English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez and Olea Gallardo, Havana, 14 September 2023 – In the bus back home to Havana from Varadero, Manuel and his wife, like many other local tourists, talked about nothing else. Every one of them, though having stayed in different hotels, felt that they had been swindled; that despite the stratospherical amount … Continue reading “Varadero Resort For Cubans ‘All Inclusive Scam’”
14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 5 June 2023 — The young man extends his hand with a 200 peso bill that the driver grabs, without returning any change. It is the price of a collective taxi on the stretch from the Parque de la Fraternidad to Santiago de las Vegas, in Havana, a distance of … Continue reading “Private Carriers, Annoyed by the New Attempt To ‘Cap’ Prices in Cuba”
14ymedio, Havana, 29 April 2023 — Cubans over the age of 13 will no longer receive standard chicken meat, but rather picadillo and mortadella. The news, slipped into a report on the difficulties in supplying the basic family basket, adds that only the chicken “in the distribution” will be for minors 13 and under age … Continue reading “As of May, Cubans Older than 13 Won’t Get Chicken on the Ration Book”
14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 25 April 2023 — The online sales pages for relatives abroad to buy for their relatives in Cuba have not only proliferated like fungi after the rain but reveal the disorder in the island’s diet. Among the first five products of the “best sellers” on some sites, such as Supermarket … Continue reading “The Cuban With Dollars Also Eats Badly: Picadillo, Sausages and Mayonnaise Bought From the Outside”
14ymedio, Madrid, 5 April 2023 — “The diet of the average Cuban household is poor in micronutrients and not sufficiently healthy or diverse due to limited and unstable availability of nutritious foods, socioeconomic factors, and poor eating habits.” The World Food Program (WFP), an arm of the United Nations, is forceful in its annual report on … Continue reading “United Nations World Food Program Reports that Cubans Between the Ages of 14 and 60 Suffer from Malnutrition”
14ymedio, Madrid, 7 March 2023 — The Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (Gaesa), the all-powerful conglomerate belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces, has been deliberately drowning the private sector in Cuba since 2016, and the SME law (micro, small and medium enterprises), promulgated in 2021, is only a “false opening” to attract foreign investment and … Continue reading “Gaesa Used the ‘Small Business’ Law to End the Competition of Cuban Entrepreneurs”
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 6 March 2023 — The outer wall of an old building on Calle Zapata, between calles Infanta and Basarrate, is just one of countless structures in the capital which is threatening to collapse. Each day local residents nervously check on its dangerous angle of inclination. “Does anyone think that these … Continue reading “Unstable Wall Threatens Passers-by in Calle Zapata, Havana”
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 12 February 2023 — If the massive abstention is as successful as the opposition expects in the electoral process scheduled for March 26, none of what is outlined here would make sense. The Cuban Parliament scheduled for the X Legislature of the National Assembly could be the last to have the … Continue reading “The Last Cuban Parliament With the ‘Historicals’”
14ymedio, Madrid, December 22, 2022 — The azulitas [little blue masks] are piled up in the Gardis warehouses. The plant, located in Matanzas, Cuba, already has accumulated 300,000 units, and, although there is enough raw material to make half a million more, its fate seems doomed to the point that “there are those who question the … Continue reading “Nobody Wants the Cuban ‘Azulitas’, the Little Blue Masks”
14ymedio, Elias Amor Bravo, Economist, 10 December 2022 — Cuban communists are privileged. Not only because they hold all the power in the nation, but also because they do what they want, without giving explanations, and then in their congresses they erase any responsibility. This is what happened in the recent Political Bureau of the … Continue reading “Economic Reflections on the Communist Party Plenary”
14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 7 December 2022 — The regime in Havana is aware that its end is near. In the last three years the system’s undeniable collapse has become evident. The “circumstancial” crisis announced by Díaz-Canel in 2019 has been growing and worsening irreversibly. Applying the ’Ordering Task’* amid the pandemic turned out … Continue reading “Cuba: Havanageddon, Apocalypse of a Dictatorship”
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 8 November 2022 — Barely two or three people in line filled their generators this Tuesday at the service center on Libertadores de Holguín Avenue. A day before, there were more than thirty customers, and their photos spread like wildfire on independent networks and media. At the back of the … Continue reading “Confusion and Annoyance in Cuba Over the Registration of Generators to Buy Gasoline”
14ymedio, Yankiel Gutiérrez Faife, Camajuaní, 28 October 2022 — The cart towed by an old Soviet tractor left the rural area of Camajuaní in Villa Clara province headed to Remedios. It was loaded with seven pigs whose owners, five farmers who rented the transportation, had made the decision to sell to the state. With the … Continue reading “‘Four Years Have Passed and the Cuban Government Still Hasn’t Paid Us for the Hogs it Bought’”
14ymedio, Havana, 10 October 2022 — Members of the independent Cuban intellectual and artistic community have signed a manifesto in which they accuse the Cuban Government of “lack of political will” to manage the “accumulated needs of the population” and “their human desire for freedom.” The letter “From Cuban artists and intellectuals to Cuban citizens … Continue reading “‘They Have Chosen to Support Repression. We Denounce It.’”
14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Valencia, Spain, October, 1, 2022 — Reaching the limit and wanting to go further, for the sole vice of maintaining power. At any price. This is the selfish and suicidal lesson the communist regime wants to teach Cubans, so that tomorrow, the whole world will remember the tragic final venture (which … Continue reading “Cuba: It Is the End of the Communist Dictatorship”
