Category: Luz Escobar

In countries like France or England public telephones are on the verge of extinction, given the advance of cellular networks. In Spain, despite being a very deficient service and with an 84% decrease in available phones in the last 15 years (from 55,000 to 18,000 nationwide), the service is still required by law and the company with the concession was forced to renew its contract in 2017, when a public tender received no takers. As in Spain, the Cuban government is committed to maintaining, through the Telecommunications Company of Cuba (Etecsa), a service that is used by lower income citizens.

At the end of last year, the country operated 59,818 public phones, including 8,588 coin operated phones. For this year, the state communications monopoly plans to install 500 new public phones, of which 45 are intended especially for people with disabilities.

At the end of 2015, the country had only 1,333,034 fixed lines – in a country with over 11 million people – of which 996,063 served the residential sector, according to data from the Statistical Yearbook published by the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI). The installation of phone lines in homes has grown very slowly in recent years and between 2010 and 2015 just over 185,000 lines were added throughout the country.

Along with the poor quality of bread and the transportation problems, the problems with public phone service dominate the criticisms most heard on the streets and raised in the local People’s Power Accountability Meetings, where people can sound off to their elected officials. Deterioration, vandalism and the scarcity of phones in heavily populated areas are the subject of complaints.

Raquel Stone, a commercial specialist for ETECSA’s Public Telephone Services Division, told the official media that every year the company must repair thousands of public phones rendered unusable due to vandalism. The most common damage is having the handset pulled out.

Repairing the equipment represents an expense of 1,000 Cuban convertible pesos (CUC, 1 CUC = roughly 1 USD) for each coin-operated device, and between 330 and 400 CUC for each device that operates only with prepaid cards.

“The publics,” as they are popularly called, are in high demand not only among those who cannot afford a cell phone, but also among those who carry a cellphone so they can be reached, but make most outgoing calls from the devices located in the streets.

“If I call you and hang up on the second ring, it means I’m going to see you, but if I call you and let it ring, I can’t go,” a teenage girl shouts from the sidewalk to her friend who had just gotten on the bus. “But don’t pick up because I have almost nothing left on my cell,” she adds. The 0.35 CUC it costs for each minute of a cellphone call represents approximately half the daily salary of a professional.

In spite of these rates, in July of this year the number of active cellphone lines in the country reached 4,313,000. The growth experienced since Cubans were first authorized to contract for the service, in 2008, still places Cuba at the tail end of Latin American countries.

Only 35.5% of the Cuban population has access to cellular service, in contrast to nations such as Panama, where usage surpasses the number of inhabitants and is at the top of the region, with a 172% penetration rate for cellphone service. In Guatemala the rate is 115% and in Puerto Rico 88%.

Aníbal Lorenzo, a 32-year-old pedicab driver who has been living in Havana for two months, is one of millions of Cubans who can not even dream of a cell phone. To maintain communication with his family in Guantánamo, he purchased a prepaid card that he uses on the public network. The worker laments that coin-operated phones almost never work.

“I have searched all the phones that are on Amistad Street,” he says while testing several unsuccessful phones. A few feet away, a young woman picks up a headset and hears the ringing tone, but before she starts to talk, she takes out a handkerchief from her purse and cleans the area near her mouth. “They are always dirty and stink,” she complains.

The telecommunications company has installed some public telephones in funeral homes, hospitals and pharmacies. The caller must dial 1-69-69 and charge the amount to the recipient of the call. The option is little known yet, but it can get one out of a bind.

“They stole my purse on the bus and a man told me that in a nearby Emergency Room there was a telephone that had that service,” says Rosaura, a young architect who before that incident not “touched a public phone for more than five years.” Now, she recognizes that in certain situations you have to go back to the old fashioned way.

In the last decade, attempts have been made internationally to offer new uses from public phone booths. In Spain for example, in addition to accepting payment by credit card, some have enabled the possibility of sending emails and SMS to mobile phones. Despite this, it has not been possible to avoid a fall off of 84% in this service in just 15 years.

In France phone booths have become public libraries in some localities, while in London the legendary red wooden cubicles are leased to small business owners who have turned them into small businesses, such as craft shops or tiny florists.

In the imposing building on the corner of Águila and Dragones streets, the ETECSA headquarters is located in a property that belonged to the American company AT&T more than five decades ago, when it was nationalized. In one of its rooms, a museum preserves several models of the first public telephones that were installed in the Island.

“All this is active thanks to a group of retirees who maintain the equipment,” says María del Carmen, one of the local workers. “In telecommunications schools, only new technology is taught now,” and these pensioners are “the only ones who have mastered these devices.”

A few yards from María del Carmen, a young woman receives a call on her cell phone while waiting to pay her telephone bill. She responds hurriedly and with short phrases. “Hang on, I’ll call you from an public phone,” she says as she looks around at the nearest devices.

For each child, Lopéz and his wife have so far invested 740 Cuban pesos (CUP), the equivalent of an average monthly salary according to the latest data provided by the National Bureau of Statistics and Information (ONEI), but they predict that the figure will exceed 1,000 CUP by the time they acquire some missing items.

Families are guided by the simple motto: buy the most durable products at the lowest possible price.

“We have to try to find most of the things that are used throughout the school year and now is the time to buy,” says the father. “You almost always think of the most visible, but you also have to look for socks, shorts for PE and notebooks.”

Lopez is a designer, while his wife works as a secretary in a branch of the Ministry of Transportation. Both remember the 1980s when they entered primary school and “in school they gave us almost everything.” But the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe and the economic crisis have reduced those subsidies to the minimum.

The Government has significantly reduced its investment in the education sector, from 14.1% of GDP in 2005 to 9% in 2017

In recent years the Government has significantly reduced its investment in the education sector, from 14.1% of GDP in 2005 to 9% in 2017. The cut affects the physics and chemistry labs, audiovisual equipment, and the teaching materials given to each student.

For the 2017-2018 academic year, the Minister of Education, Ena Elsa Velázquez Cobiella, told the official press that “all textbooks and workbooks are guaranteed,” although she acknowledged that there are problems with “paper, because there is a delay in the arrival of that resource from abroad.”

School uniforms cost less than 10 Cuban pesos (about 40¢ US) at subsidized prices, but the quantity delivered is limited and there is little variety in sizes. In Miami, with a large Cuban community, several stores offer the uniform pieces — blouses, shirts, skirts, shorts and trousers — the students are required to wear in primary and secondary education on the island. These days the emigrants receive frequent orders for these products from their families in Cuba.

“To guarantee a clean uniform every day, I have to buy at least three blouses and two skirts, says Damy, a 34-year-old Santiagan whose daughter is starting the second grade in September. Resellers offer each piece at a price ranging from 50 to 75 CUP, more than five times the cost  in the state stores, which offer only one uniform per child at the subsidized price.

After the uniform, shoes are one of the main concerns because in the state stores they cost between 140 and 380 CUP. To that is added the amount for the socks (25 CUP per pair) and the backpack (never less than 300 CUP) which brings the sum to the monthly salary of an engineer or a teacher.

“This is not over, the next few months my wife and I will be working almost exclusively so that our children can go to school with a clean uniform, pencils, notebooks and some cookies for a snack”

There are no official data on the expenses incurred by an average family for each child who starts school, but several economists consulted by this newspaper agree that it represents a difficult challenge given that the purchasing power of the Cuban worker has declined in recent years to only 28% of what was received in 1989.

Last July, the economist Carmelo Mesa-Lago told the conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE) that although “free and universal access are important and redeemable points” of the Cuban education system, it is necessary “to focus resources on those provinces and people who cannot pay for their studies.”

The situation becomes tense a few days before the beginning of September. Although the uniform is mandatory, social inequalities arise in the quality of the footwear or the backpack. In the past, school officials have tried to prevent students bringing snacks or sandwiches that indicate greater purchasing power to the classroom, but they’ve lost the battle because the schools no longer are able to provide free snacks, as they did in the past.

“Before they gave the students crayons, pencils and notebooks of better quality, but now all that is up to the family,” complains Yander Lopéz. Books are distributed among students free of charge, but must be returned at the end of the course. Higher income families buy part of these “basic study materials” on the black market.

This school year, families’ pockets are emptied a little more by the costs of the school snack, the so-called “reinforcement” of the school-provided lunch by which the families improve their children’s nutrition in the semi-boarding schools, and the purchase of cleaning supplies, which parents must provide for some schools that are receiving fewer and fewer tools and supplies to clean the buildings.

“This is not over, the next few months my wife and I will be working almost exclusively so that our children can go to school with a clean uniform, pencils, notebooks and some cookies for a snack,” laments Lopéz.

Ferrer believes that UNPACU and its activists are the definition of “courage and service.” In the current political context, some dissident groups barely survive for a few months and others go through ups and downs. “They courageously face tyranny and serve the people, especially those most in need,” he said.

Ferrer described the situation of the last year as “much more repressive” than the organization had experienced since its founding

The leader of the organization explained that since the beginning of August they have undertaken activities to celebrate the founding of the opposition organization, “despite the increase of repression.”

“We have been moving our activists to different places in activities that have developed in a wifi zone, a river, a baseball or soccer camp.”

Ferrer denounced a police operation on Thursday that surrounded the organization’s headquarters in Santiago de Cuba.

“The operation coincided with the day UNPACU’s activist get together. Everyone who enters or leaves is searched or detained,” he said.

Carlos Amel Oliva Torres, youth leader of that organization, stressed that to its credit the organization has “not ceased activism in the streets,” but agreed with Ferrer that it has become more difficult because in the past year they have faced “more prisoners and more repression.”

Regarding the arrests, he said that they may have diminished, but that this is not due to “a better situation in the country” but to the fact that “many leaders are already in prison.”

UNPACU has spread all over the island and has more than 3,000 members, according to its leaders

UNPACU has spread all over the island and has more than 3,000 members, according to its leaders. In Havana, the provincial coordinator, Zaqueo Báez, has breathed new life into the movement, Oliva said.

Baez’s face appeared on the front pages of the media when, during the Pope’s Mass in the Plaza of the Revolution last September, he and other colleagues approached the bishop of Rome and called for the release of political prisoners.

UNPACU has a very dynamic YouTube channel where it shares material to publicize its community work and the opinions of the people of the street.

In a recent video, a resident of El Cristo neighborhood called for “greater support” for the organization because “any group that seeks freedom and the rights of any man is what represents the common good for this country.”

According to Oliva Torres, UNPACU continues “with social assistance” despite having been heavily attacked. He recalled that months ago the government “raided and closed a children’s nursery” run by the organization.

“We continue despite the fact that the regime has often predicted the end of UNPACU, today we are still here with the same willingness of the first day, assuming all the risks and consequences,” said the activist via telephone from Santiago de Cuba.

“We played Cuban music, Benny Moré, la Sonora Matancera … I really thought people were going to throw eggs at us, but it was the opposite,” he says.

“Every Sunday we are in Maceo Park and when, sometimes, I have to travel to another province, I do it there,” he says.

In Santa Clara he has undertaken his musical walks through the neighborhood of El Condado and has also passed through Holguín, where he sampled his playlist in Gibara, during the celebration of the film festival last April.

Casamayor breaks with the monotonous reggaetón just before five in the afternoon on Belascoaín and San Lázaro streets and begins to link a samba, with a son, with a cha cha cha, a rumba, something of the New Trova, boleros and even a meringue

The heat of the implacable Cuban August has led him to change the start time of the show. “Before we left early, about four o’clock, but now with this sun we are leaving at five,” and he passes out hats among those who approach to listen to the soundtrack of Casamayor.

Some of his listeners make requests. “Last Sunday a man asked me to copy a selection of songs on a flash memory and I bring it here, I give them the song they like and it’s good because later they remember it,” he says.

As they turn into Laguna Street, behind Ameijeiras Hospital, some neighbors recognize Casamayor and stop to dance. In a few minutes the block heats up, those who weren’t there come as they spread the word. In a small walker, a baby leaps to the rhythm of a son while his mother also wiggles her hips.

Ada Maria, 64, comes to a halt when she hears Van Van’s The Tired Ox, and invites her little granddaughter to dance while telling her that this was the music she danced to at parties with her friends when she was young.

“Kids and parents love that we do this because there are very few places to take the kids this summer,” she says.

Some young people join the group to ask for music by Yasek Manzano and the friends of ReConstrucción tell him that, although they do not have any pieces by the jazzman, they will look for it. “We’ll have it next week,” they promise.

At the corner of Calle Escobar and Concordia, in a plastic wading pool at the edge of the street, several sweating children are cooling off. They receive Raymel with such excitement that he himself gets soaked, but the undamaged speaker continues to spread music to the four winds.

Garrote was very unlucky, say friends and family. He had already had problems several years earlier when police found in his house two issues of the magazine Cannabis, a Spanish publication dedicated to the culture of cannabis. They also confiscated a poster with the drawing of a leaf of the plant that adorned his bedroom with its defiant silhouette.

Not a single gram of weed was found during the search, but he was tried because he was “acquiring enough culture about marijuana to successfully engage in” a business, according to court records. His detention occurred in the middle of the so-called Operation Coraza, a turn of the screw against “illegalities” that allowed the courts to apply exemplary sentences.

In Cuba the law tends to be as flexible as circumstances and power require. The independent lawyer Amado Calixto Gammalame, member of the Legal Association of Cuba, recognizes this. “The judicial treatment given to each person can be a bit capricious.”

For decades, the fight against marijuana has also been an ideological issue and official propaganda described republican Cuba as a place where vices such as prostitution, gambling and drug addiction proliferated. Maria, as many on the Island call cannabis, was a symbol of capitalist decadence.

This battle with political visions has remained to this day, despite the fact that other Latin American countries, such as Ecuador and Paraguay, have decriminalized its use in public spaces for personal consumption, although without fully liberalizing it.

If Cuba is the extreme of intransigence on the continent, on the other end is Uruguay which, after the definitive legalization of marijuana sales and production in December 2013, this month began to market small envelopes of 40 grams in more than a dozen pharmacies.

This decision has not done the government of the island any favors. Recently the authorities affirmed that the liberalization of cannabis in some countries of the region is nourishing the drug traffic.

The secretary of the National Drug Commission of Cuba, Antonio Israel Ibarra, said that so far this year they have seized three times the drug that was confiscated in the same period of 2016. For those who expected a relaxation, the official delivered a strong phrase: “We have not legalized it (marijuana), nor will we legalize it.”

This statement is in line with comments by Raúl Castro at the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) held in Chile in 2013, when he remarked that on the island the drug would be fought “with blood and fire.”

Tourist guides warn that the island “is not a good place to smoke a joint” and murderers and rapists live in prison alongside inmates convicted of carrying a few grams of cannabis in their pockets. The “stain” of this criminal record on the history of anyone is a serious stigma when it comes to seeking employment.

Despite the severe punishments and controls, the consumption of the herb has not been eradicated. Marijuana has become common in the festivals of artists, successful entrepreneurs and the ruling class itself. But few of them dare to cry out in public for its decriminalization, for fear of being considered criminals.

A good part of the weed arrives aboard ships that land in the coasts. Its cultivation is also a juicy business for those who dare to plant the elongated herb, especially in the eastern part of the island.

In September of 2013 the young musician Roberto Carcassés improvised controversial verses in the middle of an official act: “I want to free the Five Heroes, and free Maria. Free access to information, to have my own opinion,” he sang in an unforgettable chorus whose reference to marijuana was clear.

Two years after that rhyme, the penal code remained just as tight and Yuris Gabir Garrote Rodríguez returned to jail.

For Iraiz Piña Gutiérrez, a 64-year-old from Holguin, the punishment was not just to be incarcerated for six years. The court also ordered the seizure of her home, a penalty that applies to anyone who “produces, traffics, purchases, stores or consumes” illicit drugs.

In a search in her house the police found ten chocolates “stuffed with marijuana,” says the former prisoner.

Aged and with only the clothes she wore, Piña left the prison after serving her sentence but still seeks justice for a case she considers “fabricated” against her. She has traveled to countless state agencies to get them to give her back her house and her “reputation,” but few want to hear or help a “marihuanera”, she tells 14ymedio.

For Lorenzo, a resident of Timba who prefers to change his name to tell his story, the feeling of helplessness will not let him sleep. He lost the house he inherited from his father because his brother kept several pots of marijuana in a room that was under the same roof that had, for years, a separate entrance.

“We did not get along and split the apartment so that everyone had their share,” he explains. Lorenzo had a thriving cafe but it all ended when a police raid found his brother’s little plants. After submitting several complaints, he has been told that the confiscation of the property is an “unappealable” decision because “that’s how it is with marijuana, there is no middle ground,” ​​a lawyer said.

That investigation ended without charges but according to the same employee “the suspicion clung to him that he was laundering the embezzled money through El Litoral.”

Nardis Francisca Mendivil, legal owner of El Litoral, refuses to talk to the press so as not to harm her son, who is imprisoned in 100 and Aldabó and subject to a warning from State Security, but she does deny the version published by some media according to which he was the proprietor of the three closed paladares.

“We have nothing to do with Lungo Mare,” said the mother of the detainee. Other sources stated that her son also managed that paladar at one time, but had sold it “a few months ago.”

In addition, Señora Mendival complains that it is not the first time that they have tried to impute false crimes to her son; in the past he was accused of the death of a police officer who, according to Señora Mendival, shot “himself in a patrol car,” a few yards from the restaurant.

The closing of the restaurants took place after an exhaustive search by the Technical Department of Investigations in cooperation with police forces.

The news of what happened circulated through emails in the Cubapaladar newsletter on food service businesses. Its organizers were quick to remove the premises from their list of recommendations and asserted that they will never include an establishment that is “under a legal investigation or involved in any case that violates any Cuban law.”

This Thursday, an improvised sign with the word “Closed” was the only visible sign to customers at door of number 161 Malecón between K and L where until recently the El Litoral was overflowing with activity. The area is now deserted.

The operation and the confiscation of numerous belongings from the premises were the subject of comments from the whole neighborhood. “I saw many things: air conditioners, drinks of different brands they had in the cellar, chairs, tables, they even took the cutlery away,” says a neighbor.

According to an employee who spoke to 14ymedio, agents also took everything that was in the basement where a new space was going to be inaugurated for “tasting exquisite drinks and Cuban cigars.”

The site, with a wide-ranging menu specializing in seafood and fish, soon became a emblem of the new era for Cuban entrepreneurship after the flexibilizations for the self-employed sector promoted by Raúl Castro’s Government as of 2010.

“From the moment you walked through the door, you felt that you were not in Cuba because of the variety of dishes and the efficiency of the service,” says Grégory, a Frenchman who has visited Cuba more than a dozen times in the past decade, where he has “two daughters and many friends.”

However, those times of bonanza and glamor seem to have ended in the large house with a view directly to the sea.

The scene at El Litoral is repeated in the restaurant Dolce Vita, specializing in Mediterranean food and also located on Havana’s Malecón. The restaurant, which was a bustle of waiters and customers, is now closed, lock stock and barrel.

At the corner of Calle 1a and C, in Vedado, silence has also taken over the outside terrace and the interior area of ​​Lungo Mare. Underneath its distinctive red and white striped awning there is no longer the noise of the silverware or the clinking of the glasses. “This is dead and it will take a long time for it to rise again,” jokes a newspaper salesman who mourns the situation.

“The whole neighborhood benefited from this restaurant because many people came and I could sell some of my newspapers at a slightly better price,” he explains.

“This happened because it stood out a lot,” says Luis Carlos, a young man who delivers agricultural products for several restaurants in the area. “El Litoral became a reference point and many foreigners and diplomats came,” he explains. “Here they sold the best croquettes in Havana and that’s not a joke.”

No other private restaurant or coffee shop owner in the area has wanted to comment on the case.

The United Nations counts 6,300 people who die every day in the world due to accidents or work-related illnesses. There are more than 317 million work accidents annually. But that data is only a part of it.

In 2016 occupational accidents in Cuba totaled 3,576 (144 more than in the previous year). Havana leads the list of provinces with 27 deaths.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) has called for eradicating the practice of “massaging” the numbers and this year is leading an intensive campaign in which it insists that it is essential for countries to improve “their ability to collect and use reliable data on safety and health in Work (SST).”

In Cuba, information on this scourge is rarely addressed in the press, although in recent years the National Bureau of Statistics and Information (ONEI) has published some figures. According to this state agency, in 2016 occupational accidents totaled 3,576 (144 more than in the previous year). Havana leads the list of provinces with 27 deaths.

The head of the Department of Occupational Safety and Health at the Ministry of Labor and Social Security (MTSS), Angel San Martín Duporté, said a few weeks ago that “66% of accidents are caused by the poor conduct of men and women. ”

However, workers say the principal causes of work accidents are poor organization, the chaotic supply of protective gear and measures, and the incompetence of unions in demanding compliance with safety protocols as the main causes of workplace accidents.

“These boots were brought to me by a relative from Ecuador,” says a sugarcane cutter at the Majibacoa sugar mill in Las Tunas. The man, who preferred to be called Ricardo to avoid reprisals, said agricultural workers in the area are subject to frequent “cuts on their hands and feet.” He says, “the type of footwear matters a lot, because if it is strong and high the chances of getting cut are smaller.”

All those who work alongside Ricardo are dressed in old military uniforms that were gifts or that they bought in the informal market. “They do not give us adequate clothes and when it does come the sizes are too small or too large,” the cane cutter complains. “We have had colleagues who don’t even have a hat and have gotten sun stroke, with dizziness, headaches and even vomiting,” he emphasizes.

Clothing and footwear are among the personal protective equipment which according to the new Labor Code must provide the employer free of charge

Clothing and footwear are among the personal protective equipment which according to the new Labor Code must be supplied free of charge by the employer. Although an official of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security clarifies via telephone to this newspaper that “each company has autonomy to modify those issues.”

Damaris, head of a construction brigade located in Central Havana, says that the workers under her command are “very upset” because now they have to pay for their work clothes and shoes. Previously, both garments were “supplied free” but now are “deducted from wages” and in response the workers are refusing to pay the union dues.

The Government allocates between 20% and 30% of the gross monthly salary of a construction worker linked to the tourist sector to pay for life insurance. “When someone is injured, that money is supposed to cover them, but the truth is that it serves for very little.”

An injured worker has the right to receive benefits in services such as orthopedic appliances and prosthetics, according to Law 105/8 of Social Security. As far as economic compensation is concerned, they get a total or partial disability pension which can reach up to 90% of their salary. In the case of death, the amount goes to the nearest relatives such as husbands or minor children.

For a person in delicate health, that money barely lasts for a couple of weeks. “I lost three fingers while working on the railroads,” says Yasiel Ruíz, a transportation technician who now sells churros near a school in Marianao.

The former state employee would have received a disability payment of less than the equivalent of 5 Cuban convertible pesos per month (about $5 US), so he decided to start his own business. “I gave up the financial compensation because it was more paperwork than benefits. My family helps me and I have become accustomed to not having those fingers, but at the beginning it was difficult,” he confesses. He claims that the accident in which he suffered the amputation was caused by “a failure to close a cattle transfer cage,” but he never brought his case to a labor court.

The former state employee would have received a disability payment of less than the equivalent of 5 Cuban convertible pesos per month (about $5 US), so he decided to start his own business

Decisions like his are repeated over and over again. Vicente A. Entrialgo León, a lawyer specializing in labor law, recently confirmed to the official press that in Cuba “there are not a great number of claims around this issue.”

But the danger is not only in the complicated work of construction, the hard work of the countryside, or the roughness of working on the railroad.

Nuria is afraid of contracting a disease at the polyclinic in Plaza of the Revolution municipality where she works as a dentist. “I get three pairs of gloves a day and many times they break while I’m taking care of a patient, but I cannot change them,” she complains. She says that there is little distribution of “equipment and hygiene items” to keep the place clean and “to protect patients and staff.”

The National Labor Inspection Office (ONIT) must ensure that these situations do not happen and demand “administrative responsibility” in case of accidents. But Nuria has never seen a representative of that entity visiting the health center clinics where she works. “This is like Russian roulette, any day I could get an infection.”

The creators distribute it with a determined content, but the users enrich it during its circulation

The compendium was born just over three years ago, in an informal way when a group of friends began to exchange files. “From the beginning we passed censored material, such as documentaries and news,” he recalls. “We also included old Cuban publications that had been forgotten,” adds Carlitos.

The audio content included every week occupies 5 gigabytes of memory, although there are larger versions that may contain a much larger offering.

The young man believes that many of these magazines are not currently known due to “the lack of historical memory” on the island because of censorship. So the first editions of the paketito had copies of “those pages from [the magazine] Bohemia of 1959 in which Fidel Castro affirmed that he was not a communist.”

Along with articles from the national press from more than half a century ago, the producers of the selection decided to include “photos of our parents and grandparents from before the Revolution.”

Among the materials that circulated from the beginning were songs impossible to find in the stores or to listen to on official media, such as those of the Los Aldeanos duo and the punk rock group Porno para Ricardo.

Carlitos clarifies that his audio-visual extract is smaller than the weekly packet, but “brings everything” that is not included in the version circulated by his ‘first cousin’

The obstacles soon appeared. The restless transgressors were a little frustrated at first because they could not update their deliveries regularly, but since the beginning of this year they have achieved a weekly frequency. Carlitos clarifies that his audio-visual extract is smaller than the weekly packet, but “brings everything” that is not included in the version circulated by his ‘first cousin.’

Meanwhile, a great distance separates the paketito from its official counterpart, La Mochila (the Backpack), created by the Youth Club to counteract the influence of the weekly packet, and which, in its latest installments, included numerous materials about the late president Fidel Castro.

Unlike this institutional imitation, every week the paketito contains a folder with written press prohibited on the island. “We load the PDF or summaries of web pages such as Diario de Cuba, 14ymedio and Cubanet,” adds Carlitos. There are also cartoons, news, movies, documentaries and courses. The documents from decades ago also continue to have an important presence in the weekly compilation.

The information comes from many sources. Some of it is downloaded over the internet. “In our team some of us work in state institutions and we have internet in our offices and we download what we need there. Other files we download in the public wifi points.”

A new and growing source of information comes from people who simply send a video that they recorded with their cellphone somewhere, when a significant event occurs

A new and growing source of information comes from people who simply send a video that they recorded with their cell phones somewhere, when a significant event occurs. Activists who travel abroad and download materials from YouTube or other social networks also contribute.

The clandestineness with which the paketito is assembled affects the expansion of its distribution, which has been restricted to customers who are as ‘transgressive’ as it creators. Through USB memory sticks and external hard drives, the files pass from hand to hand.

The compilation circulated the film Hands of Stone that was not shown at the last Havana Film Festival because its director, Jonathan Jakubowicz, was in solidarity with Carlos Lechuga’s censored film Santa and Andrés. Right now, the paketito is offering this latter film, along with the also stigmatized chapters of Miguel Coyula’s documentary Nadie about the poet Rafael Alcides.

The paketito only appears through contacts within the distribution network that demand a lot of discretion, not unlike the challenges of buying shrimp or cheese on Cuba’s black market.

Most remember the state of abandonment which the popular Manzana de Gómez fell into for decades and hardly recognize it in this gorgeous six-story building.

“I studied here,” says Roberto Carlos, a 30-year-old student who spent part of his technoly training on the second floor of the emblematic building.

“When I was studying here, there was not a blind left and the ceilings had leaks,” added the young man. As he speaks, he waits in line to enter the luxurious venue of Giorgio G. VIP with his girlfriend, his mother and a sister. They have come like a family going to a fair to feel the dizziness of climbing on the roller coaster of opulence.

The boutique’s doorman warns that “you can not take photos” or have your phone’s “wifi on.” A clarification that generates a murmur among those waiting outside. Still they remain in line, to be able to carry away in their retinas part of that pomp that ends around the corner, when they enter the Havana everyday life.

Italian businessman Giorgio Gucci inaugurated this Cuban branch of his well-known brand last Saturday. “People come here looking for quality and exclusivity, right now there are very nice women’s shoes for less than 200 CUC,” says the doorman with pride. In the line, several people raise their eyebrows when they hear the prices.

“Not everyone comes to look, there are many who come and buy,” the man explains. But in the interior you do not see anyone next to the cash register nor making the gesture of putting a hand in their pockets. They only look at the clothing and shoes on display. They behave as if they were in a museum surrounded by oils worth thousands of dollars.

Others, older, remember the days when the former Manzana de Gomez was a symbol of economic progress in the Cuban capital. Designed by the architect José Gómez-Mena Vila and built between 1894 and 1917, the building was the first shopping mall in the style of European galleries. “It was an incredible place and the customers who came were all Cubans,” says Roberto Carlos’ grandmother. The woman, who retired more than two decades ago, said: “It used to be a place for us, but now it’s for tourists.”

The new monument to luxury is located on the border of two districts with serious housing problems. Just a few weeks ago and a few yards away, in downtown Havana, the staircase of a building collapsed and left dozens of families trapped. The other face of a city that has a good part of its housing in poor condition.

At the intersection of the corridors of the gallery they removed the bust of communist leader Julio Antonio Mella, who for decades stood defiantly in the center of the building. “They took it because this place represents the opposite of what he promoted,” reflects a retired professor of Marxism who decided to have a look, this Saturday, at “the forbidden apple of abundance,” as the catalog describes it.

For Idalmis, a young woman who in her teenage years studied at Benito Juárez High School located on one of the upper floors, the place has changed so much that she has trouble recognizing it. “Of that apple only the skin remains,” she quips.

The Lacoste brand also has a space in the sumptuous building. An employee explains to this newspaper that since its opening the store has sales that average “between 2,000 and 3,000 CUC per day. Every day we sell about twenty articles,” says the employee who wears a shirt with the logo of the French brand.

In the surroundings, and dressed in gray suits, the guards make sure that nobody connects to the hotel wifi signal that reaches the stores. Although the service costs 1.50 CUC an hour, the Manzana is a much more comfortable than other places with wireless access to the web.

“You can’t be connected here, excuse me, but you have to go outside,” the employees repeat over and over again.

The place is still a construction site, but the coming and going of builders does not prevent three young people from taking their time to get a selfie in front of an ashtray that costs a whopping 53.90 CUC. They don’t want to miss having evidence of the day they were closer to wealth.

She had no access to anything, no right to family or conjugal visits, or to receive calls or food brought in from outside

Her husband, Yordanis Chavez, commented in a telephone interview with 14ymedio that both he and her parents managed to be with her for almost two hours. “As of Saturday she is outside the punishment cell and is in a of maximum severity wing of the prison.”

According to Chávez, from now on they will be able to visit her normally. The next appointment is scheduled for the 17th of this month. “We saw her well, quite strong of spirit. She continues to refuse to comply with orders and or to accept reeducation.”

The authorities of the prison used this refusal to accept the “reeducation” regime as a reason to impose the isolation of a punishment cell on Rivera. “The tried to make her stand up and give military salutes to the jailers who conduct a count three or four times a day. When a high official arrived she also had to stand at attention like they do in the military and she refused to do it,” says Chavez.

During the visit, Lisandra told her relatives that the punishment cell is like that of any police dungeon, pestilent and in very bad conditions, without light. She had no access to anything, no right to family or conjugal visits, nor could she receive phone calls or food brought in from outside. “Every Tuesday I was handcuffed and taken, almost dragged, to the disciplinary council,” the activist told her husband.

UNPACU’s leader, José Daniel Ferrer, fears that, in the midst of the difficult international situation, there could be a repeat of the 2003 Black Spring

Yordanis Chavez explained that they have not appealed the ruling because they do not trust the judicial system. “Lisandra has not committed any crime, it is only because it was an order of State Security as punishment for her activism in UNPACU in favor of freedom and democracy in Cuba.”

José Daniel Ferrer, UNPACU’s leader, fears that, in the midst of the difficult international situation, there could be a repeat of what happened in the spring of 2003, when 75 regime opponents were arrested and sentenced to extremely long prison terms. That crackdown, which came to be known as the Black Spring, coincided with the United States’ invasion of Iraq, a time when the world was looking the other way. At present, more than 50 UNPACU activists remain in prison in several provinces, many of them accused of crimes they have not committed.

For its part, the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation announced in its last report, on the month of March, that there had been at least 432 arbitrary detentions of peaceful dissidents in Cuba in that month. In addition, several dissidents were vandalized and stripped of their computers, cell phones and other means of work, as well as cash.

Director Pedro Luis Rodríguez offers the short Personal Report set on the eve of the Revolutionary Offensive of 1968 — when all remaining private businesses in the country were confiscated, down to the last shoeshine boy. It was a watershed moment in the economic life of the nation that brought profound effects on commerce, supply and even the mentality of those born after that massive closure of private businesses.

Were the facts as they are told in the books? Is the official story a report of what really happened?

In less than half an hour, Rodríguez shows the conflicts experienced by Ricardo, an analyst on the Planning Board, who is preparing to present a report to his boss on the consequences of the measure that is about to be taken. The protagonist defends his right to participate in the decisions that are made in the country or at least to be heard, but everything is in vain.

Personal Report presents that look from below on a historical event where the decision was taken “on high.” An offensive about which the government has never offered a public self-criticism, although a quarter of a century later the private sector was again authorized to operate. Today, more than half a million workers are struggling to support themselves despite strong legal limits on their activities and economic hardships.

In the discussions with the audience after the screening in the Chaplin room, Rodriguez acknowledged that his film is “a wink” at the current phenomenon of self-employment. His desire is that the work serves to “reflect on this present” and to meditate “on participation and the need to be heard and to be consistent with oneself.”

The flood of memories and questioning continued with the fictional short Taxi, directed by Luis Orlando Torres. Taxi addresses another of the many themes barely touched on by the fiery speeches from those in power: Cuba’s involvement in the war in Angola and its aftermath in society; the plot centers on the physical and mental wounds left by that conflict outside the island’s borders.

‘Personal Report’ presents that look from below on a historical event where the decision was taken “on high.”

Torres focuses on the effects on families and establishes a parallel with the internationalist medical missions that now send Cuban healthcare workers around the world, and their consequences here at home. The film develops a suspense story that begins when a taxi driver picks up a passenger in a seemingly casual way. A brief conversation will suffice to call into question moral aspects of a war, one which the Government has always defended as an act of solidarity.

Meanwhile, The Son of the Dream, directed by Alejandro Alonso and filmed in 16 millimeter with a Bolex camera, relives through family letters and postcards the filmmaker’s memories of an uncle whom he was unable to know due to the separation caused by the Mariel Boatlift. The material is the result of a workshop given at the International Film School of San Antonio de los Baños by Canadian director Philip Hoffman.

Beyond the aesthetic and artistic values ​​of each of the projects presented in ‘Moving Ideas’, it is clear that much of the young cinema that is being produced on the Island is not trying to please institutions or accept pre-established truths. It is an uncomfortable, irreverent, questioning and willing movement to belie an epic story that has been shaped more with silences than with truths.