Category: Translator: Hombre de Paz

Moscow Does Not Rule Out Military Deployment in Cuba and Venezuela if US ‘Provokes Russia’

In recent weeks something like 100,000 Russian soldiers have concentrated on the border with Ukraine (Screen capture)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio/EFE, Havana/Moscow, 13 January 2022 — Russia has upped the stakes in its standoff with the West and warned that it is not ruling out a military deployment in Cuba and Venezuela if the United States ramps up pressure on the Ukraine issue.

It occurred on Thursday when Sergei Ryabkov, deputy foreign minister and representative in the negotiations with the US in Geneva, said in televised statements that he could neither confirm nor exclude the possibility of his country establishing a military infrastructure in Cuba and Venezuela.

As reported by the AP, Ryabkov told Russian television station RTVI that “everything depends on the actions of our American counterparts,” adding that President Vladimir Putin has warned that Russia could take military-technical measures if the United States acts to provoke Russia.

Ryabkov said, moreover, that major differences in the strategies of the two sides cast doubt on the continuity of the negotiations, not least because the United States and NATO rejected Moscow’s main demand: a guarantee that the alliance will not incorporate Ukraine and other former Soviet republics. continue reading

He also claimed that the negotiations “failed” due to sharp disagreements on Moscow’s key demands. “The talks were launched to receive specific answers to specific main issues that were raised, and disagreements remained on those main issues, which is bad,” he had said earlier at a press conference.

Peskov warned of a total breakdown in relations between the two countries if the proposed sanctions against President Putin and other prominent civilian and military leaders are adopted. The measures, proposed by U.S. Democrats, would also affect major Russian financial institutions if Moscow sends troops to Ukraine.

On the other hand, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) failed on Wednesday to lower the tension between Ukraine and Russia, although it offered itself as the forum for dialogue in which Western countries and Moscow can try to find common ground.

Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau, who assumed the yearly chairmanship of the OSCE, proposed to revitalize contacts in this body, in which 57 states participate, in order to reduce the tension between Ukraine and Russia.

The West accuses Russia of concentrating around 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border in recent weeks, in preparation for a possible invasion, an intention denied by Moscow.

The OSCE was created during the Cold War precisely to foster dialogue between blocs and is the only organization dedicated to security in which the United States, the countries of the European Union and Russia are seated at the same table.

Ukraine has dominated this week’s talks between Russia and Western countries, but was not present at either the negotiations in Geneva between Washington and Moscow or those in Brussels between NATO representatives and the Kremlin.

Ukraine, as a member of the OSCE, did participate Wednesday in the first meeting of the organization’s Permanent Council in 2022, where tensions were addressed but no progress was made, except for a commitment to maintain dialogue.

In this context the Russians recalled that the United States promised the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, that NATO would not advance “one inch” eastward if a unified Germany remained in the Atlantic Alliance.

This promise was made to Gorbachev in 1990 by then Secretary of State James Baker, said Alexandr Lukashevich, Russia’s representative to the OSCE, during a press conference in Vienna today, broadcast live on Russian public television.

Baker repeated that promise the same year to Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, Lukashevich said.

The Kremlin has been insisting for months that NATO deceived it with its expansions in 1999 and 2004, which would prompt Moscow’s demand to veto the accession of Ukraine and Georgia.

During his address to the OSCE Permanent Council on Thursday the Russian diplomat accused  the West of being to blame for the degradation of the situation in Europe because of its policy of containment of Russia, and he denied that there was any progress in strategic security.

“Unfortunately, we have not received from our partners an adequate response or any reaction to our proposals,” he noted and admitted that everything points to the fact that Moscow will not receive a “constructive reaction” in the future.

He expressed disappointment that today’s entire discussion revolved around the “alleged threat from Russia,” which Ukraine accuses of preparing an invasion of its territory.

“We are not posing an ultimatum and we propose to solve the problems that have arisen between Russia and other countries, and to find a compromise in this regard. We expect a reaction from our partners in a short period of time; it is not a process of months and years,” he noted.

On Wednesday the United States supported the OSCE as the essential forum for lowering tensions with Russia and securing peace in the region, but warned that it will not accept “blackmail” from Russia or its demand to maintain “spheres of influence.”

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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The US Has Returned 1,019 Migrants to Cuba in 2021

The US Coast Guard returned 39 migrants to Cuba on Friday. (Screen capture)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 27 December2021 — A total of 1,019 Cubans have been returned to the island this year by U.S. authorities, according to data provided by the State newspaper Granma on Sunday. The report also mentioned the return of other groups from Mexico, Bahamas, Cayman Islands and Russia, without specifying the number of people.

On December 24, the U.S. Coast Guard returned to Cuba 39 rafters intercepted in various operations. One of the groups used “a sport fishing boat taken from its owner” whose whereabouts are currently unknown. The 39 returned migrants arrived on the Coast Guard Cutter Raymond Evan in Orozco Bay, Artemisa.

The first of the interceptions occurred on Sunday, December 19, 10 nautical miles off Stock Island, according to a statement issued by the Coast Guard. A day later and at different times, authorities stopped three smaller boats near Key West. continue reading

Last weekend, another 25 Cuban rafters were detained after making landfall at three different locations in Key West, Officer Thomas G. Martin reported Monday on his Twitter account. The Border Patrol provided assistance to the migrants, who were reported in good health.

One of these arrivals was captured on video by Cuban artists María Karla Rivero Veloz and Jean Michel Fernández. “We just saw some rafters who have just arrived, right where the 90-mile buoy is from here to Cuba,” the actress said. The group, made up of six rafters, including a 10-year-old girl, said they left last Saturday at 2 p.m. from Playa Baracoa.

The Cubans were taken into custody and will be able to apply for asylum by demonstrating to an immigration officer that they are afraid to return to their country. If they convince the judge, they must then post a bond. In the best case scenario, they are released with a temporary stay permit in the U.S., known as Parole.

The mobilization of [Cuban] black berets for an illegal departure from Baracoa Beach, in the province of Artemisa, was reported on social networks on Saturday. Rene Almaguer uploaded to his Facebook profile a video in which applause can be heard after a boat managed to escape. “People jumping to get out of Cuba,” said the Havana native who lives in Tampa, Florida. “They got away, I’m glad,” was one of the reactions from users.

Nothing prevented the people leaving the island in small boats, commented Dallann Loraa on the images from the municipality of Bauta in the province of Artemisa, shared by Almaguer, in which people in civilian clothes can be seen carrying machetes.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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Frei Betto and the ‘Excessive Appetite’ of Cubans

Meeting in 2014 between Frei Betto and Fidel Castro. (Granma)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, 27 December 2021 — I remember the first time I read, back in 1996, the Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot by Montaner, Vargas Llosa Jr. and Plinio Apuleyo.

I had no difficulty in identifying [Brazilian activist] Frei Betto as the protagonist of this work, a character who circulates throughout the Americas, with that vocation of being out for blood against everything that represents progress, modernization and development.

Later, when I read the second part, I had no doubt about Betto. Above all, because at that time he was one of the few who had an open door to Fidel Castro’s office to conduct those interviews that sought, unsuccessfully, to sweeten his character, something like turning him into the impossible legend that he is.

Now, we find ourselves once again with a piece of extraordinary value to measure the moral stature and intelligence of Betto, who continues to stick his nose into Cuba, with the same distorted vision of a reality that credits him with deserving the title given to him in the works of Montaner, Vargas Llosa and Apuleyo.

And really, only an idiot can think that Cubans “have a big appetite”, or that “in Cuba there is no hunger” and that it is this voracious appetite that is the origin of the food problems that exist in Cuba. God forbid! And that such things are said by someone who claims in his resume to have spent two weeks on the island in November as “advisor to the regime on the Food Sovereignty and Nutritional Education program, which has the support of FAO, Oxfam and the European Union” is even more scandalous, because it represents a lack of respect for a people who have been experiencing considerable difficulties in obtaining basic products for more than two years.

Or perhaps that this advisory function was done from a placid stay in a hotel run by Spaniards in some cay of the northern part of the island. Which could be anything.

Beto believes that by increasing local food production, through family, urban and suburban agriculture, it is possible to achieve compliance with the Cuban Program for Food Sovereignty and Nutrition Education. Nothing new under the sun.

This is the same program that was questioned by the United Nations, before the pandemic, placing Cuba at the same level as Haiti in terms of countries with the highest food risks in the world. Betto defends continue reading

the regime at all times, pointing out that “it spends more than 2 billion dollars a year to import food, including from Brazil, from which it buys, among other things, rice and chicken (85% of the products that Brazil imports from Cuba are tobacco, cigars and cigars)”.

And, at this point, it should be pointed out that the correct term is “wastes”, because the decision to buy these products for 2 billion dollars means not doing so by betting on the domestic supply, so that an unproductive agricultural sector that fails to meet the needs of the population coexists with these massive imports of goods that could be obtained in Cuba.

Betto should explain why. For Betto it is very easy to blame all the ills of the Cuban agricultural sector on dependence on foreign oil, climatic catastrophes, or the blockade, following the official script, even citing the lack of containers, which are unloaded in other countries and then the products are transported to the island, which makes them more expensive.

He concludes, all of this is a strangulation for the “fragile Cuban economy, inclusion of the country in the list Made in the USA of countries that promote terrorism.”

Not a single assignment of responsibility to the regime.

And then he mentions COVID-19, “which forced the island to close its doors to its main source of foreign currency in recent years, tourism”.  The same as other countries, but Betto refrains from comparing Cuba with Costa Rica or the Dominican Republic, where tourism in 2021 has been a success in travelers and income, while Cuba was slowly drowning. It is optimistic to think about the return of tourists. At the moment, nothing seems to affirm it.

Betto also wants the 243 measures adopted by Trump to reinforce the blockade to be eliminated, but he does not make the slightest comment on the repression suffered by the Cubans on 11J [July 11 demonstrations] when they protested extensively and intensely against that regime that he likes so much, and to whom he spares no words of support and defense.

For him, Cubans only have “a big appetite”. And then, by way of conclusion, he affirms in the key of a revolutionary slogan that “in spite of this dramatic situation, Cuba resists. The entire population, of almost 12 million inhabitants, has access to a basic monthly food basket and to the Health and Education systems free of charge. There are no homeless people or beggars”.

I insist: let him pay a visit to the hundreds of disappeared and detainees after July 11 who are still waiting for the summary trials of Castroism to be condemned to long prison sentences.

Let him leave the comfortable resort and take a walk around Old Havana. For Betto these people do not exist. They do not deserve even the slightest consideration. He is only interested in “selling” the SAN Plan, which is what has paid for his comfortable stay on the island and is the latest wonder of the regime that now thinks it is going to achieve all its objectives, with the participation of the street (as in the times of that “literacy campaign” that was of little use for what it had been programmed for, since it had other undisclosed objectives), which is something he also seems to like when it comes to acting on economic matters (Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, Federation of Cuban Women, trade unions).

Not content with that, Betto returns to the charge saying that “Cubans have eating habits that can be perfectly changed, such as the preference for wheat bread, an imported cereal”.

And, as in the times of the conquest by the Spaniards, because it is no longer possible to take a country further back in history, Betto points to the use of cassava to produce bread (cassava) or corn (which Cuba also imports from the United States) and even coconut flour.

He also wants meat, which is not available, to be replaced by beans, lentils, spinach, peanuts, soybeans and avocado, rich in protein, which are also not produced in sufficient quantities. To end up forgetting the cows and defending soy milk and yogurt (when Cuba does not have soy and must import it).

Who commissioned Betto this study, for which he is sure to charge a high fee? He must be surprised by the conclusions. I have no doubt about it.

Years ago, Fidel Castro was also obsessed with the properties of the moringa [a medicinal tree], which reminded the great Alvarez Guedes of that joke about the rosemary plant (romerillo) that has thrilled several generations of Cubans.

Not content with all the nonsense and idiocy, Betto ended up defending, of course, agroecology, no doubt to give vision and support to one of Raul Castro’s projects that the communist bureaucracy of the regime shelved in a forgotten corner, as is done in Cuba with that which is bothersome. In fact, Betto said he had “visited several rural properties with high productivity that do not use chemical fertilizers” and highlighted the term “property” recalling that it was the Revolution with the Agrarian Reform that gave land titles to farmers and landless peasants.

And yet, he did not have a single reference to the thousands of landowners who were expropriated without compensation by the regime and were left in absolute misery, forced to flee the country. Undoubtedly, Betto sees what he wants to see. This is a feature of Montaner’s, Vargas Llosa’s and Apuleyo’s character description.

If tomorrow Cuba were to evolve towards civic freedoms and market economy, Betto would not have the slightest inconvenience to see the same thing and propose the same guidelines.  What happens is that then, perhaps, he would not be so well received on the island. And his ideas would go unnoticed.

At the end of the day, Betto with his analysis puts any state policy before the priorities of the citizens. He believes in a collectivist model of society, where the means of production are controlled by the state and wealth or prosperity are outlawed, to the extent that they go against the principles he defends. From that weighty and majestic position of moral superiority that the left uses to criticize its rivals, Betto says that Cubans are to blame for what happens to them. And maybe, in this, he is right.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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Public Marches Are Effective Tools of Political Change

Despite repression, public protests in Germany were repeated during the months of September and October 1989, attracting increasing numbers of participants. (DPA)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Sebastián Arcos Cazabón, Miami, 5 December 2021 — Unlike the popular protests of last July 11 and 12, the march called by the Archipiélago platform for Monday, November 15 was announced weeks in advance. The most optimistic put their hopes for rapid change in the march, but they underestimated the repressive capacity of the regime. The most pessimistic criticized the transparency of the announcement, arguing that it gave the regime a chance to prepare, and believed themselves justified when the official repressive deployment kept potential demonstrators at home. To a greater or lesser extent, optimists and pessimists were dissatisfied with the outcome of the announcement.

However one looks at it, disappointment with 15N [15th of November] should not be a reason to dismiss organized marches as tools for political change. After all, popular demonstrations played a key role in the fall of all the totalitarian regimes of Europe, and, surprisingly, few were spontaneous; most were planned in advance. To those who claim that Cuba’s circumstances today are different from those of Central Europe in 1989, I remind them that, beyond the peculiarities of each case, they all shared with Cuba the fundamental characteristics of the totalitarian model, with its strengths and weaknesses.

The case of the GDR, the former communist Germany, is sobering for Cuba because I believe the similarities between the two outweigh the differences. Like Cuba today, the GDR in 1989 was ruled by a hard-line Marxist regime with an extensive and brutal internal security apparatus, the notorious Stasi, mentor of the Cuban DSE [Departamento de Seguridad del Estado = the Department of State Security]. In contrast, dissidence in the GDR was mostly limited to Marxist-revisionist criticisms, and never became as openly anti-communist as did Cuba’s, nor did it reach similar levels of public activism, organization, or representativeness. So harsh was the GDR regime that its leader, Erich Honecker, refused to listen to Gorbachev’s calls for reform, and banned the circulation of Soviet publications. In the GDR of 1989, the regime was stronger and the opposition weaker than in Cuba today. continue reading

When Hungary removed the border fence with Austria in May 1989, tens of thousands of East Germans fled that way to West Germany, forcing Honecker to close the border with Hungary and Czechoslovakia, effectively turning the GDR into an island of intransigence in a sea of transitions. Unable to escape, some 1,500 people demonstrated publicly against the regime on Monday, September 4, in Leipzig, the GDR’s second most populous city. Despite the repression, public protests were repeated in Leipzig every Monday in September, attracting increasing numbers of participants. By Monday, October 2, demonstrators numbered more than 10,000.

Honecker threatened a Tiananmen-style massacre if the demonstrators dared to take to the streets again. On Monday, October 9, more than 70,000 people marched in the streets of Leipzig, and the Stasi did not dare to suppress them. The following Monday more than 120,000 demonstrators came out. Two days later Honecker was dismissed and replaced by his second-in-command. The following Monday, 300,000 demonstrators took to the streets of Leipzig. On November 4 the protest moved on to Berlin with more than 500,000 demonstrators. On November 7, the GDR Council of State resigned in plenum, and on November 9, the Berlin Wall fell.

It is likely that the example of what was happening in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia served as a stimulus for the demonstrators and a brake on the repressive forces. But it is indisputable that, with the exception of the first example, the popular marches that forced the fall of the regime in the former GDR were planned and announced in advance. Unlike its counterparts in Poland and Hungary, the GDR regime had no reformist or revisionist factions, and was united in its reluctance to implement reforms, even economic ones. The Stasi was one of the most efficient repressive apparatuses in the Soviet bloc, and before the September marches they never hesitated to use the most brutal tactics. Despite all this, the courage and perseverance of the demonstrators achieved what seemed impossible.

The 15N convocation was just one of the first of its kind in Cuba — the Ladies in White [Damas de Blanco] and other like-minded groups tried years ago to popularize marches as a tool of public protest. Inevitably, others will have to follow — it took the Germans ten weeks of continuous marches — if Cubans are to rid themselves of Castroism in the short term and with a minimum of violence. Some may fail, and there will be an inevitable cost in repression, but the mere civic exercise of convocation is fundamental and necessary in a country where the state has cultivated absolute hegemony over society for more than half a century. Cubans are beginning to use their atrophied civic musculature, and this civic exercise will give them back the pride and self-esteem necessary to live in a democracy.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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IAPA Press Freedom Award goes to Henry Constantin, Director of ‘La Hora de Cuba’

Cuban independent journalist Constantín lives in Camagüey and is the director of the magazine ’La Hora de Cuba’

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 1 October 2021 — Independent journalist Henry Constantín Ferreiro, editor of the magazine La Hora de Cuba, has won the 2021 Press Freedom Award, granted by the Inter American Press Association (IAPA). Along with the Cuban, the Nicaraguan Juan Lorenzo Holmann Chamorro, manager of the newspaper La Prensa, persecuted by Daniel Ortega’s regime, was also a winner.

The IAPA said in a press release on Friday that the award winners have had to live through “one of the darkest periods” this year and have also been harassed and imprisoned in their respective countries.

The organization noted that Constantín was imprisoned and held incommunicado for ten days after being detained during the July 11 protests against the government on the Island. Along with the Camagüey journalist, two other collaborators of La Hora de Cuba remained under house arrest until August 23.

“Holmann Chamorro and Constantín Ferreiro represent the struggle and determination of independent journalism to keep the population informed, despite the strong reprisals adopted by the totalitarian regimes of Nicaragua and Cuba against critical voices and freedom of the press,” said continue reading

Jorge Canahuati, IAPA president.

Both are also vice presidents of this same organization in their respective countries, which is why Carlos Jornet, head of Argentina’s Commission on Freedom of the Press and Information, insisted that they will not cease “to raise their voices and denounce the atrocities against them and the dozens of journalists who are persecuted, imprisoned and forced into exile.”

The statement notes that the IAPA conducted two investigations, both in Cuba and Nicaragua, and was able to determine that in these countries “journalists have faced similar repressive practices, including arbitrary detentions and interrogations; threats, surveillance and monitoring; restriction of movement and impediments to leave the country; hacking, control and impersonation in social networks; stigmatization, pressure on family members, news sources and advertisers.”

Regarding the investigation on the Island, it was noted that the regime of Miguel Díaz-Canel “detained 11 independent journalists, and that human rights activists and artists suffered the same fate” and their relatives have also been harassed. Among them are mentioned the cases of Esteban Rodríguez, in prison since April 30, and Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca, imprisoned two months later.

The winners of the Press Freedom Award will be honored at a virtual ceremony between the 19th and 22nd of this month, where the chosen winners of the Excellence in Journalism Award 2021 are also invited.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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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.

‘I Didn’t Care If I Died or Lived,’ Says Cuban Rafter Hospitalized in the US

Capote left from Playa Herradura, in Mariel, Artemisa province, along with three other young people who died during the crossing. (Collage)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana | 2 September 2021 — After ten days at sea that left him on the brink of death, Cuban rafter Julio Cesar Capote will be able to begin his asylum process on U.S. soil. “I didn’t care if I died or lived,” the 21-year-old confessed to Telemundo 51 on Wednesday.

Capote was rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard on August 25 in the vicinity of Fowey Rocks, in southern Florida, while sailing in a precarious six-and-a-half-foot boat. Due to his physical injuries and the degree of dehydration in which he was found, the rafter had to be hospitalized.

“I was thinking a lot of things, if I was going to make it, if I was going to die, what was going to happen to me,” Capote told the television channel shortly after being discharged from Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, from where he left accompanied by family members living in the United States.

The young man had his legs bandaged because of the burns he suffered during the crossing, which he made together with three other migrants, who, Capote himself explained to the Coast Guard, had died on the journey.

About the crossing, the rafter reported that the companions who died were young people. He left from Playa Herradura, in Mariel, Artemisa province, together with his uncle, Chenli Yoan Capote, 21, and siblings
Josue Gabriel, 22, and continue reading

Karen Rojas Pareta, 18. “Three days later, the raft capsized and our food, water were dumped, everything,” he said.

“The sun began to burn us and the girl’s and her brother’s nails began to fall off, their hands began to peel, their ribs began to burn and she said ’I can’t take it anymore’ and jumped into the water with her brother. The brother was worse than her; from the time he left he was vomiting, dehydrated, vomiting blood and everything”, says Capote, who then stayed with his uncle, who “had already started to hallucinate.”

At another point “a piece of the raft fell off” and the uncle jumped into the sea to try to rescue the piece, but “the waves were too big and he was carried away.” He spent about ten days adrift until he was found by a citizen who was sailing south of Florida and alerted the Coast Guard.

Regarding the rafter’s legal options, Immigration attorney Willy Alllen told the television channel that, at the Customs office, there is the possibility of being granted the so-called ’parole’, a document with which, after a year and a day, he can opt for residency under the Cuban Adjustment Act.

The lawyer also said that they could eventually send him before an immigration judge, but he stated that cases like Capote’s are isolated, because most migrants intercepted at sea are medically treated and repatriated to Cuba immediately.

At the beginning of last August, a Cuban managed to pass the “Credible Fear” Review on the high seas in the United States. The migrant, identified as Ernesto Urgellés, according to his relatives, was a policeman in Cuba and had been intercepted along with other rafters, who themselves were returned a few days later to the island by the Coast Guard.

Urgellés cannot enter the U.S. while his asylum request is being studied, so he must remain at the Guantánamo base or in some third country that will provisionally accept him.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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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.

Cuban Government’s Silence is Prolonged in Response to the Request to Authorize Humanitarian Flights From the U.S.

Skyway Enterprises had been planning 20 shipments to Havana from July 22 to September 28. (Skyway Enterprises/Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 29 August 2021 — Cuban authorities have not yet authorized the landing on the island of cargo airlines from the United States with humanitarian aid despite the fact that the island is experiencing a collapse in its healthcare system and despite the voices that are clamoring for a humanitarian airlift to bring resources to families and hospitals.

In mid-August, local media in Florida reported that a group of U.S. executives had requested permission from the government of the island a month ago, but that Havana had not yet responded. A silence that has lasted until now.

“So far we do not have permits to land on the island, which the Cuban government must give,” Rey Gonzalez, an executive of IBC Airways, explained to Cubanet last Thursday. “We are not flying to Cuba because we do not have those permits. Once we have those documents to land in the country then we can work with local agencies to send humanitarian aid. But so far we don’t have that.”

It was in early July when cargo airlines IBC Airways and Skyway Enterprises obtained temporary authorization from continue reading

the U.S. Department of Transportation to travel to the island with humanitarian cargo. The permit, which will be in effect until November 30 and was made public on August 13, includes charter flights “for emergency medical purposes, search and rescue, and other travel deemed to be in the interest of the United States.”

In Miami, organizations such as Solidarity Without Borders (Solidaridad sin Fronteras, SSF), have been dedicated to collecting humanitarian aid. Dr. Julio César Alfonso, president of the NGO, told América TeVé that since the announcement was made, they have not stopped receiving donations, but the arrival of medicines, food and supplies to Cuban homes has slowed down.

SSF also presented last week the web page of its program of “direct assistance” to healthcare professionals on the island, with the aim of sending medicines and medical material, which will function as the main link for aid. They also intend to “coordinate different humanitarian assistance operations directly with all the health professionals in Cuba who voluntarily decide to join our support network,” said Alfonso.

While they continue to collect donations, the IBC Airways executive affirms that at the moment it is not known if the Cuban government intends to grant the permits to the airlines. “Unfortunately, we can’t do anything until Cuba grants those landing permits, and there is no information on when or if they will authorize them,” Gonzalez explained.

IBC Airways requested to fly twice a week to Havana until November. The airline reported that it will carry diplomatic mail and 7,500 pounds of humanitarian aid on each flight, in coordination with the CubaMax agency.

Like IBC Airways, Skyway Enterprises is authorized to operate flights to Havana, Villa Clara, Camagüey, Santiago de Cuba and Matanzas. The latter company had scheduled 20 shipments to Havana from July 22 to September 28, after which date it will be able to fly only twice a week to the Cuban capital.

In August of last year, the Trump Administration suspended private charter flights to Cuba as part of a package of sanctions against the island’s government. “The Castro regime uses tourism and travel revenue to fund its abuses and interference in Venezuela,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote on his Twitter account at the time, announcing the decision. “Dictators cannot be allowed to benefit from U.S. travel,” he added.

Two months later, the U.S. government vetoed the takeoff of two cargo flights to Cuba that, according to Skyway Enterprises and IBC Airways, were for “humanitarian” purposes and did not fall under the exceptions for the suspension of air connections between the two countries.

The Department of Transportation consulted with the State Department on the procedure to be followed and finally the U.S. Executive concluded that the flights “would not be in the interest of U.S. foreign policy.”

Cuba’s response was swift. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez described the ban on humanitarian cargo flights as “a ruthless act.” “The Trump administration is stepping up the punishment of Cuban families in both countries right up until now,” he lamented in a message on Twitter.

The silence of the Cuban government is surprising at a time when the country is facing a strong resurgence of the pandemic, aggravated by the lack of oxygen, medicine and doctors, overcrowded hospitals and collapsed funeral services.

In social networks and independent media, photos and videos are circulating showing the deplorable conditions of many hospitals and the complaints of the doctors themselves about the lack of supplies to do their work.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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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.

Cuba’s Official Press Plans to Participate in Social and Popular Control

The Council of Ministers has 30 days to propose and approve the functions, composition and structure at all levels of the new agency, which will replace the ICRT. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 26 August 2021 — Cuban authorities want to update their peculiar approach to information transparency. According to their analysis, when they have silenced some uncomfortable news it is because they needed to defend the Revolution from its “enemies,” but times have changed and the strategy must be different, said Ricardo Ronquillo Bello, president of the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC).

On Wednesday, the official appeared with other communication leaders, on the State TV Roundtable program to talk again about the creation of the Institute of Information and Social Communication (IICS), which will replace the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT).

“In a country that has had to be constructed in a trench, subjected to permanent harassment, one of the things that has happened to us is that, not a few times, silence was part of the strategy to confront the enemies of the Revolution. But in the era of convergence, with a dramatic change in the way communication works, you can no longer bet on silence,” he said.

The official argued that the word “transparency” may generate doubts among those who remember it from the “Soviet glasnost.” “However, in recent years it has been vindicated, turning it into a word of the Revolution that should describe the type continue reading

of operation of Cuban public institutions.”

The Institute, he explained, now opens the possibility of building “a press model that has not been built in the world.” Ronquillo Bello lamented that there are those who defend the emergence of a “parallel system in Cuba that has been growing at times with financing from the United States,” making reference to the independent press, which they continue to try to link with the “empire,” whether or not it receives money from Washington.

In his opinion, the private media are not, contrary to the opinions of others, the solution to the problems of journalism in Cuba, which he did not mention at any time, although he did allude to the material difficulties as if they were the most serious of the problems afflicting the state-owned media.

“In discussing with them, I tell them that we can do something that has never been done anywhere in the world: build a press media system that truly becomes part of the mechanisms of social and popular control,” he said in an unusual statement on which he insisted, making it clear that this was not a slip of the tongue.

“[In the Revolution] the press was often part of the mechanisms of political control. Now we have to encourage the press to be part of the mechanisms of social and popular control. This has to be one of the main horizons of the new institute,” he reiterated.

Humberto Juan Fabián Suárez, vice-president of the Cuban Association of Social Communicators, recalled that communication is one of the three basic pillars of government management, and defended the new institute, which will have the rank of a government ministry, about which he revealed some details that did not dispel practical doubts.

The official said that it has taken nine years to create this body and its gestation involved, in addition to journalists, members of associations and official institutions of communicators and journalists and specialists from radio, television and the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Labor and Social Security and Finance and Prices, as well as the Commission for the Implementation of the guidelines and the Communist Party.

Among the documentation, 82 theses were examined and a comparative law study in communication was carried out, more than 400 people were consulted and 900 opinions were collected, although it is not to be assumed that there was too much diversity in the structuring. “It was not rushed at all,” he added.

Onelio Castillo Corderí, member of the Permanent Working Group for the creation of the IICS, explained that its creation will be accompanied by a body of legislation ranging from a communications law to various decrees and resolutions that will be published in the coming months.

“The Constitution of the Republic defends communication, information and knowledge as citizens’ rights and as a public good of the citizenry,” he said, although in practice Cubans are barred from accessing online any page that the Government considers they should not read, starting with this newspaper or different media from other parts of the world. In addition, in Cuba it is not allowed to practice journalism outside the State and reporters are detained, held in their homes or prevented from traveling for training and attending courses or conferences.

In this context, and when journalism has once again been excluded as an activity that can be exercised outside the State, either as self-employed or in one of the new MSMEs [mipymes = small or medium-sized enterprises], Castillo Corderí argued that the IICS has among its missions “to promote the culture of dialogue and consensus in Cuban society.”

The decision to create the new institute, he insisted, “is a clear expression of the political will to strengthen our democracy based on a higher level of participation of the people in the construction of our economic and social model, in the construction of the destiny for the country we have chosen and the underpinning of the constitutional concept that Cuba is a socialist state governed by the rule of law.”

The Council of Ministers has 30 days to propose and approve the functions, composition and structure at all levels of the new body. Some conclusions can be drawn from the appointments already been made, although it is not expected that the new IICS will bring anything new.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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Costa Rica Gave Refuge to 249 Cubans Between January and April, Versus a Mere 48 the Previous Year

Cubans stranded in Costa Rica during the migration crisis of late 2015 and early 2016. (Capture)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Lorey Saman, Mexico, 24 August 2021 — Costa Rica granted refugee status to 249 Cubans between January and April of 2021, a considerable increase compared to the 48 it granted in the whole of last year. According to the latest figures published by the General Directorate of Migration and Alien Affairs, most of these procedures are filed by people arriving in the country from Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Although Cubans historically did not belong to one of the migrant groups that benefit most from refuge in the Central American nation, the rise in numbers may be related to the special asylum category, which began to be implemented in mid-November and which the Costa Rican government decided to expand at the end of last month.

The process takes into account migrants from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua who “have applied for refugee recognition after January 1, 2010 and before March 18, 2022” and remained “continuously in the national territory during the same period.”

Despite the increase of refugees in the first four months of the year, the Cuban Embassy in Costa Rica continue reading

informed Radio Monumental “that these are not persecuted citizens” and that the migrants left the island legally.

The consular headquarters insisted that the Cubans “are not leaving a nation at war, are not in danger of death, nor do they meet the characteristics to be refugees, but they only seeking to settle in the United States,” the local media quoted the local media as saying.

However, Migración y Extranjería stated last year that the special asylum category was implemented because, since 2014, Costa Rica has registered a dramatic increase in refugee applications from Cubans, a group that is “changing its migratory behavior” and seeking to settle in the country.

With the extension of the special asylum category, Costa Rican authorities intend to provide migrants with legal residence in the country and facilitate the corresponding documentation so that they can carry out work activities.

In 2018, Cuba and Costa Rica signed an agreement on migration matters, in order to enhance cooperation between the two countries in the fight against irregular migration, human smuggling and trafficking, as well as associated crimes.

The Central American country is an obligatory route for Cubans marching towards northern Mexico to cross the border and seek political asylum in the United States. After Joe Biden came to power and announced a more tolerant immigration policy, thousands of Cuban nationals living in countries such as Guyana, Suriname, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Peru and Ecuador, have taken the route to North America.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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Demonstration in Galicia to Condemn ‘The Criminal Regimes of Cuba and Venezuela’

In July, Oleiros (Spain) was the scene of a rally to demand freedom and democracy for the people of Cuba. (autono.net)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 22 August 2021 — Dozens of vehicles staged a caravan protest through the streets of the Coruña city municipality of Oleiros, in Spain, on Saturday to demand that Spanish politicians condemn the violence in Cuba and Venezuela and to demand the removal of the statue of Ernesto Che Guevara erected in a traffic circle in this municipality.

The demonstration, which was called by the Soberanía Ciudadana platform, left at 12:00 noon from O Miradoiro Street, near the Nirvana traffic circle, where the Che Guevara monument is located.

This demonstration takes place almost a month after the government of Zaragoza approved, in an extraordinary session, that Che Guevara Street will from now on be called Ana María Suárez (a Zaragoza victim of the jihadist attack in Cambrils), and the park with the same namesake will be named after the Paralympic athlete Teresa Perales.

The cars with Cuban flags circulated to continue reading

the park of Santa Cruz and from there went to the nucleus of Santa Cristina. During the tour the drivers sounded their horns during the march that ended in front of the town hall of Oleiros with a loud honking.

The participants demanded the removal of the “infamous monument” — in allusion to the statue of Che’s face — and of other symbols in the city hall, said Cuban Frank Vega, of the Association of Victims of Castroism, such as the name of Ernesto Che Guevara Avenue. “We ask for the removal of these symbols for being illegal and for constituting a persecution of the victims of Castroism.”

In addition, with the mobilization they seek to “put the political class on the ropes” so that “the violence against the peoples of Cuba and Venezuela is condemned for humanitarian reasons,” reiterated Vega.

“Any Spanish politician who does not condemn violence cannot stay one minute more in Spanish institutions,” the spokesman remarked. Thus, the demonstrators, who also carried flags of Venezuela, Spain and Galicia, joined in the proclamations of “SOS Cuba” and “SOS Venezuela”.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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Cuban President Diaz-Canel Misinforms, Comparing Cuba’s Decree-Law 35 with European Legislation

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, compares a European communication of recommendations with his decree. (EFE / ACN / Ariel Ley Royero / File)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 19 August 2021 — The Government is up in arms against the criticism raised by Decree-Law 35, which is intended to penalize false news in Cuba, its dissemination and the publication of “offensive messages or defamations that harm the prestige of the country”. The slogan now is to allege that there are countries with similar norms, but for the comparison they have chosen the wrong example.

Miguel Díaz-Canel has retweeted a user’s message stating, “They brand the Decree 35 in Cuba as an ’attack on human rights’, for things that operate in practically all countries: the fight against disinformation and cyberbullies. Its equivalent, the Action Plan against Disinformation has existed in the European Union since 2018.”

The president introduced the tweet with the message: “Sovereign Cuba says it, and honest experts from all over the world confirm it: our Legal Decree 35 is against disinformation and cyber-lying.”

The “expert” is Carlos González Penalva, who defines himself as a “stoic communist, philosophical rationalist” and head of Communication of the United Left in Gijón (Asturias). Far from being an expert in the field, the curriculum of Díaz-Canel’s continue reading

referent indicates that he began his studies in philosophy. The rest are from courses and congresses, most of them events in Cuba.

But the problem is not the source, but the content. González cites the Action Plan Against Disinformation that has existed in the European Union since 2018 as “equivalent,” but any resemblance between the two is purely coincidental.

The plan was approved on the occasion of the 2019 elections to the European Parliament and the holding of up to 50 electoral processes of different ranks in the member states. According to the text, its fundamental objective is to prevent interference by other countries in these and future elections, and it cites Russia, having documented its attempted interference on previous occasions.

“According to the EU Hybrid Fusion Cell, disinformation by the Russian Federation22 poses the greatest threat to the EU. It is systematic, well-resourced, and on a different scale to other countries,” it quotes in the text.

In the text, the EU urges the Member States to strengthen their national legislation to the same end and to link up to the European system. As far as disinformation is concerned, the plan foresees that the platforms ensure the control of political advertising, close false accounts and detect fake bots in order to eliminate them.

The text re-emphasizes that the recommendations “are part of a package of measures designed to ensure free and fair European elections (…). The work of an independent media is essential to the functioning of a democratic society,” it adds.

Finally, the document calls on the States to promote literacy in disinformation to the general public, as well as the creation of expert bodies in this field. In no case does it have, as in the Cuban decree, the rank of law nor, therefore, the capacity to sanction. Therefore, it does not work as an example.

In previous days, Cuban authorities have cited other European examples, such as that of France. The French law was born specifically from the EU Plan and was approved in 2018 with this intended purpose: to curb the dissemination of false information.

It was very controversial in their country among the opposition and press associations, which denounced the censorship mechanism that could involve the right to be able to remove “any assertion or imputation of an inaccurate or misleading fact”. The law provides for penalties of up to one year’s imprisonment in the most serious cases (cyberterrorism), but its approval required agreement on an amendment specifying that in order to take serious measures, such as blocking a web page, it must be considered proven that it was done “deliberately” and not only “in bad faith.”

Moreover, before reaching this point, the judge must determine, within a period of 48 hours, whether such false information has been disseminated “artificially or automatically” and “massively.” The intervention of a judge is decisive in the French regulation as well as in the German one (also cited by the Cuban authorities) and the Spanish one, which has not yet been approved due to the parliamentary traffic jam resulting from the pandemic. All these countries have separation of powers and the judiciary acts independently of the government.

The clearest example of this is that the French government itself was affected by its law. The Executive launched a campaign through Twitter to urge the population to exercise their right to vote in the European elections, which was deflated when the social network penalized it with its algorithm, considering that it was massive electoral propaganda lacking transparency (neither the funds nor the sender had been credited).

The governments of European countries that have tried to adopt rules following EU guidelines have all been the target of criticism from the opposition, because the fear of abuse exists and, in fact, there are cases in which people have been brought to trial for offenses expressed on social networks. But most of them are solved with an administrative fine and always depend on the courts, outside the governments.

The Cuban government has not yet specified the sanctions that will result from the violation of the rules of Legal Decree 35, but it has made a bad start by trying to match European legislation. In Latin America there are also laws against disinformation in several countries which imply fines, imprisonment and censorship, from the most obvious cases such as Nicaragua or Venezuela, to others such as Chile, which impose prison sentences for the “dissemination of false news that disturb the social order or cause panic in the population.” But Cuban authorities have not chosen to make that comparison.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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The New Address of the Cuban Embassy in Washington is Oswaldo Paya Way

Caption: Oswaldo Payá Way is in front of the Cuban embassy in Washington. (EFE)

14ymedio biggerEFE, via 14ymedio, Miami, 3 August 2021 — U.S. Senators from both parties approved on Monday the naming of the Washington street in front of the Cuban Embassy in honor of the late Cuban opposition leader Oswaldo Payá (1952-2012).

Cuban-American Senator Marco Rubio said yesterday that the change pays “a tribute to the life and legacy of one of the island’s most important civic leaders who paid the ultimate price in defense of the democratic future.”

For Rosa María Payá, daughter of the deceased dissident, Oswaldo Payá Way will be “a permanent reminder of the urgency of stopping the regime’s impunity.”

“My father’s legacy lives on in the struggle for freedom and the rights of the Cuban people,” the activist told EFE when the project was presented. continue reading

The approval comes in the midst of the protests that have erupted in Cuba since July 11 against the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel and which have been echoed in various demonstrations of support around the world, especially in Miami and Washington.

“Following the historic protests led by Cuban Americans in front of the regime’s embassy in our nation’s capital last Monday, another symbol of the tenacity of the Cuban people in their quest for freedom will be etched for eternity,” Rubio added.

Payá founded the Christian Liberation Movement (MLC) in 1988 to promote democracy and civil liberties through peaceful resistance.

A decade later, the organization created the Varela Project, which sought to advance democratic reforms under a provision of the Cuban Constitution that allowed the public to introduce bills.

Changing the name of the street “is a small but significant step that will force all those who visit or write to the embassy to remember not only Payá, but all those who have challenged the cruelty and oppression of the Cuban communist government.”

Payá’s family has maintained that the car crash in which the opposition leader and dissident Harold Cepero died on July 22, 2012 was caused by agents of the Castro regime.

Payá and Cepero were traveling in a car that went off the road. The car was driven by the young Spanish conservative politician Ángel Carromero, who was sentenced to prison in Cuba for voluntary manslaughter, but was repatriated to serve his sentence in Spain, where he was released within a few days.

In 2012, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution honoring the life of the Cuban opposition leader and calling for an impartial investigation into his death.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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More than 187,000 Cubans Participated in 584 protests During July

A young man is arrested by police and State Security agents during the July 11 protests in Havana. (Capture)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Madrid, 2 August 2021- – The massive demonstrations of July 11 “transformed Cuba”. The latest report of the Observatorio Cubano de Conflictos (OCC/Cuban Observatory of Conflicts) is conclusive in this regard: more than 187,000 Cubans participated in a total of 584 demonstrations throughout the island last month.

Not only has the number of protests in Cuba increased, notes the Miami-based NGO, but, above all, the number of people involved in them. The growth is dramatic compared to June, when 1,600 Cubans took to the streets in 249 protests, most of them small acts by a few or one individual.

“The public has been incubating a deep resentment fueled by the indolence of the authorities in the face of growing misery and their disastrous management of the Covid-19 pandemic,” says the Observatory, which notes that the song Patria y Vida “galvanized this sentiment on a national scale and became an anthem of national insubordination.”

Faced with this, the organization denounces, the response was “police and paramilitary brutality… The repressive method is continue reading

no longer a surgical one against organizations and dissidents but a massive one: neighborhood raids, beatings, expeditious sentences,” details the OCC, which includes the figures of detainees from Cubalex and Human Rights Watch: 745 people.

“The military caste has found that the citizenry has lost its fear of the repressive apparatus, so now they turn to terror,” the report says. “This is a war against all the people.”

The Observatory points out that of the protests in July, 435 (74%) were related to political and civil rights, and the remaining 149 (26%) were linked to the demand for economic, social and cultural rights.

It also highlights the “public break of renowned artists with legal trade union institutions (UNEAC), the denunciations of relatives and friends in support of the prisoners and disappeared, as well as the graphic documentation of repressive brutalities” in the second half of the month.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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Mexico Will Send Cuba Two Ships With Medical Supplies and Food

SEMAR [Secretariat of the Navy] personnel ready the boats with aid to be sent to Cuba. (Video Capture)
14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Mexico, 23 July 2021 — This Sunday, Mexico will send two vessels of the Secretariat of the Navy to Cuba with health aid such as syringes, T-type oxygen tanks with 9,500 liters and mouth coverings, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) said in a statement.

The shipment also includes foodstuffs — powdered milk, beans, wheat flour, cans of tuna, cooking oil — and diesel. The agency said that the assistance sent is “in line with the Mexican Government’s policy of international solidarity.”

The SRE’s announcement came on the same day that the U.S. government toughened its measures towards the island by sanctioning the Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba (FAR), Alvaro Lopez-Miera, and the elite military unit known as the boinas negras [Black Berets], who it held responsible for the repression of the continue reading

anti-government protests of July 11 in Cuba.

In them, thousands of people shouted “freedom,” “down with the dictatorship,” and “homeland and life,” in the midst of an unprecedented economic and health crisis, and hundreds of people, including some minors, were arrested.

The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has expressed its opposition to the U.S. sanctions and has called for them to be lifted.

Regarding the embargo on Cuba, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, after participating in a meeting of the United Nations (UN) Security Council in mid-July, said: “The blockade on Cuba and other countries where extreme sanctions are applied are causing serious impacts in terms of suffering and humanitarian conditions that we should all respect.”

With the dispatch of the two vessels, the Mexican Foreign Minister pledged to send more oxygen and Mexican-made respirators, used during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, if needed.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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Cuba Is Yours

Demonstration this July 11 in Alqízar, Artemisa. (Screen capture)

14ymedio bigger 14ymedio, Federico Hernández Aguilar, San Salvador, 22 July 2021 — Cuba is yours, brother. This island belongs to you, sister. Your face is reflected in its waters. In the blue of its skies, the clouds of your dreams are roaming. But in this island land they have wanted — how redundant! — to isolate you, they have wanted to drown your voice for many years, to muzzle your conscience, to force you to embrace a destiny that was not, is not, has never been yours.

For more than six decades, equivalent to the entire life of a human being, hundreds, thousands of Cubans were born, grew up and died breathing a rarefied air, contaminated by the hegemonic discourse of a group of privileged people who came to believe they were eternally in power.

And yet, sister, brother: do you hear, do you perceive, have you seen how the wind has turned on the coasts, have you observed how intensely the sun has renewed itself on the horizon? On July 11, you turned history upside down. You made your footsteps echo from one corner to the other of the island that was always yours and whose possession you now claim.

They were so determined to instill fear in you that they ended up continue reading

snatching it away from you. They never knew how much strength they were giving to your yearning for freedom when they silenced you, when they locked you in cold dungeons, when they covered you with chains. Today they know. Today the fear is theirs.

You have taken the fear out of your little house and put it in their official residences. You no longer tremble; they do. Their power, once so immense, is now blurred, and you have achieved this by putting your feet on the street, joining the spontaneous march of others who have also discovered that the future belongs to them.

José Martí looks at you from the height of his white statue. His thought, lucid, crosses your memory and makes your lungs expand: “Like bones to the human body, the axle to the wheel, the wing to the bird, and the air to the wing, so is liberty the essence of life. Whatever is done without it is imperfect.”

And you have had enough of the imposed imperfections, of the undeserved poverty, of the hunger that eats away at the entrails, of the yearning, the longing, that eats away at the soul.

Martí watches. He greets your heroic deed with the power of a word that tyranny tried to usurp, but that today recovers its original brilliance in the cries of freedom that make your heart vibrate. That hero thus offers you the warmth of his breath; he affirms your ankles; he pushes you to the unprecedented struggle. And you watch him lean from his pedestal to whisper in your ear: “He who lives in an autocratic creed is the same as an oyster in its shell, which only sees the prison that encloses it and believes, in the dark, that this is the world; freedom gives wings to the oyster.”

And it is true, brother, sister of Cuba: you have grown wings. In vain did they think they were going to turn this island into your shell. In moments you have reached the elevation that Martí wished for the people for whom he bled to death at Dos Ríos. Between him and you there is a real, indestructible bridge, stronger than any ideology to connect your aspirations with those of every man or woman who loves and defends freedom, their own and that of others.

Cuba is yours, sister. The nation belongs to you, brother. It is present in that woman who demands bread for her children, in the rebelliousness of that young man who demands respect for his dreams, in the slogan of that group of poets, musicians, journalists, citizens who, together, shoulder to shoulder, go out today to the public square to chant the pair of words that is burying 62 years of opprobrium: “¡Patria Y Vida!” [Homeland and Life].

And so it is. Do not doubt it. Because life is yours, brother, sister of Cuba, yours will also be the homeland!

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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