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at the scene of the crime if it is common crimes. “People feel unprotected, thieves know it,” was the feeling of the robbery victim, Aniusca Labrada.

This crime wave occurs on the island, according to the Numbeo platform, which is a company registered in Serbia and founded by a former Google software engineer, and which in 2020 ranked Cuba as “the safest country in the Americas,” with a crime rate of 29.02% and safety of 70.98%, surpassing Canada and the US.

Given the silence of the official media, the thefts are reported through social networks. “One problem is that many people do not report because when they do, the police ask them for papers on the stolen objects,” one user told this newspaper. “If they are electrical appliances (properties or import papers), as there is so much illegal sale, people fear that they will end up going from accuser to accused.”

Thus, it is difficult to know the real incidence of these acts, because many times the victims choose to remain silent and, if anything, reinforce the security of their homes after suffering a robbery: buying bars, new locks or surveillance cameras. “I once reported a robbery and then I couldn’t leave the country because I was in the middle of a police investigation,” adds a woman from Havana who had a flat-screen TV and a laptop stolen from her apartment .

“When I went to leave through the airport they told me that I could not and when investigating it was my name was in the investigation file, so I withdrew the complaint because they had not caught the thief and to top it off I was receiving double punishment, I was left without my belongings and lost the money I paid for my ticket.”

Another of the most common thefts in Cuba is motorcycles, which leads the owners to organize a “hunt” for the thieves. Yoan Rosquete, for example, through Facebook “put baited motorcycles to catch them red-handed.” There are also groups in which the spoils are denounced.

To this must be added assaults, such as the one on November 10, when a medical student was threatened with a knife to steal her cell phone. The event occurred in the Ciudamar neighborhood of San Miguel del Padrón, in Havana, and was captured on video .

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It was not, however, his first encounter with the Cuban forces of order, whom he had known as a collateral victim. His partner was a freelance journalist, which began to out the pressure on him. So, for example, he lost your rental home.

The practice of pressuring the landlord to terminate the contract with a tenant in the opposition has not been unusual in Cuba. It happened to him on two occasions, the second when he shared a house with the art curator Anamely Ramos, with whom he also collaborated on a project that called for the release of imprisoned activist Silverio Portal. Getting involved in the San Isidro Movement press group was definitely a turning point in his life.

“I had to help my friends, Katherine [Bisquet], Camila [Lobón], Carolina [Barrero], whom I met 10 years ago, when none of us were thinking of doing this kind of political activism, and I took it as something very personal,” he says.

On November 27, when he was already a contributor to the independent publication Tremenda Nota, he participated in the protest in front of the Ministry of Culture and was one of the 30 chosen to participate in a meeting that the authorities sold as a will for dialogue. Since then, his engagement has become a priority.

“I was in the group to help political prisoners, bringing meals for the ‘Where you fall I raise you’ campaign, medicines for the MSI medical kit and keeping my friends communicated and fed. That cost me a lot, because it bothered State Security that I was helping them,” he says, adding that they tried to prevent him from visiting Carolina Barrero on multiple occasions.

“They were not going to take from me a friendship of so many years. How could I not go help her if she was alone and I know she was having a bad time? She was besieged [surrounded by State Security] for more than 200 days, without food, without anything, how am I going to leave her alone in that,” remember.

Already then, when he accumulated several arrests, he bought a ticket to leave Cuba on February 8, but the restrictions due to covid-19 were joined by another issue. On January 27, he was arrested before the Ministry of Culture when the police violently dissolved the sit-in that several artists were holding after paying tribute to José Martí on the eve of the 168th anniversary of his birth.

“In that arrest they made me sign a letter in which I had to renounce all activism and pass on information to them, something that I denounced when I left. But I couldn’t handle those prohibitions and I broke everything I signed. They got very upset with me, because I continued doing my things. For me those papers are worth nothing; I signed at that moment because I was leaving in 10 days,” he adds.

After July 11, the harassment moved on to his family, which State Security began to pressure to force his departure. “They have not stopped insisting that I leave. They never ’regulated’* me , they even insisted on buying me a ticket, but I always said no, that I didn’t want anything from them,” he explains.

Martínez leaves Cuba convinced that his low profile has helped fulfill his objectives and, although he is grateful for the voices that lead activism, he claims his place. “I have always liked to be behind everything, to really help, without being in the foreground, because it does not interest me. I do not want to say things that are already more than said, but to carry out actions. That is my goal.”

*Translator’s note: ’Regulated’ in this context means forbidden to travel.

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Hernández Carrillo, who was convicted during the Black Spring of 2003, considers it “unacceptable” that the international community continues to observe the violations committed by the island’s regime and that “they do not take serious measures with the Cuban dictatorship.”

Another of those arrested and sentenced for the day of 15N is Humberto Bello, who was processed in a summary and secret trial, in which he has been sentenced to one year in jail. The Cubalex legal information center has compiled a database of those convicted in relation to 11J (11 July) and 15N, and has demanded “immediate dismissal” of all the cases in the hands of the Prosecutor’s Office.

Cubalex and the Justice 11 platform have also asked for the support of civil society, as well as that of the independent press and all those who can share information and details of these judicial processes in order to denounce them and sensitize the international community to the issue of political prisoners in Cuba.

To date, these organizations have documented 1,283 detainees as a result of the July 11 demonstrations. Of that total, at least 540 are still in prison and they report that they have verified 42 convictions in summary trials.

In the report, Cubalex showed special concern about “the use of the charge of sedition to impose exemplary sanctions on at least 122 people” and noted that before July 11, Cuban Prisoners Defenders registered 152 political prisoners.

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the informational treatment given to the the 15N marches. According to Cubadebate, “the media usually report on events in progress or that have already had an outcome,” but both CNN and the Spanish agency “as of several weeks before November 15, already systematically ’reported’ on the alleged situation of instability in Cuba and about mobilizations that had not yet occurred and a ’strong government response’.”

In addition to forgetting that, for officialdom, the mere calling of an opposition march, by means of a request presented in the institutions and in accordance with the law, was news because it was an unprecedented event, Alonso ignores his site’s own practices. A quick search is enough to verify that Cubadebate has reported calls for marches against “imperialism” and the blockade on many occasions before they occurred. They have also advanced announced events, fulfilling the function of the press, such as the reopening of the country after the pandemic, the production of vaccines and the attraction of investments, even if the latter did not come to pass.

Cubadebate not only points out what EFE should not have published, but also indicates what it should have done, such as talking more about vaccines, improvements in the pandemic, and the reopening to tourism. In this case, the little analysis carried out by the official media is easily perceived, since the agency offered – and continues to do so – the daily data of the pandemic through the press conferences of Dr. Francisco Durán. Those cables also contained information on vaccinations.

Nor has the Spanish agency spared news about the Cuban-developed vaccines Soberana and Abdala, even praising an effectiveness that has only been tested on the Cuban side, as in the note entitled “The effectiveness of Cuban formulas opens hope for the first Latin American vaccine” and many others that one can locate in seconds with the help of a search engine. The same happens with the reopening of tourism.

On Saturday, November 13, the Cuban government withdrew the accreditations of the entire EFE team on the island and, hours later, returned two of them. Cubadebate insists that two members of the team kept their credentials the entire time and were able to work, without giving any reason why the limitation or cut is justified.

In fact, the official media considers it a demonstration of government benevolence that the agency published three articles between November 12th and 15th, and 16 more articles on the day of the call to march and that the two authorized reporters were able to “move and actively report.”

It can be assumed that they were very active to be able to maintain the publication rhythm with such a decrease in the team which, to this day, it is still very limited, despite the fact that it recovered.

Efe now adds this warning note in all their cables. “The decisions of the Cuban authorities in recent months have decimated the team of the Efe delegation in Havana, where currently only two journalists can continue to carry out their work. Efe hopes to be able to recover its information capacity on the island in the coming days.”

Cubadebate also points out that the relevance of EFE, the world’s leading news agency in Spanish, is one of its concerns, and highlights some information that, in its opinion, it should not have disseminated. This includes reports related to the arrests, the arrival of Yunior García Aguilera in Spain, and even the withdrawal of the credentials, which apparently have “political intentions.”

Although this Friday’s note devotes ample space to deploring the activity of CNN in Spanish, this channel does not have an office in Cuba, although its headquarters in English does have a representative, whose ambiguity towards the Cuban regime has been pointed out on several occasions.

What is new this time is the head-on confrontation with the Spanish state agency, which had been established normally on the island for 40 years and which it now accuses of having a line similar to that of the US television as an “expression of a coordinated strategy by the large media.of the international press to make viable the policy of the North American Government against Cuba and achieve the final objective of destroying the Revolution and producing a ’regime change’.”

Press associations and governments around the world rejected the Cuban authorities’ decision to withdraw the credentials of EFE journalists, and the agency’s leadership accused the Plaza of the Revolution of demonstrating “an unequivocal will to destabilize” its work.

“The harassment of the agency by the Cuban authorities is serious and sibylline,” EFE president Gabriela Cañas said last week. The Spanish Government might also respond to the note, since EFE is a company in which the State is the main shareholder. Two ministers, Foreign Affairs and Presidency, have already demanded the return of the accreditations and, even, summoned the Cuban charge d’affaires in Spain, who declined to attend the urgent meeting claiming to have covid.

Cuban officialdom, however, does not back down and in its article today threatens to continue to wage war on the press. “Our battle against such petty interests is prepared, right on the same terrain where they intend to fight it to deprive us of the freedom and the independence conquered based on a lot of blood from worthy Cubans.”
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He was a part of the hundreds of artists who demonstrated in front of the Ministry of Culture asking for dialogue and freedom of expression, took stock from Madrid of these twelve months, in which he has seen how the threats and pressures have happened, both in private and in public.

In an interview with Europa Press, he explains that to this day the “regime” of Miguel Díaz-Canel is still engaged in the “discrediting campaign” against him through the official media.

“Cuba does not need more martyrs,” insists García Aguilera, who assumes, once again, that he may have “disappointed” part of the opposition by leaving Cuba in the midst of a wave of protests. However, he sees this stage as a necessary step to avoid being left “silenced” in his house in Havana. The playwright reiterated that for now he rules out requesting asylum.

“It is not necessary to give 20 years of our life to that regime,” he says. “It is not about going down in history, being given a street name, or putting up a marble statue in a park. It is about changing things,” he adds.

García asserts that his family has suffered threats “that perhaps it is not yet the time to talk about,” although he does confirm “pressure” by the diplomatic corps on relatives in other countries and whom the Government supposedly wanted to use as intermediaries in the “coercion.”

They wanted to “convince” him to leave Cuba. “They thought that I was going into asylum or to concentrate on my work, and that I was going to forget about politics,” says the playwright, who assumes that there may be people “following” him in Spain as well to give an account of what he does or says.

Opposition organizations have reported in recent months an increase in repression on the island, especially as a result of the July 11 mobilizations. Archipiélago already criticized the government’s veto of the protest that it had called for November 15 and the pressure continues even after this date.

Some of them “have had to lower their profile,” as the playwright explains when questioned about cases such as that of Daniela Rojo, who a few days ago resigned as Archipiélago’s coordinator. “It is human,” admits García when speaking of these types of situations, in which in his opinion they are the true “protagonists.”

Those who are still inside Cuba, he adds, are “those who need more attention.” The founder of Archipiélago considers that being in the media, making oneself “visible” is, in many cases, a shield against persecution, because what the authorities are trying to do is to make sure “no one is looking at you so they can do whatever they want with you.”

Another of the strategies used by the “regime” would be to foment division among the dissent. “All the time they make you feel that your colleagues are your enemies,” Garcia sums up, who immediately advocates prioritizing the “common goal” over any possible differences.

“It is not a race to see who comes first” or “who manages to get more attention,” he adds, speaking of “a diverse group” that tries to do “everything it can” to “change the reality of Cuba.”

“We have made mistakes and we will continue to make them,” he says.
García affirms that “no one has been trained to overthrow a regime, to build a democracy within a dictatorship,” but he does believe that “there are paths traveled without success” and it is time to “reinvent ourselves.” In this “intermission,” in which “the regime believes it has obtained a victory” by stopping the marches on the 15th, it is time to “regain strength.”

The playwright, who has already met in Spain with authorities such as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, JosÃ? Manuel Albares, also wants to take advantage of his stay in Madrid to “exchange experiences” with other people who have gone through similar situations.

Therefore, it is feasible to replicate the “strategic alliance” that exists between the administrations of Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba, but at the level of the opponents. “In the end we are facing the same thing,” it is “the same dictatorship”, in the opinion of the opponent.

García redefines concepts usually associated with communism in Cuba, among others that of homeland. “Your homeland is the people you know. For me, homeland is not feeling alone,” he reviews, recalling his own experiences in a country that he even compares with the “Matrix.”

The Castro brothers, first, and Díaz-Canel, later, would work in favor of a “great lie” that “they have sold as the best commercial product… It has received better publicity than Coca-Cola” and “many people in the world have bought that commercial product called the Cuban revolution,” he laments.

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cane prices as well as maintain control of 80% of their export earnings.

“For the workers of the recently created agro-industrial sugar companies, it was not easy at all to face the period of repairs, both of the mill and the agricultural machinery, under the pressure of enormous limitations of spare parts, supplies and other material resources, and in addition, the scourge of covid-19 in the most critical months of the pandemic,” Azcuba explained in a note on Tuesday .

The note informs that the harvest, which normally starts in November, will begin late, on December 5, at the 14 de Julio station in Cienfuegos.

Tapia Fonseca insisted on a “critical analysis” and “we have to pay more to those who produce and review the workforce of non-direct workers in each group.” He spoke of the need to evaluate sowing “by the degree of germination of the crops and not for the fulfillment of the plan of hectares,” and requested “a diversification of the agricultural productions in all the productive forms.”

For his part, Jorge Santana Hernández, general director of the agroindustrial sugar company Mario Muñoz, from the municipality of Los Arabos, in Matanzas, confessed that they have “a 6% delay” in repairing machinery, but said they hope to start production on December 20.

Last year’s harvest was a real catastrophe . With just 816,000 tons of sugar, 68% of the 1.2 million planned, the Island had the worst figure since 1908.

According to official figures, last year Cuba was only able to count on 416,000 tons of sugar for national consumption, since it had committed an annual sale of 400,000 tons to China. The Island consumes annually between 600,000 and 700,000 tons of the product.

The worst harvest since the 1959 Revolution was 2009-2010, when 1.1 million tons were reached, which forced the Cuba to import sugar from France made from beets.

Of the 156 sugar mills were in operation before 1959, only 56 remain. In that year, 5.6 million tons of sugar were produced, which increased in the 1970s and 1980s to seven and eight million tons a year.

However, the expert consulted by Reuters announced that the situation could improve if appropriate measures were taken: “They will have to go further with reforms, attract foreign investment or divert money from other sectors such as tourism.”

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“Supposedly the United States sends a stream of money for the opposition, we were just guys with cell phones and social networks, that was our job and our crime,” he said.

The playwright noted that the Archipiélago movement “is not from the right, nor from the left, nor from the center.” And he added, “we have in common what hurts us about Cuba, through civic actions, not violence.” Along these lines, he commented that his activism went to another level after the arrest of the artists of the San Isidro Movement in November of last year.

“I grew up being a revolutionary child in a revolutionary family, I wanted to change things from there, from the allowed channels, but from that moment on I understood that it was very difficult to change things through those channels,” he said.

For this reason, he looked for other references of Cuban culture and after that he “disconnected” from the story he had always heard and understood that his criticism had to be “more frontal with the regime.”

The playwright explained his departure from Cuba and acknowledged that “even today” there are things that he does not know how they could have happened.” That day the car we were in broke down, we had to take a taxi, we thought it was all a trap, that the person who was helping us was an accomplice [of the regime]. Even at the airport we thought they were going to catch us there and they were going to say that we were fleeing and they were going to put us in jail,” he recalled when speaking about the trip, which was accomplished with the help of the Spanish Government.

The Cuban government, he said, has been creating “a very subtle system so that the repression is not seen” for 62 years, and where they generate “mistrust” so that friends, relatives and acquaintances are “suspected and you always believe that they can betray you… They make it so that you can’t trust anyone,” he added.

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“This summer I expressed my concern and warned that the Cuban regime would use mass migration as a weapon in the aftermath of the historic July 11 protests. The Ortega-Murillo regime is helping the Cuban dictatorship by eliminating visa requirements to instigate mass migration toward our southern border. The Biden Administration must respond quickly and take this for what it is: a hostile act,” Senator Marco Rubio, of Cuban origin, said Tuesday.

This voice of alarm was joined by Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, who in an interview on Radio Mambí did not want to fail to comment on the question. “This is a new initiative that shows that Daniel [Ortega], very intelligently, is telling Cuba, ‘We are going to create chaos on the border, and I am going to give you the step to do it’.”

Ortega’s decision to open the door to as many Cubans who want to leave the island is understood as a response to the Reinforcing Nicaragua’s Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform Act of 2021, known as the RENACER Act, a response to elections considered a ‘pantomime’, which became law earlier this month. The country voted on November 14 in elections in which up to seven opposition candidates had been jailed, including the Nicaraguan president’s biggest rival, Cristiana Chamorro.

With an official participation of 65.34%, which independent calculations lowered to 20%, the presidential couple rose to power for the fourth time in a row, fifth for Daniel Ortega as head of state.

The international community, with the exception of Russia, China, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, rejected an election classified as fake by the European Union. The White House went even further and said it was “neither free nor fair, and it certainly was not democratic.”

For this reason, just three days later, Congress approved the Renacer Law that allows Biden to impose all kinds of sanctions on the Managua regime, including its exclusion from the Free Trade Agreement. It also involves the incorporation of Nicaragua on the list of countries subject to visa restrictions for corruption and requests intelligence reports on the activities of the Russian Government in the Central American country, including documentation of arms sales.

Biden warned in his first moments of condemning the Nicaraguan elections that he would use “all the diplomatic and economic tools” at his disposal to support the people of Nicaragua “and hold the Ortega-Murillo government and those who facilitate its abuses accountable.” The US already had multiple sanctions previously approved for members of the Nicaraguan government.

Managua’s response comes from the hand of Havana, very upset with the Biden Administration, from which it expected a much kinder treatment in line with the time of the thaw, during which the current US president was vice president.

The protests of July 11 and November 15 have also led the Cuban regime to seek a way out for those who, tired of repression and scarcity, intend to escape to the United States and see the visa exemption as a good opportunity. Getting rid of the critics and more mouths to feed is one reason why Havana can be very grateful to Ortega.

In January 2019, when the Nicaraguan government placed Cuba in migratory category B, which allowed obtaining a consular tourist visa for 30 CUC without waiting for the approval of the General Directorate of Migration in Managua, trips immediately skyrocketed. Until then, generally around 2,000 visas per year were issued to Cubans, except in 2018, when just 701 were issued. A year later, with the new rule, the figure reached 44,829, according to data from the Nicaraguan government itself.

The arrival of the pandemic stopped the entire flow of migrants who, at that time, found in Managua the base from which to leave for the United States. Although these facilities also meant access to a new source of supply for the mules, a good number of travelers they chose the country to start the journey to the southern US border, creating large plugs in northern Mexico.

The route is also particularly dangerous, even when it avoids the Darien jungle. Exposed to corruption and coyotes, migrants are victims of all kinds of robberies, scams, arrests and other dangers, including physical ones. However, the urge to flee has shown power with all kinds of threats.

The ping pong game is also joined by Mexico, a country that has a president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who sympathizes with the leaders of Cuba and Nicaragua, but is also the principal affected by the crisis at the borders and is obliged to maintain good relations with the United States, its largest commercial partner and source of work for many Mexicans.

The flow of migrants arriving from Central America ends up falling on the Mexican authorities and will now increase again with the expedited route open to Cubans. Between January and September of this year, and despite the fact that there have still been multiple border restrictions due to the pandemic, Mexico has detected more than 190,000 undocumented immigrants and has deported almost 74,300, according to the Migration Policy Unit of the Ministry of the Interior.

Finally, the contest of Venezuela in the scuffle is expected. Its airline Conviasa is vital for the Havana-Managua connection, its desire to help friendly governments and create problems for its imperial enemy and, incidentally, earn cash with the sale of tickets, will not take long to appear in the equation.

Before the pandemic, the Venezuelan airline had 3 weekly flights to the island. Recently, Conviasa reported, without specifying further details, that it could return to Havana in December and November has already reopened its routes to the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Russia, Mexico and Panama. The latter can already be reached from Cuba through Copa Airlines. So the connection already exists.

*Translator’s note: ‘Mariel’ refers to the Mariel Boatlift of 1980, when some 120,000 Cubans emigrated.

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