14ymedio

‘If I Go Back to Cuba, It Will Be on My Own Two Feet’

Passport control at aiport in Marbella, Spain area divided into two areas: one for passengers with EU passports and another for everyone else. (EFE)

14ymedio, Rosa Pascual, Madrid, November 1, 2021 — Hopes are fading fast for the Cubans who have been stranded at the airport in Zakynthos, Greece since last Thursday. At least that is what Yanelis believes based on recent media coverage on their plight. The Cuban migrant told her story to 14ymedio on Friday. She is counting down the clock until the deadline Greek authorities have given her to leave the country.

“The altercation at the airport put the whole country on alert and now they won’t let any Cubans fly unless they have a visa,” laments the Yanelis, who has little energy left to continue her journey to Spain.

“I’m thinking of going home,” she says, making no effort to hide her disappointment at the prospect that the final leg of her journey, which began months ago in Russia, may not end as she wanted. She was detained on three occasions by police in North Macedonia and spent three weeks in a refugee camp.

The Cuban Foreign Ministry announced on Saturday that it was in discussions with Greek authorities over the eighty-four Cuban migrants at the Zakynthos airport.

The ministry claimed on Twitter that its intention is to “provide consular assistance and guarantees of a safe, voluntary continue reading

return” as well as “to receive all Cuban migrants who left the country legally and who now find themselves without travel documents in third countries, in accordance with Cuban law.”

Yanelis finds the ministry’s message hypocritical but believes it could be useful to some people who might be forced to go back for lack of funds. “Perhaps there are some Cubans who want to go back. There are a lot who don’t have family to help them financially,” she says. But she herself rules out returning under those conditions. “In my case, if I go back to Cuba, it will be on my own two feet.”

Most of the Cubans stranded in Greece have no desire to return to a country from which they fled for political and economic reasons. Therefore, only those who find themselves in precarious circumstances would be willing to accept the offer by Cuban authorities.

The migrants were counting on the employees at the European airports being absent-minded. This made their journey problematic because it relied on inspectors being distracted at all points along the way. Passengers were required to present their travel documents, including visas, to airport personnel both at the check-in desk and at the boarding gate.

Upon arrival at a European airport, passengers on international flights are divided into two groups: one for domestic travellers and those with EU passports, and another for everyone else. Each group must present the requisite travel documents. For the Cubans it was the last stop before their final destination.

While some of the more fortunate, like Yanelis, wait for a window of opportunity to open to catch a flight to Spain or Italy, thirteen Cubans remain in detention for undisclosed reasons at a center for migrants in Corinth, Greece. The group is apparently awaiting political asylum, although some of them say they have not applied for it.

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The Reason for the Blackouts in Cuba: Monopoly Costs and Prices

An old fashion oil lamp provides light on a counter where none of the electrical appliances can be used.. (EFE)

Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 30 October 2021 — Blackouts have become a threat to Cubans this October, although in no way can they be considered only a current phenomenon. The difference between what happened before, and now, is the information offered by the authorities to explain why these unpleasant events occur. Undoubtedly, the regime must believe that they can calm citizens who are very annoyed with blackouts or companies facing a forced paralysis of their activities, but they are wrong.

The statements transmitted to the population through the state electricity monopoly confirm that the blackouts are going to continue and that, at least for the moment, it must be assumed that daily life will continue to coexist with the unexpected lack of electricity supply, and that this will happen even if the bills are paid as if nothing had happened. The monopoly also explains that the regime, far from telling the truth, hides itself in technical gibberish to avoid placing the responsibility for the blackouts on state management.

This week the information from the Electrical Union has been very intense. On Tuesday, they announced possible service interruptions as a result of a failure in the transmission line connecting with the Ernesto Guevara thermoelectric plant (CTE), in Santa Cruz del Norte, which led to the shutdown of Units 1 and 2 of that plant (155 MW), as well as others, Unit 6 of the Diez de Octubre CTE (90 MW), due to leakage in the boiler, and Unit 5 of the Antonio Maceo CTE (80 MW), due to the turbine speed regulator. continue reading

For the Electrical Union, the origin of the problem came from the greater impact on “peak hours.” which was 480 MW at 7:10 at night. Later, at 8:26 pm, Unit 1 of the CTE Ernesto Guevara (80MW) was incorporated, while Unit 2 was damaged by a leak in the furnace. It was not enough. This was followed by “service disruptions,” a convenient term, throughout the early hours of October 27, as a consequence of the reported breakdowns and, also, due to the behavior of the demand, which exceeded what was expected by 100 MW. From 2:00 am, the impact remained below 100 MW and, as of 6:02, the service was restored. Four hours of blackout.

At 7:00 in the morning, the availability of the national electrical system was 2,080 MW compared to a demand of 2,020 MW “with all the load served,” almost at the limit. As of 9:00 am, possible blackouts were noted again, this time due to a generation capacity deficit, with a maximum of 250 MW.

The information from the Electrical Union indicated that Unit 2 of the Ernesto Guevara CTE, unit 6 of Diez de Octubre, Unit1 of the Lidio Ramón Pérez CTE and Unit 5 of Antonio Maceo remained out of service due to breakdowns. Meanwhile, maintenance work was being carried out on Unit 4 of the Antonio Maceo CTE. In addition, limitations persisted in thermal generation with 698 MW. As a consequence of the foregoing, 1,038 MW were not available in distributed generation and the breakdowns mentioned, and 329 MW corresponded to Units under maintenance.

The statement said that Unit 1 of the Lidio Ramón Pérez thermoelectric plant, which completed its hydraulic test, could improve the situation once again in the national electricity service. The Electrical Union indicated that for the peak hours of October 27, the incorporation, in addition to Unit 1 in question, of the CTE Lidio Ramón Pérez (260 MW), of the Rincón (15 MW), and Varadero (17 MW). An availability of 2,734 MW and a maximum demand of 2,700 MW were estimated for the “peak,” for a reserve of 34 MW. This meant that, given the low levels of reserves, the authorities ended up recognizing that blackouts could occur.

A new note from the Electrical Union regarding October 28 highlighted that there were no blackouts in the electricity service in the morning and afternoon. However, as of 6:14 p.m., the service began to be affected due to a generation capacity deficit. During peak hours the maximum impact was 247 MW at 7:30 p.m. As a consequence, from 9:31 p.m. there was a blackout of 3 hours and 17 minutes. The electricity monopoly apologized for the inconvenience to those who wanted to rest by watching television or listening to the radio.

Next, the causes of the blackout were explained again, starting with the exits of Units 5 and 7 of the CTE Máximo Gómez de Mariel, the delay in the entry of Unit 2 of the CTE Ernesto Guevara, which synchronized at 19:59 hours, as well as the increase in demand above the planned 62 MW. Later, at 11:08 p.m. due to the unexpected departure of Unit 6 of the Máximo Gómez CTE (90 MW), another blackout occurred, with a maximum of 80 MW, which was reestablished at 12:01 a.m. on the 29th.

The electricity monopoly indicated in its statement that the availability of the national electricity system at 07:00 hours was 2,183 MW and the demand 2,045 MW with all the load served, estimating that there would be no power outages due to a deficit in generation capacity during Friday morning and afternoon, to maintain the expected conditions. And this is the question, how difficult it is to maintain those conditions.

The Otto Parellada CTE and the Máximo Gómez CTE Unit 5 remained out of service due to a breakdown, waiting for someone to repair them. Unit 3 of the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes CTE was out of service for condenser cleaning, Unit 6 of the Diez de Octubre CTE and Unit 4 of the Antonio Maceo CTE were under maintenance, also ceasing to supply electricity to the grid. At Energas Varadero, 40 MW in the steam turbine was out of service and at Energas Boca de Jaruco so was a gas turbine with 30 MW, so the limitations on thermal generation were maintained (425 MW).

For the Friday peak, the electricity monopoly predicted several Units would come on line, specifically Unit 3 at CTE Carlos Manuel de Céspedes with 130 MW; Unit 5 of the CTE Máximo Gómez with 30 MW; Unit 6 of the CTE Máximo Gómez with 85 MW and an engine in the CDE Mariel with 5 MW, with the use of 291 MW in diesel engines. Under these conditions, an availability of 2,761 MW and a maximum demand of 2,650 MW were estimated for peak hours, for a reserve of 111 MW. So if these conditions were maintained, no blackouts were foreseen, although the reserve levels were low at this time.

These statements, appearing almost daily in the communist state press, with the same justifications of outages, breakages, lack of maintenance, disconnections of power plants, peak hours, etc., etc., not only end up tiring the population, but also come to confirm what Minister Gil said in his analysis of the economy before the National Assembly, placing “blackouts as one of the nation’s main problems, and one of the most difficult and complex to solve,” at least in the short term. In any case, who compensates Cubans for the blackouts, and how? This is an issue that is not discussed, but it is essential to put this situation in order.

The minister made a more general analysis of the matter, with reference to the energy shortage and its high cost, but also cited these problems and mechanical breakdowns, to to justify the unjustifiable. He did not tell the truth. And the electricity monopoly, in its communiqués, I’m afraid, did not either, going for the technological nonsense, without allowing the Cubans to really know what the origin of the problem is.

The Electrical Union functioned relatively reasonably in providing its services before January 1, 2021. Yes, of course there were blackouts, but much less so than now. In fact, during the closures of the pandemic, in Cuba there were almost no blackouts. It is a phenomenon of the moment, and that is related, on the one hand, to the small rebound in economic activity that is taking place on the Island, after the end of 2020. The communists not only had not foreseen that to meet growing needs for electricity there need to be more production on the grid.

On the other hand, nobody wants to agree that, after the increases in electricity rates agreed to in the “Ordering Task*,” people were going to protest, as in fact happened. Electricity rates rose exponentially as of January 1 because the monopoly had no choice but to face wage increases without productivity benchmarks that compromised solvency. But the new rates were immediately questioned by all social sectors, forcing the regime to back down, thereby compromising the supply levels of the state monopoly, which are highly sensitive to prices.

The subsequent story is known. Who could be interested in providing a service, even a minimal one, when the prices charged to consumers do not pay them properly and they have to face imposed wage increases without reference to productivity?

It is already known that no leader of the Cuban economy will speak of this, but it is the origin of the problems with the blackouts and with many other sectors of activity. The Home Services price index prepared by the ONEI (which included electricity) increased by 152.8% in the interannual rate as of September, almost 90 points more than the average inflation rate, of 63.3%. The Ordering Task has upset the weak balances of the Cuban economy, specifically the relative prices of goods and services, and the blackouts will continue until the electricity monopoly restores its profitability and ensures the availability of resources to cover its very high costs (the regime seems to think that it no longer want to grant more subsidies and this cannot end well).

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Government Raises Payments to Cuban Dairy Farmers to Attempt to Increase Production

The price increases announced this Monday do not change the picture much as agricultural production continues to falter. (Granma)

14ymedio, Havana, 2 November 2021 — Fresh cow’s milk has a new price in Cuba after dozens of farmers complained about the low cost and denounced the incompetence in the collection of the product in various parts of the country. As reported by the Ministries of Food Industry and Agriculture, from this Monday it will have a maximum value for the industry of 20 pesos per liter and depending on its quality it will drop to 5 pesos.

When the density of the milk exceeds 1,030 grams per milliliter (g/ml) and has a cross in the mastitis (it is free of bacteria, mycoplasmas, fungi) it will cost 20 pesos, and 17 pesos if the density is equal to or greater than 1,029 g/ml and continue to indicate a mastitis cross. When the standards are below the previous indicators, the price per liter will drop to 5 pesos.

The price increases announced this Monday do not change the panorama much when agricultural production continues to stumble almost seven months after 63 measures were approved in the sector. The measures were presented by the Government as the solution to stimulate the farmer to deliver more products and improve his income. The prices approved then, and that were in force until October 31, had a ceiling of 9 pesos per liter.

However, the biggest complaints came from the defaults of the State and the deficiencies in the stockpile. Milk quality tests “are still not done individually” and one learns continue reading

the parameters of the product “at the time of receiving the invoice with the payments,” farmer Ermes Rodríguez complained at the beginning of last month in Periódico 26.

Rodríguez spoke on behalf of the 40 dairy farmers who belong to the Niceto Pérez de Las Tunas credit and services cooperative. “The disconnect is with the Dairy Industry. Notice that when they paid the first month at 9.00 pesos [a liter], all the farmers said ’let’s go there’, because they were motivated. In that month we got 19,000 liters of milk, but the next they created a catastrophe and they paid for it as they understood and then came the collective disappointment,” explained the producer.

“It cannot be possible for the milk collected by several producers in the same jug to arrive at different prices,” warned Rodríguez, stating that some farmers have been paid five pesos per liter, others four and some received up to 7 pesos and, “That is inconceivable, because they come out of the same cold thermos.”

The new ministerial provision establishes that when there is an over-compliance with the milk plan, it will be paid at prices agreed between the State and the farmer, after signing a contract, and if the delivery is not fulfilled, the producer will have to “compensate the industry with a value of 10 pesos for each liter.” If it is the dairy company that does not comply with the collection of the product at the agreed places and times, it will have to remedy the farmers’ losses.

At the end of last month, dozens of producers had not received the payment that the state promised them in freely convertible currency (MLC) for each liter of milk they delivered above their monthly plan. The authorities alleged bank bureaucratic problems, while the dairy farmers watch with indignation how the main stimulus they had to increase their yields disappears, at a time when milk production is going through a deep crisis.

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“If the Covid Doesn’t Kill Us, the Garbage Will,” Lament Residents of Central Havana

Collection trucks that never come and overflowing garbage dumpsters are part of the complaints in Central Havana. (14ymedio).

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 2 November 2021– In Central Havana the garbage cans have overflowed again. On Jovellar street, at the corner of Hospital, residents complain about the mountain of waste that mixes with the sewage water right in front of Medical Office Number 20.

“If the covid does not kill us, other diseases will,” a patient said this Tuesday morning at the door of the office. “Laziness and irresponsibility is what is going to kill us señora,” answers a man who is changing a car tire, while he observes some of the so-called “divers” who stop to rummage through the garbage cans.

In Santiago, between Carlos Tercero and Pocito, the problem due to the lack of garbage collection looms. (14ymedio)

A neighbor of the neighborhood assures 14ymedio that she has not seen or heard the collection truck for days. “When it arrives, it is impossible not to notice it, even if it is not standing at the door. I hear it because it makes a lot of noise and the workers speak loudly. Those dumpsters have been overwhelmed for days and continue reading

I have not heard them pass by, I called Comunales and they told me that yesterday there was a brigade working, which should have picked it up, the truth is that that did not happen.”

In a tour of the area, this newspaper has been able to verify that the garbage containers are full or overflowing, in some areas you can also see piles of rubble and other solid waste. The residents of the neighborhood complain about the proliferation of rodent and cockroach pests.

“It seems to me that they have no fuel, because until a while ago the collection worked quite regularly, with the new donated trucks. I can no longer handle the mice and cockroaches, even dinosaurs will come to visit us soon with such unhealthiness,” lamented a neighbor from Cayo Hueso.

And in Virtudes, between Soledad and Oquendo, the image makes the problem of garbage collection more than evident. “People’s Revolutionary Police, Please Do Not Throw Trash.” (14ymedio)

On March 1, 2020, new measures came into force and what was supposed to be a severe inspection system for collective cleaning, with fines that can reach 3,000 pesos, worked only for a short time. Faced with the failure to comply with the collection deadlines and hours, the neighbors once again cram the cans while the Communal workers shine by their absence.

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Professor Fired in Cienfuegos Denounces in Court the Threats from the Police

Professor David Martínez Espinosa received threats and insults from an anonymous telephone call. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 2 November 2021 — Professor David Martínez Espinosa, a member of the Archipiélago platform, was threatened on Monday night through an anonymous phone call. According to the 31-year-old from Cienfuegos on his social networks , he received insults and was warned that if he continued with his activism they would prepare an act of repudiation against him.

Martínez Espinosa, who was expelled from his job last month for expressing his desire to take to the streets on November 15, made the audio of the conversation public and attributed the call to “a henchman of State Security.”

Faced with the threat, the professor filed a complaint with the Cienfuegos Provincial Court on Tuesday in which he denounces that he has been a victim of “harassment, intimidation, threat and humiliation.” In addition, he requested that “criminal action” be taken against the owner of the telephone from which he received the call.

“Immediately after all the slanders against Yunior [García], Saily [González], and against Archipiélago came out in [the official site] Razones de Cuba, I began to report on social networks,” he tells 14ymedio. In response, he received threatening messages from a fake Facebook profile. continue reading

“Ten minutes later they start calling me from a number that I have not registered. I hang up once, twice but the third time I answer and well, what I posted on my networks, pure rude insults and threats,” he explained.

Martínez Espinosa said that after receiving the call he felt fear but “when he saw how pedestrian and low” what they were saying was, it made him laugh and almost instantly he had a feeling of victory because “when they resort to this type of intimidation it is because they have no other remedy.”

“If they had something solid against me, they would not make calls of this type and they would simply accuse me of the crime I was committing,” reflects Martínez Espinosa. For him it is very important to make legal complaints so that the authorities and State Security understand that he is not afraid of them.

“Anything that they do to me above or below the law I will denounce publicly,” he warned. “Enough of keeping silent about arbitrariness, enough of lowering our heads when we are objects of this type of vandalism, typical of paramilitary dictatorships.”

The professor added that although his family is “a little scared” and fears that “in the next few days some act of repudiation will be carried out” against him, he maintains his will to “continue supporting the march.”

Martínez Espinosa also delivered a lawsuit before the Provincial Court last Friday in which he accused the mayor of Cienfuegos for declaring the Civic March for Change illegal. In the text, he denounces acts of “defamation, threats and rights violations” suffered by several of the 15N (15 November) organizers.

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Cubans Enjoyed Halloween Under the Uneasy Gaze of the Police

As the night progressed, the teenagers began to arrive, with much more elaborate costumes that imitated the characters of the best-known horror films. (14 and a half) — As the night progressed, the teenagers began to arrive, with much more elaborate costumes that imitated the characters from the best-known horror films. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 1 November 2021 — Nervousness has taken hold of the forces of order, which this Sunday first tried to dissolve and then allowed a spontaneous Halloween celebration to continue on the Paseo del Prado in Havana.

Hundreds of people gathered around 8:00 at night in the central street of the capital. The first to arrive were the parents, some of them in disguise, with their young children. “I really like your Spiderman costume, I am Rapunzel,” a girl with a long blonde bow and pink robe said ecstatically to another little girl dressed in a popular Spider-Man costume.

As the night progressed, and while the minors ran and played up and down the Paseo, the teenagers began to arrive, with much more elaborate costumes that imitated the characters of the best-known horror films. The boys photographed themselves and uploaded the images to social networks, proud of their shared Halloween, when the Police appeared, trying to expel and disperse them with a hostile attitude.

The first to arrive were the parents, some of them in disguise, with their young children. (14ymedio)

However, more young people continued to arrive despite efforts to disband the group in the northern area of the Paseo. As if a counter-order had arrived, suddenly the agents stopped and began only to observe and monitor those congregating. Some were dressed in civilian clothes, others in military clothing, police officers, the canine brigade with their dogs and even the special brigade with patrol motorcycles and even a truck.

Two motorized police officers stopped a vendor on the adjoining sidewalk, without letting him continue reading

approach the Prado with his cart full of sweets and preserves.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with them. They look at you as if you were a criminal. It bothers them that the kids play here, this is a public place,” says a man to the woman who walks with him with a little girl disguised as a witch. “What happens is that they have more fear than the desire to live. Not that the children were going to overthrow the Government with a spell,” she answers annoyed.

Since the day before on the Prado, the Malecón and on Calle G thousands of young people have gathered to celebrate Halloween. In several videos shared on social networks, you can even see the moment when the police repressed a large group that was walking through the Prado as the police tried to disperse them.

“On Saturday night a group of friends went out and we wanted to go sit on the Malecón but the police did not let us get there. Since we had been going down 23rd we saw that masses of people were going up La Rampa and we suspected that something had happened,” a 15-year-old girl tells this newspaper.

This Sunday a strong police operation kept the celebrations tense. Hundreds of uniformed men and agents guarded the streets and did not allow cell phones to take videos in some areas. The independent journalist Héctor Luis Valdés Cocho was arrested after making a live broadcast on his social networks.

Valdés Cocho confirmed to 14ymedio that he was detained by two plainclothes agents. “They put me in a gray car with a private Geely license plate and took me to Villa Marista and there you know: ‘undress and pose for them to check you’ and then two interrogations for more than 40 minutes each,” describes the collaborator of DNA Cuba, released this Monday morning.

Halloween or Samhain, celebrated on All Hallows’ Eve, is a pagan festival of Celtic tradition with which the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the new year were celebrated. The Irish imported it to the United States, where it was incorporated into popular culture with its own iconography and from there it has been exported around the world again, especially through the film industry.

Although in Cuba the ruling party has always looked at it with suspicion, in recent decades the holiday has been making its way amid the enthusiasm of young people and with the support of the private sector, which has seen the day a good time to market accessories, organize costume parties and decorate their premises with fake cobwebs or skulls.

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Almost 20 Years Waiting for the Architects to Avoid a Disaster in Central Havana

“The building was built in 1948 and has never been touched.” (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 29 October 2021 — Peeling walls, cracks in the ceilings of several apartments and, above all, structural cracks keep the 21 families who live in a building on San Nicolás street near the corner with Salud, in Central Havana, in suspense. “This building was built in 1948 and has never been touched. It was reported for maintenance in 2004, architects from the community came, did the lifting and we are still waiting for them,” Miladis, one of the residents of the building, tells 14ymedio.

The 2019 tornado damaged the corner of a room in this Havanan’s apartment. “When I informed the municipal government, an architect came and told him that I needed to find a way to knock down the damaged wall and rebuild it, so that it would not fall into an access corridor of the building. And do you know what the architect told me? That it was my problem if a piece of concrete fell on someone’s head.”

Like Miladis, many residents of the building are willing to fix their homes, but due to the high prices of construction materials — due, among other causes, to the inflation that the country is experiencing — they do not have the means to carry out repair work independently. continue reading

Due to the proximity of the building to the sea, the saltpeter has been wearing down the walls. (14ymedio)

The problem is repeated throughout the neighborhood, with the exception of some houses where the recent painting of the facade reveals a private business, a private guest house that is preparing for the arrival of tourists or the existence of an emigrant in the family who sends those dollars with which you can still get some products to repair homes.

However, Miladis had to make urgent repairs because, over time, water from the downpours began to seep through the same room that was damaged in the tornado. “I had to sacrifice myself and I had a hard time with food to be able to buy a couple of bags of cement and fix that corner,” she says. “It was a repair on the outside of the apartment and whoever did the maintenance had to expose himself to the danger of hanging himself in order to fix the damaged area.”

For about two years, various building materials have disappeared from state stores. The only option to get the products at the moment is the informal market, where for example a bag of cement exceeds 1,000 pesos, or go to the foreign currency stores, where it costs 10 dollars and is scarce.

The fear that her apartment will collapse is not only what worries Miladis the most: the other apartments are in the same situation and the structures of the entire property have begun to give way. “The building is exposed to the saltpeter, its proximity to the sea makes everything worse.” Indeed, the buildings near the Malecón suffer especially the effects of the sea and none of the various government programs have solved the problem of frequent collapses.

Across from Miladis’ building there was an apartment on the second floor in very poor condition and its owner had to demolish it with his own efforts, because he never received help from the capital’s government, Miladis recalls. “It was a scandal because the neighbor threw all the rubble onto the street and they wanted to fine him, but he was between a rock and hard place and the authorities had to send for the rubble to be collected.”

As in the case of Miladis, there are thousands in the capital, which will be 502 years old on November 15. When asked what solution she saw for his building, she was blunt in her answer: “What is needed is another government.”

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Facebook, Authoritarianisms and the Thumbs Down

When the protests began in Cuba on July 11, Facebook accounts and their ability to broadcast the demonstrations live were the fundamental elements for a gagged population to find its voice. (Marcos Evora)

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchéz, Generation Y, Havana, 31 October 2021 — The giant is wounded and there are many reasons to gloat over his misfortune. The social network Facebook is once again involved in scandal that calls into question its working methods, the use it makes of its users’ personal information and even the immense power it has achieved over governments, local laws and ethical standards. Nothing new in its more than three decades of existence.

However, among its critics there are not only people concerned about the addiction generated by the tool or the traps of its algorithm, but also several authoritarian regimes that do not support the civic plaza that Mark Zuckerberg’s creature has become. They rub their hands, watching the insults rain down on the US conglomerate that has recently been accused of prioritizing profits over network security.

Undoubtedly, public scrutiny is positive given the voracity of this technological behemoth that can influence the electoral course, sink reputations and bury transcendental issues in benefits of banalities. But those are not the reasons why dictatorships abhor Facebook. It is not the challenges about security flaws or dependencies generated by the “like” network that are behind the onslaught of the oppressors against the company.

When the protests began in Cuba on July 11, Facebook accounts and their ability continue reading

to broadcast the demonstrations live were the fundamental elements for a population, muzzled for more than half a century, to find its voice. The confluence that had been created in cyberspace, in a country where the right of association is severely limited, broke the barrier of mistrust and fear that had paralyzed citizens until that moment.

Despite the cuts in internet access that occurred in the following days, social networks and instant messaging services have continued to be the fundamental scene of the rebellion. The Archipiélago platform, the main organizer of the civic march called for November 15, has used the potential of the digital group to unite more than 30,000 members. For them, Facebook has been the only possibility to meet and debate.

In the same country where school textbooks include enormous doses of political indoctrination and the Orwellian television screen is an innocent caricature of the political police, the official media rejoice in the questioning of Zuckerberg in congresses and in the press of democratic countries. They applaud the setting of limits on the tool, but not because they are concerned for the privacy of its users, or want to protect them from the excesses of advertising. They do it because it is in their interest that the network fails, thus closing the gap that has been opened in their strict internal controls.

When the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana rejoices in the media beating against Facebook , it is not thinking of protecting us but of gagging us.

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This article was originally published in DW Español.

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Cuban Businesswoman Saily Gonzalez Files Defamation Lawsuit

Activist and businesswoman Saily Gonzalez with the lawsuit she filed in Santa Clara. (Twitter)

14ymedio, Havana, October 29, 2021 — The activist and businesswoman Saily Gonzalez has filed a lawsuit in Santa Clara for moral damage to dignity and honor. The suit is filed on her behalf and on behalf of the signatories to the March for Civic Change. Miryorly Garcia filed a similar lawsuit in Havana and expectations are similar suits will be filed in other cities such as Cienfuegos shortly.

The signatories are members of Archipiélago, a group which has called for protest marches throughout Cuba on November 15. The suit is in response to a ruling by the Office of the Attorney General declaring the march to be illegal. In an interview with 14ymedio, Gonzalez said the government statement was the precursor to a string of accusations against her group which were later made in the official press and on the TV news program Mesa Redonda (Roundtable).

“If we challenge this statement, if we oppose it, more people will realize that the truth is on our side,” she says.

Filing a lawsuit for Gonzalez is an exercise in civic engagement. “We have been defamed by a few people acting as individuals but who are figures of power.” She describes that power as dictatorial, defending itself by attacking her group with lies. continue reading

“One of the fundamental problems here in Cuba is that historically citizens have not been aware of their rights or of the tools they have to exercise them,” Gonzalez adds. “And that’s one of the things has been most attractive to me about Archiépelago from the beginning: responding to authoritarianism with civic action. [This is] one more example of civic action, of recognizing our rights, even if the dictatorship refuses to recognize them.”

In the documents filed in Santa Clara and Havana the activists remind the courts that when Archipiélago filed permit applications to hold the march, the official response was that it was illicit because the stated reasons for such a march were not valid. However, the activists argue, “[The response] offers no legal explanation as to why non-violent public expressions in support of the rights of all Cubans, of the release of political prisoners, and of a peaceful, democratic solution to the ever more obvious differences within society would be illicit.”

The lawsuits challenge three specific points made by officials: that the march’s promoters are trying to effect regime change; that the march is part of a broader strategy of regime change in Cuba directed from other countries; and that some promoters of the march have links to subversive organizations or to agencies financed by the U.S. government. None of these claims, the plaintiffs say, are backed up by evidence. “The statements by officials are based on politically influenced personal opinion which reveal bias and amount to unfounded characterizations of the signatories,” the documents say.

Not a day goes by without the government trying in some way to discredit the planned march. In Thursday’s closing speech during the current session of the National Assembly, President Miguel Diaz-Canel barely touched upon the serious problems plaguing the country — the energy crisis, currency unification, the Covid pandemic, falling GDP and hyperinflation — to instead emphasize that “no one is going to spoil the party.” It was a reference to another event scheduled on November 15: the lifting of Covid restriction and a total reopening of the country, including to tourism.

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‘No One is Going to Spoil the Party!’ Warns Diaz-Canel, Sheltered by Castro and the Dome of Power in Cuba

Raúl Castro greets Miguel Díaz-Canel this Thursday in the National Assembly. (Cubadebate)

14ymedio, Havana, 29 October 2021 — “We are already vaccinated against covid-19, and against fear, we have always been. We have a Homeland and we defend life. And we continue to be homeland or death,” Miguel Díaz-Canel claimed this Thursday at the closing of the Seventh Ordinary Period of sessions of the National Assembly. “We will win!” he shouted, accompanying the deputies who responded to the slogan. And his voice broke. A coincidence, no doubt, but one that is still symbolic of the complex moment that the Cuban regime is experiencing.

The president had just closed a speech with a “No one is going to spoil the party,” a speech in which he reviewed only some of the serious problems that plague the country, starting with the energy crisis, the Ordering Task*, the covid-19 pandemic, the falling GDP and hyperinflation.

Even so, Díaz-Canel, surrounded by the dome of power and in the presence of former president Raúl Castro, considered that there is much to celebrate thanks to the improvement of the covid-19 data, which allows this coming November 15 to be a day the country reactivates on several fronts, including the reopening of borders – and, therefore, tourism – and the general resumption of the face-to-face school year.

In addition, just one day later, on November 16, 502 years have passed since the founding of the Cuban capital, another reason for celebration, which will be held the day before, on the exact day that the opposition has called for a peaceful march throughout continue reading

the country.
In his speech, the president did not deviate one iota from the argument that the ruling party maintains in recent days and there were few or no surprises, since he made a compendium in which nothing was missing from what has already been read and heard. Much of his time was devoted to talking about the “destabilization plans of the United States.”

“The enemy’s formula has been to bet that our great material difficulties weaken the forces of the people and that the people get on their knees in front of them,” he warned. Although Díaz-Canel wanted to make it clear that “war actions, invasion and occupation are not ruled out against a socialist project like the Cuban one,” he stressed that the initial strategy is usually different: “demoralization and surrender.”

The president described as “opportunism of the adversary” the demonstrations of July 11 to which, without mentioning, he clearly referred when he regretted that “a climate favorable to irritation and discontent was created just in the months in which the pandemic escalated in the country, electricity cuts became frequent and the services on offer contracted.”

The president also emphasized the accusations against the US Embassy in Havana, against which he presented its Cuban counterpart in Washington as a haven of peace and diplomacy. Meanwhile, he accused, “US diplomatic officials meet with the counterrevolutionary leaders, provide them with guidance, logistical support and directly or indirectly provide financing.”

Díaz-Canel said that in the face of permanent harassment from the United States, the Cuban people are called to resist in a heroic way, as they have done in the pandemic, basically through management with their universal and free health system — something not as exceptional as the authorities usually advertise — and creating their own vaccines.

“Our development and the well-being of the people will have to depend on the effort we make, aware that the cruel policy of the United States will persist, as long as the criminal desire to take over Cuba’s destiny persists in that country. Socialism is not to blame for our problems. It is the only explanation for how that we have survived this fierce and genocidal siege without giving up on our own self-development,” he shouted.

The president’s speech also made reference to the laws unanimously approved this Thursday, the future Family Code, the State budget for 2022 and the importance of strengthening socialism. “Socialist democracy requires innovation, permanently changing the forms of democratic participation,” he said, calling on the population to get involved and participate.

Díaz-Canel still had room to proclaim the defense of human rights that, in his opinion, is constant in Cuba; and argued that the only limit to rights is in the Constitution, another clear reference to the opposition and the Civic March for the Change of 15 November, whose organizers consider it protected by the Constitution.

“The Law of Laws cannot be interpreted for convenience. Much less in the interest of those who are the first to not respect it. Rights are not unlimited. Their limits are in the Constitution,” he argued.

But Archipiélago, the platform that is calling for the march, does not back down nor plan to enter the game of the use of violence. On the contrary, the group published a statement yesterday on its social networks in which they asked for understanding with their demands and that they be brave by rejecting the call for the use of force made by the Government.

“We appeal to your consciences, if you are planning to throw a stick at a protester, please look at your children and think of the youth of 15N, at their parents. What do you solve by hitting a citizen? Hitting does not serve to kill ideas. If you do not agree with our way of thinking, then tell us in frank conversation from mutual respect. Do not let yourself be carried away by hatred,” they urge.

The statement also requests understanding from relatives who do not support the march for those close to them who do. “What we want is a better country; if the way things have been done to date has not worked, it is time to think about changes. Thinking like this does not make us bad, nor ’worms’, nor criminals. It makes us different.”

*Translator’s note: Tarea ordenamiento = the [so-called] ‘Ordering Task’ which is a collection of measures that includes eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and others.

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Ecotaxis Celebrate a Year in Havana But Without Using Solar Energy

The Ecotaxis are driven by women, and the requirements to obtain a place are to have a driving license and some experience in this type of vehicle. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 30 October 2021 — After a year in which the first Ecotaxis ecological tricycles began to circulate in Havana, it has not yet been possible to “start up the solar panels to charge the vehicles,” a situation that 14ymedio warned about last April and that the official press has confirmed this Friday.

An article published in Tribuna de La Habana recounts the twelve months that the tricycles have provided services as part of public transportation in the Cuban capital. “A total of 633,836 km have been traveled, which is 2,700 km per month per vehicle,” the text says.

Passengers have benefited from a total of 119,000 trips, which is equivalent to an approximate of 350 daily trips and more than 750,000 clients “boarded the Ecotaxis during this year, and among the beneficiaries of the service the residents of Centro Habana and Habana Vieja stand out, as well as passers-by and visitors in the city.”

However, despite the triumphalist tone of the article, the local newspaper recognizes that “among the pending issues to be solved” is for “the motorcycles to work under the concept of zero emissions, since it has not been possible to start the solar panels to charge the vehicles.”

This newspaper pointed out the problem in last April’s continue reading

report about these vehicles, which arrived on the island in part thanks to the Small Donations program of the Global Environment Fund, which included the installation of a photovoltaic park with a power of 10 kilowatts (kW) to charge the tricycles.

But tricycles still need fossil fuel to operate and their batteries are charged connected to the national electrical energy system, which is supplied, 95%, by fossil fuels.

An employee of Agency Number 9 of Taxis Cuba, which manages the Ecotaxis, then told 14ymedio that the photovoltaic modules “are already installed,” but “they are not yet used” to supply energy.

For the moment, the equipment “is charging for approximately seven hours, from ten at night to five in the morning,” connected to conventional power outlets, the site worker said. “Only one converter is missing” for them to start working.

At present, a total of 23 teams operate under the Ecotaxi system, of which 11 cover the route that goes from the National Bus terminal to the Parque del Curita, Parque de la Fraternidad and Cienfuegos street, until reaching the train terminal. The rest go from the railway terminal to the Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital.

A technician from the Ecotaxis agency fears that “with all the time that has passed, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the panels to start working.” The employee, who prefers to remain anonymous, reports that “the installation of the photovoltaic cells was made for the launch and the photos with the donors, but after that no further work has been done on the matter.”

“The vehicles have also had some problems and of the initial 23 it is a rare week in which they are all rolling on the street.” The technician says that “with the cost of living as it is, some of the drivers who had been enthusiastic at the beginning have asked to leave and are no longer at the helm.”

The Ecotaxis are driven by women, and the requirements to obtain a place are to have a driving license and some experience in this type of vehicle. They do not have a fixed salary and the worker who owns the tricycle has to pay 125 pesos daily to the state company, for the use of it — and the one that works as an assistant to the principal has to pay 300.

With its six seats, in an Ecotaxi trip the driver could earn at least 24 pesos for each one which would add up to 432 pesos after completing the 18 trips of the day. If they have to pay 125 to the company, the daily profit would be 307 pesos before subtracting 10% for the National Tax Administration Office (Onat).

A year ago, earning more than 300 pesos a day might seem tempting but with inflation and the rise in the cost of basic products, “the accounts are very tight,” acknowledges the employee. “Many of them have had to bear the cost of a repair out of their own pocket because if they wait for the State to fix them, they stay idle for days and they don’t earn anything.”

Yellow and with colorful “100% ecological” and “zero emission” stickers, Havana tricycles are neither as environmentally friendly nor as advantageous in terms of employment as they were originally painted to be.

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Providing Three Meals a Day Is Difficult but Cubans’ Obsession with Bread, Even if Low-Quality, Makes It Easier

Though the baker sells several varieties, only garlic bread was for sale on Thursday. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 29 October 2021 — A long line of people waited outside the bakery on Carlos III Avenue to buy garlic bread, the only kind for sale on Thursday morning. The cost was 6 pesos each, limited to ten a customer.

“Like public transportation, this bakery has odd hours. I try to get here early to avoid the crowd,” says one customer seated on a small stool she brought from home. Meanwhile, an employee controls the flow of people entering the shop, allowing only two in at a time.

I really like the garlic bread because it saves me having to add my own oil and garlic. We eat it just by itself,” adds the customer.

“Garlic? No way! I mean, it’s edible but no garlic has ever been near that bread,” responds another customer, eliciting laughter from those around her.

The bakery sells other breads, such as sandwich bread for 25 pesos, but there is not much demand for it. There is also the popular barrita, a top seller due to its low price of 5 pesos. There is always a selection but, when supplies run out, customers can wait as long as thirty minutes to an hour before a new batch arrives. continue reading

When supplies run out, the wait can last from thirty minutes to an hour before a new batch is ready. (14ymedio)

Wheat flour has been in such short supply that in May bakeries began using corn flour as a substitute. Recently, long lines have started wrapping around bakeries and police have had to intervene after arguments and fights broke out. Though the situation improved somewhat over the summer, the bakery in Carlos III is still not back to the kind of normality that perhaps no longer exists in Cuba: being able to buy something without having to wait in a long line under a blazing sun.

Cubans are obsessed with bread in part because it serves as a substitute for many other foods that have been disappearing from their tables. Bread with oil, bread with mayonnaise, bread with guayaba jam and many other such combinations have become a way to get by between meals or now serve as substitutes for traditional dishes made with rice, beans and meat.

Bread made from refined flour ends up in a school backpacks as part of a between-class snack and as a replacement for the tasteless hospital food served to patients in hospitals. Fervent consumers will flock to wherever it is being sold, especially if the price is lower than for bread made from elaborate recipes at privately owned bakeries

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‘No to the Cuban Dictatorship’s Blackmail of Offering Exile in Exchange for Freeing Political Prisoners’

Anamely Ramos said that in the previous hunger strike by Maykel Castillo, she was by his side, although in this one she will not be able to be because he is in prison. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 26 October 2021 — Maykel Castillo ‘Osorbo’ is on a hunger and thirst strike in a dungeon at the Kilo 5 and a Half prison, in the province of Pinar del Río, according to art curator and activist Anamely Ramos. After several hours of uncertainty in which the San Isidro Movement (MSI) expressed its concern about the absence of the daily call that the artist makes to his family, the rumors that other inmates had sent to their relatives about the possibility that he was a ’plantado’ were confirmed.

“They [the prisoners] have taken care of him all this time and when they shouted Patria y Vida, when they heard about the Latin Grammy nomination, they felt that their hope resurfaced beyond the imprisoned body. ’He cannot die for us’, they repeat over and over again, calling their families and asking them to report the Maykel situation,” Ramos wrote on her Facebook profile on Tuesday.

The activist, who is currently doing postgraduate studies at a university in Mexico, has expressed her closeness to Osorbo even from a distance, emphasizing that the singer and author of the song that has become an anthem for change in Cuba is aware that he is imprisoned for having been part of “a song that inspired a people,” but he vindicated his example for other people.

“Maykel is the example that all human beings can improve and grow, he is the example that no matter how much violence they have thrown against you, you can always love and fight peacefully for freedom. Maykel alone represents all mobility that the ’Revolution’ promised and did not fulfill,” she adds. continue reading

Her words came hours after the virtual press conference called by the San Isidro Movement in which she herself emphasized the rejection of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Osorbo himself to be released in exchange for exile, a negotiation that dates back to several weeks ago, according to Tania Bruguera, and that facilitated the departure from the country of the artists Hamlet Lavastida and Katherine Bisquet to Poland.

“We do not accept the political blackmail of the exile and exile of the Cuban dictatorship as a condition to free the political prisoners in Cuba,” the group said in summary.

Although the press conference was initially called to give “unconditional support” to the Archipiélago collective and the Civic Marches for Change scheduled for November 15, the MSI took the opportunity to demand the release of all political prisoners, among whom it cited Otero Alcántara and Osorbo expressly.

Anamely Ramos reiterated the “total solidarity” of the MSI with Archipiélago and insisted that the country lives in a “situation of terror,” with continuous reprisals for those who disagree politically, which materialize in expulsions from jobs, threats to families and other bullying practices.

Fernando Almeyda, one of the Archipelago spokespeople who also participated in the conference through Zoom, considered that his organization has already achieved “something important” with this call, although he fears that the Government, prisoner of a “tremendous fear” in the face of the protests, will respond with attacks.

“We know that we can face many very difficult scenarios on November 15,” said Almeyda, who stressed that opponents face “a system that has only violence left.”

Almeyda stressed that the initiative has a peaceful nature, and encouraged those who do not feel safe to participate in the protest in an alternative way with cacerolazos — the banging of pots and pans –or on social networks.

Hours later, the head of the Ideological Department of the Communist Party of Cuba, Rogelio Polanco, directly accused the United States Government of being “the true organizer and promoter of the provocation mounted for November.”

The official affirmed that senior officials of the Washington Administration “participate openly” in promoting the march with the intention of bringing about a change in the island’s political system.

“The supposed peaceful march is a provocation as part of a strategy of a soft coup and its purposes coincide with the main lines of attacks, slander, lies and threats used by those who, financed by the US Government, oppose the Cuban political system and they are trying to destabilize it and restore capitalism,” the official stressed on the Roundtable program on State TV.

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Before November 15, Products Reappear in Cuba as if by Magic

This line this Friday in Central Havana, where products that had been missing for months had been put on sale in Cuban pesos. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 30 October 2021 — As if by magic, products that had been absent from the shelves of Central Havana for months have appeared. The neighbors, as expected, did not take long to gather around the shops in the neighborhood.

Chicken, hotdogs, shampoo, toothpaste and cologne were on sale this Friday in stores like La Mía, on Belascoain Street. “This is good today, for a long time now they didn’t have so many things for sale in the same place,” commented a man in line. “That’s because of November 15,” another man replied, “after that day, we go back to chicken one day and, if anything, mincemeat the next.”

And yes, the toothpaste, ran out first thing in the morning.

When they had collected 160 identity cards from the people in line, it was noon and 100 people were still waiting around the corner for continue reading

their cards to be taken. Several members of the “coleros confrontation brigades” at the door of the store organized the flow of customers, who, with their rationbook in hand, had overcome the last obstacle before entering the market.
“This is disrespectful, they have passed a few people ahead of everyone, I have been playing the game for a while,” lamented a neighbor of about 50 years, standing in the line. “Groups to confront the coleros for what? If the coleros are first in line; then they also all leave with their packs full and even one of them may not find anything left to buy.”

State businesses that offer products in national currency are going through a shortage crisis that is almost commonplace, which began in 2019, and that the authorities called ’temporary’, and which reached its zenith with the covid pandemic. After the protests of July 11 and, in the last month, with the call for a Civic March for Change for November 15, Havanans have seen, not without suspicion, a discreet improvement in the offer of products, especially in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods of the capital.

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Cuba: The End of the Party

Yunior García, one of the leaders of the Archipiélago, at the time he received the official response declaring the march of 15N “illegal”. (EFE)

14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Miami, 30 October 2021 — The Cuban march on November 15 has been called by Archipiélago. This group is not a political party and does not intend to replace the communists in the country’s leadership. It takes its name from diversity. It is not true that Cuba is only an island. It is a large island – larger than the Netherlands and Belgium combined – and with many habitable islets, and also the Isle of Pines and the abundant keys.

Nor are the members of Archipiélago are at the service of the “Americans” or, specifically, of the CIA. This is the classic infamy with which the regime tries to discredit and disqualify those who oppose its forced unanimity. What the many members and supporters of Archipiélago want is to express themselves and tell their truths under the Constitution’s protection.

The Constitution guarantees freedom of thought, but, simultaneously, it subjects what is said to the socialist goals designed by the institutional order of the text itself. It is deliberately ambiguous since its model is the Stalin’s 1936 Constitution and its derivatives. On one side, it establishes the fundamental rights. On the other, it suppresses them.

In the Cuban case, when Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, on behalf of the ‘Christian Liberation Movement,’ presented more than the ten thousand signatures (in fact, more than 14,000) that were required to submit to a vote a referendum on a constitutional amendment that would authorize the multiparty system, the Cuban Parliament (the ‘National Assembly of People’s Power’) did not bother to answer him.

In 2012, he was murdered along with Harold Cepero. They were too bothersome. Human Rights Watch tells it: after a confusing incident, in which only the Cubans died continue reading

, despite the fact that both had got out of the car on their own feet, unaided. This was told to me by Ángel Carromero, a young Spanish man who was driving the car on the day of the crime.

Previously, the Constitution, the communist aims of Cuban society and the role of the Party had been “armored,” so that it was highly unlikely to modify the course of Cuban events. However, it is practically impossible to prevent such changes towards openness. When will they happen? Once there is a critical mass that demands them or, otherwise, when certain people with effective power have the political will to carry them out.

Both forces converge in Cuba. On July 11, it became clear that young people want to expand society’s participation margins, but, at the same time, there are thousands of cadres from the Communist Party itself who call themselves “reformists” and are eager to initiate a substantial change that allows them to abandon collectivist and authoritarian superstitions forever. It has been 62 years of continuous failures.

In this sense, the cases of Leo Brouwer, Pablo Milanés, and Silvio Rodríguez, despite being different, are very significant. They repeated the “we have come this far” of José Saramago, when three young black men were executed in Havana on April 11, 2003. Brouwer sharply distanced himself from the Cuban regime due to the repression exercised against civil society on July 11 of this year. Hundreds of peaceful people were beaten and imprisoned, which was intolerable to this great-nephew of Ernesto Lecuona, a great guitarist and a great composer.

Pablo Milanés has lived in Spain since 1992, so his clear break with the regime, expressed in previous circumstances and now reiterated, is not surprising. More significant was the position taken by Silvio Rodríguez. He talked for more than an hour with the young playwright Yunior García Aguilera, an animator from Archipiélago, and with his wife, Dayana, a filmmaker, after García Aguilera’s arbitrary arrest. From that meeting came out a formal request from the singer-songwriter to the dictatorship to release the hundreds of detainees who had not used violence.

Silvio Rodríguez said on Facebook, “The meeting with Yunior and Dayana was good, I am not exaggerating if I say fraternal; there was dialogue, exchange, we listened to each other with attention and respect. The most painful thing for me was hearing that they, as a generation, no longer felt part of the Cuban process but something else. They explained their arguments, their frustrations to me. I tried to make them understand that at my age everything was also much slower than we expected it to be.”

Silvio Rodríguez has taught Miguel Díaz-Canel a lesson on how to deal with the opposition. But he has received another quite obvious lesson – he has heard that Yunior and Dayana “do not feel part of the Cuban process.” The story of the Sierra Maestra is so old that it’s not possible for young people to bond emotionally with those stories. Silvio was born in the 1940s. Yunior in the eighties. If Silvio were as rational as he appears he would tell Díaz-Canel to get ready for the end of the party. It’s just around the corner.

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