Translator: Sheilagh Herrera – Page 8

Official Press Confirms the Discovery of a Body in a Hospital Cistern

The hospital maintains that it has taken measures to resolve the situation.

14ymedio, Havana, April 26, 2019 — The information that had been circulating for several days on social media was true: they had found, last Saturday, a body in a cistern of the Iván Portuondo hospital in San Antonio de los Baños (Artemisa). The official press has confirmed it this Thursday in an article published on the Facebook page of the local newspaper El Artemiseño, which speaks of an “unpleasant incident” and calls for “ill-intentioned rumors” to be avoided.

“According to the doctor Alden Peláez, provincial director of Public Health, upon finishing work in the cisterns, which has a quandrant system that makes them difficult to inspect, a body was detected, on April 20, inside one of these,” explained El Artemiseño, which clarified that the deceased “is not a patient of the hospital.”

“In San Antonio they aren’t talking about anything else,” Rosenda Calvo, a resident of the area near the hospital, tells 14ymedio via telephone. “It was the patients themselves and their families who put so much pressure on them with their complaints of the poor state of the water that they ended up making workers inspect what was happening.” continue reading

“The water coming out of the sinks didn’t only have a bad odor, but it was also murky and, for several days, the patients’ visitors had had to bring the sick people even water to bathe,” confirms Calvo, who had a family member hospitalized. “They thought that maybe it was a matter of a turkey vulture or a dog, but never a person.”

This newspaper attempted to communicate on several occasions with the hospital, the local Police office, and local media to confirm the information, but only received evasive answers and on several occasions the people who answered hung up.

However, the publication this Thursday of the news in El Artemiseño is an unusual gesture in the official press, little given to reporting incidents that occur inside hospitals, schools, or prisons.

The Ministry of the Interior is in charge of the investigation and, according to the publication, took measures like the “halting” of the water supply in the hospital and the use of barrels and tanks of certified water for the hospital to continue functioning.

“Other measures taken were the monitoring of residual chlorine three times a day in different parts of the network and microbiological surveillance of the water on equal numbers of consecutive days,” added Peláez.

According to the director, the contaminated cistern and the tanks that it supplies will not be in service until “the pressure washer and the hydrology team carry out the cleaning, disinfection, and certification.”

According to Martinoticias, which interviewed a resident, the deceased was named Villo Mantilla and was a former employee of the hospital. According to her, the body had been in the water tank for at least 15 days.

“I don’t know how he fell in the water, which is potable water for the consumption of the patients, the sick, the doctors,” said Rolando Yuset Pérez Morera, another resident of San Antonio de los Baños.

“Inside the cistern they found trash, a wheelchair, a great amount of filth,” added Pérez Morera.

The official press added in its statement that it will provide a “follow-up” to this “lamentable incident” in order to not give space to comments “that undermine the sensitive Cuban health system.”

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Cuba Withdraws its Doctors From El Salvador

The program of the Miracle Mission eye center at the Santa Gertrudis hospital in San Vicente was closed. (Photo/Mauricio Cáceres/ elsalvador.com)

14ymedio, Havana, April 24, 2019 — The Cuban Government decided to withdraw its doctors and other health professionals who were working in El Salvador, after the Medical Profession Oversight Board (JVPM) notified the Attorney General of the Republic of an alleged illegal practice of the profession by Cubans in the Central American country.

The Island’s Ministry of Public Health decided to withdraw 19 doctors, technicians, and nurses who were part of the Miracle Mission in El Salvador and who provided services at the National Eye Center (CON) at the Santa Gertrudis hospital in San Vicente, according to the Minister of Health of that Central American country, Violeta Menjívar, of the outgoing cabinet.

The winner of the Salvadoran elections this past February was Nayib Bukele, a 37-year-old businessman from the advertising sector, who will take office on the first of June. Until then the office will be held by the current president, Sánchez Cerén, an ex-guerrilla of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and a traditional ally of the Plaza of the Revolution of Havana. continue reading

Menjívar expressed this Wednesday her dissent because the Oversight Board was “criminalizing” the Cuban doctors by demanding the “originals” of their graduate diplomas instead of copies, and for that reason the Cuban Government withdrew them from the mission. Additionally, she described the action of the JVPM as a discrediting campaign against Cubans.

On the team of specialists who returned to Cuba were ophthalmologists, optometrists, retinologists, nurses, a clinical lab technician, biomedical professionals, a chemist, and a pharmacist. They all left El Salvador last week under orders of the Cuban Government.

The Minister of El Salvador requested that the JVPM not ask for the Cubans’ original diplomas. “Don’t be finicky,” she said, to which she added, “not a single professional is fake, a legal analysis must be done.”

Despite that request the JVPM insists that the original diplomas of the Cubans be shown in order for them to be authorized, because they believe that the Cuban professionals cannot present only copies because they are not part of The Hague agreement.

The president-elect, Nayib Bukele, said on Twitter that “starting in June the Miracle Mission will be re-established and increased.”

“When I was mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlán I saw how hundreds of older adults benefited, many of whom no longer had any hope of seeing,” added the leader, who emphasized that his government will place a special emphasis on hiring Salvadoran doctors and asked his compatriots “not to politicize good things.”

Cuba has been present in El Salvador with the Miracle Mission since 2015, thanks to the Specific agreement for the Implementation of an eye center in the Santa Gertrudis hospital of San Vicente, signed by the Ministries of Health of El Salvador and Cuba.

Last week the doctor Milton Brizuela, president of the Salvadoran Medical College, affirmed that the Miracle Mission “is an eminently political project of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) governments, created with electoral ends and with the aim of helping their Cuban allies.”

The official version for the reasons for the withdrawal of the Cuban medical mission from El Salvador has still not been publicized, but it is happening in a similar setting to what occurred with the doctors who participated in the Mais Medicos program in Brazil.

At the end of 2018 the Island’s Government withdrew thousands of doctors from that South American country after Jair Bolsonaro, at that time president-elect, described those professionals as “slaves” of a “dictatorship.” He had also conditioned the continuity of the program on the fulfillment of threec onditions: a test of the qualifications of the more than 8,500 Cuban doctors in the country; that they be able to receive their whole salary rather than most of it going to the Cuban government; and the demand that they would all have the freedom to bring their family members with them.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Street Vendors Go Digital

USB sticks have become so common that they have become part of the merchandise of the street vendors in Cuba. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Marcelo Hernández, Havana, 25 April 2019 — If a decade ago, when the first USB memory sticks began to circulate in Cuba, someone had insisted that a few years later they would share space with scrubbing sponges, instant glue, and disposable razors on the blankets of street vendors, they would have received a loud burst of incredulous laughter. Now, the devices, also called pendrives or flash memories, have become so common that they have become part of the merchandise of the street vendors in Cuba.

This storage device is not only everywhere, but its capacity to save files surpasses by many times that of the first USBs that barely held a few megabytes. “I have memories of 16 and 32 gigabytes,” explains an elderly man who sells batteries and aluminum scouring pads, among other products, outside the Central Train Station in Havana. Although the retiree does not even have a mobile phone, much less a computer, he says that “these are the good kind, the ones that don’t break.”

“For 15 CUC you can have the biggest and for 8 the one with the smallest capacity,” says the informal vendor to an interested party who tries to get a discount. “No, I can’t lower it by even a peso because that is what they are worth everywhere, you aren’t going to find them cheaper,” he adds. To convince the indecisive customer he assures him that “with this in your pocket you won’t ever have to watch Cuban television again because anyone can copy series and movies for you.” With the same one, he turns to another customer and tells her of the advantages of the teflon rolls he has on sale for plumbing jobs.

In the late afternoon, the man has managed to sell a few USB sticks. With his blanket placed on the sidewalk he is a small but vital link in the long process of digitalization that Cuban society is experiencing.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Iberostar and Melia Prepare Their Defenses in Face of the Hardening of the Embargo

The Spanish hotel company Meliá has 32 hotels operating on the archipelago, 7 in construction, and some 15,000 rooms. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Madrid, March 25, 2019 — Iberostar and Meliá, the two big Spanish hotel companies with major investments in Cuba, are preparing themselves in face of possible claims after the Trump administration partially activated Title III of the Helms-Burton Law. According to the Spanish economic newspaper Cinco Días, the hotel companies had already contracted the services of several lawyers’ offices to face eventual legal problems.

Title III of the Helms-Burton Law, approved by the United States in 1996, provides for the possibility of bringing claims in front of American courts which could result in the confiscation of properties in the United States owned by businesses with operations in Cuba.

In the last 20 years Washington has suspended the application of this title of the Law, but on March 17 the government of Donald Trump made the decision to apply it in a partial manner. continue reading

For the time being, people and companies are able to sue companies sanctioned by Washington that operate in Cuba and that are included on a “black list,” which principally affects those linked to the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR). In this case are found some hotels of Gaviota, which manages Meliá.

The main fear is that when April 17 comes, Trump will not definitively renew the suspension and allow the attempts to recover confiscated goods.

According to Hermenegildo Altozano, associate at the law office of Bird & Bird consulted by Cinco Días and an expert in Cuban affairs, Trump intends to use the pressure of economic measures to force political changes.

Marco Rubio is leading that strategy, explains the lawyer. “He is a very important, influential senator, who wants to make a political career and is using his power to try to convince Cubans in exile and in the US to make claims and reactivate the mechanism of coercion,” business sources close to Trump pointed out to the newspaper.

Ignacio Aparicio, associate of Andersen Tax & Legal and director of the Cuban Desk, also consulted by Cinco Días, says that there are around 6,000 certified claims before the Commission of Liquidation of Foreign Claims run by the Government, in the amount of approximately $9 billion, although the figure is conservative.

According to Cinco Días, experts on this matter rule out a priori that it comes to expropriating, but they consider other economic measures possible. “I see it as highly improbable that one of the certified claimants is able to begin the claims process, but if it did this it could generate a deterioration of the credit qualification of the companies and could provoke a cut of lines of credit to the Spanish companies,” said Altozano.

Another office consulted, which did not want to identify itself, doesn’t dismiss the resources so much. “The pulse could intensify if it passed from threats to reality and the American government could also opt to seize cash flows or assets of the company on American soil,” they declare.

Meliá has 32 hotels operating on the archipelago, 7 in construction, and some 15,000 rooms, while Iberostar has 21 hotels and 6,300 rooms. The latter has an important expansion plan approved to reach 12,000 rooms in 2020.

Last week the Spanish Chamber of Commerce called on the European Union for a common stance to fight in this framework. The body asked for actions aimed at avoiding the application of the Helms-Burton Law in an extraterritorial manner to European and especially Spanish citizens and countries.

Among the actions that could be carried out, it points out the application of Article 6 of the Blocking Statute of the European Union, which permits member States affected by the Helms-Burton Law to initiate legal actions on European Union territory against American companies demanding sanctions on European countries with interests in Cuba.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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The Referendum Hangover

Signs and posters are thrown into the trash and everyday life returns to the streets. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Marcelo Hernández, Havana, March 7, 2019 — After Sunday, February 24 and after finishing the constitutional referendum, everyday life seems to have entered a kind of impasse. On the walls, public stores, and billboards of the city, you can still see the signs asking you to vote Yes with which the government filled every corner, but the slogans are also beginning to fade, some posters are being thrown away, and the page turned on a tension that lasted months.

The lines in front of consulates to obtain a visa continue, on the streets the lack of cooking oil and the poor connectivity of 3G service for cellphones dominates conversations, while the vote for the Constitution sounds like a distant and past matter. With the electoral propaganda finished in national media, the news tries to fill the holes of the calls to mobilization and completes them with headlines on the production of supposed articles that nobody finds in stores and with news about “the Bolivarian brother people of Venezuela.”

Now, also returning with force to conversations are the comments that were suspended by the barrage of slogans about the ballot boxes, the “vote for the homeland,” and the ratification of the Constitution. Returning are the stories of people who are still sleeping in the home of a relative or friend because the January tornado took their own house; the testimony of the Cuban who, from the Panamanian jungle, tells his family on the Island how compatriots are joining that caravan of hundreds of migrants on its way to the United States, and, also, the traditional criticisms of the bad transportation situation.

With the constitutional drunkenness past, we have returned to our normal state: the hangover of everyday life.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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Cuban Doctors Survive on Gifts from Patients

The Martyrs Intermunicipal General Teaching Hospital in Sagua la Grande, Villa Clara. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Marcelo Hernández, Havana, March 7, 2019 — Herminia does a rigorous inventory of everything she needs to bring to the hospital: a pillow, a fan, a bucket to flush the toilet, and some disposable syringes that she bought on the black market. Her 27-year-old grandson is hospitalized with dengue fever and the family is preparing for the shortages of the Public Healthcare system in Cuba.

In the bag, along with the cotton swabs and thermometer, Herminia carries a gift for the doctor and the nurses attending the young man. “No one has asked us directly but it’s clear that the conditions in which they work are very bad, so we try to help them.” The gift includes soap, several pens, and a women’s perfume.

Although in 2014 the Government approved a salary increase for the more than 440,000 workers of the Public Healthcare sector, the monthly salary still doesn’t surpass the equivalent of $70, a figure that is almost symoblic in a country where a liter of sunflower oil reaches $2 and a kilo of chicken is about $1.90. continue reading

For decades Cubans have been accustomed to bribing doctors with money or gifts to get a favorable treatment, a practice that the government prohibits but which has spread to all levels of service and all specialties.

In recent months several official voices have resorted to the traditional euphemisms calling for “raising the ethics” in patient treatment and “eliminating certain distortions” in Public Health, but doctors don’t seem prepared to renounce the bonus represented by the gifts, donations, and help that they receive from the sick and their relatives.

“It’s not that they have to give me something to receive good care, but everyone who comes to this clinic knows that I have to jump through hoops to be able to feed my family with this salary,” justifies Sandra, a young graduate in Comprehensive General Medicine who sees patients in a hospital in the Cerro neighborhood.

“Yesterday I was able to have a snack because the mother of a young man I attended gave me a steak roll and a drink,” says Sandra. “In my house I have half a bag of rice given to me by a grateful patient who I once helped recover from an allergy crisis, and the husband of another patient got me the only fan in this place,” she says.

Sandra’s salary, a little more than $50 monthly, is enough for her to defray the costs of electricity and gas, buy the few products that the rationed market still offers, and “go twice to a hard currency store to bring food home,” she reflects. “It’s enough to buy a few pounds of pork, some tomato sauce, and a little bread, and that’s it.”

With an extensive network of hospitals, clinics, and family medical consults, the Healthcare sector, which was one of the jewels in the crown of the system, has been particularly affected by the loss of the Soviet subsidy that had allowed the Island to reach the health indicators of a first-world country.

“We began to have problems with everything, since the equipment was breaking and there weren’t replacement parts or even medicine, going through the resources that workers receive like clothing or footwear,” recalls Jorge Echavarría, a retired urologist who had to work in the difficult years of the ’90s on the Island. “The levels [of care] prior to the Special Period were never recovered,” he believes.

Bathrooms without water, unpainted walls, broken air conditioning, and terrible food are what Herminia found upon arriving at the ward of the Freyre de Andrade General Surgery Hospital Clinic, in Havana, where her grandson was a patient. The medical center is still half-finished after a long repair, and patients enter between scaffolding and workers finishing certain places.

“We’ve even had to bring the power outlet to put it in the wall and be able to connect the fan because there was only a hole with two cables,” laments Herminia. A neighbor has lent them a small portable television and they also have brought all of the bedding from home. A mosquito net, also brought by the family, covers the patient’s bed.

A few meters away, another patient eats directly from a plastic container that his daughter has brought him. Beside the bed, untouched, is the tray with a watery soup, a little rice, and a greenish mash that they gave him in the hospital. “Those who don’t have family members who bring them food have to eat that,” he points out, because here “we have to move our home into the hospital.”

As a consequence of the precarious economic situation doctors are experiencing in health centers, many of them long to be part of the medical missions to other countries. Although once abroad they only receive between 10% and 15% of the total salary that the local governments pay the Ministry of Health, this quantity is much more than they receive on the Island.

The Cuban medical presence reaches 64 countries and it is calculated that more than 30,000 health professionals are currently working in “international medical cooperation.” The hope of the majority is to be able to bring resources to the Island so that their families can live better or to end up emigrating during one of those trips.

“My dream is that they send me on a mission,” says Sandra, the young recent graduate. “That is the only possibility I have to get out of this hole and get some money to fix my house.” Until that day arrives, the doctor hopes “to be able to keep surviving thanks to grateful patients,” those who never arrive with empty hands.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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Reflections on the Coming Laws

From now, numerous laws will have to pass to Parliament to fulfill the terms planned by the new Constitution. (Granma)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, March 5, 2019 — Almost at the end of the definitive text of the new Constitution of the Republic, ratified on February 24, three temporary provisions appear imposing the terms for the enactment of the complementary laws.

Although a date has not been officially mentioned for their definitive publication in the Official Gazette, the deputies have proposed that the effective date for the new Constitution be April 10, 2019 to be implemented that day 150 years from the first Constitution of the Republic in Arms proclaimed in Guáimaro in 1869.

If that date is chosen, the established terms will be calculated from April 10 for each one of the steps planned in the temporary provisions. However, the dates indicated now could be moved up. continue reading

October 2019: Approval of a new Electoral Law.

This law was announced by Raúl Castro in February 2015 during the holding of the 10th Plenary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC). Debate on that topic in official media was fleeting, but in the realm of independent civil society and the political opposition, proposals arose intended to eliminate the Candidacies Commission and to introduce the election of the president of the Republic by popular vote. The new Constitution has established that the president will be chosen by Parliament and for this reason the new electoral legislation will develop bound by that precept.

January 2020: The National Assembly of Peoples Power (ANPP) will choose, from among its deputies, its president, vice-president, and secretary, the other members of the Council of State, and the president and vice-president of the Republic.

If so, February 24, 2020 would be perhaps the moment chosen for the assumption of these offices. There rise several questions. The first is if, in the case that Miguel Díaz-Canel is designated president of the Republic, and if he managed to be chosen again for a second mandate, the regressive count of his time in power will be extended until February 2030. In what count is the year that he governed between 2019 and 2020 included?

April 2020: The president of the Republic proposes to the ANPP the designation of the prime minister, vice-prime ministers, the secretary, and other members of the Council of Ministers.

In the times in which Fidel Castro occupied the position of prime minister (from February 16, 1959 to December 2, 1976) his power didn’t depend on his investiture, but rather the other way around. That position was important because the Supreme Leader occupied it. From the time when he became head of state there was no more a prime minister although Carlos Lage was taken as such when he acted as secretary of the Council of State. Behind the scenes they called him “the administrator of the insane asylum.” Among the candidates to this position the names of Homero Acosta and Mercedes López Acea are put forward.

On that same date the president must propose to the municipal assemblies the choice of provincial governors and vice-governors.

Among the discrepancies with the Constitution project that had greatest resonance during the popular debates is the detail of the election of the provincial governors. A good number of citizens who participated in these discussions suggested that this governmental position be proposed and approved by the vote of their electors.

The ANPP approves its regulations and that of the Council of State.

The ANPP will approve a one-year legislative schedule that complies with the elaboration of the laws that the established precepts in the new Magna Carta develop.

We will see, for example, how the jurists implement Article 4 of the Constitution which institutionalizes intolerance, repudiation rallies, and the repression of dissidents. That provision gives citizens the right to “combat by all means, including armed struggle [. . .], against anything that tries to overthrow the political, social, or economic order established by this Constitution.”

July 2020: The municipal assemblies designate the mayors.

October 2020: The Governing Council of the Supreme People’s Court presents to the ANPP the draft of the Law of the People’s Courts and proposed amendments to the Law of Criminal Procedure and the corresponding procedure of civil, administrative, labor, and economic law.

It would be desirable to include in that law the prohibition against arbitrary arrests, the right of the arrestee to have a lawyer from the beginning of the process, and remedies against undue confiscations, disproportionate sentences, and limitations on travel within and outside the country.

April 2021: The Council of Ministers presents to the ANPP the draft regulations of that agency and the provincial governors.

The ANPP approves the regulation of the municipal assemblies and their board of directors.

The process of popular consultation and referendum on the draft of the Family Code begins, in which the manner of establishing marriage must be included.

Those who placed themselves in opposite barricades with so much passion in order to settle the issue of whether marriage should be defined as between man and woman or between persons disposed to legalize their relationship will have to wait two years, at most. Too much energy, too much time was dedicated to this topic compared to the irrevocability of the system or the single party. But that’s how it happened.

In 2021 will begin a consultation process that presupposes a prolonged clash between the LGBTI community and the evangelical churches that have been so active on this topic. By that time Raul Castro will not longer be first secretary of the Communist Party, and Mariela Castro will lack the symbolic support that genetics gave her.

Matters of greater importance will attract the attention of those who remain at the helm of this ship. Among them, to cite only those of greatest importance, one would have to mention the solution to the acute problem of the dual currency, the elimination of the rationing system, the liberalization of the non-state productive forces, a greater opening of the migration laws that restores all rights to Cubans who live abroad and, of course, the de-criminalization of political differences.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey and Mary Lou Keel

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Three Lessons for the Cuban Opposition from the Venezuelan Struggle

Julio Borges y Carlos Vecchio, representatives of Guaidó in Washington, meet with Mike Pence. (VP)

14ymedio, Jorge Hernández Fonseca, Lisbon, 8 March 2019 — The struggle of the Venezuelan people to liberate themselves from the Castro-Communist yoke is on the definitive path to victory. The sequence of events that have led to today contain lessons important for the struggle of the Cuban people, for the fundamental reason that the Castro regime provides the main political advisers of the Venezuelan dictatorship and the ones who direct it.

Three important lessons – among others – can be extracted as experience for the Cuban political opposition absorbed in a similar struggle to that of the Venezuelan people for their freedom.

A first lesson is related to the weight that international support has had in this struggle, recognizing, supporting, and encouraging democratic Venezuelans in their effort, above all, the almost total and unconditional support that the United States has offered. For the struggle of the Venezuelan people this is very important, because Cuban opposition sectors insist in keeping their distance from US support, to avoid the inevitable and hackneyed Communist propaganda. Being supported by the US does not mean being their puppet. continue reading

The second lesson that we Cubans must learn is the importance of the exile in the struggle for freedom. We know that the Castroite dictatorship has always sown the seed of division between “Cubans inside and Cubans outside,” a seed that has been absorbed to a certain extent by opposition sectors from within the Island. If, in the case of Chavista Venezuela there is a monolithic external support, it is in large measure the result of the work of the Cuban exile.

There is a third lesson that applies to the Cuban case, increasingly clear in the Venezuelan case. Despite the fact that all of Latin America insists on ruling out an external military solution, we Cubans know that Maduro will not hand over power if he is not forced to do so. When he was alive Fidel Castro coined a phrase that is also valid in Venezuela: “What we obtained by force, they will have to take away from us by force.” In Venezuela it’s a matter of the force being that of the Venezuelan army itself, but if that is not possible, then an outside force.

Additionally, the support for the democratic Venezuelan people to the current struggle is owed in large part to the work of American members of Congress of Cuban origin, like Marco Rubio and Miguel Díaz Balart, among other Cuban American officials, who have contributed decision-making support to the United States presidency, instructing it to take decisive actions in favor of the democracy and freedom of an oppressed and needy Venezuela, even humanitarian aid. The Venezuelan fighters inside the country feel heartfelt thanks for their Latin American brothers and sisters in key positions within the American administration, without feeling self-conscious about that support, selfless and in solidarity, as it is from fellow Latinos.

In Cuba there has been enough division over these three matters, now put on the discussion table and highlighted in the struggle of the Venezuelan people. The dictatorship of Maduro, like the Castro dictatorship, insists on placing the conflicting dichotomy between Chavismo and the US, copying the Castro regime’s outline, which repeats that the Cuban dilemma is not between the oppressed people of the Island and the oppressive dictatorship, but rather between “the Revolution and the US.” No one from the opposition within Venezuela rejects international support and much less do they reject the collaboration of the United States against Maduro. We Cubans must learn that lesson.

Translated by Sheilagh Carey

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The Referendum Triggered Arbitrary Arrests in Cuba

Text of the sign: “#We All March. We don’t vote at the polling places of the assassins.” Among the most repressed independent organizations were the Patriotic Union of Cuba, Women in White, the United Antitotalitarian Forum, and the Cuban Association of Electoral Observers, among others. (@bertasolerf)

14ymedio, Havana, March 5, 2019 — The detentions for political reasons in Cuba increased to 310 in February compared to 144 in January, the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) denounced in its monthly report published this Wednesday. The number is substantially below the figure reported by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH), based in Madrid, last Sunday, which placed arrests at 405.

According to the CCDHRN, before the referendum held on February 24, a “large mobilization” of the police and para-police forces took place, capable of exercising “preventive repression and intimidation” on citizens classified as disaffected or non-sympathetic to the Government.

Likewise, it cites as two new cases of political prisoners those of Yasser Rivero Boni and Salvador Reyes Peña, arrested in Havana on 10 and 16 February respectively and interned in high security prisons.

On its list of political prisoners updated last December, the Commission cited between 130 and 140 people detained in one of the 150 prisons and internment camps currently operating on the island.

In its new monthly report it also denounces “48 acts of harassment (basically threats) and 12 physical attacks,” repressive actions carried out or orchestrated by the political police.

The OCDH, which counts almost one hundred more arrests last month, more than double the previous one, said many of these occurred “against the activists who promoted a No vote or abstention in the constitutional referendum.”

What happened “demonstrates that, in face of rebellious expressions and discontent over the economic situation, the Government of Cuba opts to intensify repression and not for reforms,” stresses the text published by the organization headquartered in Madrid.

“In addition to the arrests, the repressive action included raids on homes, confiscations of work materials, fines, house arrests, and violent episodes against human rights activists and independent electoral observers,” specified the OCDH.

The provinces with the greatest incidence of these repressive acts were Santiago de Cuba, Havana, and Matanzas, while among the most repressed independent organizations were the Patriotic Union of Cuba, the Ladies in White, the United Antitotalitarian Forum, and the Cuban Association of Electoral Observers, among others.

“We blame the Government of Miguel Díaz-Canel for the growing repression against independent activists. Almost a year after his appointment to the leadership of the country, the siege against civil society remains,” sustains the Observatory. Something that “reasserts the repressive line of the Government and shows Havana’s worry about the real results of the constitutional referendum,” denounced Alejandro González Raga, executive director of OCDH.

In a previous statement, the organization also lamented that “during seven months of campaigning for the referendum, not a single article has been published in the official press proposing No or abstention,” something which “violates international electoral standards.”

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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The Ghost of The Special Period Threatens Cuba in 2019, Warns Report

The worsening of the economy is seen not only in the “shortages in the hard currency stores,” but also in the lack of subsidized basic necessity products like bread and eggs. (14ymedio)

EFE (via 14ymedio), Miami, March 5, 2019 — The economic crisis Cuba is experiencing will worsen in the next few months and, if it doesn’t open itself to a market system, the country could fall into a new “Special Period,” the grave depression into which the island was sunk in the 90s, according to predictions from The Havana Consulting Group, headquartered in Miami.

In fact, the worsening of the Cuban economy is now seen not only in the “shortages in the hard currency stores,” but also in the lack of subsidized basic necessity products like bread and eggs, emphasized Emilio Morales, president of this firm that provides insight into the Cuban market and its consumers.

The report to which Efe had access warns that Cuba “urgently needs” to open itself to the market economy, “liberate once and for all the productive forces, and allow Cuban citizens to invest in their own country,” otherwise, the “reappearance of the ghost of the ’Special Period’” will become a reality. continue reading

At the time of the ’Special Period’ the grave crisis that gripped Cuba was due to the withdrawal of the subsidies that it used to receive from the defunct Soviet Union; today the “financial support that the island has [recently] been receiving from Venezuela is practically insignificant,” given the total collapse of the South American country.

Only by “avoiding the habitual dependence on third parties” and undertaking “profound transformations of its economy” will Cuba be able to get out of the crisis by itself, detailed The Havana Consulting Group’s report.

In that context, Morales noted that the Venezuelan subsidy, for some twenty years, “has helped the battered Cuban economy survive,” with the subsidized shipments of billions of dollars in barrels of oil in exchange for primarily medical services.

This commercial exchange between the two countries managed to reach $8.5 billion in 2012 and today barely reaches $2 billion, which is a decrease of 74%.

Added to this reality is the “failure of the economic reforms undertaken by Raúl Castro” approximately a decade ago and the “decrease in exports of nickel and sugar,” to the point where sugar production in 2018 was some 16.3% less than in 1905, which has now forced the country to buy sugar from France.

To these difficulties must be added another negative factor such as the “limits imposed to hinder the development and expansion of the private sector,” whose entrepreneurs took $2.39 billion out of the country in 2017.

And the nonexistence of free enterprise, the “non-recognition of private property, the prevalence of the monopoly established 60 years ago, and the lack of opportunities to invest and market goods and services that Cubans have,” undermine any attempt to revitalize the economy in medium and long term, says the report.

Another “chronic problem” is the deficit of the Cuban economy, despite the opening of the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM) and its failure to attract capital, which barely reaches the 14.2% of the goal proposed when it was created six years ago.

To this devastating outlook must be added the “stagnation that the Cuban tourism industry has had in general,” with the decrease of the principal tourism markets: Canada, the United States, Germany, England, France, Spain, and Italy, it points out.

Air travel between Cuba and the US in 2018 declined some 18.3% compared with the previous year, a “declining tendency begun in the last trimester of 2017.”

In terms of the economic impact, this decline in toursim translated into an estimated loss of $1.283 billion.

Conversely, the low growth rate of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) “hides a permanent recession,” with a fall to 1.4% in the last five years, according to official figures.

For that reason, “if the Cuban economy has not collapsed, it has been thanks to the Cuban exile,” 90% of which is settled in the United States and annually provides around $7 billion to the Cuban economy, between cash remittances and merchandise.

Additionally, Cuban Americans leave millions of dollars in the tourism sector of the island, since more than 50% of them who travel to the island stay in hotels with their relatives* living in the Caribbean country.

Close to 2.2 million Cubans live in the United States, some 90% of them in the state of Florida.

In 2017, cash remittances coming to the island represented 50.8% of the total annual income of the island’s population, The Havana Consulting Group pointed out.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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"Journalism and Humor Cannot be Silent"

Pedro X Molina’s caricature for the Day of Journalism in Nicaragua, on March 1.

14ymedio, Yader Luna, Managua, March 4, 2019 — The Nicaraguan caricaturist Pedro Molina revealed that he was the victim of direct threats by fanatics from the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, something that he said dozens of independent journalists in Nicaragua also suffer. However, he insists that they will not shut him up and that the commitment he has, along with his colleagues who work clandestinely or from exile, is every day greater.

The Confidencial caricaturist reflected on how difficult it is to practice the profession in these days of crisis that Nicaragua is experiencing because of the constant attack guided by the Government. “We continue doing our work, overcoming censorship and reporting,” says Molina, who maintains that this is the great triumph and seems optimistic.

“The optimism I have is based on the commitment that today every journalist doggedly doing their work has. Many of them, working clandestinely or from exile, have shown that they aren’t there (reporting) for a salary, but rather because they have recognized that with their work they can contribute to the liberation of the nation,” he affirmed during an interview with the television program Esta Noche. continue reading

Molina, a man who has drawn the powerful for years, is accustomed to annoying those personages who believe themselves untouchable. However, he admits that in the current context the threats have escalated to another level and he blamed Nicaragua’s dictatorial “first couple” for anything that may happen to him or any of his friends and family.

“There have always been threats because of my work, but they have risen in tone because they have begun to reveal details of my private life or of those of people close to me; and [Ortega and Murillo] being the ’butchers of El Carmen’ they cannot be overlooked and they have to be taken into account,” he insisted.

For the humorist, currently in Nicaragua “it’s difficult to get any kind of protection” because “we are all exposed to any kind of thing they can do to us.”

The most recent threat he received, and the one that motivated him to reveal his situation by publishing a caricature on his Twitter account, was conveyed to him through a person close to the Ortega-Murillo regime. But as for him, he preferred to not be silent.

#Nicaragua A little message… #SOSNICARAGUA #SOSJOURNALISM (In summary, the text says: My work is not secret and is not a crime. I hold Ortega/Murillo responsible for anything that might happen to me or those close to me. Equally responsible are others who act for them. Everyone will be held to account in the future that will come to fruition.)

Molina declared that the current situation that Nicaragua is experiencing is difficult for humor, because “there isn’t much to laugh about,” but he believes in the emotional value that his drawings can have.

“All of us who do journalism independent of power have to celebrate because we are doing it, in whatever manner, whether it be clandestinely or from exile. I think that we have to celebrate the commitment of independent journalism to the truth,” he stated.

The artist said that humor has the virtue that it breaks with the powerful because “for it to function it has to upset power.”

Molina explained that many of the characters in power cover themselves with a cloak of solemnity and omnipotence. “Because of that, when you make them see with humor or with a caricature that they are equal to any other person, they feel that they are diminished, that they are being lowered from the place where they deserve to be.”

During the program, he said he felt accompanied by the popular humor of Nicaraguans, which is expressed on social media. “I am happy that people empower themselves with that weapon, because it is a tool that can help you and liberate you in a situation that oppresses you.”

He recalled the assault on the facilities of Confidencial, Esta Semana, Esta Noche, and Niú; but he also appreciated the solidarity of audiences and the support they show by sending their materials (videos, photos, reports) to independent journalists, via platforms like Reporte Ciudadano (Citizen Report).

Molina declared that his opinion of young people has changed, he used to believe they were numb, and he appreciated their being “one of the driving forces of awareness raising in the entire country.”

“Many people (close to the regime) boast of threatening and humiliating people (…) there is a lot of rejection of the Government, but there is also a lot of fear; which does not mean that the people have given up, because all fear has an expiration date,” he pointed out.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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2.5 Million Cuban Voters Distance Themselves From the Constitution

Several voters exercise their right to vote at the Acapulco cinema in Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, February 26, 2019 — The preliminary results from the referendum on the new Constitution confirm what was expected: that the new Constitution was going to be approved by the majority and that the process was going to make clear the increase in citizen dissent by putting a number to that group that rejects the administration of the authorities.

More than two and a half million voters all over the country have distanced themselves from the new Constitution, between No, null, and blank votes, in addition to abstentions. Many have thus found themselves on the path to distancing themselves from the ruling political and economic system on the island.

However, it is necessary to recognize that the government managed to get the Constitution ratified, it was enough with 51% of registered voters to declare that the new Constitution had been approved in the referendum. The preliminary numbers unveiled by the National Electoral Commission show that 73.31% of citizens with the right to vote marked the Yes square. To emphasize the victory, official media outlets mention that this number is 86.85% of the votes cast, that is to say taking out of the count those who abstained. continue reading

But this is not really a victory that a decent Government can feel proud of.

Across the length and breadth of the country the official campaign to persuade voters to vote Yes was so overwhelming that there was practically no space to look where the official slogans weren’t harping at voters.

Television interviewed hundreds of people of different levels of education, race, sex, and profession who reaffirmed with arguments or emotions, or even both, their indisputable motives to ratify the new Constitution.

Indisputable, yes, because none of the more than two and a half million Cubans who did not mark Yes on the ballot had the opportunity to explain their reasons. Much less the 706,400 Cubans who overcoming fears made their cross in the No box.

What would have happened if a week before February 24 there had been a public and televised debate between the conflicting arguments? On the list of those who could have defended the negative vote would have been people like Dagoberto Valdés, Manuel Cuesta, Rosa María Payá, Juan Moreno, Julio Aleaga, Miriam Celaya, Pedro Campos, José Daniel Ferrer, and Eliécer Ávila.

But they also could have given space to those who promoted abstention, and there voters would have heard Antonio González Rodiles, Claudio Fuentes, Ailer González, Ángel Moya, and many others.

They have wanted to make people believe that the propaganda for Yes was organized by the masses, not the Government. Voters have every right to know where the budget to pay for that campaign came from. In countries with a democratic tradition it usually happens that the person who has been elected president is asked for their resignation when it is discovered that they financed their campaign with shady funds.

But this “tied-up monkey against a hungry lion” was also muzzled. Almost all of the country’s opposition organizations have denounced the persecution the promoters of No were subjected to, as were, along with them, those who wanted to have an independent observation of the process.

Not only were those who differed from the official line denied a place in public spaces, but they were also prevented from gathering peacefully to come to agreement.

Assaults on several homes of Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu) activists and arbitrary detentions against different bodies of independent observers were systematic, as well as verbal threats (never written) issued by State Security officials against political activists and independent journalists. “We are not going to allow it,” they repeated, caressing the butts of their pistols.

It is basic in any electoral process to recognize the results if the previously established regulations are fulfilled or, at least, there is not evidence that they have been violated.

Those who went to vote No or those who stayed at home in order to not play into what they considered a farce knew that these were the rules. With them, the Government managed to have the electorate ratify the new Constitution and that has to be recognized even though the authorities never recognize that they played dirty. There is no proof that they have committed fraud, but there is evidence that they played a trick.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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In Cuba, Markets Attract More People Than Polling Places Do

A group of voters prepares to vote in the constitutional referendum of this February 24. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 24 February 2019 — An unusual bus procession travels around centrally located G Street in Havana starting in the morning this Sunday. Pedestrians passing through the street, also known as Avenue of the Presidents, cannot help associating the volume of buses with the electoral process that this Sunday convenes more than 8 million Cubans to the referendum on the Constitution.

Like a calculated staging, the Cuban government has prepared every detail of a process that has a symbolic character than transcends the Constitution. “This is a referendum for the Homeland, for the Revolution, and for Cuba,” they have repeated until exhaustion in national media, in which they have presented No voters practically as enemies of the country.

Along with the intense propaganda, the Government has begun the sale of several products that have been missing for weeks. In several markets unexpected supplies of chicken and ham arrived hours before the voting started. Meanwhile, the astonished residents of some Havana municipalities saw vegetable oil land on the shelves of stores after a month’s absence. continue reading

“We are going to have to have a referendum every week to see if public transportation works and there’s food in the stores,” ironically remarks Claudia, a nurse in a maternal hospital in the capital. At the health center where she works “they had a meeting this week to warn that we would have to be prepared for any provocation that the counterrevolution might attempt,” on election day.

Like a calculated staging, the Cuban government has prepared every detail of a process that has a symbolic character than transcends the Constitution. (14ymedio)

“They told us that we ourselves need to keep vigil so that everything goes well,” says Claudia, mother of a 9-year-old “young pioneer” who is today looking after a ballot box in one of the more than 25,000 polling places set up all over the country. “They’re going to give her a canned drink and a bite to eat,” the woman tells 14ymedio. “With that I no longer have to make lunch,” she adds.

Long lines aren’t seen at the polling places, but they are in the markets. At the kiosks managed by the Youth Labor Army, on 17th street, buyers arrived early to get pork. On the other hand, few people are seen at the nearby voting center.

Several activists, among them the dissident Julio Aleaga, reported cuts to their cellphone service. Internet connection from cellphones is also suffering frequent interruptions this Sunday. The Government also cut access to independent news sites, among them 14ymedio, Cibercuba, Diario de Cuba, and Tremenda Nota. As for the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel, official media showed him, in short sleeves, in a little line along with his wife to vote at polling place number 3, Tecnosuma, located at 140 street, between 25 and 31.

Internet connection from cellphones is also suffering frequent interruptions this Sunday. (14ymedio)

“We Cubans are voting for our Constitution, we are voting for Latin America and the Caribbean, we are also voting for Venezuela, we are defending Venezuela, because in Venezuela the dignity of the continent is at stake,” said Díaz-Canel in statements to the press after casting his vote.

The ruler took advantage of the opportunity to harshly criticize Latin American leaders who accompanied humanitarian aid to Venezuela, along with interim president Juan Guaidó. “They looked like clowns, a group of presidents at the Colombian border. Who are those presidents supporting? When all those presidents have more problems than Venezuela has,” he said.

On social media several people denounced the presence of propaganda for Yes inside voting centers and some also complained of lack of privacy to vote. “I had intended to mark No but I got scared that they would see me because in the cubicle there was no curtain or door, so I ended up marking Yes,” said a voter in Sagua La Grande, in the center of the Island.

As for the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel, official media showed him, in short sleeves, in a little line along with his wife to vote. (Twitter)

In Camagüey the religious worship at the church led by the evangelical pastor Bernardo de Quesada was interrupted by a police officer and a Public Health representative because “they are making a lot of noise” on an election day where everything should be “calm and based on the vote,” they were told, which the pastor’s wife condemned to this newspaper.

The noise of an electric polisher fills a stretch of Ayestarán street, in Havana. Osvaldo, 42, is repairing an old car a few meters away from the polling place where several residents form a short line to vote. “I’m not going to go because that’s not going to change anything,” the mechanic says categorically while pausing in his work.

At the kiosks managed by the Youth Labor Army, on 17th street, buyers arrived early to get pork. (14ymedio)

Osvaldo was born the same year in which the current Constitution was submitted to a vote and this would be his first opportunity to participate in a referendum, but he has several reasons to not attend. “I don’t believe that a text is going to improve the situation that we are living in Cuba; that is going to remain as letters on paper but reality will continue in its own direction.” Not even the recognition of private property, included in the Constitution, seems to motivate him.

“It’s not exactly private property because when the Government wants to confiscate something from you, they do it and that’s it,” he believes. “That little shop on the corner was my grandparents’ and they took it away after the Revolution triumphed. Now that private property is recognized, are they going to give me back what belonged to my family or not?” he asks as he starts up the polisher again.

Children watch over the ballot boxes, as they do in every election in Cuba. (14ymedio)

From Last Tunas, in the east of the island, a pastor from the Evangelical League of Cuba reported that they had just called him from the Central Committee of the Communist Party to invite his faithful to vote Yes.

“I left it very clear to them that our fight is not political, that it is in favor of our biblical principles and that they cannot count on our vote in favor if that Constitution does not represent us,” denounced the religious figure, who prefers to remain anonymous. Authorities have locked up and threatened in the last few days several pastors to pressure them to change their position on the new Constitution. Evangelical, Christian, and Catholic churches have been especially critical of the text, calling on their faithful to vote with their conscience.

“You have besieged and intimidated us only for defending our rights and our principles. You can’t count on us,” the pastor answered the official, who abruptly terminated the call.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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Constitution Yes, Cooking Oil No

A crowd outside a market hoping to find some cooking oil in Sagua la Grande. (Maykel González Vivero)

14ymedio, Marcelo Hernández, Havana, March 1, 2019 — Polling places for the referendum last Sunday never achieved the snapshot of a long, full line, stretching around the corner. The great winner of the day was without a doubt vegetable oil for cooking, a product that has been missing, capturing people’s interest and worry in many parts of the national territory. That “candidate” did manage to convene multitudes.

The shortage of food has been worsening in recent weeks until now it is the turn of cooking oil, a basic ingredient in the domestic kitchen. The scarcity has provoked scenes like the one in this photo, in Sagua la Grande, Villa Clara, where residents crowded together for hours in front of a store to buy the product. The image has been repeated all over the Island and is sparking fears of the return of the so-called Special Period, the economic crisis sparked by the end of the Soviet Union’s subsidies to Cuba.

With a culinary tradition in which fried foods, the wide use of animal fats, and vegetable oils abound, for the majority of Cuban families the lack of these ingredients turns into a grave problem. Almost three decades ago, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union, tricks to substitute oil for frying foods proliferated. continue reading

People learned to recycle the oil they used again and again, something that specialists advise against for its negative effects on health, but they also substituted the product with that of a mineral origin, taken fundamentally from pharmacies, where it is used for the preparation of various compounds. Now, many Cubans fear having to return to those practices and try to stick up on liters of the scarce merchandise.

“If you see oil somewhere, buy me some because I’m preparing for what comes,” one resident was yelling to another from a balcony in Old Havana. “I can do without everything, coffee, chicken, and even bread, but without oil I get depressed right away,” she added. “Right away I remember the year ’91 and everything that came after.”

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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Observers Criticize Delay in Announcement of Referendum Results

The OCDH had 170 observers, deployed in 12 of the 16 provinces of the country. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, February 25, 2019 — After election day Cuba returned to its routine this Monday and the majority of the population shows no signs of interest in the “preliminary” results of the referendum on the Constitution that will be announced starting at 3:00pm by the National Electoral Commission (CEN).

The improvements in transportation that characterized the days leading up to the referendum ended as quickly as they had arrived. The signs for Yes to the new Constitution remain, omnipresent, in stores, state offices, buses, and billboards.

“I only hope that now the propaganda on television lessens a little, because we’ve had a few days in which it’s been impossible to sit and watch a program without something coming out about the referendum,” sighs Rebeca, a Havana resident of 36 who says she didn’t vote in the process. “I preferred to go to the beach because the day was really nice.” continue reading

In Santiago de Cuba, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), José Daniel Ferrer, denounced the police cordon around the opposition organization’s headquarters and the arrest of several of its members. The ex-political prisoner reported on social media about the violent detention of opposition figures, some of whom were left by police on the highway*, far from voting centers.

The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH), headquartered in Madrid, has denounced the delay of the CEN in publishing the preliminary results of the process. “More than 16 hours after the closing of the polling places, the official data of participation and the results are still not known,” the organization laments in a press release.

The OCDH believes that it is “the same line of lack of transparency that has predominated in the performance of the Cuban government throughout the entire process.” The independent organization lists irregularities during the voting such as “the manipulation of the electoral register, the use of pencils” in place of pens to mark the ballots, and the absence of international observers, among others.

“It makes us even more suspicious of what the Government will have done in the darkness of the early morning,” adds the press release. “According to the data received so far, the sum of the rejections (votes for No, blank ballots, null votes, and abstentions) would surpass 30% of the electoral register, with an upward trend,” it assures.

the information is based “on acts of vote counting facilitated by electoral observers, OCDH collaborators, and reliable citizens, who in the midst of a climate of vigilance and repression were able to exercise protection of the vote,” specifies the text.

On Sunday’s events, the OCDH pointed out low voter turnout, especially in Holguín, Camagüey, Sancti Spíritus, Villa Clara, Havana, and Pinar del Río, contrary to the assertions of the CEN, which announced that 74.09% had cast their votes as of 2:00 pm.

The raid on activist centers, arrests, and lack of privacy to cast a vote also weighed down the process. “In Artemisa, it’s reported that members of polling stations visit old people in their homes and pressure them to vote for Yes,” pointed out the organization in one of its reports published the day of the vote.

The OCDH had 170 observers, deployed in 12 of the 16 provinces of the country. The observers have carried out a systematic monitoring of the different phases of the election day and their work “seeks to corroborate that the process fulfills national electoral norms (Law Number 37) and with the minimum international standards.”

Several 14ymedio reporters also participated in the ballot counting. Among the voting centers visited was that on Lombillo street, between Factor and Estancia, a 12-story building in the Plaza of the Revolution municipality. In this building of district 72 live mainly workers from the Ministry of Transport and of the Provincial Court.

The electoral register of this polling place varied throughout the day until arriving at 498, because 112 new voters were added, the majority national guests of the nearby hotel Tulipán. Of the total voters 429 (86.14%) voted, abstentions reached 13.86%. No was marked on 25 ballots (5.83%) and there were 4 blank ballots (0.93%). Yes was marked 400 times and obtained 93.24% of the valid votes but only 80.32% of the electoral register of this polling place.

“This is a community highly integrated into the Revolution and we have many Communist Party activists,” explained María de los Ángeles, a retiree who lives in the building. “Since they built this building we have been like a family and now we have come to give complete support to that Constitution because it guarantees the existence of the homeland.”

A few blocks from this place, in the Nuevo Vedado area near 26th Street, where the residents enjoy a greater purchasing power, Yes got a less inflated majority, with barely 70.14% of the electoral register.

The big houses where some of the relatives of the accused in 1989’s Cause Number 1 live. Cause Number 1 was a case in which several generals and high-ranking military officers were executed or condemned to long sentences for their supposed link with narcotrafficking, had their doors and windows closed this Sunday, as this newspaper verified.

“Here people are really unhappy with the economic situation,” commented a resident under condition of anonymity. “In this neighborhood, five years ago we had at least ten private restaurants, and now there are only three left because they have suffocated them with the taxes,” he laments.

In the two polling places for District 82 in La Timba, a low-income neighborhood near the Plaza of the Revolution, Yes obtained 71.6% of the electoral register, a similar support to the district of Nuevo Vedado, but abstentions were even greater with 19.1%.

*Translator’s note: It is a common police practice, in Cuba, to pick up dissidents and instead of taking them to a police station and formally detaining them, to simply drive them far from their homes and leave them on a deserted country road.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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