Translating Cuba

Once again, details were lacking about the exchange rate being applied, and it was only mentioned that it “provides highly relevant information,” since “it does not respond to posts on social networks or buying or selling intentions”

Once again, details were lacking about the exchange rate being applied, and it was only mentioned that it “provides highly relevant information,” since “it does not respond to posts on social networks or buying or selling intentions, but rather to real, settled and confirmed exchange transactions, which make it possible to better substantiate the official exchange rate” for individuals and the private sector.

Carbonell Karell reviewed some of the measures that are already underway and whose operation has been uneven. Among them is the expansion of the transfer threshold, which at the end of July rose from 120,000 pesos per month, the limit imposed in 2023, to 2.5 million or more, provided that they are declared. This resolves the inconvenience of having to travel to branches to carry out transactions that at this time involve a very small amount of money. The official assured that the printing of new banknotes is fundamental in this case, since it puts more money into circulation and resolves the shortage of cash.

Although this remains to be verified, Carbonell said that the country will move from a model of cash rationing to one of planning to meet demand. Institutions will have to adapt to their customers, accompany them, advise them and agree with them on the financial cycles most appropriate to their situation. “The service must be different for an individual and for a company, because their needs are not the same,” he said.

The official also reviewed the latest resolution allowing private businesses to operate accounts abroad without prior authorization, although they must report their opening, or to deposit foreign currency in cash, a package of reforms presented last week that takes effect this Thursday, September 17.

Another previously known issue that was emphasized was the outsourcing to private businesses of pension payments. The solution, adopted months ago as a response to the banks’ lack of liquidity, already has a model representative: El Olímpico. It is a private venture, which the official press calls a casilla, a food sales outlet, that is paying retirees in Santiago de Cuba through an agreement with the bank. Its owner is none other than Eriel Sánchez, a former baseball player and manager of the Cuban team whose record includes less honorable episodes, such as managing the Under-23 team from which half the squad fled during the 2021 World Cup in Mexico, or the five-year suspension imposed in 2025 by the National Baseball Commission after he struck sports legend Miguel Rojas Rodríguez with a bat.

The officials also spoke about providing greater incentives, especially by reducing commissions for digital payments, since there remains a conviction that online banking can be modernized, which would make it possible to reduce the number of branches while increasing transactions and customer service. All this despite the previous failure of the so-called banking reform. The easing of credit, particularly to finance renewable energy sources, was another of the new developments mentioned, although the experience is also not proving very positive in practice, as the official press itself has warned. In addition, they discussed the imminent updating of regulations related to the use of cryptocurrencies.

“One of the Central Bank’s main objectives is to restore the functionality of the national currency and return greater usefulness to the Cuban peso within the economy,” said Delgado Portal, an analysis that clashes head-on with the opinion of Cuban economist Pavel Vidal. In the preceding hours, the expert sent out a bulletin from the Observatory of Currency and Finance of Cuba (OMFi) in which he precisely points out that “the new rules expand the dollarization of wholesale transactions between companies (State and private) and, to a lesser extent, of consumer markets.” The phenomenon, he adds, is not new, but the current changes “represent another step in reversing the dedollarization process begun in 2004 and also depart from the purpose of the Monetary Ordering in 2021 of restoring the Cuban peso as the economy’s sole monetary sign.”

“One of the Central Bank’s main objectives is to restore the functionality of the national currency and return greater usefulness to the Cuban peso within the economy”

Vidal considers it difficult for the Cuban regime, whether forcibly or through negotiation, to secure another international partner other than the United States, making the dollarization of an economy that is already, de facto, dependent on its northern neighbor almost inevitable. Washington’s sanctions have limited imports, travel and all kinds of investment from any other country, so the generalization of the currency appears “natural” and “logical.”

However, this could be very useful in an initial phase of stabilization—as the Cuba Transformación document points out—to facilitate the entry of capital and financing while the national currency gains strength and confidence. But it recommends that it not be extended unnecessarily, since it creates distortions and inequalities between those who have access to foreign currency and those who do not. In addition, a single exchange rate is important, which these processes do not favor. “Dollarization provides monetary stability but limits responses to international or domestic shocks and increases the economic and social cost of economic adjustments.”

Vidal believes that although the Cuban peso has lost value extraordinarily and the rise in prices has been unstoppable, hyperinflation has not been reached, which allows the national currency to recover its functions over time, relying on some reforms already carried out and others that should be added. Among his proposals are a greater reduction in the fiscal deficit, the unification of all exchange rates, an increase in interest rates, the formalization of the foreign-exchange market and the transfer to the BCC of the international reserves currently controlled by the military conglomerate Gaesa.

Translated by Regina Anavy

______________________

COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

In 2024, infant mortality was already far from 4 per thousand, a number that requires looking much further back, to the best years in the Island’s recent history

Cuba was, because of the widespread implementation and expansion throughout the population of public health programs such as Pami (National Maternal and Child Care Program), one of the countries with the best infant mortality figures in the region, even ahead of the U.S. In 2000, the Island began to stabilize the relatively poor figures from the years of the Special Period and remained for several years at around 6 deaths per thousand live births. Starting in 2006, things began to improve significantly, and by 2008 the rate had reached 4.7 per thousand, continuing to improve until the record years: 2017 and 2018, when it reached the 4 that the official now recalls.

Everything changed in 2019, when it rose by one point, but the major rupture came in 2021. The pandemic hit the healthcare sector very hard. That year, not only was the figure unusually high for the Island, at 7.9 per thousand, but there were truly dramatic figures. This was the case in Ciego de Ávila, where 13.8 deaths per thousand live births were recorded, more than double the previous year and even higher than the figures for Mexico (11) and El Salvador (12). On that occasion, the province’s official newspaper, Invasor, sought responsibility and found it much closer than in Washington.

“Low birth weight and prematurity contribute to morbidity and mortality in the territory, fundamentally associated with high blood pressure, intrauterine growth retardation and adolescent pregnancy. Many babies arrive at the Neonatology service with extremely low weights (less than 1,500 and 1,000 grams), putting their lives at risk and extending their hospital stay,” said Luis Carmenate Martínez, head of the gynecology and obstetrics department in the province and a Pami official.

The physician warned of the lack of a health promotion and education system. The working groups are incomplete and there is a lack of support from the sector, he added

Those statements were spontaneously answered by a physician, Ernesto René, who worked for 34 years in Pami, and who denounced that the intersectoral work of the program had begun to be dismantled 20 years ago. “Today it does not work,” he warned. The physician warned of the lack of a health promotion and education system. The working groups are incomplete and there is a lack of support from the sector, he added. “Professionals with experience in PAMI have been lost due to completely misguided policies and decisions by the province’s directors, lacking entirely in science and experience.”

It surprised no one that, following the pandemic, these figures continued, and Cuba was unable to return to the rates it had achieved for decades. In 2022, the figure reached 7.5; in 2023 and 2024 it declined slightly to 7.1; and in 2025 it deteriorated severely, reaching the 9.9 cited by Morales Ojeda. That is 39.9% higher than the previous year, although not the 148% claimed by the official when going back to figures from eight years ago. The numbers come from the National Office of Statistics and Information, but Tribuna de La Habana has not deemed it necessary to correct the party’s secretary of Organization and former Public Health minister, who speaks of a “punishment that is taking it out on the innocent” by resorting to a false figure.

Translated by Regina Anavy

______________________

COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

However, there are no tender documents available – as is customary in international practice – containing, among other things, the terms and conditions, financial fees and other specific matters

Since 2022, a resolution of the Ministry of Domestic Trade has regulated tendering processes allowing non-state economic actors to take over facilities that are underused or in poor condition. The regulation specifies that ownership remains with the State. Under this system, countless properties have passed into private hands, with private operators improving premises, services and products, and what began almost as an experiment has spread to all kinds of sectors. Although food service leads the tenders by far, there are cinemas, parks, workshops, bakeries and all kinds of businesses that have changed hands.

However, the leasing of food-service spaces in hotels is another step following the abandonment by the major hotel chains, with which a preferred partner had previously been sought. In 2019, the company presented an investment plan for its establishments throughout the country, as well as plans to open new venues.

At that time, when the State-run company was celebrating its 25th anniversary, the president of Islazul presented the project to the official press, giving priority to the arrival of foreign capital. “We are open to foreign investment, especially management with financing and marketing. For this, we already have a management contract with Meliá,” he commented. The Spanish hotel company had management agreements at several of the Cuban chain’s hotels, and the executive hoped to expand through that channel. He announced that negotiations were underway with foreign operators and that tenders were being held in several destinations, including Santiago de Cuba, as well as Havana, Varadero, Camagüey and Sancti Spíritus.

That path has been completely closed since foreign hotel companies, mostly Spanish, left the Island following Donald Trump’s executive order warning of sanctions against companies from any country that did business with the Cuban regime. Meliá has been the case with the greatest impact, since until this year it had been managing 34 establishments on the Island and, even despite the negative outlook for the tourism sector – in decline, since 2019, and in outright collapse since 2026 – had declared its intention to remain in Cuba. The responsibilities to the shareholders of this publicly traded company have outweighed the friendship of its executive chairman with the regime, a relationship he inherited from his father.

In this situation, and with no flights to Cuba, the Government has begun a timid opening in the tourism sector while at the same time expanding its search for domestic private capital for these establishments. The population, however, is skeptical. “Cuban capitalists are no longer traitors; now they are dollar-traffickers. They are stone-faced, buddy, but when it comes to asking for something, they’re the first to say no,” one user comments on the State-run company’s post, where distrustful reactions were abundant. “So that afterward you spend your money, make it look nice, and they take it away from you.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

______________________

COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Analysts emphasize that this type of military operation is usually framed as joint security tasks between the two countries

Among the aircraft detected are the Boeing P-8 Poseidon and the MQ-4C Triton drone, used by the U.S. Navy for maritime patrol, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. Analysts emphasize that this type of military operation is usually framed as joint security tasks between the two countries, and is normally coordinated with the armed forces. However, that has not been the case here. The report cites a documented precedent that may explain the reason for these flights.

Last January, Reuters and Politico magazine revealed that at least a dozen MQ-4C Triton drone missions had flown routes that coincided with those of Mexican oil tankers headed for Cuba, just when the White House was pressuring Mexico to cut off those shipments. A Mexican official quoted by Reuters said at the time that the drone activity was impossible to interpret as anything other than a warning.

The last Mexican vessel to dock on the Island was the Ocean Mariner, on January 9, with 80,000 barrels of crude oil, and since then it has only sent humanitarian shipments without fuel.

Ehrlich Maritime Security insists that these flights do not fit conventional counternarcotics patrols: maritime drug trafficking activity is concentrated off Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero and Michoacán, in the Pacific, not in the Gulf. But the flight routes documented since last December are concentrated along the coast where the oil export infrastructure is located and in the Yucatán Channel, rather than extending toward the Caribbean, where the bulk of the U.S. counternarcotics operation known as Operation Southern Spear is concentrated.

The report also records the rescue, on August 20, of the Cuban vessel that had been adrift for nine days after leaving Pinar del Río bound for Yucatán. The Mexican Navy’s Ninth Naval Zone rescued 16 people: 12 adults and four children.

The authors of the analysis link that increase in emigration to the deterioration of conditions on the Island, and they anticipate that this type of rescue will continue to be common in the area for the rest of the year.

Translated by Regina Anavy

______________________

COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

According to the first testimony, these tanks generally receive crude oil from the Varadero pipelines and from the areas of Puerto Escondido and Santa Cruz, as well as from the western and central pipelines.

The accounts coincide with the information initially published by the official newspaper Girón, which reported an “accident that caused a fire” during maintenance of an empty tank. The fire was brought under control by firefighters, Ministry of the Interior forces and other agencies, and there was no danger of it spreading. The information was reproduced by the Provincial Government of Matanzas.

One day later, the Ministry of Energy and Mines stated that “there was no such fire” and attributed the smoke to sulfur accumulated in the tank. For its part, it stated that “there was no such fire,” although it acknowledged that “during maintenance activities in the tank, which contained no product inside, sulfur accumulated on the surface generated smoke, which was quickly brought under control.”

The denial prompted a protest from Raúl Navarro, photojournalist and director of Audiovisuals at Girón. “It is very easy, with a simple publication, to destroy the work of an entire team,” he reproached Minem on Facebook. He accused the agency of “minimizing the problem” and of putting his colleagues “in a difficult position as liars.” “I demand an apology to our team,” he demanded. The publication is no longer available.

Navarro also questioned the official technical explanation. “Sulfur in contact with welding work (or any source of ignition) will cause a fire, not just smoke,” he wrote.

The episode occurred at a facility still marked by the great fire of August 2022, which left 17 people dead, more than 100 injured and destroyed four of its eight large storage tanks. The loss forced the construction of four new tanks to restore the destroyed capacity. The Cuban side took responsibility for one of them, while Chinese entities were responsible for the other three.

Just a month ago, the structures were already standing, but the sources now consulted by 14ymedio confirm that they cannot operate because they have still not been connected to the rest of the facility: “You can put in fuel, but you have no way of getting it to the tank with a pipeline.”

“The pipelines are missing, the fire protection system installation is missing, and two storage tanks that are larger than the existing ones for firefighting foam and water still need to be built,” the source detailed. The interconnections were supposed to be carried out by Chinese workers, but they “took off,” he added. Although he said he did not know the reason for their departure, he mentioned the possibility of some “payment problem.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

______________________

COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Half of Habanos S.A. belongs to ITI Cigars, a Spanish company wholly controlled by Tabacalera, while the other 50% remains in the hands of the Cuban state-owned company Cubatabaco.

At the beginning of August, Tabacalera informed its employees that the freezing of its accounts was the most serious consequence of the sanctions imposed by the European Union on Chen Zhi on July 30. The company warned at the time of possible delays in some operations and, shortly afterward, Human Resources confirmed a delay in salary payments. In a subsequent communication, it explained that it had obtained the necessary authorizations from the Treasury to unblock the payroll.

The scope of the problem extends beyond the Spanish company itself. Half of Habanos S.A. belongs to ITI Cigars, a Spanish company wholly controlled by Tabacalera, while the other 50% remains in the hands of the Cuban state-owned company Cubatabaco.

That structure dates back to the 2020 sale of Imperial Brands’ premium cigar business. Allied Cigar Corporation paid 1.04 billion euros for the international operations outside the United States, a portfolio that included the 50% stake in Habanos S.A. and a large part of the global distribution network for Cuban cigars.

Chen Zhi subsequently entered the structure and came to indirectly control 57.1% of Allied Cigar. His shareholding influence turned the international sanctions into a direct problem for Tabacalera and the companies linked to it.

Meanwhile, Habanos’ commercial network is accumulating difficulties in several markets across the continent

The new crisis comes just a few months after the company appeared to have stabilized its situation. In May, Tabacalera emerged from pre-insolvency proceedings – a procedure prior to bankruptcy – in Spain after obtaining temporary licenses from the authorities in the U.S. and United Kingdom that allowed it to continue operating despite the sanctions adopted in those countries against Chen Zhi.

The U.S. authorization extends through 2028 and the British authorization through 2031. Both allowed the company to partially normalize relations with banks, suppliers, and customers, but they do not cover the measures subsequently adopted by Brussels. Tabacalera is now trying to obtain an equivalent solution at the European level.

Meanwhile, Habanos’ commercial network is accumulating difficulties in several markets across the continent. In Germany, Fifth Avenue Products Trading GmbH, the exclusive distributor for that country, Austria, and Poland, was placed under provisional insolvency administration on September 9 by decision of the Waldshut-Tiengen court.

The strategy of sharply raising the prices of brands like Cohiba and Trinidad to place them in the ultra-luxury segment had disastrous consequences

Days earlier, Fifth Avenue had announced the temporary suspension of new orders and shipments due to banking restrictions related to sanctions against one of its shareholders. In Sweden, Elite Trading Scandinavia is in liquidation after previously losing its distribution license amid doubts about its ties to Chen Zhi.

By contrast, Tabacalera continues to supply cigars to distributors, according to an investigation by L’Amateur de Cigare at several points of sale.

The businessman, currently detained in China, was for years virtually unknown to most cigar consumers despite his influence within the corporate structure. Recent investigations have reconstructed his influence over the business and the strategy of sharply increasing the prices of brands such as Cohiba and Trinidad to place them in the ultra-luxury segment, with disastrous consequences for cigar sales in several markets.

Translated by Regina Anavy

______________________

COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.