March 2017 – Translating Cuba

Warning to the Repressors: “We Are Watching You”

Juan Antonio Blanco, director of the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba sent a strong message to the repressors: “We are watching you.” (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Mario Penton, Miami, 31 March 2017 — The Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba (FDHC) launched its new program Artists For Rights in Miami on Friday and sent a strong message to the Cuban government’s “repressors”: You are being watched and your actions will not go unnoticed.

The artistic project seeks to sensitize artists and the Cuban people in general about the difficult situation of human rights in the island. More than 30 artists have contributed to the project’s first activity, among them artists who are in Cuba, in exile and in other countries such as Venezuela, Costa Rica and Puerto Rico.

“In the gallery there will be pictures of all kinds, not necessarily political. What we consider to be political is the artist’s decision to contribute his art to the promotion of human rights in Cuba,” said Juan Antonio Blanco, president of the Foundation. continue reading

The first action of this new project is an exhibition of fine art open to the public at Calle 8 in Miami, the hub of the Cuban diaspora in the city.

Among the artists who will exhibit their works at the Cuban Art Club Gallery are Ramón Unzueta, Danilo Maldonado known as El Sexto, Claudia Di Paolo, Rolando Paciel, Yovani Bauta, Roxana Brizuela and Ramon Willians. The exhibition will be open from April 1st to 15^th, and admission will be free

Blanco also talked about the Foundation’s project to identify and document the repressors that the Cuban government uses to muzzle the opposition.

“We have numerous documented cases of repressors, with photos and archives proving their participation in activities against civil society and human rights activists on the island,” he said.

The work of Cuban artists is on display in Miami

“Publicity isn’t important to us, rather we want to have a psychological impact on military and paramilitary repressors. We want our message to reach those who carry out the acts of repudiation in exchange for a sandwich or for a T-shirt, so that they think about it three times,” he added.

According to the FDHC, in Cuba there are more than 70,000 prisoners, which is why it ranks as the sixth country in the world in prisoners per capita.

“There are thousands of prisoners who are in prison under the charge of ‘dangerousness’ [without having committed a crime] so they do not have to call them political prisoners,” he added.

According to Blanco, the Foundation is undertaking “quiet diplomacy” to ensure that these people who have been identified as repressors are not able to obtain visas for the United States or European countries.

The detailing of the record or repressors has not been without conflict.

“In Miami we have received denunciations against repressors, but we always ask the denouncer to sign a notarized affidavit that the repressor is accused of having carried out that work in Cuba,” he explained.

According to Blanco, his organization has had to face maneuvers by the Cuban government to delegitimize the work they are doing, by ‘leaking’ the names of people who are not repressors.

“The Havana regime wants to keep it quiet, it is not a priority, but that is precisely what we do not want. We seek to focus on violations of human rights in Cuba and we want Cuba to be a priority,” he insisted.

The Thousand Faces of “Journalism” / Miriam Celaya

A tourist walks along Calle Monserrate, in Old Havana (File)

Cubanet, Miriam Celaya, Havana, 29 March 2017 – An opinion piece published in recent days by El Nuevo Herald gives me a disturbing feeling of déjà vu. It is not the subject – overflowing with a number of articles by different authors – but its focal point, which presents as adequate a number of superficial and highly subjective assessments to validate conclusions that in no way reflect the reality it alleges to illustrate.

With other hues and nuances, it has the same effect in me as the experience of participating as a guest at a meeting of journalists, politicians and academics – primarily Americans – held October, 2014 at Columbia University, just two months before the announcement of the restoration of relations between the governments of Cuba and the United States, where the wish to support rapprochement and to substantiate the need to eliminate the embargo was essentially based on colossal lies.

For example, I heard how the “Raúl changes” that were taking place in Cuba favored the Cuban people and a process of openness, and I learned of the incredible hardships that Cubans had to endure as a result of the direct (and exclusive) responsibility of the embargo, of the fabulous access to education and health services (which were, in addition to being easily accessible, wonderful) enjoyed by Cubans, and even the zeal of the authorities to protect the environment. continue reading

To illustrate this last point, an American academic presented the extraordinary conservation state of the Jardines de la Reina archipelago and its adjacent waters, including the coralline formations, as an achievement of the Revolutionary Government. She just forgot to point out that this natural paradise has never been within reach of the common Cuban, but is a private preserve of the ruling caste and wealthy tourists, a fact that explains its favorable degree of conservation.

The Cuba that many American speakers described on that occasion was so foreign to a Cuban resident on the Island, as I was, that I wondered at times if we were all really speaking about the same country.

In my view, the question was as contradictory as it was dangerous. Contradictory, because there is certainly sufficient foundation, based on realities, to consider the (conditional) suspension of the embargo or to show partiality for dialogue between governments after half a century of sterile confrontations, without the need to resort to such gross falsehoods, especially – and I say this without xenophobic animosity or without a smack of nationalism – when they are brandished by foreigners who don’t even have a ludicrous idea of the reality the Cuban common population lives under or what its aspirations are. Dangerous, because the enormous power of the press to move public opinion for or against a proposal is well known, and to misrepresent or distort a reality unknown to that public, can have dire consequences.

But it seems that such an irresponsible attitude threatens to become a common practice, at least in the case of Cuba. This is what happens when overly enthusiastic professionals confuse two concepts as different as “information” and “opinion” in the same theoretical body.

It is also the case of the article referred to above, that its essence is the answer to a question that is asked and answered by the author, using the faint topic of the first anniversary of Barack Obama’s historic visit to Cuba and some conjectures about the continuity of the relations between both governments with the new occupant of the White House.

“What repercussions have the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba had on the Cuban people?” the writer of the article asks, and she immediately answers herself by assuming several suppositions, not totally exempt from logic, but regrettably inaccurate.

“Greater openness to Cuba has undoubtedly meant greater interaction with the Cuban people through the exchange of information from the thousands of Americans who now visit the island”, she says. And this is partially true, but this “exchange of information” about a society as complex and mimetic, and as long closed off as Cuba’s, is full of mirages and subjectivities, so it ends up being a biased and exotic vision of a reality that no casual foreign visitor can manage to grasp.

A diffuse assertion of the article is one that reassures: “Tourism represents the main economic source for the country, and at the same time it leverages other sectors related to textiles, construction and transportation.” Let’s see: It may be that tourism has gained an economic preponderance for Cuba, but that it has boosted the textile, construction and transportation sectors is, at the most, a mere objective, fundamentally dependent on foreign capital investment, which has just not materialized.

In fact, the notable increase in tourist accommodations and restaurants, bars and cafes in the private sector is the result not of the tourist boom itself but of the inadequacy of the hotel and gastronomic infrastructure of the State. If the author of the article has had privileged access to sources and information that support such statements, she does not make it clear.

But if the colleague at El Nuevo Herald came away with a relevant discovery during her trip to Havana –job related? for pleasure? – it is that many young people “believe in the socialist model.” Which leads us directly to the question, where did these young people learn what a “socialist model” is? Because, in fact, the only thing that Cubans born during the last decade of the last century have experienced in Cuba is the consolidation of a State capitalism, led by the same regime with kleptomaniacal tendencies that hijacked the power and the Nation almost 60 years ago.

About the young people she says that “many are self-employed and generate enough resources to live well.” There are currently more than 500 thousand people In Cuba with their own businesses, about 5% of the population, according to ECLAC” [U.N.’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean]. This is another slip, almost childish. The source that originally reports the figure of half a million self-employed workers belongs to the very official National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), a Cuban Government institution, and not to ECLAC. This number has remained unchanged for at least the last two years, as if the enormous migration abroad and the numerous returns of licenses on the part of the entrepreneurs who fail in their efforts or who are stifled by the system’s own circumstances, among other factors, did not make a dent.

But even assuming as true the immutable number of “self-employed” that the authorities refer to, on what does the writer base her assumptions that the self-employed generate sufficient recourses to live well? Could it be that she ignores that that half a million Cubans includes individuals who fill cigarette lighters, sharpen scissors, recycle trash (“the garbage divers”), are owners of shit-hole kiosks, repair household appliances, are roving shaved-ice, peanut, trinket and other knickknack vendors, and work at dozens of low-income occupations that barely produce enough to support themselves and their families? Doesn’t the journalist know about the additional losses most of them suffer from harassment by inspectors and the police, the arbitrary tax burdens and the legal defenselessness? What, in the end, are the standards of prosperity and well-being that allow her to assert that these Cubans “live well”?

I would not doubt the good intentions of the author of this unfortunate article, except that empathy should not be confused with journalism. The veracity of the sampling and the seriousness of the data used is an essential feature of journalistic ethics, even for an opinion column, as in this case. We were never told what data or samples were used as a basis for the article, the number of interviewees, their occupations, ages, social backgrounds and other details that would have lent at least some value to her work.

And to top it off, the trite issue of Cuba’s supposedly high educational levels could not be left out. She says: “While it is true that education in Cuba is one of the best in the continent, the level of education is not proportional to income, much less a good quality of life.” Obviously, she couldn’t be bothered going into the subject of education in Cuba in depth, and she is not aware of our strong pedagogical tradition of the past, destroyed by decades of demagoguery and indoctrination. She also does not seem to know the poor quality of teaching, the corruption that prevails in the teaching centers and the deterioration of pedagogy. We are not aware of what comparative patterns allow her to repeat the mantra of the official discourse with its myth about the superior education of Cubans, but her references might presumably have been Haiti, the Amazonian forest communities or villages in the Patagonian solitudes. If so, I’ll accept that Cubans have some advantage, at least in terms of education levels.

There are still other controversial points in the text, but the most relevant ones are sufficient to calculate the confusion the narration of a reality that is clearly unknown can cause to an unaware reader. It is obvious that the writer was not up to the task, or is simply not aware of the responsibility that comes from a simplistic observation. And she still pretends to have discovered not one, but two different Cubas. Perhaps there are even many more Cubas, but, my dear colleague: you were definitely never in any of them.

Translated by Norma Whiting

It’s Never Too Late If The Movie Is Good

Authorities decided not to screen the film after its director, Jonathan Jakubowicz, suggested withdrawing it from the festival as a protest. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez, Havana, 30 March 2017 – After more than three months of being excluded from the Havana Film Festival, the movie Hands of Stone will be shown at La Rampa cinema in the Cuban capital. The film, based on the life of the Panamanian boxer Roberto Durán, was not shown at the festival as a punishment because its director, Jonathan Jakubowicz, expressed his solidarity with Cuban director Carlos Lechuga, whose movie Santa y Andrés was censored on the island.

For several weeks the story of the Panamanian boxer has begun to circulate widely through the popular “Weekly Packet” in a high definition copy dubbed in Spanish. Now it comes to the big screen, although its release has been accompanied by very little coverage in the official press. continue reading

Last November Jakubowicz spoke on the phone with Lechuga to share the idea of removing his film from the festival’s playlist. After that call, the organizers of the event stopped responding to messages from the Venezuelan director to organize the arrival of a copy of the tape to the Island.

The discreet official projection of ‘Hands of Stone’ is a small victory for its director and for the national filmgoers

“Like the day after the death of Fidel Castro was announced, I thought that was it, so I didn’t write any more. I guess preferred to avoid the uncomfortable situation of me being in Havana, at a time of so much tension,” the director explained to 14ymedio. The organizers of the film festival said that the director “never sent the exhibition copy.”

“I felt that going to the Festival to show my film would be a hypocrisy, like when I saw international filmmakers [in Venezuela] photographing with Chavez while I was being persecuted,” he said in an interview with 14ymedio. “I was afraid to become that evil figure of the artist who supports the repressor.”

The discreet official projection of Hands of Stone is a small victory for its director and for the national filmgoers that have been waiting months to see it in the big screen. Jakubowicz predicted that “Cubans will feel the history of Durán as their own.”

Sagua La Grande, The Village Where A Glass Of Water Is A Miracle

Residents in Sagua la Grande filling containers with water.

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 30 March 2017 — Through the streets of Sagua la Grande, in the province of Villa Clara, people walk around with bottles, buckets and every kind of receptacle. This month’s break in the turbine that supplies the city’s water has forced its inhabitants to carry water from different towns.

“It’s been more than a week without water,” Jaime Guillermo Castillo, a resident, told 14ymedio. “We fill the buckets at some public taps very far from the center, everyone goes to the closest one however they can. We go in horse-drawn carts, on bicycles, or whatever appears.” continue reading

The municipality is supplied by a public aqueduct system that has three basic sources: Caguaguas about 7 miles away, Chincilla about 6 miles, and Viana, nearly 10 miles. But with the acute drought affecting the whole country, the first of these sources has had to come up with most of the supply.

The breaking of the Caguaguas turbine aggravated the situation. The equipment was taken to Santa Clara for repairs but the residents complain about the lack of information and the excessive delay. The problem has reached the point that several residents have called the local People’s Power delegate to resolve the problem as soon as possible or to make a public protest.

“First they said it was only for a couple of days, but we have been dealing with this for more than a week and the situation is getting worse,” laments farmer Jorge Pablo, who fears “big crop losses” because it’s been at least eight days without being able to put “a single drop of water in the furrows.”

According to the Population and Housing Census of 2012, the municipality Sagua la Grande has about 52,334 inhabitants, 90% in urban areas. Problems with water supply have been frequent in recent years due to poor infrastructure.

Several areas of the city have also had problems with water pressure for decades, mainly in the San Juan neighborhood, the southern part of Victoria Center and Loma Bonita. Water is almost entirely unavailable in the latter. A situation that has forced many villagers to drill wells for their homes, which has brought a deterioration of the water table.

Through the streets of Sagua la Grande, in the Province of Villa Clara, people wander about, loaded down with jars, buckets and all kinds of containers (14ymedio)

A study a decade ago calculated that water losses in the city were estimated at 30% and were mainly caused by leaks and uncontrolled consumption. Of the total water that is pumped from the sources of supply, about 410 liters per second, only about 290 reach the city.

Instead of improving, the situation has continued to worsen in the last ten years and the people’s council areas with the greatest difficulties are Coco Solo and Centro Victoria.

The driver from Caguaguas has also suffered the problems of maintenance and conservation, as well as the shortage of equipment and qualified personnel to maintain a stable service, according to local press reports.

Authorities attribute part of these problems to “unscrupulous citizens” who drill holes in the water distribution pipes to illicitly irrigate small orchards. The presence in the area of numerous producers of meat with clandestine farms has contributed to the increase of the phenomenon.

A study a decade ago estimated that water losses in the city were estimated at 30% and were mainly caused by leaks and uncontrolled consumption. (14ymedio)

However, the residents point out that the promised investments have not been made to avoid the continuous breaks. “Nobody cares about this town,” laments Herminia, was was born there and who is now trying to sell her four-room property with an immense patio.

The Villaclareña puts her hopes on the sale of her house to leave what she considers has become “a place with no future.” She feels that Sagua la Grande has undergone a process of deterioration and “the frequent breakingof the turbine is another step in this fall.” Not even the 2011 declaration making the historic city center as a National Monument managed to stop the process.

“A town without water is a ghost town,” says Herminia. “Parents do not want to send children to school in dirty uniforms and older people are the ones who are worse off because they cannot carry water from afar.” She paid a water-bearer about 50 Cuban pesos (about $2 US), a quarter of her pension, to fill a tank that she only uses for cooking: “A bath is a luxury that I can not give myself,” she says resignedly.

Plaza Carlos III Shopping Center Reopens

The official media gave no explanation for the sudden closure of the mall. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 29 March 2017 — This Tuesday, the Carlos III Plaza Shopping Center, closed since last Friday, reopened its doors to the public.

From the early hours dozens of people waited outside the mall with the hope that, after being closed four days, the shelves would be better stocked.

The only difference from other days was that the employees had a more polite attitude than usual and the singular fact that there were bags at all the cash registers in the market, and also the coins needed to make change, which isn’t always the case. continue reading

“They even said ‘thank you’ after we made purchases,” commented a gentleman who said he had come from Puentes Grandes in search of a box of chicken.

In the children’s play area, the kids rode their horses and carts while the parents ate pizza or drank beers.

Not a single word was said about the reasons for the closure of the market, either in the written press or in the television news.

Outside the market there was not a single informal dealer in household appliances, furniture, or electrical equipment. Instead there were many police officers imposing fines for poor parking or simply keeping watch.

The Mysterious Closing of Plaza Carlos III Causes Distress

Plaza Carlos III Shopping Center, Havana

14ymedio, Miriam Celaya, Havana, 27 March 2017 – It is almost noon on Sunday and a young couple, with their two young children in their arms, stops, frustrated, in front of the closed gate of the Plaza Carlos III Shopping Center. For a moment they are confused, they consult their watches and immediately start asking questions of several people who arrived earlier and who, like them, have stopped in front of the gate. Some wait patiently outside from very early, “in case they open later”, but in vain.

This scene has been repeated every day since Friday, March 24^th, when the commercial center, the largest and most popular of its kind in Cuba, closed down. Dozens of regular customers from several of the provinces have traveled to the capital just to stumble across a small and laconic sign on the gate, warning about the obvious, but offering no useful additional information:

DEAR CUSTOMER
THE PLAZA CARLOS III SHOPPING CENTER
WILL BE CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE THIS MIGHT HAVE CAUSED.
GENERAL MANAGEMENT continue reading

Of course, without any official information, the surprise closing of Plaza Carlos III has raised a lot of speculation, especially in neighborhoods surrounding the area, in the heart of downtown Havana, for it is one of the pioneer shopping centers to deal in foreign currency transactions in Cuba, since the so-called decriminalization of the dollar took place, back in the 90’s. From the time it opened as a foreign exchange market, Carlos III has undergone several renovations in different stages, but never before have sales to the public been completely discontinued.

Would-be customers mill around outside the shopping center (14ymedio)

Rumors are circulating that connect this unusual closing with the recent fires that have taken place in other establishments that operate in foreign currency in the municipality

Rumors are circulating that relate this unusual closure to the recent fires that have occurred in other establishments that operate in foreign currency in the municipality. “The management denounced to the fire department headquarters the bad state of the fire-fighting media, because it does not want the same thing to happen to them [as in the last ones], so they are renovating the whole system,” say some residents of the neighborhood who, according to what they say, received that information from some of the shopping center’s employees and officials. There are those who say that “the firemen came and found that there were flaws in the fire protection system.”

These days, however, no metal or metal bars covering the two entrances of the Plaza have been seen to deploy personnel or vehicles specializing in fire-fighting technology, nor have any workers been seen to be reinstalling or maintaining the electrical networks or other similar tasks.

The most visible interior hassle has been the employees of the place, occupied in general cleaning of the floors and windows, who have been reluctant to give explanations to those who are not satisfied with the simple poster and inquire about the date of reopening. “Until further notice,” they repeat, as automatons, those who deign to respond.

Other neighbors speak of a “general audit” that “becomes very complicated” due to the large number of shopping mall departments and the size and complexity of their stores. This conjecture is reinforced, on the one hand, by the experience of decades of cyclical (and futile) raids against mismanagement, administrative corruption, misappropriation, embezzlement, smuggling, black marketing and all other illegalities to be found in a socioeconomic system characterized by growing demand, insufficient supply and the poor management of the state monopoly on the economy. The regularity of which does not escape any establishment where a high amount of state resources moves.

The only information that is offered to those who come to the shopping center entrances is a brief sign. (14ymedio)

On the other hand, the surprise and undisclosed closing -with all the losses it entails in a shopping center that bills thousands in both national currencies- is a sign of the intervention of the highest ranking government auditors to detect irregularities in situ, without giving transgressors time to hide traces of their misdeeds.

If the alleged audit is true, it would be a demonstration of the ineffectiveness of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) and their failure to prevent unlawful activity in the neighborhood. For several months, the constant and strong police presence around the outer areas of the commercial center has looked like the appalling image of a besieged square, while the “inside” criminals, those who are part of the staff, lived by their own code.

For now, all indications are that it does not appear to have fallen into that sort of epidemic closing that has been coming down hard recently in the capital on several establishments that trade in foreign currency

Last Sunday several trucks continued unloading merchandise in the stores at Plaza Carlos III, which augurs that, on an imprecise but possibly brief date, the center will reopen to the public. For now, all indications are that it does not appear to have fallen into that sort of epidemic closing that has been coming down hard recently in the capital on several establishments that trade in foreign currency, such as the cases of heavyweight hardware departments on 5th and 42nd and at La Puntilla, in the municipality of Playa; The Yumurí and Sylvain, at Zanja and Belascoaín markets in Centro Habana; The TRD Panamericana at Ninth Street, in the Casino Deportivo development, Cerro municipality, and numerous sale kiosks dispersed through different points in the city, just to mention some cases.

While the waiting stretches out and the questions without answers accumulate, the more optimistic habaneros have begun to rub their hands to the intangible expectation that the next reopening of the popular Plaza Carlos III will arrive with renewed offerings, and that, at least in the first sales days, the usually depressed shelves and stands of the different departments will offer more quantity and more variety of products.

Hope is the last thing you lose.

Translated by Norma Whiting

*Site manager’s note: The previous “translation” of this post, which was a complete mess, was a mistake in transmission / my apologies to Miriam and Norma!

Cuban Phone Company Lowers Fees to Surf Government Controlled Internet Sites

A woman connects to the internet in the Wi-Fi zone of La Rampa, in Havana. (Photo EFE)

14ymedio, Havana, 30 March 2017 – On Thursday the Telecommunications Company of Cuba (ETECSA) reduced its fees for internet access to Cuba-based sites from 0.25 to 0.10 CUC per hour (roughly 10 cents US). The price reduction, the second in less than four months, seeks to capture users to navigate in local sites with very little popularity.

The new fee has been implemented “in order to facilitate the search of websites of cultural, informative and investigative interest with national content,” according to an ETECSA statement. Along with the lowering the cost of national websurfing, the company has also lowered the minimum cost of a recharge to 0.10 CUC. continue reading

“Multiple websites and portals exist in our national network that will allow you to carry out school tasks and get to know the cultural billboards throughout the country,” the statement said.

The Government has a monopoly over the hosting of sites on national servers and all domains ending in .cu are under its control. However, surveys conducted among Cuban Internet users reflect their preferences for connecting to social networks such as Facebook or Twitter, as well as international news sites, services, chats and dating sites.

For customers who want to receive more information, ETECSA’s Business Information service is available by dialing 118.

Ladies in White Report the Repression They Suffer to Attorney General

The leader of the movement, Berta Soler, denounced that activist Lismerys Quintana Ávila sent to prison on Monday in what she defines as “a rigged trial.” (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 2017 — The Ladies of White Yamile Garro Alfonso, Lázara Barbara Sendilla and Maria Cristina Labrada delivered on Monday, as representatives of the whole movement, a summary report to the Attorney General’s Office on the repression they have suffered over the last fifteen months.

The leader of the women’s group, Berta Soler, explained to 14ymedio that the report is the same as the one presented on 23 March by Leticia Ramos to the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, David Kayes, on “Arbitrary detention and harassment against the family of Ladies in White,” but that it had been “updated to yesterday.” continue reading

Soler detailed that the new version of the report explains how “the Cuban regime” threatens them “all the time” with fines to keep them from leaving the country and with imprisonment.

The leader of the movement denounced that activist Lismerys Quintana Ávila was sent to prison on Monday in what she defined as “a rigged trial.”

“They are really inventing some crimes to be able to fine us and to kill the Ladies in White,” explains Soler

“We delivered it to the Attorney General’s Office, the European Union Delegation, the mailbox of the Apostolic Nunciature and the Embassy of the United States,” said Soler. She also said that they will also “hand it over to the Archbishop of Havana.” According to the Lady in White, the movement wants the Catholic Church to understand what is happening to them.

“They are really inventing some crimes to be able to fine us and to kill the Ladies in White,” explains Soler, who considers the actions of the authorities arbitrary and also denounces “what they are doing to the families, to the children and spouses,” of the activists.

He added that they plan to deliver a copy of the text, about twelve pages, to the Military Prosecutor’s Office and the State Council, as well as to send it to the embassies of Spain and the Czech Republic by e-mail.

She also denounced that the Ladies in White headquarters in the Lawton neighborhood of Havana is surrounded by “an operation” that “has been around the clock since Thursday, March 23.”

Santiago de Cuba Hit Hard by Drought

Communities in central and eastern Cuba report losses from the drought. (EFE)

14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, 29 March 2017 — Cuba is experiencing one of the worst droughts of the last half century and its reservoirs are at 39% capacity, a situation that affects the water supply for people, industry and agriculture. Santiago de Cuba is going through the most serious situation, according to José Antonio Hernández, director of the Department of Rational Use of the Institute of Hydraulic Resources, who spoke Wednesday on state TV.

In that eastern province some 635,000 people are supplied with water on 17 and 20 day cycles. Meanwhile, more than 81% of the agricultural area of the island is affected in some way by the lack of regular irrigation. The picture is aggravated by the annual loss of 3.4 billion cubic meters of water through leaks and breaks in the supply system. continue reading

Currently, the reservoirs in at least 11 provinces are below 50% of their normal levels and “in three they do not even reach 25%,” Hernández said. In the case of Ciego de Ávila stored water stored barely fills 15% of the reservoir capacity in the territory. The supply is currently governed by a rigorous schedule, prepared by the local Aqueduct and Sewerage Management.

Reservoirs in at least 11 provinces are below 50% of their normal levels and “in three they do not even reach 25%

The Zaza dam, with the country’s largest storage capacity, is also in a difficult position. Located in Sancti Spíritus province, the dam is filled to only 14% of its capacity, the equivalent of 146 million cubic meters. The neighboring Siguaney Dam has less than one million cubic meters of usable water.

This central province has seen 69 of its supply sources dry up, 16 of them totally. This situation affects 105,821 inhabitants in more than 40 communities and urban neighborhoods of the cities of Sancti Spíritus, Trinidad and Jatibonico, according to figures offered by the local press.

“Since the first signs of the drought in the country began in mid-2014, working groups have been set up to deal with this problem,” explains Hernández, whose mission is to monitor and assess the situation in each area from the municipalities.

At the end of last year the country’s reservoirs were 1.510 million cubic meters below the historical average, a situation that has been aggravated in the first quarter of 2017 and has forced the country to expand the practice of supplying water through tanker trucks – popularly known as pipas – that deliver water neighborhood by neighborhood and block by block, to residents who collect it in every available container.

Water problems have also affected internal migration. “The fact of being able to open the spigot and have water is a luxury I can’t give myself in Palmarito de Cauto,” Raydel Rojas, a man from Santiago who recently emigrated to the capital, tells 14ymedio.

Water problems also influence internal migration

“The problem in the province and in small towns is that it becomes more difficult to pay for the water truck,” says Rojas. “You have to live day by day buying water little by little.”

In the West, the situation is not without problems either. The authorities have looked at the private swimming pools, considering them wasteful in times of drought. The entrepreneurs who rent to tourists in the area of Viñales have experienced the “anti-pool” offensive with special intensity.

At the beginning of last year the Council of the Municipal Administration decreed the closing of all the pools and canceled the licenses to rent to tourists for those who resisted obeying. Over the months the situation has worsened.

“Now they carefully supervise water consumption and call to account those who have a greater consumption,” complains an entrepreneur who rents two rooms in his home in this village that attracts a lot of tourists. The innkeeper, who chose to remain anonymous, said local inspectors “have their eye on the pumps if we increase the pressure of the showers because they say it costs too much.”

The Ascent Of The Spy

The Cuban former spy Fernando González Llort in a file image. (CC)

14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez, Havana, 29 March 2017 — It was only a matter of time before the spy Fernando González Llort took over the presidency of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP). Since his return to Cuba after serving a 15-year prison sentence in the United States, many predicted his rise to that position.

In June 2014, González was appointed vice president of ICAP and on Tuesday it was announced that he was replacing Kenia Serrano Puig, who had served in the presidency of the institution for eight years. continue reading

The official note on the replacement was sparse in its goodbye to Serrano and did not include the usual formula of “she will take on other responsibilities”

The official note on the replacement was sparse in its goodbye to Serrano and did not include the usual formula of “she will take on other responsibilities.” The text didn’t even describe her “excellent performance at the head” of the institution. In the grammar of power, this reservation does not bode well for the woman.

Since their return to the island, all the members of the so-called Wasp Network have held positions in official bodies, mostly as vice-presidents. González Llort is the first to manage an organization.

In 1987, shortly after graduating with a Gold Diploma in International Political Relations, González Llort was part of a tank brigade in Angola. In the rest of his biography, he emphasizes his participation in the Wasp Network that concluded with his arrest and imprisonment in the United States.

For decades the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) has been a front for Cuban Intelligence

For decades, ICAP has been a front for Cuban Intelligence. Since their founding, institutions of this type have existed in the rest of the socialist countries. Instead of presenting themselves with the ideological tint of the Marxist court, they wrap themselves in the clothing of friendship between peoples.

The position of ICAP president can lead its occupant to higher spheres, as was the case of Sergio Corrieri, who was part of the Central Committee of the Party and was a member of the State Council. On the other hand, Kenia Serrano, who had previously been a member of the National Bureau of the Young Communists Union (UJC), was only able to ascend to a seat in Parliament.

“All You Can Catch in the Almendares River is a Good Infection”

According to data from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, domestic and industrial waste has seriously damaged the biodiversity of Almendares. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Yosmany Mayeta Labrada, Havana, 28 March 2017 — The stench fills the air and permeates the clothes of El Fanguito residents near the Almendares River. Those who live there carry that stink everywhere, it gets into your nose and into your pores. The main river flowing through Havana barely shows any signs of recovery despite several environmental projects that are trying to rescue it from pollution and sluggishness.

Gonzalo once lived from fishing in the vicinity of this river, which the natives called Casiguaguas and which gave its current name to one of the country’s most famous baseball teams. The Almendares has been a part of the old man’s life from the time he gets up in the morning until he lies down at night. All his memories begin and end in its waters.

A resident of El Fanguito neighborhood for more than 70 years, Gonzalo recalls the crystalline channel that he knew as a child. In those waters he fished with his friends, dived in to escape the heat, looked for small treasures of stone or metal in its depths. But these are old stories and only exist in the memories of the oldest residents. continue reading

A study published in 2005 by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (CITMA) warned that the main channel of the river was in a “critical hygienic and health situation.” The report drafted by specialists at the Higher Institutes of Technologies and Applied Sciences documented, at that time, 70 sources that dumped hazardous waste into its waters with “high levels of organic and inorganic contaminants, among them toxic substances such as heavy metals.”

The river bank has been systematically stripped from trees and in the last decades some 17 dams and reservoirs have been created in its tributaries

The river bank has been systematically stripped of trees and in the last decades some 17 dams and reservoirs have been created in its tributaries. Another CITMA study determined that 80% of the contamination came from organic domestic waste and that some 200 liters of sewage flows into the river every second.

“The only thing that can be fished here is a good infection,” Gonzalo mocks as he points to those still, dark waters that approach his modest home. On the shore floats a mass composed mostly of plastic bottles and bags, while the surface is lit up in many areas due to hydrocarbon spillage.

Domestic and industrial waste has seriously damaged the Almendares’s biodiversity, according to CITMA. Lorenzo Rodriguez Betancourt, a CITMA specialist, told the official press that the cleaning of the basin was “an immediate mission, but very complex at the same time, because it requires a major investment of capital and the creation of awareness in the residents living close to the area.”

Among the measures taken by the government is the closure of the two beer breweries, the Tropical and the Polar, which dumped part of their waste into the water, and also replacing the technology of the Mario Fortuny Gas plant and the Coppelia Ice Cream plant. Several nearby facilities that produced construction materials were dismantled.

Authorities point to urban settlements as one of the main sources of pollution, but residents of El Fanguito defend themselves. “This neighborhood does not have a sewer,” says Rosa, a retired teacher who settled in the area two decades ago. “We paid the bills for water and electricity but outside that we have been forgotten by everyone,” she says.

Authorities urge the elimination of sewage going into the river, but residents complain that there is no good sewer system. (14ymedio)

Every day, the woman takes care of her bodily needs in a can that she empties at night in a nearby mound. The place is full of debris and a truck rarely comes to pick it up. Legends abound about crocodiles and enormous catfish known as claria that swallow everything in their path. At night, families prefer to stay indoors and one of the first lessons they teach their children is “don’t swim in the river.”

Rosa was filled with hopes a decade ago when a project led by then Vice President Carlos Lage was heralded as the solution for the slum. The project included the construction of new houses, the asphalting of streets and even several playgrounds for children in the area. But the idea never moved past the planning stage and Lage was soon ousted.

Instead of improvements, the neighborhood has continued to grow, chaotic and impoverished. More than two hundred houses dot the banks of the river, cramped and flimsy. The police avoid going into the area and on rainy days everything takes on the color of mud.

Some initiatives focus momentary attention on the problem, such as the recently concluded Casiguaguas River Festival, which, under the motto “For Cleaner Water,” brought together various social actors and institutions interested in environmental action. But after the headlines in the press and the TV reports, the sewage took over once again.

For Armando Hernández López, representative of the National Sports and Recreation Institute (INDER), who gave a lecture at the second River Festival, many communities on the bank have “poor housing, overcrowding, precarious sanitation, low educational levels, school dropouts and alcoholism, where in spite of the talks carried out by different sectors, the sanitary and hygienic conditions become more acute.”

Clara María Kindelán, a specialist at the Provincial Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology, believes that the main actions should be taken in communities and work centers

Clara María Kindelán, a specialist at the Provincial Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology, believes that the main actions should be taken in communities and work centers. The state of the river does not yet allow “sanitation activities where participants have contact with water. Decontaminating the Almendares River will be our main challenge in the coming years,” she says.

A representative of CITMA in the capital said that the pollutants have been reduced, but that there are still more than 50. The official adds to the list sources of waste that have been closed, including “two paper mills and a rubber company.” Although the latter, she clarified, has begun to be readied to reopen, “by a political decision.”

For the president of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution at 19^th and Rio Streets in El Fanguito, the urgency is to move from words to deeds. “All they do is talk to us about eliminating the sewage that goes into to the river, but nobody is in charge of building or helping to build a good sewer.” The resident says that there have been “angry outbursts” in the community because the children “play around these waters.”

Meanwhile, the elderly Gonzalo no longer registers the stench that permeates his house and his skin. He looks at the river of his childhood as a convalescent relative that needs urgent therapy. He has lost the illusion of ever swimming in its waters again someday.

Raul Castro Modifies His Brother’s Orders / Juan Juan Almeida

Fidel Castro and Raul Castro in their “younger” years.

Juan Juan Almeida, 27 March 2017 — At age 85, infirm, and ten months from his much trumpeted retirement, Raul Castro directs the Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces to modify Order Number One of the deceased Commander in Chief.

According to an unexpectedly transparent account from a corpulent and not very young Cuban official, “Cuba has a rusty army that, taking into account all its forces — land, sea and air — as well as reservists, exceeds 700,000 troops [in a country of just over 11 million people]. Every unit, regiment or battalion chief dictates an Order One, that rules the behavior of the men under his command.

“For his part, the Commander in Chief, which in Cuba is the same person as the head of state, decrees an Order One, that governs the conduct of the members of all institutions, be they military or not, charged with the defense and security of the state.

“To violate this precept, as many of us know, could be considered an act of high treason and imply a penalty that ranges from a warning to the death penalty. It is so stipulated in martial law. continue reading

“But Fidel is water under the bridge, he’s dead, and although Raul has chosen not to call himself Commander in Chief out of respect for the memory of the leader of the Cuban Revolution, the reality is that when he inherited the post of head of state, he also inherited that ’honorific rank.’ So now, that he is the Commander in Chief should he change the Order? Not necessarily.”

“The Order One,” he continues, “obliges all the military, among other things, not to have relations with foreigners, counterrevolutionaries or emigres, and to endure with stoicism the rigors of service. That has to change, not because the Commander died, it is transformed because the operative situation changed, the world scenario and the sociopolitical conditions of Cuba.

“We see,” he reflects, “Today, there are fewer trees among the so-called Amazons, family and friends of Cuban leaders, officials, military and revolutionaries living outside this country. Some are coming back,that’s great; but it is not fair, nor ethical, nor moral, that so long as it is forbidden for many, some, I among them, have an exemption to engage with our exiled relatives, which, to a large extent, I must admit, left because of us. That is why the law changes, by the force that, with great dignity, some officers are doing that which we don’t want to call attention to.”

“The other reason is more obvious,” he adds. “At the time that mandate arose, back in the 60s, there was no economic conglomerate of Cuban soldiers with the force today held by the military run GAESA Group (Business Administration Group SA). The negotiations of this group, or of the Universal Stores, the Mariel Special Economic Zone, or ANTEX, ALMEST, GEOCUBA, GAVIOTA, TECNOTEX, any of the 57 companies owned by the Armed Forces or other civilian companies run by the military are carried out with foreigners, or with emigrant Cubans who now reside abroad. The order fell into obscurity, so that, following it closely, even Luis Alberto Rodríguez Lopez-Callejas [Raul Castro’s son-in-law] should be tried, and sentenced to life imprisonment for violating the regulations.”

“We have to change things,” he tells me like a punch line, “but modifying Order One is only one part of an integrated agenda that includes repealing outdated laws and instituting others that don’t hinder the transition to a more democratic, more participate and open society, without abandoning our principles.”

Requiem For My Havana / Somos+, Grettha Yedra

Island, what happened to you?
Who changed the spring?
Who shut the door?
What ship left you alone?

Island, they have changed your clothes
They have distorted decency
They have trafficked your innocence
They have shit on your equality and mine.

Island, by Lien Y Rey

Somos+, Gretther Yedra Rodriguez, 29 March 2017 — A few days ago I arrived from Cuba. I was there about a month. Havana was where I spent most of my time. I hadn’t seen it for almost two years, two years of not feeling the breath of the Malecon which enchants even the most skeptical. I suffered the spectacle. The most controversial capital in the world felt to me like a Dantesque chaos. In a few years, I thought, it’s going to look like a pile of trash where there once was a city. Cardboard houses proliferate on the periphery and spread throughout the country. Havana, my beautiful Havana, what happened to you? continue reading

I saw something that I had not seen before and that, in the country where I now reside, caused me great sorrow: I saw beggars, tons of them. Beggars and children wandering aimlessly along the Malecon and the historic center. Old people with lost gazes, filled with despair and empty hands. Irritable people, alcoholic men… and even women. State companies in a lamentable state, indolent workers who say NO for the pleasure of saying it.

I saw Havana as a raggedy old man, lying in a doorway while a copy of the Granma newspaper pretends to protect him from the cold.

On my way from Matanzas to the city I could see idle lands, plagued by the invasive marabou weed, and I thought enviously of the Ecuadorian earth, deeply cultivated, filled with cattle, of the rows of plants created by the indians and native people. I thought with sadness that there was a time when Cuban land did not suffer by comparison to the beautiful Andean land. It is not necessary to be a specialist to see the decline in agricultural and livestock, to notice the huge expanses of idle farmland, the volume of imported food continually increasing, making up for the deficit in national production.

While most of the Asian and Latin American countries lagged behind Cuba in the 1960s, they have now overtaken Cuba in the diversification of their economies, the development of competitive manufacturing sectors for export, and the decline in their dependence on a limited group of export products. And knowing this data and returning to Cuba, it hurts. It forces you to rethink many things, to not remain silent when the instinct of self-preservation demands it.

As I was walking along Montes street, I looked in disbelief at how the building collapses multiplied in only two years of absence. A man, seeing my puzzled face, told me: “Looks like they threw bombs, right?” My silence was agreement. And the bombs exploded in my head. Nothing they promised was fulfilled, economic failure has made a beautiful country into an arid land, cold and dirty, where people fight to survive.

How to wake an entire people from their slumber? How to tell them that humanity said “Enough” and got up and walked, and that we should do the same if we want a future?

We cannot remain with the masterful lines of Gabriel García Márquez, where an omniscient narrator asserts that those condemned to a hundred years of solitude do not have a second chance on earth. We are not García Márquez’s fictional Macondo, we are Cuba. We come from the line of Maceo, Gomez and Martí, Jose Antonio Echeverria, Frank and Camilo. Let us honor these men by rescuing what we have all lost. Let us awaken from this lethargy and, without shaking off the dust of the road, let us act. These are times to act.

It would kill me to say that Cubans are afraid, that it is difficult to reveal ourselves to a totalitarianism that constantly represses and annuls. In Cuba today, fear no longer exists, what we lost was faith and with it shame. From the ashes of Havana we must rescue her.

Health Of Three Siblings On Hunger Strike In Cuba Worsens

Forming the sign “L” for “Libertad” are siblings Adairis Miranda, Maidolis Leyva Portelles (the siblings’ mother), Anairis Miranda and Fidel Batista Leyva. (Courtesy)

14ymedio Havana, 27 March 2017 — The health of the siblings Fidel Batista Leyva, and Anairis and Adairis Miranda Leyva is worsening, as Monday marked their 21 days on a hunger strike, according to their mother, Maydolis Leyva Portelles, who spoke with 14ymedio.

Members of the Cuban Reflection Movement, the three siblings are experiencing “a serious deterioration” of their health. continue reading

In a telephone conversation, Leyva denounced the “cruel and inhuman” treatment she has received from the political police who will not allow her to see her twin daughters, one of them admitted to the Vladimir Ilich Lenin University General Hospital of Holguin and the other in Lucía Iñiguez Landín Clinical Surgical Hospital.

“All patients have the right to see their relatives at two in the afternoon but I have been told that until my daughters stop the strike I cannot see them,” says the mother.

14ymedio contacted the Lenin Hospital by telephone and was able to confirm with the information desk that Anairis Miranda has been admitted to the intermediate therapy care room in bed 2. Medical sources report her condition as “serious.”

The nurse on duty in the intermediate therapy room explained that Adairis Miranda, sister of Anairis, “is not reported to be in as serious a condition,” but continues in “voluntary starvation.”

Leyva explains that her son is being held in the Cuba Sí Holguin Prison where as of Monday he has been a hunger strike for 21 days, with five days of that also on a thirst strike.

“Despite the prolonged strike they keep him in a punishment cell sleeping on the ground,” says his mother.

The three siblings were serving sentences of one year accused of the crimes of public disorder and of defamation of heroes and martyrs. The authorities accuse them of having “made a provocation” last November 27, during the days of national mourning over the death of former President Fidel Castro, an accusation that the three deny.

Later the activists were victims of an act of repudiation; their homes were raided, they were beaten and their personal property was stolen, concluding in the arrest of the three siblings

The Miranda Leyva twins were held in the Provincial Women’s Prison, while Batista Leyva was a prisoner at La Ladrillera Work Camp, from where he was transferred to Cuba Sí, a penitentiary with a more severe regime.

The strikers demand the “unconditional freedom for the 10 political prisoners of the Cuban Reflection Movement” and the “acquittal” of Dr. Eduardo Cardet of the Christian Liberation Movement.

The regime opponent Librado Linares who heads the Cuban Reflection Movement told14ymedio that the siblings are being held prisoner “unjustly.”

“Those responsible for their lives are placed at the highest level, from Raul Castro to the authorities of the Interior Ministry in the province, for having thrown them into this situation,” said Linares.

Young Cuban Women Skaterboarders Defy Gravity And Machismo

14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havna, 28 March 2017 — A pirouette and life is turned upside down. Another and the wheels crash against the pavement leaving a mark in their path. Cuban women skaters defy gravity and machismo, two forces trying to make them fall. Their dreams are told in the documentary Sisters on Wheels by director Amberly Alene Ellis, currently in the United States.

The film looks at the phenomenon of skateboarders told from the experience of young Cuban women who practice a sport marked by prejudice. Not only must they deal with the animosity still provoked in some observers, but also with putting themselves in “a territory of men.” continue reading

The protagonists of Sisters on Wheels display the technical difficulties of practicing this discipline in Cuba, with few resources and places to skate for training. The young women talk about their struggle to have skateboarding recognized as a sport, far beyond an entertaining pastime.

The Amigo Skate project has helped alleviate the material hardships of some of these young women. The initiative asks, from its on-line site, for people to bring or send skateboarding equipment to the island, and facilitates events linked to the sport, in additional to concerts and the painting of murals.

Cuban-American René Lecour is part of the solidarity project and the director of Sisters on Wheels came to the reality of skateboarding through him. In a country where very few skateboards have been marketed and there are barely enough spare parts to fix a broken table, the practice becomes complicated. However, new technologies help, with videos and tutorials that teach spinning and other techniques.

Ellis, who traveled to the island initially to film material about women filmmakers, was attracted by the “innovation” she saw in these urban athletes and knew first hand about a similar phenomenon in her own country when “skateboarding pioneers, in the ‘80s, made their own boards with what they could find.”

“Without intending to, we moved from filmmaking to skating,” recalls the director, who believes skating becomes an act of protest for these young people in a nation where the government regulates every centimeter of reality, especially the sports scene.

The documentary, which began filming in 2015, uses skateboarding as a way to approach the national reality and in particular the changes that occurred after the thaw between the Governments of Cuba and the United States.

In the practice of skateboarding, the filmmaker sees a gesture of independence that “is seeking free expression”