December 2024 – Page 7 – Translating Cuba

Raúl Castro meets with China’s Minister of Public Security to Discuss the Fight Against Subversion

The official arrived a few months after The Wall Street Journal reported on the construction of a fourth Chinese spy base in Cuba.

Raúl Castro and Miguel Díaz-Canel meet with the Chinese delegation. / Revolution Studies

14ymedio, Havana, 1 December 2024 — Even if trade relations between Beijing and Havana are in free fall “due to the Cuban leaders’ unwillingness to adopt market-oriented reforms,” collaborations on “cybersecurity” remain in place. This Saturday, Raúl Castro left his retreat, as he does only in exceptional cases, to receive, along with President Miguel Díaz-Canel, China’s Minister of Public Security, Wang Xiaohong.

With a row of Chinese representatives in suits and ties on one side, and, opposite, another row of Cuban military personnel in olive green, Díaz-Canel thanked the visitors for their “support for the confrontation of the policies of cultural colonization, hegemonic and also subversion, that the empire exercises over our nations.”

Castro, for his part, limited himself to noting the friendly relations between the two countries and thanked China for the aid sent after hurricanes Oscar and Rafael.

Although the island’s official press portrays the “working visit” as an innocent meeting between authorities from both countries, the truth is that the presence of Wang and senior officials from the Cuban Ministry of the Interior in the Palace of the Revolution once again focuses attention on the Chinese espionage bases installed on the island. continue reading

The presence of Wang and senior officials from the Ministry of the Interior once again puts the spotlight on Chinese spy bases

Last July, the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal reported that Beijing had increased the capacity of its electronic listening stations in Cuba, using as its source images taken from space by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The photographs apparently show the new base, which is located a few kilometers from the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay.

In June 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported on alleged negotiations between China and Cuba to build a joint spy base and military training facility on the island. Over the years, CSIS has located them in four locations: Bejucal, Calabazar, Wajay and El Salao. The first two, near Havana, have large satellite dishes designed to monitor and communicate with satellites.

The new base would be located in El Salao (Santiago de Cuba). According to the document, construction began in 2021 and appears to be intended to house a group of antennas placed in a circle, which can be used to intercept and locate electronic signals.

At the time, both China and the Cuban regime dismissed the allegations of The Wall Street Journal as a “hoax” and claimed that it was “a campaign of intimidation” by Washington against Havana. The Chinese side even went so far as to describe the bases as a “model of mutual aid between developing nations.”

Etecsa sells landlines, cell phones, routers and other equipment from brands such as Xiaomi or Huawei.

The similarities between the two regimes when it comes to using propaganda and espionage as weapons of repression have also allowed the Asian giant to be an almost exclusive partner of the island in terms of telecommunications. The Cuban Telecommunications Company (Etecsa) sells landlines, cell phones, routers and other equipment from brands such as Huawei – to which Havana owes hundreds of millions of dollars – as well as Xiaomi, ZTE and Vivo.

This weekend, the Higher School of State and Government Officers of Cuba, whose representatives traveled to Hunan to attend the Seminar on Public Administration Management for Latin American Countries, signed several agreements with universities in that Chinese province.

According to Prensa Latina, cooperation in “education, training, academic research and scientific collaboration” was expanded with the schools of Administration, Cities, Railway Vocational, Non-Ferrous Metal Technology and Technology.

Last April, another Cuban delegation traveled to Wuhan to take part in the first Forum on Space Cooperation between China and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). Although the island does not have a space program nor specialists in astrophysics or cosmonautics, it hoped that with its presence at the event, Beijing would offer, among other agreements, the use of its satellite data . On that occasion, the China agreed with CELAC to “support the creation of capacities in the application of satellite communications, navigation technologies and terrestrial observation.”

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A 24-Year-Old Woman is Murdered by Her Ex-Partner in Old Havana

The list of femicide crimes in the country totals 48 during 2024

Naomi Téllez Wilson was 24 years old / Facebook

14ymedio, Havana, 29 November 2024 — The independent platforms Alas Tensas and Yo Sí Te Creo en Cuba are in the process of verifying the murder of Naomi Téllez Wilson, 24, at the hands of her ex-partner on November 20 in Old Havana. The incident was reported on social media that same day by user Niover Licea, although other Facebook posts on Thursday added more details of the crime.

According to Licea, the attack occurred at night in the attacker’s house, located in the Belén neighborhood. The young woman was beaten by her ex-partner and attacked with a knife. The alleged murderer was arrested shortly after the incident.

Téllez’s body was in the Ángel Arturo Aballí Polyclinic, on Sol Street, between Aguacate and Compostela, “for many hours,” awaiting the arrival of experts, Licea’s report added.

Yo Sí Te Creo en Cuba told 14ymedio that it has registered the case and is investigating to confirm it.

A quarter of the feminicides of 2024 occurred between October (seven) and November (five) alone

With this femicide, the list of crimes of gender-based violence in the country totals 48 during 2024, according to the count of this media. A quarter of them occurred just between October (seven) and November (five).

Both organizations denounced this Thursday the murder of five-year-old boy Édgar Aliesky Martínez Torres, in Camagüey. continue reading

In their report, they indicated that the homicide occurred on November 26 in the municipality of Minas and that it was committed by the minor’s father. Both NGOs indicated that it is an act of vicarious violence because “the aggressor kills a third person, children or other relatives, to make the victim suffer.”

In addition to the case of Edgar Aliesky, they reviewed seven previous cases of a similar nature: three in Las Tunas – a five-month-old baby and two girls aged two and five; one in Camagüey – a seven-year-old girl; another in Guantánamo – a one-year-old baby; another in Santiago de Cuba; a one-year-old infant; and another in Villa Clara; a 10-year-old boy. All the attacks were committed by the fathers or stepfathers of the minors.

Of the 48 reported by this media so far this year, at least 39 were committed by the partner or ex-partner of the victims.

In the case of femicides, of the 48 reported by this media so far this year, at least 39 were committed by the victims’ partner or ex-partner, a figure that is in line with what was reported by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean ( ECLAC ), which published a report on November 22.

The commission’s document, which included the island for the first time, reports 60 crimes of this nature last year that were reported “by the official agencies of each country.” However, this newspaper reported 87 femicides in 2023, 45% more than the official data provided.

With the 60 crimes reported by ECLAC, the rate of femicides per 100,000 women is 1.1 (taking into account that the commission uses 6,000,000 women to make the calculation). However, taking the 87 accredited by 14ymedio and a population, more adjusted to the latest official figures, of 5,000,000 women, the rate rises to 1.74. With these numbers, Cuba has the third highest rate in the region, behind Honduras (7.2) and the Dominican Republic (2.4).

In its report, ECLAC stated that there are nine countries, including Cuba, that lack systems for measuring gender-based crimes of violence. The organization noted that these nations “are working on the coordination and capacity building necessary to implement integrated or single administrative record systems for cases of gender-based violence.”

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New Total Blackout in Cuba Due to the Disconnection of the Antonio Guiteras Power Plant

The Government suspends all teaching and work activities, except for “vital” ones
The break occurred at 2:08 a.m. on Wednesday.

Dawn in Havana at 6:30 a.m., a few hours after the total blackout began. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Havana, 4 December 2024 — Cuba’s National Electricity System (SEN) suffered its third disconnection in less than two months at 2:08 a.m. this morning, plunging the country into total darkness once again. According to a brief note published in Cubadebate, an “automatic trip” at the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant, the country’s main power plant, caused the outage, a case very similar to what happened on October 18.

As a result, work and teaching activities have been suspended throughout the country, according to the announcement by the Minister of Labour and Social Security, Marta Elena Feitó. The decision, adds the official information, “is maintained” as long as the “national electrical and energy situation” lasts. Likewise, “vital services” will be maintained and “no worker’s salary will be affected.”

When dawn broke, Havana had already been submerged for several hours in a total blackout, which began, as the editorial staff of this newspaper was able to confirm, around 5:00 am. After a rather cool dawn – it reached temperatures of around 54 degrees Fahrenheit – there were few lights on in the city, most of them in ministerial buildings. The capital’s neighborhoods were completely dark early in the morning. The western area, with Playa and Marianao, were also in blackout. El Cerro was completely dark, as was El Vedado, Centro Habana and the Boyeros area. Lights were visible in some points of the bay.

The Cuban Electric Union has announced that it is working on the process of restoring the network. According to Beatriz Johnson Urrutia, governor of Santiago de Cuba and one of the first officials to speak, on social media, about the situation, “specialists will work on the construction of micro islands to restore [power] in the shortest possible time.” This technique was the only one that managed to restore the SEN after the failure of continue reading

October 18, which was followed by a failed attempt to reconnect.

“Fuel for the power generators of the main hospital institutions is guaranteed, assuring their operation, especially in critical areas such as intensive care,” Johnson Urrutia added.

“Fuel for the power generators of the main hospital institutions is guaranteed, assuring their operation”

The Cuban Ministry of Energy and Mines, through its account on X, assured that “the conditions are more favorable than in the last disconnection,” since “the fulfillment of the procedures is not affected by the hurricane.” And it added: “The islands are already working and the system is gradually being restored.” In a second tweet, it reiterated this last information, adding: “Electrical microsystems are prioritized for water pumping. Several units are ready to start up. Today a large percentage of the SEN will be recovered.”

By 10 a.m., Villa Clara had “revived its microelectric system” with a group of diesel engines from Santa Clara Industrial, although only two circuits had electricity. In Guantánamo, only the Children’s and General Hospitals, the center of the main city and the Baracoa Hospital had electricity. A similar situation occurs in Havana, where there are 12 hospitals and 35 circuits with electricity, located in the municipalities of Guanabacoa, Boyeros, Habana del Este, Centro Habana, Cerro and Marianao.

In addition, in the central region, “is fed by the generation of the Hanabanilla hydroelectric plant” to connect with the Cienfuegos refinery and reach Energas in Varadero. The objective here is to recover the Guiteras plant during the evening of this Wednesday. In the east, the Moa engines were started to activate the thermoelectric plants of Felton and Renté, in addition to unit 5 of Nuevitas.

The second disconnection of the SEN occurred during Hurricane Rafael, on November 6, and its aftermath was still present in Artemisa, the province where it had the greatest impact and where there were still around 10 megawatts (MW) affected by faults in the network.

The Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant, located in Matanzas, rejoined the SEN on November 25 after going down a week earlier for “unpostponable” repairs.

Since then, it had been operating at full capacity, according to the official Matanzas journalist Jose Miguel Solís, who updated the island’s energy situation every day, highlighting that the production of the plant – the largest in Cuba – was almost at full capacity, with 270 MW generated.

However, the situation of both the Guiteras plant and the SEN is highly precarious, as the Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, warned a month ago, acknowledging the evidence on national television.

“And the misery will continue until the poor administration that exists in this country is what is disconnected”

“The system is weak, there is a huge generation deficit,” he acknowledged. This Tuesday, the deficit forecast for peak hours was almost 1,600 MW, an amount that is already within the norm, even in these days of December, which are cooler on the Island.

According to the UNE report, the maximum electricity generation capacity was 1,554 MW, which for a demand of 3,080 MW represents 50.4%.

Despite the increase in oil shipments from partner countries such as Venezuela, Mexico and Russia, the fragility of thermoelectric plants constantly puts the national grid at risk.

“And the misery will continue until the poor administration that exists in this country is put to rest,” one Internet user commented to official journalist Lázaro Manuel Alonso.

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Cuba’s Official Press Hides Crimes Until They Are Solved by the Police

’Cubadebate’ did not inform its readers of the murder of a child by his father, but it does publish an official statement about the arrest of the murderer

The authorities want to generate a perception of security / La Hora de Cuba

14ymedio, Madrid, 3 December 2024 — The official press announced this Tuesday the murder of Edgar Aliesky Martínez Torres, the five-year-old boy whose violent death was denounced by independent media and feminist organizations last week. As usual in state media, they point out the crime when it is already solved and do not give a single detail about the circumstances of the violent event.

Avoiding the impact of the case, Cubadebate reports the arrest of the perpetrator of violent acts against children and pregnant women in Minas, Camagüey. The article goes further in concealing the facts and indicates that “the occurrence of an unusual event against the life of a child under five years of age was learned,” without explaining at any time that the victim was murdered.

Something new is revealed: the man “in the course of his flight sexually assaulted a woman who is eight months pregnant,” which is simply a statement from the Ministry of the Interior incomprehensible to anyone who had no knowledge of the events.

The events occurred on November 26 and were broadcast two days later by the Alas Tensas platform, which already said that it was a case of vicarious violence, in which the murderer was the father of the minor. “The aggressor kills a third person, children or other relatives, to make the victim suffer,” the organization reported on its social networks, which attached a list of seven more children killed continue reading

by their parents or the partners of their mothers. “We have a debt towards Edgar Aliesky and all the boys and girls who have suffered the most terrible of deaths,” it added.

The version circulating in Camagüey indicates that Edgar Aliesky was with his maternal grandmother when his father arrived

The version circulating in Camagüey indicates that Edgar Aliesky was with his maternal grandmother when his father arrived without anything indicating, apparently, his intentions, even despite the fact that the child’s mother, Keilyn Torres Varela, was being threatened by her son’s father for wanting to leave the relationship. Since the murder was committed, Torres Varela has been guarded by the Police, since she was the main target.

After strangling the child, the alleged murderer ran away and came across the pregnant woman, who was on her way to a medical check-up. He hit her, raped her and stole her cell phone. According to a nurse at the maternal and child hospital Ana Betancourt De Mora, “the pregnant woman is stable and maintains her pregnancy.”

The police information validates the identity of the alleged murderer, although without granting him the right to the presumption of innocence, as befits an official body until the trial. “In the course of the investigation it is known that the author of these facts is the citizen Alieski Martínez Ferrer, father of the aforementioned minor,” the statement continues, without revealing more facts than the sexual assault on the pregnant woman.

Comments on social networks and in ’Cubadebate’ have been filled with requests for justice

Comments on social networks and in Cubadebate have been filled with requests for justice, including the death penalty for the murderer.

The way the official press proceeds follows the usual pattern of announcing violent events only after the criminal has been arrested, as happened days ago with the case of an alleged murderer of two custodians in Santiago de Cuba. The purpose is to generate a feeling of tranquility and crime control that, despite the Regime’s efforts, does not resonate with the population.

In a survey prepared by Bohemia magazine a year ago, 92.4% of participants considered that violence has increased a lot in Cuba, 42% said they had been aware of 10 or more violent crimes in the last six months, and almost half said that a direct family member or close person was a victim of one of these events. In addition, 84% of those who responded have changed their routines for fear of the insecurity they perceive, including modifications in their daily routes, hiding their valuables and avoiding carrying cash with them.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Tree of a Thousand Voices Arrives at The Country with only one Growl

Loaded with words, the 15-meter-high consortium is a hymn to freedom and the power of literature.

‘Those who cross the Plaza de Armas in Havana these days will come across an enormous installation by the French artist Daniel Hourdé. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Natalia Lopez Moya, Havana, 18 November 2024 — El árbol de las Mil Voces extends its branches in the centrally located space and, instead of leaves, displays an endless number of book pages. The collection, loaded with words and measuring 15 meters high, is a hymn to freedom and the power of literature. But its foliage, with fragments of Lorca, Proust or Goethe, takes on another meaning in Cuba, a country marked by censorship and editorial dogma.

The writings, on pages that hang like fruits of human knowledge and creativity, include a wide catalog of Poetry, Narrative, Art History and Philosophy. The wind can stir the structure, shake the steel pages that creak and rattle, creating a unique symphony on each occasion, but it cannot bring down the thick trunk that supports human creation. The gusts can barely batter the flowers, just as intolerance can barely hit literature but never uproot it.

‘The Tree of a Thousand Voices’ arrives amid an artistic wasteland where much of the diversity that Cuban culture once displayed has been lost

Standing near the base, it is sufficient to glance up to read names that Cuban editorial policy in recent decades has looked down on, such as Octavio Paz and Milan Kundera. But there are also many other works that readers on the Island have missed because the economic crisis has reduced continue reading

the publication of international authors, while resources continue to be allocated to supporting propaganda. More than a thousand voices, Hourdé’s tree seems like a chorus of cries that remember the unpublished titles, the stories not disseminated and the gaps left in so many bookstores and libraries.

The piece has also landed at a very complicated time for freedom of expression in Cuba. The 15^th edition of the Havana Biennial could not take place in a worse context, with hundreds of political prisoners and artists, such as Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, having been sentenced to prison for pushing the limits of the narrow cultural policy. The intensification of repression, the tightening of censorship and the lack of opportunities for creators have also contributed to the especially dramatic exodus among painters, sculptors, actors and writers.

The Tree of a Thousand Voices arrives in the middle of an artistic wasteland where much of the diversity that Cuban culture once displayed has been lost. If the piece symbolizes freedom of expression, as its author has stressed on numerous occasions, it only remains to read it as a wake-up call in Cuba. Its branches and leaves, full of words, grow and expand in a restored square for tourists, in the framework of an event that functions as a showcase for a plurality that does not exist, and surrounded by people who have been deprived of the right to decide what they can read and what voices they can listen to.

Translated by Norma Whiting

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Cuba’s Official Journalism Regrets the Desertion of Young People and the Empty Newsrooms

The Cuban Union of Journalists questions military service for future students

Third Plenary of the UPEC National Committee on Saturday / Cubadebate

14ymedio, Havana, 2 December 2024 — The figures provided in the III Plenary of the National Committee of the Cuban Union of Journalists (UPEC), held on Saturday in Havana, clarify the decline in the career of journalism, once coveted by students with better grades. So much so, that university enrollments are not enough to meet the demand of the existing media.

Distributed in the six journalism schools on the Island – Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, Camagüey, Villa Clara and Matanzas – and in the four years of study, there are a total of 498 students. The panorama worsens even more in the next generation, if we take into account that in the university colleges of preparation for the career, existing in those provinces plus Las Tunas – in which this course opened – there are only 108 students.

In the articles published in the official press that mention the plenary, there is no mention of the reduction in young people that the migratory exodus has meant in recent years, nor of the low state salaries compared to the cost of living – 4,800 pesos a month, plus extra depending on the position, the environment (municipal, provincial or national), and whether the journalist is a Party “cadre.” These are probable causes of disenchantment with the journalism career, but the mandatory military service for young people who want to study journalism, launched in this 2024-2025 course, was again questioned. continue reading

At the meeting it was also recognized that the repeated “legitimate demands of the sector” will not be easily resolved

Thus, the head of the Department of Journalism of the Faculty of Communications of the University of Havana, Karla Picart Rodríguez, proposed that the UPEC reduce the internship in Active Military Service (SMA), which right now is one year, “considering that in less time its objectives could be met and that the newsrooms and the media are decapitalized, empty.” The criticism, however, was mild, and the official report stated: “Although in the Plenary it was clear that this is already a firm decision, the young teacher called for defending the emphasis of such transit through units in activities and actions that nourish their perspective as students of media communication.”

Other speakers made proposals for “those future journalists in the military units,” who “can be used to improve the communication processes of the Armed Forces, manage radio bases, become correspondents of the magazine Verde Olivo, nurture knowledge in the staffs and the College of National Defense, and join battles on social networks.”

This is far, therefore, from the voices within the regime, who have warned that military service is a deterrent for potential journalism students. The dean of the Faculty of Communication of the University of Havana, Ariel Terrero, for example, said in the II Plenary of the UPEC that the implementation of that condition was “a failure” and questioned whether it served to “educate and ideologically train these young women.”

On the same Saturday that the III Plenary of the UPEC was held, national television broadcast a long hagiographic report on the SMA for future journalists. It was blatant proof that, despite the arguments against it, the obligation [of military service] will continue for the time being.

Moreover, the meeting also recognized that the repeated “legitimate demands of the sector” will not be easily resolved. “To satisfy them, political will is not always enough, because material and financial resources can be deciding factors,” said the deputy head of the Ideological Department of the Party’s Central Committee, Marydé Fernández López.

“Several organizations try to control information to give the idea that nothing is happening, which leaves the press the sad role of damage control that follows”

UPEC presented “a list of material, logistical, organizational and training vulnerabilities” that the official press does not mention – “it would take a long time to detail here,” they excuse themselves – but which can be summarized in a conclusion: “A good part of what the Social Communication Law establishes is not fulfilled, not even by the media.”

Another slightly critical moment in the plenary was when they talked about how to communicate the recent catastrophes such as hurricanes Oscar and Rafael and the two earthquakes in Granma province. In this regard, Juventud Rebelde journalist José Alejandro Rodríguez said: “Before the current comes, the light of information must arrive,” and another colleague from Las Tunas, István Ojeda Bello, said: “The Social Communication Law goes into crisis because several organizations try to control information to give the idea that nothing is happening, which leaves the press with the sad role of damage control that follows.”

Finally, they also analyzed the change in management models in the state press, which began in August last year. According to the report presented, the results of “the experiment” are “very encouraging in the multi-platforms where they are best applied.” That is, Ideas Multimedios – directed by Randy Alonso and encompassing websites such as Cubadebate and TV programs such as Mesa Redonda, the Cubavisión International channel, the Cuban News Agency and Prensa Latina, as well as the Escambray, Girón, Juventud Rebelde, Periódico 26 and Granma newspapers.

In this aspect, Radio Rebelde, Tele Rebelde and Tele Pinar “began to take off,” and “46 other media have just defended their projects of inclusion in the experiment.” On the other hand, they indicate, the start of the proposal has been “exceedingly” delayed “in media that were expected to be leaders: Radio Sancti Spíritus, Radio Florida and Solvisión.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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A Nurse Questions the Lack of Cuban Doctors in Remote Areas in Mexico When the Arrival of 96 is Announced

A health worker denounces the lack of medicines and specialists in communities in the Mexican state of Sonora

Cuban doctors assigned to the rural community hospital in the Vícam Settlement, in Sonora / Facebook / Salud Servicios IMSS Bienestar

14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico City, 3 December 2024 — The 96 Cuban doctors that the Mexican Government boasts of having incorporated into the Sonora hospitals are not even remotely sufficient to solve the state’s problems. “Neither with the Cubans nor with the announcements of new hospitals have the shortages in the Sonora health services been eradicated,” a nurse, who requested anonymity in the face of possible reprisals, told 14ymedio. “There is a shortage of medical supplies at the IMSS-Bienestar hospital in Nogales. Some of the patients have to buy their own medications,” she says.

The same source reveals that of the 100 Cuban specialists that Gabriela Nucamendi Cervantes, director of Imss-Bienestar, the free health organization created during the Administration of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to replace the Popular Insurance, announced this Sunday, “none has been sent to Etchojoa,” which is considered the poorest municipality in Sonora.

Given the lack of doctors, last February “16 medical interns (students) of medicine were sent to 12 health centers that are in the rural area of the municipality. The boys come from universities in Sonora and Sinaloa,” says the nurse, who wonders why the Cuban doctors were not taken to this site.

Last May, the MegaNoticias portal denounced the backwardness in healthcare in the northern state. In Etchojoa “there is an obvious lag in the issue of health, according to figures from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi). Only 28.6% have a mobile unit for transfer, and there is a 41.9% poverty rate.” continue reading

Health deficiencies also prevail in the Mochipaco ejido* where “for 30 years, a house enabled as a health center has been closed.” In Guaytana, history repeats itself: there are no doctors established to attend to the population.

Cuban doctors sent to the municipality of Átil, in Sonora / Facebook / Administracion Municipal de Atil 2024-2027

On November 27, Mayor Jorge Alberto Elías Retes was elected as vice president of the Health Network to meet the needs in the southern region of the state. “The fight against dengue and the urgent need for doctors for rural health services,” are the two primary considerations of the Government, he emphasized.

In her speech, Gabriela Nucamendi Cervantes recognizes the valuable addition of the Cubans, given the shortage of specialists in several municipalities. “We are fortunate that the Cuban doctors and psychiatrists are here. We just sent two to the mountains and are going to distribute them throughout the state,” she said.

Nucamendi told the newspaper El Sol de Hermosillo that Cuban specialists were helping in the municipalities of “Magdalena, Moctezuma and Álamos, especially in community hospitals that are difficult to cover.” The official said that others are in the Vícam Settlement, located in Yaqui territory in the south of the state, where a $26,014,316 hospital is under construction.

The Cubans are also working in the General Specialties Hospital and the Children’s Hospital in Hermosillo.

Regarding the per diem of Cuban doctors, at the beginning of October it was revealed that the Government of Mexico pays 5,188 dollars a month for salary, transportation, food and lodging for each of the 3,101 Cuban specialists hired to offer services in rural areas.

*Translator’s note: An ejido is a tract of land held in common by the inhabitants of a Mexican village and farmed cooperatively or individually.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Venezuela Cannot Rid Itself of Maduro without Cuba’s Help Says Former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda

The Venezuelan army is under constant surveillance by Cuban intelligence

is stint at Mexico’s chief diplomat more than twenty years ago was marked by a breakdown in relations with the island. / Jorge Castañeda/Instagram

14ymedio, Mexico City, 20 October 2024 — Former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castañeda made it very clear. If the international community wants to help Venezuela resolve the crisis following Nicolás Maduro’s fraudulent presidential election, it will first have to negotiate with Cuba. “Without Cuban cooperation, it is impossible,” the former diplomat said in an interview with the Argentine news site Infobae.

“I have my doubts but the Cubans claim that the disaster they are experiencing is due to increased sanctions — the “blockade*” as they call it — and limits on remittances. If all that is true and the situation in Cuba is as dire as they say, then there is an incentive,” he explained.

The former minister has a hunch that Havana will try to normalize relations with the U.S by facilitating Maduro’s handover of power

The former minister argued that Venezuela’s army is subject to constant surveillance, supervision and meddling by Cuba’s intelligence services. “They are very, very good,” he emphasized. “They prevented any attempt to overthrow Fidel or Raúl Castro for sixty-five years. And who knows how many assassination attempts on one or the other? They are very good at what they do.”

His time as head of the Mexican foreign ministry more than 20 years ago (between 2000 and 2003) was marked by a historic breakdown in relations between Mexico and Cuba. First, there were resolutions against Cuba in the Organization of American States’ Commission on Human Rights. Later, continue reading

there was an incident — it was dubbed the “eat-and-run” — when then-president Vicente Fox suggested to Fidel Castro that he leave the country before the United Nations Summit on Financing for Development, which was being held in the Mexican city of Monterrey, had ended.

That is why Castañeda has stayed away from politics and now teaches at New York University while contributing articles to various Mexican and international media outlets. He believes the international community, particularly Latin American countries, should insist on finding a solution for Venezuela. “I believe we must continue insisting but without countries like Mexico abandoning the effort because that causes even more damage,” he points out. “Mexico is no longer active in the group that includes Colombia and Brazil, and that weakens the efforts of those other two countries. The result is they now see themselves playing a more passive role. They must also include other countries in the region without taking sides.”

Castañeda believes the international community should insist on finding a solution for Venezuela

Castañeda also warns of the threat posed by Venezuela’s relations with countries such as China and Russia, and the role they have played in the country’s recent post-election crisis, which has left twenty-four dead and more than two thousand detained by the Maduro government. The repression, he points out, has also forced opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia to seek asylum in Spain.

“It is my understanding the Chinese are not particularly interested in getting involved in this conflict in part because Maduro still owes them a lot of money which he has not paid,” he observes. “They are upset because he has not paid them in either petroleum or cash. They also give the impression that they don’t want to get into a fight with the United States over Venezuela.”

The former Mexican foreign minister admits that, in the case of Russia, the situation is more complex. “Putin is obviously trying to irritate and provoke the United States through his support for Venezuela,” Castañeda notes. ” He has sent weapons and some money, and made demonstrations of force such as sending brigades of bombers and ships. However, it does not seem to be having much much of an effect on the situation.”

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Justicia 11J Confirms That 554 Demonstrators From the 2021 Protests in Cuba Are Still in Prison

The NGO documented that there were a total of 173 protests on the island between July 2023 and July 2024.

A police patrol guarding a protest in Santiago de Cuba on July 11, 2021 / 14ymedio

EFE (via 14ymedio), Mexico City, 28 November 2024 — The organization Justicia 11J reported Wednesday that 554 Cubans remain imprisoned for participating in the July 2021 anti-government protests, the largest in decades on the island.

In its annual report Otro año sin justicia (Another Year Without Justice), presented Wednesday afternoon, the NGO warned that “repression on the island, by state authorities, is systemic and structural” and stressed that “Cuba’s repressive context has become more complex”.

Similarly, Justicia 11J assured that the 554 demonstrators still in Cuban jails represent 35% of the 1,580 people who have been detained since the July 11, 2021 (11J) demonstrations. The prison sentences are up to more than 20 years.

Also, the organization emphasized in the document that 93% of the 554 inmates are men. continue reading

In addition, 12 of them are between 20 and 21 years old -they were arrested when they were 17 and 18-; 383 are between 22 and 45 years old; 92 are between 46 and 59 years old; and 13 are 60 or older.

Justice 11J documented that between July 2023 and July 2024, there were 173 protests in Cuba. Within that period, “at least 35 people” were arrested, of which “27 are still in detention.”

Justicia 11 J criticized the fact that “the Cuban State” has “continued to manipulate the dialogue with international actors to project a false image of commitment to civil society and citizens.

In this regard, Camila Rodríguez, founder and director of the organization, stated during the online presentation of the report that the protests on the island “will continue to happen”, so “there is no turning back”.

Johanna Cilano, a researcher with Amnesty International (AI) for the Caribbean, regretted that “there is no civic space and freedom of association” in the country. She also reiterated AI’s concern for the case of opposition leader José Daniel Ferrer, imprisoned since 2021.

Last week, family members, human rights NGOs and Cuban dissident organizations denounced that Ferrer, considered a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, was hospitalized after being “brutally beaten” by prison staff.

Neither the Cuban government nor the official press has reported on the matter. A minority pro-government media outlet assured that the reports of the beating “are unfounded” and that Ferrer was in a “favorable” state.

In its annual report, Justice 11J criticized the fact that “the Cuban state” has “continued to manipulate dialogue with international actors to project a false image of engagement with civil society and citizens. Its interactions with UN and EU representatives show an official willingness to maintain diplomatic relations while dodging its responsibilities”.

Translated by LAR

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A Debate on Cuban TV About the Necessary Collaboration of the Private Sector To Build Socialism

The ideal system will begin when the two economic sectors begin to “link themselves” properly

Cid Ice cream shop in Havana, a private business / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Madrid, 26 November 2024 — Determined to address public-private collaboration, a thorny issue for the economic model that has reigned in Cuba for 65 years, the television program directed by Marxlenin Pérez, Cuadrando la Caja [Squaring the Box], had a surprise. Nothing that Cubans have experienced so far was communism and, if they hurry, not even socialism. Something like this will begin when the two economic sectors begin to properly “link themselves” – as the ruling party calls cooperation – and give way to a “developed” society.

The program turned out to be a recommendation to correct the last 65 years in total, which was not very clear judging by the fancy footwork of Ayuban Gutiérrez Quintanilla, professor at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Havana. The doctor was invited, clearly, to justify the demand from the institutions for public-private collaboration, so present in countries with market economies, including China and Vietnam in their turn to state capitalism.

Marxlenin Pérez repeatedly asked his guest to address the alleged “contradictions” of this type of cooperation with an economic model that for decades denied any private initiative. Then the diatribe began.

“In my studies of Marxism, we think that socialism is the transition to that higher society, which is communism”

“In my studies of Marxism, we believe that socialism is the transition to that higher society, which is communism. I believe there is no contradiction in understanding that, either as the transition to socialism or as socialism [itself], which is that path to a higher society, there is undoubtedly a space in which different forms of property have to coexist,” explained Gutiérrez Quintanilla. continue reading

The professor argued extensively for the beginnings of private property and Lenin’s arguments exactly one hundred years ago, to which Cuba – he pointed out – must adapt the conditions that occur at this historical moment. “Marx and Engels assumed that the transition from developed countries to communism was because there was already a guaranteed material base,” he describes at one point. “It’s interesting, because later they [the Marxists] realized that it didn’t have to be exactly like that in their relationship with the Russian revolutionaries. They realized that it was possible from an underdeveloped country, but then the process is longer, because the material basis for the transition has to be guaranteed.”

At this point, Gutiérrez Quintanilla affirms that Cuba is at that moment “when the State cannot do it on its own,” and that it needs to associate with other forms of private management, both in the country and abroad. It is not clear if the argument says the Marxist theorists of the nineteenth century were right or makes the six decades of Castroism wrong, but it clearly leaves doubt about what has been done since 1959 in Cuba. The system must start from scratch with the help of the now necessary private sector as a preliminary step to restart Cuban socialism.

Without doubt, the professor was admitting that, no matter how much on paper the state sector continues to appear as the engine of the economy, the State imperatively needs the private sector to prosper. Therefore, Gutiérrez Quintanilla called for public policies that regulate relations between both parties “so that these forms of property participate in the achievement of a final objective that is the development of the country, the improvement of well-being and the improvement of living conditions.”

The businessman has been cooperating with the state sector for almost two years thanks to an unusual access to foreign currency, and he did not hide the fact that the Central Bank of Cuba “supports” his company

The speech is not entirely new – already in 1987 the official State newspaper Granma had a headline on the front page: “Now we are going to build socialism”; but Gutiérrez managed to overshadow the presence of Jorge Félix Peraza Noriega, president of Jolyni, an MSME dedicated to making pasta, who came to put some meat on the beautification of private collaboration with the State.

The businessman has been cooperating with the state sector for almost two years thanks to an unusual access to foreign currency, and he did not hide the fact that the Central Bank of Cuba “supports” his company. Jolyni “has not had to go to the informal market to get currency and let’s hope it never happens,” he said.

“Operating with microcredit we achieved a very favorable credit history. We have also benefited from all the possibilities that have been generated for us and from the confidence and seriousness with which we manage our business. We have worked with foreign suppliers who have given us credits, which are still pending and must be honored, but we also count on the seriousness of the financial institutions that support us,” he claimed, a recital of what few can achieve without leaving behind some doubts.

Peraza Noriega, in any case, spelled out the positive nature of his experience, since his company makes the products on the Island, generating value at the national level. “In the end, when we buy a package of spaghetti that was made in Italy we are paying the salary of a worker in Italy. When a Cuban buys a package from Jolyni he is not only paying Jolyni but is also helping to generate a whole process of a salary and a guarantee of consuming a fresh product, a healthy product. That’s one of the things we need to do.”

Retaking the floor, Gutiérrez Quintanilla insisted that it is very positive that the private businesses “align themselves with the country’s development objectives,” but that it is necessary to create the conditions for an alliance favorable to all to be achieved, at which time the capital issue of foreign exchange appeared as directly responsible for public-private collaboration not being able to prosper.

“Today, the private company has to go to a foreign exchange market that we all know has a series of important difficulties, because it is part of the informal market. However, the state-owned company, by its nature, cannot enter an informal market; it would be contradictory. So how do we find a solution? That’s a challenge,” the teacher said. He thus admitted, without saying it expressly, that the Cuban economy has entered a loop impossible to solve, since it is – he said – essential that there is a macroeconomic stabilization that generates confidence and productivity, inviting the private sector to join the State. “It is very difficult for the actors to relate correctly if the rules are not the same,” he concluded.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Lack of Milk and the Import of Gouda Are Burying Cuba’s Own Creole Cheese

At the La Plaza Boulevard market in the city of Sancti Spíritus, a pound of Creole cheese costs 450 pesos this week / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 1 December 2024 –Inseparable companion of the wedge of guava and constant presence in the hands of the sellers who display their merchandise on the sides of the road, white or Creole cheese was so common in our lives that we only knew how to value it when it began to become more expensive and scarcer every day. Now, a wave of synthetic and tasteless products is giving the coup de grace to the cheese of farmers.

“I was born in Sancti Spíritus, a very rural province where we are proud to make one of the best cheeses in Cuba,” recalls Pascual, 81, a resident of Havana for six decades. This week, the old man’s sister visited him from her native Jatibonico. “She managed to bring two pounds of cheese made by our cousin, but she told me to eat it slowly because it is the last production: he is selling the farm.”

Pascual cut a thin slice, sat down in the armchair on the terrace and took the first bite. Suddenly, he remembered his mother’s scream from the courtyard of his childhood telling him not to climb so high in the mango tree. The smell of the mountain flooded everything, and he saw the milkman placing bottles at the doors of the houses with the first rays of the sun. He heard the neighbor’s rooster and the noise that his father made, machete in hand, when he cut the grass that grew at the entrance to their home, made of planks and palm trees.

“I was born in Sancti Spíritus, a very rural province where we are proud to make one of the best cheeses in Cuba”

The second bite took Pascual to the Military Service where that white cheese had killed his hunger many times. “The bread arrived still warm; they gave me a large piece and put a slice inside; if there was a little bit of guava nearby, even better.” When the Rafter Crisis happened in the summer of 1994, his eldest son took to the sea with several friends. They were finally continue reading

intercepted and taken to the Guantánamo Naval Base. He now lives in Tampa.

“The only thing he could carry was some water and a piece of white cheese; eating that for the week they were adrift was how he was saved,” he recalls now. “In Tampa, you can buy all the cheese you want, cheddar and mozzarella mainly, but he tells me that it doesn’t have any taste, nothing like that farmers’ cheese bathed in seawater; there’s nothing like it.” The sour smell spreads over the terrace; an almost blind dog approaches and Pascual gives him a piece. The animal swallows it quickly and begs for more.

The journey to the past, over a piece of cheese, is over. “I’m going to save what I have left for some spaghetti that I want to make on the weekend,” he explains. Inside the refrigerator, wrapped in a cloth that was once a baby’s diaper, is kept the treasure that has arrived from a farm in Sancti Spíritus, where the arms of his cousin have beaten the milk, sweat has been mixed with the whey, and an improvised press with two boards and a tourniquet has given it form.

A few kilometers from the farm for sale, in the La Plaza Boulevard market in the city of Sancti Spíritus, a pound of Creole cheese costs 450 pesos this week, 100 more than in these days in December last year. But this is not its highest price; it reached 550 last June. However, even with plenty of money in your pocket, it is not so easy to buy a product that has been disappearing from Cuban markets and homes to the same extent that livestock production is sinking, hit by the lack of animal feed, the wave of illegal slaughter that keeps cattle owners without support and the State controls that force farmers to comply with the deliveries of milk agreed with Acopio.

“Making cheese takes time and a lot of work; this is not sewing and singing,” a merchant from La Plaza Boulevard defends himself when a customer complains about the price of the product. Nearby, a private mipyme, full of imported products, offers a pound of Gouda cheese at 2,100 pesos. This cheese has a high demand,” clarifies the smiling employee. “You can buy the entire block that is three and a half kilograms or we can sell it to you by the pound,” he says. The label has the name of the Spanish firm Vima.

Some of the imported cheeses that arrive on the Island are synthetic. These are dairy preparations made from fats, fragments of other cheeses, starches, salts and dyes. These ingredients are ground, mixed and melted. As a general rule they contain a lot of salt. They don’t have the typical holes that fermentation leaves, and they are very caloric, but among Cubans they are surrounded by a halo of healthy and tasty foods.

If you don’t have a lot of money, you will have to settle for a small pizza, about 17 centimeters in diameter, made with farmers’ cheese for 200 pesos

Thankfully it melts; it can stretch and is quite photogenic, but the Gouda cheese that arrives in Cuba absolutely lacks personality. It comes in rectangular bars and without those holes inside that create the action of bacteria during the maturation of the product. With artificial color, wrapped in plastic and odorless, the imported cheese has captivated Cubans and intimidated the local rancher.

That unequal fight is seen everywhere. In a cafeteria located on Zanja Street in Central Havana, the bulletin board shows the superiority that customers give to foreign cheese. If you don’t have a lot of money, you will have to settle for a small pizza, about 17 centimeters in diameter, made with farmers’ cheese for 200 pesos. But if you can spend more and, in addition, want to give an image of solvency, then you will have to pay 350 for a similar product but with Gouda. Almost everyone who arrives asks for this last combination.

However, Pascual has positioned himself in his own way in that encounter between Creole and industrial cheese, with colorful labels in which a chubby cow smiles. Wrapped in a thin fabric, his cheese remans the last piece of a food in the refrigerator that has the ability to transfer him back to his childhood, to the patio with the orange and tamarind trees where he grew up. He chews it calmly and hears the scream of his mother who tells him to get out of there, that the snack is already on the table. A sandwich with a white slice, full of holes, that protrudes on each side of the bread, awaits him.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Hundreds of Cubans Crowd Into Tapachula for the CBP One Program, Wanting To Get to the US Before Trump Takes Over

At least 3,000 migrants, including several Cubans, went to the Migration offices in Tapachula (Chiapas) for CBP One* Program / Facebook / South Border News

14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico City, 26 November 2024 — Cuban Yunier Pérez Valdés is confident of being in the United States before Donald Trump assumes power on January 20 and, as he threatened, starts mass deportations. “I’m against the clock,” he tells 14ymedio. His sister María Elena and her brother-in-law arrived in Tijuana, the border with the United States, and after crossing the San Ysidro checkpoint they turned themselves in last Friday. But he confesses in anguish: “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I stay in Mexico.”

In his first term in the White House (2017-2021), Trump implemented restrictive measures such as the “Stay in Mexico” program, which forced asylum seekers to wait on Mexican territory while their cases were resolved. “If you don’t find a way before Trump, everything will overflow at the border,” estimates Pérez, who is in Tapachula, in the state of Chiapas. “Once again, all Cubans, Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans will look for a way to enter the country illegally.”

The young man, 23 years old and originally from Matanzas, had to sell everything he owned to be able to make the journey. “I have no money, I don’t have a house, I don’t have a family. I tell the agents that in Cuba we are starving and they laugh.”

A policewoman in Tapachula asked him if he was politically persecuted. “They don’t understand that Cubans leave because there are no improvements. There are months of blackouts, without medicines, without work. Where is the humanitarian aid they send for natural disasters? If you protest you are now an enemy and they beat you with sticks,” he laments. continue reading

Several migrants stay overnight in the Plaza de Tapachula while waiting for Migration procedures / EFE

This Monday, some 3,000 migrants arrived at the Migration offices in that same border city, comments Pérez, about 100 Cubans among them, but “the rule,” is to assist 1,000; of those, 700 are there for CBP One Program*. “The rest process documents for their regulation. There are two lines, although there were problems because some Haitians and Colombians wanted their papers immediately.”

The Cuban migrant stays overnight in the Bicentennial Park. There he met the Venezuelan José de Casa, who last October registered through the CBP One application, but the answer has not reached him. “The agents ask me not to despair, but it’s not easy, I’m here without money. The little I brought ended in days and I can’t get out of here (Tapachula),” says the Venezuelan.

They say that they tried to clean windshields on the streets, as other migrants have done, but “there is a mafia that controls them,” denounces the Venezuelan. “From what you earn you must share the money. ’You have to pay for the territory,’ they tell us.”

In that same place Pérez Valdés has met dozens of Cubans. “Many left with the caravan of 1,500 people last Wednesday. “They do it to avoid extortion and kidnappings by coyotes,” he says.

According to official data from the United States authorities, arrests in September for illegally crossing the border from Mexico were at their lowest point in the last four years.

Despite a 76% drop in the daily detention of migrants on the US border since December, according to the Mexican government, irregular migration through this country rose 193% year-on-year to a record of more than 172,000 people, according to the Migration Policy Unit.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Cuban Government Requires Companies by Law To Have Their Own Energy Generation Equipment

“Large consumers” will have to produce 50% of the energy they use as of 2028

An ’MSME’* in Holguín dedicated to the sale of toiletries and food / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Madrid, 27 November 2024 — Cuba’s state-owned companies, private companies and any governmental or foreign dependency must implement a series of measures for energy efficiency. Among them, they must have their own system to supply 50% of the energy they use during peak hours. This will be required from 2028 for “large consumers,” those who need 30 megawatts per hour or 50,000 liters of fuel on average monthly.

This is established by a new law published this Tuesday in the Official Gazette, Decree 110/2024, on “Regulations for the control and efficient use of energy carriers and renewable energy sources.”

The text repeals a 2019 resolution on the subject and has been in the works for at least a year, with recurrent public appearances by the authorities in recent months regarding the unrelenting crisis. The State cannot continue subsidizing electricity to the private sector, and it is imperative to save electricity. The resolution is published in the midst of a fever for renewable energies, specifically solar panels, unleashed on the front pages of the official press for weeks.

Fundamentally, the decree says that “state and non-state economic actors, foreign investment modalities, representative offices and branches of foreign entities, dependencies or other representations of foreign institutions, as well as associative forms” have to implement “a management system for the control and efficient use of energy carriers and renewable energy sources, in accordance with their corporate purpose, functions and approved mission, in relation to the commercial activities they carry out.” continue reading

Companies that already exist are given a period of three to five years to adhere to the measures

To do this, they must take a series of measures, including establishing a “program for the development, maintenance and sustainability of renewable sources and the efficient use of energy, with a reach of five years.” These should include “the goals that are proposed to be achieved, the necessary financial and human capital” and a plan for electricity consumption during peak hours (daytime, between 11 am and 1 pm, and at night, between 5 pm and 9 pm).

As reported on national television upon giving news of the decree, all economic entities that start new ones must have this plan within their project so that it can be approved by the authorities. For those that already exist, they are given a period of three years from the publication of the law in the Gazette to adhere to the measures.

The law requires that 50% of the electricity of large consumers during daytime peak hours come from “renewable energy sources.” “In cases where for reasons of space or structure of the roof of the installation or building it is not possible to install photovoltaic panels” to reach that 50%, the text continues, “the contracts of installed power in the photovoltaic solar parks must be signed with the Unión Eléctrica, as established in the regulatory provisions dictated by the Minister of Energy and Mines.”

Another of the elements provided for in the decree is a change in tariff. The Electric Union of Cuba will take as a reference “the real cost of diesel generation at the official exchange rate approved by the Central Bank of Cuba for the new companies considered large energy consumers from their start-up.” The Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM) is exempt, however, from this “real-cost tariff,” and “the rates established by the Electric Union” are applied to each one its companies.”

For “new investments that are considered large consumers,” the law requires that 50% of the electricity they consume during daytime peak hours come from “renewable energy sources”

The law lists a series of violations that will entail sanctions, which can include “deducting” 50% of the administrative fuel for a period of three months, the interruption of electricity service up to 72 hours or fines of up to 15,000 pesos. The listed “violations” are numerous and include, for example, “not having an adequate technical and operating state of the facilities and energy-consuming equipment”; “having dirt in the filters, evaporators and condensers in the climate and refrigeration equipment”; “using air conditioning equipment in non-technological premises, at temperatures below 24ºC”; “having refrigeration equipment and non-hermeticized air-conditioned areas”; “failing or not having an electricity consumption plan for the peak hours”; and even “not having the Energy Efficiency Label on the end-use equipment of energy and renewable sources that are marketed in the country.”

Among the infractions there is a whole section referring to fuel, in which sanctions are provided for; for example, “not carrying out periodic analysis of the operations that are executed with prepaid fuel cards,” “failure to comply with the due custody of prepaid fuel cards”and “failure to comply with the fact that the prepaid fuel cards are associated with the vehicles and those responsible.”

All this is planned for a “period of stability of the national electric power system,” since the decree foresees tougher measures – up to 20,000 pesos of fines and other sanctions – in case of “an electrical contingency regime.” This is decreed when “the National Electroenergetic System fails to meet the demand for generation capacity, so it is necessary to affect the electrical service in a planned and sustained manner for more than 72 hours.”

The Government establishes the creation of “energy councils,” which are constituted “at the national, provincial and municipal levels”

To monitor compliance with the new resolutions, the Government establishes the creation of “energy councils,” which are constituted “at the national, provincial and municipal level” with “representatives of political, social and mass organizations of each level” as “permanent members,” and the possibility of inviting, “by own decision or at the proposal of a member,” “representatives of state and non-state economic actors, modalities of foreign investment, as well as associative forms.”

Beyond a brief report on television, the official media have not yet dedicated, as they usually do, a more extensive explanation of the new law, whose wording is more cumbersome than usual. It is striking, for example, that they do not express the obligations with the conditional modal verb “should” but with affirmative verbs. In any case, it looks like it will soon raise indignation, at least from smaller entrepreneurs.

“It’s a direct blow to all these new MSMEs,” says a young baker living in Havana. “How much does an energy system like this cost, 35,000, 40,000 dollars? Who can take on that burden?”

*Micro, Small, Medium Enterprises [mipyme in Spanish]

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuba Receives Help From Japan in Addition to Deliveries From the European Union, Russia, Brazil and the UN

Japan donated mats, water purifiers, tents and blankets to the victims of Artemisa

Reception for the Japanese donation at the José Martí International Airport in Havana / Facebook / Jica

14ymedio, Havana, 30 November 2024 — After two hurricanes, two earthquakes and a long season of blackouts, the Cuban regime has done what it does best: ask for help left and right. The Government’s hand remains open and extended to receive international aid, most recently from Japan.

A publication of the Japanese embassy on the Island announced on November 19 that the country was willing to cooperate with resources for the 114 victims of Artemisa who totally or partially lost their homes after the passage of Rafael. This week, the shipment, with water purifiers, blankets, tents and mats finally arrived on the Island. The shipment was managed by the International Cooperation Agency of Japan (Jica), and its value is about 160,000 dollars.

The shipment was received by a delegation from both countries at the José Martí International Airport in Havana. “During his speech, Ambassador [Kazuhito] Nakamura conveyed his condolences to those affected and said that this aid is a sign of Japan’s solidarity with Cuba, since both countries face natural disasters,” the statement says.

The event was Nakamura’s debut as a diplomat on the Island after presenting his credentials on November 20 to Miguel Díaz-Canel and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez. continue reading

The ambassador also recalled that it is not the first time that Japan has sent donations to Cuba. “Similar actions of the Japanese people and government in disaster situations in Cuba” were carried out after the passage of hurricanes Sandy (2012), Matthew (2016), Irma (2017) and Ian (2022).

Since 2018, Japan also maintains eight large-scale non-refundable financial assistance programs

Since 2018, Japan has also maintained eight large-scale non-reimbursable financial assistance programs on the Island. One of these projects was the one that assisted the residents of Pinar del Río after Ian’s scourge. The donation included “23 water purifiers, 23 tanks to store the liquid, and 50 spools of cables and adapters,” the Japanese authorities then listed.

As former ambassador Kenji Hirata explained at the time, his country’s assistance to the Island focuses mainly on agriculture, energy, the environment and transport. In the latter case, they highlight the donation of 84 Japanese buses in 2022 to the Havana transport company and the 24 garbage trucks delivered in 2019.

Tokyo also grants Havana microcredits of up to $130,000 with an assistance program – which they also do not need to repay – for Human Security, designed for immediate attention to small towns after specific disasters

“For example, in some small towns of Cienfuegos we installed pumping equipment based on renewable energy, and the inhabitants received a more stable water supply. Meanwhile, the Government was able to save money invested in fuel to carry the liquid by pipes,” said the representative.

Through Jica, Japan “boosted” with 20 million dollars last April, on Isla de la Juventud, the installation of photovoltaic parks, following the controversial Cuban energy transition plan. The project also includes batteries with a storage capacity of 10 MW.

Japan “boosted” with 20 million dollars last April the installation of photovoltaic parks

“The experience can be very useful for the megaproject of 2,000 megawatts that would be generated with solar panels, the first phase of an ambitious [Cuban] government project to move the fossil energy matrix to a renewable one,” Hirata said

As for food, up to 2023, Japan had spent 63,400 dollars to supply machinery to several mini industries of fruit and vegetable preserves in Matanzas. The plan then was to collaborate with the failed Food Sovereignty Act.

Taking into account that, according to official press reports, the total number of damaged homes in the province was 21,037, Japanese aid to 114 people seems insignificant. However, it frees the Government of the Island from assisting at least a few dozen families until they can recover their homes.

In addition, the resources are added to the many others sent by political allies of Havana, foreign solidarity groups, international agencies – the European Union approved this week an additional 2.7 million euros to support the recovery in Cuba – and to Japan’s own investments accumulated over the years. According to data from the Japanese Embassy in Havana, 203.06 million dollars have been spent in Cuba since 1998.

“The Government of Japan sends experts to Cuba in fields such as the environment, electrification, irrigation, disaster prevention, etc., and receives Cuban interns for training courses,” he explains in a report.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Relevance of a Dialogue Today in Cuba

The “change” will not be fraudulent because it will happen in the light at a negotiation table

Peace talks in 2016 between the Colombian Government and the FARC guerrillas in Havana / EFE

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 29November 2024 — In political terms an initiative can be convenient but inopportune, and vice versa. It must also be viable. The proposal for Cuba for a dialogue between the Government and the opposition fluctuates at these extremes.

Two answers, from opposite sides, are repeated in the face of the proposal for a dialogue:

“It is inadmissible that pro-democracy patriots sit down to talk with the dictators who decreed that ’the combat order be given’ to suppress the popular protests of July 11, 2021.”

“It is inadmissible that the revolutionaries who defend socialism and the sovereignty of the homeland against the aggressions of imperialism sit down to talk to their paid lackeys.”

These negatives have so many supporters on both sides that it is very difficult not to give up, even before developing arguments in favor of a dialogue.

Like swallows or the flu, from time to time these ideas return to the debate stage. Two colleagues from the independent press, Luis Cino and René Gómez Manzano, have recently addressed the issue. Also in an interview published in this newspaper with the Polish journalist and writer Adam Michnik, this controversial matter was raised from the perspective of a man who actively participated in a process of transition to democracy.

For Cino, who recognizes that it is unlikely that the dictatorship will want to sit down and talk with its opponents, “there are risks that, in the absence of other options, are worth running,” with the eventual gain that the regime recognizes the opposition.” He believes that “the dictatorship will see all its possibilities exhausted and face the imminence of a popular outbreak of incalculable magnitude, on top of the particularly hostile Trump continue reading

Administration, with Cuban-American Marco Rubio as Secretary of State.”

These new aspects show the imperative need for “the change” that has to go beyond cosmetic reforms

Cino warns that “the pro-democratic opposition must be clear about the direction, the goals to which it aspires. To do this, rather than with the regime, they must dialogue and agree, at least on their basic points and demands, with all the actors, both in Cuba and in exile.”

For his part, Gómez Manzano believes that Cino is in a hurry and that the moment of dialogue will be more propitious “when, in the ranks of the same single Party, those who are aware of an irrefutable truth become the majority: that the system is unfeasible and unsustainable”; however, at this moment “that essential aspect is not seen in Cuba, not even remotely!”

Manzano thinks it’s a good move to draw attention to “the need to negotiate with the regime, only not now with the one that declares itself to in ’continuity’. It is absolutely immobile and clings to power with an intensity that a limpet would envy.”

Five years ago I published in this newspaper an extensive, detailed (and somewhat pretentious) text on this matter where I warned that “to talk about dialogue, in the context of Cuba in the first decade of the 21st century, you have to steel yourself, replace all the fuses, secure the safety net and, if possible, pay life insurance in advance.”

The only thing that has changed since then is that the dominant historical generation has come closer to its extinction, and the living conditions of the population and the productive capacity of the country have plummeted even more. The demonstrations of 11 July 2021 also entered the equation, and in our neighbor’s house a government team is being installed that will not pull punches with the Cuban dictatorship.

These new aspects show the imperative need for “the change” to finally occur, which must go beyond the “changes” or cosmetic reforms that the regime could bring.

The change is not intended to be fraudulent because its birth will occur at a negotiation table. As we said yesterday, “the alternatives to dialogue are the overthrow of the dictatorship in a violent way (foreign invasion, popular uprising, coup d’état), with its inevitable consequence of death and ruin; the meek acceptance of waiting for the heirs of the heirs, in a remote future, to make some reforms; or, leave this Island forever.”

Mimicking Luis Cino’s arguments today, I think that if these continue being the alternatives, it’s worth running the risk of trying to have a dialogue.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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