New sinks at the José Luis Arruñada school. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Marcelo Hernández, Havana, February 7, 2019 — A mobile phone, and social media as an amplifier, has been a sufficiently powerful weapon to change things at a primary school in Havana. For decades, deterioration has been advancing in the bathrooms of the José Luis Arruñada school, in the municipality of Plaza of the Revolution, until this January a mother, tired of waiting, brought about a change in the situation.
Almost three weeks ago, the photos taken in the bathroom of La Arruñada, as the school is popularly known, sparked a heated debate on the internet. The toilets with broken flushing mechanisms, the stalls without doors, and a plastic tank filled with water instead of a sink reflected the deplorable situation that the students had to face every day. Many of them preferred to pass the eight hours they spent at school without going to the bathroom in order to avoid the bad smells and filth.
The bathroom’s flushing mechanism now functions. (14ymedio)
A few days after the photos were published on social media and were republished on the pages of 14ymedio, a committee from the Ministry of Education visited the school and began the process of repairing the bathrooms. Now there are sinks where water flows, each toilet can flush, and privacy has returned to each stall. The students and their parents haven’t stopped marveling.
“The next thing will be to photograph the lunch they give them in the cafeteria, to see if it improves,” joked a student. Perhaps she is right.
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 house of María Elena López was fragile long before the fury of the tornado struck the island’s most populous city. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 5 February 2019 — María Elena López has spent more than a week with her “nerves on edge.” Entrenched in the back part of her home in Luyanó, Havana, she saw on January 27 how the walls were cracked and the rain came through the roof in torrents when the tornado hit. Five days later, an architect determined that her house should be demolished because of the damages it suffered that fateful night.
López lives at 169 Quiroga Street and last Friday told 14ymedio about the causes for a sadness that started long before the blowing of those 300 km/h winds that twisted the lives of thousands of Havanans that last Sunday of January.
López spent years asking for a home, between paperwork and postponements. Finally she managed to get a state-owned place that she could put in her name, commission the plans for a complete renovation, and request a subsidy to begin the work. However, the gusts of the storm destroyed her plans.
“All this cost me years of work and I’ve lost it in a few minutes,” María Elena López reflected this Monday. (14ymedio)
The help for the reconstruction that she requested took so long that this willful Havanan planted herself in front of the office of the Institute of Housing of her municipality. She didn’t move until she obtained the wood and the workers to brace the facade of the deteriorated place. “They finished the work on Wednesday and the tornado came on Sunday,” she remembers.
That coincidence saved her life. “If I hadn’t made demands as I did, the house would have come down that night with all of us inside,” she reckons. continue reading
According to official data, in the Cuban capital some 3,780 houses were damaged by the weather event and 372 of them totally collapsed. López’s house was fragile long before the fury of the tornado struck the island’s most populous city.
Now, the fight is to preserve the space. The majority of the owners affected prefer not to move from the place. Vandalism and the fear of “losing out because they aren’t there” mean that they remain among the ruins, as they wait for authorities to evaluate the damage. It is a task of patience and of nerves, where whoever gets tired will have the worst lot.
So, taking refuge in the shade cast by the only wall that remains standing in a house, underneath some tree on the sidewalk, or protected in the entryway of a neighbor, the tornado’s victims wait for a government inspection to put into numbers the damage they suffered and facilitate the purchase of construction materials at preferential prices.
Although electrical service is practically recovered in the most affected areas, the inventory of the destruction has barely begun. Especially that which details the damages suffered in domestic infrastructure, very difficult to calculate because they include not only the architectural impacts but also the lost of appliances, household items, and personal belongings.
Monday afternoon many people came to the processing office in Luyanó to obtain the documents that would permit them to access a loan. (14ymedio)
“They can help me to buy cement, but who’s going to help me buy a refrigerator, the mattress I lost, and the clothing that ended up I don’t know where,” lamented a mother of two children this Monday in Luyanó. “All this cost me years of work and I’ve lost it in a few minutes,” she reflected.
The government has noted that it will implement a discount for purchasing construction materials equivalent to 50% of the price, but official conduct on other occasions awakens mistrust. The traditional shortage of steel, sand, and bricks leads the tornado’s victims to fear that the solution could be delayed for months or decades.
At age 64 and with the tiredness of one who has traveled a difficult path, María Elena López says that five days after the tornado “nobody [from the government] has come” to her house. An architect who was inspecting a nearby house agreed to assess the damage. “He came and explained everything to me.” The verdict was like a bucket of cold water: “It has to be demolished.”
“Friday night a soldier came here, he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, don’t worry, we’re going to do your house, but I don’t even know what his name was,” she laments.
“After it’s demolished, where will I go?” López asks in a small voice. She fears that she will have to start from scratch on that bureaucratic path that she knows so well. “I have to repair the whole house but they tell me that the paperwork for the subsidy they once awarded me but they never gave me are overdue,” she says.
Abundant in the place are long faces, nervous gestures, and gazes that don’t miss a single gesture of the state employees who fill out the forms. (14ymedio)
Near her house, the government set up the Processing Office for the victims from that area of Luyanó. Monday afternoon many people came to obtain the documents that would permit them to access a loan. Some leave satisfied, some complain of the bureaucracy, because if “a paper isn’t missing, a stamp is.”
Abundant in the place are long faces, nervous gestures, and gazes that don’t miss a single gesture of the state employees who fill out the forms. Added to the atmosphere charged with impatience are the questions that are left without answers and that no one knows how to clear up. “When will they begin to rebuild the houses?” “With this subsidy will we be able to access construction materials that are sold in stores in convertible pesos?” “All the materials that are on the list, are they actually available?”
In the improvised office on Monday, a retiree approached the table of the officials who note the information of the most affected. “I have children abroad but I don’t want to call them for this,” says the woman. “We’ve spent days in which we cannot cook or do anything, luckily people from the church bring us food each day.”
In a pocket of her bathrobe, the only garment she saved from the tornado, the woman carries a fork and a spoon, the little she is left with from what was once her kitchen, her house, and her home.
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.
A polling place in Cuba during a previous election. School children “guard” the ballot boxes and salute each voter as they cast their ballot.. (14ymedio)
EFE, via 14ymedio, Havana, February 5, 2019 — Cuba will set up 195 special polling places in transport facilities, hotels, and other spaces for voting in the referendum on the new constitution that will be held on February 24, official media reported this Monday.
The special polling places will be set up in bus and train terminals, airports, student residences, hospitals, and hotels with the aim of facilitating the voting of citizens.
The secretary of the National Electoral Commission (CEN), María Esther Bacallao, explained that those who cannot go to their assigned polling places for justified reasons will have the option to go “to a special one or some other one,” as reported by the state-owned Cuban News Agency. continue reading
Likewise, it indicated that people affected by the tornado that last week devastated several municipalities of Havana will have guaranteed participation in the constitutional referendum.
The CEN secretary specified that the installation of 25,348 polling places is anticipated, 7.6% of them located in private houses, and that districts will increase to 12,635 in the entire country.
On February 10 a dynamic test will be conducted at the polling places located abroad, prior to the votes scheduled for February 16 and 17.
A similar test will be applied at the polling places on the island on Sunday the 17th, one week before the referendum.
The final draft of the new constitution is made up of 229 articles, 11 headings, 2 special provisions, 13 transitory, and 2 final, after which were incorporated 760 amendments, which means that 60% of the first draft was modified.
Although political campaigns are not permitted, on social media the government and the pro-government organizations are carrying out an active promotion in favor of Yes, facing a sector of the citizenry that shows itself openly against it under the slogan #YoVotoNo (I’m voting no) or #YoNoVoto (I’m not voting).
In Cuba, with a population of 11.2 million inhabitants, more than eight million citizens are eligible to vote on the text of the new constitution that was submitted to a popular debate and in December was approved by the National Assembly.
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.
A majority of negative votes could not be hidden or falsified. (EFE)
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, February 4, 2019 — If someone wanted to find a definition of what is most current and important from what is happening in Cuba, they could assert that today there is happening a transition of authority from symbol to force of law.
For almost half a century Cuba was basically driven by the personal decisions of Fidel Castro. There are at least two different lines of reasoning, but not opposing ones, to explain how it was possible that an entire nation could be submitted to the will of one individual. One is fear, the other, fascination that cancels all disobedience.
But as fascination can be interpreted in this case as a shift, a collective sublimation to not recognize the humiliating reality one gives into under the pressure of fear, then everything is reduced to the intimidating authority that was built around one person who tried to embody all the symbols: the homeland, the flag and the history, among others. continue reading
This authority distributed shares of power among those who made up what later came to be called ’the historic generation’ of the Revolution. All those who were chosen by him formed a reduced army of untouchable archangels whose superiority depended on their degree of concomitance with the supreme leader. On that personal closeness depended the fear or fascination that they provoked.
From the first of January of 1959 until the constitution of 1976 was proclaimed, the country was practically governed at whim by a pair of military boots. “We are not going to leave even a single trace of private property”; “We will build socialism and communism at the same time”; “We will produce 10 million tons of sugar”; “Here we are going to build a dam”; “We will surround Havana with a cordon of coffee plantations”; “We will have better cows than in Switzerland, the biggest zoo in the world, and hundreds of schools in the countryside to combine study with work.”
The ostensible failure provoked by such political will ended up leading the country to compromise its sovereignty to the dictates of the Soviet Union, the only provider of what was euphemistically called “a just trade between two peoples.” The leaders of the USSR demanded guarantees to continue maintaining “the pipeline” of the subsidy and to convince them it was necessary to carry out the First Congress of the Party in 1975 and, one year later, present a new constitution.
The head of the drafting commission of that constitution was Blas Roca, the last Communist leader from the republican era, as a guarantor that the Law of laws would be backed by the tenth five-year plan of the Soviet Union (1976-1980). As payment for the solidarity of the older brother, the Cuban constitution recognized in its text “the brotherly friendship and cooperation of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries.”
With the formalities covered, the supreme leader continued behaving with his habitual political will. On one occasion in which a representative warned him that what had been planned could not be carried out because it contradicted a law, the commander-in-chief responded that if a law didn’t permit an aim of the Revolution, the solution was to change that law immediately.
Those were the times in which the representative Fidel Castro, embodiment of authority emanating from the symbol, inspiration of all fears and of all fascination, consumed at least half the time that the Parliament sessions lasted in front of the microphone. The last feats of his political will as a response to the desmerengamiento* (dismantling and collapse) of the socialist bloc of eastern Europe were to decree the Special Period, put the American dollar into circulation, drive the Battle of Ideas, and announce the Energy Revolution.
In the summer of 2006 an unexpected intestinal ailment forced the supreme leader to rest and transfer his legally recognized powers to his brother Raúl Castro. Knowing that he lacked the charisma of the comandante en jefe, the division general understood that the moment had arrived to work out compulsory norms to guarantee the continuity of the system.
It was then that reforming the constitution of the republic began to be discussed, more to adapt it to the reality of the new times, where there was no longer a socialist bloc, than to retract what had been proposed until that time.
The general president had ten years to accustom the governed to the idea that he was the successor. Although he never received public congratulations from his brother for his performance, not even a lukewarm approval of what he was doing, in November of 2016 it became evident that from that moment on Raúl Castro would make the decisions, among other reasons because there no longer remained anyone alive with the power to give him orders.
Once the main influence that emanated from the authority of the symbol had disappeared and calculating that biology would probably give the successor at most a five-year grace period, it could be concluded that from now it only remained to appeal to the pure and harsh force of the law to subdue the citizenry. That appears to have been the essential reason for formulating a new constitution.
This law of laws not only imposes that the socialist system is irrevocable, but also gives the system’s sympathizers the right to use arms against whomever would try to change it and confirms again that the only permitted party, the Communist Party, is “the superior ruling political force of society and the State.”
That constitution will be submitted on February 24 to the consideration of an electorate that is very distant from the one that in 1976 overwhelmingly approved a constitution that was practically mirrored those that ruled in the socialist countries.
This new constitution, if ratified, will institutionalize the dictatorship of one party and, as a consequence, will be the instrument of control of some inheritors, chosen for their loyalty, who will no longer need the merits of heroism nor the revolutionary mystique to govern.
The factor in favor of the government in this referendum, in addition to those who think that socialism still has reserves to solve the problems of the country, is the apathy of those who believe that the new constitution will change nothing and that even if the majority decided to vote No, nevertheless, they would implement it.
Others bet that a majority of negative votes could not be hidden or falsified and that, by performing the miracle of a massive civic rebellion at the ballot box, sooner or later it would be known and the government would have to recognize its defeat.
Not being able to implement the force of law and without any possibility to revive the authority of the symbol, they would only be left with two options, either resorting to plain force or packing their bags.
*Translator’s note: Fidel Castro coined the term “desmerengamiento,” which can be literally translated as “the collapse of the cake” to refer to the dismantling of the USSR and the collapse of the Eastern European Socialist Bloc.
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 activist Hugo Damián Prieto Blanco was prosecuted for the crime of “pre-criminal dangerousness.” (Courtesy)
14ymedio, Havana, February 4, 2019 — The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH), headquartered in Madrid, has denounced this Monday the “growing aggression of the police against activists demonstrating peacefully for the No vote on the [referendum on the] Constitution” coinciding with the presentation of the report of arbitrary detentions in January.
Their count of this type of arrests in the first month of the year is 179, a higher figure than that provided by the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), which registered 144 in the same period of time.
According to the Observatory, the police detained dozens of activists who were promoting a No vote on the Constitution or were carrying out peaceful acts to show their disapproval of the text. continue reading
“The government of Miguel Díaz-Canel has prohibited any reference to No in the media and uses the police to persecute the activists who try to ask for the negative vote and who are at an absolute disadvantage of means and resources,” says the body in a press release.
“The state is applying its powerful propaganda and police machinery to crush any dissidence regarding the new Constitution. Therefore, we reiterate that the February 24 referendum does not have the minimal democratic guarantees.
“We alert the international community of the imminence of new repressive episodes against independent civil society, as the referendum approaches and in light of the critical situation of the city of Havana, after the passing of the destructive tornado,” denounced Alejandro González Raga, executive director of the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights.
The network of observers that provides data to the organization from the island counted 94 repressive actions against women and 85 against men, with Havana, Matanzas, and Villa Clara being the most affected provinces.
The OCDH has also expressed its concern about the response of the government, hampering or impeding access of civil humanitarian aid to areas affected by the tornado of Sunday, January 27 in Havana.
The Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation also made public today its data from this January, and warns in its report of the continuation of harassment and physical assaults against Cuban activists, “orchestrated by the powerful and ubiquitous political secret police.”
This number of arrests and detentions, “generally of a short duration,” is lower than that reported in December, when the CCDHRN received reports of 244 arbitrary detentions. The report also includes “21 cases of harassment and 4 physical assaults,” which are attributed to the conduct of State Security, the “instrument of social control and intimidation widely used by the regime.”
The organization broadcast its concern for “the prolonged internment of the Christian Democrat political leader Eduardo Cardet, who should have been released from prison months ago.” The most visible face of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) is part of the more than “one hundred political prisoners subjected to subhuman conditions,” specifies the report.
In the text, the CCDHR also laments the sentence against Hugo Damián Prieto, who was imprisoned for a year for the crime of “pre-criminal dangerousness.” The organization warns that the opposition figure “suffers from several ailments of the digestive system, contracted in several prison internments” previously.
Amnesty International and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have denounced Cuban law for punishing citizens with sentences of one to four years in prison for a supposed crime that they have not yet committed, according to articles 73 to 84 of the Penal Code.
Throughout 2018 the CCDHRN counted 2,873 arbitrary arrests on the island, some 240 per month. The independent body also denounced the harassment of activists who only “tried to exercise basic civil and political rights.”
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.
Cuban bishops criticized “the absolute character of Marxist-Leninist ideology” in the constitution. (COCC)
14ymedio, Havana, February 4, 2019 — Cuban bishops published a message this Sunday in which they criticize the new constitution, considering it to “exclude the effective exercise of the right to plurality of thought.” The constitution, which will be submitted to referendum on February 24, only recognizes “a single ideology,” the text points out.
The members of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba (COCC) warn that in the preamble to the constitution it is said that “only in socialism and in communism does the human being achieve his full dignity.” A phrase which, they believe, excludes “other visions about man, society, and the universe that do not assume Marxist-Leninist ideology.” continue reading
The prelates recall that José Martí defined a constitution as “a living and practical law that cannot be built with ideological elements” and call for plurality to be “safeguarded” in the constitution that will replace the current one, in force since 1976.
The message of the Catholic prelates praises the fact that to Article 15, which states that “the Cuban state is secular,” has been written so that it respects “the right of each person to believe, live, and express the values that correspond to his faith.” However, they point out that that definition contradicts the preamble where “the absolute character of Marxist-Leninist ideology” is emphasized.
“The freedom to practice one’s religion is not the simple freedom to have religious beliefs but the freedom of each person to live according to their faith and to express it publicly, having as a limit the respect for the other,” the bishops note. For which, the Church must have access to education, and be able to “build buildings” and “acquire and own goods suitable for its activity.”
One of the first actions taken by the revolutionary government after the arrival to power of Fidel Castro, in January of 1959, was the expropriation of the institutions that were administrated by different religious orders. Well-known on the island among them were the schools of the Brothers of La Salle and those run by the Marist brothers.
For six decades, the state has maintained total control of primary, secondary, and university education, and officially Catholic schools and universities are not permitted. Cubans can only take courses for computer science, theology, graphic design, English, or business administration run by the island’s parishes.
After Pope John Paul II’s visit to the island in January of 1998, authorities changed the constitution to change Cuba from an atheist state to a secular one, a gesture that opened the door to a greater religious liberty, after long years of atheistic intolerance, persecution, and punishment for the faithful.
In the section of the message dedicated to marriage and the family, the bishops appreciate that the definition of “marriage as a union between two persons” has been eliminated, which the draft version of the constitution put forward in Article 68, but signal that in the current Articles 81 and 82 “the path is opened so that in the future the union of two persons of the same sex is recognized as marriage with all its prerogatives.”
“We lament that there has not been substantial change regarding marriage and the family,” they add and also criticize that the new constitution does not recognize that “the family has an original and irreplaceable function in the education of children” which includes the power “to choose the type of education” that they will receive.
To conclude, the prelates deal with the economic aspects detailed in the consitutional text and praise that the recognition of private property has been included, but they suggest that the reference “in relation to foreign investment must be extended to [give the right to invest in the country to] the Cuban citizen.”
The bishops exhort that “each citizen, with a responsible vote from his conscience, contribute to the building of a society in which all Cubans feel respected in our rights.” This exercise must be aimed at guaranteeing “a dignified and prosperous life with the participation of all without exception.”
This is the second message from the bishops about the constitution in fewer than four months. In the previous one, dated October 2018, they passed over several criticisms of the constitutional text that was still being drawn up. On that occasion the prelates emphasized that the constitution “must reflect the characteristics of society,” since it determines the life of citizens, their future, coexistence, and their “participation in the making of decisions” of the country.
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.
It’s a matter of going to the most affected areas to bring help to those who have lost the roof from their house and spent days sleeping in the elements. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Luz Escobar, February 2, 2019 — In the living room of the singer Haydée Milanés a group of artists and independent journalists sorts the donations sent by friends and neighbors. Clothing, towels, sheets, toys, shoes, candles, as well as powdered milk, cans of meat, cookies, bread, and bottled water.
They have been mobilized via social media to return to the streets of the areas of Havana most affected by last Sunday’s tornado. The previous days they went to Luyanó. Now it’s time to help the people of Regla.
Among the artists one notes some well-known faces, like the musicians Jorgito Kamankola and Athanai or the film director Carlos Lechuga. At the stroke of one a caravan of eight cars filled with clothing and food goes out. continue reading
When they arrive in Regla the police block their access. The problem is resolved with a visit to the authorities by the local People’s Power, which designates a “representative of the government” to accompany the caravan.
It’s a matter of going to the most affected areas to bring help to those who have lost the roof from their house and spent days sleeping in the elements, like the residents of Calzada Vieja. They haven’t had electricity since the tornado went through that area last Sunday.
On that street utility linemen were working, assuring that “they were almost” finished. “We’re not from Havana but we’ve come to help fix this disaster,” says one of them as he accepts a bottle of water to relieve his thirst.
The “representative of the government” looks for the president of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) to see who are the most affected on those streets. She comes back with some addresses and begins to pass out the gathered articles. But very soon everyone realizes that, except for two little houses that were in very bad condition, all the homes on the street have a roof and aren’t very damaged.
Some people approach the cars asking for candles and water but the government representative yells at them: “Nobody can come here, we will go house by house.”
One of the volunteers from the caravan approaches the residents to ask where they can find houses with small children and houses without a roof. The young woman delivers water, milk, bread, candles, and cans of meat to those families.
Feelings run high and the residents begin to scream their dissent. “It’s always the same and here everybody needs help, the president of the CDR has a lot of nerve, they always send help for the same houses every time that someone comes with donations.”
Faced with that situation the representative of the government orders the caravan to withdraw and assures that she will guide the group to a new place called La Ciruela. It’s difficult to enter that area because the police have blocked off many streets.
In La Ciruela the same scene is repeated as in Calzada Vieja. There are hardly any houses without roofs, the poverty and bad living are the same as always, increased by lack of electricity. The president of the CDR also appears here, reporting on two critical cases. A young mother who lives in a house that has lost its roof and an older couple whose house half fell down. They leave them water, food, and some clothing.
“Thank you very much for coming here, my girl, I don’t like to ask for anything or make a fuss,” says Lourdes Alfonso Villegas, who lives on Gerardo Granda street in a house that has lost half its roof.
Again the group establishes that the most in need are not here. The caravan leaves the representative of the government and heads for Luyanó, which the artists know well because they passed out help in that area on two occasions this week.
In Luyanó everything is easier. Walking street by street, visiting house by house, they leave everything they have left. It’s already nighttime when they finish the deliveries. Before leaving, they take a photo at the foot of a church that has lost its belltower.
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.
14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, January 31, 2019 — Through the wide esplanade of the Church of Jesus of the Mountain the residents of Mango street go to look for food. There was Fefa, who went out this Tuesday at noon along with two friends with plates in hand. They spoke under the sun, which was burning strongly, shaking the plates from side to side, the food intact without spilling.
“Are you a journalist? Good, listen to this. Nobody has come here, half of my house completely fell down, I’m sleeping in the elements, without mattresses. Now I came to the church so they could give me food because I don’t even have anything to give to my daughter. It’s a lack of respect that nobody from the government has come here, and all of us are mothers,” she says while walking down the hill that leads to her street and making a gesture with her hand for the journalist to follow her. continue reading
Mango street is long and steep and since Sunday it has been filled with debris and fallen posts. Fefa walks quickly as she yells at everyone in the reach of her voice: “Come, you have to see how Mango street is. Nobody comes down here, the government has to be here in the town, with us and not in a helicopter. Here nobody has seen how the 10 of October [municipality] is. If it weren’t for the church we would die of hunger. Ah! If it’s for other countries, right away they send help, but not for us.”
A stone fell from the roof and broke Fefa’s washing machine.
“We want a roof and mattress,” repeats Fefa insistently. Entering through the door of her house, she shows a sideboard where there is some bread covered with ants. “They haven’t sent anything, barely a bread with green ham and a Tanrico drink. Look where we are sleeping, look at the mattresses, none of them is any good now, they’re soaked. I’m a daycare teacher, revolutionary, but do you believe that this is just? Not the president of the council, not the president of the government, nobody has come. Look at the mattress of my mother, an old lady of 81 who even fought in the Sierra, and look where she is sleeping.”
She wants to show the rest of her house but from the back a voice yells: “Wait, I’m bathing, I’m bathing.” In the last room of the house, with walls but without a roof, a woman who takes water out of a can with a jar, sticks her head out several times to make sure nobody comes back and sees her naked.
Fefa keeps showing the damage to her house, like the refrigerator, which was broken in two. “They asks us for money for the federation [of Cuban women] and the CDR [Committee for the Defense of the Revolution], but to do their duty by the people no. To top it off, when the help arrives they sell it to you, no, that cannot be,” she complains.
On that same block lives Emilia Delgado Mango, an older woman, who lives with her mother and still hadn’t finished building their house “by our own effort” when the tornado came.
Emilia’s room that lost its roof. (14ymedio)
“The first night, after that day, we slept in the kitchen, which is the only one that has a roof, seated on a big easy chair. The only thing I’ve eaten is bread with cold cuts that they brought, nothing more. They didn’t say anything about going to look for lunch, and I can’t go to Reyes park because I don’t have money and I can’t leave the house alone. Hurricanes have names, Irma, Flora…but tornados don’t,” she reflects as she shows the easy chairs that she has managed to salvage and the window she grabbed before it went flying.
In Reyes park there is a point of sale for food where for 11 CUP (Cuban pesos, roughly 45¢ US) you can get a piece of chicken, rice, and yam, but Emilia Delgado doesn’t have a peso and has only eaten a piece of bread in 48 hours. They also sell cookies for 25 pesos and pork.
In the house in front of Emilia’s lives Ada Morejón, a small but robust woman, who wears on her head a white handkerchief and on the left hand the garments of her saints. “I suffer from nerves and I’m on a base of pills since that day. Here we cook with firewood. The gas pipe broke, but nobody comes here, nobody.”
The house is beautiful. The wall of the kitchen is blue and there she has all her orishas, a cross, and a virgin. On top of the refrigerator there is a stick of bread that seems to have been there forever. She grabs her pressure cooker from on top of the sideboard and looks at it: “Since I still have no electricity I don’t know if it still works, same with the refrigerator.”
Ada Morejón took a Librium and was in bed all afternoon until she heard that there was someone to talk to about what was happening.
Esteban’s room. (14ymedio)
On the heights lives Esteban Pavón Romero, but everyone calls him Jaime. “This here was left ruined, when I felt the phenomenon that day I tried to close the door. My mom was cleaning. I grabbed her and hugged her before anything, but a piece of tile fell on her and cut her hands.”
He says that between the moment when he saw his mother hurt and until the “black storm cloud” moved away were dark minutes for him. Afterward he called an ambulance “that arrived very quickly,” he assures. “I can’t complain of the hospital, magnificent. They stitched her fingers, all good. Now, here at the house the rooms were left without a roof, the patio, everything. We were asking ourselves where the posts and tiles from my roof came to land. I sent my mother to Cerro with my sister.”
He says that the same thing has happened to all his neighbors. “Here nobody has come concerned, you are the first person to enter this house. Yesterday a woman from urban reform passed by who, from the sidewalk, asked but kept going straight past, nobody has come here. We ate because all the neighbors got together and last night we made a broth there outside on the street, that’s how we are.”
And he continues: “Nobody has worried about if the children had milk. My nextdoor neighbors have several small children and they have had to sleep here in my house, which at least has a part with a roof.”
Hilda’s room and the Mango thicket. (14ymedio)
Jaime, as everyone calls him, hopes that very soon they begin to give them “at least the tiles to put on the roof” and he would like to be able to pay for them as soon as possible because, he emphasizes, “right now nobody here has a peso.”
Further on is the house of Hilda Buch and her daughter, who is pregnant although practically still a girl. Sunday night mother and daughter had gone to bed very early when, suddenly, the tornado tossed the neighbor’s mango thicket on the roof and they went out running to the other side of the house. “Here nobody has come. We collected the debris alone. My own roof can fall at any moment, the fatal night, really cold here inside, everything is wet. Touch it, either the hard floor or the mattress that is soft but wet. We’re mostly sleeping on the floor, covering ourselves with two towels.”
Buch explains that she cannot wait for a subsidy. “That’s a lot of red tape and delay.” She believes that help needs to arrive right now, because she has nothing to pay with. “My [monthly] salary is barely around 300 pesos [roughly $12 US], but there they are selling food for 11. Here in my house we don’t have even a cent, we can’t go. We ate because a friend brought us something and also the neighbor, who made a broth for everyone. Conditions are really precarious right now, there isn’t even gas to cook.”
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.
14ymedio, Emilio Alberto Pérez Anchía, Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Recently I read in some outlet, that you, in your capacity as representative of the PP to the government, have presented a non-legislative motion (NLM) urging the Spanish government to take a stance before the exploitation of Cuban doctors in the More Doctors program in Brazil.
This NLM urges Madrid to assess (and I quote) “giving political asylum and facilities for entry into the labor market in Spain to the Cuban health professionals who flee from those abusive conditions.”
It praises the training of my Cuban colleagues when it mentions: “It is an immigration that requires humanitarian support and is of very high quality since Cuban doctors are known in many of the world’s countries for their extraordinary expertise, their vocation, and their hard work in extreme situations,” to which I add “in any situation.” continue reading
It also denounces that “all the doctors from the country (Cuba) know that they are prohibited from returning for eight years if they do not return to Cuba after the mission,” which is a reality and it pleases me that it is recognized by the Popular Party, and I dare to add that the Cuban government also doesn’t let the family of that doctor, a “traitor/deserter of the homeland,” leave Cuba for a family reunification in that eight-year period.
I am one of those Cuban doctors, not from the aforementioned More Doctors program in Brazil, but indeed one who emigrated, and I was separated from my family for six and a half long years. When I managed to arrive in Spain, in the last years of the PP’s government presided by Mr. Aznar, I had no other choice but to settle for an authorization as a general doctor and not as a general surgeon, which is my speciality, despite a royal decree having been authorized which was intended to authorize various non-EU specialists, but it never materialized.
It is because I feel myself referred to and even honored by the current concern of the PP, with which I identify for ideological reasons, that I earnestly ask that this letter be given to the highest authorities of the Party with the aim that it analyze the following proposal, and I would complete the request that it makes to the government:
1. – That it include all the Cuban doctors who have emigrated in search of new horizons of liberty and a more dignified life for our families, not only those who have gone to Brazil with the More Doctors program.
2. – That the years working in Cuba by these doctors to achieve a decent retirement be taken into account, at the same standard as any Spanish citizen.
3. – That any medical specialty obtained in Cuba be valued and recognized after being demonstrated and accredited with the required official documentation, as is done with other Latin American countries.
Thank you for your time, you cannot imagine how much I appreciate a receptive ear. I await your response by this means or, if you wish, in person, it will be an honor for me.
Email: epantxia47@hotmail.com
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.
“If you come to this neighborhood and see it’s filthy, don’t be surprised. Sometimes it’s worse!
Rebeca Monzo, 28 January 2019 — Much is said via the media of the celebration in 2019 of the 500th anniversary of the city of San Cristobal of Havana, but when you go out to the street you see that the destruction of this country, above all the capital, began in the ’60s, as a result of the triumph of the Revolution, when they began to destroy monuments, streets, avenues, sidewalks, schools, hospitals, factories, stores, shops, and all types of private establishments, companies, and businesses that were usurped from their owners as well as some state organizations. continue reading
Carelessness and abandonment seized Havana, which was invaded by people who were fleeing the misery that was growing in their provinces. The government always prioritized the issue of political propaganda and “voluntary work” so that what they did was greatly deteriorate everything whose sole owner and employer was the state.
The lack of love and feeling of belonging, in the capital especially, brought as a consequence the abandonment and mistreatment of all heritage assets. Architectural values have been lost, due to the lack of care and maintenance of them.
In the main streets and avenues deterioration abounds in the sidewalks, the potholes in the street, the leaks of sewer water, the accumulation of waste and trash and even dead animals, the rotten fruit at the bottom of some trees.
Buses are scarce, but they are also dirty and deteriorated, they are no longer cleaned before leaving the bus terminal, as was done in the time of the Republic. Also lamentably, the majority of hospitals and schools are in these same conditions.
Observing Havana’s streets, one doesn’t see brigades of workers repairing them, nor the sidewalks that are in terrible conditions, neither does one observe the restoration of building facades, nor parks, nor schools. It’s a great shame that television announces so many concerts and art expositions in honor of the 500th anniversary and the city has been submerged in a total abandonment and discontent.
Note: Last night the tornado that hit Havana took delight in destroying destruction.
The spokeswoman of the Popular Party in Congress and ex-Minister of Health, Social Services, and Equality in Spain. (GPP)
14ymedio, 29 January 2019 — The representatives of Spain’s Popular Party (PP, opposition) this Tuesday presented a parliamentary initiative in which they requested explanations on “the possible evidence of modern slavery” in Cuban medical missions abroad.
In a non-legislative motion that will be debated in Congress, the PP invited the Cuban government to repeal the “impediment to enter the country” from the doctors who left the missions and asked the Spanish government to apply “measures of political asylum” for those professionals. continue reading
According to a source close to the new president of the Popular Party, Pablo Casado, “it’s a proposal that is part of the line taken by the leadership of the PP of keeping pressuring on the (socialist) Spanish government so that it doesn’t give in to Cuba even more and that it put human rights before commercial agreements.”
The initiative, which appeared signed by the spokeswoman Dolors Montserrat and the representative Carlos Rojas García, is based on another motion for a resolution presented in the United States Senate on January 10, 2019 affirming that the Cuban government’s medical missions abroad constitute human trafficking.
In the US Senate’s report are detailed several restrictive measures suffered by the Cubans serving abroad, among them restriction of movement, retention of passports, prohibition from having their families with them, and threat of imprisonment for abandoning the job or not returning to the island after completing it.
It also denounced that “the Cuban doctors received approximately 25% of the amount that was charged for their work in said agreements, with the government of Cuba retaining approximately 75% of the payment received for said work.”
The PP explained in its motion to the Spanish parliament that, after reading the resolution of the United States Senate, it considered “that all of the mentioned assertions, as well as the rest, are scrupulously truthful” and then included other elements that were produced by their own investigations that added arguments to the decision.
As a consequence, it proposes that the Congress of Representatives urge Spain’s government to demand that Cuban authorities explain “the denounced facts constituting human trafficking and modern slavery” and that it recommend the modification or elimination of a set of current legal instruments that violate internationally recognized labor rights.
The initiative of the conservative Parliamentary group proposes that, from confirming the facts or a significant part of them, the Spanish government “commit itself to considering the allowal of measures of political asylum and entry into the labor market (in Spain) to the Cuban doctors around the world who find themselves in this situation.”
The text recognizes that the work of these doctors “has been extraordinary and, without a doubt, has helped save thousands of lives. However, in recent years we have discovered that that tool of diplomacy, that supposed solidarity of the Cuban government, in reality was the front for a source of income that subjected Cuban professionals to subhuman situations.”
The proposal will be debated in the Spanish parliament in the course of the next few weeks. Non-legislative motions generally have a political character and seek to formulate proposals before the chamber that do not have the character of a law, but rather urge the Government to carry out some concrete action or express the feeling of the Congress regarding a particular subject.
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.
Part of the image from the cover of the book The One and Only José Martí: Principal Opponent of Fidel Castro.
14ymedio, Ariel Hidalgo, Miami, January 28, 2019 — Photographs of José Martí were never missing from the offices of any of the Cuban presidents. It didn’t matter if their actions contradicted the ideas of that great master who would have pronounced these words from the prophet Isaiah with respect to the Castro regime’s leaders: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
They considered Martí “the intellectual author of the attack on the Moncada Barracks,” and although many of those who fought and died in that action felt truly committed to those ideals — The Centennial Generation, they called themselves — they were all betrayed when that leadership not only prolonged the wrongs against which they had fought by not restoring the Constitution or holding free elections. continue reading
It deepened with the installment of a military dictatorship with absolute powers and institutionalized the violations of fundamental rights and freedoms, something that they want to reaffirm now with the approval of a spurious Constitution.
Much repeated is this phrase: “Martí promised it to you and Fidel fulfilled it for you.” In my opinion this is the worst mockery and the worst calumny that can be thrown against any honorable man. Now, to top it off, this thing that they call “Revolution” is described as “Marxist, Leninist, and Martí-ist.”
Under this regime the Seminars for Martí Studies are held each year, and a center for the study of his thoughts was created. Although more than a few intellectuals hide behind Martí to make a covert complaint against Castroism, his appropriation by the oppressors was carried out with the pretext of his Latin American and anti-imperialist ideas.
It is true that Martí advocated the unity of the peoples of Our America, for what he conceived as a great homeland (“From the Rio Grande to Patagonia there is no more than one people”), and that he opposed the expansionism of the United States (the “seven-league giants”). But he himself had expressed that he loved “the land of Lincoln” just as he feared “the homeland of [Augustus K.] Cutting,” two interests at odds still today.
These aspects of Martí thought were taken advantage of by the group installed in power with the intention of gathering the support of the Latin American peoples and of maintaining, in the international arena, the idea that the Cuban problem was summed up in the contradiction between a small country that was supposedly fighting for its sovereignty and the aims of a large empire that was trying to subjugate it, to conceal the real contradiction: a group that has turned an entire country into a large fiefdom and a people subjected to the most humiliating conditions.
Many thousands of Cubans have passed through prisons without having attacked or insulted anybody, without destroying even a lightbulb, only for having expressed ideas different from the policy dictated by the ideological secretariat of the governing party, be it under the cause of “enemy propaganda” or that of “contempt,” something diametrically opposed to the ideology of Martí.
In Martí’s conception of democratic revolution, the right to free expression is sacred. This key principle in his thought, which is an insurmountable wall between him and that leadership, can be read repeatedly in his Complete Works. “Respect for liberty and different thought, even of the most unhappy entity, is my fanaticism: if I die, or they kill me, it will be for that,” he wrote. Or: “I feel as if they kill a child of mine every time that they deprive a man of his right to think.”
Another type of Martí’s thoughts that the authorities try to sidestep are those that refer critically to ideological aspects that touch them closely. Of those, the one that they have most dared to cite is that of Martí’s reservations about Marx, because along with the criticism there is some praise, like this: “Profound observer of the reason for human miseries and the destinies of men and man eaten by the yearning to do well.”
But he also declares: “He went in a hurry and a little in the shadows, without seeing that children who have not had a natural and laborious gestation are not born viable, neither from the womb of the people in history, nor from the womb of the woman in the home,” which seems to indicate that Martí reflected upon the importance of a development process of civic consciousness in order to achieve, peacefully, a just social order, which he reiterates when he says: “Shameful the forced turning of some men into beasts for the benefit of others, but a way out of indignation has to be sought, so that the beast ceases without getting out of control and frightening.”
Martí, it is necessary to clarify, was not only an apostle for independence but also of social justice, but he didn’t stop harshly criticizing those who, in the name of that justice, intended to raise themselves up and lord over humble people.
In the article Future Slavery, about an essay by the English philosopher Herbert Spencer, Martí refers very clearly to the model known as state socialism, later incubated in the gloomy Russia of Stalin and which Cubans have been suffering for 60 years.
In these societies where all riches would be under the control of the state, he warns, “the number of public employees [would increase] in a terrible manner. With every new function, a new stock of officials would come.” He adds: “From being his own servant, man would pass to become the servant of the state. From being the slave of capitalists, as they call him now, he would go to being the slave of officials.” And he concludes: “The servitude will be lamentable, and general.”
Another text is the letter to his friend Fermín Valdés Domínguez in 1894. The latter had communicated his participation in activity for May 1 along with socialists and anarchists, and Martí warned him about “the dangers of the socialist idea.” Among them “the arrogance and furtive rage of the ambitious, who to raise themselves in the world begin by pretending to be, to have shoulders on which to rise, fierce defenders of the helpless.” But at the same time he warns him that such objections do not mean the abandonment of the ideal of social justice, because “of how nobly must be judged an aspiration: and not for this or that wart that human passion puts on it.”
Today, when the citizenry is expected to approve by referendum the constitutional institutionalization of the violations of their fundamental rights and liberties, it’s necessary to rescue Martí from those kidnappers with the same bravery with which Agramonte rescued Sanguily in the middle of the scrubland. To make very clear that the emblematic image of those rights and liberties is that of Martí, and that, as a consequence, we, defenders of those guarantees, have more right than they to claim it.
If all those groups opposed to that sacrilege meet in a place of cyberspace in a campaign to vote No on the Constitutional referendum on 24 February, and declare themselves in permanent convention, even to face the tasks that duty will set for us after the referendum, that cause itself must carry the name of José Martí.
No image brings together more Cubans than his does. Martí unites. Martí includes. As far as I’m concerned, that convention in honor of Martí not only must be created, but must not be dissolved until those rights and liberties have achieved a definitive victory.
If its members claim that name before global public opinion and do not respond with insults to their offenders, nor resist arrest before their oppressors, it would be a great victory if the international media reports that the followers of Martí, only because of their being that, are being persecuted and harrassed in the homeland of Martí.
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 Protest for all the Prohibited” promoted slogans like #YoVotoNo (I’m Voting No) to the Constitution and the hashtag #Ni1+ (Not One More) in reference to the years that the Cuban regime has gone on.
14ymedio, Havana, 26 January 2019 — Between Friday and Saturday thousands of Cuban emigrants have protested in front of consular centers for the Island in at least ten countries. The unprecedented demonstrations have focused on denouncing the migratory obstacles, the lack of citizens’ rights, and the new text of the Constitution that will be put to a referendum on February 24.
What began as a spark ended up igniting a vast array of dissatisfactions, complaints, and questioning that for decades has been accumulating in the Cuban exile. Initially the march was going to occur only in front of the Island’s embassy in Washington, but emigrants in other places joined the initiative. continue reading
“The Protest for All the Prohibited” promoted slogans like #YoVotoNo (I’m Voting No) to the Constitution and the hashtag #Ni1+ (Not One More) in reference to the years that the Cuban regime has gone on. Although it also accommodated other demands.
In the American capital, despite the temperatures below 5 degrees Celsius this weekend, more than 400 Cubans answered the call from the Somos+ (We Are More) movement and participated in the march, after spontaneously coordinating the move.
The initiative, promoted by the leader of the movement Somos+, Eliécer Ávila, was also supported by several exile groups, along with the campaign Cuba Decides. Initially it demanded the right for Cubans to “enter and leave” the country “without restrictions, or blacklists.”
Among the organizers of the march in the United States were also, among others, the presenter Alex Otaola, the exile Amaury Almaguer or “Siro Cuartel,” author of the political satire blog El Lumpen (The Underclass). The actor Jorge Ferdecaz also joined the initiative.
Other cities where protests also occurred were Madrid, Sao Paulo, The Hague, Barcelona, Quito, Montevideo, Geneva, Holland, Santiago de Chile, and London. In total hundreds of Cubans protested against the new constitutional reform and demanded “to have a passport at a price accessible for everyone,” the “existence of marriage equality,” a direct vote for the presidency of the country, and the “end of the dynasty.”
The event had a wide impact on social media where its call circulated with the hashtags #NoMasProhibidos (No More Prohibited), #YoVoteNo (I’m Voting No), and #Ni1+ (Not One More). At the meeting point near the diplomatic headquarters in Washington, participants held a symbolic vote that produced 413 No votes for the new Constitution.
For the activist Eliécer Ávila, “Today’s great protagonists were the Cubans and their families who traveled for hours, many 20 hours to be here, many young people, 90% of whom were around 25 or 30 years old,” he explained to 14ymedio.
“It was a huge message of hope and optimism,” added the leader of Somos+. The dissidents called on people to “not let languish” initiatives of this type and “every month do something bigger and we propose that this 2019 Cuba enter a phase of social pressure that brings about a political response.”
Among those joining the march were actors, musicians, and creators like the artist Geandy Pavón, who recreated his performance Nemesis on the facade of the Permanent Mission of Cuba in front of the UN in New York this Friday night.
Massiel Rodríguez, a Cuban who has lived in Spain for a year, told 14ymedio that at the Cuban Embassy in Madrid they sabotaged the activity from the diplomatic headquarters playing music on full blast toward the exterior of the building. “They mostly put on Silvio Rodríguez but between blocks you could hear La Guantanamera and Carlos Puebla.”
The emigree explained that all along the sidewalk there were police officers posted to guard the area to prevent the demonstrators from getting close to the embassy. Inside the embassy there were many older people who as far as it was known were celebrating the birthday of José Martí and the 60 years of the Revolution, she said.
“We hugged each other, there was a lot of cordiality and respect, it was really nice and we made contacts to organize to do this type of thing, that link was good so that there can be an action group for whatever is needed,” Rodríguez said. “There were people who arrived organized in groups that came from other towns, but also some didn’t notice.” The dissident Rosa María Payá, leader of Cuba Decides, joined the action.
In Sao Paulo, several demonstrators reported that upon arriving in front of the consulate they bumped into groups from the Brazilian Communist Party, who with flags and slogans took the place. “They became aggressive and more than 200 people fell upon us to hit us,” an emigrant who participated in the protest told this newspaper.
So far the official Cuban press hasn’t published anything about the demonstrations, which happened a few hours after the Cuban government confirmed that emigrants and temporary residents abroad will not be able to vote in the constitutional referendum unless they return to the Island. Polling places outside the Island will only accept those working on an official mission.
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.
Making the sign of “L” for “Libertad,” Cubans abroad demonstrating for the right to vote in the Constitutional Referendum scheduled for 24 February.
Somos+, Richard Shirrman, 27 January 2019 — This January 26 we watched as thousands of Cuban citizens and lovers of liberty and democracy came together with one voice demanding our rights, it was more than one march or protest against that dictatorship that robs us all alike of our liberty, that subjugates, and that represses our people and dissidents who protest peacefully. It was a unanimous cry of NO!! Of Enough already! Not one year more!
All those of us who do not forget our country, we feel proud of each Cuban who raised his voice. It set a standard in the fight for the freedom of Cuba, and it said to the ruling regime on our Island what we Cubans have carried guarded in our hearts for 60 years. This 26th of January history was made, we managed to gather thousands of Cubans in the world and it was shown that united, we can do anything. continue reading
But this doesn’t end here! We will keep working with all our brothers and sisters who want with all their hearts to see our Mother Country free and prosperous, this rebellion is the beginning of the path to follow, because when a people lets itself be defeated by tyrants, any dream and longing for liberty will perish, let us not allow ourselves to be intimidated by lack of faith in ourselves and by external agitators, it’s necessary that every Cuban who loves his Mother fight for the liberty, democracy, and prosperity of our nation.
That is why we ask for the union and cooperation of all for the good of all and to fight until the end of the dictatorship that robs us of our most elemental rights and the peaceful coexistence between our different ideologies, creeds, and positions on life.
The enemy is only one, my friends, it is that criminal and murderous regime that has killed our dreams, our future, and our human dignity. There are never words to persuade when one is fighting for a just and true cause. Let us all unite as children of the same mother! Because if we don’t do it, the dictators and politicians will do whatever they feel like with us.
Cubans, brothers and sisters, José Martí fought in exile for many years until achieving the objective that was always the light in his thoughts, an inheritance that leaves us the path toward liberty, that thought and path that the murderers and vile, ambitious men of power have covered up so that we do not see it, and have placed stones in our path so that today the people of Cuba lives without decency and human dignity.
And today on the eve of the birthday of our greatest Cuban of all time, I dedicate to all those Cubans who protested against the vile and cruel dictatorship that has oppressed us for more than 60 years. And quoting José Martí:
…Thus we want the children of America to be: men who say what they think, and say it well; eloquent and sincere men.
…A man who hides what he thinks, or doesn’t dare to say what he thinks, is not an honorable man. A man who obeys a bad government, without working for the government to be good, is not an honorable man. A man who complies with unjust laws, and permits men who mistreat the country where he was born to tread its soil, is not an honorable man.
…There are men who live content although they live without decency. There are others who suffer as in agony when they see that men live without decency around them. In the world it is necessary to have a certain quantity of decency, as one must have a certain quantity of light. When there are many men without decency, there are always others who have within themselves the decency of many men. Those are the ones who rise up with terrible force against those who rob the people of their liberty, which is to rob men of their decency. In those men go thousands of men, goes an entire people, goes human dignity. Those men are sacred.
Ángel Santiesteban, Havana, Cuba, Thursday, October 25, 2018 — Whoever commits a crime in Cuba should be certain that it won’t be enough to complete the punishment that the court decides for him, that isolation and prison will not be sufficient. One who breaks the law on this island has, beforehand, the certainty that the guards will put all their effort into making him feel like he is in a Hell in which the character of a uniformed Lucifer recurs.
The common prisoner also pays dearly in his stay in that diabolical underground, almost as much as he who goes to prison for “political reasons.” There any human rights are not respected, although the official discourse tries to show the opposite and brags of the virtues of Cuban prisons, and even seems to embrace theUnited Nations Charter of Universal Human Rights. That figure known on the island as a common prisoner is used as slave labor, and those who receive some economic benefit know very well the treatment that the military dedicates to them. continue reading
Beatings are commonplaces in those spaces of confinement, insulting the prisoner is the dish that the guards cook best. The beatings never have justification; beating is a right given to them by a government accustomed to repressing and pounding since it seated itself on the throne. A prisoner can be beaten with impunity becaused the uniformed don’t recognize the rights of the inmates. Their frustrations and ignorance are viciously taken out on the convicts.
Didier Cabrera Herrera is now thirty-nine years old and serving a sentence for a homicide he committed in self-defense. Didier was attacked in his own house. Didier used to make yogurt and sell it in his home, until a delinquent from the neighborhood asked him for a tube and later refused to pay for it. The assailant took out a knife and, making a show, attacked the vendor, and from the show passed to a more real aggression, to unforeseen violence. The criminal intended to thrust with the knife; first at one point, then another, without counting on Didier’s dexterity.
Then would come the struggle in which Didier was more skillful and managed to grab the knife from his aggressor and use it in self-defense. Didier defended himself, stuck the attacker with the sharp point, but didn’t compromise any organ, but a blow fractured a rib that damaged some vital organ, according to the determination of the pathologist. Thus Didier went to prison to serve a sentence of five years.
Traveling to the prison with the prisoner were the certified doctors, those who warn that this man suffers from a “personality disorder of emotional instability of a moderate intensity, and of an organic base,” that had already prevented him from fulfilling the obligatory military service. The medications to keep him calm are: Carbamazepine, Sentraline, and Clonazepan, but they are not always administered with the regularity prescribed by his doctor, despite the fact that authorities are aware that the patient attempted suicide before entering prison.
The first prison that received him was “Combinado del Este,” where he kept good discipline, despite how irregularly he was returned to his medication when they moved him away from his mother. Doctors attributed the carelessness to the lack of those medicines, even though they didn’t accept those that his mother, Iris Josefina Herrera López, with many pleas, tried to give them.
Didier was then sent to a prison in Manacas, in the province of Villa Clara. His mother traveled there for each visit, negotiating all the obstacles of the island’s bad transportation. And many were the pleas of this woman for authorities to permit her son to return to Havana or a closer place. She asks and asks at the National Directorate of Prisons at 15 and K, in Vedado, but so far she hasn’t managed to bring her son closer, like Leonor Pérez did achieve in the 19th century, when the Governor General of the island, following the “plea of the mother,” responded to Leonor’s entreaties.
This man is still here, so far from his mother, suffering humiliations in punishment cells and even rape attempts from “Calandraca” and “Calabera,” two dangerous prisoners who scour the prison displaying knives without receiving any punishment. Who was punished was this sick man, who was transferred to Guamajal prison, on the outskirts of the city of Santa Clara, where he spends his days in the atrocious imprisonment of another punishment cell, in which two guards beat him with so much force that his left eye was affected.
To top it all, and despite so much abuse, Major Cepero just informed the mother that he had been denied parole for a year, without letting her know the cause, although she supposes the reason is the many telephone calls her son made saying that they were not giving him his medication. Thus survives this sick young man, faced with the apathy and injustices of the authorities of the law and of Cuban “justice” that isn’t interested in putting right those effronteries that could put an end to the life of Didier Cabrera Herrera, a very sick young man.
14ymedio, Marcelo Hernández, Havana, February 7, 2019 — A mobile phone, and social media as an amplifier, has been a sufficiently powerful weapon to change things at a primary school in Havana. For decades, deterioration has been advancing in the bathrooms of the José Luis Arruñada school, in the municipality of Plaza of the Revolution, until this January a mother, tired of waiting, brought about a change in the situation.
