of [Cuban] black berets for an illegal departure from Baracoa Beach, in the province of Artemisa, was reported on social networks on Saturday. Rene Almaguer uploaded to his Facebook profile a video in which applause can be heard after a boat managed to escape. “People jumping to get out of Cuba,” said the Havana native who lives in Tampa, Florida. “They got away, I’m glad,” was one of the reactions from users.

Nothing prevented the people leaving the island in small boats, commented Dallann Loraa on the images from the municipality of Bauta in the province of Artemisa, shared by Almaguer, in which people in civilian clothes can be seen carrying machetes.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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Back to School in Cuba and Back to the Mask

Restart of the primary school year in Granma province, in November. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Panama, 31 December 2021 — Ana Laura’s mother was summoned by the teacher to hear complaints about her daughter’s behavior. The 14-year-old teenager has returned to her classroom in Havana after more than a year without classes and now she feels that she does not fit in the desk, does not pay attention to the content and does not want to take notes. “More than half of her grade is in the same place,” laments the teacher. Returning to school is a global challenge, but the situation worsens in Cuba, where excesses of ideological indoctrination contribute to students’ rejection of school.

At the beginning of the confinement, the island’s educational authorities believed that it would be enough to teach the subject at a distance, place a teacher in front of the camera or send assignments through instant messaging. But the months without morning assemblies inflamed with political slogans took their toll on the influence that the Cuban regime had on children and young people. For a long time, these students did not have to attend a place where the blackboard alternates with photos of party leaders, nor did they have to attend “revolutionary reaffirmation” events in which students are frequently involved.

No wonder the historic protests that occurred on July 11 took place when schools had been closed for almost a year. As if the spell had vanished after missing the daily repeating of the words that elicited that state of submissive acceptance, the youths awakened civically. Among the more than 1,000 political prisoners of that day, a good share are under 20 years of age, many barely over 16, considered the age of majority in Cuba. continue reading

For those who did not end up behind bars for demonstrating in the streets, going back to school gives them a bitter taste. There are classmates missing from the classrooms and everywhere they hear the stories of summary trials and courts where sentences of more than ten years are asked for exercising the right to protest. But also, those who are returning to the education system are not the same as those who stopped going to classes in the spring of 2020 when the numbers of those infected by covid-19 began to increase. They have changed a lot.

Putting these children and adolescents back into the mold of indoctrination is as impossible as putting the tiny glass slipper on one of Cinderella’s sisters. They no longer fit in the ideological prison of a school, although the confinement of “stay at home” has made them miss exams, sigh at a notebook and even idealize classes full of mathematical formulas or compound sentences. They are fed up with the cult of personality, the slogans of fiery rhetoric and the double standards that all this provokes.

When Ana Laura’s teacher laments that she is not interested in the subjects, she believes that it is the rebellion of age or the lack of teaching practice. But it goes further: in this last year the teenager learned to live without that iron mask and now she no longer wants to put it on again.

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Editor’s Note: This text was originally published in Deutsche Welle in Spanish.

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Frei Betto and the ‘Excessive Appetite’ of Cubans

Meeting in 2014 between Frei Betto and Fidel Castro. (Granma)

14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, 27 December 2021 — I remember the first time I read, back in 1996, the Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot by Montaner, Vargas Llosa Jr. and Plinio Apuleyo.

I had no difficulty in identifying [Brazilian activist] Frei Betto as the protagonist of this work, a character who circulates throughout the Americas, with that vocation of being out for blood against everything that represents progress, modernization and development.

Later, when I read the second part, I had no doubt about Betto. Above all, because at that time he was one of the few who had an open door to Fidel Castro’s office to conduct those interviews that sought, unsuccessfully, to sweeten his character, something like turning him into the impossible legend that he is.

Now, we find ourselves once again with a piece of extraordinary value to measure the moral stature and intelligence of Betto, who continues to stick his nose into Cuba, with the same distorted vision of a reality that credits him with deserving the title given to him in the works of Montaner, Vargas Llosa and Apuleyo.

And really, only an idiot can think that Cubans “have a big appetite”, or that “in Cuba there is no hunger” and that it is this voracious appetite that is the origin of the food problems that exist in Cuba. God forbid! And that such things are said by someone who claims in his resume to have spent two weeks on the island in November as “advisor to the regime on the Food Sovereignty and Nutritional Education program, which has the support of FAO, Oxfam and the European Union” is even more scandalous, because it represents a lack of respect for a people who have been experiencing considerable difficulties in obtaining basic products for more than two years.

Or perhaps that this advisory function was done from a placid stay in a hotel run by Spaniards in some cay of the northern part of the island. Which could be anything.

Beto believes that by increasing local food production, through family, urban and suburban agriculture, it is possible to achieve compliance with the Cuban Program for Food Sovereignty and Nutrition Education. Nothing new under the sun.

This is the same program that was questioned by the United Nations, before the pandemic, placing Cuba at the same level as Haiti in terms of countries with the highest food risks in the world. Betto defends continue reading

the regime at all times, pointing out that “it spends more than 2 billion dollars a year to import food, including from Brazil, from which it buys, among other things, rice and chicken (85% of the products that Brazil imports from Cuba are tobacco, cigars and cigars)”.

And, at this point, it should be pointed out that the correct term is “wastes”, because the decision to buy these products for 2 billion dollars means not doing so by betting on the domestic supply, so that an unproductive agricultural sector that fails to meet the needs of the population coexists with these massive imports of goods that could be obtained in Cuba.

Betto should explain why. For Betto it is very easy to blame all the ills of the Cuban agricultural sector on dependence on foreign oil, climatic catastrophes, or the blockade, following the official script, even citing the lack of containers, which are unloaded in other countries and then the products are transported to the island, which makes them more expensive.

He concludes, all of this is a strangulation for the “fragile Cuban economy, inclusion of the country in the list Made in the USA of countries that promote terrorism.”

Not a single assignment of responsibility to the regime.

And then he mentions COVID-19, “which forced the island to close its doors to its main source of foreign currency in recent years, tourism”. The same as other countries, but Betto refrains from comparing Cuba with Costa Rica or the Dominican Republic, where tourism in 2021 has been a success in travelers and income, while Cuba was slowly drowning. It is optimistic to think about the return of tourists. At the moment, nothing seems to affirm it.

Betto also wants the 243 measures adopted by Trump to reinforce the blockade to be eliminated, but he does not make the slightest comment on the repression suffered by the Cubans on 11J [July 11 demonstrations] when they protested extensively and intensely against that regime that he likes so much, and to whom he spares no words of support and defense.

For him, Cubans only have “a big appetite”. And then, by way of conclusion, he affirms in the key of a revolutionary slogan that “in spite of this dramatic situation, Cuba resists. The entire population, of almost 12 million inhabitants, has access to a basic monthly food basket and to the Health and Education systems free of charge. There are no homeless people or beggars”.

I insist: let him pay a visit to the hundreds of disappeared and detainees after July 11 who are still waiting for the summary trials of Castroism to be condemned to long prison sentences.

Let him leave the comfortable resort and take a walk around Old Havana. For Betto these people do not exist. They do not deserve even the slightest consideration. He is only interested in “selling” the SAN Plan, which is what has paid for his comfortable stay on the island and is the latest wonder of the regime that now thinks it is going to achieve all its objectives, with the participation of the street (as in the times of that “literacy campaign” that was of little use for what it had been programmed for, since it had other undisclosed objectives), which is something he also seems to like when it comes to acting on economic matters (Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, Federation of Cuban Women, trade unions).

Not content with that, Betto returns to the charge saying that “Cubans have eating habits that can be perfectly changed, such as the preference for wheat bread, an imported cereal”.

And, as in the times of the conquest by the Spaniards, because it is no longer possible to take a country further back in history, Betto points to the use of cassava to produce bread (cassava) or corn (which Cuba also imports from the United States) and even coconut flour.

He also wants meat, which is not available, to be replaced by beans, lentils, spinach, peanuts, soybeans and avocado, rich in protein, which are also not produced in sufficient quantities. To end up forgetting the cows and defending soy milk and yogurt (when Cuba does not have soy and must import it).

Who commissioned Betto this study, for which he is sure to charge a high fee? He must be surprised by the conclusions. I have no doubt about it.

Years ago, Fidel Castro was also obsessed with the properties of the moringa [a medicinal tree], which reminded the great Alvarez Guedes of that joke about the rosemary plant (romerillo) that has thrilled several generations of Cubans.

Not content with all the nonsense and idiocy, Betto ended up defending, of course, agroecology, no doubt to give vision and support to one of Raul Castro’s projects that the communist bureaucracy of the regime shelved in a forgotten corner, as is done in Cuba with that which is bothersome. In fact, Betto said he had “visited several rural properties with high productivity that do not use chemical fertilizers” and highlighted the term “property” recalling that it was the Revolution with the Agrarian Reform that gave land titles to farmers and landless peasants.

And yet, he did not have a single reference to the thousands of landowners who were expropriated without compensation by the regime and were left in absolute misery, forced to flee the country. Undoubtedly, Betto sees what he wants to see. This is a feature of Montaner’s, Vargas Llosa’s and Apuleyo’s character description.

If tomorrow Cuba were to evolve towards civic freedoms and market economy, Betto would not have the slightest inconvenience to see the same thing and propose the same guidelines. What happens is that then, perhaps, he would not be so well received on the island. And his ideas would go unnoticed.

At the end of the day, Betto with his analysis puts any state policy before the priorities of the citizens. He believes in a collectivist model of society, where the means of production are controlled by the state and wealth or prosperity are outlawed, to the extent that they go against the principles he defends. From that weighty and majestic position of moral superiority that the left uses to criticize its rivals, Betto says that Cubans are to blame for what happens to them. And maybe, in this, he is right.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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Cuba’s Fleeing Athletes

Some of the Cuban players who escaped in 2021 during international championships. (Collage)

14ymedio, Havana, 28 December 2021 — It was going to be a quiet championship, without the great prominence of adult tournaments, but the under-23 world cup held in Mexico became the greatest disaster in the entire history of Cuban sport with the escape of nothing more nor less than half the entire team.

The squad was made up of 24 players, but since they set foot in Mexico, they fled one by one until 12 were gone. Geisel Cepeda, Loidel Chapellí Jr., Yandi Yanes, Bryan Chi, Miguel Antonio González, Yeinel Zayas, Luis Dennys Morales, Uber Mejías, Dariel Fernández, Loidel Rodríguez, Reinaldo Lazaga and Diasmany Palacios joined the list of young people who left the Island.

Added to the seriousness of the situation was the fact that, weeks before leaving for Mexico, the coach, Eriel Sánchez, had declared that sporting attitude, which he was in charge of, was added to others when choosing the athletes. The players were patriots, he said, a quality that is not in doubt, except in the sense that the manager said it.

The loss of 50% of the team, which played out under the watchful eye of the international sports world, was attributed by the Cuban authorities to the alleged evil arts used by the United States to encourage the emigration of talented ballplayers. continue reading

But the massive flight of Cuban players began months earlier, when at the Baseball Pre-Olympic held in Florida, second baseman César Prieto , and pitchers Lázaro Blanco and Andy Rodríguez left the island’s delegation .

In 2017, shortly after US Major Leagues reached an agreement with the Cuban Baseball Federation to establish contracts for the island’s players in the neighboring country, then-President Donald Trump broke the pact.

The island does not forgive the loss of foreign currency that the agreement would have resulted it and since then it has not stopped labeling the measure of “player robbery” without observing the responsibility of the regime when the elite of the sport bleeds every time they board a plane.

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