Translator: Sheilagh Herrera – Page 6

Unpacu and Cuba Decides Call for Going Out to the Streets to Protest on September 8

Organizers show their solidarity with the Women in White Movement who, as shown here, are “repressed week after week by the dictatorship.” (EFE)

14ymedio, Havana, September 5, 2019 — The Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu) and Cuba Decides have called on the Island’s population to demonstrate next Sunday, September 8, at 10 in the morning, according to a statement. “We will go out to the parks and other public spaces of our country,” reads the notice.

The announcement is these organizations’ response “to the increase in repression against the peaceful opposition and the citizenry” and for that reason they have chosen the day before the meeting of the Joint Council of the Cuban Government and the European Union in Cuba, which the high representative of foreign policy, Federica Mogherini, will attend on Monday.

Unpacu and Cuba Decides intend to denounce “the notable increase in repression for political motives and the violations of the rights of the Cuban people,” and show their solidarity with the Women in White Movement “repressed week after week by the dictatorship.” continue reading

The support also extends to “journalists and independent artists; the defenders of religious freedoms and the LGBTI activists who suffer persecution; and all peaceful persons and organizations” who promote respect for human rights and “change of the system toward democracy in Cuba,” reads the announcement.

The initiative’s organizers ask for an end to police abuses, prison terms for political motives, violations of the right to enter or leave the country, poor treatment and torture in prisons, police raids on homes of dissidents, and violent arrests, in addition to the harassment of activists.

The text which calls for a demonstration on Sunday includes a “repudiation of the implementation of an Accord of Political Dialogue, because it is not conditioned on concrete changes in the political-economic system of the country which guarantees the cessation of repression and respect for the basic freedoms of citizens.”

The document signed by both organizations urges “the participation of civil society and the opposition in any process of negotiation with the dictatorship.” According to both opposition groups, the EU should check “the implementation of the PDCA until the concrete reforms demanded of the regime are made clear.”

Among the petitions for reforms Unpacu and Cuba Decides indicate “the release of all political prisoners and the total cessation of harassment and violence of State Security and the police against human rights defenders and the citizenry.”

To this they add “the right to change the country’s political system in a binding plebiscite to allow the participation of the citizenry in free, just, and pluralistic elections for the first time in more than 60 years.”

The organizers of the call appeal “to the solidarity of the international community to check the impunity of the tyranny that means to attack our coordinators and activists with new assaults, robberies, violent arrests, and prison.” They hope that this time the voice of Europe is raised in the person of its high representative, Federica Mogherini, to support those who defend “the same democratic rights.”

The protest will coincide with the day of the patron of Cuba, the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre, a national symbol that had a big presence in the wars of independence and also in subsequent social movements. As a general rule, on that day in several parishes in the country pilgrimages are made in which thousands of people gather.

In recent years the day of Cachita, as the Virgin of Charity is popularly known, has meant forceful police operations, arrests of activists, surveillance around opposition figures’ homes, and arbitrary arrests.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Starting a Business in Miami: A Road With Difficulties and Rewards for Cubans

Madeleydis Mejía, a Cuban entrepreneur who opened her own restaurant in Miami. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Yessenia Zevallos, Miami | August 29, 2019 — “Starting a business in Miami isn’t easy. It requires a lot of sacrifice, effort, and patience because the road is long,” says Madeleydis Mejía as she rocks the carriage of her newborn baby. This Cuban arrived in Miami seven years ago to fulfill the dream of her life: to become a business owner.

“Behind every one of these walls there are many hours of insomnia, of tears, of hardships, but also of satisfaction and achievement,” says Mejía, 32, as she looks around her recently opened restaurant.

La Gozadera Pizzeria Restaurant, located on one side of Coral Way, an important avenue in the residential area in Miami, specializes in Italian food, but also has a creole menu that includes classic plates like congri rice and roast pork, in the purest Cuban style. continue reading

“Nothing is impossible when you make an effort and have faith,” explains Mejía, also the owner of Trendy Extension Salon, a hair salon located a few meters from her restaurant.

Both businesses are run by Mejía’s family. Her husband, Juan Carlos Blanco, also Cuban, is the chef at the restaurant and her younger brother is in charge of logistics. Her mother and several friends also collaborate.

“I came to this country with nothing. From the beginning it’s been difficult because no bank lends you money if you arrived recently, so you have to start with your own savings,” she explains.

With different tones of gray, and a design exclusively created by Mejía and her family, La Gozadera is a restaurant with a Cuban stamp that is seen from the sunflowers used as decorations to the Latin music that invades every space of the place. A broad mural recreates the Havana capitol and several decorative motifs recall Cuba.

“I called it La Gozadera for the hit by the group Gente de Zona, of whom I’m a fan and friend,” explains Mejía. “The construction of the place was done by a family member. All together we were knocking down the walls of an old pharmacy that was in ruins to build the restaurant,” she adds.

“Now the most difficult thing is to maintain it,” says Mejía. “Having a restaurant in Miami isn’t like having an ice cream shop in Cuba. Here there is a lot of competition and we small businesses have to work very hard to survive,” she adds.

Eduardo Álvarez Rivet, another Cuban who has lived in Miami for seven years, has managed to open a beauty salon. Álvarez, born in Guanajay, started out on his journey as a stylist in Pinar del Rio. There, he says, was born his passion for hairdressing and the desire to get his family ahead.

“I started the Rivet Salon so that my mother’s surname would prevail,” says Álvarez, 44.

Rivet Salon specializes in offering various esthetic services like haircuts, coloring, and ironing, among others, and according to its owner the decoration of the place, full of elegant crystals, was completely his idea. The salon is in West Kendall, a comfortable residential zone located to the southwest of Miami.

Before opening his own business, Álvarez worked for 10 years as a hairdresser for an employer, first in Peru and then in Miami. “Opening a business requires a lot more effort and more time,” says the now business owner. Álvarez hasn’t taken any type of classes on how to manage a business but he mentions that everything he learned came from practice. “In Cuba I learned what it was to work since I was little and in Peru I learned how to treat the client, how to be an administrator and strategist,” he explains.

This entrepreneur left Cuba for Peru in 2007 to be able to improve economically and professionally. Later he decided to migrate to the United States because he saw more opportunity to open his business.

“I have clients who emigrated from Cuba and now I find them in the salon,” he says with pride. Álvarez compares his country of origin with the United States and says that in the south of Florida he has more possibilities to develop his business.

“Having a business in Cuba is very different from having a business in Miami,” says Álvarez as he explains the difficulties that he had on the Island to get products. Starting a business in Cuba is very difficult in face of the lack of supplies and the government bureaucracy, excessive if compared with the limited legal documents to open a business in Miami.

“The most important thing is that I have the possibility to find fulfillment in my profession and that is what gives me more desire to do it,” he says, referring to many immigrants who cannot work in the area in which they specialized.

The main difficulties for this hairdresser have been adapting to the culture and language of the country. Álvarez misses Cuba a lot, but he says that here is where he has more opportunities to better himself.

“Don’t waste time because this country is very big. Keep going forward, with a lot of effort you can achieve your goals,” Álvarez advises anyone who wants to open a business in the US.

Prospera is a state-owned nonprofit organization specializing in offering bilingual assistance to Hispanic entrepreneurs trying to establish or expand their businesses, and has helped various Cuban new arrivals to Miami to start businesses.

“What I most admire about the recently arrived Cubans is that they have a great capacity for recovery, they don’t put off work, they have a desire to learn,” says Myrna Sonora, vice president of Prospera, who is also Cuban-American.

Sonora says that Prospera has served many recently arrived Cubans who want to move forward as mechanics, stylists, or teachers, among other professions. “In the last five years, 13% of Prospera’s users in the south of Florida were recently arrived Cubans and in the last fiscal year of 2017-2018, it went up to 14%.”

“There was a time in which we were seeing very few professionals, but now it has gone up again. We are seeing many doctors and different professions. Also Cubans who enter the United States from third countries,” explains Sonora, who has been working at Prospera for seven years.

The vice president of the organization says that she is “proud of the fact that despite any difficulty that they have had to put up with, that spirit of being successful, of working hard to prosper and achieve the American dream” remains present in her compatriots.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Wave of Repression Against Cuba’s Biggest Opposition Organization Continues

Photograph of the moment of the arrest of José Daniel Ferrer published by State Security and circulated on social media.

14ymedio, Havana, August 29, 2019 — In the middle of an escalation in repression against the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), this Wednesday the police raided the home of José Antonio López Piña, director of that opposition organization in El Cristo, a town in the province of Santiago de Cuba.

According to Carlos Amel Oliva, coordinator for Unpacu, the police action was carried out with “extreme violence” and López Piña was detained by the police force of the Songo la Maya municipality.

“Among other threats they told him that by continuing with his activism there only remain two paths for him: a long time in Kilo 7 prison in Camaguey, one of the harshest in the country, or he would have to leave Cuba,” said Oliva. continue reading

The raid happened a few hours after Amnesty International published a report recognizing five new prisoners of conscience on the Island and that the Police detained José Daniel Ferrer, national leader of Unpacu. Ferrer was freed that very Tuesday, August 27, along with another five activists.

According to Oliva, during the raid of August 27 repressive forces with assault weapons entered “three houses located in the Altamira area of Santiago de Cuba which function as headquarters of Unpacu.”

During the assault three laptops, two televisions, several mobile phones, and some tables that were used to provide a social cafeteria area were confiscated.

“José Daniel Ferrer was driven, handcuffed, to the third police station of Santiago de Cuba, known as the motorized one, and was released around noon. The rest of the activists were subsequently released,” he added.

Oliva explains that Ferrer was warned that the operation was carried out in response to commentaries that the Unpacu director had published and for what he has said on social media about “irregularities incurred by Lázaro Expósito, first secretary of the Party in the province, and for what he said related to the birthday of Fidel Castro and his tweets on the day of the anniversary.”

Oliva also suspects that “the Government is very annoyed” by the inclusion of five Cubans on the list of prisoners of conscience that Amnesty International published.

“In response to the occupation of our media we do not rule out making the proper complaint once again. We know that going through these channels has never had success, it’s a long and fruitless process because it has never returned anything,” he added.

The secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, demanded on his Twitter account “the immediate release” of Ferrer and that “the regime’s repressive forces stop the intimidation and abuses against dissidents.”

In February of this year, in response to the campaign of the opposition organization against the referendum on the new Constitution, José Daniel Ferrer was arrested for more than five hours along with several members of Unpacu. The detentions occurred during the police raid of the organization’s headquarters and of homes of activists in Santiago de Cuba.

In the last five years the members of Unpacu have reported more than 40 assaults on their headquarters and other facilities of the activists of the organization, considered the largest opposition group on the Island and the one with the highest number of political prisoners.

In its latest reports the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) calculated that there were some 120 political prisoners in Cuba.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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A Royal Visit: Cuba, Spain, and the Political Blockade

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, during a floral tribute in Havana. (EFE)

14ymedio, Elena Larrinaga de Luis, Madrid, August 31, 2019 — Havana was founded in 1515 by Diego Velázquez under the name of San Cristóbal de La Habana. Years later, in 1519, the city became the colonial capital in 1589, found a definitive seat in the north of the western region of the Island, beside a beautiful bay, well sheltered and convenient for a port and human settlement.

In 1634 it was declared “Key to the New World and Safeguard of the East Indies” by royal decree, and in 1665, it was conceded the right to have its own coat of arms, in which were represented, with three towers, the fortresses (La Real Fuerza, El Morro, and La Punta) that defended the city. In 1982, Old Havana was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

The city’s importance is unquestionable and its belated disengagement from the Kingdom of Spain in 1898, whose grave effects in some way remain currently in effect. It is thus commendable and desirable to recover a close and brotherly relationship with the old colony, necessary and productive for both parties. continue reading

“Spain’s political blockade threatens a visit by the king and queen to Cuba for Havana’s 500 years,” was El País’s headline on August 25. Not even a mention of what it means for the Spanish Crown, architect of the democratic system and of the 1978 transition, to back with its presence a dictatorial regime whose last constitutional reform has as its essence the subordination to “all” the dictates of the Cuban Communist Party.

That is to say that the courts of justice and their organs are controlled by this single party and that that same State that says that rights can be claimed judicially, suffocates through repression and exclusion their exercise and claim.

The news makes clear that what is not desirable is an uncomfortable photograph with the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and the Nicaraguan Daniel Ortega, close allies of the Cuban regime, invited to the commemoration, but that the visit could indeed be made, in the preceding days.

Avoiding the photo with these leaders and taking them with representatives of the Cuban regime implies an immense slight against the Cuban people. Their responsibility is known to everything, once it takes place in these countries under the supervision of the hierarchs of Havana. Governments pass but people don’t, and as has been demonstrated throughout history, they have a memory.

According to international law, breaches of commitments by States before the United Nations and the ILO are violations of human rights. Cuba is a signatory of the Agreements of the United Nations and has ratified the agreements of the International Labour Organization.

The last report of the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights confirms that the Cuban government violates 20 conventions of the ILO (protection and confiscation of salary, forced labor, freedom to work, right to unionization and collective bargaining, among others). The export of medical services is a clear example, baptized by the volunteer workers themselves as a “slavery of white coats.”

The Cuban Government has announced structural reforms in the economy that it has not carried out and has paralyzed the growth of private work and toughened state control. Decree 349 which regulates cultural production has produced a wave of arbitrary arrests.

Not a single mention of what should be referred to by a newspaper, the “fixer” of the Spanish transition and aware of the importance of support and international solidarity in these cases. It vividly demonstrates its concern over the sanctions of President Trump and over the effect they could have on Spanish businesses: understandable but insufficient.

The Spanish Crown has had many opportunities to visit Cuba in these 500 years. We know that the throne of the King of Spain is waiting, but the ideal thing would be that the Spanish monarch not be committed in this visit, which will be without a doubt manipulated by the country’s government.

The message that the Cuban people will receive will be that the Spanish Monarchy approves and supports absolutist regimes and it will be in detriment to its image. Let us hope that the “blindness” of certain politicians does not cast a shadow over the image of the magnificent statesman that is the current king Felipe VI, whose defense of democracy has been clear.

El País’s headline should have said “The political blockade of the Cuban government threatens the visit of the King and Queen to Cuba for its 500 year anniversary.”

The visit of the current Spanish monarch should be made when Cuba takes the path the Spanish took in ’78. It would then be very important that King Felipe, with his presence, support that process.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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The Southern Border of the US, Destination of Thousands of Fleeing Venezuelans

14ymedio, Sonia Osorio, María Luisa Paúl, Mario J. Pentón, Miami, August 21, 2019 — First came the pressures and then the threats, until María, a fictitious name for this report, decided to escape Venezuela. Emigration became the only path that this lawyer found to avoid the reprisals of Nicolás Maduro’s regime, a sad fate she shares with thousands of compatriots.

María, her husband, and their daughter decided to travel to Mexico to reach the border with the United States. In Nuevo Laredo they registered themselves on a list to request asylum and went to a shelter with a single bathroom for 40 people, where they slept on a mat.

“At night when my husband went to buy food two coyotes intercepted him and offered to take us across the border for $800 each. The cold was really strong and desperation urged that we go with them,” relates María in an interview from Boca Raton, where she resides after entering the United States in July.

In Nuevo Laredo, authorities moved the family from the shelter to another place at the international bridge that connects with Texas and there they slept in the elements. “My daughter was turning blue from the cold and an official told us that they would give us access to the US,” she remembers. continue reading

María’s case is part of a growing trend: as living conditions deteriorate in their country, more Venezuelans opt to travel to the southern border of the United States to request political asylum.

Patricia Andrade, executive director of Venezuela Awareness Foundation, a human rights organization located in Miami, warns that “the problem of the majority of Venezuelans is that they embark upon the adventure without informing themselves of what is going to happen and how you must be prepared.”

On social media migrants exchange recommendations, advice, and some tricks for the crossing, but many minimize the risk.

“The thing is easy, the thing isn’t so difficult. Like, difficult is that they’re going to put you in prison. One has to go with the idea in mind that one is going to go there. That’s all. It’s the most legal thing there could be: requesting asylum. It’s the most legal thing in the world,” explains a Venezuelan via a WhatsApp voice message.

Andrade, via her program Venezuelan Roots, receives each week more than 20 messages from migrants who managed to cross and are in the south of Florida without work, without a home, and without resources to get a lawyer to help them present their asylum case to immigration authorities.

Fleeing from persecution

Angelina Estrada decided to make the dangerous crossing of the border between Mexico and the United States with her two-year-old son. Her desperation drove her to turn to a coyote who on a dark night became her blessing, but also her worst nightmare.

The 32-year-old journalist embarked on the journey from Maracaibo to flee the death threats she received after publishing several critical reports on the operations of the Bolivarian National Police and the poor functioning of the Administration Service of Identification, Migration, and Immigration.

Along with her son, a brother-in-law, and a niece, she traveled first by highway to Colombia, then flew to Cancun and arrived by land at Reynosa, in Tamaulipas, a violent state which from January to June of 2019 recorded 21,537 crimes, 721 of which were homicides, 306 sexual abuse cases, 292 rapes, and 21 kidnappings, according to figures of the Executive Secretariat of the National System of Public Safety of Mexico.

Estrada registered on the waitlist to present her case, they assigned her number 203, and she waited at a shelter run by a religious group. “I waited a month and they never called me. Afterward the US government made that law that you had to stay in Mexico and that affected me a lot,” she adds.

Recently Washington implemented the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which establishes that people who arrived at or entered the US via Mexico must be returned to that country while their immigration procedures last.

“Sending asylum seekers to Mexico and making them stay in Nuevo Laredo is an unacceptable policy, which puts them in areas controlled by criminal organizations who view migrants as merchandise and a source of income,” believes María Hernández, a member of the Doctors Without Borders team in Mexico.

“This action is made in response to the illegal immigration crisis confronting the United States at its southern border. Throughout the last five years there has been a 2000% increase in asylum requests,” says the US embassy in Mexico. But “nine out of every 10 asylum requests are rejected by an immigration judge, for not meeting the requirements.”

After learning that other migrants at the shelter crossed the Rio Grande, Estrada decided to try it with a coyote who charged her $1,500 and she left alone with her son. A woman drove her to a house where they gave her food and where she waited until a night when the police presence in the area diminished.

“They took me through the back part of a house, and very close by was the Rio Grande, bordering the United States. The area was very dark. They gave me an inner tube (of a tire) and a plastic bag so that my things wouldn’t get wet. The baby got scared and began to cry, I told him to keep ’quiet because the fish were sleeping’ and he calmed down,” she relates.

Estrada and her son got on the inner tube and the coyote pulled it, submerged up to his chest in the water. After reaching the United States bank the man looked very scared, walked about two minutes, instructed her to continue straight until she saw a wall or a bridge, and disappeared, leaving her in absolute darkness.

The Venezuelan took the wrong path and ran into dense vegetation, and there were moments when she fell with the boy in her arms. Dawn came and no matter how far she walked she didn’t make out the bridge, until she heard the sound of a motor and she came out of the undergrowth. She asked for help and fortunately they were Border Patrol agents of the United States.

“I cried like I’ve never cried in my life, I thought that I was going to die there.” One of the officials gave her water and brought her to a transit center where she was interviewed and two days later they let her go. Two and a half months have passed since the crossing and she shudders to remember it.

Estrada can consider herself fortunate. Stories of kidnappings and assaults against migrants are heard everywhere. Many, after passing through that torment and managing to cross the border, are returned to Mexico by American authorities.

Wilfredo Allen, a lawyer specializing in immigration, believes that the desperation and lack of information is a common denominator among migrants. “It’s not the time to go to the border,” he warns. “During this government, going to the border is suicide because the people passing are very few and it’s a schizophrenic system.”

“So there’s no pattern one can follow to determine how people enter through the border. There’s no pattern, it’s chance,” says Allen.

In Reynosa, a Venezuelan couple waits to enter United States territory again after being deported along with their small daughter. Their future is a big question mark, but they insist that they will not return to their country. They were forcing the young man to enlist as a soldier to “defend the homeland and Maduro.” But he insists that he is a cook and that he knows “nothing of arms.”

Editors’ note: This article is part of a project carried out by El Nuevo Herald/Miami Herald, the newspaper 14ymedio, and Radio Ambulante with the sponsorship of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Globalization Against Corruption

The Brazilian giant Odebrecht, which with its corrupt practices influenced a goood many Latin American Governments. (EFE)

14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Miami, August 18, 2019 — Fighting globalization isn’t just counterproductive: it’s useless. It’s counterproductive, because one of the unforeseen consequences of globalization is the beneficial battle against corruption. Globalization leads us to behave better. When countries were isolated, it really mattered little if country A or B was corrupt. Today, now that they are joined in large circuits, the corruption of the other harms us much more directly.

His majesty the Internet and social media reign. Everything is known instantly and there is an electoral cost for shamelessness. Within the European Union, and within every society, there is less and less patience with nations like Greece, Romania, Italy, Portugal, and Spain that have corrupt practices. Meanwhile, for years the figure of “conflict of interests” has been in the penal code. Until relatively recently German companies could deduct bribes from their habitual costs of doing business. That is no longer possible.

The trend, then, set by globalization is favorable. There is no longer glamour in corruption. In Cuba, when I was an adolescent, there did not exist a moral sanction against dishonesty in the administration of public resources. Jokes were told about thieving politicians and many people aspired to be a “tax inspector” or anything with the object of “making a killing.” That attitude, present in almost all of Latin America, is no longer acceptable. It exists, but it has a social cost. At least it’s a start. continue reading

Roughly speaking, in the world there are 180 nations who deserve to be called nations. Approximately 150 are fundamentally corrupt. It has always been that way. Economic power feeds big shots and big shots increase the resources of economic power. They are two social spheres that complement and mutually reinforce each other. This happens in dictatorial regimes and in the planet’s imperfect democracies.

Corruption does a lot of damage. It generates a growing atmosphere of cynicism. It belies the principle that all citizens are equal before the law, which is fatal for democracy. It hinders competition. It discourages personal effort: why study and do things well if economic success depends on relationships? It raises prices. All are problems.

The most honest countries, according to Transparency International, are the Scandinavian ones and those spawned by Great Britain: New Zealand, Canada, Australia, the United States, and Ireland. The countries of northern Europe are also on the list of the best, although on a second tier: Holland, Germany, the Baltic states.

At the head of the most honest pack is the kingdom of Denmark, but very close to it is Singapore, which contradicts the hypothesis that it is a question of culture. Within Europe, the nations of “Latin” origin are the most dishonest: Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Romania. Even France.

But it’s necessary to go further. It’s not only about “moral rearmament” or the elimination of North American or European visas. That’s not sufficient. It is important to place legal barriers against corruption. In Denmark, for example, the commission that studies and assigns auctions is constituted of experts who have no access to those who offer their services and vice versa.

Antonio Maura Montaner, an honest Spanish politician at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, spoke of his country’s necessity of “broad daylight.” Today he would have recommended the Internet. Every public action should be recorded on a web page so that any citizen can find out what is done with taxpayers’ money, with their money, including auctions.

It is necessary to create barriers between corrupters and corrupt. There’s no need to prevent lobbies from existing, but they must exhibit their comparative advantages via the Internet and not in dark meetings with those who can use their services or products.

In Spain they used to speak, jokingly, of “envelope-taking” journalists. Corrupters would hand them an envelope and they would pocket it with a smile. The Internet, mobile phones, and international circuits — all instruments of globalization — have wiped them off the map. Magnificent.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Speaking of Cowards

It is unjust to speak of cowards, especially when to be brave can turn out to be excessively costly.

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, August 16, 2019 — “Of cowards nothing has been written” is very unjust. In addition to inaccurate it is unjust, especially when to be brave can turn out to be excessively costly.

Many times in the commentaries of various texts that are published in the independent press there appear those whom they describe as “servile eunuchs, obedient scabs, accomplices of the dictatorship,” all those who do not dare to speak out publicly in face of the abuses and arbitrary actions of the Government. It’s necessary to point out that they are speaking about the majority, about millions of people, parents of families who every day have the obligation to bring home bread to their children.

One must exclude from that list the true believers, who have the foolishness, the stupidity, and why not, the nerve, to continue defending the current state of things in the country. It’s not worth venturing numbers on both sides of the scale to determine if those who don’t protest one way or another stand on the side of those who believe or in the group that pretends. continue reading

The magnitude of cowardice in Cuba is not a sign of the lack of humanity of its inhabitants, but rather an indication of the degree to which repression has reached.

It is detected in the workers of the state sector who work under difficult conditions without complaining; in those who accept the plunder of their salary in joint ventures, where the state employer is left with the majority of what the foreign investor pays for that scheme; in the thousands who leave to carry out international missions, sometimes at the risk of their lives, and meekly accept that the State will keep 70% of the value that is paid for their work.

Cowardice appears among the workers of the non-state sector who continue suffering the absence of a wholesale market, the pack of inspectors who hound them, the taxes that bleed them dry, the abuse of capped prices, the permanent dismissive insults of the official media sources that demonize them, the hypocritical stance of the officials who one day describe them as indispensable and another reduce them to a complementary part.

Cowardice is sensed in that false unanimity of members of parliament, in the massive marches on May 1, in the simulated fighting spirit of those who participate in a repudiation rally or in the silence of those who witness it. In those who inform on their friends or family members.

Cowardice shines in the journalist who doesn’t dare to stake his position on asking an official the uncomfortable question that everyone is waiting for, in the artist who withdraws a picture from his exhibition, the playwright or the filmmaker who deletes a scene, the writer who tears out a page from his original work to get it printed, the singer-songwriter who gets rid of his controversial songs so that his concert is allowed, the comedian who chokes on his best joke because he wants to continue hearing applause…

What causes the most pain is seeing how the brave crack.

Sometimes “showing them the instruments” is enough. Nobody can validate the certainty of the legend of Galileo murmuring “and yet it moves,” what is indeed historically confirmed is that Giordano Bruno burned at the inquisatorial stake for not renouncing his “heresies.”

But who is going to ask a university professor to dare to tell his students something that contradicts the dogma, or a last-year student to renounce the golden dream of his degree defending that classmate who is going to be expelled for not being a revolutionary?

It hurts a lot to see how the brave crack.

All of the aforementioned examples are common knowledge for anyone who lives in Cuba. They are not exaggerations; the cruelest tools aren’t even mentioned.

This Saturday, in front of the Ministry of Communications the most likely thing is that they suspend the protest, let us say the presence, of the young people who had gathered to show their dissatisfaction, let us say their opposition, with the elimination of the SNet network. Very few will go and those who try will not be allowed to get there.

Throughout this week a group of State Security officials trained in the sophisticated techniques of frightening decent people have been put in charge of dissuading leaders and threatening enthusiasts. They have resorted to everything.

Nobody should condemn these kids for cowardice, none of them has any reason to feel cowardly. The accusing finger should be pointed elsewhere.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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‘Maleconazo’ Turns 25 Between Legend and Oblivion

Caption 1: The popular uprising begagn on Avenida del Puerto and many people joined it along the Malecón. (Karel Poort)

14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havana, August 4, 2019 — “This was one of the places where more people joined,” remembers Loipa, a resident of Malecón and Escobar in Central Havana. Twenty-five years after the Maleconazo*, the events of that day have taken the form of an urban legend that older people tell and younger ones don’t know. “That fifth of August in 1994 it seemed that everything was ending,” stresses the woman.

The area has changed a lot since that social explosion that put Fidel Castro on the ropes. Calle San Lázaro near Maceo Park now has a quarter century more of deterioration, in several places entire buildings have collapsed, and “the majority of those who experienced that moment have left or have died,” says Loipa.

“I was a nurse at Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital when everything happened,” she remembers of that Friday. “We started the day with no light and I didn’t have to work that day but I had gone out to look for some food because in the house we’d gone a week with only rice and a sauce that my mom invented with lemongrass and oregano from the ground.” continue reading

The crisis, which the government had baptized with the euphemism of Special Period, had been dragging on the lives of Cubans for several years. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economy of the Island sank from the lack of fuel, the abrupt cutting of imports, and the lost of Soviet support that turned out “brutal,” according to the economist Carmelo Mesa-Lago.

On August 5, 1994, the Cuban seaboard was witness to a popular revolt known as the Maleconazo. (Karel Poort)

That fifth of August, Loipa was unaware of what was brewing near her house. For days tension had been growing after authorities intercepted several boats sailing toward the coast of the United States. A rumor began to gain force on the street: that the Government was going to permit the arrival of boats from Florida to seek family members on the Island, just as had been done in 1980 during the exodus of the Mariel Boatlift.

“That morning my son came in the house and told us he was going,” remembers Fernando Soriano, a retiree who lives in a neighborhood “with a view of the sea,” as he likes to call it. On the avenue of Malecón and near the corner with Campanario, the now retired man is in the business of collecting beer and soda cans from businesses in the area to sell them in raw material centers and augment his pension.

A few months earlier, in an attempt to relieve the social pressure cooker, Castro had promoted self-employed work by permitting some licenses for the private sector. Thus were born the first private restaurants, the first small shops in decades that sold sweets, fried food, and pizzas in a legal manner, but the economic situation remained at rock bottom for the great majority of Cubans, trapped in a suffocating cycle of survival.

“Many people like my son went to the boat launch on the Regla wharf to see if they could go on the boats that were going to arrive,” remembers Soriano. “That filled up but the police already had surrounded the place because the residents of this area kept going down through all the streets to get to the Malecón wall in case the boats came.” In one moment the frustration erupted.

The area has changed a lot since that social explosion that put Fidel Castro on the ropes. (Karel Poort)

“The Malecón turned into a death trap, when the people came to realize that they weren’t going to let them go, the shock troops were already here,” he explains. Soriano points out the intersection of Calle San Lázaro and Belascoaín. “The Blas Roca construction contingent entered through here, with helmets and rebar in their hands, dealing out blows on all sides.”

Soriano believes that the protest didn’t turn into more because “it lacked leadership and they chose the route poorly.” He believes that “had they placed themselves in Central Havana and Old Havana and moved outward, thousands of people would have joined and then everything would have been different because it’s not the same thing to suppress a handful versus a sea of people.”

Castro had the skill of setting civilians against each other to avoid the image of uniformed soldiers hitting the population. “No one knew who was who, although I remember that those who were demonstrating looked skinnier and with more raggedy clothing,” says this Havanan.

Mesa-Lago believes that the worst year of the crisis that led to the Maleconazo was 1993, “but the crisis began in 1991,” he specifies. What was lost was not a small thing, between 1960 and 1990 the USSR injected around $65 billion into the Island’s economy. In the decade of the 80s that bulky subsidy generated a “golden” age of Cuban socialism that some still remember today with nostalgia.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economy of the Island sank. (Karel Poort)

Ernesto was born a year after that popular revolt and now he operates a pedicab in the vicinity of where on that day his father joined a group of those who were yelling and demanding that they be permitted to leave the country. “The old man has told me some things but he doesn’t like to talk about that day because the police arrested him and put him in jail.” Years later and after leaving prison, Ernesto’s father managed to get political asylum in the United States.

“Here almost nobody talks about that, although everyone still has the same desperation to leave,” reflects the bicycle-taxi driver. “People no longer go out in the street [to protest] because it was already seen that nothing is achieved, but the Maleconazo of today is outside of the embassies,” he believes. The event has been erased from official history and every August, the media praises the birthday of Fidel Castro, on the 13th, while they silence that other day that marked so many lives.

Castro had the skill of setting civilians against each other to avoid the image of uniformed soldiers hitting the population. Fidel Castro is in the green army cap center left. (Karel Poort)

The Rafter Crisis [Crisis de los Balseros] that erupted after, in which tens of thousands of Cubans embarked upon the sea, has also been erased from the anniversaries that are studied in schools and broadcast on national media.

On the same corner of Malecón y Belascoaín, one of the epicenters of the protest, now there is an esplanade where children play and at night groups of young people gather to share their dreams and a lot of rum. The adjacent building has some columns that look out on the sea, they have tried to hide the cracks with some paint.

A man rocks in a chair in the doorway while he sells paper cones of peanuts. He says that he doesn’t remember much of that day but that in the stairway of the entrance of the building “some children hid, one of them covered in blood because they had split his head.” The neighborhood of San Leopoldo, in Central Havana, was one of those that took the worst part of the suppression against the demonstrators on that fifth of August.

Cubans launched sticks and stones against Hotels like the Deauville and stores like La Época. (Karel Poort)

Propelled by frustration and rage, some of them began to break the glass windows of state-owned businesses and vandalize trash containers. “Here almost every family had a child beaten that day or who later left on a raft,” believes Soriano.

Official media broadcast the arrival of Fidel Castro to the area, like a sign that the revolt had been pacified and the Government had emerged victorious. “He only arrived when everything was already calm and the truth is that that wasn’t a happy day for anybody in this neighborhood,” says a resident of San Leopoldo who prefers anonymity and who was surprised by “all that” on the street.

But behind the official silence, the wound remains open. “I handed in my Communisty Party card a little after that, I had stopped believing in everything when I saw the builders splitting heads open and dealing out blows,” the woman makes clear.

*Translator’s note: In Spanish “azo” is an ending used to coin words and implies concepts such as “blow and hit, and also big.” In this case, added to “Malecon” it means the explosion/riot on the Malecon.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

Maleconazo Photographer Shares Links / Karel Poort

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An Entire Day Dedicated to Buying a School Uniform

Some parents had problems with illegible papers or errors. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, August 6, 2019 — Enormous lines and annoyance among parents marked this Monday the beginning of the sale of uniforms in the majority of municipalities in the capital. After days of waiting, uncertainty, and misinformation, Plaza de la Revolución, Centro Habana, La Habana Vieja, Regla, La Habana del Este, Guanabacoa, Cerro, and Marianao finally joined the communities of San Miguel del Padrón, Diez de Octubre, La Lisa, Boyeros, Arroyo Naranjo, and el Cotorro, which began the operation last Thursday, and Playa, which was added on Friday.

In a store called La Gloria, chosen for students from Plaza de la Revolución to buy their uniforms, the line began to form on Sunday at four in the afternoon.

“This was madness. Here in the front door of the store there was a little group that had the list. They were drinking rum and making a huge uproar. The parents who were arriving put their names down on the list, got their number, and left, but early in the morning there was even a knife fight and we had to call the police,” says a resident who everyone calls Nena and who carries a thermos of coffee in her hand from which she sells cups to others. continue reading

They had to keep the store open until midnight, due to the large number of people who had piled up on this first day in part of the capital. (14ymedio)

At eight in the morning, an hour before the opening of La Gloria, a crowd was gathered around the building. The list that had been made the previous day included the first hundred people in the line who had in their hands a ticket with a number. As the others arrived they asked “who’s last”* in the line for those “without a ticket” as they arrived.

There are hardly any children in the long line. The majority of the parents have chosen to bring a garment of their child to figure out the size and avoid a bad experience for the children. Those who couldn’t avoid bringing them, on the other hand, passed the time running around, sometimes desperate, going from one side to the other, or asking for water and food.

A slim woman comes in high heels, a business skirt, and a pearl necklace. After five minutes of waiting, leaning on a column, she takes some sandals out of her purse, puts away the heels, takes off the skirt, and remains with some shorts that she was wearing underneath. “Now I’m ready for this,” she says, and she takes off to rest against one of the walls surrounding the front door of the store after putting down a little nylon bag that she takes out of her purse. She gets comfortable, and now she is ready for a long wait.

A few minutes before nine in the morning, the manager of the store arrives and explains in detail the necessary requisites to make the purchase and all of its peculiarities. She warns that they are not yet selling high school uniforms for boys and that the voucher cannot having any corrections. She also asks the parents to carefully read the list of schools that shop there to avoid waiting in line in vain, a moment in which all of the parents check their papers to make sure.

One of the mothers is worried because the part of the voucher that indicates the sex of the student wasn’t very legible. “Here you can see that they wanted to turn an M into an F, so nothing is understood. We can’t accept that this way here,” the employee tells her. “Now you have to go to the municipality education office which is on H and 21 and get another,” she adds, to the annoyance of the woman.

The mother leaves after calling her husband, who picks her up on a motorcycle to right the wrong. She had arrived at the store at five in the morning and was among the first hundred in line, so she didn’t want to lose the opportunity. “There I had to make a big fuss for them to pay attention to me, because nobody is doing anything, but in the end I got a promise from an employee that they would send someone here with new vouchers to exchange,” she says upon returning.

An official from the Ministry of Education finally arrived, in a car and with a folder of papers, as a savior of the parents and not only gave a new voucher to that family but also to others in a similar situation. “They didn’t accept my voucher because it’s written in two different inks, imagine. The teacher’s pen ran out when she was filling out the information and I gave her mine to finish it,” explained a grandmother to the woman from the municipality. “Who would think of making a demand like that?” she complained.

Despite the incidents, the sale began punctually, at nine in the morning. At two tables, placed at the entrance to the store, workers took information from parents, who then passed inside to make the purchase. At the counter two very young girls, with white t-shirts with the face of Che, were in charge of sales, while a boy helped to take out and organize pieces from the storeroom.

At a rate of five minutes per person, at midday some 40 people had already made their purchases. However, the feeling was that it wasn’t advancing, and only after two in the afternoon were they able to organize the second part of the line, those who had no ticket. One of the mothers got everyone in a line and handed out a hundred new numbers to guarantee order and prevent cutting.

The list that had been made the previous day included the first hundred people in the line who had in their hands a ticket with an identifying number. (14ymedio)

At four in the afternoon, after eight hours of waiting, a grandmother sadly came out of the store. “I wasn’t able to buy anything because my grandson is starting first grade and she says that it’s only for the first ones,” explained the woman, who had missed the moment in which the manager had warned of that detail.

“You wait there, that is outrageous, why couldn’t they make an exception for you, an older woman? Now you have to come another day and wait in line, that cannot be,” yelled an older man who was accompanying his son. “I can’t sell to her on that voucher, because later when they do the audit, I’ll be the one with the problems,” explained the manager to the man who, despite everything, managed to extract from her the promise that, when sales to the second group begins, the woman will not have to wait in line again.

After an entire day in line, some parents began to sketch out ideas to solve the yearly disaster in sales of school uniforms. “The best thing would be to get rid of them, let each student come in dark pants and a light sweater and the problem is over,” said a mother. “I’m 41, and in my high school they gave out the uniforms in the school’s storeroom, where they gave you your books. And there were never problems, if they were missing a size they asked for it and it’s done, if they did that now they would get rid of a few problems,” says another.

At eight at night the parents who had come at eight in the morning were coming out with their purchases, although some no longer found the size they were looking for. Those who had arrived at nine or ten in the morning still had two hours of waiting ahead of them. The store was selling up until a few minutes before midnight. Today, in front of the store, the view is the same, hundreds of parents waiting to buy school uniforms for their children.

*Translator’s note: In Cuba people join lines by asking “who’s last” and then they know who is the person ahead of them. Once the next person comes and they identify themselves as “last” they can wander off, sit down, visit with friends and so on without losing their place.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Cuban Observatory Urges "A More Demanding Posture" From the EU Toward Havana

Cuban police detain the activist Iliana Hernández during the LGBTI independent march on May 11 in Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, August 4, 2019 — The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH) has urged the new legislature of the European Union, which will come into office in the next few weeks, to present “a more demanding posture in face of the human rights violations in Cuba,” according to a statement published this week.

The OCDH also details in its text that during the month of July on the Island arbitrary detentions and repressive actions increased in Cuba. “There were at least 263 arbitrary arrests, within a total of more than 300 repressive actions by the authorities.”

The Observatory, headquartered in Madrid, adds to these repressive acts “cases of home raids, illegal summons, prohibition of trips abroad, and besieged houses, among others.” The provinces with the most worrying rates have been Havana, Matanzas, Santiago de Cuba, and Villa Clara. continue reading

“Some of the cases had special relevance in July, like the explusion of Omara Ruiz Urquiola as a university professor at the Advanced Institute of Design in Havana,” details the report. “The human rights activist suffers from cancer and has claimed on several occasions that the island’s medical authorities are denying her treatment,” it adds.

The arrest of the independent journalist Ricardo Fernández Izaguirre, a contributer to 14ymedio, is also included in the text. The reporter was “detained for nine days, four of them totally isolated. Later he was fined and deported from the capital to Camagüey. His case is typical of the shameless breach of the by now arbitrary Cuban national law,” it claims.

Iliana Hernández, contributer for the portal CiberCuba, also “was detained by the police twice in July,” adds the OCDH.

In the next few weeks a new legislature will begin in the European Union and the matter of human rights “cannot be subordinated to geopolitical calculations, much less when people, now not only in Cuba, but also in Venezuela and Nicaragua, look at Europe as a global benchmark in the defense of democratic values and human dignity,” affirmed Alejandro González Raga, executive director of OCDH.

Recently the organization published a report claiming that in the first half of 2019 there were at least 1,468 arbitrary detentions against opposition figures, independent journalists, and activists on the Island.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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When America Was Called Cuba

In the 1516 Carta Marina, Waldseemüller called the contour that the United States currently occupies “Terra de Cvba.”

14ymedio, August 5, 2019 — When Columbus arrived in the “New World,” he called it Cuba. He didn’t know then that he was on an island and believed that it was part of Asia. In 1507 the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller made a great map in which the word America appeared for the first time to designate the lands explored by Vespucci, but years later rectified it and ended up changing it to Cuba.

Waldseemüller began to doubt Vespucci’s role in the New World and called the continent “terra incognita,” with a note that indicated: “This land and the adjacent islands were discovered by the Genoese Columbus, by mandate of the king of Castile.” The cartographer thus joined the idea that Columbus had reached the continent, so when he made the Carta Marina in 1516 he decided to label it “Terra de Cvba – Asie partis” (Land of Cuba – part of Asia, in Latin).

The Carta Marina is one of the most important cartographic works in the world, considered the first printed nautical map it has 12 pages. It measures approximately 2×1 meters and its only copy is in the United States Library of Congress. continue reading

“In the Carta Marina, he [Waldseemüller] adopts the idea of Christopher Columbus. Then what we call America is in reality an unknown extension of Asia,” Ricardo Padrón, a specialist in literature and cartography of the Spanish empire, tells BBC Mundo in a report that dives into this mystery.

The professor believes that Columbus explored part of the Cuban coast on his second voyage to America. “He was convinced that the lands he had discovered were part of Asia and when it became evident to him that the coasts he was exploring were those of an island, he denied it and made his crew members swear that the land that he had discovered, Cuba, was continental and not insular,” he added.

This confusion, created deliberately by Columbus, would have consequences like that of Waldseemüeller’s map.

It is unknown, moreover, what is the origin of the name of the island, the BBC text takes the opportunity to remind us. One theory suggests that it comes from ciba, which means “stone, mountain, cave” among the native Tainos. Another, also of indigenous origin, is that it comes from cohiba and that is what natives named it. Cubanacan, which means “central place” in Taino, because of its position in the Caribbean, could be another of the origins.

A last one, which comes from outside, is that it comes from the Arabic word coba (mosque with a dome) and that is the form of the mountains seen from the Bay of Bariay, where it is believed Columbus disembarked.

Although the Genoese called it Juana, for the daughter of the monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, he changed it to Ferdinanda when the queen began to be known by the nickname The Crazy One. However, Cuba is the name that prevailed.

“The indigenous population called it something similar to Cuba. This is recounted by Father (Bartolomé) de las Casas, the Dominican friar who was traveling with Columbus and was in Cuba for the entire colonization. And all this is known from oral tradition,” Ciro Bianchi, collaborator of Juventud Rebelde, tells the BBC.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Businesses Comply With "Capped" Prices Out of Fear of Complaints

Cafes had to adapt to the new law this Thursday. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, August 1, 2019 — Notice boards of missing products or those corrected in a hurry are part of the scene this Thursday as capped prices of drinks go into effect in private cafes and bakeries in Havana, a governmental measure that intends to contain inflation after the salary increase in the state sector.

“20 pesos,” responds an employee of a private cafe in El Vedado in a low voice, when, the day before the law started to apply, a mother asks him how much an orange soda costs. Private workers have spent days preparing themselves for the price regulation, which also affects industrial juices, bottled water, and beer.

The fear that the law will entail a reinforcement of the presence of undercover inspectors and that customers will denounce those who maintain former prices has led many to modify the prices days before the official date for its entry into force, while others maintained them until the last minute of July 31. continue reading

Some businesses still continue with the former prices. (14ymedio)

In many of the private cafes and bakeries that opened in the early hours of August 1, crossed-out prices could still be seen, now replaced by lower figures, but in the majority of places one had to ask.

The new rates stipulate that domestically produced beer be fixed at 30 CUP (1.25 CUC); imported beer at 35 pesos (1.45 CUC); and soda in 1.5-liter bottles cannot be more than 30 CUP and in cans 18 CUP.

In a brief trip through the Nuevo Vedado neighborhood, the most obvious thing was that late yesterday night, July 31, Hollandia beer was stocked at the Tulipán store. At the price of 1 CUC per can (roughly $1 US) and with a maximum limit of five cases of 24 cans per customer, there had already been a line since the early hours.

“If every day there was this supply, you could understand capped prices,” commented the owner of a bar-cafe. “We’ll see how long it lasts.”

In a pizzeria on Tulipán street, prices remained at 40 and 50 CUP for domestic beer and 60 for imported, but the sales clerk said that as soon as the cashier arrived, they would make a decision about taking down the sign or amending it.

Employees of various private restaurants in the Plaza de la Revolución municipality confirmed to 14ymedio that, although the measure doesn’t apply to private restaurants, they have been summoned to a series of meetings where authorities have asked them not to increase prices. In those meetings, representatives of the Provincial Administration Council of Havana have promised to not raise prices in state-owned retail markets, where self-employed workers buy a good part of their products.

“Personally it doesn’t affect me so much, because in addition to canned soda I sell juices and natural fruit smoothies that we make right here,” Néstor, an entrepreneur with a small kiosk in an arcade in the Calzada del Cerro, tells this newspaper. “But I also sell plenty of cola and lemon sodas, because the pediatric hospital is close by and parents prefer to bring drinks that are sealed and more secure to the children that are patients.”

Despite the fact that his pocket will not be among the most harmed by the new law, Néstor believes that “the self-employed weren’t consulted at all before they applied a measure like this to us. When the time comes to pay taxes and hand over part of our earnings, they announce it with plenty of time beforehand, even on television, but when it’s time to make a decision like this, they say it practically from one day to the next.”

That the capped prices include small private cafes and places that sell breads and baked goods but not private restaurants is, in Néstor’s opinion, discrimination. “They punish the little people but leave out those who make more money with the drink prices that remain as they are,” he claims. “Everyone is saying that it’s because they don’t want to affect their own interests because there are many powerful people in this country who have opened private restaurants.”

Stores were well stocked this Thursday early in the morning. (14ymedio)

Many cafe owners have come throughout the week to the premises of the National Office of Tributary Administration (ONAT) of Central Havana to ask if the measure will entail a change in the tax rate that they must pay each year on their personal incomes. “I had planned more or less how much I was going to earn in these months, but now I have to redo all those calculations,” protested a self-employed worker to an employee of the office.

The ONAT employees insisted that the decision “has been made by the Provincial Administration Council of Havana” and is disassociated from the tax system, dependent on the Ministry of Finances and Prices.

In a small cafe located on Carlos III, near the corner of Infanta, a few customers were looking this morning to see if the rule was being followed. “When I don’t find soda in the store I come through here and buy a can to take it to my son at school for snack time,” explains Dayamí, a nurse and mother of an eight-year-old son who is now on vacation. “The price has risen in the past year and I was no longer able to pay it,” she clarifies.

A day before the law was due to take effect, the incumbent of the Ministry of Finances and Prices, Meisi Bolaños, justified the price freezes on drinks and other products. “If we increase the salary and at the same time they do it with the main products, goods, and services that the population demands, the positive effect on purchasing power wouldn’t be matched or achieved,” she argued.

The official called on citizens to denounce those who don’t comply. “It’s the people themselves who through communication channels inform us and provide evaluations, complaints, and reports; additionally, they explain to us and offer suggestions to review prices and establish regulatory mechanisms, above all in those cases that have to do with food and services.”

This Wednesday the economist Pedro Monreal warned of the dangers of appealing to what he called “frozen prices.” On his blog, the academic judged that the measure indicates “the supremacy of administrative mechanisms and the anchoring of planning in a centralized outline. It’s the economic equivalent of an induced coma and its multiple consequences could be significant.”

A private restaurant in Nuevo Vedado maintains the old prices: “Nobody has told us that we had to change them.” (14ymedio)

Monreal shares the fear spreading through Cuban streets that the new straitjacket imposed on the private sector will not prevent prices from “growing on a black market that could expand. It could also loosen the stitches of the economic system through other places: investment, jobs, and salaries.”

“When they capped the prices of pork in the markets, what happened?” asks Isidro del Valle, a pork producer from the region of Bahía Honda in Pinar del Río who says that the majority of the pork now sold in the region “is done on foot and because the buyer comes directly to the farms or has an intermediary, but it doesn’t arrive in the markets.”

“What’s going to happen with drinks is that we’re going to come to a cafe and the employee will say that they don’t have them, not on the announcement board, but if someone wants a cola they will have to pay the price that it had before all this,” he suspects. “Either you pay the price or you have no drink. Oh, and if an inspector comes they will say that the customer brought the can from another place.”

“Every time the Government makes a law here, the people invent a trick,” says the pork producer with resignation.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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The Obligations of the Church

The cardinal’s funeral was held in the presence of several members of the Government. (EFE/Yander Zamora)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, January 30, 2019 — First of all, I must confess: I don’t agree with any religion. I hardly have metaphysical doubts, which doesn’t even allow me to classify myself as an atheist. I have always believed that religions are a kind of discipline for the spirit and that mine is notoriously undisciplined.

Now that I have confessed I say: the Catholic Church, its bishops, its clergy, its laypersons, its believers, have been profoundly offended by the Cuban Government in the days in which the remains of the cardinal Jaime Ortega began their eternal repose amidst the ceremonies related with his funerals.

I say “the Government” because I suppose that the Ministry of the Interior is part of it, and I deduce that the “organs of State Security” are subordinate to said ministry. And so I wonder from what office came the order to prevent Dagoberto Valdés from being able to attend those funerals; the activist Iliana Hernández, the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, and the journalist Luz Escobar, among others, from being able to approach Havana cathedral or Colon Cemetery. Who directed the cordoning off of the cathedral plaza to reduce its access to a single point?

I wonder if, in agreement with the due respect owed between government institutions and the entities of civil society, law enforcement, commanded by the Ministry of the Interior, coordinated such measures with the ecclesiastical hierarchy. I imagine not. continue reading

But it so happens that law enforcement behaved as if every step they took was perfectly coordinated with all the parties involved. For that reason they argued with Alcántara that they would not let him go to the street because “it was necessary to respect the cardinal’s death” and suggested to Dagoberto Valdés that during the ceremony “things [could] happen” that law enforcement could not allow.

I don’t want to believe that the Church asked the Ministry of the Interior to take such precautionary measures. I resist accepting that the Ministry asked the Church’s permission to adopt these measures. But that is what State Security has led people to believe and as a consequence the Church, since it is not going to protest, has taken on the obligation to publicly clarify that it was not even consulted.

I recognize that I have no right, not even via my baptism, to demand that the Catholic hierarchy make some type of declaration on the matter, but it happens that that hierarchy boasts that the deceased cardinal influenced the thaw and the “reconciliation” between the Government and the Church, that he built bridges for those who held different philosophical positions to understand each other, instead of being offended from the extremes.

Since those things fall to me I have the right to have an opinion, even though I have never baptized my children, nor have I married at the altar. The Church has contracted obligations with this citizen and I am waiting for it to fulfill them.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Puerto Rico and the Crisis Underneath the Surface

Protesters in front of the seat of Government known as La Fortaleza, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (EFE/Thais Llorca)

14ymedio, Carlos A. Montaner, Miami | 28 July 2019 — It was an unusual spectacle. Popular demonstrations forced the resignation of Ricardo Rosselló, governor of Puerto Rico. It was the first time that something like this had happened since 1898, when the United States snatched sovereignty of the Island from Spain in what became known as the Spanish-American or Spanish-Cuban-American War.

However, the central nucleus of the conflict remains intact. Apparently, the reasons for this episode have to do with the corruption of the government and the disclosure of a vulgar chat in which Rosselló and some twenty buddies and officials make offensive comments about political adversaries, or major artists, like Ricky Martin, but that’s not the whole truth.

That’s the surface. Underneath, like a ghost of the 19th century, lies the problem of status: independence, autonomy, or full statehood. Faced with the glaring insensitivity and stupidity of Rosselló and his courtiers, those in favor of independence or autonomy, the “populares” went out to the streets. They were right to be indignant, but the almost 900 pages of chat were anecdotal. They turned out to be a magnificent alibi. The hidden key of the protest was status. continue reading

I know the Island very well. I lived there from 1966 to 1970. I taught in a private university and our son was born there. It’s a beautiful and very dear place. It’s true that more than half a century has passed, but nothing has changed in the political order since 1898, except the proportions of the three trends.

Half a century ago the supporters of independence were 5% of the electoral register. Supporters of autonomy (or “free staters”) were, more or less, 60%, and those who wished to transform the Island into state number 51 of the American Union were at somewhere around 35%.

Today it seems that support for independence continues to be at 5% of voters, while the rest of the population is divided in similar proportions between supporters of autonomy and statehood. Sometimes the “populares” and sometimes the “staters” win. Fifty years ago only the autonomists would have won.

Wilfredo Braschi, a magnificent writer, extremely intelligent, friend of Luis Muñoz Marín, caudillo of autonomy, warned me of this with a certain melancholy: “The trend is unstoppable. The number of supporters of statehood will be more and more.”

The definitive blow against supporters of Puerto Rican independence was dealt by the United States Congress. In 1917, it granted American citizenship to all Puerto Ricans born or yet to be born on the Island. That allowed them to settle in “continental territory” without limits. Today there are more than 5 million in the United States and barely 3.3 million in Puerto Rico. (Florida is the state with the greatest number of Puerto Ricans: more than a million.)

The stability of the Island, democracy, republican institutions, American citizenship, which very few Puerto Ricans are prepared to renounce, individual freedoms, and, ultimately, the links with the United States, mean that Puerto Ricans have a per capita of forty thousand dollars annually, placing them at the head of Latin America, although they are at the tail of the United States.

Simultaneously, there is no extreme poverty, nor children that go hungry, lack schooling or medical attention. There is even the paradox that life expectancy in Puerto Rico (some 81 years) is higher than that of the United States. The same thing happens in post-secondary education: 47.1% of Puerto Ricans participate in it. Although it’s true that the average of the United States is 47.6%, Puerto Ricans surpass 20 of the 50 states in the Union.

None of these objective facts negates the immense problems of Puerto Rican society: drug use, violence related to that scourge, the enormous external debt, or the proportionally gigantic size of its public sector, but, as they say on the Island, nothing that doesn’t allow them to adequately deal with those conflicts.

What will happen, ultimately, from the resignation of Rosselló? Nothing. Everything will continue the same until, in many years, the number of staters clearly overtakes the autonomists and they decidedly ask for incorporation into the United States. That is the observable trend. Wilfredo Braschi, with melancholy, warned me about it.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Lavrov Closes Ranks with Havana and "With the Cuban Leaders"

“We’re going to continue supporting the Cuban leaders,” emphasized the diplomat, who met this Wednesday morning with his Cuban counterpart at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs headquarters. (@CubaMINREX)

14ymedio, Havana, July 24, 2019 — Russia isn’t waiting time. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s tour through Latin America, which began this Tuesday with his arrival in Havana, sent the clear message that the old ally maintains with the Island a “deep agreement on the international agenda,” said the Minister of Foreign Relations, Bruno Rodríguez, during a press conference this Wednesday.

The minister’s visit happens at a moment of special financial tension for Cuba, and Lavrov has emphasized that Russia will contribute to “making the Cuban economy more sustainable in face of the blows,” alluding to the new restrictions imposed by the Administration of the United States.

Lavrov has also confirmed his backing of the senior leadership of the country, after more than a year of Miguel Díaz-Canel’s presidency. “We are going to continue supporting the Cuban leaders,” emphasized the diplomat, who met this Wednesday morning with his Cuban counterpart at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs headquarters. continue reading

During the meeting, Lavrov mentioned the joint economic projects that are in development, which “make progress in a sustainable way in strategic sectors like energy, industry, and transport,” according to a note in the official newspaper Granma. The minister stressed that Russia has in Cuba a “trustworthy and long-standing” partner.

For three decades Moscow supported the Cuban economy via subsidies and sugar purchases for which, on occasion, the Soviets ended up paying seven times above its cost on the world market. Of the 31.7 billion debt that the Island incurred, it only payed 500 million and Russia canceled the rest.

Recently, the economist Carmelo Mesa-Lago detailed that “the Soviet Union gave Cuba, in 30 years from 1960 to 1990, some $65 billion,” but despite that, the Island “didn’t change its structure and its system to be able to grow and finance imports. The money practically vanished.”

Last October Cuba and Russia signed seven agreements for collaboration in areas like the steel industry, sports, and customs services, at the same time opting to strengthen bilateral collaboration, commerce, and investments on the Island.

Railway is one of the sectors where the relationship between both countries has been the most palpable. Russia is carrying out an ambitious renovation project of the Cuban rail network, affected by decades of technical deterioration and lack of investment.

In June the director of the Russian company Sinara Transport Machines (STM), Anton Zubijin, said that projects of that type on the Island add up to 200 million Euros. “We have already covered half of the way, we’re providing 45 locomotives, and we are building together a locomotive repair factory,” he explained.

However, it is the collaboration in the military sphere that has gotten more international attention, especially from the United States. At the end of 2018 it was made known that the Cuban Government will receive a Russian credit of $50 million that will allow it to buy all types of arms and military material from Moscow.

Cuban authorities are seeking to modernize the military industry and armaments through the purchase of Russian tanks and armored vehicles, in addition to ships, spare parts, tools, and accessories.

Caption: Raúl Castro Ruz, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, accompanied Lavrov to the inauguration ceremony for the restoration of the Statue of the Republic at the National Capitol. (Angélica Paredes/ Radio Rebelde)

Raúl Castro Ruz, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, accompanied Lavrov to the inauguration ceremony for the restoration of the Statue of the Republic at the National Capitol. Russian experts were the ones in charge of the rehabilitation process of this sculpture and are putting gold plating on the dome of the emblematic building.

The restored sculpture is the work of the Italian artist Angelo Zanelli and it is considered the third tallest statue underneath a roof in the world.

Although so far no official reference has been made to the situation in Venezuela, Lavrov’s arrival in Cuba also coincides with the dialogue process between the regime of Nicolás Maduro and representatives of the opposition which is being held in Barbados, on which Russian influence has projected several times.

This Tuesday Lavrov told the press that “the situation in Venezuela is changing for the better,” and he stressed that after the “failed attempts” of provoking a new “color revolution,” “common sense is beginning to prevail.”

“In light of the positive comments of the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and of the opposition figures on how the negotiation process is going, I trust that an agreement that satisfies everyone will be able to be reached. That will go, first and foremost, for the benefit of the Venezuelan people,” he emphasized.

Recently Elliott Abrams, special US envoy for Venezuela, warned of the importance of the Russian role in the survival of the Chavist regime. The support of that power is essential, argued the New York political figure, among other reasons because of its veto power in the United Nations Security Council.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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