Only the municipalities of Esmeraldas, Nuevitas, Florida and Camagüey have cash machines. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Ricardo Fernández, Camagüey, 20 February 2021 — Despite the Cuban economy’s urgent need for foreign exchange and commercial operations, one of the basic elements of the commercial chain continues to have serious problems. ATMs to withdraw cash are a headache, especially in the province, where they fail, do not have bills or cannot meet the demand.
The extraction of cash in Camagüey is limited to 34 ATMs in four of its 13 municipalities, a province where there is one device for every 22,500 inhabitants. The shortage of ATMs creates long lines, unnecessary delays and the dangerous crowds that are so ill-advised in times of pandemic.
Only the residents of Esmeraldas, Nuevitas, Florida and Camagüey have money dispensers in their territories, but they also encounter other obstacles such as the lack of low-denomination banknotes and breakages in the few that exist. continue reading
The use of magnetic cards imposed by companies and work centers as a means of payment to workers complicates the limited service. “I did not ask or choose to be given a magnetic card,” complains a state employee from Camagüey. “At the beginning when there were no ATMs, there were huge lines and now that they exist, when you have problems or they haven’t put money in, you have to return to the abusive lines.”
Another resident, while recognizing how useful money dispensers are, warns that at any time of day the lines are immense: “There are almost longer lines for ATMs than for the bank itself.”
Although paying in cash is still a very widespread practice on the Island, where 6.2 million magnetic cards were enabled as of the end of 2019, more and more retirees use this way to collect their pension. The opening of stores in freely convertible currencies (MLC) has also increased the number of nationals who resort to “money encased in a plastic.”
The alternative to the ATM, which could be the counter at the bank branch, can be another ordeal for customers. The monetary unification that began on January 1 has increased the lines in these places where defunct convertible pesos can be changed into Cuban pesos. In addition, on weekends most of these offices are closed, leading to longer lines in front of ATMs.
“When they installed the ATMs here in Nuevitas there was a little more relief but many more are needed. Only five blocks away I have one, however, there are those who live several kilometers from here, even within the same city, and have they have to travel even at night “to be able to get paid,” says the state worker.
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
“We will not allow any counterrevoltionary to go to Santiago de Cuba,” they told the reporter and religious activist. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Ricardo Fernández, Camagüey, February 21, 2020 — You pack your bags, full of plans and dreams, but you discover with anger that freedom of movement in Cuba is conditioned on the way in which you think and speak. It doesn’t matter how many times it happens or where you were going, it is always frustrating when the authorities arbitrarily tell you that you cannot travel.
On February 17, a captain of the Department of State Security (DSE) informed me that, again, I couldn’t travel. This time I wasn’t at José Martí International Airport, nor was I heading abroad. I had been invited to the church of pastor Alaín Toledano Valiente, in Santiago de Cuba. It was a purely religious event, but the reason of your trip doesn’t matter, the problem is who you are, or that’s what the DSE official whose pseudonym I can’t even remember said.
“We will not allow any counterrevolutionary to go to Santiago de Cuba,” he said emphatically before ordering two police agents to put me in patrol car number 424 which brought me to the Third Police Unit of Montecarlo in Camaguey. There they searched my belongings for filming equipment that could have betrayed that the purpose of my visit was journalistic. They found nothing, but the sentence against me didn’t change. continue reading
Being someone who thinks and acts according to his ideas, whenever they don’t agree with their own, it seems, they deprive us of all the rights that citizenship and the Constitution grant us. It is not the first time that they arbitrarily spoiled my plans. Nor is it the first time that they left me with no explanation about what happened. Once again I had to make conjectures, look for some logical reason that would abate the ire I was feeling.
Putting two and two together, it occurred to me that it is possible that the Government is trying to control the situation in the city, where a few days ago a group of residents confronted the Police, who were trying to prevent the lynching of an alleged rapist of an eight-year-old girl. The obvious question is: What do I have to do with what happened in Santiago? Am I a real risk in face of a possible social explosion, despite being openly pacifist?
Speaking about the Cuban reality without sugarcoating has put me on the same level as terrorists and drug traffickers, which is how I was treated by the State Security captain during the two and a half hours that my detention lasted. So that it would be on the record, the agent wrote an “official warning” that of course I refused to sign. The text says: “If he is detected in the Eastern provinces he will have committed a crime of disobedience.” And adds: “That is three years in prison.” Three years in prison for trying to visit the church of a friend in my own country.
As I was leaving the police station the same official passed by me on the typical Suzuki motorcycle and, as if I were an old friend, said to me: “If you want I can take you, public transportation is bad.” “Are you going to Santiago?” I responded in the same ironic tone.
Apparently he didn’t like my response, because he accelerated and disappeared in the distance while I was calling my wife, who thought I was on my way to Santiago, to tell her that the trip had been short…and in a patrol car.
Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
Independent reporter Ricardo Fernández Izaguirre was arrested twice in 2019. (14ymedio)
The contributor to La Hora de Cuba and 14ymedio Ricardo Fernández Izaguirre (born Camagüey, 1983), who is also a prominent Christian activist, met all the necessary conditions to raise the Government’s anger; and so it happened in 2019.
In July, he was arrested in Havana when he left the headquarters of the Ladies in White when he was going to the bus station to return to his province of residence. The police kept him nine days under arrest and finally released him with a warning letter for an allegedly illegal stay in the capital that Fernández could prove was not, because he had travel tickets to Pinar del Río.
In November, he was arrested again, this time for 29 hours, during which he was interrogated on numerous occasions by State Security agents who warned him that this was “a lesson” while the legal process was being settled by an investigation. The police intend to take him to court for “usurpation of legal capacity” – a term they apply to individuals whom they consider to be exercising a profession without the legal right to do so. In Fernández’s case the government claims that he cannot exercise journalism; an accusation that derives from the interrogations of several people interviewed by the reporter for an article he wrote about the town of Nuevitas.
COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
The activist Guillermo del Sol decided to stop eating as a protest against the violations on freedom of movement. (Cortesía)
14ymedio, Ricardo Fernández, Camaguey | September 7, 2019 — Guillermo del Sol, 53, has committed himself to fighting against the Cuban Government’s arbitrary practice of “regulating” nonconformists by prohibiting them from leaving the country. Twenty-seven days ago he began to fulfill his promise with a hunger strike, which has made him lose 21 kilos, he says via videoconference from his home in Santa Clara.
“It’s not a matter of getting my own benefits,” clarifies Del Sol, who takes the opportunity to cite one of the most well-known verses of the Cuban national anthem of “dying for the homeland is living.” He speaks slowly, taking long pauses to take a breath and recuperate the little energy that the long fast is leaving him. Since he began the hunger strike, he assures, he has only consumed water.
He made the decision to stop eating on August 12 after Immigration officials at the Havana airport announced to his son, Adrián del Sol Alfonso, that he couldn’t board a flight to Trinidad and Tobago, where he was going to participate in an event on religious freedom. The young man found out that he was “regulated” after going to the airline’s counter and checking in his baggage; “regulated” is the euphemism used by the Cuban government that means a person is forbidden from leaving the country. continue reading
That same day, father and son carried out a peaceful protest in the terminal area, which ended with the arrest of both. They were brought to the National Revolutionary Police unit of the Boyeros municipality, where they were fined and later released.
“Indignation, that’s what I felt when I saw that they were treating my son like a terrorist at the border,” explained Del Sol to this media outlet. “Then I understood what so many young people, journalists, religious people, and people whose only crime is thinking differently from the regime are experiencing. It wasn’t only my son who was being humiliated. In front of me I was seeing that sector of Cubans who live according to their own principals and pay for that audacity with being prohibiting from traveling abroad.”
The practice of preventing activists, independent journalists, and political opposition figures from leaving the country has become more common in recent months as a form of repression. International organizations and human rights groups in Cuba have warned about the situation, but authorities continue arbitrarily denying freedom of movement to citizens.
Guillermo is a member of the Old Catholic Church, declared illegal by the Office of Attention to Religious Affairs, attached to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. Additionally, he directs the independent press agency Santa Clara Vision. He knows that his health is delicate, because he suffers from diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and respiratory problems, but he is determined to continue on the strike.
In more than three weeks without food, he has suffered considerable weight loss, a gradual fall in blood pressure, and pain in the kidneys, legs, and joints. With great difficulty he reads the Bible and converses with friends who visit him.
It’s not the first time that Del Sol has declared himself on a hunger strike. The most recent ended on May 20, 2017, after more than twenty days without food as a demand for him to have some film equipment that the police had confiscated returned to him. On that occasion he achieved his demand.
“The Cuban authorities are going to be silent until I’m dying, that’s if they don’t decide to let me die. But it depends on them,” he says, unhurried, sure. “The only one who comes is the doctor from the office who checks on me in the mornings and informs the agents from State Security about my health.”
In his current situation he tries not to make any physical efforts and his son helps him bathe, in addition to remaining seated until the exhaustion forces him to lie down. “I try to save energy because this is a matter of time.”
He explains that he has received the support of many opposition organizations but laments that “certain religious organizations that suffer from the regulations have not declared themselves.”
“I know that demanding an end to the arbitrary ’regulations’ of the 150 ’regulated’ people that we have been able to count seems like madness and that demanding only the reversal of that condition for my son would have been easier,” he recognizes, but “the world has to know that the Cuban government is trying to turn our borders into bars.”
On social media, that demand is expressed with the hashtag #Ni1ReguladoMás (Not One More Regulated), which helps to raise awareness in public opinion and pressure Cuban authorities to “lift this arbitrariness,” emphasizes Del Sol.
Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera
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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
14ymedio, Ricardo Fernández, Camagüey, 20 April 2019 — Camagüeyanos have struggled this week to get around, due to the high demands on public transit as a result of school breaks at every level of education. Families turn to private carriers, which raise prices for the occasion, given the limited availability of state buses.
According to official figures, more than 1.7 million students travel around the country during this holiday period. The inefficiency of the state transport monopoly and the scarce fleet of private vehicles, this year, like every year, overwhelms the transit system resulting in frequent long and exhausting lines.
The network of commerce and places for leisure and recreation, also in the hands of the State for the most part, collapse under the sudden increase in customers. Trips to the coast of Camagüey are frequent at this time when people travel from the provincial capital to the coast in increasing numbers. continue reading
The long lines to buy a ticket at the State-run Astro bus company and waiting lists several days long, cause many travelers to give up on using the state transport network. Individuals, on the other hand, offer trips in trucks rebuilt to serve as buses, but the fares are close to 10 CUC per person for the Camaguey-Havana route, half of a monthly salary.
The capital is a frequent destination for families seeking a wider range of recreational options. In Havana, the attractions include two zoos, the historic center, the National Aquarium and the Eastern Beaches, among other places to enjoy in the summer.
The week of school recess in April has been maintained for several decades and was ratified by Resolution 36 of 2017, based on an agreement of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers. This month’s break is established for both educators and students, the first one after the New Year’s break in a school year with a total of 46 weeks of study.
At the beginning, it was officially called “Girón week” because it coincided with the events of the Bay of Pigs in 1961, but over time many called it Holy Week because it coincides with the festivities and celebrations of Lent. Only since the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the island, in 2012, has Good Friday been established as a holiday.
Until the 1990s, schools continued to be open with recreation activities for students whose parents did not have work holidays during those days or who did not have the ability to organize field trips. However, with the coming of the economic crisis known as the Special Period, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this service has waned and in some places disappeared completely, so now families must take care of their children during the school break week.
These days the option of watching state television shows dedicated to children and teens is on the wane, replaced in many homes by watching programming available through the ’Weekly Packet’.
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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
Camagüey province has the 4th highest traffic crash deaths in the country. (EFE)
14ymedio, Ricardo Fernández, Camagüey, 19 March 2019 — The number of deaths due to traffic crashes in Camagüey increased in 2018 according to data from the Provincial Highway Commission: 64 people were killed and 647 injured, compared to 58 and 540 in the previous year.
With a total of 597 crashes, the roads of Camagüey continue to be among the most dangerous on the Island, only behind the provinces of Havana, Matanzas and Villa Clara, and ahead of Holguín and Santiago, all at the top of the list for the number of crashes. The most affected municipalities were Camagüey with 319, Florida with 55, Sibanicú 27, Esmeralda 21 and Vertientes 20.
The authorities provided data for the most frequent causes, such as loose animals on the road and the irresponsibility of drivers, who were fined more than 7,000 times. Camagüey has registered 11,224 drivers whom the Roads Commission has proposed to evaluate more frequently. continue reading
According to the Commission, “only Santa Cruz del Sur and Jimaguayú managed to reduce the rates of a problem whose fundamental causes are, among others, not paying due attention when driving and ingesting alcoholic beverages.” In addition, they added that the number of victims increased in both Sierra de Cubitas and Esmeralda, “all of which presupposes the need to continue demanding the relicensing and psycho-physiological studies of drivers, both private and state.”
However, once again, those responsible for traffic avoided addressing problems as visible as the state of the roads and the vehicles themselves.
“It says that up to Kilometer 500 the are roads in poor condition, but I think that’s true for the whole trip from here to Havana. What’s more, the roads here are like neighborhood streets and today’s buses are not made for that,” a young man explained to 14ymedio, while observing the informational posters placed in the interprovincial bus terminal. The blackboards located at the front of the platform show the most dangerous sections so that the drivers will take precautionary measures. “It is unfair to only blame the drivers for crashes without talking about the bad conditions of the roads,” he protests.
“When we travel we find ourselves getting into vehicles in poor condition, with obsolete technologies that were not even designed for the transport of people,” explained Enrique Fundora. “Whenever I can, I book Yutong buses, in advance, for long trips, but within the province there is no such alternative and that’s why disasters happen.”
Sergio Tejeda told this newspaper he almost lost his life last month in a serious crash on his way to Camagüey. “Climbing a hill I passed a Yutong and could not dodge a pothole in the road.” The car swerved out of control into the opposite lane, hitting the rear wheel of a truck converted into a bus that was carrying passengers heading east. “The pothole affected the steering column and caused the accident, thank God nothing happened to me, but the repair of the vehicle cost me about 10,000 CUP.”
The vehicles most involved in traffic crashes are cars, with 117 incidents, followed by motorcycles with 81 and bicycles with 53.
In the official note released by the authorities of the sector, it is emphasized that road safety is of special concern to the country’s leadership, so “the Provincial Road Commission will require its entities in the municipalities to exercise their functions, above all because the number of people involved continues to grow and because all the actions that are taken to reduce the crash rate fail to work.”
But nothing is said about improving the infrastructure, making it possible to renovate the vehicle fleet, or facilitating the purchase of spare parts for vehicles at affordable prices.
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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
The strict regulations for the entry of men into Cuban maternal hospitals limit the attendance of fathers at births. (Cadena Agramonte)
14ymedio, Ricardo Fernández, Camagüey | February 8, 2019 — The strict regulations for the entry of men into Cuban maternal hospitals ruined the plan that the new parents had imagined: she, still exhausted by the birth but happy, while he takes the first photo of the baby to show the family.
Despite the fact that the general regulations of hospitals, in force since 2007, don’t include limitations on a father accompanying a woman during the birth and recuperation phase, in the country’s maternal centers men are only allowed access, for an hour each day, to the rooms where mothers rest after giving birth.
Outside the Gynecological-Obstetrical Provincial University Hospital of Camagüey, this week fathers were crowding to enter for visiting hours, planned between five and six in the evening. Some had not yet met their babies and, in their conversations, complaints about the restrictions on access were mixed with expressions of happiness for the new child. continue reading
Outside the maternal hospital of Camagüey, this week fathers were crowding to enter for visiting hours. (14ymedio)
“Fathers are totally prohibited from staying in the birth rooms and access to the [recovery] rooms is only permitted during these visiting hours,” repeated the security staff. While the wait lengthened, some men recounted details that had reached them by telephone. “They say that the baby was born with a tuft of hair,” said one, full of pride. “They told me that the girl is just like her older brother,” added another.
“Let’s use logic. This is a women’s hospital in which the privacy of the mothers has to be respected,” a nurse from the hospital explained to 14ymedio under condition of anonymity. “The rooms where the mothers go after giving birth are shared, and doctors have to treat the wound from the episiotomy, so they need to protect the privacy of the patients,” she added.
For Yilber Durán, a young man from Nuevitas who was waiting in front of the hospital to meet his third baby, these rules are, at least, “arbitrary.” The lack of public transportation after six o’clock in the evening from Camagüey to the municipalities of the interior didn’t allow him to meet his baby until now.
“Since I can only see my wife between five and six in the evening, I had to figure out who to leave the other children with to be able to come and stay in the city after visiting her, because I don’t have my own transportation to return to Nuevitas,” he explains to this newspaper. Durán spent the night in the entrance hall of the maternal hospital, nodding off in a seat, like other fathers in the same situation.
According to official figures, almost 80% of the childbirths of the province happen in this hospital, which records some 6,000 each year. The scenes of fathers waiting outside or in the cramped lobby, popularly known as The Stork, have become common. Some can be seen early in the morning trying to find a clean bathroom near the hospital and others with a toothbrush sticking out of a pocket.
“I wanted to take care of my wife when the girl was born. It is my right as a father, but no matter how much I explain and ask, they don’t allow me,” complains Reinier Menéndez. “The height of the phobia against men is that at hospital admissions where they do the entry process, we can’t go through to the consultation area and there aren’t even bathrooms for us,” he laments.
The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef) promotes responsible fatherhood and insists that this implies “being involved in all the key moments of development” of the child: “from family planning, pregnancy and prenatal health, preparation for the birth, childbirth, early childhood, childhood and adolescence, and for the entire life.”
“Men can’t stay here because there aren’t the conditions for that. It’s not a whim of the institution, we are defending the privacy of the women,” an employee of the Public Service Department at the hospital who only identified herself as Miriam explained to this newspaper. “From the time the woman enters for the birth she has a female companion who will help her until she is discharged,” she specified.
Some fathers can be seen early in the morning trying to find a clean bathroom near the hospital and others with a toothbrush sticking out of a pocket. (14ymedio)However, the situation becomes complicated when the future mother has no female family member or friend who can accompany her in the process. In several testimonies gathered by this newspaper of cases in which the pregnant women were not able to arrange female company, the hospital administration did not soften the restriction on access for a male companion.
In a telephone inquiry with more than ten maternal hospitals all over the country, the response was invariably the same. “Fathers cannot enter for the birth for reasons of hygiene and privacy,” “men are not permitted to accompany their wives during the birth phase,” and “they cannot stay in the rooms where they are placed after giving birth.”
Hundreds of kilometers from Camagüey, in Havana, Ronald, 34, just had a similar experience. “Ever since my wife started having the first pregnancy consultations, we told the doctor how important it was for me to be able to be there at the birth,” he explains.
“I wanted to experience the arrival of my first child,” he says. “I even got the clothes to enter the birth room and I prepared myself for that moment.” When Ronald’s wife began to feel the first contractions and they arrived at the hospital, the plans went to pieces. “They told us that it’s not done that way in Cuba and that men cannot go in for the birth, it was a big frustration.”
In statements to the official press, Dr. Ramón Rivero Pino recognizes the problem: “For many fathers it is frustrating arriving at the hospital accompanying their wives at the moment of birth” because “they feel that the entire shared experience, the good and bad times together as a family in relation to the child on the way is lost (faced with the access restrictions for them).”
“The demands of the hospital system place a barrier, an obstacle that doesn’t allow this work of three that was being done until that moment to continue,” emphasizes Rivero.
In Ronald’s case, the frustration of not being able to “be there for such a special moment” is even greater because he saw how two of his friends managed to access a birth room, “one because he is a doctor and the other because he paid to be there.”
Translated by: Sheilagh Carey
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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
The most ‘democratic’ of Camagüey’s beaches suffers from a chronic neglect. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Ricardo Fernández Izaguirre, Camagüey | August 18, 2018 – The sun rises and dozens of bathers start to arrive at the beaches of the Bay of Nuevitas, on the north coast of the province of Camagüey. They are equipped as if for battle: food, water, sturdy shoes to deal with stones and even an improvised kit for the possibility of cuts on pieces of glass or cans. The poor conditions of the coast do not manage to cool the desire to take a dip.
The province of Camagüey has 25% of all the beaches in the archipelago but the state of the coast has been getting worse in recent years due to climate change, lack of maintenance and deterioration of infrastructure, to which is added the discharge of industrial or domestic waste. Some areas that were once a haven of peace and beauty today seem to come out of a post-war scene.
Among the extensive coastline, Nuevitas is the busiest resort because it is cheaper thanks to the “beach train” that runs in summer, from Friday to Sunday, from the city of Camagüey and arrives a few meters from the sea. continue reading
The beach train runs in summer, from Friday to Sunday, from the city of Camagüey and reaches a few meters from the sea. (14ymedio)
For low-income families this is one of the few possibilities of having a day sunbathing in front of the waves, because the most beautiful and well-kept areas, such as Santa Lucía beach, have been filled with hotels where mainly foreign visitors stay.
Getting there is expensive and complicated, so Nuevitas is a more accessible option. However, the most democratic of Camagüey’s beaches suffers from chronic neglect. The ruins of old buildings destroyed by hurricanes or abandonment dot part of the coastline and holiday makers are forced to bathe in the middle of concrete fragments, metal beams and other types of rubble (debris).
Among the beaches with the highest number of visitors Las Piedras, La Colonia and the others that extend close to the old railway line stand out, although some opt for the more distant ones such as Santa Rita and the one with better seabeds such as Varaderito, about three kilometers from the city, but which can only be accessed by a road in poor condition.
“Here it has been years that no repairs have been made nor the beach dredged,” laments Mily Marín, a local resident who takes her children to the beach. “These places do not look like the beaches I knew as a child, my children leave with wounds on their feet,” laments the mother, who recalls a childhood with a maintained coastline and denounces the institutional abandonment that the area has reached.
The industrial growth that the zone experienced during the years of Soviet subsidy made industries proliferate, among them some very polluting ones like the 10th of October Thermoelectric Company and a fertilizer factory. The damages left by strong hurricanes, such as Irma last September, have exacerbated the situation.
The rising waters have also taken space from vacationers. During the last century an increase in the average annual temperature of 0.6 ° was registered in Cuba and the average sea level has increased at a rate of 2.14 millimeters per year. At least 291 beaches in the country (84% of the total) have already been affected by these changes. The climate changes and industrial discharges are compounded by the problem of domestic waste carried to the sea by the waters of the Saramaguacán River and from places as far away as the north of the municipality of Camagüey and the plains of Sibanicú.
The neighbors of Nuevitas remember the beautiful beach before industrial waste and neglect appropriated their coastlines. This is the case of Juan, a retiree who makes a few pesos selling corn chips to holidaymakers and regrets that the bay is now invaded by a “fetid mud.” He only has one word to define the situation: “It’s a disaster.”
The authorities have been working on a project supported by the United Nations Development Program that seeks to alleviate the environmental impact in the area. “A series of results has already accrued that have repercussions not only on biodiversity, but also on the economic development and good social living of the territory,” assured the local newspaper Adelante.
The signature work of this collaboration is the so-called Malecón-Patana Rosa Naútica Complex, inaugurated at the end of last year, which includes a seawall on the coast with various recreational opportunities nearby. The work, 320 meters long, was erected partly over an old pier.
The Malecón-Patana Rosa Naútica complex, inaugurated at the end of last year, includes a wall on the coast with various recreational offers around. (14ymedio)
“It turned out very good, but the vacationers of Camagüey do not come to these places,” clarifies Pastor Yilber Durand. “They want to enjoy the beaches, which are in terrible conditions. I think it would have been better to invest all that money by improving them.”
The difference between “the beaches of the people,” as many call the coast where the Camagüeyans dip and “the beaches of the tourists” does not only lie in the quality of the maintenance they receive, in the cleanliness of their waters or in the number of houses that rent rooms for vacationers. The gastronomic offers also mark a great difference
While in Santa Lucia you can buy “almost anything […], in Nuevitas the offerings are poorer,” says Roxana, mother of two girls and resident in the city of Camagüey, who frequently visits the north coast. She has no doubt that “many sellers prefer to go to those places where customers can pay better for a sandwich, a soft drink or a fresh fruit.”
However, Roxana is happy that some private businesses remain in Nuevitas. If they were not here, “there would be very little left to enjoy, because between the dirty waters and the attention that you have to take with the garbage on the coast, at least drinking a cold juice in front of the sea is worth it.”
“We are the ones who guarantee food and drink to those who arrive from the main city, because the state offers are very scarce,” the owner of a restaurant that operates in a place leased to the State confirms to 14ymedio. The small businessman and some others plan to stay, waiting for good luck and care to return to the beaches of Nuevitas.
Translated by Wilfredo Díaz Echevarria
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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
A user tries to use the Transfermovil application for the Android operating system. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Ricardo Fernández, Camagüey, 9 March, 2018 — The poor coordination between the Telecommunications Company of Cuba (ETECSA) and the Bank of Credit and Commerce (BANDEC) has meant that the activation of Transfermóvil, the mobile payment service, started off on the wrong foot in Camagüey. Individuals can not use it on their cell phones because, despite having the application, the state communications monopoly has not enabled the service.
“I downloaded the application directly from the it doesn’t work,” an employee of a downtown branch of this Camaguey bank affected by service problems told 14ymedio. As long as ETECSA is unable to register his mobile number and username, the only thing this employee can do is wait. continue reading
Transfermóvil is an application for smartphones with the Android operating system that was launched last year in other provinces of the Island. Since its arrival in Camagüey in January this year, the city’s banking offices have received hundreds of requests from customers who want to use this tool, but only ETECSA can register users for the mobile banking service.
“Initially we made a list of all those who requested mobile banking and for whom the service didn’t work; we sent their respective mobile numbers to the provincial address of BANDEC but they ignored the issue,” laments the bank worker.
After having been correctly registered by ETECSA, if a user wants to perform an operation with the application, they send messages through a USSD protocol and the state company responds to the subscriber’s cell phone via SMS to confirm the requested operation.
“When I learned virtual banking would start working in Cuba, I did not hesitate and set up my bank accounts to use it,” Yunior Jubitea, a young man who works in a private candy store in Camagüey, tells this newspaper. He has managed to make only a single payment in a fixed terminal of a branch, connected to the network, since he is still “not registered.”
A worker at BANDEC’s 5971 branch, in the historic center of the city, acknowledges that customers have returned with dissatisfaction because they do not receive the registration message that Etecsa must send.
“The answer I got at first was that the bank had no staff to process the applications at a national level,” explains Yusleysi, a manicurist in the neighborhood La Guernica who installed the application on her phone weeks ago.
“Later they told me that the problem was that BANDEC had not yet finalized the contracts with ETECSA,” complains the woman about the second version. Among the particular reasons that led her to join the service is to be able to pay her bills without spending so much time standing in line.
Despite its malfunction in the area, Transfermóvil “has almost the same functions as an ATM,” Julio García Trápaga, director of Development and Application Management of the Mobile Services Division of ETECSA explained recently to the official press. In 2017 there were around 20,000 mobile banking customers in the country.
Aside from paying bills for water, telephone and electricity, the tool also allows transfers between accounts in the same bank without the need to connect to the internet.
To use this service it is also essential to have a magnetic card, of which some 3.8 million have been issued so far. The goal of the banking authorities is to reach 7 million to alleviate the problems of scarcity of money in circulation and the long lines at ATMs to get cash.
The payment through mobile banking was enabled a year ago and is used jointly by the Banco Popular de Ahorro, the Banco Metropolitano and the Banco de Credito y Comercio. Its promoters assure that it is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
“What always happens with technological advances in Cuba is that the state does not guarantee the infrastructure to support them,” the economist Karina Galvez of the Convivencia project told 14ymedio. “That discourages people and they continue to distrust everything that is not physical money.”
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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
In the city of Camagüey, the blackouts, which at first were sporadic and of short duration, have become an almost daily occurrence lasting several hours. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Ricardo Fernandez, Camagüey, 20 February 2018 — Darkness and silence envelops the nights in the city of Camagüey since the fire at the 10 de Octubre Thermoelectric Company, in Nuevitas, on 25 January. Almost a month later, blackouts and annoyance continue to affect residents.
Brigades from various parts of the country are working under the direction of the Electric Union to repair the plant’s three power-generation blocks, which supply a total of 360 megawatts. However, so far none of them have been restored and the municipality of Nuevitas is mainly supplied with generators located in the town. continue reading
According to sources from the sector consulted by 14ymedio, the complexity of the work is great, since along with the replacement of what was damaged by the fire, a security review of the equipment is being undertaken and “some unforeseen events” have arisen in the process. The work is now forecast not to be completed until summer.
In the city of Camagüey, the blackouts, which at first were sporadic and of short duration, have become an almost daily occurrence lasting several hours.
“The worst thing is that they almost always happen when it’s time to cook,” laments Hermida Suárez who lives in the La Guernica neighborhood. “At that time of the day I have my grandchildren watching television while we prepare the food.”
Many Camagüey families cook with electricity after the Energy Revolution promoted by Fidel Castro at the beginning of this century. The program included the sale of electric cooking appliances at subsidized prices, to replace equipment that used kerosene. In addition, in 2016, thousands of induction cookers were also sold in the province.
The thermoelectric towers stand out against the blue sky without their usual trails of smoke and the absence of the humming of the generators raises daily fears of a new round of blackouts.
“The cuts in the electric service are not programmed, they occur when the demand exceeds the delivery capacity of the national network,” an employee of the Electric Company of Camagüey, who preferred anonymity, explains to 14ymedio. “The shutdown of the Nuevitas thermoelectric plant complicates everything,” he concludes.
According to the official press, the fire at the plant was caused by electrical overheating. The flames reached the system of buried cables and switches, which makes restoration more difficult.
Private businesses have been especially affected. Cafeterias, service outlets and mobile phone repair points are among the hardest hit by the lack of power.
“I’m a barber and all the equipment I use is electric,” says Ariel, in the town of Vertientes. “I bought an oil-powered electrical generator thinking about the hurricanes but now it’s exactly what I need with these blackouts.”
Last September the national electrical system suffered the onslaught of Hurricane Irma which caused numerous technological breakdowns in the 10 de Octubre Thermoelectric plant, but these were repaired in a short time. In 2014 the industry had completed capital repairs that cost more than 56 million pesos.
The Nuevitas generating plant runs off of Cuban crude, which has a higher sulfur content than imported oil. The quality of the raw material not only increases the combustion gas emissions, but also requires more frequent maintenance of the infrastructure.
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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
A woman connects to the internet through an alternative network that she captures from the doorway of her house in the city of Camagüey. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Ricardo Fernández, Camaguey, 7 February 2018 — The city of Camagüey is experiencing an intense digital transformation thanks to independent wireless networks that connect thousands of users throughout the country. It is a complex framework that carries the Wi-Fi signal from the Telecommunications Company of Cuba (ETECSA) to all neighborhoods and also eliminates censorship.
In this city, in the center of the island, there are only nine wireless zones installed by the state telecommunications monopoly and the majority are located in the most central areas of the city.
In parallel, dozens of NanoStation or Mikrotik devices capture the signal and broadcast it. That web of connections not only offers a cheaper internet experience but one that is also free from censorship thanks to the fact that the flow of data passes through virtual private networks (VPNs). continue reading
Previously it was the users who, on an individual basis, made a joke of censorship through anonymous proxies. Now, it is the administrators of the nodes who are in charge of doing it.
“What started with some guys offering Wi-Fi connections through a laptop is now a well-structured business that takes the Internet to all neighborhoods,” one of the young administrators of one of the most popular networks, who prefers to be called “AA” (Anonymous Administrator), tells 14ymedio.
The official service costs 1 Cuban convertible peso (CUC) for each hour of navigation, but local entrepreneurs make it possible for the same connection to be shared among several users in order to reduce costs. The price can fall to less than half the ETECSA rate and even go as low as 0.30 CUC an hour.
The purchase of service is made directly through those who manage the antennas, and prepaid cards have been created for that purpose. Regular customers benefit from the signal reaching the doors of their houses and others who receive a weakened signal, because they are further away, at least no longer have to travel long distances.
The commercialization of ETECSA’s Nauta Hogar service that supports Internet browsing in private homes began in the city on December 11. Right now, this service is available only in three of the council districts in the city and Internet users do not want to wait for Etecsa to extend the service to all neighborhoods.
The alternative network also offers the advantage that “you can access the pages stapled [i.e. blocked] by the government,” ’AA’ tells 14ymedio. The government censors dozens of sites, including this independent newspaper and the webpages of human rights organizations.
Last September a report from the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), an organization associated with the anonymous network project and the free VPN tool Tor, revealed that after analyzing access to more than 1,400 web pages in three cities on the Island between May and June of 2017, it detected that at least 41 of them were blocked.
Most of the blocked sites belong to independent media and opposition organizations, so OONI concluded that the only Internet provider in Cuba, ETECSA, censors sites that “express criticism (direct or indirect) towards the Government.”
“The private [providers] not only have better prices but the user’s final experience is more pleasant”, says Mandy, 34, an administrator of a dozen antennas that provide service in Havana. “At the beginning we transmitted the ETECSA signal as it came to us but now we’re trying to give a superior service.”
Contracting with an efficient VPN means that these entrepreneurs must have a credit card for online payments, an obstacle they skillfully overcome through contacts abroad. “We take out our MasterCards and pay the fees for the different services so that our internet is really free,” explains another young Camaguey computer expert.
The business is attracting many interested in joining. The initial investment to manage your own node is around 500 CUC. The most expensive part of hosting is the NanoStation or the Mikrotik — costing up to about 200 CUC — and the rest of the capital is invested in routers or switches and mobile phones.
“All the sending and receiving equipment is configured through telephones so as not to use computers, in this way we minimize the damage if the police search us [and sieze the equipment],” AA explains.
Some of these wireless networks have managed to get official backing by signing up with the Youth Computer Clubs as communities dedicated to video games. Other distributors prefer to mask the network so that it is visible only to customers who pay for the service.
“This is not a business to get rich, but it gives us enough to live on. We have taken advantage of the lack of a laws [that we could be charged under], although we know that if they set the police on us everything would be complicated,” acknowledges AA.
However, much remains to be done. “The connection gets slow at peak times,” Yunior Rodriguez, a young man from the Guernica neighborhood, who connects from his home portal to one of these alternative networks, comments to this newspaper. He appreciates that the independent providers have a more attractive access interface than ETECSA does.
“There are the little things that make the difference: the homepage of the network where I have to put my user data is updated regularly,” he explains. Once again, competition knocks at the door of Etecsa, which since the beginning of its web browsing service has not changed its access portal or carried out many other improvements in the service.
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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
Workers at the state-run Coppelia ice cream parlour relax over lunch, as they have no customers because they have no ice cream. (14ymedio)
Ricardo Fernández, Camagüey, 29 January 2018 — The ice cream parlor Copellia in the city of Camagüey has become an empty passageway between two main streets. Only the occasional passerby wanders into the empty building to access the Italian restaurant and three small shops on the floors above.
At midday the employees take advantage of the calm hour in the previously crowded room, moving a table outside to enjoy a relaxed lunch without the pressure of waiting on customers.
The same scene repeats itself throughout the different ice cream parlors that were regularly supplied by the Helados Coppelia factory belonging to the Camagüey Dairy Products Company. continue reading
Two months after an ammonia leak in the factory, the industry has still not restarted and local consumers have been forced to depend on the private market to acquire the product. In the Cuban province with the strongest livestock tradition the ice cream parlors remain totally empty.
On the 29th of November last year an incident in the machinery room of the plant resulted in the release of this chemical substance which, according to authorities, does not present a health risk for either the workers or the residents of surrounding areas.
The directors of the industry have not given an expected date for the reactivation of production and no one knows when they will again supply the region’s state food service establishments. In the ice cream parlors and the TRDs (state run retail stores) the absence of ice cream is felt.
The incident came as a surprise to almost no one. The economic crisis, the scarcity of resources and the lack of technological renovation have caused a rampant deterioration in the province’s dairy industry, resulting in a decline in productive capacity.
Last March, the managing director of the company, Alexis Gil Perez, told the official press that only in the last few months have they succeeded in resuming the maintenance process but that still “not all of the accumulated problems have been solved.”
The state industry has the capacity to process up to 400,000 liters of milk a day, but the drought and problems of infrastructure have contributed to make the average production of the past year little more than 100,000 liters a day. The province of Camaguey accounts for 25% of Cuba’s total dairy production.
The Camaguey Provincial Dairy Products Company consists of 16 entities, including pasteurization plants, collection and cooling centers, mixing mills ,and cheese, ice cream and powdered milk factories.
The continued repairing of obsolete machinery has allowed production to be maintained for decades, but the technical difficulties continue to be numerous, especially concerning refrigeration and transportation to sites of distribution or sale.
Only three years have passed since the announcement of the assembly of a new evaporative condenser and ammonia system aiming to improve the refrigeration system of the industry Coppelia. The investment included the remodeling of the refrigerators and air conditioning of the sites of production.
With the paralysis of the plant following last November’s incident, the programmed maintenance has been moved up to this January and includes the installation of a new boiler and other equipment for the refrigeration system.
The major beneficiaries of the lack of ice cream in the state-owned shops are the private sellers who have long lines of customers. (14ymedio)
Local consumers hope that in a few weeks the factory will resume production, but the process drags on without any sign of an end date.
“In the beginning they brought ice cream in from Nuevitas, but the small factory barely manages to satisfy the demands of that municipality,” explained a customer of the main Coppelia ice cream parlor who prefers anonymity.
In the municipality of Subanicu in Camagüey, there is another small industry that produces ice cream for local consumption in a limited quantity. The plant, using Argentine technology, only possesses two flavor mixers and on good days achieves only 100 gallons in eight hours.
“What we are offering is mango soda. They have told us that the factory will be ready for production next month, but it is not certain,” a worker added, in the middle of the empty store.
The halting of the second largest ice cream factory in the country is not a source of bother for everyone. The indirect beneficiaries are workers who make ice cream independently.
Almost right across from Coppelia itself, on Antonio Maceo street, a large line forms in front of a small private establishment. “I’ve been here waiting for ten minutes because I’m craving ice cream,” says Yusleysi Gil. “It’s a little more expensive, but the flavor and presentation are better,” comparatively.
The reverse is happening in the TRDs, which receive the ice cream containers supplied to the factory in Camaguey. The typical refrigerators with glass covers that earlier displayed the varieties of Nestle ice cream, now just display their silver bottom.
The informal market has taken advantage of the success of this business and in neighborhoods nearby sellers offer pints of an artisanal ice cream that owe nothing to the state industry.
A privately owned, alternative ice cream maker can cost between 1000 and 3000 CUC (Cuban Pesos) in the classifieds.
Although the required investment is high, some local entrepreneurs are toying with the idea of joining the sale of ice cream in a city where the temperatures are rising and cold products are lacking.
Translated by Geoffrey Ballinger
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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
A beekeeper observes his hives in the Vertientes de Camagüey municipality. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Ricardo Fernández, Camaguey, 20 December 2017 — Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) lives up to its name by being in an out-of-the-way spot 40 kilometers from the town of Vertientes, in Camagüey. The small settlement of houses with a palm leaf roofs has its greatest treasure in the surrounding beehives, but this year the production of the honeybees suffered a major setback and the residents are facing economic hardship.
The Camaguey fields were expected to produce 700 tons of honey this year. However, the damage caused by Hurricane Irma, the problems in accessing inputs and non-payments to producers have meant that only 490 tons have been collected. The national production, which this year, according to the official press, was forcast to be 10,000 tons, will also fall below that figure.
Ciudad Perdida has suffered a severe blow with this drop in production since most families depend on the product from the apiaries, as the groups of productive hives are called. This situation extends throughout the center of the island, the area most affected by hurricane winds and rains. continue reading
With 2,800 beekeepers throughout the country and about 180,000 beehives in operation, obtaining honey has been encouraged in recent years due to the favorable prices the State obtains when selling it in the international market, especially when it exports varieties obtained organically.
Some 90% of the honey produced in Cuban fields is exported to Europe, mainly to Germany, Holland, Spain and Switzerland, while the rest goes to the national market and the tourism sector.
Foreign trade is a state monopoly, but production is mostly carried out by beekeepers associated with cooperatives. Before leaving the island, the sweet product must trod a bitter bureaucratic path, marked by the lack of inputs, low producer purchase prices and late payments.
Any private beekeeper with more than 25 beehives is obliged to join a cooperative to deliver their honey to the State and may only keep enough for home consumption. The fruit of the work of the hardworking bees goes through the Provincial Apiculture Company, from where it is sent to CubaExport, which is responsible for its export.
“The only thing the cooperative does is to be an intermediary because we do not have legal standing to sell the honey and buy the supplies,” complains Manuel, a beekeeper from Ciudad Perdida who has been in business for more than a decade and who has chosen a fictitious name to avoid retaliation. “The payments take months and the resources we requested never arrive,” he laments.
Beekeepers are lonely people, accustomed to going into the bush to care for their hives and always attentive to the slightest signs of fatigue, disease or vandalism shown by their populations of insects. They zealously take care of their “girls,” as some call them, since they know how fragile they are in the face of inclement weather, illness and abandonment.
First the drought and then Hurricane Irma significantly affected the population of bees in Cuba. (Gailhampshire)
The work is hard and meticulous. “I’ve gotten used to being stung, but from time to time a huge swarm comes at me and they scare me, they still scare me,” says Roberto, another beekeeper from the Najasa area who inherited his father’s occupation. “I have a lot of time to think when I do this work and sometimes even sing, although lately I do not have much reason to sing,” he says.
The massive death of swarms in recent months has Camaguey beekeepers desperate. The ravages of the drought were followed by the strong winds of Hurricane Irma, which significantly affected the flowering of the so-called “Indian vine,” one of the main sources of nectar for bees in the territory of Camagüey. Without food, “the bees fall like flies,” Roberto says.
“This has been a bad year,” adds his colleague Manuel, speaking to 14ymedio. “I have lost 50% of my swarms and I am not one of the worst cases. I have a friend who had 42 hives and today he only has nine.”
Diseases have also played their part, especially the Varroa mite that parasitizes bees and ends up decimating their populations. When the mite takes over a hive, beekeepers can barely do anything more than watch the workers die one by one, until the queen finally perishes. There is also another hypothesis that points to a fungicide as a possible cause of the disease.
“We cannot provide producers with medicines and vitamins because organic honey has twice the price on the world market,” an official of the Provincial Apiculture Company of Camagüey clarifies to this newspaper. The state entity must ensure that they do not add chemicals to the process, because without them the profits are much greater.
However, the prices paid to the producer hardly vary, regardless of inclement weather or fluctuations of the value of honey on the international market, a situation that some have begun to denounce, especially after the added expenses this year associated with responding to weather problems and pests.
“They pay us when and how the company wants,” explains a beekeeper who declined to join the cooperative and sells his honey through a friend who is a member. “This year, for a ton of honey we are paid 14,000 CUP (equivalent to about 460 euros or 560 dollars) but we all know that the price has gone up in the world market.”
In 2016-2017, the price of bulk honey in reached 4,180 euros per ton in Spain, and organic honey, of the multifloral variety, around 12,000 euros (about 14,000 dollars), according to data from the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture. The profits obtained by the Cuban State when buying at low prices from domestic producers and selling at high prices in the international market are increasingly questioned.
“The inputs are expensive and do not come or when they do come are not complete, and then the work is greater and the profit decreases,” laments another producer from Ciudad Perdida. “The refractometer to check the density of honey costs 400 CUP, the boxes to assemble the beehives are 65 each and never less than 45, the trays that go in the interior cost 4 each and I need about 100 of them,” details the beekeeper.
“With all that you need 1,050 CUP to build a hive and you have to pay 50 pesos for each feeder and buy the sugar at 6 pesos a pound to feed the bees,” when the natural food is poor. “I’ve been asking the State for three years to sell me a manual centrifuge to extract the honey, but nothing. Now I’m working on a loan,” he concludes.
To that is added the fact that many times the hives are distant from the producers’ homes. To save the lease payment of tractors or trucks, they usually hitchhike or cycle, but when collecting honey or moving the hives to other sites they must rent a vehicle, which triggers more costs.
Some producers try to make up for their expenses by selling part of their honey in the ’informal market’, but the practice is greatly persecuted by the authorities and they cannot sell wholesale quantities without being discovered. “I am willing to sell under the table but nobody buys my whole crop and with intermediaries it is very risky,” laments Manuel, the beekeeper from Ciudad Perdida.
The only option that the Camagüey beekeepers have at the moment is to trade with the state and cross their fingers so that the winds, the drought and the pests bypass their hives.
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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
Online site of Bank of Credit and Commerce in Cuba. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Ricardo Fernández, Camagüey, 8 December 2017 — The first online financial transactions have been delayed for two decades in Cuba. The new service, called Kiosco, allows the payment of electricity and telephone bills, in addition to the repayment of bank loans, but is not exempt from technological setbacks and has not yet managed to gain the trust of customers.
There was an empty chair in front of the Kiosco computer this Thursday at the Avellaneda Street branch of the Bank of Credit and Commerce (Bandec) in the city of Camagüey, where electronic payments can be made through a “self-service terminal.” continue reading
“So far no one has tried it and everyone is still standing in line for the tellers,” laments a worker, confirming that people who enter the bank prefer to interact with an employee, partly because they are not familiar with electronic transactions.
The Island’s poor internet penetration makes electronic payment a novelty. Among the 5.7 million savings accounts in the country as of the middle of last year, at least 50% have a magnetic card, but only a small share of account holders have had experience with electronic payments.
To use Kiosco you need to have a multi-bank card, which can be obtained at the same branch as your debit card. There is no bank in Cuba that issues credit cards for private customers.
“I do not want my money to evaporate because I do something wrong and send it to somewhere where is disappears,” says Monica Salgado, a retired teacher from Santa Clara, another province where Kiosco also operates. The woman receives her pension through a magnetic card that she refuses to use in the new service because she wouldn’t receive cash.
In the beginning, the service was offered exclusively to companies, but this year it began to offered to private users, although it cannot be used to buy products in the country’s stores, pay for an interprovincial bus ticket or book a room in a hotel.
The new service can also be accessed through an internet connection in the Wi-Fi zones that the Telecommunications Company of Cuba (Etecsa) has installed across the island over the last two plus years, places where one hour of internet time costs one Cuban convertible peso, the daily salary of a professional.
However, as soon as you enter Kiosco’s digital site, the navigator gives you a warning: “This connection is not private, it is possible that some attackers may try to steal your information.” This message demonstrates that there is a problem with the certificate of authenticity, something common in national sites.
After entering the access data, the internet user accesses a private area where they can check the balance and transfer money to other accounts in the same bank. They can also download the Mobile Transfer application, designed for the Android operating system, which allows several operations through USSD codes.
“It’s not much yet, but soon we may be shopping at Amazon,” says Roberto Carlos, a 16-year-old who was with his mother at a Wi-Fi hotspot in Havana on Friday. The young man dreams that in the near term “we can buy applications in Apple stores and Google Play with this system.”
Electronic banking works through different payment channels, such as ATMs, POS terminals, the digital site of the application or mobile applications.
Beyond technology, Pinar del Rio economist Karina Gálvez, from the Center for Coexistence Studies, comments that “the environment and infrastructure” in Cuba which surrounds everything related to electronic commerce or virtual payments. “I think you have to give it time to see how it works,” she advises.
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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
Pastor Alain Toledano, from the Apostolic Ministry Pathways of Justice. (Facebook)
14ymedio, Ricardo Fernandez, Santiago de Cuba, 30 October 2017 — The evangelical pastor Alain Toledano feels that he has lived through 18 years of intense battle since he founded his own church in Santiago de Cuba, a congregation that has experienced a “rapid growth,” according to what he told 14ymedio.
The high numbers attending the worship services “frightened the authorities” from the first day and then “the confrontations began,” the pastor maintains. In Cuba, among the denominations of greatest expansion in recent years are Pentecostals and Baptists. continue reading
Although official entities rarely give figures, international religious organizations estimate that on the island there are some 40,000 Methodists, 100,000 Baptists, and 120,000 members of the Assemblies of God. The latter had only about 10,000 faithful at the beginning of the 1990s.
In July 1999, Toledano left the Assemblies of God to create the Emmanuel Church. “We met in an apartment and the crowd blocked those who tried to climb the stairs of the building,” he recalls. The pressures of the authorities forced them to move the temple to a courtyard.
“There we did not bother anyone and even so police officers came to try keep us from meeting,” the pastor explains. He believes that from the beginning it was not a question of order and that all those pressures were part of “an attack against the Church.”
Between January and July 2016, more than 1,600 churches were subjected to religious persecution by Cuban authorities, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW). The entity accused the government of Raúl Castro of attacking the temples “to strengthen control over the activities and composition of religious groups.”
The annual report on religious freedom, published in the middle of last year by the US State Department, indicated that the government of the Island “supervises religious groups” and “continues to control most aspects of religious life.”
The first direct attacks suffered by Toledano came from the Office of Religious Affairs of the Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party, led by Caridad Diego. “On several occasions they sent their officials to prohibit me from continuing to hold the services,” says the leader of Emmanuel Church.
Toledano, of the Apostolic Ministry Pathways of Justice, did not give into the pressures and State Security took action on the matter. “At first they did not attack me, rathered they offered to have me work for them,” he says. “They told me they needed a person of influence in religion inside and outside of Cuba.”
The offer included the legalization of the congregation in exchange for collaborating as an informant and opinion agent within the Pentecostals.
“Given my categorical refusal, they entered another phase and the eviction came,” the first of them in November 2007. Nine years later, while Toledano was traveling in Miami, the story was repeated and the police deployed a broad operation that included special forces.
On that day, more than 200 of the congregation faithful were arrested and the police demolished the place authorized for worship that the Toledano family had taken years to prepare.
The troops also made off with chairs, benches, musical instruments, a piano and more than a thousand legally purchased cement blocks with which the family planned to improve the conditions of the house and the temple.
“The objective was to leave us without resources and to pressure us to opt to emigrate,” the religious reflects. “No one who is persecuted in Cuba is exempt from passing that thought through his head,” he says, although in his case he has chosen to stay with the congregation.
A year after those events, the pressures have not diminished for Toledano. “When we were preparing the celebration for 18 years of the ministry, on October 17, they arrested the host who lends us his patio to meet.” The man was threatened with eviction and his house demolished if he continued to offer the land to the congregation.
“It’s not the first time it has happened and we’ve had to move twice because of the pressure on the owners of the places where we meet,” says Toledano.
In May of this year, in the Abel Santamaría neighborhood in Santiago de Cuba,Toledano started a project to help with food for vagabonds and other marginalized people. “We are doing our bit in this country, in this society,” he told several independent media at the time.
“It is better to talk, because if we stay quiet they crush us,” explains the pastor, who has chosen the path of social networks to denounce the boycott of his congregation.
14ymedio, Ricardo Fernández, Camagüey, 20 February 2021 — Despite the Cuban economy’s urgent need for foreign exchange and commercial operations, one of the basic elements of the commercial chain continues to have serious problems. ATMs to withdraw cash are a headache, especially in the province, where they fail, do not have bills or cannot meet the demand.
