14ymedio.com

The Temporary Working Group, the agency handling the public health emergency, announced that motorcycles would only be allowed to carry paying passengers during the hours public transport in operating. They are considering whether or not to allow motorcyclists, with or without commercial licenses, to transport family members with whom they are living.

Authorities say the decision is intended to “alleviate the transportation needs” for city residents.

“As in times past, motorcyclists are still doing the rounds and avoiding the traffic police by operating mainly in areas outside the city center, like Santa Maria, Boniato and Caney,” reports one young man who works in construction in the city.

“Thanks to the motorcycles a lot of us are able to get around because public transport only runs for a few hours a day and you have to fight for your life to use it,” he adds.

As of May 26, public transport may operate for six hours a day, from 5 A.M to 8 A.M and from 4 P.M. to 7 P.M. Only vehicles which are distributing essential goods, transporting flour, or being used by Public Health personel for administrative functions may operate outside those hours.

On Saturday, Santiago de Cuba reported 180 new cases of Covid, putting it behind Havana at 422 cases and Matanzas at 192, on a day that saw a record 1,470 new infections. On that same day there were 12 deaths due to complications associated with the infection for a total of 1,087 deaths from Covid-19 on the island.

The Public Health Ministry announced on Sunday that it has recorded 157,708 positive Covid test results since March 2020. Since early May, new daily infections of SARS-CoV-2 have averaged more than a thousand, with 1,198 cases in June so far.

On Sunday, Cuba, with a population of 11.2 million, reached a Covid case rate of 152 per 100,000 inhabitants according to the Spanish news agency EFE.

Controlled trials of the two of the five vaccines developed in Cuba, Abdala and Sovereign 02, are being conducted in high-risk areas of the country.

Both pharmaceuticals are in the final phase of clinical trials, which determine the efficacy of a potential vaccine. They have not yet received emergency use authorization from the country’s regulatory agency but authorities are hoping to obtain it this month once the results of the clinical trials are known. If one or both are shown to be effective, a massive vaccination campaign will begin.

Cuba is not part of the COVAX project, a vaccine program created by the World Health Organization which allows low and medium-income countries to acquire vaccines they have not been able buy on the world market.

____________

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.

After the journalist’s arrest, his family and the Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and Press (Iclep) denounced that he was missing. Once released, Suárez said on his social networks that he was transferred to the police station at 7th and 62nd in Havana’s Playa municipality.

The journalist’s family told 14ymedio that they were looking for him at the police stations closest to his home, in the Siboney district, and did not get information on his whereabouts. Iclep recalled that Suárez “has been besieged lately for his work” and for denouncing “the repressive forces for their methods of torturing independent activists and journalists.”

On the other hand, Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca, director of the Delibera digital platform, remains under arrest since June 15, first at the Zapata y C station, in El Vedado, and later in Villa Marista, according to family members and activists.

Valle Roca, a day before his arrest, published on the Delibera YouTube channel, a video of the tossing out of leaflets at the central corner of Zanja and Galiano, in Centro Habana, on the occasion of the celebration of Antonio Maceo’s birthday.

This Thursday, Eralidis Frometa, a human rights activist and wife of the independent journalist, denounced that several agents searched the house they share.

Also still remaining in pridon is the independent reporter Esteban Rodríguez, who was transferred from the Guanajay maximum security prison to a hospital in Havana on Tuesday, where he was admitted after testing positive for Covid-19.

Rodríguez, a journalist for ADN Cuba, was one of those arrested on April 30 in the peaceful demonstration on Obispo Street, in which Mary Karla Ares, a contributor to the community media outlet Amanecer Habanero, was also arrested. The reporter was able to return home under “home confinement” and denounced that, during the 27 days she spent in prison, she was the victim of “long hours of interrogation” and “psychological torture.”

Likewise, the CiberCuba activist and reporter Iliana Hernández has been besieged at her house by the police and State Security agents for about 70 days. In addition to being forbidden to go out, they have also cut off her mobile data internet service.

In the month of May alone, the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights documented more than 900 violent actions, something that, they denounce, confirms a “broader and more personalized repression” against civil society with the aim of “silencing all dissent.”

After the increase in repression by the regime in the first five months of the year, some activists and organizations consider that the country is experiencing “a new version of the Black Spring” of 2003.

____________

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.

Agustín Garrido Ramos took advantage of the early ripening and together with his family picked the mangoes on Farm 17, but the days passed and neither the UBPC directors nor Acopio did anything to collect the harvest. The only response that the farmer heard, after calls and negotiations, was: “Separate out the rotting mangoes and measure it in boxes and take photos of it, so when Acopio comes to collect it, the evidence is available.”

Ten days later, on June 7, the official entities collected part of the merchandise, by which time 320 boxes (12,800 pounds) had gone bad. “I gave up on harvesting it. To have it piled up here and see how it is rotting, I just leave it. It hurts to see how food is lost and we can’t even give it away,” complains Garrido Ramos.

The same happened with the Montaña Téllez harvest on Farm 12. Of the 165 boxes that he was able to collect, only 35 could be used, the rest were lost.

Elio Veny Martínez González, president of the local UBPC, told the local newspaper that they were going to “make a demand” to the State to pay them the money they lost and to ensure that the workers would not remain unpaid.

“A breakdown at the El Mambí canning factory coincided with the days of early ripening and there was no destination for the fruit we had already harvested. We told Acopio and the provincial government but there was no solution. This product is very expensive in the establishments and for that reason it is offered for sale slowly,” explains Martínez González.

According to the local newspaper, the company Conservas de Vegetales de Camagüey cannot process all the mango production in the territory due to limited industrial capacity, lack of packaging and repeated breakdowns in one of the main factories, El Mambí, where the machinery they are working with is 50 years old.

Two other plants were only able to process “400 tons, more than the 100 planned” in May, and for this month they will exceed “800, of the estimated 200,” according to the directors of Conservas de Vegetales.

The farmers of the affected UBPC, after much fighting, requested a permit from the Council of the Administration of the municipality to sell 90 boxes in the Puerto Príncipe and La Belén districts, “but a week after having the mango harvested,” says Martínez González.

For his part, Orestes Martínez Hernández, who is in charge of the harvest in the production unit, says that Acopio “does not have the capacity to move everything.” However, he insists: “We are in the best disposition to work the shifts that are necessary and until whatever hour, so that it is not lost.”

Added to this problem with transportation is that, coincidentally, this UBPC, which owns one of the 32 mini-industries in the province subordinate to the Ministry of Agriculture with the capacity to process 200 quintals (1 quintal = 33 acres) a day, cannot do so due to the lack of packaging.

The loss of tons of mango coincides with a rise in its price in markets throughout the island, where the fruit sells for between 6 and 15 pesos a pound, depending on its quality. Despite the increase in wages as of January this year, many retirees and low-income people cannot afford one of the most emblematic fruits of the Cuban countryside.

____________

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.

This information echoes a statement the president of Cadeca, Joaquin Alonso Vazquez, made on Sunday to the official press, in which he said the company was diversifying its retail services after the government announced that customers would no longer be allowed to deposit U.S. banknotes in their accounts.

Alonso Vazquez indicated that, although he foresees a shift in the retail sector to other foreign currencies, the company was diversifying the range of services it provides. These involve “operational capabilities and alliances” with ONAT, the banking and postal systems, utility companies that provide electricity, water and mobile phone services, the credit card company Fincimex and the oil company Cuba Petroleo, “to offer their services through Cadeca offices.”

Alonso Vazquez stated that sales are high at stores that sell goods or services for Cuban pesos so the company is setting up operations, known as third-party deposits, with state-owned businesses to confirm customers’ bank accounts.

The only service he did not mention was the sale of pre-paid gasoline cards, which are currently not available in all provinces.

In late May the government suspended the operations of currency exchange bureaus at the country’s international airports, claiming it had run out of cash. Executives at Cadeca said that they had been operating within established limits despite a “significant shortage” of hard currency but had to shut down due to a “lack of liquidity” which had reached an “extremely unsustainable level.”

Only two weeks ago, on June 10, authorities announced they would temporarily stop accepting cash bank deposits in dollars, blaming tighter U.S. sanctions imposed as part of the ongoing U.S economic embargo, which prevent the country’s central bank from using dollars it collects in Cuba overseas.

Cadeca offices became an essential feature of Cuban life in the 1990s when use of the dollar became widespread throughout the country. The company opened branches in major cities, tourist destinations and neighborhoods. Their importance has diminished in recent years, however, especially with the unification of the Cuban peso (CUP) with the Cuban convertible peso (CUC), which is being taken out of circulation.

____________

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 document also indicates that last month the non-payment of fines, together with the crimes of contempt, public disorder, disobedience, spread of epidemic, illicit economic activity or pre-criminal dangerousness, have been used to imprison and “remove from circulation” dissidents and human rights defenders.

The Havana-based organization explains that it is “very difficult” to collect information on political prisoners because, due to the Covid pandemic, prison visits are prohibited. The report also mentions “an outbreak of coronavirus” in the provincial prison of Sancti Spíritus where, according to reports, they have placed restrictions on visits and phone calls from prisoners so that information is not leaked, a “very difficult” situation for inmates.

People who are constantly besieged by the government and its repressive forces and who are not allowed to leave their homes without even having been given any document issued by the authorities, are also detailed in the report.

The Center also mentions the threat made by prosecutor José Luis Reyes Blanco on national television, when he said that opponents of the regime who are outside the island could be prosecuted and extradited so that they could be held criminally responsible for a crime committed.

With regards to “harassment” against the activists, the NGO details that it has been carried out on 102 people, 10 more than the previous month, and also notes that “repressive actions are increasingly intense.”

As an example, it cites the case of the reporter and activist Iliana Hernández Cardosa, who has had a police cordon around her home for more than two months, and those of Iván Hernández Carrillo, the Ladies in White, the members of the Patriotic Union of Cuba and of the Opposition Movement for a New Republic, who have been under siege for the entire month.

Regarding the economy and the crisis that the country is experiencing, the report indicates that every day “the amount of products and services” that are sold in foreign currency in state stores increases, as do “people’s complaints about exorbitant product prices.”

____________

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.

However, the vegetable oil crisis in the city has been dragging on since last year. Dunia says that before January, several times he paid 80 pesos for a pound of oil. With the rise in prices associated with the ‘Ordering Task’*, it became not only scarce, but “almost unattainable,” he says. In addition, in the stores that only accept payment in freely convertible currency (MLC) they hardly sell the product and the little that is sold in the network of stores in pesos “already has owners.”

“There are no possibilities for people to buy the little oil the stores put on the shelves because resellers monopolize the line. Here we have to buy everything at a premium. The street sellers don’t give anyone else a chance to buy anything and then they sell things at triple or quadruple their value,” adds the Santiaguan.

With the refinery shut down, the authorities warned that the unrationed sale of the product will be affected and that they will only be able to include oil in the basic market basket sold through the ration stores for the month of July. Santiago’s industry supplies that province and also Las Tunas, Granma and Guantánamo.

Although Durán assured that there is already a ship sailing to the port of Santiago with the raw material, he expects the cycle of regulated distribution to be reestablished next month, but did not refer to whether the sale in the network of state stores will stabilize.

Vegetable oil is widely used in Cuban kitchens, mainly sunflower, soybean and corn, a use that has been expanding as the traditional fat, mainly from pork, disappears from recipes, a sector in decline due to the lack of of animal feed.

Cuban culinary culture also abounds in fried foods and the lack of other products, such as sauces, various condiments or various dressings, force families to use vegetable oil in many dishes, a practice that several studies indicate as harmful to health due to its link to obesity.

However, in Cuba the lack of vegetable oil for cooking is associated in the popular mentality with the crisis, such as the one that the island went through in the 90s. Having to boil food or cook it “without fat” is considered by the vast majority of Cubans as a sign of misery and lack of resources.

In other eastern Cuban cities such as Baracoa, in Guantánamo, a liter of oil is sold on the black market for 200 pesos, and in Holguín, a resident of the Sagua de Tánamo municipality reports it is selling at “300 pesos and continues to rise.”

“There are many things here that have already changed their status. Science fiction literature in Cuba now is no longer about aliens or robot technology that is going to end the universe, here science fiction is oil, chicken, rice; and beans, corn, sweet potatoes enter into ancient and medieval literature, that is, they are only memories,” joked the man from Holguin.

Erasol is the only industry on the island that processes edible oil, while the companies located in Camagüey and Havana are only dedicated to packaging.

In the Cuban capital, at the beginning of last May, several complaints gained force on social networks after some Internet users published images of one-liter bottles of oil, made in Russia, with a label that read that the sale of the product because it belongs to a lot of donations from the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).

The Ministry of Internal Trade then alleged that breakage in the domestic industry had prevented the product from being bottled for sale on the rationed market and that they would replace the WFP bottles as soon as possible.

*Translator’s note: The ‘Ordering Task’ [Tarea ordenamiento] is a collection of measures that includes eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and others. 

____________

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.

It adds that this measure is intended to protect the Cuban banking and financial system and only applies to U.S. currency in cash, not to dollar denominated bank accounts or existing accounts in this currency, “which will not be affected in any way.”

The BCC claims that, for more than a year, it has been restricted from depositing U.S. dollars collected within Cuba’s borders in international banks.

The bank also claims that it is becoming increasingly difficult for Cuba to find international institutions willing “to receive, convert, or process cash” in the form of dollars because of “the extra-territorial effects of the blockade and additional measures adopted by the United States.”

“This is not about penalizing people for having dollars. What we are saying is that we have a problem with banks overseas,” BCC president Marta Sabina Wilson González said on Cuban TV’s Roundtable program, adding that Cubans had until June 20 to deposit foreign cash in their bank accounts

Carlos Fernández de Cossío, director general of U.S. affairs at the Cuban Foreign Ministry, added that the reason for this decision is “the blockade,” whose aim, he noted, is to “depress foreign earnings and people’s standard of living.” U.S. measures towards Cuba, he observed, were intensified four years ago during the Donald Trump administration and have so far remained unchanged under Joe Biden.

The official statement concludes by noting that how long this measure remains in effect “will depend on the lifting of restrictions that impede normal procedures for exporting American currency.”

____________

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 University of Havana now returns to the position it held in 2020, after having risen to 498 in 2021. The decline of the country’s most important center of higher learning has been precipitous if one takes into account that as recently as 2015 it held a respectable 83rd place.

In the global context, Latin America is not the highest ranking region. Not until you come to 69th place do you find one of the continent’s school’s, the University of Buenos Aires. Next on the list is the National Autonomous University of Mexico at 105, followed by the Universiity of Sao Paulo at 121, and the Catholic University of Chile at 135.

Topping the list globally (as it has for ten years) is the presitigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), followed by most of the traditional American and British universities.

Among the most striking things about this year’s rankings is the rise of Chinese universities, two of which are in the top twenty, in contrast to those of Japan, almost half of which fell.

The QS World University Rankings evaluates 9,000 universities throughout the world, chooses the top 3,000 and ranks them using several criteria: academic peer review, faculty/student ratio, citations per faculty, employer reputation, international student ratio and international staff ratio.

London-based Quacquarelli Symonds is a company specializing in education and overseas studies. It is one of the most widely recognized firms of its kind in the world.

____________

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.

Tobacco also fell dramatically, making 54% of the forecast, as did construction materials (54.3%), agricultural inputs (7.7%) and household supplies (17.1%).

Thus, of the 304 million pesos in commercial circulation originally foreseen, only 225 million were realized.

Local authorities have drawn attention to the importance of making decisions to improve production and savings, although nothing was put on the table to suggest that there will be a change in such a negative trend.

Obregón García explained that during the first four months of the year 193 fines related to non-compliance with the decrees that regulate prices and sanitary measures have been imposed in the amount of 1,075,000 pesos.

Decree 30, approved in December 2020, establishes sanctions that reach 3,000 pesos for those who fail to comply with the health regulations provided to reduce coronavirus infections. On the 31st, and published the same day, sellers were fined between 5,000 and 7,000 pesos for not displaying on a board the products and prices they offer; between 8,000 and 10,000 for “withholding, reserving, postponing or not putting products for retail sale on sale,” and up to between 12,000 and 15,000 if the seller does not comply with the measures ordered against “abusive prices” and “speculative prices.”

“Municipal economic development has a short, medium and long term strategy planned, a fact that will facilitate better planning and in-depth review of each measure implemented to ensure the redistribution of scarce available resources and meet priorities,” affirmed the mayor.

Ciego de Ávila’s numbers are not surprising. At the beginning of this year the Ceballos Agroindustrial Company, one of the few jewels in the crown of the Cuban State and the main industry in the territory, ended the month of January in the red. The industry, which produces canned food and sells mainly in national currency, suffered from the lack of packaging and the rise in raw material costs.

The news of Ceballos’ nosedive was published at the same time that President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that “the business system of the Food Industry needs a shake up, to take advantage of the 43 measures to strengthen the socialist state enterprise and get the maximum benefit from the Ordering Task*.”

“We can do more: more production, more efficiency, more offers, better designs, different ranges of products, greater optimization of processes,” concluded Díaz-Canel then, during the meeting to analyze the work of the Ministry of the Food Industry during 2020.

But the province’s performance suggests that the measures have not yet yielded the expected results.

*Translator’s note: The ‘Ordering Task’ [Tarea ordenamiento] is a collection of measures that includes eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and others. 

____________

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.

In August of last year, the first group of health workers returned to the island, which, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, consisted of 152 aid workers who treated “758 patients infected with the pandemic, and saved 189 of them from death.”

In January, the second group arrived, in this case of 125 professionals, who “treated 33,753 patients with Covid-19, carried out 374,680 nursing procedures, worked in the emergency services, and in intensive therapies and attended 30 patients per day.”

It is unknown how the jump was made from 758 patients in two months to more than 33,000 in six, despite the reduction of 150 in the total number of health workers present in Kuwait, although it is less understood that in June the figure tripled with just 60 doctors, even if the figure was accumulated.

In addition, the number of cases of coronavirus in Kuwait has been 320,257, so if Cubans make reference in their accounting to only patients with Covid-19, they would have dealt with almost half of those infected in the country. However, it is possible that in the global count, where it is not clear whether the patients were afflicted with the coronavirus, others hospitalized for any circumstance have been included.

All three returns of the brigades have been celebrated with the usual epic. “The pure white of the medical gowns distinguished the night veil of the first hours of the date, when the 152 members of the internationalist Henry Reeve contingent descended from the plane to the national soil, to be received as heroes,” said the press release on the August contingent, who did not remain there. “The assistance of Cuban solidarity reversed the pace of death.”

A less literary note was released for the January group, but was signed by the Cuban president himself and entitled Henry Reeve also with his imprint of love in Kuwait.

The Cuban people still do not know how much was paid for that love, although there has been speculation with figures of around 12 million dollars. In Kuwait, a local doctor can earn around $7,000, which can be doubled in cases of high specialization or overtime.

The Cuban government has doctors in several Middle Eastern countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain or Qatar. In the latter, several Cuban health workers fled and reported the conditions under which they worked in this mission, similar to the usual ones, including the requirement that they surrender their passports, the impossibility of communicating with citizens of the host country, the obligation to give public support to the Government and participate in its activities and, finally, the fact that the Cuban government keeps between 70% and 90% of money paid by the host country for the healthcare workers’ services, with the remainder paid out in salaries.

Cuba is taking advantage of its doctors to profit from its image during the pandemic. In addition to being one of the few economic assets that remains after the collapse of tourist activity, the obstacles to remittances and the collapse of its ally, Venezuela, the obtaining of the Nobel Peace Prize, which it has been seeking for months, would yield — in addition to the value of the award, just over a million dollars (10 million Swedish crowns) — the prestige that it craves.

Since April 2020, when the health crisis broke out, the campaign to win the Norwegian award for Cuba’s Henry Reeve Brigade has been insistent in its search for support around the world. This same Tuesday, during a debate in the European Parliament on human rights in Cuba, two Members of the European Parliament reviewed the work of the island’s doctors and their great contribution against Covid-19 worldwide.

This international campaign is accompanied by the internal one. Physicians are greeted with pomp at each return, with Kuwait just the most recent example. Just three weeks ago, Dr. Julio Guerra Izquierdo, head of the brigade stationed in Mexico, insisted in his speech that the low mortality rate in that North American country was due in part to Cuban health workers. “With the hard work of our collaborators, it was possible to reduce the fatality at the end, after four months, to 9.7%,” he defended.

A paradigmatic case of this amplification of the work of the Cubans is that of Andorra, where that country’s press did not skimp on its mockery of Cuba’s official propaganda: “If you read the balance sheet for the delegation presented by the the Castro regime media (…) thanks to Cuba and the Cuban health workers, the pandemic, the coronavirus, has not swallowed Andorra and Andorrans. It has been a miracle (…) The figures are such that it is evident that the brigade has saved the Principality from Covid as, in his day, Charlemagne [a medieval emperor decisive in Andorran independence and the European configuration] saved these latitudes from other events,” said an article in the Altaveu newspaper.

In the European principality, the data on cured people was also questioned, which permits putting in quarantine any official figure that is provided. “They have supposedly treated 821 critically ill patients in the Intensive Care Unit of the Nostra Senyora hospital in Meritxell. It is evident and clear that the hospital’s ICU has not treated this number of patients in any way shape or form. The collapse would have been brutal. But in Cuba, it is clear, they will be heroes. They have been decisive in the recovery of more than 700 patients, which are all the people officially recovered so far and of whom Cuban health workers have barely seen 20%,” the article added.

The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced in October, so expect a long summer of lavishly celebrated returns.

____________

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.