14ymedio

In Ciego de Avila, Cuba, Only 8 of the 17 Buses Are in Service

For 2023, forecast ridership in Ciego de Ávila has been estimated as 155,681 passengers. (Invader)

14ymedio, Havana, 14 February 2023 — The national transport company of Ciego de Ávila was far from fulfilling its 2022 plans and left at least 84,313 passengers at the curb. Among the reasons is the lack of buses, since of the 17 that the company owns, only eight work and sometimes even they don’t arrive. The inability to get batteries, tires, glass and other spare parts destroyed last year’s data, although determining its size is a confusing undertaking.

In a note published this Tuesday by the province’s official newspaper, Invasor, it is reported in general terms that last year’s plan was to transport “more than 230,000,” riders, although later Inaudis Figuera Ferrer, head of the operations group, indicated that “of 180,912 passengers for 2022, 84,313 were missing when completing the statistics for the year,” which adds up to a projection of 265,225.

In any case, for 2023 the forecast has been streamlined, estimated this year at 155,681 passengers, data that the official newspaper considers “not so pretentious” (sic).

The company not only did not make a profit due to the large number of passengers it left unable to carry, but its losses were relatively high, reaching 504,000 pesos. According to the group’s head of accounting, María Caridad Águila Cuéllar, the increase in the cost of parts and spares is the cause, since a tire costs approximately 7,000 pesos. continue reading

The deficit, however, improves compared to the previous year, when the pandemic paralyzed transportation and the company lost around three million pesos. Compared with the benefits of more than five million five years ago, according to Invasor, the data is catastrophic and, to try to raise the numbers, some measures summarized by Águila Cuéllar were taken, including leasing premises and three buses to the private sector, despite the limited availability of vehicles.

The official added that since June 2022 the interprovincial service has been subsidized at 0.05 cents per kilometer, which increased income – or reduced losses, in this case – by 180,000 pesos per month. In addition, in October the rate rose from 6.96 to 13.96 pesos. Based on these calculations, the company calculates to end the year with profits of 1,149,000 pesos.

The only objective achieved is that of interurban passenger transport, as the projection was 54,070 passengers and the actual number was 101,206, despite the fact that the routes were reduced by four since 2019, when the routes to Niquero, Camagüey, Cienfuegos and Havana disappeared on the schedule at 1:30. Consequently, the number of drivers was also reduced, but the head of Human Resources admits that there should be 24 drivers and 22 are hired.

The article leaves a piece of information that the company considers positive, and that is that there was no shortage of fuel, since it received more than what was required, which was 410 tons. For this year, the energy specialist estimates that 390 tons will be needed.

The data abounds in the provincial transport crisis that the same newspaper Invasor announced three weeks ago. According to the statistics of the Provincial Transport Company of Ciego de Ávila, 7,700,000 passengers traveled, barely a third of the projection (21,937,000). In this case, of the 236 buses owned by the company, only 90 are in good condition.

The critical situation in Ciego de Ávila, a province located in the center of the Island, affects mobility beyond the borders of its territory. Many travelers from other regions of the central west use the buses that arrive from the Ciego de Avila terminals to travel to the Cuban capital or other western municipalities, so the drop in the number of routes that depart from the province affects them by forcing them to resort to private transport.

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A Woman is Murdered by Her Partner in the Middle of the Street in Santiago de Cuba

Pérez’s wake was this Tuesday morning at the central funeral home on Calvario street, in Santiago de Cuba. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 14 February 2023 — A woman identified as Yurina Yaque Pérez was murdered in the neighborhood of Sueño, Santiago de Cuba, on Monday night. The victim was “cut” on a public street by a man with whom she had a relationship, according to her relatives.

“It was her partner who cut her throat yesterday in the middle of a downpour,” one of the sources told 14ymedio, explaining that the murder had been committed on Avenida de Céspedes, between I and J streets. Approximately between seven and eight o’clock at night, a sudden downpour fell on the city, this newspaper confirmed, and in that area of Sueño there was a blackout at that time.

Pérez’s wake was this Tuesday morning at the central funeral home on Calvario street, in Santiago de Cuba, as confirmed by 14ymedio with workers from the establishment.

With the death of Yurina Yaque Pérez there have been 11 femicides in Cuba so far this year. Just three days ago, Mercedes Vasallo Herrera, 51, was murdered by her husband in the town of Carlos Rojas, in Jovellanos (Matanzas).

Vasallo Herrera, whose body her grandson found under the bed, was killed with a knife and had a serious contusion on her skull, according to the activist Marthadela Tamayo, from the Cuban Women’s Network, reporting on her Facebook profile. continue reading

Independent Cuban human rights observatories such as Yo Sí Te Creo [I Do Believe You] and the Red Femenina [Women’s Network] verified 34 murders of women in 2022, while the figures in the two previous years were 32 and 36, respectively. These groups have called on several occasions for effective mechanisms for the prevention of sexist violence “so as not to reach its extreme manifestation, which is irreparable.”

The most recent official data on gender violence date from a 2016 survey, which revealed that 26.7% of Cuban women between the ages of 15 and 74 claimed to have suffered some type of violence in their partner relationship, during the twelve months prior to the study. Only 3.7% of the assaulted requested institutional help.

Last Friday, when the murders of two women became known, the official press published an extensive article in which, among many other things, it wondered if there really were more victims or if complaints had become a more frequent practice today. The mystery is unjustified, since the Ministry of the Interior is the only body that has strict control of accunting for all violent deaths that occur in the country.

The lack of public data is precisely one of the main demands of the independent groups, as well as the inclusion of femicide as an aggravating circumstance or offense typified in the Penal Code. The Cuban Women’s Network advocates for a new legal body that guarantees care and response to victims, since the Island is the only country in the Western Hemisphere that does not have a comprehensive law against violence against women.

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Patients Can Bring Resin but not Anesthesia, Clarifies a Cuban Dentist

Anesthesia, he warned, is administered directly to the nerve through infiltrative techniques, for which reason only drugs certified by CECMED* are used. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana | 8 February 2023 — Sancti Spíritus hospitals refuse to use the medical supplies provided by the patients themselves if they are not previously approved by the Center for State Control of Quality of Medications (CECMED). Daniel Álvarez Rojas, head of the Stomatology (Oral Medicine) section in the province, admitted that they do not have the necessary resources, but that they cannot be held responsible if the medicine has been acquired on the black market or if it does not have quality certifications.

In an interview with Escambray, Álvarez Rojas confirmed that in Sancti Spíritus, as in the rest of the Island, medical centers have no choice but to work with the medicines that patients bring. In the case of his specialty, he explained, they allow amalgams or resin because “they do not compromise life”, but when it comes to using other supplies of dubious origin, such as anesthesia, the risk increases and the official decision in those cases is not to intervene.

Anesthesia, he warned, is administered directly to the nerve through infiltration techniques, for which reason only drugs certified by CECMED are applied.

The measures to alleviate the shortages in Cuba authorize the duty-free importation of food, toiletries and medicines. However, the newspaper adds, some “have ignored the ‘non-commercial’ warning and forget that certain medications, such as anesthesia, can put a person’s life at risk.” continue reading

“Sometimes, the way of administering this imported type of medicine is also very different from the one we use in Cuba, with different doses”

Escambray acknowledges that “it is understandable” that more and more people from Sancti Spiritus turn to social networks to buy drugs in their “desperate attempt” to put an end to a toothache. The newspaper points out that “it is no longer surprising” to find on the classified portal of Revolico the sale of bottles of dental anesthesia at prices between 500 and 600 pesos, along with other medicines for bronchiolitis, vitamins, and even the antiparasitic metronidazole.

Álvarez Rojas explained that there are few occasions in which the vials carried by the patients can really be used in the treatments, because they lack key information for their use, such as the expiration date and the CECMED certification. “Sometimes, the way of administering this imported medicine is also very different from the one we use in Cuba, with different doses,” he said.

Thus, people who go to the black market to buy an anesthetic bulb are in danger of losing their money, because no dentist will risk applying the drug without the minimum specifications, he warned.

The dentist pointed out that hospitals in the province are facing an anesthesia shortage, which they hope to temporarily overcome with the recent arrival of a batch to Cuba. The drug will be used for dental extractions and other treatments, added the professional, who believes that more imported supplies will be available in 2023. Of supplies available in 2022, he assured that attention to pregnant women, children under 19 years of age, the elderly, and people with disabilities was prioritized.

*Translator’s note: CECMED: Regulatory Authority of Medicines, Equipment and Medical Devices of the Republic of Cuba, responsible for promoting and protecting public health.

Translated by Norma Whiting

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Cuba Purchased More Chicken from the U.S in 2022 at a Higher Price Than in the Previous Year

Purchases in December included cigarettes, corn flour, caramel corn chips, peas, frozen chicken, as well as beef and pork. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 11 February 2023 — The total value of chicken imported by Cuba from the United States in 2022 was $295 million, a level 5.6% higher than the previous year. The data, provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and analyzed by economist Pedro Monreal, contributes to dismantling the excuse of the embargo, the Cuban government’s favorite excuse to justify its inefficiency.

Cuba is ever more dependent on American chicken, on which the country spent $279.1 million in 2021. The numbers have doubled since 2020 (an increase of 105.9%), during the pandemic, when the regime spent $143.7 million for chicken imports.

Last December alone, a record $33 million was spent to import 26,460 tons of chicken. Monreal warned on his Twitter account that the amount paid in the last month of 2022 is half of what the Island budgeted for January 2019, but for the same amount imported, evidence of a greater hard currency outlays and an increase in the price of that food item.

Thus, the value of a kilogram of chicken imported was $1.26 at the end of December, the equivalent of an 44.8% annual increase compared with a price of $0.87 that same month in 2021. The price of white meat remained relatively high during the second half of 2022, when it reached more than a dollar per kilogram and reached its highest level in October — $1.29, on average.

“The inability to produce chicken is the elephant in the room of the national agricultural policy,” said the economist with regard to the low levels of avian production in Cuba, a food that in the last years has become an essential part of the Cuban family table due to the disappearance of other sources of protein from the market and the high price of pork.

Much different from the official discourse, which insists that Cuba does not depend on the United States, the data confirm a different reality. According to the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, purchases of agricultural inputs and food products from the United States reached historic levels — $328.5 million at the end of 2022, which represents an increase of 7.7% from the $304.7 million reported in 2021. continue reading

Imports in December reached $39.3 million, 28.7% higher than the level reported that same month in 2021, by a little more than $28 million, or 178% more than the $14.1 million in December 2020.

Purchases in December included cigarettes, corn flour, caramel corn chips, peas, frozen chicken, as well as beef and pork. Furthermore, there were shipments of beans, coffee, beer, non-alcoholic beverages, and also soap, shampoo, detergent and beauty products.

The Council reported that the import of hygiene products alone totaled $9.22 million, the highest level since 2013, the first year data were recorded since sales to Cuba were authorized in 1992.

Humanitarian donations from the United States also reached record levels of $30.08 million at the end of last year, 171.7% greater than the $11.07 million received in 2021.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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A Wave of Layoffs Shakes Up State-owned Companies in Sancti Spiritus, Cuba

The directors of the state entity have not only significantly cut the workforce but have warned the workers who keep their jobs that now “they will have to work more.” (Facebook/Caribbean Stores)

14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus , 11 February 2023 — A call, the summons to a meeting or the simple phrase “the director wants to see you” make the workers of the province of Sancti Spíritus tremble these days. The state companies in the territory are taking on water and, forced to reduce their workforce due to the drop in income, the number of layoffs only grows.

In the Caribe Store Chain that manages part of the sale of food in the city of Sancti Spiritus, the employees have raised their voices to heaven. The brigades of stevedores that brought in the trucks with merchandise to unload the products in each trade have been deactivated, as confirmed by a company executive.

“Now it’s up to the store workers themselves, storekeepers and the personnel that deals with sales to the public, to unload the merchandise from the trucks, that is, to do the work that the stevedores did before,” the official details. “All this is based on Decree Law 53 of 2021,” he points out.

The regulation, approved by the Council of Ministers, creates greater flexibility in the mechanism to establish the organization of the salary system of the workers of state companies, and gives greater decision-making capacity to local managers. “In principle it sounds good, but what is happening is that they are laying off staff to adjust the numbers, instead of producing more; they are adjusting the accounts by removing people.”

When Decree Law 53 entered into force, many workers felt hopeful that the new legislation would help raise wages, but the reality has been quite different. “It leaves the hands of company directors and administrators free to readjust the workforce at will, they raise the salaries of some, but by leaving others without work,” laments this worker at the Caribe Chain Store in Sancti Spíritus.

Doubts about the application of the regulations were felt from the beginning. Last September, Guillermo Sarmiento Cabanas, director of Labor Organization, and Edith González, head of the Department of Salary Organization of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, had to answer, in the official press, the questions that were already arising about the new Decree. continue reading

The functionaries then assured that “the essence” of the change in legislation was “to transform the company, since to pay more it must obtain better results,” which they synthesized “in the formula more productivity plus efficiency plus salary.” But in reality, the directors of state entities seem to have opted for the easier way: fewer employees equals more money to distribute among those who remain.

At the Base Tiles Business Unit, belonging to the Sancti Spíritus Construction and Assembly Company, a process of eliminating jobs began at the end of last year. “They summoned us to tell us that they cannot continue paying all the salaries and we have to reduce staff,” one of the affected workers told 14ymedio. “But it won’t be easy for those who stay,” he stresses.

The directors of the state entity have not only significantly cut the workforce but have warned the workers who keep their jobs that now “they will have to work more” and take on “up to two responsibilities” in the tile manufacturing line. A measure that has been criticized by the employees who, however, do not find support in the local union.

“You spend your life paying union dues, but when you need the Union to stand up for you, then they do nothing,” laments another worker in the administrative area of this tile industry; one of the workers who was counted among the “interrupted workers,” the euphemism used by the Cuban government for the unemployed.

But not all the dismissed are a response to Decree Law 53; the lack of income and raw materials also raise the number of dismissals. In the asphalt plant in the city of Sancti Spíritus, located in the Chambelón neighborhood, this newspaper reported last January on the paralysis of the industry, equipped with old machinery, the Ukrainian-made DK-117 model, which arrived on the island during the years of Soviet subsidy.

The passing of the years, the deterioration and the shortage of parts took their toll on the plant, but the final blow has been given by the lack of fuel and materials. “Since April of last year, production began to decrease because we did not have materials for the process, although it was only a few days ago, at the beginning of this year, that it was announced that it was going to stop producing,” one of the employees told 14ymedio. After the closure of the factory, that employee has been left without work.

The options for finding a job in a province hit by the economic crisis and unproductiveness are “like finding water in the desert,” the same worker now quips, and reports that he has been “searching and searching for months and nothing appears.”

For most of the unemployed, however, there is at least one thing in which they feel very secure: “I won’t return to the state sector anymore, they use you when they want and throw you away for whatever. Now I’m going to earn a living selling churros or unclogging toilets, but on my own,” says the employee.

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Cuban Opposition Platform D Frente Thanks Cardinal Stella for Asking for ‘Clemency’ for Cuba’s Political Prisoners

Both Pope Francis’s and Cardinal Stella’s attitudes have been one of closeness, and even sympathy, towards the Cuban authorities. (Cubadebate)

14ymedio, Havana, 11 February 2023 — The opposition platform D Frente [D Front] thanked Pope Francis this Friday for Vatican Special Envoy Cardinal Beniamino Stella’s asking the Cuban government for “an amnesty or some form of clemency” for Cuba’s political prisoners. Stella, whose visit to the island starting on January 23, followed a strategy of non-confrontation with the regime, culminating in some statements to the international press about the need to release those detained after the massive protests of 11J (11 July 2021).

Last December, knowing that the Pope would send Stella to Cuba to commemorate the 25th anniversary of John Paul II’s presence on the island, D Frente had demanded a word from the pontiff about the situation of the incarcerated and the violation of human rights. humans in Cuba. They also called for the mobilization of Francisco’s “good offices” in diplomatic terms to alleviate the country’s economic, social and migratory crisis.

In a statement signed this Friday, D Frente appreciates that the Pope has expressed himself, although through the words of his special envoy. Stella’s request to the Government, they say, is “in tune with the organization’s first work objective”: the freedom of prisoners.

As the text acknowledges, the D Frente platform has been advocating since its creation in September 2022 for a Law on Amnesty and Decriminalization of Dissent, which the platform presented through the Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba – one of its member organizations – with the concept of that amnesty is “the best form” of response that could be expected from the Government.

In addition, D Frente points out that, if this legal mechanism is granted – which Cuba does not have, as Cuba’s Minister of Justice, Oscar Silvera, recently warned – it must be done “immediately and without conditions such as exile or the limitation of the rights”. continue reading

The document also defines the NGO’s vision of the future of Cuba as “a country enriched morally, economically, and spiritually,” which will be possible “through the encounter between Cubans, fraternity, freedom, and pluralism that marks our strategy”.

“Attempts to face a painful past, such as dictatorships, are usually historically associated with the debate around their memory, the role of forgetting and forgiveness in transitions and the legitimacy of States when renouncing the retributive justice,” the statement continues.

In addition, D Frente exposes its “reconciliation policy” and calls for a consensus to “replace a single-party dictatorship with a regime of civic liberties, without opening a new period of internal struggles.” In this process, the platform says, the Catholic Church must play an important role as a mediating institution.

The text concludes by demanding “a decriminalization of dissent and the recognition of political pluralism” and insisting on its gratitude to the Vatican, which “echoed” the requests of the platform.

In December 2022, when the Cuban Episcopal Conference announced the visit of Beniamino Stella, Cuban civil society saw an opportunity to expose the country’s situation to an international actor. In fact, in the bishops’ own message, the government was called upon to consider the release of “a good number of those who are in prison” as a gesture of leniency during the end of the year.

D Frente echoed the words of the bishops about the “hunger, loneliness and lack of freedom” that was experienced on the Island and questioned the pontiff with an open letter. Both Francisco’s and Stella’s attitudes have been one of closeness – and even sympathy – towards the Cuban authorities. However, Stella’s statements to the press suggest that he did have a conversation at the highest level about the situation of the prisoners. Miguel Díaz-Canel ’s public response, however, was that he would try to find “a solution to the expectations of both parties.”

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The City of White Stones

Every time I returned to the cemetery of my town I tried, in vain, to guide myself in the labyrinth and find the tombstone of my ancestors. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 12 February 2022 — Somewhere in the town where we were born, turning down a certain aisle and advancing to the third or fourth corridor of the cemetery, the family vault is located. The word pantheon, in most cases, is excessive. It is more like a rectangle of two meters by one, which overlooks a kind of endless beehive. There, in small aluminum boxes or in heavy coffins, our dead rest.

No one suspects how horrifying the sight of an open tomb can be for a child. I, who accompanied the funeral march of my grandparents, cannot get out of my head – not as a trauma, but rather as vertigo of memory – the act of uncovering the vertical passageway, its niches numbered, where the gravediggers dropped the sarcophagi with the help of ropes and pulleys.

It didn’t impress me so much to learn that my grandparents would no longer belong to the world of the living, they would no longer come to lunch, they would not smoke compulsively, they would not take me to a municipal band room or sit me in the barbershop chair, to cut my hair against my will, as did the fact of seeing them hidden, covered and under stone. Of the old, I thought then, only the name, the dates and a mortuary address remain, which I refused to learn and, for this reason, today I would not know how to recognize my family vault.

I suppose that, more than one tomb, I get two or four or sixteen, due to the multiplication of relatives. I don’t know if my brother or my parents know that information, which comes with adulthood, like the keys to the house and the bank account number. My resistance to memorizing these types of figures comes, perhaps, from having forgotten where my ancestors were after they died. In fact, I never even went back to my maternal grandfather’s or great-grandfather’s house. When one leaves his country, the last thing he thinks about is the deceased. continue reading

As a child, my father took me to place flowers for his grandmother. I only remember that the tomb was in the northern sector of the cemetery and that to get there, an unpleasant thing, you had to step on several sepulchers. There he showed me a rectangle covered not by a stone but by earth, whose tombstone he had made himself, as a young man. On a molten cement plate and with the help of a stiletto that served as a chisel, he carved the names of the deceased he knew. I don’t remember if there was any Carbonell or Echevarría, but there were the Beltráns and the Seijos, a strange Galician surname.

Before we left, he offered me some clues — a sepulcher that was a miniature chalet, a mutilated angel, a flag — to locate the grave in the future. Every time I returned to the cemetery of my town I tried, in vain, to guide myself in the labyrinth and find the tombstone of my ancestors. I have chosen to think that it never existed and that my memory is invented, another fiction, material for a novel.

A few weeks ago I leafed through a Cuban newspaper that talked about grave robbers in Matanzas. I thought for a moment of Howard Carter, the Valley of the Kings and the pharaohs, but the photos in the report grounded me. The bandits destroyed the coffins with a very peculiar viciousness, scattered the bones on the ground – like Kubrick’s monkeys – and evicted the works of art and any bronze rings from the pantheon.

The cemetery I went to as a child did not have the value or the history of San Carlos Borromeo, it mattered much less than that of Colón and Santa Ifigenia. But on the gate was a phrase by Tito Livio that my friends and I repeated without understanding, and that reminded whoever passed by that every death was, at the same time, liberation and compensation for wrongs. Or, to correctly translate the word, revenge.

Other cemeteries that were familiar to me had more serene inscriptions – I am the door of peace – or more resigned ones – death is the last reason – but always in the Latin language, perhaps because it is a reassuring and remote language, like death itself. Behind the gate the avenues, chapels and white stones appeared, figures always broken, sculptures of dogs and cats, a miniature ship, busts polished by the rain. Or, in the Hebrew cemeteries – my town had one – pure and incomprehensible text, characters arranged from right to left, the same with the dates.

No sane person is concerned with death or immortality. Any preparation is useless and nothingness must be as thick as in the dream, similar to medical sedation, and hopefully just as painless.

My grandparents. My parents. My favorite writers. The guy who composed the piece we hummed insistently. The desecrators of San Carlos Borromeo. The cats I raised and the ones that ran away. The objects, even. The meditators and the carefree, the loud and the silent, the dictators and the exiles, the bad and the noble. The undertaker. Who reads this text. I. What will we think with the last bar?

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There Are Plenty of Jobs in Cuba But No One Wants to Live Here

The restaurant Nel Paradiso has not been able to hold onto staff since Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega opened the “volcano route.” (Facebook)

14ymedio, Madrid, 9 February 2023 — The European press normally pays little attention to what is happening in Cuba. In recent months, however, the continent’s media outlets have turned their focus to the enormous exodus from the island, which has left business managers unable to find workers. Data published on Thursday in an article by Agence France Presse (AFP) casts light on this catastrophic situation.

Take the case of Havana’s Nel Paradiso restaurant. Of the sixty employees it has hired since November of 2021, only ten remain. “When Nicaragua opened its doors, it was a real blow to us. In one week we went from fifty employees to thirty,” says Annie Zuñiga, the restaurant’s hiring manager. Her experience illustrates an odd paradox: Employment on the island is plentiful but no one wants to live there.

As reported in the AFP article, Zuñiga has been desperate to hold onto employees since the government of Daniel Ortega lifted visa requirements for Cubans, a measure that has unleashed an exodus the magnitude of which has never been seen before.

“We haven’t been able to create a unified, stable team. As soon as we think, ’OK, this is the team,’ one of them comes to me and says, ’This is my last week. Next week I’m leaving.’ It’s a disaster,” she says.

Norberto Vazquez, head waiter at Nel Paradiso and a sommelier instructor, sums up his own experience of having trained more than fifty people, only to see them leave the country. “Some students tell me, ’Professor, all I think about now is how I’m going to leave,’ and that makes me incredibly sad,” he says.

At Park Central, a hotel owned by the state but managed by Iberostar, 30% of employees recently emigrated and their jobs have been filled by students. Similarly, sixty employees at a travel agency headed by Stephane Ferrux, a French national, left in one year.

“When there’s nothing to buy because almost everything is in short supply, when you feel you have no future even if you have financial means, then you flee,” says Ferrux. He points out that many of these emigrants had high salaries, as much as 1,500 dollars a month, forty-five times more than the average Cuban. But it means little if you can find nothing to eat, even at hard currency stores. continue reading

If it is hard to find waiters and tourism workers, the situation is even worse for independent press outlets, as this publication knows all too well. Finding employees — people willing to risk threats, fines and prison sentences — is much more difficult than in any other profession. Many leave, however, not for these reasons but in search of a decent life.

At least a dozen journalists and colleagues at 14ymedio have gone into exile over the last nine incredible years, the most recent being Alejandro Mena Ortiz. After years walking the streets of Havana to report on daily life, including going quasi-undercover to report on the July 11 protests, he ultimately decided to join the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who, in late 2021, left the country, setting out on the “volcano route.”* He expects his family to join him in the next few days in the United States, where he currently lives.

The British news agency Reuters dispatched a team to the village of Isabela de Sagua, for decades the point of departure for many migrant boats. This week it published an article on the exodus. “People here are desperate to leave,” says Carlos Hernandez, a 49-year-old fisherman interviewed for the article.

Hernandez reports that, among local residents, whose village is only 130 miles from the Florida Keys, there is a lot of talk about a Biden administration program that allows Cuban emigrants to enter the U.S. via a sponsor. It provides a safe way out but is not an option for many of those who want to leave.

“Cubans have decided they can’t live here and they get out any way they can,” explains 59-year-old Ana Maria Mederos, who earns a living selling coffee from the doorway of her house. She herself is unable to leave because she is caring for a sick relative.

“Those who can leave under this new program will do so. But there are many others who do not have that option and are still willing to risk doing it by sea, by land, whatever it takes,” she adds.

The problem of finding workers is not limited to the private sector. The state-owned newspaper Trabajadores reported in late 2022 that the Carlos Manuel de Cespedes electrical power plant had forty-five vacant positions due to the exodus. “We are still generating electricity but not without enormous effort,” admits the plant’s labor foreman.

According to data provided by the international press, most Cuban emigrants are between the ages nineteen and forty-nine, and are also highly educated. Universities, laboratories, medical centers… no sector is immune from migration. It is just one new element adding to the impoverishment of an Island in which the population pyramid is on the brink of collapse.

*Translator’s note: An overland journey led by paid “coyotes” through Central America and Mexico to the United States.

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Cuba’s Foreign Ministry Vetoes the Presence of Several Priests at the Event with the Cardinal in the University Great Hall

Cardinal Stella’s visit has not been without controversy between those who approve of his non-confrontation policy and those who would have wanted a more explicit denunciation. (Twitter/Minrex)

14ymedio, Havana, 9 February 2023 — The Havana journalist Adrián Martínez Cádiz was one of those invited by the authorities of the Catholic Church to an event this Wednesday at the University of Havana where Cardinal Beniamino Stella, envoy of Pope Francis, participated. The guest list included laymen, priests and nuns, and had to be approved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Martínez, known for his critical stance against the regime, never received endorsement for his participation in the event.

“Today after the meeting I understood why we were not allowed to attend. Miguel Díaz-Canel was there,” Martínez reasoned on Facebook. Along with the journalist, several priests and Catholic communicators also waited in vain for government approval.

The event, held in the Aula Magna [Great Hall] of the University, a place that houses the remains of Félix Varela, a Cuban priest and patriot, was attended by various leaders of the Catholic Church, as well as government authorities, diplomats and university professors. With a speech that commemorated the meeting of Pope John Paul II, 25 years ago, with the “world of culture,” Stella ended his agenda on the Island, whose provinces he had toured since January 23.

“I have to say that I would have liked to hear Cardinal Beniamino Stella give his speech, in that place, in front of those people,” said Martínez, alluding to the words of the former apostolic nuncio about the need for freedom on the island, which he later detailed in statements to the international media.

After Martínez’s complaint, several Havana priests denounced that they had also been prohibited from attending the event at the university. Jorge Luis Pérez Soto, one of the clergy who has offered assistance to the prisoners from the 11 July 2021 protests [11J], and who has demanded their release, commented: “Although the Church counted me among the guests, I was excluded from the list by ’other’ people.” continue reading

The Dominican friar Lester Rafael Zayas Díaz doubted, even, that the ecclesial authorities themselves had included his name among the list of “recommended.” He claimed not to know “who organized this act or its relevance,” and stated that he was not on Stella’s “original agenda.”

“Every year I refuse to enter that marvelous campus when it is intended to celebrate and honor the university as if it had been born in 1959 and where Father Varela has never been mentioned, at least in that event. I am grateful not to have been included by whoever it was. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Those who know me closely know that I would not have gone,” he wrote.

Cardinal Stella’s visit has not been without controversy among those who approve of his policy of non-confrontation with the Cuban government and those who would have wanted a more explicit denunciation of human rights violations on the island. Stella, however, did not offer problematic statements until the last moment, in front of Díaz-Canel and the government authorities.

From his speech, phrases such as “Freedom cannot be subordinated to any calculation of interests or circumstances or to wait for better times to promote it” and “learning about freedom will favor the material, ethical and spiritual growth of the people,” emerged from his speech, which has been reprinted on social networks.

For its part, the official press has made one last attempt to redirect the interpretation of Stella’s words this Wednesday with the publication, in the Communist Party newspaper, of an apology for the rapprochement of the Cuban government with the Vatican.

To the statements about the possibility of an amnesty for the 11J prisoners, the only phrase that Díaz-Canel ambiguously conceded, according to Granma, was that he would try to find “a solution to the expectations of both parties.” Regarding the Episcopal Conference, whose relations with the Government have experienced a notable estrangement, the president was no less hermetic when affirming that “at this moment the bishops thank the Cuban president and government for many gestures they have made in these years, and in present times.”

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Cuba Falls in the Caribbean Series: Causes of an Historic Crisis

EFE (via 14ymedio), Juan Carlos Espinosa, Havana, 9 February 2023 — The Agricultores, Cuba’s card in the Caribbean Series, ended their participation in last place this Wednesday and with the memory of the 20-3 beating against Venezuela, leaving in question the current level of a historic country in this sport.

The plummet of the ninth, led by veteran Carlos Martí, has stunned fans and specialists alike. However, for not a few it was the consummation of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“(The result) was expected, but perhaps not its magnitude. But it was certainly expected. It is the result of many years of bad work,” said journalist Daniel de Malas, CEO of the specialized media outlet Swing Completo, in an interview with EFE.

The Agricultores team was the product of an experiment that the Cuban Baseball Federation (FCB) launched last year: the Elite League, a winter tournament that brought together the best players from the National Series and merged teams from different provinces.

The championship failed to connect with the fans and the images of empty stadiums were a constant, with the honorable exception of the finals.

Despite being the champion team of a league that, in theory, has a better level than the local tournament, Agricultores only managed one victory in their seven games: 3-1 against Curaçao.

Then they lost 3-1 to the Dominican Republic; 20-3 with Venezuela; 6-5 with Mexico; 5-4 with Colombia; 4-3 with Puerto Rico and 10-4 with Panama. continue reading

The role of the team unleashed introspection among the experts and left a question in the air: what does it say about the level of baseball in Cuba that the winning team of an elite tournament does not find any bandwidth in the Caribbean Series?

To the journalist Alejandro Rodríguez Cuervo, a sports presenter on state television, the Elite League is a good idea but it needs to be reformed.

“The Cuban player only plays with Cubans, and very few (have) experience abroad (…) That (Elite) league needs to be addressed in some way so that it can grow economically, including inserting players from various latitudes who can give it much more quality,” he points out in a telephone interview with EFE.

However, De Malas goes further on this point and insists that there is a fundamental problem – above all, a systemic one – in the organization. “There is a lot of politics. (This) is a political problem, (the FCB) does not have the power to make decisions,” he believes.

Swing Completo’s CEO recalled that, unlike the other leagues in the Caribbean Series, the Cuban one is not 100% professional and depends directly on the Government.

“There have been many years of ostracism, of refusing to open up to the world. The FCB needs to be independent and really professionalize,” he adds.

Rodríguez Cuervo does not entirely agree on this point and defends that Cuban baseball players are professionals – since they receive a salary for their work – although he admits that the Elite should become even more professional with players from abroad.

According to Swing Completo, the island players of the Elite League receive a monthly salary of about 3,500 Cuban pesos (about 28 dollars, at the official exchange rate).

Despite its structural problems, Cuba won the 2015 Caribbean Series. Pinar del Río defeated the Tomateros de Culiacán, one of the most iconic teams in Mexico, in the final.

But for the journalist Francys Romero, author of the reference book The Dream and the Reality. Histories of the Emigration of Cuban Baseball (1960-2018), the title can be explained with a bit of context.

The year 2015, Romero recalls in an interview with EFE, was the “prelude to what began to be a systemic exodus of players.” In that year alone, 200 Cuban baseball players emigrated, according to his records.

“The level of the league dropped completely,” he says. “From 2014 to 2016 the teams (the Cubans in the Caribbean Series) were a dream team compared to the ones now,” he stresses.

Since 2017, an average of 80 to 100 Cuban baseball players have left the island to pursue their dream of playing in the US Major Leagues and earn a much higher salary.

In fact, in 2016 Yuli Gurriel – star of the Houston Astros, MLB champions – deserted along with his brother Lourdes when they were concentrating on a Caribbean Series.

The FCB bet this year is the World Classic, which starts in March. Cuba will have three active players in the MLB for the first time. Although the illusions within the organization are high, De Malas and Romero have doubts that the team can go far in the competition.

“I have my doubts that they can get past the first phase,” says De Malas.

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Cuba’s Tinima Brewery, in Camaguey, Will be Reopened with Foreign Capital

The Tínima brewery will have foreign capital to produce and market all kinds of beverages. (Forward)

14ymedio, Madrid, 10 February 2023 — Cuba’s Minister of Economy and Planning, Alejandro Gil Fernández, announced this Thursday the imminent start-up of seven foreign investment businesses with an impact on the food sector, some of them starting in March. In a meeting with directors of the Ministry of the Food Industry, he insisted on the need to turn to this type of association to alleviate the shortage of foreign currency that prevents the payment of debts.

The new companies mentioned by Gil, who is also deputy prime minister, are for the provision of refrigeration services, the production and marketing of sea cucumbers and the cultivation, processing and marketing of marine sponges, fish and gin.

There is also a mixed company that will produce and market cocoa derivatives and another that will do the same with water, soft drinks, beers and malts in the Tínima factory in Camagüey, which has been brewing beers since 1985. Last July it suffered an ammonia leak due to the breakage of a valve in which there had been no major problems.

The officials pointed out that shrimp, eels – a luxury food intended solely for export to the Asian market – and coffee are other products that should be promoted to foreign investors due to their high demand and important dividends. In the case of the last product there is a lot that will have to be worked on, as the scarcity of coffee is becoming a serious problem for Cuba, forced to import it from all kinds of countries. continue reading

Gil Fernández pointed out that the 2022 food export plan was only 92% fulfilled and this is expected to be much worse due to the “US blockade, high prices, conflicts and natural catastrophes,” he said, without the slightest hint of self-criticism.

However, it clashes with the recognition that this year will be – in his words – “very tense” with the planned figure, which is valued at $232,787,600, an increase compared to 2022. The sectors whose sales are expected to be most lucrative are rum and fish products.

The deputy prime minister, who asked for an assessment of each foreign investment proposal and its contractual conditions very carefully, said that a foreign currency financing plan has been approved for strategic sectors such as tourism, health and telecommunications, and that it would be very useful “to link” with these.

The dependence that the Cuban authorities have on imports to feed the population is both a cause and a consequence of the serious crisis that the Island is suffering, forcing it to buy 80% of the food it consumes abroad.

According to a recent report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Cepal) together with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP), Cuba is the second country more deficient and dependent per capita on agricultural imports, only surpassed on the continent by Panama.

Fish is the only product that adds up to a negative balance of 1.635 billion dollars, but the rest of the products present scandalous figures.

The cereal deficit was 668 million dollars, while in corn and wheat it was 181 million. The little that goes into fruits and vegetables also marks a negative balance of 109 million dollars in imports and there is another 104 million in vegetable oils. In dairy, the imbalance was 204 million and meat presents a 446 million dollar imbalance.

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Cuban Authorities Confirm the Discovery of the Body, with Signs of Violence, of a Disappeared Person

The body of Guperto Rafael Cánovas Adán, 72, appeared this Wednesday, after five days missing. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 10 February 2023 — The Cuban authorities have confirmed the discovery of the body of Guperto Rafael Cánovas Adán, a 72-year-old taxi driver from Camagüey who had been missing since February 3, according to his relatives.

The news, which had been circulating on social networks since Wednesday, was officially corroborated by the Ministry of the Interior, which also admits that the body had signs of violence and, without expressing it literally, that the cause of the attack was a robbery.

“The alleged perpetrators were arrested in Havana and the car that had been taken from the victim was seized,” says the statement, reproduced by the official press and its networks.

The alleged perpetrators, of whom no details are known, will be referred to the Prosecutor’s Office to be criminally prosecuted, the note emphasizes.

The journalist from Camagüey, José Luis Tan Estrada, had made the situation known last Saturday, February 4, alerted by the relatives of Cánovas. Two young men and a woman had hired his services as a private taxi driver the day before and he had not returned home since.

On Tuesday, the reporter asked his followers not to spread rumors that could harm the family, but just a day later he himself was able to confirm the news of the discovery of the body.

“Today the people of Camagüey mourn another victim of this wave of violence that has no end,” wrote Tan Estrada, who in the last week has called attention to the multitude of cases that are coming to light of violent robberies and deaths in the province.

The journalist recalled the alleged murder of Yudel López, an employee of an insurance office, who recently went to work on a state electric tricycle and never arrived. continue reading

“They stabbed him until he was defenseless, until they took him to a house and there they finished him off in the most inhuman way that exists. They threw his body in a sack with a stone and threw it into the river. Everything was discovered because the murderers were selling the tricycle in Vertientes and they caught them,” said Tan Estrada, citing a source close to the deceased.

The communicator was also one of the people who provided the greatest follow-up to the case of Leidy Bacallao Santana, 17 years old and murdered by her ex-partner in Camalote. The young woman died at the hands of Elesvan Hidalgo, about 50 years old and with whom she had had a relationship, when she tried to take refuge in the police station in the face of the man’s threats and persecution.

Social networks have caused news of murders and robberies to spread more than in the past, when the state communications monopoly controlled any uncomfortable information. As a result, authorities are increasingly being forced to confirm this kind of information.

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US Returns 21 Rafters to Cuba, Making 1,621 Already in 2023

The US Coast Guard has already made 18 repatriations so far this year. (Twitter/@USCGSoutheast)

EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 10 February 2023 — The United States Coast Guard Service (SGC) returned a group of 21 irregular migrants to Cuba this Thursday through the port of Orozco, reported the Island’s Ministry of the Interior.

This new group of returned rafters, made up of 17 men and four women, had carried out an “illegal exit” by sea, a criminal offense in Cuba, the statement details.

This is the eighteenth return from the United States so far this year, for a total of 1,621 Cuban migrants returned to the island by the Coast Guard in 2023.

Last Tuesday, the US Coastguard Service handed over to the Cuban authorities another group of 16 rafters, who had been intercepted at sea after two illegal departures.

Cuba insists that it maintains its commitment “to a regular, safe and orderly migration” and insists on “the danger and life risking conditions that illegal departures from the country by sea represent.” continue reading

For several months now, the United States has seen record numbers of migrants trying to cross irregularly at its southern border, motivated, for the most part, by a new unprecedented migratory exodus from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

In the case of Cuba, a total of 224,607 citizens arrived at the southern border of the United States in fiscal year 2022 – October 1, 2021 and September 30, 2022 – according to the US Customs and Border Protection Office.

At the beginning of the year Washington implemented a policy to welcome 30,000 migrants per month from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua.

In parallel, the United States will immediately expel to Mexico migrants from those countries who try to cross into its territory irregularly.

Mexico, for its part, agreed to admit 30,000 migrants a month who are expelled from US territory.

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The Ideologue of the Cuban Communist Party on the Networks: ‘We Have to Take Away Those Weapons From the Enemy’

Rogelio Polanco this weekend, after being elected as a candidate by Holguín for the next elections. (@RPolancoF)

14ymedio, Madrid, 8 February 2023 — At the age of 57, the head of the Ideological Department of the Communist Party, Rogelio Polanco, feels part of what he calls the “process of gradual and orderly transfer of the main positions and responsibilities of political direction of the Revolution from the historical generation to a new generation,” and from that place he is willing to fight one of the most important battles for the regime: that of ideas.

The official spoke at great length in an interview for La pupila insomne [The Insomniac Pupil], in which he refers to the need for the transformations to be profound, but the detailed explanations make it clear that what changes, in any case, is the form, not the substance. “All our ideological commitment is aimed at reinforcing (…) the foundations of our ideology, based on the thought of José Martí, Fidel Castro and, of course, on Marxism and Leninism,” he explains.

The interview, of more than 7,000 words, leaves little room for the news. Among the few announcements that Polanco makes is the extreme intervention of the new Institute for Social Communication, created in 2021 to replace the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT) and about which nothing is yet known. “We are proposing that at all levels and institutions the structures that are in charge of communication have to be hierarchical at the highest level of direction, because communication is a strategic resource,” he says.

Polanco also addresses the transformation that awaits the media of the Island, and that, from his words, will follow more or less the arrival of advertising in the Cuban media, although the official omits the word and prefers to talk about the experience of giving “a greater capacity to reflect the reality of Cuba and also that those media be allowed to have income for their sustainability, which guarantees the creation of better technological capabilities to face this new digital ecosystem.”

He also mentions the changes in the selection of journalism students and the importance of being “better prepared from a professional point of view and also in values,” an issue that is not really new either, since ideological adherence has always prevailed in this university career and its working reality on the Island. continue reading

However, Polanco introduces this alleged battery of measures to deal with what he calls “hybrid war,” a concept already exploited by the ruling party for months and that he develops to exhaustion in the interview. In his opinion, the United States is using the entire network to discredit its “enemies” while exporting culture and capitalism as the only model to follow. In addition, it has the necessary technology, since the companies that manage the algorithm (in clear allusion to Google or Facebook) are on its side.

On the other hand, the discomfort generated by the terrible situation of the world economy in general and Cuba in particular — part of which is induced, he argues, by the blockade [American embargo] and its effects — is used to generate chaos and cause confrontation by the people with the Government. His recipe for fighting all this is as follows: “Take those weapons away from our enemy. Learn to master them and use them for our own goals. We have to master the use of those tools.”

The objective, he says, is to strengthen political preparation at all levels so that “the people increasingly understand and accompany the leadership of the Revolution in the process of development of our nation, socialist construction and confrontation with subversive actions.”

Polanco steps on delicate ground when he talks about emigration. The official recognizes that the number of young people who have left complicates the economic and demographic situation of the country, but affirms that Cubans are migrants like those of any country in the world, who return when they improve economically, even though reality denies it.

“Today, thousands of Cubans live outside Cuba, maintain a normal bond with their homeland and return systematically. Even many actively participate in solidarity actions with their country of origin. Let’s go to what social science and demographic analysts call a circular migration,” he argues after an extensive dissertation on exiles since the 1960s, alluding to the Cuban Adjustment Act and the visas agreed upon and not delivered by the Trump Administration.

In any case, and aware that Cubans are leaving — more than 300,000 to the United States alone in 2022 — he asks that the “personal and professional realization” of young people be stimulated “without denying, of course, that anyone who wishes to emigrate can do so because it is their right.” As he explains, the Cuban Government has created working groups that can “in the short term present some projections of those policies in the field of employment, improvement, housing and other facilities especially aimed at youth,” but the economic, employment and lack of infrastructure data threaten to make any plan useless, no matter how good.

A similar case occurs with some other of Cuba’s achievements that Polanco enunciates. The official speaks of “continuing to strengthen fundamental social conquests” and accurately cites everything that is now in a situation of shipwreck, from education, which is experiencing a full exodus of teachers and students who, if they stay, must resort to a private tutor; to health, in the midst of a crisis of shortage of doctors, supplies and medications; and even sports, following Cuba’s failure in the Caribbean Baseball Series. To reach the zenith, the official exalts the “high level of democratic participation and elevated popular control” that exists on the Island.

Polanco goes into the final stretch of the interview talking about working in networks to reach a youth that is increasingly seduced by new formats rather than by books, and he calls for “generating content to infinity and in a creative way” to compete in the message. “We have to manage to be appropriate in that format,” he summarizes, before ending by making a plea in defense of the emotional, in addition to the intellectual. “Che said that a revolutionary is motivated by great feelings of love. It’s love in all its expression, so we’re still in love.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuban Artist Michel Mirabal Takes the Immigration Issue to the Venice Biennale

Mirabal goes to the Venice Biennale solo for the first time. (EFE)

EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 8 February 2023 — On Tuesday, Cuban plastic artist Michel Mirabal presented his exhibition project at the National Museum of Havana, on a very current theme: “migrations in the world.” He will attend the next Venice Architecture Biennial with this same project.

Mirabal, known as the painter of hands and flags, will display six large installations, six works of painting and two sculptures, in the rooms and the outdoor space of the Loredan palace, an 18th-century building located in front of the Grand Canal of the Italian city of canals.

The project of the exhibition “Architecture of a System” is based on Cuban emigration from all over the world, the artist explained to EFE.

“In recent years due to wars, the displaced have become a very strong phenomenon, and I wanted to draw attention to that. I also want it to be as raw and real as possible, without half measures,” he said.

Mirabal (b. 1974), considered one of the most important current plastic artists in Cuba, is more famous outside the Island than inside, which he says is his source of artistic inspiration, especially its problems. continue reading

In this exhibition, which is accompanied by the art video “Exoduses, causes and consequences,” Mirabal addresses an issue that also concerns his country, where there is “a brutal exodus, more than half a million people who are not there, including many friends, family and my eldest daughter. So I experience it very closely,” he says.

His return to Venice — the city that hosted him with a scholarship between 1999 and 2002 — will be, from May 16 to July 23, the first time he exhibits a solo show at the biennial.

After the exhibit, Mirabal plans a four-year journey through museums, galleries and foundations of countries in Europe, China and Israel, and he also will bring this exhibition to the National Museum of Fine Arts of the Cuban capital, produced by the Spanish company Art Logistics.

Nelson Herrera Ysla, an experienced Cuban art critic, is the curator of this project, which he described as “very complex,” especially because of the requirements of the old Loredan palace, which “has interiors that cannot be touched. This makes it very difficult to place works there.”

He says that at the entrance of the building there will be a metal sculpture made from vehicle exhaust pipes, and in the interior there will be scarecrows, white sheets hanging on barbed wire. There will also be a work that addresses the constant Cuban migration with a group of passports incorporated into paintings by the artist.

Herrera Ysla said that the video art, made by Alejandro Pérez with a soundtrack by composer and pianist Frank Fernández, brings “the image in motion and music” to the exhibition.

About what he expects from this project, Mirabal tells EFE: “I do what I like to do. I’m happy with the result of my work and my colleagues.”

His presence in this Biennial “can be a breakthrough, because I never had the opportunity to be at an event like this. All artists would love to be in Venice, and I think it’s going to be epic,” he says.

Born into a family of artists, Mirabal is a graduate of the School of Design. He studied painting at the renowned Academy of San Alejandro and began painting 20 years ago.

He has participated in more than 50 personal and collective exhibitions in Argentina, Canada, Cuba, China, the Dominican Republic, the United States, Spain, France, Great Britain, Italy, Jamaica, Haiti, Mexico, Panama and Portugal.

His works integrate collections of important cultural institutions and private exhibitions, including the Rockefeller museums; those of Fine Arts of Medellín and Bogotá, in Colombia; the Martin Luther King and Afro-American foundations of New York, and the collections of Gabriel García Márquez, Mohamed Alí, Donald Trump, Danny Glover, Quincy Jones and Carlos Santana, among others.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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