14ymedio – Page 309 – Translating Cuba

After a Two-Hour ‘Blackout’ in Cuba, Internet and Mobile Data Return

The last blackouts like this were in August 2019. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Madrid, 12 February 2021 — Cuba was cut off from the world for two hours by an internet blackout. Telephone communications were also affected in the capital and in all areas of the country.

The 14ymedio correspondent in Spain lost contact with the Havana Newsroom shortly after 12 noon but was able to establish communication with a number in Cienfuegos, although it was very interrupted.

In addition, no official websites could be opened, from the Granma newspaper to the pages of the ministries, through all the provincial media, as well as social networks and messaging services.

“The internet went down in Cuba, I can’t communicate either by WhatsApp or by Telegram with anyone in my family,” said a Cuban resident in Ecuador. “It does not load Ecured or other .cu pages that I have tried to open from here, I even sent an SMS to my mother’s phone and the Ecuadorian operator has not confirmed that it reached her.” continue reading

“I have sent messages through various applications to my family without receiving responses for more than an hour,” confirmed another Cuban who lives in Spain.

The causes of the blackout are unknown, and, for now, the Cuban Telecommunications Company (Etecsa) has not reported any breakdown. “We had a technical interruption in voice and SMS services, as well as Internet access, they are restored. We apologize for the inconvenience caused,” the company limited itself to tweeting almost an hour after the internet returned.

It is known that, after two hours, the connection was still intermittent and that the problem extended to sending text messages (sms), calls between mobiles and communications abroad from landlines. “The number 118, for Services and Repairs of Etecsa, did not work either,” a woman in Havana tells this newspaper after the service was restored.

“On the 1 pm newscast, almost at the end of the broadcast, they gave brief information that there were technical problems with the internet connection,” says the same source. “They transmitted that information just after giving a very triumphant news report where it was stated how well the Transfermóvil service was working to pay for some services, from cell phones that have data.”

Among the services affected were also sales in stores in freely convertible currencies (MLC), due to not being able to access the network that checks cards in national and foreign currencies.

Internet outages are frequent on the island, as is the blocking of some pages, such as 14ymedio, which the Government finds ’uncomfortable’, and of some services such as Telegram. However, a network crash of this nature and extent is unprecedented.

Cuba, which for years was one of the most disconnected countries in the world, began in 2015 a gradual expansion of internet use, which until then remained forbidden to the majority of the population.

At the end of 2018, the mobile data service arrived, which has triggered access to the network in the country. According to a report from the Ministry of Communications, currently 7 million Cubans access the internet through different channels, 4.2 million of them through mobile data.

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Ceballos, One of the ‘Crown Jewels’ of the Cuban State, Registers Losses

Ceballos’ flagship products have been in high popular demand for years, especially its tomato sauces and canned sweets. (Ceballos Company)

14ymedio, Havana, 12 February 2021 — The Ceballos Agroindustrial Company, from Ciego de Ávila, one of the few jewels in the crown of the Cuban State, ended the first month of 2021 in the red. It was not planned: as the official newspaper Invasor notes, Vice President Marino Murillo, architect of the “Ordering Task,” had insisted that Ceballos would not be among the 426 entities that could end up with losses this year.

With the start of the new economic measures, the company went from the most demanded to the most reviled, when buyers observed that the prices of its products had quadrupled.

The entity did not put new products on sale until the third week of January due to lack of packaging, according to Invasor, but the rest of the month, no profits were generated, so the 5,000 workers of the company received only the basic salary. continue reading

Claudio Enrique Delgado Montes, director of Human Capital of Ceballos, told the local newspaper that with the salary reform of the Task Ordering, the salary increase was double, when the national average was 4.9, through having implemented piece-rate pay. “Therefore, our company’s increase wages must come hand in hand with profits, which is what is uncertain today.”

The problem, says the official newspaper without mincing words, “is precisely that the real cost of things conflicts with the express decision not to apply shock therapy and protect people’s purchasing power,” because “if it is important not to affect to the consumer, it is also important to maintain profitability.”

A reader responds to this in a comment: “Obviously, either the rules of the game change or the industry is bankrupt. If there is business autonomy, there can be no price limits against the logic of costs.”

Ceballos’ flagship products have been in high popular demand for years, especially its tomato sauces, canned sweets and other foods that are sold in various sizes of cans, including large ones. But, the opinions about the state company’s product line are not unanimous.

“I don’t buy their tomato puree because it is not good, they mix it with carrots and sometimes with beets to stretch it and the final flavor is not tasty. I think there is little left of the Ceballos industry of a few years ago, because the quality has fallen through the floor,” comments a customer, who frequently buys these canned foods through the market of the Youth Labor Army on Tulipán Street in Havana, speaking to this newspaper.

In the Cuban capital, the price of a can of tomato paste produced by the company has risen to more than 300 pesos, triple what the product cost last year before the monetary unification and price adjustments. Due to the new prices, the product is now piling up on store shelves without much demand.

The news of the the agro-industrial complex’s losses was published the same day that the governor Miguel Díaz-Canel insisted 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 most out of the ’Ordering Task’.”

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

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A Vacation in Cuba Without Leaving Your Room Can Cost Up To $600

Hotel Meliá Habana, one of the six establishments that offer “confinement packages” in the capital. (EFE / Ernesto Mastrascusa)

EFE/14ymedio, Havana, 13 February 2021 — Enjoying five nights and six days in a hotel in Cuba is now more than ever within the reach of any international traveler, with packages ranging from 250 to 600 dollars. With one problem: the guest cannot leave the room.

These “confinement packages” include airport transfers and accommodation with full board in establishments of between three and five stars, in addition to medical attention and the number of PCR tests necessary so that the client can be released on the sixth day if the Covid-19 infection is ruled out. It is the island’s response to the collapse of tourism due to the pandemic.

Since the middle of last January, the island has suffered a harsh second wave of infections: it has not dropped below 500 daily positives and on some days it has touched a thousand. continue reading

Six hotels in Havana (Vedado, Parque Central, Capri, Tulipán, Meliá Habana and Comodoro), one in Varadero (Starfish Las Palmas) and six more in other provinces (Granjita and Los Caneyes in Santa Clara, Sol Cayo Coco in Ciego de Ávila, Plaza in Camagüey, Mirador de Mayabe in Holguín and Versalles in Santiago de Cuba) have hosted clients of various nationalities who have contracted this offer since last weekend.

To contain contagions, which in this second wave were attributed mainly to travelers from abroad, everyone who arrives in the country is obliged to undergo isolation until they have had rwo negative PCR tests at least five days apart.

There are two isolation options: the free one, which is to spend at least a week in state institutions in places such as campsites and student residences, and the paid one, with one of the new packages that can be purchased online at the traveler’s origin or directly at airport arrivals.

There are two isolation options: the free one, which is to spend at least a week in state institutions in places such as campsites and student residences, and the paid one, with one of the new packages that can be purchased online at origin or directly in the room of airport arrivals.

Cubans and residents on the island can choose between both options, but foreigners who arrive as tourists or for other purposes do not have the option of going to a state center and must spend the isolation period in a hotel.

“We are promoting it through social the networks so that the client comes with the purchased package,” declared the marketing director of the state agency Havanatur, Isabel Docampo, in a meeting with Efe and other international media in Havana to explain the new initiative.

So far, most of the hundreds of travelers who have purchased one of the “confinement packages” are Cubans residing in other countries, mainly in the United States, who return to visit their relatives, according to Docampo.

There are also Cubans who return from personal or work trips, as is the case of Madeline Hernández, who this week arrived from the Dominican Republic with her family and is staying at the four-star Comodoro hotel in Havana.

“I travel for work and my company pays for the package for us, so we don’t have to go to an isolation center, where the conditions are different,” this 49-year-old woman, who works for a foreign company , explains from the balcony of her bungalow in the Cuban capital.

Although Cubans currently occupy the vast majority of hotel rooms reserved for travelers in isolation, in Havanatur they believe that their offers could also be attractive to European, Asian or American tourists who want to escape the cold and the harsh restrictions imposed in their respective countries.

“The tourist who arrives and buys the package spends those five nights and six days in isolation and, if they are negative, they can continue making a tour around the country or continue doing the program they came to do here,” says the representative of Havanatur.

Some hotels, such as the Comodoro or the neighboring Meliá Habana (five stars), never closed due to the pandemic and now house travelers in isolation, so they have had to adapt part of their facilities to the strict hygiene and security that these types of guests require.

Marino Elorza, general director of Meliá Habana, explains the basic rules to avoid contagion: “Physical barriers, such as screens and gloves on workers, maximum observance of all processes set by Public Health and continuous communication with our team of doctors within of the hotel.”

These doctors visit each guest in isolation twice a day to check their health and take their temperature.

“I always tell customers: now here the boss in the hotel is the white coat, the doctors are, because the priority is that we all take care of ourselves,” says the director of this hotel, which reserves 90 rooms for travelers in isolation, currently 22 of which are occupied.

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Creators of Independent Cinema Are Not Self-Employed, Insists Cuban Film Industry

Juan Carlos Cremata, from the G20 collective that demanded a law for independent cinema, during the meeting with a T-shirt that says “censored”. (Luz Escobar / 14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 12 February 2021 — The Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (Icaic) published a note this Thursday in which it specifies that audiovisual production is not an activity for the self-employed , although it appears on the list of jobs not allowed for the private sector officially announced this week.

According to the agency, this activity is governed by Decree-Law 373 in which independent production that does not comply with the Government’s provisions was explicitly prohibited. The audiovisual creators who do not work for the state, says Icaic, are not self-employed but artists.

The Decree-Law, which develops the activity, does recognize three activities that, without being artistic, are essential for the development of an audiovisual project. These are the occupations of operator and/or lessor of equipment for artistic production, casting agent, and artistic production assistant. In these cases, all three can be performed by the self-employed. continue reading

Icaic clarifies that the fact of considering cultural creation as an artistic and non-self-employed activity was the result of a “broad debate” with professionals in the sector and it was thus agreed to emphasize the creative nature of the profession.

In June 2019, the Government gave the green light to Decree-Law 373, which regulates the work of audiovisual creators not linked to the state sector. At that time, the professionals were very satisfied with the fact that they had managed to wrest this legislation from the Government, for which they spent several years fighting, but the disappointment set in as soon as they read its content.

To become an audiovisual and cinematographic creator, the applicant must be registered in a registry that depends directly on the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industries (Icaic) and the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT). Both institutions make up the admission committee responsible for approving and evaluating applications.

The text makes explicit that the candidate must demonstrate having the conditions, abilities and skills required by the committee, which, de facto, implies passing through an ideological filter of the arbitrary State and that prevents any critic of the regime from having access to develop their work in an independent way.

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Cuba’s Private Sector Workers Seek Government Jobs to Get Them Through the Crisis

According to official figures, job listings in the private sector are approaching 35% of the total listings. Sign Text: Area for Self-Employed Workers.(EFE/ Ernesto Mastrascusa)

14ymedio, Havana, February 9, 2021 — “Are you calling about work in the public sector?” asks a voice on the other end of the phone at one of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security’s employment offices in Havana’s Cotorro district. “You have to bring your I.D. to look at the job openings we have,” explains the employee.

She is talking to a young man who graduated three years ago in accounting. He had been working for only a few months at a privately owned business. The opening that best fits his profile is with the Pasture and Forage Research Institute, far from his place of residence, which does not appeal to him.

“I called because they told me the job included transportation but the salary was less than I wanted. What they were going to pay me would only have covered some groceries, the electricity and a few other small things. The problem was I would have had to be there for eight hours a day, Monday to Friday, without time to find something else on the side to make ends meet,” he explains. “I’ll keep looking.” continue reading

The young accountant is one of 92,651 Cubans who have sought employment since new salaries were announced following monetary unification. So far, however, only 52% have accepted available job offers.

As a result of the national economic crisis, monetary unification and a long shutdown of the private sector, even formerly undesirable positions in the public sector are starting to look more attractive, though prejudices against working for the state remain. In interviews with 14ymedio at least a dozen people said they were “looking for something in the short term, without a long-term commitment.”

“I want a job so that I’m not stuck at home with nothing to do, making no money, but only until the paladar (private restaurant) where I worked as a waiter reopens. Once I can go back to working for a private business, you won’t see me at a state job anymore,” admits Mauricio, a young man who until a few months ago was waiting tables at a privately owned restaurant on Infanta Street.

“In a private sector job I work more but I feel better. The salary is one thing I notice on a day-to-day basis, in things I can buy and pleasures I can afford. Plus, there are no trade union meetings or murals,” he points out. “But something is better than nothing, so for now I’ll have to take some state job, though I haven’t liked any of the listings I’ve seen so far.”

A position as a night watchman or custodian at a Havana clinic pays a 2,200 pesos a month and requires a ninth-grade education. The difficult job of railroad repairman pays 2,960 while that of a driver for the Havana port facilities pays 2,540. Most of the available jobs require a great amount of physical effort, are in blue collar fields and, as such, are more suited to people who are young and in good health. But there are also listings in banking, auditing and design.

Employment listings vary by search area. For example, Plaza of the Revolution, with its high concentration of government ministries, has few listings, with most being clerical or service related. Guanabacoa only has listings for truck drivers, mechanics and crane operators. Meanwhile, in Central Havana there are at least three listings for tobacconists at salaries ranging from 2,660 to 2,810 pesos a month.

According to a recent report by academic Carmelo Mesa-Lago, given the choice between closing money-losing state companies or doing “fictitious monetary reform,” Cuban authorities opted for the latter and have decreed “a transition period of one year, during which time companies operating at a loss will continue to be subsidized in order to adjust to the new conditions, avoid unemployment and guarantee the production of essential goods.”

“We’ve been told to hire more people,” explains an employee of Cuba Petróleo (Cupet), “but all we have are positions for which there is very little interest, such as for instructors in our training center. We don’t have anything at gas stations. Some of our staff are working remotely or getting paid without really doing much of anything. How are we going to hire more people under these conditions?”

Between the months of April and October last year some 150,000 workers were unemployed due to business shutdowns resulting from Covid-19, though they continued collecting their salaries. Some 250,000 freelancers and private sector businesspeople also suspended their licenses. That is a total of 400,000 workers, 8.7% of the active workforce.

Despite official figures which predict there will be 32,000 new job openings this year, with at least 22,000 in the public sector, voices like those of Mesa-Lago predict a more uncertain outlook in which “total unemployment could exceed 30%.” It is possible, however, that “if self-employment is allowed to expand without obstacles or excessive taxes, it could absorb state unemployment.”

It is a complicated task given that Covid-19 has been especially damaging to this sector. The economist Pedro Monreal warned on Twitter that although “there is insufficient date, available information suggests that the self-employed labor market has been the segment most strongly impacted by the economic crisis linked to the pandemic.”

Monreal explains that the the negative impact is being caused by “the relatively high dependence of private sector employment on tourism… hindering the recovery of private [economic] activity.” And indications are that the number of foreign visitors to the island is not expected to return to pre-pandemic levels anytime soon.

To facilitate the search for employment, the government has launched a mobile app, TrabajarEnCuba, with listings in both the private and public sectors. However, problems such as sudden crashes, security alerts on the Android operating system indicating it has not been validated for the Google Play store and a scarcity of listings for private sector jobs have caused many users to give up on it.

“I downloaded it and it worked for two days, but not after that,” noted a commentator on an official site that promoted TrabajarEnCuba. “I found out about a job but when I went went to see the human resources manager, I was told me that they weren’t hiring for that position,” complains another by the name of Lázaro. Although 14ymedio has not found any job openings at privately owned companies in the Havana municipalities of Plaza, Central Havana or Old Havana, official data indicate that up to 35% of the positions being offered are in the private sector, 17% of which are in cooperatives.

Other workers have, nevertheless, managed to find employment opportunities in spite of the app’s technical problems. “I was interested in a bank supervisor’s position at the Focsa Building, which is close to my house,” says Maylin. “If they accept me, it will be the first time in fifteen years that I have worked for the state. I used to be a housewife and, until not long ago, a self-employed hair stylist.”

This Havana resident’s plan is “to keep working until things get back to normal and then reopen the hair salon.” For now, however, she says that “it’s better to work for the state than not because no one knows how long this will last.”

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Prohibiting to Prohibit

More than half of the homes built in Cuba, between January and October 2020, were built by individuals; private architects remain expressly prohibited. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Havana, 11 February 2021 — The house is flat and ugly, with a makeshift structure because of the haste. To build it, its inhabitants could not hire a private architect, nor would they be able to in the future. The list of self-employed occupations prohibited in Cuba not only includes those professionals, but also journalists, film producers, lawyers, undertakers, scientific researchers, and vehicle manufacturers.

The list of private activities banned on the island was finally published this Wednesday and its content managed to exceed the most pessimistic forecasts. Not only does it expressly prohibit work that until now was done in the field of illegality, such as the management of private galleries or accounting, but it also strictly sets the limits that the State does not want private initiative to cross. It is, in short, a list of the fears of a political system that seeks to continue to control the main spaces of the lives of its citizens.

This list is proof of the backward mentality that governs decision-makers on this Island. They continue to think that they can prevent a musician from building a small recording studio in their bathroom to produce their records and those of other colleagues; they believe they will be able to prevent someone from taking wheels and casings to build vehicles; or to keep legal counsel from a defendant. They fantasize that they will be able to clip the wings of someone who lays out a book of poems, or who twists tobacco to sell on their own. continue reading

The list with these 124 banned occupations also reveals the arrogance that imbues those who wrote it, so much an arrogance that it is difficult to connect the image with that of an economically bankrupt regime with huge international debts, a chronic crisis of shortages, without the capacity to create wealth or to satisfy the demand for basic products. It is worded as if a great number of avenues to generate employment, prosperity and development could be allowed to be discarded, when they have brought the country to beggary and the brink of humanitarian crisis.

This is not a list made from an economic point of view, nor even a legal one: it is made from the desire to control. Perhaps the section where the ideological inspiration is shown most crudely, is the one entitled “artistic, entertainment and recreational activities.” The first condemned activity on the list is journalism, that thorn that for years has put into check the state monopoly on news dissemination, exposing innumerable events that the regime would want swept under the carpet and exposing the servitude of the press controlled by the Communist Party.

What can be expected from such a list? A dead letter or strict application? Witch-hunting against many economic phenomena that had been spreading under the shadow of illegality? A repressive slap that buries all those privately-run spaces now banned? Difficult to foresee what will happen. By now, it is clear that they have succeeded in uniting in outrage the film producer, the freelance reporter, the engineer and the frustrated architect who sees cities full of botched roofs and flimsy walls. They have just confirmed more than a hundred trades as enemies.

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Angel Santiesteban’s Personal War

Santiesteban makes film scripts, practices journalism and is very active in the Freemasons. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana | 7 February 2021 — Ángel Santiesteban Prats (1966, Havana) is perhaps the living Cuban writer, residing in Cuba, who has had the most problems with the political police. He is also one of those who has garnered the most recognition for his literary work. He writes film scripts, practices journalism and is intensely active in the Masons. He doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t drink alcohol or coffee, he doesn’t speak ill of anyone and he spends the day working.

Reinaldo Escobar. In August of last year, you received the 2020 Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissidence. You had already finished the script for the film Plantados and had turned the script into a novel. What has happened since then?

Ángel Santiesteban. When I was awarded the prize, the film was already finished, but could not be released in 2020 as planned due to the COVID-19 misfortune, as Lilo Vilaplana says, the director of the film “the year of broken dreams.” The jury considered that I would find myself in trouble with the regime for having participated in the writing of the script. Anyway, within a dictatorship, if you don’t wave official flags, you always have problems. continue reading

Reinaldo Escobar. Is this the first time that you have taken a film script to the novel genre?

Ángel Santiesteban. It is the second novel that I wrote after making the script; a process that is commonly done in reverse, but I have always had a knack for seeing the scenes and describing them. All my literature is a movie that I describe. In my mind, I make up the scene, see the characters do everything and see all that surrounds them. They are actors and actresses on stage in my mind.

We have worked on Cuba’s social and political problems associated with the dictatorship that has oppressed us for the last 61 years

Reinaldo Escobar. And what’s on your desk now?

Ángel Santiesteban. Once the film Plantados was finished, and during this whole wait to show it, I completed another script at the request of Lilo Vilaplana about the events of the Tugboat 13 de Marzo [March 13^th]in 1994, that vile murderous act that was forged against innocent victims.

In both scripts, we have worked on Cuba’s social and political problems associated with the dictatorship that has oppressed us for the last 61 years.

Next March, the movie Plantados will be released in theaters in Miami. Let’s hope for the much-needed reception to excite the producers so we can continue to make a denouncement film, a film that tells the truth about Cuba. All on the basis of art, that is our first demand. Lilo and I have tried to do it in the best possible way, from our artistic resources.

Reinaldo Escobar. Does the novel Plantados have a publication proposal, and if so, where and by when?

Ángel Santiesteban. Lilo was approached by an important publishing house and he proposed to publish a novel. He knew that I was at a creative moment, and he told them that I would let him know, but I have let it rest, other urgent creations have emerged simultaneously, such as the script for the 13 de Marzo and a novel that I had started writing before, which is very advanced and I need to finish so as not to drag out truncated projects.

I hope to return to the Plantados novel which I finally titled “La Ciudad Desnuda” [The Naked City] because that’s what they called the part where the semi-naked planted prisoners lived together, refusing to wear the common prisoners’ uniform.

Reinaldo Escobar. What other scripts are you working on?

Ángel Santiesteban. After finishing 13 de Marzo, we have made another one about the current Cuban reality, and, in addition to a couple of stories for medium-length films, we are now working on a kidnapping that the former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, ordered some criminals in Colombia to carry out. The Colombians later revealed the whole plot, and those involved who have been able to be brought to justice have already been convicted, except for Correa, who is in Europe, in a country without an extradition agreement with Ecuador.

At this moment there is another proposal for a budgeted script, which is very important because filming is assured.

After finishing the script about the events of Tugboat 13 de Marzo in 1994, we have made another one about the current Cuban reality

Reinaldo Escobar. Parallel to your activity as a writer, you have an important presence in Freemasonry. How have you evolved in that fraternity?

Ángel Santiesteban. It is a passion for the family tradition that I inherited from my mother. Since I was a teenager, I was busy looking for literature about the Masons; José Martí and most of the heroes of the independence were Masons. I started in Freemasonry at the allowed age: 21. Since then, it has had a fundamental place in my life. It has been a school contributing to my formation as a human being, as an artist and as a Cuban.

The Masonic fraternity is a family that occupies us, and that brings a lot of personal satisfaction. I was presented at my lodge “Knights of the Sun” in 1987, and since then I have ascended the steps to become Venerable Master of my lodge on two occasions, I have been Grand Dean of the Meritorious Association of Veteran Masons for two periods too, where I have been able to represent those who have been in the fraternity the longest and have sacrificed the most, and that fills me with great pride to know them as extraordinary people. And it is to such an extent that in 2012 I was serving my first term as Grand Dean and the political police waited to incarcerate me until I handed over the position in January 2013, in February of that same year. They knew that it was very strong and that Masons could be hurt and start a confrontation.

I am the Representative of my lodge before the Masonic High Chamber and the Spiritual Father of my lodge, and perhaps the outside world may not know the meaning and importance of these positions, but Masons do.

On the other hand, I hold the effective 33^rd degree, which decides the fate of Scottish Freemasonry. It occupies a lot of my time, but it has been a life vocation, an emotion that in these 34 years of permanence, remains like the first day.

Reinaldo Escobar. Why did you abandon your blog Los hijos que nadie quiso [The Children Nobody Wanted] (The last post is from October 2017)?

Ángel Santiesteban. Because when I started the blog in 2008, it was the most sensational thing I had found up to that point. I was never able to access it from Cuba, because they had it blocked. Other friends managed it from overseas. After producing my writings and sneaking them out of prison while managing to evade the guards – I wrote them by hand – they digitized it and sent it abroad to be uploaded to the blog.

I always remember the blog fondly because it gave me the visibility I needed to face the injustices of the dictatorship

Reinaldo Escobar. Was it then that you started independent journalism?

Ángel Santiesteban. After I got out of jail, I started to collaborate with Cubanet and no longer posted my writings on the blog. Until I had direct access to the internet, and since then, I have been working on Facebook, which I take on as a fighting tool. I interact directly and with immediacy, so now it seems more effective than the blog. For the last three years, literary work and scripts have consumed me, so I had to stop working for Cubanet. But I always remember the blog fondly because it gave me the visibility I needed to face the injustices of the dictatorship.

Reinaldo Escobar. How do the political police treat you now since you have been released from prison?

Ángel Santiesteban. Once they released me in 2015, they tried to re-imprison me for the same alleged crime, even accused by the same person, who continued to lend herself to such infamy – though today she has asked me to forgive her by admitting that it was a truncated passion, something that was spoiled and she did not want to understand at the time – then came the kidnappings by the political police, the threats, all that tension with which we have had to learn to live.

Reinaldo Escobar. You have said that in prison you acquired conditions that affect your health. Can you give details?

Ángel Santiesteban. Upon my release from prison, I took care of having surgery on lipomas I had detected since my confinement. They had appeared on my body and grew incessantly. I noticed them because the same political police always insisted about the state of my health until they exhorted me, with marked intention, for me to examine my body. I did it once and found those bumps that grew incessantly.

My departure was complicated. On one occasion they sliced a lipoma open and closed it again without touching it, which was a very bad sign. I began to think that perhaps I was reaching my end, and it did not occur to me to do it in any other way than to continue striving to work harder and better.

I am proud to have accompanied them on 27N. I stayed with them until the last moment to run their luck

Reinaldo Escobar. A new wave of young artists has assumed a very critical position against the regime. How does that affect you?

Ángel Santiesteban. I am proud to have accompanied them on 27N. I stayed with them until the last moment to run their luck. A Mason brother invited me to join the group, I thanked him, but I explained that they were not contaminated like me, that this was their moment and their space, that I was there to support them. He was there because at that time he thought that the more people in the crowd, the fewer blows per person.

It is the first step backwards that I have seen the dictatorship take, of the many that it will have to continue taking in the nearest future. Many communicated with me and cried, they believed it was the end. When I saw them go inside the Ministry of Culture and that the political police did not repress that, I thought we were also close. But I soon understood that they were buying time, that they knew that allowing repressors to enter the ministry could cost lives, and that the next day there would be thousands. They understood that they were in the most dangerous moment of the “revolution,” and I think they came out in the most intelligent way. They were deceived.

Reinaldo Escobar. Despite everything you have suffered, you remain in Cuba. Is it an irrevocable decision?

Ángel Santiesteban. I maintain a personal war with the regime. It has never occurred to me to leave Cuba and I don’t think I will at this point, unless the dictatorship falls and I am absent for a long time to share with my wandering family around the world, like many, and take care, as I should, of my literature.

Translated by Norma Whiting

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Even with Price Rollbacks, Can the Regime Control Inflation Caused by Currency Reform?

Marino Murillo, Cuba’s so-called Reform Czar.

Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 5 February 2021 — It seems the subject of prices continues to be one of the main problems stemming from the recent currency unification reforms. A problem for which the the communist model, with its emphasis on economic planning and state intervention in the economy, is incapable of setting prices for the goods and services it provides at an adequate level. The state-run newspaper Granma has echoed authorities’ statements about their decision to initiate a “review process” to prevent excessive price increases from affecting the public’s purchasing power. That it has done it, is doing it, and will do it is a story that is not over. What does this “review” sound like?

The reasons behind the explosion in wholesale and retail prices, which is creating public alarm, are many and complex. Some have a medium and long-term impact (such as the lack of monetary control and government debt) while others have their origin in the currency unification process and the disparate, controversial measures that the authorities had wanted to apply this past January.

Clearly, there are problems with price controls. There have been very few instances in which communist authorities’ goal of setting maximum allowable price ceilings on consumer products has been met. This suggests that, if prices rise between 2% to 5%, they will have reached this cap. And this will happen either because all the calculations required by the producers have not done things correctly, or alternatively, because some consumers are willing to pay the highest prices. continue reading

In other words, supply does not respond to lower prices unless demand justifies it. And that is why, despite controls and ceilings set by the regime, there has been an increase in consumer prices. This has become a social problem only because more and more sectors of the population have taken note of the growth in speculative pricing and the subsequent surge of price gouging.

Once the government officials became aware of the problem, economics minister Marino Murillo announced they would be reviewing everything, using the political argument that economic inefficiencies cannot be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices.

Since Murillo is the person responsible for the guidelines, the first thing one might ask him would be what inefficiencies does he believe are being passed along to consumers. There are some clues. It is worth noting that these inefficiencies were not present before currency unification. This is not to say that prices were not going up before January, just that they were not doing so with same intensity as they are now. That is why the public was not openly expressing its discontent back then.

These inefficiencies must, therefore, have something or a lot to do with the way currency unification was implemented, and possibly with two key measures of the process that were not well considered by those responsible for the economy.

First of all, the devaluation of the Cuban peso has seriously impacted the business sector — making imports more expensive and domestically produced alternatives without a positive impact very hard to find — without having a positive effect on exports. This has disrupted the market for wholesale goods and will continue to do so for the rest of the year. The government has yet to determine a stable exchange rate, though the current unofficial rate provides some idea of where it might eventually settle, and further devaluations can be expected.

Secondly, the elimination of subsidies and grants only leaves vulnerable sectors of society, which rely on them to augment their meager salaries and pensions, helpless. Meanwhile, some providers of goods and services — mainly state-owned companies and organizations which are financed by these subsidies — have taken advantage of currency unification to raise prices beyond what is legally allowed, causing inflation.

Price adjustments have been made to grants and subsidies for the Family Aid System, restaurant and food workers and postal rates, and are under review for water utility rates, the school snack program and other goods and services. The review the regime is conducting of its own companies aims to determine whether the standards were was correctly applied or not.

Under this scenario, an enterprise that manages to achieve a high profit margin will trigger a review, the reason being that the regime does not want to give the impression that the profitability of their own companies is dependent on prices, regardless of the organizational, administrative and underemployment problems they may have. Like robbing Peter to pay Paul. In this way, the issue of the quality-price ratio of government grants and subsidies remains unresolved, keeping the potential threat of upward pricing pressure alive.

It is clear that the effects of devaluation have not been enough to halt traditional policies such as price controls and centralized planning. It is one thing to impose them under normal economic conditions but another to prevent market forces from responding to changes in pricing during a period of devaluation

Authorities have demonstrated that the more many anti-inflationary measures they put in place — including price controls on high-end products and services, and limits on free-market wholesale prices — the more unit production costs increase. If they do not pass along the costs of higher wholesale prices, their companies risk serious capital shortfall and insolvency.

Initially, the regime responded by unfairly blaming private sector business owners for the rise in prices, launching a wave of inspections, levying increased fines and sanctions, and trying to turn public opinion against retailers who provide services to consumers. Later, in what seemed like a timeout in a boxing match when one fighter is being pummeled by another, it acknowledged in Granma that “it is inevitable that prices will rise.”

The regime’s only aspiration is “for prices, as well as costs and expenses associated with them, to be applied correctly.” The all powerful communist regime, with full power to intervene in the economy, has taken away Cubans’ property rights to the means of production and stigmatized the free market as a tool for assigning resources, acknowledging that it can do nothing to fight inflation caused by currency unification.

At a time when economic forces are interrelated and decision makers are hoping for balanced solutions through prospective actions, the communist government is falling back on the old, reactionary paradigm of price and cost controls. These are inefficient and do not even come close to solving the problem. It’s throwing in the towel.

To say that “due to strong public sensitivity, the pricing policy adopted as part of currency unification will undergo a process of review and analysis in order to reconcile how companies make their profits with how to offer acceptable prices for the income level of the population” is to say nothing. It is an acknowledgement of the failure of an economic system and its policies.

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Mexican Doctors Rebel Against Being Required to Study in Cuba

Mexican doctors protested this Monday in Mexico City’s Zocolo plaza.

14ymedio, Lorey Saman, Mexico, 9 February 2021 — A score of doctors demonstrated Monday in Mexico City’s Zocalo plaza in protest against Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government requiring them to study their specialty in Cuba.

“They say that the infrastructure there is greater than what we have in Mexico, but here we have more hospitals and there is a greater need for specialist doctors,” declared Ingrid Izar Cuéllar to the local media; Dr. Izar was one of the doctors who protested this Monday in front of the Palacio Nacional, the seat of the Mexican Executive and also, since he took office two years ago, the residence of López Obrador.

The Mexican president had announced in May of last year that they would start a program of scholarships for doctors to live abroad, due to the lack of vacancies in the country. Months later, in November, the health authorities reported not only the doubling of positions but also the launching of up to 1,600 scholarships abroad, with destinations in Canada, the United States, Argentina, Cuba and Australia.

In fact, when doctors took their specialty exams, they were asked if they wanted to go abroad and which country they preferred. continue reading

However, when the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt) published the call for the scholarships last December 15, they were only for Cuba. On that occasion, health consultant Xavier Tello noted that Mexico would pay the Cuban government a total of 40 million dollars as “tuition” for this program.

Those aspiring to residencies were up in arms, because it was not even optional: if they did not accept the place on the Island, they would lose it, and their exam results would not be considered.

“It is unfortunate for the aspirations and dreams of doctors who yearn to do a specialty outside the country, that they are not given the opportunity to do it in the place they prefer,” Belinda Cázares Gómez, president of the Mexican Medical Association, told 14ymedio. “It is frustrating, moreover, that if they do not accept studying in Cuba, they will lose their exam passing grade and their efforts will not be recognized.” And she adds: “I don’t think they were even warned.”

“Because of the conditions associated with the pandemic, doctors prefer to stay in their own country and not go out to take risks,” says Dr. Cázares.

Along the same lines, Dr. Izar told Imagen Radio: “We are in the middle of the pandemic and we demand a position here because our selection certificate is about to expire in two weeks.”

Those, like Izar, who passed the National Medical Residency Examination last November, must begin their residency on March 1, but those who chose to go abroad, in this case Cuba, must apply for the Conacyt scholarship before February 12.

“For Rehabilitation Medicine, 449 applicants were selected, of which only 149 obtained a national position,” said Izar. The remaining 300 have to go to Cuba, “obviously doing all the paperwork, which costs between 15,000 and 20,000 pesos, at our own expense,” not to mention “nor are you assured of acceptance.”

With the 1,100 dollars that Conacyt will pay each month for each scholarship holder who goes to Cuba, Izar reflected, two doctors could do their specialty in Mexico, since what is paid to residents in national territory is half the cost. “That is why we think that those economic resources should be redirected to our country and not to Cuba, because we do not know what study plans they manage, what hospitals they offer, we know nothing, everything is phantasmal.”

Dr. Belinda Cázares adds in an interview with 14ymedio: “The doctor who wants to do a specialty wants to have the certainty that his studies have the right academic conditions, that they are what he aspires to, that within the Cuban academic infrastructure he can know which are the study programs and the hospitals where he will work and what opportunity he will have here to occupy a position as a trained specialist once he finishes his specialty” in Cuba.

The president of the Medical Association sees it as positive that other countries receive Mexicans to study specialties and carry out scientific exchanges, but she asks: “What guarantee will these doctors who will go to Cuba to do a specialty have of obtaining a professional license to be able to practice when they return to the country?”

Cázares says he has “very certain information” that there are medical degree students graduated in Cuba but who were later not granted professional licenses in Mexico by the Mexican General Directorate of Professions “because the Cuban academic programs are not compatible with the Mexican ones.”

The issue of forced specialties in Cuba is a new episode that divides the healthcare profession and the president with regards to the Island. The College presided over by Cázares was, precisely, one of the signatories of the letter addressed to López Obrador last June in protest against the hiring of Cuban doctors to work in Mexico.

“We first asked why we as a guild had not been informed”, says Cázares, “what were the specialties of the Cuban doctors who were coming to the country because of the pandemic.” On that occasion, the schools heard “many concerns from the healthcare personnel… They didn’t know if they were doctors, intensive care or emergency physicians, nurses, we didn’t know their academic quality,” he says. “The authorities were very secretive, even the Cubans didn’t talk much.”

Another complaint of the doctors was that they did not even enter the spaces where the COVID patients were being treated. “Did they come to support us?” Cázares asks doubtfully. “The Secretary of Health of Mexico City [Oliva López] answered us that they were observers, epidemiologists, who came to do work of that nature.” Thus, denounces the doctor, “there was a double discourse: did they come as support for the pandemic or to be observers?”

The more than 700 Cuban Brigadists were in Mexican territory during the first wave of the pandemic, distributed between Mexico City and Veracruz returned to Cuba last October. The National Welfare Institute paid the regime more than 6 million dollars for their services, although the contract between the two parties was never made public.

Despite the uproar, Lopez Obrador “imported” again, two months later, a brigade of 500 healthcare workers, joined by a new contingent of 200 last January. Unlike those who worked during the first wave of the pandemic, stationed in civilian hospitals, this time they are in military hospitals, “attending” with the help of the Navy and the Armed Forces, as the Mexican president himself said and a medical source confirmed to 14ymedio, which makes the information about them, if that were possible, even more opaque.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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No News of 22 Rafters Who Left Cuba’s Isle of Youth in November

Fabio González, the son of Yanet Paz, was one of the three underage youth traveling by boat. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Lorey Saman, Mexico, February 8, 2021 — The families of a group of 22 Cubans who have disappeared in the Gulf of Mexico since November 29 are desperate. The migrants, three habaneros and 19 piñeros, including three minors, left the Isle of Youth for Cancun, in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, but it’s not known if they reached their destination.

Family members of the rafters filed complaints in several Mexican cities, including Chetumal, Cancún and Islas Mujeres, without obtaining a response from the authorities.

Yanet Paz, mother of one of the minors who was on the boat, tells 14ymedio that two lawyers have also presented the case before the National Human Rights Commission in Mexico. Along with the Cubans, Paz says, the three Mexican boatmen they were traveling with are missing. continue reading

The boat left Mexico for the Isle of Youth to pick up the Cubans and return to its starting point. The last they heard about the rafters, from the call to a relative, is that they were near the Mexican coast. “One of the boatmen said that they had run out of fuel and were being towed by another boat. Since then nothing else has been known,” says Paz.

Her son, Fabio Francisco Paz González, is only 16 years old, and although it’s been more than two months, she says that she still has faith and hopes that he will appear along with the other migrants. His goal was to get to the U.S., where she is living.

“No, I didn’t know anything about that trip; my boy didn’t tell me. Three days after leaving Cuba, I found out that he had left in a boat. Since then I’ve searched for him everywhere.”

The 421 kilometers that separate the Isle of Youth from Cancun are one of the most common routes for Cubans trying to escape their country. Another of the most frequent points that serves as a port of departure is the province of Pinar del Río, just under 200 kilometers from the Mexican coast.

According to data published by the Mexican press, between 2014 and 2017, 393 Cubans were rescued on the high seas when they were seen by cruise ships, cargo ships or tourists, who reported them to the Mexican Navy. The average number of people per boat ranges from a minimum of 4 to a maximum of 18.

On November 28, 14 Cubans were rescued by personnel from the Secretariat of the Mexican Navy when they were navigating in the vicinity of Isla Mujeres. The rafters had been on the high seas for more than five days and had intended to reach the coast of Honduras.

In addition, Cubans try to enter the U.S. through South Florida. On January 1, the Miami Border Patrol detained 12 rafters in Key West, the first in 2021 to reach land in a homemade boat.

In 2017, the Obama Administration eliminated the wet foot/dry foot policy that benefited Cubans who stepped onto U.S. territory. However, dozens of the island’s residents continue to jump into the sea in precarious boats to escape a life without a future in their own country.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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More Than 20 Families Live in the Ruins of the Home of a Cuban Hero

The former residence of Enrique José Varona, an intellectual who became vice president of Cuba, located on Calle 8 between Línea and Calzada, in Havana’s Vedado. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Eustaquio García, Havana, 6 February 2021 — Two plaques, one from the 1930s and the other from the 1940s, are the only evidence passersby see on Obrapía Street, between Bernaza and Villegas in Old Havana, that shows that the patriot Manuel Sanguily lived there until his death in 1925. Manuel Sanguily was one of the few Cubans who participated in the two wars of independence and held high positions in the government.

If it weren’t for the plaques, nothing would speak to the history of the old nineteenth-century manor house, almost in ruins, where more than 20 families live divided into different rooms.

The facade of the house clearly shows where one of the balconies collapsed in 1990, the year Yarianna Milanés Acosta was born; she now lives in the house with her two young children. Since then, more than 30 years ago, it has remained the same, with the risk that another piece of the balcony could collapse. continue reading

The young woman says that a family began to build a large five-room house, in what was the old garage, with the aim of renting it out to international tourists, but everything stopped long ago. “The man in charge was told that they are planning to give us all houses soon, something that has not happened and we doubt that it will happen,” says Acosta.

“I arrived here in 1961, very young,” Abelina Matos Peña, who is almost 80, told 14ymedio. “Since then, my family has been growing and we have had to divide the house.” Although in the past there was some interest on the part of the Office of the Historian to repair this property and turn it into a museum, she assures us that nothing happened.

In 1975, a fire broke out in the warehouse next to the building, which was already in poor condition, and in 1989, the City Historian, Eusebio Leal, was interested in turning it into a state center. “But the Special Period arrived and all those plans were abandoned,” explains Matos.

“My mother has written several letters to all possible government agencies where she explains the poor condition of this house and the need to leave here for a better place,” adds Milanés Acosta. “Even the fact that is is the old house of Manuel Sanguily does not mean they pay attention to us. Here all the walls seep and the mice are the owners of this place.”

On Obrapía Street, between Bernaza and Villegas in Old Havana, the patriot Manuel Sanguily resided until his death in 1925. (14ymedio)

Manuel Sanguily’s birthplace is not the only one that has been abandoned by the authorities. The same happens, for example, with the former residence of Enrique José Varona, an intellectual who became vice president of Cuba, located on Calle 8 between Línea and Calzada, in Havana’s Vedado district. The entryway to the house is completely propped up and almost all its walls are cracked.

This is the abode where the essayist Jorge Mañach, one of his greatest admirers, visited Varona to interview him when he had only a few years to live. Mañach’s testimony was published by the modern magazine Avance.

Today, only one plaque indicates that the so-called “teacher of youth” lived there. The current owner of the old mansion, 14ymedio learned, has put it up for sale, but did not want to give further statements.

The same oblivion would be the fate of the last house of the Dominican General Máximo Gómez, if it were not for the fact that the Historian’s Office has assumed its repair to transform it into a museum.

Three years ago, the magazine El Toque showed the palpable deterioration and abandonment of that large house located in Calzada y D, in Vedado, where the great military strategist — who resigned as president of the newly launched independent nation — lived his last years until his death, in 1905. There is no trace of the bust of the hero, which was tucked in a corner of the interior garden, but one of the builders who works in the restoration assures that it was removed to be renovated.

With the Revolution, in 1959, most of the houses of historical personalities that had been converted into state centers or museums were abandoned, especially those mansions that, due to their size, repair or maintenance could only be maintained at the expense of considerable material resources.

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In Cuba, No Dollars, No Light Bulbs

Ever since Fidel Castro launched the “energy revolution,” old refrigerators and energy saving light bulbs have been in the spotlight. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 8 February 2021 — The light bulb began flickering and two days later it was dead. Nena, a retiree in Central Havana who was using her old Singer sewing machine at the time, knew the darkened room was not a good sign. For more than a year, stores in Havana have not been selling lamps or bulbs for Cuban pesos.

“My first idea was to take the bulb from the patio and use it in the room but when I tried it, the lamp still didn’t work,” she says. “My sons thought maybe it was the starter but it turned out to be more serious than that. The lamp’s transformer had broken.”

For Nena replacing the lamp has been “a mission impossible.” Due to the national economic crisis, many basic consumer items — from rugs to cement to candles — have disappeared from the shelves of state-owned stores. The situation has gotten worse during the months-long pandemic, when only grocery stores have been allowed to remain open. continue reading

“They closed everything: stores that sell shoes, plumbing supplies, even electric mixers. As if the coronavirus was going to prevent those things from breaking and people didn’t need to replace them,” complains Nena.” When some of those products became available again, they could only be found in hard currency stores. To have white light, you need greenbacks,” she notes ironically.

There was so much pent-up demand that when light bulbs became available again, they disappeared within a few days. Nena regrets that resellers used the opportunity to buy up everything they could and then jack up their prices. “I remember that a few years ago you could clap your hands and bulbs would come out of nowhere, incandescent as well as fluorescent,” she recalls.

Ever since Fidel Castro launched the “Energy Revolution,” old refrigerators and energy saving light bulbs have been in the spotlight.

Brigades of social workers, who basically served as Castro’s Red Guards, went from house to house, identifying high energy appliances, which were replaced with more energy efficient ones. Imports and sales of incandescent bulbs, both in pesos and in hard currency, were banned. The lucky few who managed to hold onto one hid it from prying eyes.

Energy-saving bulbs, also known as compact fluorescents (CFLs), replaced incandescents but were unpopular due to their short lifespans and low light levels. The new bulbs’ coiled shape became a symbol of the Energy Revolution, as the program was named in 2006.

Juan Alberto, who at the time was a teenager with dreams of singing on a stage filled with brightly colored lights, must now grope his way around his room because he has been unable to find a replacement for a broken lamp for two months. “I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve stubbed my toes and how far I’ve walked looking for someone who will sell me one,” he says.

Juan Alberto learned that one could buy light bulbs, electrical cables, lamps and all manner of electrical supplies needed for both indoor and outdoor illumination at stores that only take payment in hard currency. The problem is that he does not have the required debit card linked to a bank account with foreign currency or a relative overseas who would send him dollars to make the required bank deposit.

“I have not seen a single light bulb in any store since the end of last year. It finally dawned on me that this could be an unsolvable problem.” After visiting more than a dozen state-owned stores, Juan Alberto only managed to find some obsolete DVDs, antiquated musical equipment and an electric hair straightener covered with dust.

Until he went to the renowned La Cubana hardware store, popularly know by its traditional name, Feíto and Cabezón, where Juan Alberto’s spirits sank. The fluorescent bulb he needed was right there in the store’s display window for the exorbitant price of eleven dollars. Frustrated, he walked several more blocks down Reina Avenue until he came across a man who whispered, “LED and fluorescent bulbs.”

For 150 pesos, a little more than six dollars, this underground merchant was selling one of the most desirable items to be found on the streets of Cuba. “I bought two, just in case, but when I got home, I found out the problem was the lamp, which isn’t for sale anywhere,” claims the Havana resident, who now recalls what he was told about hard currency stores during their rollout.

“I heard on television that they were supposed to be stores that only carried high-end merchandise. But a light bulb is not a luxury item. Nor is a chicken breast, nor a piece of cheese. We’ve learned to live without these things. But without light?” he asks. “Pretty soon we’ll have to go back to living in caves.”

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To Stop the Virus, Havana Prohibits Shopping Outside One’s District

The capital already operated under the same rules to try to stop Covid-19 between August 27 and October 1 of last year. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 9 February 2021 — Havana’s Government decided to once again impose a restriction on residents, against shopping in any municipality in the capital city other than their own. The measure goes into effect on Wednesday, as a part ot the measures to try to stop the spreading of Covid-19. Measures already in effect include limitations on transport and a night curfew.

The same rules to stop the spread of the virus were already in place in the capital between August 27 and October 1. As during that period, Havanans must show their identity card, or an authorization of they live at a different address than that shown on their identity document.

A Temporary Use Card will be issued, as they were previously, to make purchases for all those residents without an officially registered address in the capital, which caused some problems last summer. continue reading

Luis Carlos Góngora Domínguez, vice president of the Provincial Administration Council, said that the measure does not apply to foreigners with permanent residence in the country, who may buy in all municipalities, “as well as other categories of people whose official identity document does not contain their residence address.”

Stores that require shoppers to pat with freely convertible currency and agricultural markets are also outside this rule.

The authorities sat that “they will work to achieve an equitable distribution of basic necessities, including those that meet the needs of children and the elderly,” and that they have launched “a network of 154 places” that will offer supplies at least one once a week, “to meet the demand of those populations where commercial coverage is not adequate.”

The growing shortage of basic products forces residents of the Cuban capital to travel to various municipalities in order to buy food. While some areas of the city, such as Centro Habana, La Habana Vieja, and El Vedado have a wider commercial life, other areas have fewer state sales outlets.

When the same measures were implemented last September, one of the collateral effects was that many goods disappeared into the black market, in addition to an increase in the home delivery of processed food, as well as food in general, cleaning products and articles from informal networks.

Luis Antonio Torres Iríbar, president of the Provincial Defense Council, declared this Monday that “the epidemiological logic would indicate a total closure,” but that “Cuba does not have the millions in reserves to do so and it is necessary to go out every day, looking for food and services.”

In this latest outbreak of the coronavirus, the capital has remained in the lead in the number of daily cases, sometimes having more than half of the infections reported in the country as a whole. This Tuesday was no exception: of the 580 positives registered on Monday, 292 are in Havana.

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Cuban Police Pursue Tania Bruguera While Germany Invites Her to an Art Exhibition

Tania Bruguera at her home in Havana in 2015 during a staged 100-hour reading, analysis and discussion of Hannah Arendt’s book ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 8 February 2021 — The Hannah Arendt International Institute of Artivism (Instar), founded in Havana by the artist Tania Bruguera, has been selected to participate in the 15th edition of documenta, the prestigious contemporary art exhibition held in Kassel, Germany, currently scheduled for June 18 to September 25, 2022. On this occasion, the theme of the community of social art and the usefulness of art in society will be addressed.

It is the second time that Bruguera has participated in this exhibition, having previously attended in 2011. On this occasion, her participation becomes even more relevant, if possible, due to the discrediting campaign launched against the artist by the Cuban government media and the harassment she has been subjected to on the part of State Security, which has prevented her from leaving her home under threat of arrest since 27 January, when a dozen artists were physically attacked by the Minister of Culture himself, Alpidio Alonso, while carrying out a peaceful sit-in in front of the official headquarters.

“This invitation should not be ignored by the Ministry of Culture, an institution with which we independent artists from Cuba are trying to have a dialogue in which our work is recognized and our spaces are legalized,” Bruguera explains to 14ymedio. It would not hurt for the ministry to see this, she says, as a sign that independent artists have “a force that is not in competition with the institution” and that they can “reach places of great prestige on their own.” continue reading

Tania Bruguera, whose work has always been critical of the regime, has been periodically harassed by the Government since December 2014, when she tried to organize a performance in the Plaza of the Revolution with the title of Tatlin’s Whisper #6, but the most recent attack began on November 27, when she was one of the most visible heads of the peaceful demonstration in front of the Ministry of Culture, where more than 300 artists and intellectuals demanded the freedom of those who were detained after their eviction from the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement, and the end of the persecution of artists.

Since then, Bruguera has been briefly arrested on several occasions and the official press has published articles dedicated to the artist, calling her a “mercenary” and accusing her of receiving financing from abroad, as is business as usual with regards to critical figures who acquire some relevance. On January 14, Bruguera filed a complaint at the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT) in response to the broadcast of a program in which “they distorted, defamed and fostered negative opinions” about her, and she argued that a “government that is believed to be above the law and constantly violates the Constitution” must be fought.

“The best response that can be given to the defamation and attacks of the National Television Newscast and the official organ of the PCC is to let them know that today the inclusion of the Hannah Arendt International Institute of Artivism (#INSTAR) in documenta 15 has been announced, the most important exhibition of plastic arts in the world,” she wrote on her social networks after hearing the news of her selection to appear at the exhibition.

The artist believes that this decision is “the recognition of independent art in Cuba… I think it is not a celebration for Instar, it is a celebration for independent artists. It recognizes their need and relevance, and the impact they have,” she said. Instar has worked since its founding on civic education through art and has been a great supporter and promoter of independent artists.

The documenta exhibition is held every five years and includes a selection of between 80 and 100 artists from around the world chosen “for their quality and their track record.” This time the Indonesian group ruangrupa will be the artistic director for the exhibition. “It is something new because previously it had always been a chief curator who made the selection and for the first time a group has been chosen.”

“What the group has proposed is that this time the decisions will be made not by a single person, it is a little slower, but more democratic. All the people in the group, plus the team of curators, plus the other invited artists will be the ones who approve and vote and discuss the relevance of whether or not a project becomes part of the group. In this case I am happy to say that Instar was approved unanimously by all the jurors,” said Bruguera.

Instar’s participation in documenta, which has been in development now for a year and a half, also means that the artist is learning about other projects similar to those of her collective. “Exchanging ideas, experiences with similar projects of social art, political art, civic, learning and creating an international support network with other projects from the five continents,” she adds.

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Cuba Eliminates the Limited List of Jobs Allowed in the Private Sector

Economy Minister Alejandro Gil described the changes in self-employment rules as “a very important step.” (14ymedio)

EFE, via 14ymedio, Havana, 6 February 2021 — The Cuban government eliminated the constrained list of activities allowed in the private sector, leaving a list of just 124 occupations which can be engaged in only by government entities, a long-awaited reform that opens the doors to the expansion of self-employment in the midst of a serious economic crisis.

The decision had been announced last July within a package of measures to confront the recession and the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it was not approved until this week by the Council of Ministers, according to a summary published this Saturday by the official newspaper Granma.

“That self-employment continues to develop is the purpose of this improvement,” said the Cuban Minister of Labor and Social Security, Marta Elena Feito, who noted that the private sector employs 600,000 workers and represents 13% of the employed population. continue reading

At the moment, it has not been specified what the 124 activities are that the private sector will not be able to engage in, but the elimination of the list of permitted occupations implies going from the 127 that were included in it to more than 2,000 collected in the National Classifier of Economic Activities, said the minister.

Feito also acknowledged that the health crisis and the reinforcement of US sanctions have “had a hard impact” on the self-employed, a large percentage of whom operated in the tourism and services sectors.

According to the Minister of Labor, interested parties must present a project and the paperwork will be handled through a single window, “which will make it possible to unleash the productive forces in this sector,” she said.

She also appealed to the “responsibility” of the provincial and municipal authorities “for the attention, control and evaluation of the performance of this sector, as well as the results of the inspection and the confrontation with illegalities,” reported Granma.

For his part, the Minister of Economy, Alejandro Gil, described the elimination of the list as “a very important step in terms of expanding the possibilities of working in self-employment, to give a timely and positive response to the implementation of the monetary ordering in the country.”

Although the Cuban State, governed by the Cuban Communist Party (PCC, the only legal party), has maintained its monopoly of the national economy since the 1959 Revolution, in the last decade it expanded the number of activities that people can engage in as self-employed.

Cuban economists and the private sector itself had been demanding the elimination of the list of permitted activities for years, considering it a drag on the country’s economy.

The measure comes a month after Cuba launched its long-postponed monetary and exchange unification, a far-reaching economic reform that includes the elimination of the Cuban convertible peso (CUC — which claimed parity to the dollar), an increase in wages and prices and the withdrawal of generalized subsidies.

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