The New Ministry of Truth is Lanched in Cuba, it is Called the Institute of Information and Social Communication

Official reporters lamented that on July 11 “the Cuban press did not cover what happened on the street.” (Capture)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 24 August 2021 — The Cuban government knows that communication is the priority. After the popular protests of July, the regime has moved at full speed to pass decrees to control publications on the internet and is now trying to shake up the stagnant Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT) which, as of Tuesday, has ceased to exist and has been replaced by the Institute of Information and Social Communication (IICS).

The all-powerful institution, which until yesterday regulated who could appear before a camera that broadcast with national scope, and determined how to count on a few minutes in a cultural program, or whether to show a recent creative project on the set of a news program, has just disappeared. It is not a small thing, it is a huge system anchored to the institutional orthodoxy of propaganda.

The news of the disappearance of the ICRT, just became known Tuesday, from Decree Law 41 published in the Official Gazette. The Decree establishes the creation of the IICS. Shortly after, the broadcast on the Roundtable television program of a large part of a meeting of the governor Miguel Díaz-Canel with journalists, on August 19, has been broadcast to continue reading

complete the scenario that gave way to the birth of the institution.
The new Institute of Information and Social Communication “has the mission of leading and controlling the Social Communication Policy of the Cuban State and Government; proposing its improvement, as well as contributing to promoting the culture of dialogue and consensus in Cuban society,” say the regulations.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel meets with journalists on August 19. (Capture)

However, the scope of this new institution, and what it will be able to decide, censor or produce is still unknown, even among ICRT employees who were totally surprised by the news this Tuesday. Who will lead the IICS? How much will it be able to regulate the audiovisual content consumed on the Island and what resources does it have? These are still open questions.

Part of these questions — asked by the the professionals of the press not beating around the bush much in the meeting with Díaz-Canel and, despite the triumphalist tone of the meeting — pointed out the deep problems facing the exercise of the press in Cuba and the effects of that deterioration in reality, especially pointed their finger at the social outbreak that swept through the island on 11th July.

“July 11th could be painfully repeated if the press does not communicate better and I say it with tremendous pain, but it is the truth, and if I keep quiet, the truth would be a dishonest act on my part,” said Ana Teresa Badía Valdés, the reporter from the Radio Rebelde station, in relation to the ways in which officialdom and the regime transmit their messages.

“We must transform the way in which our politicians communicate,” the journalist advised at another time about the increase in political leaders and officials in “traditional media and social networks” that have “a discourse that does not reach the expected impact.”

With boring repetitions of the slogan “Continuity,” current party leaders are seen by many Cubans as stagnant and distant, a new generation of officials who have inherited — without going through the polls — the rudders of power in Cuba. But now they too leverage themselves in a more modern way through the press.

Badía also advised looking for “new visual scenarios… avoiding images of meetings all the time, and offices. Politicians have to be in productive spaces and it is essential,” something highly criticized in times of pandemic when they require the population to maintain its distance and avoid social encounters.

The birth of the new entity, with its unpronounceable initials, “IICS”, comes in the midst of a convulsive media scene in which the Government has been rapidly losing audience within the Island. New technologies, the irruption of independent press media on the national scene and the arrival of internet access service on mobile phones in December 2018, have complicated the dissemination of government propaganda.

Some Internet users, writing on social networks, have already baptized the newborn Institute as “the Ministry of Truth,” described in the novel 1984 by George Orwell, a parallel with the totalitarian society alluded to in the text. This entity’s capacity to act could be very limited in the midst of the most severe economic crisis that the country has experienced in the last quarter of a century.

The institution arose due to “the absence of an organism that leads and controls the social communication system to strengthen the country’s institutional framework,” according to the regime’s justification. Over the next 30 days the Council of Ministers will establish “the specific functions, structure and composition” of the new institution, according to the Decree Law that describes its emergence.

For her part, Rosa Miriam Elizalde, first vice president of the Cuban Union of Journalists (Upec), during the meeting broadcast on Tuesday, called the independent media “digital timbiriches” (tiny ’mom and pop’ businesses) that are waging a cultural and symbolic battle and where there is a strategic ‘design’ to generate ‘communication gaps’. She said that the majority of the national audiences “are ours” and that their challenge is to confront the “war laboratories.”

In 1968, Fidel Castro used the term “timbiriches” to denigrate small businesses that were nationalized. Those particular initiatives then fell under nationalization: from the small private cafés that were still operating, to the shoe shiners with their little boxes with brushes and polish. In the speech of March 13 of that year, the use of the word fueled popular anger against local entrepreneurs.

“Loafers, in perfect physical condition, who set up a timbiriche, any kind of business, to earn 50 pesos every day,” Castro said then and immediately added: “The gross entry of the timbiricheros acquires unsuspected characteristics,” referring to the sellers of frita, a meat mixture placed in a very popular bread, among the street foods.

The use of the term, although it has been maintained on the Island to designate the small businesses that have survived economic centralism, has been officially impregnated since that time with a derogatory, elitist and ideological character. However, in the population it is a term used to designate something that manages to satisfy the rigors of putting a bite in the mouth while are out and about.

During the meeting on August 19, Cristina Escobar, a Cuban television reporter, affirmed that “there is a sense of urgency and what needs to be changed within the ICRT.” She regretted that on July 11 “the Cuban press did not cover what happened in the street” and for that reason they had to “take what others said.”

“The directions were to defend the building and not go out into the street, our cameras did not go out and the narrative is defined by others.”

On that day she acknowledged that “the issue of what happened to the detainees is pending” but also “the heroic” nature of the police’s actions. In addition, she pointed out that “there is a Cuba not reported in the media” and for that reason “there are a large number of young people who are proud that they do not watch the news.”

“We do not have hegemony but we have to go fight for that audience,” Escobar added.

14ymedio’s Newsroom, located in a multifamily building constructed 36 years ago by workers who mostly were employees of the ICRT, has received some opinions from our neighbors. Disbelief, surprise, but also imagining that “some of this was cooking years ago and could happen at any time,” are the most listened to opinions.

“This is the new Battle of Ideas but there is nothing left to fight or defend,” said a retired cameraman living in the building. “Get ready, television takes money and a lot of money, if they want to relaunch everything they will have to have many resources because in that building there is no camera that works or even a toilet that works.”

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Cuban State Security Threatens to ‘Intercept Laritza Diversent in the US to Try Her in Cuba’

In the image, the lawyer Laritza Diversent, director of the Cubalex legal information center. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 24 August 2021 – On Monday, Cuban State Security threatened the mother of the director of Cubalex, Laritza Diversent, who denounced the incident on her social networks and on the web presence of the non-governmental organization of which she is the founder.

“An agent of State Security went to the home of the family of the director of Cubalex, Laritza Diversent, and threatened her mother because of the work that the organization has been developing,” detailed the official Facebook page of the legal information center which, since the protests of 11th July, and with the help of a group of volunteers, compiles data on the detained and disappeared in a list that exceeds 800 names.

The on-line posting explains that Maricelis Cámbara, 63, “was warned that she herself could be tried for her daughter’s work” in defense of human rights and they threatened to “intercept Laritza Diversent in the United States or another country” to “take her to Cuba” and try her. Cámbara was also asked where Diversent lives in the United States.

“I have been reflecting on this threat and the first thing it shows is that the work that Cubalex is doing annoys them and worries them to the point of going to my mother’s house and threatening continue reading

her to be able talk to me. Direct threats to put her in jail by insinuating that I send her money and she receives it, for example,” Diversent told 14ymedio .

The lawyer said that they also offered her mother “things that they were going to give her” if she collaborated. “My mother is quite calm but I can’t stop worrying about her and she is worried about what may happen to me here in the United States,” she said.

“I think they are trying to send a message of fear so that one is frightened and leaves the work they are doing. I think that those of us who live outside of Cuba are also exposed, although not at the same level of risk as those who are on the island who receive repression directly,” she added.

Diversent is clear and categorical when she affirms that she is not going to abandon the work she does with her team: “We are not going to leave what we are doing, much less now, we are not going to leave the people imprisoned in Cuba alone, I am going to continue supporting them.”

Cubalex has spent years providing free legal advice to Cuban citizens and activists, journalists and opponents who are victims of repression on the island and whose human rights are constantly violated.

A part of the legal team went into exile in May 2017 after State Security carried out a raid on the headquarters of Cubalex where its members, including Diversent, received attacks and threats.

On her networks, Diversent spoke directly to the agent who went to her mother’s house: “You can come find me and take me to a prison in Cuba. I’m waiting for you (…) whatever you are going to do, do it, but starting now.” She also pointed out that she is responsible for her actions and her work and that “bothering” her mother for what she does “is irresponsible and cowardly.”

Laritza Diversent graduated in Law from the University of Havana and later did a Master’s degree in Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law at the American University Washington College of Law. On the island, the lawyer directed the work of Cubalex for more than six years and now continues to do so from exile.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

The Sounds of the Crisis in Cuba

There is a soundtrack of the disaster that is barely mentioned, but that surrounds us on all sides. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Havana, 24 August 2021 — Dawn breaks and the sound of some chickens from a nearby patio can be heard throughout the neighborhood, when midday comes we can hear the shouts of a neighbor letting us know there are bananas in the market on Tulipán Street and, in the afternoon, the squeaking of a wheelbarrow with two little kids nostalgic for the amusement park.

Although the images of long lines, unsmiling faces and empty shopping bags are the most recurrent when it comes to describing the current situation on this Island, there is a soundtrack of the disaster that is barely mentioned but that surrounds us on all sides. Some of the sounds echo what we heard in the 90s during the Special Period, as if the needle on the record player of our lives had skipped and went back to playing the same music.

These times remind me of that period when some neighbors in our building raised a pig in their bathtub and, so it wouldn’t bother everyone too much, they operated on its vocal cords, leaving the animal to emit a hoarse breathy sound much more disturbing than its original grunts. Now, on a nearby balcony, someone has a cage with several turkeys that cluck all the time, a practice intended to guarantee protein for families fearful there are worse times ahead.

But there is also another permanent ringing and it is that of irritability. The swearwords of domestic fights, fueled by the lack of resources and the forced confinement the pandemic has brought to families with positive cases of covid-19; the crying of children who do not understand why they can’t go out to play; and the sobs of the son whose mother died for lack of oxygen or medicines.

A suffocating resonance, the chorus of a city and of a desperate country.

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Three Reporters from ‘La Hora de Cuba’ Fined 1,000 Pesos

The communicators were summoned on Monday morning by two political police officers. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 23 August 2021 — The reporters of La Hora de Cuba, Iris Mariño, Neife Rigau and Henry Constantín were fined this Monday with 1,000 pesos for the alleged crime of “public disorder” for which State Security tried to charge them after they tried to cover, as journalists, the protests of the July 11 (11J).

Constantín, director of the independent media, confirmed the imposition of the fines during a live broadcast through the social network Facebook, shortly after leaving the State Security Operations headquarters in the Garrido district of the city of Camagüey.

As of July 21st, when the three reporters were released, they were serving a sanction of “home confinement” and this monetary penalty “closed” the case against them. “We are somewhat happy although the sanction is unfair, none of us should be sanctioned for demonstrating peacefully,” added the journalist.

Mariño, Rigau and Constantín were summoned on the morning of this Monday by two political police officers who passed their homes on motorcycles to continue reading

verbally announce that they should attend the meeting, although at no time “did they show up or leave a citation.”

In his brief speech, the director of the magazine also reported that he had heard that the opposition activist Félix Navarro, also arrested after the 11J protests, is on a hunger strike in a prison in Matanzas. The former Black Spring prisoner was infected with covid-19 and was hospitalized a few days after his arrest.

According to La Hora de Cuba activist Bárbaro de Céspedes, known as El Patriota, was released from prison this Monday “with a precautionary measure of home confinement,” after being locked up since last July 11 for participating in the protests. The journalists of this Camagüey publication have been frequently harassed by the police authorities, who prevent them from carrying out their work. Constantín and Mariño were threatened with prosecution for a crime of “usurpation of legal capacity” — that is working as journalists without a license to do so, in a country that refuses to license independent journalists.

After learning of the reporters’ arrest on July 11, the Inter-American Press Association demanded the immediate release of Constantín, Rigau and Mariño, who had been imprisoned in the police unit known as Second Station.

For its part, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) also demanded the release of the independent media’s reporters and others under arrest, while urging the government to release them “immediately and unconditionally.”

“Cuban authorities have responded to the largest anti-government protests in the country in decades with expected hostility, attacks on members of the press and interruptions in internet service,” said Ana Cristina Núñez, CPJ researcher for Central and South America.

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Cuban State Built Just 21% of Planned Housing Units

The work stoppage is constant due to the lack of cement and other construction materials. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 23 August 2021 — Housing construction in Cuba hasn’t had a good year either. In the first semester of 2021, just 9,323 homes have been completed, 21% of the 44,652 planned for that period, according to the Minister of Construction, René Mesa Villafaña, in an interview with the State newspaper Granma, which dedicated an article this Monday to the recent achievements in the sector.

“The state plan is fulfilled at 26%, with 4,051 houses built of the 15,872 planned. With regards to the subsidies it is fulfilled at 11%: 1,304 basic housing cells are completed, of the 12,201 projected.”

Private real estate construction and rehabilitation were also far from planned. In the case of the former, 3,968 homes were completed, of the 16,579 planned, some 24%. Meanwhile, the rehabilitation program remains at only 17%, with 5,931 improvements out of the 34,759 programmed.

Mesa stressed the importance of prioritizing the homes of those who need them most and said that “the policy is designed to benefit mothers, fathers and legal guardians who have three or more children under 17 years of age in their custody or care.” However, the numbers of homes built continue reading

in 2020 by the State and by private efforts to replace those damaged by natural disasters and those subsidized for single mothers with three or more children are not good either.

“As of the end of 2020, 5,841 families have benefited from this concept, concluding 2,416 properties with different actions or totally new houses built. In the current year, 117 have been completed and the plan is to finish 5,658 dwellings,” an objective that is clearly complicated.

The article in the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba, entitled How are the constructions going in the midst of the pandemic and the intensification of the blockade? highlights the tasks that have had to be prioritized in such a complicated scenario for the Cuban economy with regards to housing, a problem that affects hundreds of thousands of people on the island.

According to the latest available data, the housing deficit in Cuba reached 929,695 houses last year. Among the most affected provinces are Havana, with the lack of 185,348 homes; Holguín, with 115,965; and Santiago de Cuba, with 101,202.

But the ministry has prioritized some major works. Among them the renovation of the facilities of the Sierra Maestra Science, Technology and Innovation Entity (ECTI), the recovery of camps for the workforce, the clearing of the hectares for sowing plants, and the supplies of prefabricated elements in Pinar del Río. All of this as part of the reactivation of the program for the development of moringa cultivation devised by Fidel Castro, “which provides a response to agriculture and the health of our people.”

Mesa explains that two cement factories are also being built in Santiago de Cuba and Nuevitas, Camagüey, which are in the foundation stage, civil construction in infrastructure works and technological objects. The lack of cement has been behind the problems of private construction in recent years, and the authorities have even resorted to this argument to respond to the complaints of many Cubans who claim unsanitary conditions in their homes.

The material circulates on the black market at exorbitant prices, which sometimes exceed 1,000 pesos a bag, and it constantly prevents the completion of works or the solving of infrastructure problems, although its lack has not complicated the construction of luxury hotels — even when the pandemic has stopped tourism, nor the construction of the large concrete flag in front of the United States Embassy in Havana, in the so-called Anti-imperialist Platform.

Other works cited by the minister were the technological reconversion of Antillana de Acero, which is advancing with the intention of recovering other scarce material; ten ponds in Camagüey destined for the shrimp industry; and dozens of them in Villa Clara, Cienfuegos, Granma and Guantánamo for fishing, whose works are due to conclude this year.

Likewise, also mentioned was the completion of 14 rice drying plants, and other works related to biotechnology through Labiofam.

The pandemic has also required, since 2020, the intervention of the Ministry of Construction, with works in 20 hospitals, obtaining 15,118 individual isolation places (617 of them in the Ministry’s facilities), and the repair of facilities for 2,686 beds. Services are also provided with water pipes, road repairs and internal areas of hospital and service centers.

The text attributes, as usual, the problems to the “tightening of the US blockade against Cuba”, but praises the construction sector for being “an impressive force of thousands of workers dedicated to the fulfillment of decisive national economic plans, aware that in this branch lies a good part of the construction of that prosperous and sustainable socialism to which we all aspire.”

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Balcony Collapse in San Rafael Street Alarms Residents of Central Havana

The collapse happened in front of the Juan Vitalio Acuña elementary school. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 23 August 2021 — The collapse of two balconies this Sunday in the building located at number 403 A, on the corner of Manrique and San Rafael, in the municipality of Centro Habana, worries residents already concerned. The collapse did not cause casualties because it happened after nine at night, right in front of the Juan Vitalio Acuña elementary school.

“The third-floor balcony collapsed and fell on top of an apartment on the second floor and also knocked down part of the balcony of that house,” a local resident told 14ymedio, while continuing to look suspiciously at the concrete fragments that remain on the street on Monday.

The resident says that many people pass through the area and thanks to the fact that the collapse occurred late at night “there was no tragedy.” Authorities in Havana have decreed a curfew between 9 pm and 5 am for months, in response to the covid-19 pandemic, which keeps people and vehicles off the street during that time.

Calle San Rafael is one of the busiest roads in the municipality as it connects continue reading

avenues such as Belascoaín, Galiano and Prado, as well as having a strong presence of shops, private food venues and even a very popular agricultural market. But, as it is not a tourist artery, it has hardly benefited from any repairs, although most of its homes are from the first half of the last century.

The balconies were in the part of the building that faces Calle San Rafael. (14ymedio)

It was precisely the collapse in January 2020 that caused the tragic deaths of three girls in the neighboring municipality of Old Havana, between Vives and Revillagigedo streets, in the Jesús María neighborhood. The structure, deteriorated by the years and the lack of maintenance, collapsed around four-thirty in the afternoon, when the children were on the sidewalk rehearsing for the events to celebrate the birth of José Martí.

Centro Habana is one of the most populated municipalities in the capital and is an area that, for decades, has been characterized by the high presence of tenements, mostly with infrastructure problems and overcrowding. Many of its buildings were built at the beginning of the 20th century and have not received repairs beyond a facade painting for more than fifty years.

The buildings near the Malecón suffer especially from the effects of the saltpeter from the ocean and none of the various government programs have solved the problem of the frequent collapse.

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Demonstration in Galicia to Condemn ‘The Criminal Regimes of Cuba and Venezuela’

In July, Oleiros (Spain) was the scene of a rally to demand freedom and democracy for the people of Cuba. (autono.net)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 22 August 2021 — Dozens of vehicles staged a caravan protest through the streets of the Coruña city municipality of Oleiros, in Spain, on Saturday to demand that Spanish politicians condemn the violence in Cuba and Venezuela and to demand the removal of the statue of Ernesto Che Guevara erected in a traffic circle in this municipality.

The demonstration, which was called by the Soberanía Ciudadana platform, left at 12:00 noon from O Miradoiro Street, near the Nirvana traffic circle, where the Che Guevara monument is located.

This demonstration takes place almost a month after the government of Zaragoza approved, in an extraordinary session, that Che Guevara Street will from now on be called Ana María Suárez (a Zaragoza victim of the jihadist attack in Cambrils), and the park with the same namesake will be named after the Paralympic athlete Teresa Perales.

The cars with Cuban flags circulated to continue reading

the park of Santa Cruz and from there went to the nucleus of Santa Cristina. During the tour the drivers sounded their horns during the march that ended in front of the town hall of Oleiros with a loud honking.

The participants demanded the removal of the “infamous monument” — in allusion to the statue of Che’s face — and of other symbols in the city hall, said Cuban Frank Vega, of the Association of Victims of Castroism, such as the name of Ernesto Che Guevara Avenue. “We ask for the removal of these symbols for being illegal and for constituting a persecution of the victims of Castroism.”

In addition, with the mobilization they seek to “put the political class on the ropes” so that “the violence against the peoples of Cuba and Venezuela is condemned for humanitarian reasons,” reiterated Vega.

“Any Spanish politician who does not condemn violence cannot stay one minute more in Spanish institutions,” the spokesman remarked. Thus, the demonstrators, who also carried flags of Venezuela, Spain and Galicia, joined in the proclamations of “SOS Cuba” and “SOS Venezuela”.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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Cuban Police Blackmails Mothers by Detaining their Children if They Go Out on the Street

Women “are the driving force behind the demonstrations, since they are victims of a totalitarian government,” say the Ladies in White. (14yMedio)

14ymedio biggerEFE/14ymedio, Havana, 4 August 2021 — Institutional neglect and violence are two scourges that many Cuban women suffer, but not only this, they also cry out for democracy, freedom and human rights. It is something that is increasingly seen in citizen protests, as several organizations have accredited.

“When women in Cuba protest the social conditions they are suffering, they are also victims of institutional violence”, Elena Larrinaga, executive director of Red Femenina de Cuba [Cuban Women’s Network] points out to Efe in Madrid, which promotes the role of women as “agent of change” in the “peaceful” demonstrations in Cuba this past July 11th.

Cuba’s mentality continues to be “anchored in the past”, laments Larrinaga; suffering gender-based violence in the family is understood “as a scourge carried by all members, so it is not usually something that is discussed openly”.

According to legislative provisions, gender violence will be considered a crime starting in 2028, so Cuba is “the only country in the Western Hemisphere where it’s not criminalized,” she explains. Until then, the activist asserts, some 400 women will have died.

So far this year, at least 26 women have died violently at the hands of continue reading

their partners, according to this network, and during 2020 there were about 30, according to the #YoSíTeCreoCuba [I do believe you, Cuba] platform and Alas Tensas [Tense Wings] magazine.

The last ones, Daniela Cintra Martín, 23, and her mother, Liena Martín, 42, died on July 25th in a rural community of Villa Clara at the hands of Daniela’s former partner.

The threats they tell young people are: “be careful what you do, remember that this is going to have an impact on your family”. They don’t realize that families no longer care about repression

“Women have been working in Cuba for a long time to empower females in a civic way, and this movement has grown and will continue to do so,” Marthadela Tamayo, vice president of the Council for the Transition in Cuba, tells Efe from Cuba.

Women “are the driving force behind the demonstrations, since they are victims of a totalitarian government that does not take into account the physical, psychological and mistreatment they suffer”, María Cristina Labrada, a member of the Ladies in White, a pioneer group in the peaceful struggle for freedom, also denounces from Cuba.

Women are now the “instigators” of this new wave for freedom. “It was demonstrated in San Antonio de los Baños, when they got up to shout “It’s over, we want freedom and democracy!'” Tania García, a human rights defender, told the Spanish agency from Havana.

After the protests that arose on the island there is an “irreversible” social change, she points out. “They are no longer a minority of women opposed to the Cuban government, there aren’t that many subjected to the current Cuban system, these demonstrations are helping many realize that rights have been taken away from us and we must recover them”, says García.

At a high price, that is: “With great pain, mothers are seeing how their children, who have come out peacefully to defend something legitimate, freedom, are jailed in prisons and their whereabouts are not known”, says Larrinaga.

Various independent organizations have documented more than 700 detainees since the July 11th protests, including minors and missing persons, with the country plunged into a serious economic and health crisis due to the Covid-19 epidemic.

One of the ways that the Cuban government has to exert “pressure” on women is through their children, these activists denounce.

“The threats they make against young people are: “be careful what you do, remember that this is going to have an impact on your family. They don’t realize that families no longer care about repression”, because in Cuba “fear has changed sides,” says Larrinaga.

In addition to threatening the young children of the women who come out to demonstrate, they also take them from their homes. “They knock on the door, take the children, mothers cry and scream and they carry them away”, she denounces.

María Cristina Labrada denounces the same: “In schools, children are forced to repeat regime-prepared slogans to indoctrinate them.  Mothers who refuse to allow their children to repeat them are judged and threatened with taking their children from them.

Translated by Norma Whiting

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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.

Two Cuban Judokas Escape from the Official Delegation During a Stopover in Madrid

Nahomys Acosta during a match at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games. (Juventud Rebelde)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, August 21, 2021 – Cuban judokas Ayumi Leyva and Nahomys Acosta left the island’s delegation during a stopover in Madrid, Spain. The athletes were going to participate in the qualifier for the Junior Pan American Games in Cali, Colombia, which took place on August 14 in the same city, but they never made it to the event.

As reported on Tuesday by the official site JIT, Leyva and Acosta were together with 12 other athletes who continued to Colombia but were withdrawn from the tournament after seven of them tested positive for covid-19.

The seven men and five women suspended from the contest “had to win their spots in the last of the seven events with scores for the ladder,” although JIT says that at least two “women are pending access by ranking.”

Due to pandemic-related flight restrictions, many athletes from the Island who are going to compete in tournaments in Latin America must first travel to Madrid and from there take a plane to a nation in continue reading

Central America or South America.

At the end of June, the athlete Raudelis Guerra also abandoned the Island’s basketball delegation in Spain, on the way to the qualifying tournament for the World Cup, which took place in El Salvador.

Guerra escaped from the entourage at the same Madrid-Barajas Airport, where part of the national team made a stopover before continuing to the Central American country.

“I left the delegation for a very, very personal reason. Maybe many don’t know what it is and those people will judge without knowing. But I know, and my family will understand me,” the Guantanamamian told Play-Off Magazine shortly after.

About a month earlier there were other defections by Cuban athletes and assistants. Lázaro Blanco, a pitcher for the national team that participated in the Pre-Olympic Baseball Tournament of the Americas held in Florida, decided to stay in Miami on June 4 and not return to Saltillo, Mexico, where he had a contract with a local team.

“The important thing is that I feel good about the decision I’ve made, a new life that I’m going to start right now. I am very happy to be here,” said Blanco shortly after his decision was known.

Days earlier, César Prieto, one of the promising players, had left his teammates just hours after landing in Florida. A few days later, Jorge Sile Figueroa, a psychologist for the baseball team, also decided to leave the delegation and stay in the United States.

Translated by Tomás A.

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Neither Candy Nor Pampers for the Children of Santiago de Cuba

The parents say that, faced with the situation, they are forced to buy everything they need from resellers “at exorbitant prices.” (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 17 August 2021 — More than 600 mothers and fathers of Santiago de Cuba have repudiated the exclusive sale in foreign currency of most of the products they need to make up the basic supplies for their babies. In a letter delivered this Monday to the authorities of the Government and the Communist Party of Cuba, the signers explain that they depend on their salaries in pesos and do not have access to freely convertible currency (MLC).

“The letter was written because they are now selling pampers in MLC,” (stores that only take foreign currency) one of the mothers from Santiago who signed the document tells 14ymedio; she says this was “the last straw.”

“It seems that the buzz came to the authorities and then they put some diapers for sale in national currency but most of them are still being sold in foreign currency,” she adds.

The letter, an initiative of the members of the Facebook group “Everything for babies” in Santiago de Cuba, denounces that currently “all cleaning products, hygiene, jams, even clothing and footwear” are sold in foreign currency, so they propose “that products such as pampers, wet wipes, continue reading

soaps, bath gel also be available in stores in national currency,” among other products.

The parents claim that, faced with the situation, they are forced to buy everything they need from resellers “at exorbitant prices” and that they do so with their children in mind: “our children do not understand the economic crisis, pandemic or problems.”

Santiago journalist and audiovisual producer Carlos Melián tells this newspaper that a few weeks ago he made a walk through the city in search of diapers: “A few months ago all the stores were full of disposable diapers and water, but lately they are all closed and when I have gone out to look for them I have not found any or they are available only in MLC [foreign currency].”

“Right now the fundamental problem is that to buying anything here in the MLC stores is difficult because they are full of coleros [people who stand in line for others] and there is a dawn [when one must get in line] and I am afraid of catching Covid,” explains Melián, the father of a one-and-a-half-year old. “What I decided was to wash the diapers by hand. It depresses me a lot to stand in those lines and expose myself to the disease, I prefer to do the wash every night.”

The supply of the product is also very irregular in Havana, says Marieta, mother of a two-month-old boy and a girl of 18-months, speaking tothis newspaper. “Sometimes I get some for the girl but not for the smallest baby because they do not sell all the sizes,” she explains. “People buy the product in foreign currency stores and then resell it. On the street a package for newborns can go up to 500 pesos.”

“Those who have families abroad who can buy them in digital stores are saved, because they can be found there, but you have to pay in dollars and from abroad,” he says. In several digital portals consulted by 14ymedio, the price of 36 baby diapers ranged between 15 and 20 dollars, but they are not sold for all stages there either.

Many mothers have returned to the custom of cloth diapers, but the option complicates the day-to-day with continuous washing and the high consumption of detergent. “The few disposables that I get I use on some days of the week but most of the time I have them on cloth, it is a slavery because the washing never ends,” adds Marieta.

“The ones that we buy for now, which are the Premium Plus, are made here in Cuba, in Mariel, they cost 275 pesos but you can only buy two per person,” says a couple from the Cuban capital with a 10-month-old baby. “We buy the Premium because they are better, the difference is noticeable, in reality there always is, but there is a limitation on the quantity.”

Added to the instability in the sale of the pampers are other concerns of the Santiago parents. In their letter they propose that it be considered to include “all the products in the supply book, in the basket or sell them as modules.” They point out that “it is necessary to guarantee the sale of food for children from six months of age” upon presentation of the minor’s card and at the price of the State.

“An adult may be able to stop eating one day (which is not ideal because we must have our body fed to raise, fight for our children, work), but a child needs proteins, meats, food, vegetables for their growth and proper development, but with such high prices,” it becomes very difficult to feed babies, they explain.

They also demand that “the cycle of delivery of milk in the warehouses” be complied with, that medicines be “commercialized in a controlled manner,” the sale of household electrical equipment such as fans and mixers, and that the prices of food be reviewed “because they are in the clouds.”

They complained about the exclusive sale of sweets in MLC: “Beyond what can be explained to them, it is frustrating, in these times of confinement, that a child asks you for a lollipop, jams, sweets, telling you that they are hungry but that they don’t want food and you don’t have to give him, not being able to please him with such basic things. “

At the end of the document they made it clear that they will continue to insist on finding solutions in “any instance.”

“When it comes to a child there are no limits, there are no barriers, we stop living ourselves, to live for them.”

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‘It is Torture to Intubate Patients Without Sedating Them, As is Being Done in Cuba Now’

“All this about the shortage of sedatives is terrible, very worrying,” denounces a Cuban doctor. (Twitter / @ DiazCanelB)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 22 August 2021 — “Imagine your mouth being forced open to shove a tube down your throat and all this without a sedative.” The Cuban doctor asks to keep his name in reserve before telling 14ymedio about his traumatic experience with Covid-19 patients in collapsed hospitals, without oxygen, without medicines for patients and without means of protection for healthcare personnel.

“It is torture, and the patient can even die in this whole process because if intubation is complicated, he dies from hypoxia,” adds this doctor who works in a hospital in Havana.

It is not an isolated case, but rather several testimonies collected by this newspaper in recent days, both in Havana and in the provinces. In the absence of the usual sedatives in Cuba, such as midazolam, propofol, atracurium or pancuronium, doctors must make very difficult decisions when connecting a patient in serious condition to an artificial respirator through intubation.

“All this about the shortage of sedatives is terrible, very worrying. There are many ventilated patients now in the country and it is an ethically very complex situation. You are faced with the dilemma of either I intubate him to try to save him or I do not intubate him and he dies,” explains continue reading

a doctor from Cienfuegos, who speaks of “chaos” in the therapy rooms between the lack of oxygen and medicines.

“There are patients who are so bad that they put up only a minimal resistance but there are others who do not, there are others who have to suffer it, open their mouths, sometimes there are even broken teeth, sometimes they survive, sometimes not,” laments another doctor from Havana, very affected by this situation.

“When you put the patient on the ventilator without sedation, they are tied to the ventilator and there is a ventilatory discomfort that causes the patient’s ventilatory rate to go one way and the ventilator the other.” He adds that “if the patient were sedated, the frequency of the patient would be the same as that of the ventilator and better breathing can be achieved because otherwise the objective, which is to ventilate the patient well, is not achieved.”

The nightmare of testing positive for covid and “having to enter a hospital because your symptoms worsen” can begin “from the moment you call an ambulance and it does not appear,” Eloisa, a young woman who survived covid after spending 21 days in a therapy room.

“When you think the worst has happened and you are already in an intensive care room, you realize that the nightmare is not over, that it is just beginning. The dead passed through the corridor every half hour and that was terrifying, luckily for me I did not have to be intubated because I responded well but my family had to bring everything, even the oximeter to measure the oxygen saturation in the blood because there were none in the hospital,”he complains.

“Those rooms are a total disaster, the doctors work with all their strength but with very few resources and with the minimum means of protection. Some days I saw how the doctors had to deal with oxygen blackouts of up to two hours,” adds the young man.

In the midst of the oxygen crisis in almost all the country’s hospitals the local Cienfuegos press said that 20 “concentrators had arrived in the province “to support the fight against the pandemic.”

Dr. Duniesky González Rodríguez, director of the Provincial Medical Supplies Company in that province, explained that they come from Mexico and that “flights from China are being expected in the next few hours” with more equipment of this type. “You know the real situation that the province has today, not only with the high incidence of covid cases but with the lack of oxygen,” he added.

As reported this Saturday by the official press, in the last two days a “more stable” supply of oxygen has been achieved for the hospitals of the capital, an improvement that allows “ensuring continued coverage for the almost 500 admissions that require it; 128 of them are treated with artificial ventilation in intensive care units and 369 in general wards.”

The report detailed that health care institutions such as Freyre de Andrade, known as Emergency, and Joaquín Albarrán, located on Avenida 26, “had experienced a tense situation in the coverage” of oxygen and that for that reason they were “especially benefited with a group of containers that ensure the existence of this product for 8 to 10 days.”

Dr. Emilio Delgado Iznaga, provincial director of Health, assured this Saturday during a meeting with the authorities of Havana, that “the delivery of medicinal oxygen and compressed air” to the 82 polyclinics in the capital was resumed, “to attend to the patients with acute respiratory infections or other illnesses that need this drug.” The official’s statement reaffirms the controversial use of compressed air as a substitute for medicinal oxygen, which has generated so much criticism.

Delgado Iznaga also announced that this Saturday the province received 95 oxygen concentrators “for home distribution,” which, together with another 10, will be able to “serve the hundred convalescents who need it daily in their homes.”

Recently dozens of Cuban doctors denounced through videos shared on social networks, the health collapse that the country is experiencing and demanded supplies they need to carry out their work. They also protested against the criticism of the sector launched by Prime Minister Manuel Marrero.

“Our patients need help,” said angiology and vascular surgery resident Julio C. Hernández. “We also need help, we do not want more people to die,” adds the doctor in his brief complaint dated August 16.

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Cuba’s Frantic Race for Oxygen

In recent days, complaints from patients and relatives have grown warning of lack of oxygen. (ACN)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Mexico/Madrid, 20 August 2021 — They come with four or five tanks, people must be dying for lack of oxygen,” a young man from Sancti Spíritus says, seeing a horse drawn cart asking for clearance for a truck loaded with a few cylinders. The same hubbub, he says, happened earlier this week, when a shipment of medical oxygen was being transferred from the airport.

“Cienfuegos Hospital continues to have a deficit of oxygen. The helicopters of the Cuban Television Primetime News is symbolic for the need there,” a doctor in the province told 14ymedio on Thursday. The physician was referring to the images that flood the official media that illustrate the transfer of cylinders in military aircraft and trucks.

Fifty oxygen concentrators donated by the Government of China should arrive in Havana by air over the weekend. This Thursday, the Telesur correspondent in Beijing echoed the tweet of a user who announced it, accompanied by two images in which the cargo piled up at the airport can be seen. The journalist recalls that recently 30 ventilators also left for the island from the Asian country, which together with Russia is becoming the largest partner of Havana after the Venezuelan collapse.

The Russians themselves came to the aid of the Cuban authorities on Sunday to set up a plant that was continue reading

added to the two that the Cuban Army already had at the San Antonio de los Baños Air Base. The Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) have made their factories available to the Ministry of Industries to support the growing demand amid the peak of the covid-19 pandemic. But nothing is enough.

The complaints of patients and relatives warning of lack of oxygen, with alarming crises in provinces such as Ciego de Ávila, Villa Clara, Camagüey, Cienfuegos and Holguín, led to a propaganda marathon by the authorities on the distribution of medicinal oxygen on the island.

The amount of oxygen a covid patient needs is impossible to determine: it depends on their condition and the time required for assistance, which can be days or months. But the needs of countries where the explosion of the pandemic arrived earlier give an idea of the quantities required. In Spain, the largest manufacturer of this product explained in April 2020 (when deaths in the country were close to a thousand a day) that the demand had multiplied by four, by seven in Madrid (the most affected region) and, in the worst days, by ten.

As of last March, according to the State newspaper Granma, Gases Industriales Company, OxiCuba, located in the capital had last March, according to Granma, “the capacity to generate more production than that demanded by the Health system,” while in Santiago de Cuba it produced only 5% of the national demand on that date and covered the orders of the eastern region.

The official newspaper did not say how much medical oxygen the Cuban health system demanded, but according to data from the National Office of Statistics and Information (Onei), Cuba produced 20,726.8 million cubic meters in 2020, well below the 31,612 million of 2015, which gives an idea of the level of shortages that the country is suffering with a pandemic that has increased demand exponentially.

In the midst of the biggest wave of the pandemic, the worst news came: the breakage of a piece at the Havana plant, which kicked off this obstacle course to achieve one of the most necessary treatments in this context and whose current production is unknown.

Gases Industriales Santiago produces 930 cylinders a day, which it distributes mainly to the province’s health system, Granma and Guantánamo, but in recent days at least Holguín and Las Tunas have joined. To this production are added the 360 cylinders every 24 hours in charge of the military factories and the Russian plant installed at the San Antonio de los Baños Air Base.

In Las Tunas, the Stainless Steel Company produces barely 1,300 to 1,500 liters per day and in Holguín the support of the Gas Processing Complex of the military region was added, which according to a Cuban television report contributes about “seven cylinders” per hour (168 daily).

In Camagüey, in addition to the 250 medical oxygen cylinders that the territory’s business unit made last February, another 280 reinforcement units are added, which are “distributed in the 13 hospital centers of Camagüey, in addition to some thirty polyclinics in all municipalities,” according to a report in Prensa Latina published this Tuesday.

With the doubt about how many liters or cubic meters are produced per day and how many are being consumed on average, the official press has tried to calm a population desperate for gas, but when it has not fallen in the propaganda, it has contributed to sowing confusion.

A Public Health director, quoted by the Havana Tribune , admitted this Wednesday that in recent months compressed air had been used as a substitute for medicinal oxygen, which “also reported a deficit in recent days.”

Directors of Gases Industriales Santiago told the Cuban News Agency that “they produce compressed air, which allows saving medicinal oxygen, with problems in its coverage” and national television published Wednesday that the Marlin Azulmar Navy of Ciego de Ávila was bottling compressed air used for scuba tanks.

The information was also shared on the Facebook page of Televisión Avileña and withdrawn shortly after panic spread among some users over the use of this gas in patients with covid.

“The 40% oxygen reached with this filling is insufficient for serious and critical patients, but it is necessary and sufficient for those who arrive at a duty station with respiratory deficit because it is twice what we normally breathe in the atmosphere. It is a way to stabilize the patient and then give them the necessary treatment,” Televisión Avileña responded to several users, although fear is still in the environment.

Unlike other products that are easily available in the informal market, medicinal oxygen is scarce in illegal networks and sellers only market with highly trusted contacts, fearing strict police surveillance over that product. Its size and the need to have its own cylinder to carry out these clandestine operations make it even more difficult to purchase through this route.

A source from the Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery confirmed to this newspaper that, even with the gas deficit in recent days, some cylinders continue to go to the black market. Between Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, there were gaps in the medical center allocation, the source said. “When the truck arrived with the cylinders, it did not bring the amount that was stated in the documents. Apparently they tried to sneak the missing one to the person in charge at the hospital, but they could not and had to leave without unloading the oxygen.”

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Rapper ‘El Radikal’ Was Released on Bail After Being Arrested on July 11

‘El Radikal’ is investigated by the military prosecutor. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 21 August 2021 — Cuban rapper Richard Adrián Zamora Brito, El Radikal, was released on bail this Friday. This was published on his Facebook profile by his colleague Osvaldo Navarro Veloz, from the Di.Verso community project, of which Zamora is also a collaborator.

“After 40 days in prison, Richard Zamora is on his way home. They released him on bail. We continue to fight for freedom and due process for those incarcerated in Cuba. We will soon have new updates on Richard’s case,” Navarro wrote, another important voice of rebellious rap and member of the Citizens Committee for Racial Integration (CIR).

Navarro told 14ymedio that Zamora was detained in the Combinado del Sur prison after being arrested by police and State Security agents at his home in the middle of the night in Colón, Matanzas, the day after participating in the July 11 protests. (11J).

His family members then requested a ’change of measure’, but it was denied, and they denounced that they were not allowed to visit him or pass on the medications that the musician needs for a treatment “of nerves and stomach problems.” continue reading

The family was never informed that in prison the artist was infected with covid-19, a fact that was only learned thanks to detainees who were released. They also did not have access to Zamora’s file nor did they know the charges against him.

Navarro explained that El Radikal was being investigated by the military prosecutor’s office and that a criminal investigator had told the family “verbally” that he was accused of “public disorder,” “robbery with force” and “disturbances.” Others of those arrested for these 11J protests, such as Eduardo Manuel Báez, 22, are also being charged for those offenses.

Báez’s father told this newspaper that “since the MLC stores* belong to the army” then “it is the military prosecutor’s office that is making the accusations” and added that they have not even allowed him to hire a lawyer for his son.

Rapper Randy Arteaga is still in prison, having also been arrested on July 11 in front of the Santa Clara Palace of Justice. “Witnesses, and the video of his arrest, indicate that he suffered physical violence at the time of his arrest,” said Osvaldo Navarro.

The list of detainees and disappeared, drawn up by a group of volunteers in collaboration with the Cubalex Legal Information Center, counts 391 protesters still in prison, four of them in “forced disappearance.”

*Translator’s note: ’MLC stores’ are stores that only accept payment in foreign currencies (MLC).

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Cuban President Diaz-Canel Misinforms, Comparing Cuba’s Decree-Law 35 with European Legislation

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, compares a European communication of recommendations with his decree. (EFE / ACN / Ariel Ley Royero / File)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 19 August 2021 — The Government is up in arms against the criticism raised by Decree-Law 35, which is intended to penalize false news in Cuba, its dissemination and the publication of “offensive messages or defamations that harm the prestige of the country”. The slogan now is to allege that there are countries with similar norms, but for the comparison they have chosen the wrong example.

Miguel Díaz-Canel has retweeted a user’s message stating, “They brand the Decree 35 in Cuba as an ’attack on human rights’, for things that operate in practically all countries: the fight against disinformation and cyberbullies. Its equivalent, the Action Plan against Disinformation has existed in the European Union since 2018.”

The president introduced the tweet with the message: “Sovereign Cuba says it, and honest experts from all over the world confirm it: our Legal Decree 35 is against disinformation and cyber-lying.”

The “expert” is Carlos González Penalva, who defines himself as a “stoic communist, philosophical rationalist” and head of Communication of the United Left in Gijón (Asturias). Far from being an expert in the field, the curriculum of Díaz-Canel’s continue reading

referent indicates that he began his studies in philosophy. The rest are from courses and congresses, most of them events in Cuba.

But the problem is not the source, but the content. González cites the Action Plan Against Disinformation that has existed in the European Union since 2018 as “equivalent,” but any resemblance between the two is purely coincidental.

The plan was approved on the occasion of the 2019 elections to the European Parliament and the holding of up to 50 electoral processes of different ranks in the member states. According to the text, its fundamental objective is to prevent interference by other countries in these and future elections, and it cites Russia, having documented its attempted interference on previous occasions.

“According to the EU Hybrid Fusion Cell, disinformation by the Russian Federation22 poses the greatest threat to the EU. It is systematic, well-resourced, and on a different scale to other countries,” it quotes in the text.

In the text, the EU urges the Member States to strengthen their national legislation to the same end and to link up to the European system. As far as disinformation is concerned, the plan foresees that the platforms ensure the control of political advertising, close false accounts and detect fake bots in order to eliminate them.

The text re-emphasizes that the recommendations “are part of a package of measures designed to ensure free and fair European elections (…). The work of an independent media is essential to the functioning of a democratic society,” it adds.

Finally, the document calls on the States to promote literacy in disinformation to the general public, as well as the creation of expert bodies in this field. In no case does it have, as in the Cuban decree, the rank of law nor, therefore, the capacity to sanction. Therefore, it does not work as an example.

In previous days, Cuban authorities have cited other European examples, such as that of France. The French law was born specifically from the EU Plan and was approved in 2018 with this intended purpose: to curb the dissemination of false information.

It was very controversial in their country among the opposition and press associations, which denounced the censorship mechanism that could involve the right to be able to remove “any assertion or imputation of an inaccurate or misleading fact”. The law provides for penalties of up to one year’s imprisonment in the most serious cases (cyberterrorism), but its approval required agreement on an amendment specifying that in order to take serious measures, such as blocking a web page, it must be considered proven that it was done “deliberately” and not only “in bad faith.”

Moreover, before reaching this point, the judge must determine, within a period of 48 hours, whether such false information has been disseminated “artificially or automatically” and “massively.” The intervention of a judge is decisive in the French regulation as well as in the German one (also cited by the Cuban authorities) and the Spanish one, which has not yet been approved due to the parliamentary traffic jam resulting from the pandemic. All these countries have separation of powers and the judiciary acts independently of the government.

The clearest example of this is that the French government itself was affected by its law. The Executive launched a campaign through Twitter to urge the population to exercise their right to vote in the European elections, which was deflated when the social network penalized it with its algorithm, considering that it was massive electoral propaganda lacking transparency (neither the funds nor the sender had been credited).

The governments of European countries that have tried to adopt rules following EU guidelines have all been the target of criticism from the opposition, because the fear of abuse exists and, in fact, there are cases in which people have been brought to trial for offenses expressed on social networks. But most of them are solved with an administrative fine and always depend on the courts, outside the governments.

The Cuban government has not yet specified the sanctions that will result from the violation of the rules of Legal Decree 35, but it has made a bad start by trying to match European legislation. In Latin America there are also laws against disinformation in several countries which imply fines, imprisonment and censorship, from the most obvious cases such as Nicaragua or Venezuela, to others such as Chile, which impose prison sentences for the “dissemination of false news that disturb the social order or cause panic in the population.” But Cuban authorities have not chosen to make that comparison.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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Official Data on Covid Deaths in Cuba are ‘Imprecise’ Admits the Minister of Health

A doctor from Cienfuegos told ’14ymedio’ that 36 deaths occurred in his hospital, but only four cases had a positive test. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger

14ymedio, Havana, 19 August 2021 — Chaos in hospitals, in cemeteries and, now, in the numbers of deaths from covid-19 in Cuba. The Minister of Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda, has admitted that the official data are “imprecise” in statements this Wednesday to Invasor, the provincial newspaper of Ciego de Ávila. The high official recognizes that the statistics only enter the deceased who have a positive PCR at the time of death and this is not always carried out or, simply, the result does not arrive in time.

On the other hand, the same article points out, in the Antonio Luaces hospital those who have tested positive in the rapid test or have symptoms compatible with the disease are being reported as deceased by coronavirus, in addition to those who have died from after effects after negative test results.

According to the official gazette, with the inclusion of these cases, the statistics “rise,” although the testimony rather adds confusion to being admitted from a hospital center that does not follow the Ministry’s protocol, which sows doubt about how deaths are accounted for in each center.

This Tuesday, a doctor from Cienfuego s told 14ymedio that 36 deaths occurred in his hospital, but only four cases had a positive test, so the official notification was four.

Last week, complaints also came from Guantánamo, where Ihosvany Fernández, director of Communal Services in Guantánamo, acknowledged that the funeral service is overwhelmed and they have been forced to use two Etecsa (phone company) vans and two Commerce trucks to transport bodies. continue reading

“On August 4 we worked with 67 [deceased], on the 3rd with 61 and on the first day of August with 80,” of the latter 69 were in the city. The official data published by the Ministry of Public Health for these two days gave, respectively, 9 and 8 deaths in Guantánamo, instead of the 67 and 80 managed by the Communal Services, and registered a national total of 93 and 98 deaths for those same dates.

The page that analyzes the data of the Ministry of Public Health has been idle for days and has been updated twice in the last month when it used to be updated daily. “Due to the fact that the way of reporting the deceased by the Minsap was changed, we will be making some changes in the project and, therefore, we will not update, for a few days. We will soon be up to date again. We apologize for the inconvenience,” says the website.

The rapid expansion of capacities in cemeteries, the shortage of hearses and the data provided by so many Cubans on dead relatives or acquaintances all gives an idea that the death figures should be higher than those officially reported.

The way of counting deaths from coronavirus has been controversial in most countries of the world, since very different criteria have been followed. In Europe, where the first wave caught unexpectedly and overwhelmed the systems, each country counted in its own way: France only added those who died in hospitals, Spain did not include those who died in nursing homes without a test, Italy those who had negative PCR and Germany was late incorporating them based on the data set, among other examples. Added to this chaos was the testing shortage in March 2020.

However, little by little, most of these countries have brought the figures closer to reality, with the incorporation of tens of thousands of people in the official records some time later, and also using the statistics of excess mortality over previous years.

The comments of the Cuban Minister of Health suggest that the authorities have realized that they cannot maintain an optimistic discourse when images multiply — even in the official provincial press — of collapsed hospitals and cemeteries.

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