English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, NYC, 6 April 2017 — Resistant and thorny, the invasive marabou weed has inundated Cuban fields and threatened to displace the national shield’s royal palm. The shrub has become a plague spreading across the country, covering previously arable land, and worming its way into a topic for the speeches of senior officials. But the … Continue reading “Invasive Marabou Weed Arrives at the Plaza of the Revolution”
14ymedio, Bertha Guillen and Ricardo Fernandez, Artemisa/Pinar del Rio, 9 February 2017 – When he was a boy, Jorge Luis Ledesma Herrera played around the charcoal ovens his father had built. Now, approaching 50, this Pinar del Rio man dedicates his days to a shrub that is both hated and appreciated: the invasive marabou weed, raw … Continue reading “Invasive Marabou Weed, An Enemy That Became An Ally / 14ymedio, Bertha Guillen and Ricardo Fernandez”
14ymedio, Marcelo Hernández, Havana, 30 August 2018 — On both sides of the Central Highway and the National Highway there is no other plant that dominates the landscape as much as the invasive marabou weed (called marabú in Cuba, and also called sicklebush in English). However, this thorny bush — which has become a plague … Continue reading “Havana Marabou”
EFE, via 14ymedio, Havana, 9 February 2018 — Cuba has commissioned China, one of its principal economic allies, to fabricate a prototype harvester for marabou, an invasive plant also known as sicklebush which is seen as a plague on the Island’s fields, so it can be used as raw material for vegetal coal and be … Continue reading “Cuba Commissions China to Fabricate a Prototype Marabou Harvester”
14ymedio, Ricardo Fernandez, Pinar del Rio — The Cuban farmer has only two problems in being productive: the invasive marabou weed and everything else. When Raul Castro promoted a plan to lease idle land to the farmers and invited them to make it productive using oxen, he overlooked the fact that these parcels, in many … Continue reading “Marabou and the Government: Making the Life of the Cuban Farmer an Ordeal / 14ymedio, Ricardo Fernandez”
Fernando Damaso, 5 March 2106 — Poor taste and anti-aesthetics have spread across the whole country. Havana is an excellent example of this. None of its suburbs or districts have been able to avoid it. In Nuevo Vedado, in Tulipán Street, between Marino and Estancia Streets, an African-Cuban religious-cultural centre has been put up, made out of waste … Continue reading “The Urban Marabou* / Fernando Dámaso”
14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 22 August 2023 — The Castro state press has paid unusual attention to the sugar agro-industry that is currently starting the works for the repair and preparation necessary to face the next campaign, and among which are included, the pool of equipment that will guarantee the cutting, hauling and pressing … Continue reading “Cuban Sugar: No Present and No Future”
14ymedio, Yankiel Gutiérrez Faife, Camajuaní, 21 February 2023 — The hands of Emilio, a 66-year-old farmer, say everything about his trade: rough, firm, and smeared with soot. For decades he has gotten up at dawn, along with his brother Daniel, and they go to work in the fields of Vueltas, a town a few kilometers from Camajuaní, in … Continue reading “With the Blackouts, Charcoal Making Starts Up Again in Cuba”
14ymedio, Havana, 27 January 2023 — Companies in Matanzas, Cuba, fell far short of their export goals in 2022, some as much as 85% short of the plan. The directors of the province attributed the failure to productive stagnation, the lack of supplies and the absence of “strengths” in the industrial sector, as they explained this Friday to … Continue reading “Cuban Rum Exports Fall Due to the Bad Sugar Harvest and the ‘Lack of Containers’ in Matanzas”
14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, October 16, 2022 — When a government ignores economic problems, it does so for two reasons. Either because of incompetence, or because there are substantive reasons that prevent the adoption of appropriate measures to meet social demands. Or it can happen as in communist Cuba, where the two converge. For … Continue reading “The Argument of the Embargo and the Ridiculousness of the Cuban Communist Regime”
14ymedio, Havana, 20 January 2021 — A few months ago, the Empresa Integral Agropecuaria de Las Tunas was distinguished with two awards, one last October and the other in December. Judging by recent statements from the charcoal workers, the authorities do not seem disposed to let the awards be joined by an improvement in the workers’ income. … Continue reading “Las Tunas Charcoal Workers Denounce the Theft of Their Wages by State Company and the Union”
Fernando Dámaso, 4 June 2020 — After the 1959 “accident” occurred, Cuban agricultural production, which had been prosperous and efficient, ensuring the population with an adequate food supply, began to plummet. Two agrarian reform laws — the second one took away what the first had provided — were carbon copies of the failed Soviet system … Continue reading “Cuban Agriculture: A Chain of Inefficiency, Bureaucracy and Corruption / Fernando Damaso”
Elías Amor Bravo, economist, June 18, 2019 — Central planning is the basic tool used by the Castro regime to control the Cuban economy. More specifically, it replaces the market as a tool for allocating resources while at the same time taking private initiative out of the economic decision-making process. Since the establishment of the … Continue reading “Are Changes to Central Planning Enough to Fix the Cuban Economy?”
Somos+, Susana Acosta Diaz, 12 March 2019 — To be born and grow up in a country that is dreaming, a country that is asleep and seems not to want to wake up. A dream country that lives in a constant nightmare. An island that looks out to sea, to the infinite, because it does … Continue reading “Do We Want to Be Like Che? / Somos+”
Fernando Damaso, 11 June 2018 — In the Granma newspaper of June 6th of this year, there is an article by the historian Rolando Rodríguez, under the title “A Hero Courageous Before Every Test,” referred to the patriot Ramón Leocadio Bonachea. In one of its paragraphs it is stated that “he was part of the escort of … Continue reading “Of Traitors and Opportunists / Fernando Damaso”