14ymedio – Page 310 – Translating Cuba

#Exprésate! (Express yourself!): A New Campaign for Freedom in Cuba

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, Héctor Luis Valdés Cocho, María Matienzo, Tata Poet and Juliana Rabelo, in the video of the #Exprésate! (Express Yourself) Campaign. (Screen Capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 2 February 2021 — The Cuban Youth Dialogue Table returned to the public scene on Monday with the launch of the #Exprésate! [Express Yourself] campaign, which promotes Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to freedom of expression and information.

To do this, it released a video featuring the independent journalist, Héctor Luis Valdés Cocho, the rapper, Africa, and the artists Arián Cruz Tata Poet, Juliana Rabelo and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, leader of the San Isidro Movement (MSI).

According to Kirenia Yalit Núñez Pérez, the coordinator of the campaign, the intention is “to show familiar faces of the people who, in different ways, have tried to exercise their right to freedom of expression, and to serve as a driving force for young people who haven’t yet done so.” continue reading

Alcántara thus joins this new initiative, after the protests of the MSI in November and those of the group 27N in December and January. Last Friday, when he was arrested before heading to a sit-in in front of the Capitol, he was wearing a white pullover with the campaign slogan ” Exprésate!” and the logo, a striped star with the Island in its center.

“Freedom of expression, beyond being a universal right, means being able to say what you want without going to prison,” says the artist in the video, “without being separated from friends and without persecution from a totalitarian, military state.” Alcántara also uses his characteristic phrase: “We are super connected.”

Africa equates this right to “everyone being able to flow in their own energy and associate with people who flow like them and create things in common.”

“I need to speak, I need to communicate, I need them to know what I think,” says Tata Poet. “We should be able to enjoy the full expression of what we really feel, both politically and culturally,” adds Cocho.

Núñez, a psychologist, explains that a fundamental goal guides the campaign: “to expand the ability of Cuban youth to get together and to generate new spaces for participation in a civic movement.”

“Today the video is composed of young people who have already expressed themselves openly, but we hope that new faces will be added in the future,” says the psychologist, who founded the Cuban Youth Dialogue Table just seven years ago.

“During this time,” says Núñez, “they have been focused on educating young people and training them in different areas. If they reappear now,” she says, “it’s because we believed it was time to retake other spaces of participation.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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“Water And Rest”: The Prescription in Cuba in the Absence of Pharmaceuticals

Grandmothers’ remedies are gaining popularity in the face of drug shortages in Cuban pharmacies and hospitals. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 2 February 2021 — It started with a small wound on his foot, but as the days passed, infection and fever set in. Luis Álvaro, 25, went to the emergency room at the nearby Freyre de Andrade hospital in Centro Habana. After looking at his foot, the doctor concluded: “I can’t prescribe antibiotics because there aren’t any. Rest, drink plenty of water and keep your foot elevated.”

Four days later, with a large red area around the wound, the young man posted on Telegram: “I’m exchanging a Nintendo wireless remote for a full course of oral antibiotics and a tube of Gentamicin.” Shortly thereafter, an interested party responded. Luis Álvaro obtained several blister packs of amoxicillin, a drug manufactured in Cuba.

His skills with instant messaging, having something to exchange on the black market and the fact of living in Havana, which has a dynamic informal commerce, played out in favor of this young man, but in regions far from the capital the options are much more limited, and “you can’t find medications even if you have money,” says María Victoria, a resident of San Antonio de los Baños. continue reading

After several days of uncertainty, the health of María Victoria’s relative has evolved favorably, but she hasn’t stopped worrying. “I see sick and chronically ill children and elderly people who can no longer find the medications they need,” she warns. “It’s a desperate situation.”

“We’re very concerned,” this resident of one of the most populated municipalities in the province of Artemisa tells this newspaper. “I have a niece who they thought had leptospirosis, because there were several cases in one part of town,” she says. “She was prescribed rest and water because there wasn’t anything else. We spent days of anguish, and all we could do was wait.”

To avoid crowds in pharmacies, hospital officials have warned doctors not to prescribe drugs they don’t have. “Before, I ran out of prescription pads very quickly, but for months I’ve hardly used them because there’s nothing left to prescribe,” acknowledges a doctor from the Miguel Enriquez hospital in Havana.

“We’re seeing patients who arrive with an infected lesion, and if a topical medicine is used in time there won’t be any pain or complications, but there’s nothing to prescribe,” laments this graduate in Comprehensive General Medicine. “A few days ago I treated a woman with severe ankle pain, and I knew that with a painkiller she would feel better, but I couldn’t write the prescription.”

“As a doctor, I’m aware of what’s happening with the lack of medicines and the risks of the pandemic. I tell my family and friends to avoid going to hospitals unless it’s something serious,” she laments, “because we can’t give them anything to help them and the danger of getting coronavirus is high. ”

In some consulting rooms for family doctors, there are signs posted explaining how to use natural remedies that range from infusions to calm anxiety to the use of softened leaves to treat skin lesions. Grandmothers’ remedies are gaining popularity as the pharmacies remain empty.

Herb growers who offer their products in the city have seen a rebound in the number and variety of plants that their customers request. “Before, what we sold most was basil for Santeria rites and some sticks that are also used for spiritual work, but now this has become a pharmacy,” Ramón, a herbalist from Monte street, tells this newspaper.

“The most requested herb now is chamomile, the leaves of the plant that people call Meprobamato (Plectranthus neochilus Schltr), prickly pear leaves for issues related to foot pain, horse liniment for those who have kidney problems, and I also sell a lot of rosemary for sore throats,” he explains. “There are days when I close at noon because I run out of products.”

But Ramón’s herbs can do little or nothing when a serious illness is involved. “In recent months the situation has worsened, and although the problem has been going on for a long time, we’re now in negative numbers. Medications for chronic patients can’t be found, or only half the dose that the patient needs arrives. If there’s an emergency we have to appeal to social networks,” explains the father of an oncology patient.

“My daughter underwent a mastectomy and now she’s using cytostatic serums, but from the list of medications that she needs to make the process more effective and bearable, we’ve had to get two of them through friends,” says the man. “We have had to buy other medications, but the price doesn’t matter because it’s a question of life or death.”

Instant messaging for some, herbs for others and money for a few are propping up medical treatments in a country that is still seen internationally as a medical bulwark.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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In Cuba, the Ration Book’s Goodbye Causes a Stir

Interior of Cuban ration store, a hallmark of the Revolution. Photo: Glass&Tubes via Flickr.

Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, January 28, 2021 — I recall that not so long ago, around October of last year, Cuban economics minister Manuel Murillo said during one of his many appearances on Cuban TV’s Roundtable program that the “elimination of the ration book would be very gradual.” It was in response to a question by the journalist Randy Alonso on the future of Cuba’s controlled distribution of consumer goods.

They then began discussing the ramifications of eliminating subsidies and grants as part of the government’s currency unification process, a cause of great public concern which sparked Alonso’s question to Mr. Murillo, who must have been annoyed judging from his blunt and unequivocal response.

The issue raised questions and several days later President Diaz-Canel had to assure the public that, during the first phase of currency unification, the rationbook would be maintained as a tool to guarantee citizens’ access to staple goods that are in short supply and to prevent rampant speculation. He added that, once market conditions had improved and a new set of economic and financial relationships had been established, “we will have reached the point when it is time to phase out the rationbook.” continue reading

He was not hiding the fact. He was very clear. For the regime’s leaders, who set the currency unification process in motion, rationing is an extremely expensive proposition. They believe the retail practices of state-owned neighborhood grocery stores are flawed and present more than a few problems. The quality of the goods these stores carry has been steadily declining and, all things considered, they have been thinking it may be time to finally say goodbye to this thing Fidel Castro himself dreamed up back in 1962.

Authorities, however, credit the rationbook with having a certain efficiency when it comes to dealing with shortages. So much so that every time the Population and Housing Census is carried out, it is compared with the consumer registry. That is why they defend it as a method of distribution and why it seems to make sense to leave it alone for now. Today yes, tomorrow no, and after that, we’ll see.

In reality, the eventual phase-out of the ration book, which is as part of the currency unification process, was first announced back in 2011. At that year’s Sixth Communist Party Congress, Raul Castro said that suspension of the rationbook was not an end in itself nor an isolated decision but rather one of the principal measures that had to be applied “with the objective of eradicating the existing and profound distortions in the economy and society as a whole.”

Raul Castro, who was there during the rollout of ration book back in 1962, understood and admitted at the 2011 communist party congress that the book essentially contradicted the socialist principle of “from each according to his ability to each according to need.” So having acknowledged the uselessness of the ration book, the decision now is when to say goodbye to this monstrosity that has prevented eleven million Cubans from exercising their freedom of choice as consumers.

Things being what they are, a rumor started several days ago that fines of up to 5,000 pesos ($208) are being levied against those persons who do not remove the names of deceased relatives or household members who are not currently living in Cuba from their ration books. The agency in charge of this, the Consumer Registry Office (OFICODAS), has been around for awhile but it is going about enforcing it with a rigor and zeal that suggests authorities have issued an order to speed up the phase-out of the ration book. Or perhaps not.

In recent days, in the midst of a raging pandemic, long lines of people terrified of being fined have been observed outside OFICODAS offices to take care of this paperwork. It seems absurd that, in a country where the state maintains absolute control over the economy and society, this agency has to rely on citizens to provide this information.

State-run media later reported that the fines in question would not be imposed. At the same time, however, it explained that Resolution #78/91, adopted by the Ministry of Domestic Commerce, requires heads of households to remove the names of any person listed in ration book who has died, been imprisoned, or been living in a nursing home or hospital for the more than three months, or has been out of the country on a permanent basis for more than ninety days. The issue becomes complicated when it is not clear who this “head of household” is, a frequent situation on the island.

This happens over and over. When the communist regimes drafts rules people must follow, they either end up being too homogenous to cover everyone or highly asymmetrical, favoring some people over others. This situation seems to be an example of the former. There have been complaints about difficulties finding the required documentation or information as it pertains to ration book itself, which helps explain why so many have disdain for and little interest in this obsolete throwback.

Perhaps the measure is a way of getting things in order before the final shutdown. There were complaints in the National Assembly about people who had emigrated or died but were still receiving their benefits, a symptom of low-level corruption that indicates Cubans’s needs go well beyond what the regime wants to recognize.

The rationbook will say goodbye, sooner rather than later. Correcting certain problems created by poverty, scarcities, and the reduction in supplies provided by the state may be fair and necessary but, at the same time, the communist regime should take responsibility for creating these conditions. Cubans are not satisfied with what they are getting, and they want more and better choices. Until that happens, which under the communist social model is not feasible, the best thing is to do is finish off the ration book once and for all.

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The Paris Club Advises Cuba to Devalue the Peso

The government continues to provide subsidies, which Western experts believe should have been eliminated years ago, out of fear of public protests. (Archivo/Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, January 28, 2021 — It appears that economic reforms recently enacted by the Cuban government will not be enough to satisfy its creditors. Several Western diplomats and businesspeople believe that it will have to devalue and deregulate more if it wants to revive a bankrupt economy, obtain credit or pay its debts.

The experts, members of Cuba’s creditor nations who wish to remain anonymous, told the British news agency Reuters that they viewed recent changes on the island favorably but believe that they do not go far enough.

According to Reuters, a European diplomat from a member country of the Paris Club has proposed that the peso be devalued to an exchange rate of 40 to 50 to the dollar but believes that the government is unwilling to do so out of fear of public reaction. continue reading

“I think they are going to put off further devaluation for a long time,” he said, adding that the government is trying to curb public anger over spectacular increases in the cost of basic services such as the electricity by maintaining subsidies it should have abolished long ago.

Cuba’s public finances are in worse shape than ever. Venezuela, its main trading partner for the last twenty years, is drowning economically. American sanctions have impacted many of its businesses, starting with the country’s main source of income: remittances. The pandemic has paralyzed the tourism sector, one of the island’s key lifelines. Its international medical services industry is the only sector that remains afloat.

The country’s foreign debt in 2017, the last year for which figures were available, was already 18.3 billion dollars. The government, which agreed to a schedule for restructuring its obligations to the Paris Club, failed to make last year’s payment (about 85 million dollars). And although its creditors agreed to a delay, they still plan to impose sanctions.

Cuba does not have access to international markets or the IMF, which often requires a country to make budget cuts and devalue its currency before loaning it money. Cuba’s budget deficit, which the country’s own banks finance, is expected to triple to between 18% and 20% of current GDP.

According to one of Reuters’ sources, authorities initially insisted that company assets remain valued at the old one-to-one exchange rate. “The problem appears to have been resolved but it showed incompetence at certain levels of the politicized bureaucracy,” he points out.

Reuters quotes Paul Hare, former British ambassador to the island, who thinks that authorities should deregulate the small business sector and ease restrictions on foreign investment if it wants to encourage growth and absorb surplus labor, things that Cuban economists and large segments of the population would like to see. Both groups believe fewer roadblocks and less state involvement would allow for greater participation in the economy.

“Will they open up key sectors such as agriculture, energy or communications to foreign investment, or allow small businesses to engage in manufacturing, exports and build more than mini enterprises?” Hare asks.

But Reuters’ sources are skeptical of Havana’s willingness to carry through. “They keep on repeating that this is their goal. But are they seriously doing it? Not so far,” says one of the diplomats.

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Cuba’s Monetary Unification Slows the Sales of Homes

“There is no one to sell to,” lament the owners who offer their houses in the dull Cuban real estate market. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 31 January 2021 — “No one here to buy and sell?” asks the clerk of the notary’s office on 20 de Mayo Street, in Havana. Clients are waiting to make a will or formalize a power of attorney, but requests for procedures related to housing have disappeared from these offices since the monetary unification. The uncertainty surrounding the Cuban peso brought the island’s real estate market to a halt.

If until a few months ago most of those who lined up at Cuban notaries hoped to formalize the donation of a property or the sale of a house, now the most demanded procedure is “the power of attorney so that a relative can represent the owner in case that he leaves the country,” a worker at this notary’s office in the neighborhood of El Cerro told 14ymedio.

“For a couple of years we began to notice a decrease in the number of sales that we manage every day,” acknowledges the employee who preferred anonymity. “With the pandemic it also decreased a lot, but what has happened since the beginning of the year doesn’t have to do with the coronavirus but rather with monetary unification. People are afraid to sell in Cuban pesos (CUP).” continue reading

Fears of a devaluation of the national peso run throughout society but are felt most strongly in commercial operations that involve large sums of money. Although the authorities have imposed a fixed exchange rate of 24 pesos for every dollar, in the informal market the US currency is already priced at between 47 and 50 CUP.

“So there is no one who sells,” recognizes Ulises Brito, who for more than a year has been trying to sell a four-bedroom house in the Playa municipality “equipped with everything to function as a vacation rental.” With residence in the United States, Brito repatriated to the island a few years ago to open a thriving business to rent rooms to tourists, but things did not turn out as expected.

“The diplomatic thaw was shipwrecked and my entire business was designed for the massive arrival of American visitors,” acknowledges the entrepreneur. “Then the coronavirus appeared on the scene and it is no longer worth staying here because this country is going to need a long time to recover and I cannot continue to lose money.” But after making the decision to return to the US, Brito has not been able to sell the house for months.

“I started asking for $80,000 and I’m already going for $65,000 but I can’t keep going down because the house is in very good condition and each room has a renovated bathroom, which cost me a lot of money to rebuild.” The man does not want to hear or talk about the Cuban peso. “The transaction has to be done in dollars and the interested party must deposit the money in my US account. Nothing at all in national currency.”

On the Revolico digital site, where nearly 300 classifieds for the sale of houses are added every day, most of the ads are from sellers who have not found a buyer for their home for months. The economic crisis that continues to deepen on the island, the rise in living costs and the loss of purchasing power of broad social sectors linked to tourism have hit the real estate network hard.

Notary’s Office on 20 de Mayo Street, Havana. (14ymedio)

The current situation is very different from that of the end of 2011, when the government of Raúl Castro authorized the sale of homes after decades of prohibition and a frenzy broke out among many Cubans willing to acquire or get rid of a house. The measure was a starting signal in a country with 3,700,000 homes, 85% of them individually owned.

Less than two years after the decades-long sales ban was lifted, the emerging real estate market reached some 80,000 transactions. Real estate agents appeared on the scene and opened private offices, which operated under a home exchange and sales manager license. But shortly after, many ended up in court when it was found that they charged the client a commission on the transaction, something prohibited by law.

In practice, those managers pocket between 10% and 25% of the total amount paid by the buyer, but legally they could only charge for the efforts to connect and inform people interested in carrying out this type of operation. The official onslaught against them ended with the closure of their offices and the real estate market moved again, mainly through advertisements on digital sites.

But even these hurdles had failed to dampen the home-buying enthusiasm that gripped a country with a deficit of more than 900,000 homes. It was the “Ordering Task”*, with the disappearance of the convertible peso and the rise in the costs of basic products and services that has dealt the hardest blow the sector has had since it was authorized a decade ago.

“I left a power of attorney for my sister to sell my apartment in the city of Santa Clara,” Carlos Luis Alonso, a Cuban stranded in Mexico for a year, comments to this newspaper. Together with his wife and a five-year-old son, the migrant dreams of finding a buyer for his home who can deposit the money in a Mexican bank account and use those funds to reach the United States.

“In the house where we are staying there are two more Cuban families who are in the same situation: trying to sell a house in Cuba so that they will pay for it in real currency here,” Alonso details. “But no one has been able to sell anything because when they find a buyer, they want to pay them in Cuban pesos and that is paper, not serious money,” he laments. “I thought that having a house to sell meant having capital, but now I neither live in it nor can I convert it into the resources that I need.”

“Three-bedroom house for sale a few meters from the Old Square of Havana. Do not waste our time, only for buyers with dollars,” warns a classified that has been repeating itself every day for months in a Telegram commercial thread. “We do not accept Cuban pesos,” underlines the text he adds to avoid being confused: “Only with hard currency.”

*Translator’s note: The Tarea Ordenamiento (Ordering Task) is a series of government actions that include ’unifying’ the two currencies — the Cuban Convertible peso and the Cuban peso — resetting wages and pensions, resetting prices, and other measures.

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A 23-Year-Old Cuban Shot to Death Trying to Enter the United States Illegally

The place where the young Cuban was shot by a federal agent while crossing the border, in Hidalgo, Texas. (Screen Capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 1 February 2021 — A Cuban immigrant who was shot while entering the United States illegally died Monday in a hospital in Hidalgo, Texas. The information was confirmed in a statement from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and aired by Telemundo.

The television station spoke with the parents of the deceased, who was identified as Diomani Ramos Laurencio, 23.

According to the authorities, who are investigating the event, which occurred near the Hidalgo international bridge, with Ramos already in the United States. A federal agent responded to “a case of illegal entry into the country” and when trying to arrest the immigrants, he shot Ramos.

The young man was admitted to a local hospital, but died on Monday morning.

Until 2017, when then-President Barack Obama repealed the so-called wet-foot / dry-foot policy, Cubans crossing the U.S. border surrendered to immigration agents and were welcomed as refugees, but for the past four years, nationals of the Island must request political asylum and defend the request like any other immigrant from Central America or Mexico.

The U.S. borders with Mexico remain closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Thousands of Cubans and migrants of other nationalities wait in northern Mexico to seek asylum, or cross illegally to north.

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Currency Unification Status: One Month Out

Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, January 30, 2021 — January is coming to an end and we still know little about the effects of the government’s currency unification program. Recent official press coverage of a nation-wide tour by senior government officials has provided some loose, unrelated bits of information but not a comprehensive, accurate and competent analysis of the measures adopted by the regime.

What is obvious is that currency unification has all the characteristics of a political compromise that prioritizes the sloganeering of communist party congresses over social and business needs. Initial impressions based on recent statements by senior government officials is that currency reform is an economic policy without public support. It has been widely rejected and heavily criticized by all sectors of society, which has forced authorities to go back and quickly retool it.

This kind of reaction is what happens when a government tries to implement economic policies that do not respond to social needs or that are perceived as such by the public. One of the basic tasks of public policy makers is knowing, understanding and interpreting what people want and then designing appropriate economic policies to address their social demands. continue reading

Currency unification does not do that. It seems more like a burden imposed by a government oblivious to social demands, one that is only interested in fulfilling some guidelines dictated by the ruling party, of which, it can also be said, has never taken into account the real needs of society.

What can be said at this point about currency unification is that it has created a divide, with officials on one side and the Cuban public on the other. Among the many reasons for this are wildly unpopular price increases and tariffs, the rise of hard currency stores that force customers to use dollars to make purchases, an artificially high official exchange rate, and the reduction in subsidies to families whose incomes have not kept pace with inflation, which the government has been unable to control and that is bound to get worse.

What can be said at this point about currency unification is that it has created a divide, with officials on one side and the Cuban public on the other. Among the many reasons for this are wildly unpopular price increases for goods and services, the rise of hard currency stores that force customers to use dollars to make purchases, an artificially high official exchange rate, and the reduction in subsidies to families whose incomes have not kept pace with inflation, which the government has been unable to control and that is bound to get worse.

The exchange rate initially set for the Cuban peso has been falling and further devaluation will be necessary. The unofficial rate on informal market has been setting the pace of the Cuban economy, leaving the Central Bank to follow its lead. But the longer this goes on without the government taking action, the harder and more painful the adjustments will be, leading to the dreaded shock therapy, which communist leaders have said they do not want to apply.

After the steep devaluation of the peso, businesses now also face higher costs for intermediate goods and are not finding domestically produced alternatives for more expensive imports.

Higher wages without increases in productivity will also lead to higher labor costs. If this is not offset by price increases, the result could be underfunding and bankruptcy, as happened from 2014 to 2019, when 12% of Cuban companies disappeared.

The most serious aspect of this inflationary spiral, fed by one of the highest money surpluses in the world and a runaway deficit equivalent to 20% of GDP, is that it could reach double digits. Much of the problem stems from rising prices and taxes on goods and public services, though the regime has never missed an opportunity to blame self-employed workers and rental property owners of price gouging, and to launch smear campaigns against them.

The relationship between state and non-state pricing is leading to a significant transfer of wealth from the miniscule private sector to the state sector which, if not corrected soon, could end up ruining many small-scale entrepreneurs, who had been generating substantial tax revenue for the regime.

No sooner had the cancellation of subsidies and grants been announced than the first protests began. In the end the plan was shelved. Instead, the regime has had to allocate additional budget reserves to deal with increases in subsidies for utilities and food. Rationed goods and services are in increasingly short supply, a situation which more severely impacts so-called vulnerable groups. In time, the ration book will disappear but it will happen in the worst possible way because nobody is thinking about how to reduce consumer prices by increasing supply. What’s to come is even worse.

People suddenly realize that, though wages and pensions have risen, the increases are not enough to offset the rise in consumer prices and that living on a state salary means being poor. On the other hand, the communists see the rise in job applications at provincial employment offices, which they believe to be a result of the rise in wages, as a good thing. But perhaps it is the other way around. This is also the kind of thing that could have negative effects in the short term.

The one-month-old currency unification process is the result of an economic policy that is not well designed, not well timed and does meet any of its stated objectives. Among its results:

• Public dissatisfaction with wages, consumer prices and reduced subsidies for vulnerable segments of the population

• Companies’ inability to use profit sharing strategies to improve worker productivity.

• A generation of artificially high public sector employment in which surplus jobs and redundancies abound, systemically reducing productivity.

• The increasing inability of the agricultural sector to produce enough food.

These problems could increase in the coming months if steps are not taken quickly to address them. Governments have a responsibilty to make changes in economic policy without directly interfering in the economy by creating conditions conducive to economic activity, clearing up uncertainties and addressing the expectations of businesspeople.

The communist regime’s priority in relation to currency unification should be to stabilize the economy, which will likely not be easy given the magnitude of the deficit, the lack of foreign exhange earnings and the need to negotiate debt relief with Russia, the Paris Club and Angola. It does not have much wiggle room and at some point will have to decide if the chosen path, based on previous communist party slogans made during times that were very different from the present, must still be followed.

President Díaz-Canel has only one card to play. And when a politician is facing a dilemma like this, he either has to finish the game or reshuffle the deck. His legacy wil be measured by the decisions he makes. With all the talk by the nation’s leaders about about the revolution and “dialogue,” they now has a historic opportunity to actually do it. The Cuban economy will not last another quarter, regardless of what Biden does. They all know this.

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When There Are No Classes There Is No Indoctrination

With the 27 November protest and its most recent follow-up, it has been shown that the political control of the universities is a vital element for the Cuban ruling party. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Havana, 1 February 2021 — They wake up after ten in the morning, the rest of the day passes between standing in lines to buy food, staring at the screens of their cellphones, or sitting in front of some video game console. They are older than 17 and younger than 25, but this February 1st they could not restart their university studies because the rebound of Covid-19 in Havana has prevented it. And freedom from face-to-face studies also saves them from ideological indoctrination sessions.

Karla, Mateo and Jeancarlo are in their first, third and fifth year of technical specialties and humanities in higher education centers in the Cuban capital. Long months have passed since they stopped attending classes, and that is noticeable not only in the quality of their spelling and their silent alarm clocks, which no longer wake them up early, but also in the disconnection from the ideological indoctrination mechanism that until recently marked the passage of their student life.

“I don’t watch anything on the television schedule,” confesses Jeancarlo. “If I don’t have to go to school, I’m not going to torture myself with the news,” argues Karla, while for Mateo it is clear that although there is nostalgia for his fellow students, “it’s a relief not to have to listen to the same political song every day.” All of them have left aside the official indoctrination that, until recently, was an inseparable part of their student lives. continue reading

With the November 27^th protest in front of the Ministry of Culture and its most recent follow-on, two months after that initial date, it has been shown that political control of the universities is a vital element for the Cuban ruling party. The morning assemblies filled with slogans, the use of students as shock troops in the repudiation rallies, the public acts of supposed revolutionary vindication, and the demonization campaigns against critics that are deployed in the classrooms, all of these activities are “missed.”

Instead, the pandemic has forced a focus on reputation-killing campaigns against independent artists, activists and journalists in the official digital media, on national television and in pro-government social media accounts. The problem is that outside of the obligatory thought mechanisms that are imposed in the University, and with the students confined in their homes, they do not see the official channels.

“Nothing in the world can make me spend my time on that. If something good comes out of this quarantine, it’s not having to pretend so much,” admits Karla. With her friends, they communicate on WhatsApp, they talk about fashion, about new couples who, despite the distancing, have formalized relationships among their group of friends, about the music they are listening to, and the future. “A professor sends us some content via Telegram so we don’t forget entirely how to study, but who would think of reading a political communication there,” she jokes.

A regime that has needed to ideologically control the individual to maintain itself from very early on does not know very well how to act when people are distant, almost inaccessible. The poor attempts to regain that “revolutionary enthusiasm” included the calls to gather in various parks of the country to respond to the protest of the artists in Havana, but the popular rejection of the epidemiological risk that these mobs would represent must have made even the most fervent defenders of the partisan hubbub desist, because they have not been convened again.

In front of a video game screen, on the thread of a courier service, or splayed out on the bedsheets after having stayed up all night watching series and movies, little can be learned about history, grammar or science, but nor do these entertaining sites host ideological excesses. Due to the suspension of classes, these will be the young people who will have the most difficulties in the coming years doing mathematical operations, identifying an artistic style or specifying the date of a medieval battle, but they will also be more impervious to ideology. They have been away from this constant downpour of political indoctrination for too long and have become used to using umbrellas.
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“In Cuba, Our Parents’ Generation is Collapsing”

The artists Solveig Font (left), and Celia González (right). (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 30 January 2021 — Celia González (Havana, 1985) has arrived from Mexico to link Nicaragua and Cuba in an exhibition that reflects the political similarities of both nations. She is an artist who likes provocation, research and data who graduated from the Higher Institute of Art in 2009, but long before her works were being talked about.

The young woman coordinates the exhibition No Somos Memoria [We’re not Memory], recently exhibited at the Avecez Art Space gallery by curator Solveig Font, by a group of Nicaraguan artists who developed their work based on the events that occurred in 2018, when the protests against Daniel Ortega’s government ended with hundreds of deaths in the streets. Finding common ground with Cuba, some of the pieces are inspired by the repression experienced by the San Isidro Movement (MSI) or the protest on November 27^th (27N) before the headquarters of the Ministry of Culture.

About this project and her return to Cuba, Celia González spoke with 14ymedio.

14ymedio: Why Nicaragua?

Celia González: I’m starting to get interested in Nicaragua because I’m in the midst of an investigation on how political context determines contemporary art, thinking about the Cuban scene, but I want to put it in a regional context. First, I thought of covering all of Central America, but I finally decided to focus on Nicaragua because of the similarities I found, because of having a mythical, authoritarian revolution in the government. continue reading

First, I thought of covering all of Central America, but I finally decided to focus on Nicaragua because of the similarities I found, because of having a mythical, authoritarian revolution in the government.

14ymedio: How did you start this meeting between Cuba and Nicaragua from Mexico?

Celia González:I began to come into contact virtually with Nicaraguan artists who explained their work to me and what is happening in their country, which has a very similar context to that of Cuba. Thus, I understood that the art they are producing has radically changed since 2018 due to the April events, which split the country, especially because it radicalized the people’s positions in favor of and against it.

As a consequence, they have stopped exhibiting publicly. What they have done has been outside the country. Many of the works that are being shown here have not been shown in Nicaragua.

14ymedio: What do you perceive in these works in particular?

Celia González:The works should be explained one by one because they respond to affective relationships with the Nicaraguan context. I find it very interesting that the 2018 demonstrations involved rethinking the symbol. They used the Sandinismo slogans against Sandinismo, such as the cobblestone, the flag, the trees of life or the propaganda with Hugo Chávez in neon lights.

14ymedio: And how does that connect with Cuba?

Celia González:What seems interesting to me is that in Cuba, with the MSI and the 27N, there is a symbolic dispute being forged with power from art. The important thing about bringing in this exhibition is that the people who have been mobilizing and fighting for their political and citizen rights here, see that the same thing is happening right next door and they can know what kind of response the artists are giving.

What seems interesting to me is that in Cuba, with the MSI and 27N, a symbolic dispute is being forged with power from art

I think it is something new, because, up to now, the relationship that Cuba and Nicaragua have is at the State level, there is no citizen or civic relationship between the two countries. I’m excited that they dedicated two editions of the Panic fan magazine with MSI and 27N in mind. That connection allows them to learn what is happening here and, for us, what they are living through. Emotionally, it has been a point of support for me, a joy.

14ymedio: Personally, how did you live this experience?

Celia González:I think one of the things that dictatorship and totalitarianism regimes feed on is isolation. In this sense, connecting two realities can be very rewarding and productive all at once to break with that supposed singularity of ours that the State has made us believe in. It has made us think that we are different, better and unique, when in reality we also have femicide, poverty, repression, shortages, hunger, inflation and neoliberalism. The loss of contact has been a strategic move, it has been something thought out.

I believe that a union can be a very powerful thing, and right now we have an opportunity that did not exist before, which is to be present in the networks, and we can create things together without being physically present.

14ymedio: What do you think of what happened the night of 27N in front of the Ministry of Culture, do you think that the presence of people demonstrating in the streets can bring a change in the country?

Celia González:I was in Mexico then, but wanted to be there, in front of the Ministry of Culture. That same November 27^th, some students from my university [the Ibero-American, also known as Ibero, of Mexico City] went to make the first demonstration in front of the Cuban Embassy. There were people from State Security filming from inside, although they never came out. Many went despite having been threatened by using their relatives and fearing for the family and the consequences, such as not being allowed to return to Cuba.

Many went despite having been threatened by using their relatives and fearing for the family and the consequences, such as not being allowed to return to Cuba

We played the music of Willy Chirino, Celia Cruz and Maykel Castillo. We went out with our posters; we sang the National Anthem and we were there for a long time. Many of us did not sleep that night, since we were very attentive. For about 15 days before then, I was also very active, very dedicated to collecting signatures of support, doing everything I could.

14ymedio: From Mexico, how were you able to collaborate with your Cuban colleagues?

Celia González: I have an emotional relationship with what went on, beyond what it means, because the people involved were my friends. Anamely is in my postgraduate degree in Anthropology and we managed to get the Ibero to speak out, something that was very difficult.

Ibero is a left-wing Jesuit private university, but at some point, they believed it was fair to support Anamely and they did. The complex thing is that the government has pro-government Cubans there and it was tense, because they were bent on questioning what we were doing. I say tense because many are afraid, we all know what can happen in a case like this, but it had to be done. When you have a friend in trouble, you have to do whatever it takes.

14ymedio: If you had been among the 30 who entered the Ministry of Culture, what would have been your claim at that meeting?

Celia González: My main claim would have been a stoppage of the repression, that they take charge publicly and that they apologize for repressing the citizenry, not only in the art scene, which is, in the end, the mildest, but also the neighborhood black people, such as Silverio or Denis Solís, who do get arrested and beaten up.

It is a request that implies the end of the Government: that there should be a multiparty system, free expression and a structural change to which they do not agree in any way, because it implies giving in. If people acted in unison, everything would be easier.

14ymedio: Have you taken a turn living through censorship in Cuba?

Celia González: I felt censorship twice. The first was in 2008 at Sandra Ceballo’s house, in the Aglutinador space. They prohibited her from doing the exhibition and publicly called all of us counterrevolutionaries, even before it opened, because they assumed that people from the US Interests Section had been invited. Actually, the group Porno Para Ricardo was going to play there, and it was banned. There are certain people who are banned, and when they come into contact with you, you too become banned, regardless of your work.

People are standing on lines, basically. The neoliberal of the conditions is every man for himself; he who can pay for it, fine, he who can’t, won’t eat

I suffered the other incident of censorship in 2018, when Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara invited us to the #00Bienal. They threatened my mother and it was very dramatic, because it was done by my half-brother, who is a lieutenant colonel of the Minint [Ministry of the Interior], already deactivated. My whole family on my father’s side is in the military, and my half-brother worked at Villa Marista repressing political prisoners. The Ministry of Culture gave him the order to repress me through my mother, which is one of their strategies.

My mother was told that I was going to end up in jail and she ended up with a nervous tic. Now she is in another position, she feels more secure because she sees that other things are happening, that people have more courage and that parents are more supporting.

14ymedio: What caught your attention the most about Cuba after almost two years abroad?

Celia González: Sadness, the lack of a life project, living in the immediacy. This was already there but it has worsened. People are standing on lines, basically. The neoliberal of the conditions is every man for himself; he who can pay for it, fine, he who can’t, won’t eat.

There is a government that places you in an economic and emotional stress situation, and that each time is left with fewer and fewer arguments. It has always wanted to give meaning to sacrifice in the name of a political project, but people of the generation such as father’s who is 80 years old, realized that the credibility of everything was lost, and that produces a lot of sadness. Our parent’s generation is collapsing.

Translated by Norma Whiting

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Cubans and Other Migrants in a Critical Situation at the Frontier of Colombia and Panama

Migrants at an improvised camp on the shore of the beach. (Semana)

14ymedio, Lorey Saman, Mexico, 29 January 2021 — More than 100 Cubans have been stranded for 23 days in the Colombian border municipality of Necoclí, in the department of Antioquia, along with hundreds of Haitians, Venezuelans and other migrants. They are waiting to be transported by boat to a point in Panama in order to continue on to the United States.

The Colombian government announced on January 15 that it was extending the closure of land and river borders until March 1. The director of Migration Colombia, Francisco Espinosa, reported that due to the increase of cases and the worrying hospital situation, due to the high occupation of COVID-19 patients, the passage between Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil and Venezuela was suspended.

According to Wilson Patiño, director of Migration in Antioquia, “it is not a time to travel”, but “to protect ourselves, in order to minimize the risks of COVID-19 infection”. continue reading

Necoclí has become a place with no way out for the migrants: “Every day more and more Cubans continue to arrive, becoming completely trapped in a nightmare”, describes Telemundo’s correspondent, from a makeshift camp where migrants, including small children and pregnant women, find themselves

“What prevents us from leaving is the sea, and I have a son with diarrhea and vomiting,” Cuban Odalys Trobajo, says with impotence, having been stuck halfway after Colombian authorities closed the border because of the pandemic, she tells the news channel.

In the last year, given the restrictions on mobility and quarantine due to COVID, as reported by the Colombian magazine Semana, the passage of migrants has decreased in that region. However, at the beginning of the year, the movement of travelers returned in “Necoclí, the next-to-last step before crossing the Gulf of Urabá and venturing on a path of death through the Darién Gap”, the article states.

First, travelers must reach Capurganá in order to board a boat that will take them to a point in Panamanian territory. “They don’t sell us a ticket because the borders are supposedly closed to us, the migrants, and the illegal boats are leaving,” Ailen Campos, another Cuban, tells Noticias Caracol.

Cuban Jany Perez tells Telemundo: “We are afraid to cross in the illegal boats, because when they arrive they throw you in the water and we don’t want to go through that moment”.

Father Aurelio Moncada, parish priest in a settlement near Capurganá, affirms that the number of migrants arriving in the area continues to rise, too much “for the coyotes (traffickers)”, reports the Colombian newspaper El Espectador. “Since October they have been smuggling them at night”, adds the priest.

For his part, the mayor of Necocli, Jorge Tobón, denounces the critical situation of migrants: “They are taking care of their ’necessities’ on the beaches, that is why we have decreed a health emergency and a humanitarian emergency”.

“I call on the national and departmental government to help us, because the truth is that we are overwhelmed,” insists the mayor. “I hope they help us, many of these migrants are already enduring hunger today. The children are sick too. Migration Colombia should also support us with these people.”

Data published by the International Organization for Migration, collected by El Espectador, point to the increase in the transit of migrants between Colombia and Panama: whereas in 2006 only 79 people crossed the Darien Gap, in 2012 the number rose to 1,777.

By 2015 there were already 29,289 migrants and a year later there were 30,055, “mostly Cubans hoping to quickly to reach the US” in view of the possibility, implemented by Barack Obama in January 2017, of the elimination of the wet foot/dry foot policy, which allowed Cubans who “touched land” in the United States to be on a path to citizenship.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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Cubans and the ‘Revolution’

The Beatles’ music was banned for being an “ideological deviation” until the Maximum Leader, seated next to a bronze John Lennon at that moment, confessed on television: “I am very sorry not to have met you before.”

14ymedio, Eloy M. Viera Moreno, Havana, 31 January 2021 — The term “revolution” was used in the Cuban context for the first time by the priest Félix Varela. He did so in 1824, in a newspaper distributed illegally and secretly from hand to hand. The colonial authorities classified that newspaper, El Habanero, and its director as “mercenaries” at the service of “foreign powers,” while its maker had to live the rest of his life in exile, condemned to death. Any resemblance to the conditions of extreme disqualification and government repression under which the independent press operates in Cuba today is an absolute coincidence.

Since then, we Cubans have considered the driving events of Cubanity as “revolutions,” due to that apparent desire for accelerated renewal of our political life that “barely knows the adagio and instead cultivates the allegretto with an irresponsible avidity,” according to Francisco Ichaso. Over the course of 135 years, until 1959, we named as “revolutions” true processes of a positive sign such as the independence exploits of 1868 and 1895, the general strike to end the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado or the triumphant popular revolution in 1959.

All with something in common: they contributed, to a greater or lesser extent, to the development of the nation and to the cohesion of Cubans. The history of Cubanity was seen as a prolonged, indivisible revolution, with culminating moments led by diverse generations, the revolutionaries therefore considered themselves heirs to previous struggles. continue reading

However, events with no root contribution to Cuban identity have also been baptized as the same thing, aimed more at achieving personal aspirations. In this group we can include insurrections due to partisan discords such as the La Chambelona uprising in 1917, or the uprising of the sergeants on September 4, 1933. Even Fulgencio Batista, a figure trained in this type of revolt, repeatedly used the word “revolution” in the text of the Statute Law, in an attempt to justify the coup d’état of March 10, 1952.

This word has historically had an overwhelming influence on the conscience of Cubans, for which it was extensively used by politicians and demagogue leaders.

With these antecedents came the 1959 Revolution and a good part of the Cuban population and intelligentsia awakened hope in an unprecedented consolidation of the nation. Jorge Mañach, an intellectual student of the subject, with a vital experience of four decades of struggle, declared that year: “There is no doubt that the great national will is at last taking shape.” A few months later he went into exile in the face of the totalitarian course of events.

With the turn to Marxism between 1959 and 1965, the leaders took advantage of the islanders’ fascination with the “revolution” and turned it into a party question, when it had traditionally been treated as a concept relative to the nation. Additionally, the imposition of a single and exclusive political group in a country with a long multi-party tradition was justified by repeating the Soviet praxis of Marxism. The nation stopped setting the course and the Party was placed over the State, until then an expression of Cubanity and the legal watchdog of its interests through the mechanisms of democracy.

The Revolution was proclaimed as a continuous process in time and the generational events were canceled. A well-orchestrated ideological campaign confused in the collective consciousness the terms homeland, nation, State and revolution. To stay in power for six decades, the cult of personality was taken to a mythical scale, contradicting Marti’s teaching according to which “revolutions, no matter how individualistic they may seem, are the works of many wills, and it is frequently necessary to bend one’s own.”

The principles of the “revolution” were changed with chameleon profusion: the triumphant “green as our palms” movement turned “socialist Marxist-Leninist”; demonized private initiative was reintroduced for years; foreign tourism, just as demonized, returned; and a long etcetera. Sympathetic and illustrative is the example of the music of the Beatles, banned for being an “ideological deviation” until the Maximum Leader, seated next to a bronze John Lennon, confessed to television: “I am very sorry I did not meet you before.”

The most serious consequence of this “eternal revolution” is the division of Cubans, of the nation, into two groups according to their attitude towards the regime: the “Revolutionaries” and the islanders with no heart. It will take time to close that rift. I am optimistic, we can always return to the essential feelings and traditions that the fathers of Cubanity left us. The future is promising.

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Second Repressive Day to Prevent a Demonstration at Havana’s Capitol Building

The artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara leaving his house this Saturday heading to the Capitol a few minutes before being arrested. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 31 January 2021 — This Saturday, Havana saw the second day of repression against activists, artists and independent journalists to prevent a demonstration at the Capitol building. The protest, called by Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, sought to demand the resignation of the Minister of Culture Alpidio Alonso, after his violent action on January 27.

“I am going to send a message to the dictatorship: if the minister does not resign, I will go up to Díaz-Canel. The President and the Assembly of People’s Power have to ensure his resignation. That’s why I’m going to the Capitol again,” Alcántara said in a live video, broadcast on Facebook.

The independent artist demands that Alonso be revoked from his position after leading an attack last week against a group of artists gathered in front of the Ministry of Culture. The head of the sector not only beat an independent journalist but was part of a repressive operation that ended with the arrest of several artists. continue reading

After the incident, there were new arrests. The first person arrested on Saturday was Otero Alcántara himself, when he left his house, and he was followed by independent artist Amaury Pacheco, producer Michel Matos and writer Katherine Bisquet.

The art historian Carolina Barrero and the rapper Maykel Castillo, known as El Osorbo, were able to reach the steps of the Capitol at eight o’clock at night, but both were arrested within minutes of being there. The arrests of Matos and Pacheco were broadcast live on Facebook.

“We have come to the National Assembly of People’s Power to demand our right as citizens to have the Minister of Culture Alpidio Alonso Grau resign for the acts of violence committed at the gates of the ministry,” declared Barrero upon arrival at the scene.

“We have a Constitution that protects us. (…) The government has to be accountable to us and not us to the government,” he added in a Facebook broadcast in which he also invited citizens to join the protest, seconds before the State Security agents and the police arrived.

Both Barrero and Castillo were taken to the Regla police unit and released shortly after midnight. The rest of the detainees were also released after several hours of arrest.

On Saturday, there was a visible police and State Security operation around the Capitol.

On that day, State Security monitored the homes of artists, activists and independent journalists such as Tania Bruguera, Yasser Castellanos, Camila Acosta, Julio Llopiz-Casal, Luz Escobar, Katherine Bisquet, Otero Alcántara, Michel Matos, Oscar Casanella and Amuary Pacheco, all of whom were blocked from going out.

For his part, Amaury Pacheco denounced the arrest of his 18-year-old son, Jesús David. The young man was summoned and later detained at the Alamar police station, east of Havana. According to the father, Jesús David was summoned allegedly to be given a mobile phone whose theft he had reported three years earlier. But the appointment turned into an arrest.

Pacheco maintains that the true motive for his son’s arrest was to prevent him from supporting Otero Alcántara in the call to demonstrate outside the Capitol.

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A ‘Young Revolutionary’ Denounces the Workload in Cuban Hospitals

Cuba remains at the highest levels of covid infections since the pandemic began. (EFE / Yander Zamora / Archive)

14ymedio, Havana, 25 January 2021 — The provincial authorities have recognized, after a tour of several hospitals in Havana, that there are problems in the scheduling of health workers. “There were concerns regarding the availability of the necessary personnel and complaints about the rotation system,” reported the Tribuna de La Habana, “which is being studied by the Ministry of Health to make it more workable,” in the words of the Vice Minister of Science, Technology and Environment, Tania Margarita Cruz Hernández.

Last Saturday, a nurse publicly denounced the working situation they experience in the Doctor Luis Díaz Soto Naval Hospital, in the municipality of La Habana del Este. “We have almost no relief, we are working 16 days, 8 day of quarantine in the military sites and we rest at home only 5 days,” the young man identified as Adam Roque wrote on Facebook.

“We are experiencing constant stress,” he lamented. “They do not give us an answer and when we talk to the bosses they tell us that if we do not like it, ask for a discharge,” he said, while wondering “why the lack of respect for professionals?” and asking for help to make his post viral. continue reading

As a result of the opinions raised by his post which was also picked up by the independent press, he pointed out on Sunday: “I have been reading every comment and I want you to know that at no time have I blamed what is happening on the Government or on our leaders. I love my people and I love my country… Nor do I want my publication to be used for the counterrevolution,” he wrote. And he added these words: “I am a young revolutionary and the only thing I want is my right to rest, just like my colleagues.”

In his daily meeting to report on the pandemic, Luis Antonio Torres Iríbar, president of the Provincial Defense Council of Havana, asked this Monday for a “rigorous” response to violations of healthcare regulations to mitigate COVID infections among medical personnel.

He also urged that “an effort” be made so that the results of the PCR tests reach those interested in the first 24 hours or “at the most,” in 48 hours, in addition to insisting on selecting “the suitable personnel to work in the isolation centers,” and provide “adequate treatment to patients… In these institutions there must be medicines to treat the most frequent ailments in the population,” the official was quoted in the local newspaper.

Both the delay in the tests and the mistreatment in some isolation centers and the lack of medications intended for patients with chronic diseases are complaints that have been repeated in recent weeks.

The Ministry of Health reported 567 new Covid positives on Monday and three deaths from the disease, which brings the accumulated cases to 21,828 and the total deaths to 197. The Island, in this second wave, is experiencing its maximum levels of contagion since the pandemic began.

On Friday, in addition, the presence in Cuba of the South African variant of the coronavirus, found in an asymptomatic traveler from South Africa, was confirmed and, according to Dr. María Guadalupe Guzmán, director of Research, Diagnosis and Reference of the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine, it has not been ruled out that it has spread. “A number of cases are being reported daily, but this does not include testing for the variant,” she said in a public appearance.

On the other hand, Dr. Rolando Ochoa Azze, senior researcher at the Finlay Vaccine Institute, the center that develops the Cuban vaccine candidates Soberana 01 and Soberana 02, assured that the first vaccine candidate is being tested in a clinical trial as of January 16 in “convalescents from the illness.”

These are 30 volunteers, between 19 and 59 years old, who had a mild clinical picture or were asymptomatic and were positive in antibody studies and who, therefore, “may be susceptible to reinfection,” explained Ochoa.

However, the Cuban vaccine candidate that is in a more advanced stage is Soberana 02, which is being developed with the collaboration of Iran.

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“For Me, it Was a ‘Shock’ to See a Minister and Vice-Ministers Dealing Blows”

The Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso, together with the Vice Minister Fernando Rojas and other officials, left the Ministry of Culture in a group and advanced towards the group of artists. (Screen Capture)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 28 January 2021 — Mauricio Mendoza still does not understand what he did to make the Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso, slap him and, with it, unleash the fury of a mob that came out of their offices and attacked artists who had arrived at their doors after performing a tribute to José Martí this Wednesday. “I was doing my job, reporting live, without offending anyone, asking Fernando Rojas questions,” he tells 14ymedio.

Vice Minister Rojas, a character at the meeting on November 27^th with some thirty of the more than 300 artists gathered before the Ministry of Culture, had already gone out several times to speak with the group, made up of twenty artists, including Julio Llopiz-Casal, Solveig Font, Maykel Osorbo, Carolina Barrera and Reynier Leyva Novo.

In some of the released videos, Rojas can even be seen stating that they could enter the ministry but without cell phones. The young people refused and demanded, at the same time, the withdrawal of the police officers who surrounded them, so Rojas turned around and went back into the building. continue reading

Suddenly, Mendoza remembers, “everyone comes out”: not only Rojas, but Minister Alonso himself and other officials. “One by one, I began to introduce who they were for the live broadcast, and I didn’t finish the first sentence when he slapped me and that triggered everything. A mob came out of the ministry and came at us”.

The 22-year-old independent journalist, who was also present at the Ministry on November 27^th, asserts that “it was a low blow”. The minister even called him “a girl” because of his long hair. “The campaign has been brutal, they said that the minister approached me to shake my hand. A crude excuse they are using, they think we are little children,” criticizes the young man, who thinks that Alpidio Alonso “is nothing more than a joke.”

For Novo, it was incredible to see “that group which included a Minister, Vice-Ministers and officials acting like they were the police, beating, pushing, overwhelming a group of peaceful young people”

Reynier Leyva Novo, another of those attacked, simply cannot believe it. “The reaction of that group that included a Minister, Vice-Ministers and officials, acting as if they were the police, beating, pushing, overwhelming a group of peaceful young people in front of their institution …”, he explains. “That was a shock to me”.

Solveig Font is of the same opinion. Initially, she was speaking on her phone, on the side, and only felt a growing noise. “I see a horde, the fury of the Minister and the Vice-Minister coming up on us, pushing Mauricio”. Font recalls that she and Julio Llopiz-Casal tried to separate the Minister and the Vice-Minister and another official, whom everyone calls Chicho, and said to Alpidio Alonso: “Minister, calm down, calm down”, at the same time she joined in separating them.

Novo hardly managed to press his camera’s shutter, but he did take two photographs, the graphic testimony of a Cuban Minister of Culture throwing himself on top of a peaceful citizen. Immediately, he received “strong shoves against the crowd” to get on a bus, arrested. Font describes them as “Old people, their gray hair nicely done, new glasses, new shirts, pushing us…”

In front of Novo were other officers pushing Oscar Casanella, but the door was blocked. “He was reluctant to get on the bus, and while the State Security agent beat him, Oscar looked him in the eye and told him that he was not going to get on.” Up until that moment Novo had not resisted because they had not hit him yet, but as soon as he got up, he received a blow from behind in the lower part of the head.

“It was a very strong blow that knocked my hat off. When I looked back, several people were screaming and what I remember the most, which keeps coming back to me, were Camila Lobón and Celia González screaming while they were being strangled”.

The screams and blows inside the vehicle were recorded in audios and videos recorded by the artists themselves.

The situation was so violent that Font thought they were going to break a bone. They threw her against the step of the bus and put pressure on her body. “The first thing I saw when I looked up was an older person from State Security who gave Chino Novo a tremendous blow on his head from behind. Then I fainted, I couldn’t take any more”, she recounts.

The situation was so violent that Font thought they were going to break a bone. They threw her against the step of the bus and put pressure on her body

Before the bus started, the artists saw through the window the faces of Fernando Rojas and Alpidio Alonso who, together with the Ministry workers, shouting slogans while they held a Cuban flag.

Julio Llopiz-Casal’s feelings are contradictory, because he believes in dialogue, but at the same time he’s filled with “deep disappointment… I am getting closer and closer to thinking that dialogue is not going to happen”, he confesses, “especially because they don’t want it to happen, because they are looking for all the excuses in the world to obstruct it”.

Llopiz sees it as a shame that Cubans and the entire international community have seen the Minister of Culture behaving “like a common criminal… It seems to me that it is essential that Alpidio Alonso be separated from his duties”, he believes. “He should resign if he had a little dignity”.

For the art historian Carolina Barrera, what happened this Wednesday is “so extremely severe that it calls into question not only the legitimacy of the Government, but its power to exercise its functions, its sanity… The Ministers and Vice-Ministers are public officials, and as such, they are indebted to the citizens. How is it possible that a Minister of Culture and his entourage of Vice-Ministers lash out with violence against young people who read poetry, against citizens whom they should serve?” he wonders, in puzzlement.

What happened, she says, “is unacceptable” but, above all, “illegal”: “A punishable act that in any part of the world would be sufficient reason not just for immediate dismissal or resignation, but for criminal prosecution”.

Translated by Norma Whiting

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When Life Prevails over Bureaucracy

It is rare for customers to get what they want if they do not get in line for bread, the pharmacy or a retail store by dawn.

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 26 January 2021 — The line starts forming at dawn. It has been this way since the national “situation” and the global pandemic coincided on the island. It does not matter if the line is for bread, the pharmacy, the peso store, the hard currency store or the bank. If you do not get their first thing in the morning, you will likely not have access to any of their products or services, all of which are essential.

A thin young woman with disheveled hair bites her nails as she sits on the curb, constantly checking for messages on her cell phone. It is noon and she has been here for hours, guarding her place in line at the hard currency store at Fifth and 42nd in Havana’s Playa district. She hopes to buy chicken breasts, cheese, yogurt and jam for her young son. When she looks up, she chats with the woman next to her, explaining that she has to take good care of herself because she lives with her 81-year-old grandmother. She no longer thinks about “fatherland or death” because there is nothing to eat at home anymore.

“When my son says he’s hungry, it breaks my heart,” she says. “I have nothing to give him. Not even bread with something we have on-hand. And what’s to come is even worse.” continue reading

The woman listening to her has come with her husband and son. Though it is a hard currency store and prices are high, there are some limits on how many items one customer may buy. “That’s why the three of us came. We want to get things for my mother and mother-in-law because they are too old to wait in long lines where you don’t know when, or even if, you’ll get in,” she says as she takes off her coat.” Though it was chilly in the morning, the sun is now high in the sky, baking the pavement.

The hours pass slowly. Groups of ten customers at a time are allowed in. They come out twenty to thirty minutes later. The employee who opens the store in the morning reassures the customers in line: “There’s enough merchandise for everyone. Don’t worry.” There are indeed things to buy but what is in short supply is time. By 5:30, with more than twenty people still waiting to get in, a police security guard intervenes. “No one else is allowed inside today. Come back tomorrow,” he says.

The young woman on the curb leaps up, puts her cell phone away and approaches the policeman with tears in her eyes. “Look, officer,” she says. “I can’t come back tomorrow. I’ve left my son with my grandmother and she is too old to run errands like this. I sacrificed a whole day to be here and I can’t do this again. I’ve been worrying about my son the whole time, about him and my grandmother all alone while I’m here waiting my turn. And now you tell me I can’t buy anything. It’s criminal but, of course, you don’t understand because you don’t have children.” She turns and walks away, without waiting for a reply.

The one who does seem to have the weaponry to battle indolence, however, is the lady who came with her family. Flanked by her husband and son, she heads towards the uniformed officer, who sticks to the script: it’s out of his hands.

However, the woman manages to convince him to go find an employee and after ten minutes the manager comes out.

“I understand how you all feel,” he tells her slowly, “but you have to understand our position. I have workers who live far away, some of them in Guanabo. Even if we close at six o’clock, we can barely manage to get out of here with everything squared away by seven. That’s why I can’t let you in. We have are jam but selling it really slows things down, “he explains.

The woman looks him in the eye and says, “Look, almost everyone has already left. We’ve spent hours in line. All we want to do is buy some chicken and cheese. It wouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes of your time.”

Her plea now meets with little resistance. “I will let you in but on the condition that you do not buy anything other than chicken and cheese.” A murmur of satisfaction spreads through the line.

Browsing through the aisles, a girl who has so far remained been silent grabs yogurt containers of various flavors and runs to the cashier with a photo of her son on her cell phone. “Look, this is my boy. He loves yogurt. Will you let me get some?”

The employee nods her head and says, “Grab what you can but be quick so the boss doesn’t see me.”

A few minutes after six o’clock the employees close the doors while the last customers walk away with their blocks of cheese, frozen chicken and even jam. A real accomplishment for these times. Some of them have been in line for more than six hours but they now have something to take home to feed their families. They will have to do it all over again next week.

____________

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