14ymedio

In Cuba, Salt – Along with Coffee, Electricity and Face Masks – Is a Problem

14ymedio, Havana, October 5, 2021 — A product as basic and elemental as salt is has become yet another of problem for the island’s authorities. Not a day has gone by when they have not been called to account, even by the official press, for the lack of some consumer product, be it tobacco, electricity, coffee or masks.

On Tuesday salt became the latest item to be added to the list. It is sold in a form so damp that even the addition of rice to Cuban salt shakers is not enough to separate the grains. On Tuesday Jorge Luis Bell Alvarez, director of Ensal, has had to face the press to provide some justification for the problem. He claimed the only Cuban salt producer with technology capable of producing dry salt is in Guantánamo province. In addition to distributing the product locally, the plant also supplies Havana’s rationed markets. In total, it is responsible for 46% of Cuban saline production.

According to Bell Alvarez, the rest of the island is supplied by salt plants in El Real, Matanzas and Zoa, which produce damp salt. He acknowledges that the product, which is now the only option on the market, “is a problem” but adds that the thirteen provinces which do not get their salt from Guantanamo, which has a drying oven, sometimes do have the “benefit” of being able to get salt.

He says the centrifuges used to spin salt, like the ones used in sugar refineries, are not adequate. To fix the problem, the government is trying to import four new centrifuges and is “thinking about” another investment to continue reading

provide the plant in El Real with a machine used to produce dried milk. For the moment, however, all these ideas only amount to castles in the air.

The Granma article notes appreciatively that, despite the quality issue and problems associated with distribution and sale, production targets for the first half of the year have been met. It notes, however, that over the summer the situation was complicated by fuel shortages, particularly of diesel fuel, and frequent blackouts due to problems at electrical generator facilities.

In August salt production was at 92.7% of what had been expected. Producers must provide 475 tons of salt to fulfill their commitments.

Electricity shortages have also impacted production, which in August was 92.1% of estimates. In September it was at 97%. Supplies of one-kilogram bags of rationed salt, he insists, have not fallen significantly, meeting 99.5% of targets and at a comparable level to the previous month.

Nevertheless, the amount of salt provied in the “basic basket”* is not enough to meet the needs of most families, who use it not only in cooking but also to make their own toiletries, cleaning products and disinfectants due to shortages of manufactured goods.

“I wash my dishes with a mixture of powdered detergent, vinegar, baking soda and salt,” explains a Havana resident who has been unable to buy a dishwasher for months. “You can only buy them in hard currency stores and I can’t afford the ones they sell there so I do my own repairs and use some of the salt I get through the ration book to do that.”

Others use salt to increase sales of roasted peanuts, which remains one of Cuba’s most popular street foods. “Everything has gone up. Peanuts have gone up. The sheets of wrapping paper are through the roof and salt is in short supply. I don’t know how much I’ll have to sell to turn a profit,” worries Humberto, a peanut vendor in the Calzada de Cerro area.

The fine table salt allocated to Cuba’s tourism sector bears little resemblance to the salt Cubans themselves consume. To address this discrepancy, the salt usually imported from abroad was replaced with salt from Guantanamo, the only reasonably comparable alternative. In December 2020, thirty tons of fine table salt and 180 tons of cooking salt were delivered. This time around the figures are forty tons of table salt and 120 tons of cooking salt

Bell Alvarez added that the lack of electricity has meant the loss of 344 hours of work, the equivalent of approximately 3,400 tons of salt.

*Translator’s note: A list of basic consumer goods available to all Cubans at subsidized prices and in limited amounts through the ration book.

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“No One Can Shut Me Up,” Says Professor Who Was Fired for Criticizing Healthcare in Cuba

Merladet, 26, had been teaching History classes for two years at the Silberto Álvarez Aroche vocational pre-university in Granma. (Courtesy)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 6 October 2021 — Julio Merladet, who months ago made several public complaints about the poor state of healthcare in Cuba, was sanctioned this Tuesday at his workplace with the “separation from the Education sector” for three years. This is, de facto, a dismissal.

Diplomas he was awarded on several occasions, such as “outstanding professor” and “exemplary educator” demonstrate it. The latest one is dated last December.

In August of this year, he posted a video on Facebook that went viral in which he said that his daughter and her partner had not received medical attention at the health centers where they went. After testing positive for Covid, the young man was not transferred to an isolation center and ended up infecting his family.

“If I had stopped a few days before at the entrance to my house and had shouted ‘homeland and life‘, police would have arrived faster than the doctors arrived at my home this time,” he said in that video, where he also indicated that he could be fired from his job. continue reading

“He published two live videos in social networks in an uncomplicated and very rude way, he spoke out against hospital institutions and the Government”

So it happened this Tuesday. That day, they warned him he’d be summoned for “voluntary work”, but in reality, it was a form of punishment. He already expected it: the reprisals had started long before, “while I was still a teacher”, he narrates, “after I published the first videos”.

The document that was handed to him was signed by Denis Alberto Moreno Beatón, director of the Budget Unit for Education in Granma province, and states that Merladet “incurred violations of labor discipline.”

“He published two live videos on social networks in an uncomplicated and rude way, he spoke out against hospital institutions and the Government, then he made a publication where he says that he does not regret anything stated in the videos but he does regret the rudeness used in that video,” the text details, which argues that a teacher violates the regulation “when he does not maintain “conduct consistent with the ethical principles of educational policy, permanently performing the educational work that corresponds to him” or performs “serious acts” that are “contrary to morality and the ideological principles of our country”.

“Publicly defaming or disparaging the institutions of the Republic and the heroes and martyrs of the country”, the notification also reads, is a violation of “the utmost gravity”.

If Merladet regrets something, it is the “curse words” used in the first video “I am a peasant and when I am crossed, I close myself off, and at that moment I was upset when I spoke”, he alleges, “but after that, I did not.” In addition, he had already made the decision not to continue teaching, despite the fact that months before he had been offered “to do a direct doctorate, without doing a master’s degree”.

“Why are they asking me to separate from the Education sector for three years? What rules did I violate?”

Many of his colleagues, he says, have also supported him, and “even offered themselves as witnesses if I decide to appeal”, something that he still has not decided to do. “I have seven business days to make the claim but I’m still thinking about it.”

“Why are they asking me to separate from the Education sector for three years? What rule did I violate?” Merladet asks during Tuesday’s transmission on his social networks. As a citizen, he was expressing himself freely, he claimed, “a right that anyone has in any country in the world”. But not in Cuba.

“I’m not going to starve, I know how to work, I know how to fight it,” says Merladet in the video, which indicates he sells cumin on the street.

At the same time, he asks the ‘workers’: “With your salary, can you shop in an MLC store [one that takes foreign currency only]? You can’t, because they don’t pay us in MLC”, he answers. “You have to have family there, in the empire, among the enemy” he says ironically. “If you are an ordinary worker, barefoot, like we are, you can’t go in there, you have to have a ‘gusano* from Miami’ who will send you dollars to be able to shop there.” His teacher’s salary, he indicates, was 4,845 pesos.

In the same publication, Merladet announces that now he is going to “really” get involved in politics: “There is no one to shut me up anymore,” concludes his video. “Homeland and life. Homeland or death is over. What represents us is Homeland and Life.”

*Translator’s note: The term gusano — meaning worm or maggot — is a derogatory first applied by Fidel Castro to ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and those who wanted to leave Cuba.

Translated by Norma Whiting
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The Space and Time of Words

As if something that has not yet happened could overshadow what is already registered as a historical date. As if November 20th was not the continuity of July 11th. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 6 October 2021 — Something that I have never managed to do is pronounce two words at the same time. This “deficiency” has led me to understand how difficult it is to state two ideas simultaneously in a grammatical sentence. In this arduous struggle of half a century, I have also learned that I cannot say everything in a 400-word text.

When I speak, for example, of blackouts, a commentator usually appears who reproaches me for not mentioning food shortages, and if I focus on the absence of products, another appears who is outraged because I have not mentioned the critical housing situation, the disastrous state of the streets or the calamity of public transport. There will be no excuse if I forget the plummeting health services or the crushing indoctrination in schools. But the most unforgivable thing will always be not to cast the blame on the dictatorship.

The most current scolding rails against the intention of promoting the call for the November 20 (20N) march because “it is intended to overshadow what happened on July 11 (11J),” as if something that has not yet happened could overshadow what is already registered as a historical date. As if the 20N was not the continuity of the 11J.

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara has not gone out of style because we expose the arbitrary detention of Hamlet Lavastida; denouncing the unjust imprisonment of Maykel Osorbo does not leave behind the systematic repression against the Ladies in White; reporting the attack on continue reading

the Unpacu headquarters in Santiago de Cuba is not a trick to negate the assault on Cubalex; exposing the seizures of the working tools of independent journalists is not done to forget the outrage to which the prisoners of the Black Spring of 2003 were subjected.

If we manage to expose all of the above in a single page, the crime against the March 13 tugboat, the parameterization of the Five GreyYears, the UMAP camps, the forced evictions in the Escambray, the express executions of 1959 will always be conspicuous by their absence.

Trying to say everything every time one speaks or writes, in addition to being boring for the reader, runs the serious risk of not mentioning something or someone. I prove it in this note where I have omitted so many things that should be unforgettable.

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Let’s Lay the Foundations of the New Cuba

Hundreds of Cubans were arrested during the July 11th demonstrations. (EFE)

14ymedio, Ariel Hidalgo, Miami, 2 October 2021 — Since the Cuban people have finally conquered freedom, since true liberation begins in the human spirit, it is time to start laying the foundations of the New Cuba.

Those who still believe that they govern the country, ignorant that no one governs without the consent of the governed, will believe that they have finally managed to put the noose on the people, and that they can deceive them once again as if by magic, making changes here and there so as not to have to change anything.

They do not understand at all what has really happened. Just as they did not believe that July 11^th could happen, they now think that everything will return to its place, that everything will continue as before that date. They don’t see reality or they don’t want to see it, and that can be dangerous. Nobody will deceive the people again, because they have become aware of their rights and, sooner or later, they will come out to demand them. And it will not be like that day, but multiplied by ten. Now it could be the State that is expropriated, as in the 1960’s the leadership did with the population, including independent workers.

The State seized all the wealth of the country by force in the name of all the people. It seized the lands, the factories, the shops, the banks, the hotels and even the most modest means of subsistence of humble workers who made a living through their own efforts, without exploiting anyone. Who got liberated? From that collective looting began the subjugation of all the people, who have lost all their freedoms since then. They were no longer able to express their opinions, associate freely, make their own way in independent economic activities, so they stopped being an entity in order to become a mere screw in the State machinery.

That leadership only succeeded in creating an immense monopoly, though it claimed to have put an end to large Estates and all monopolies

That leadership, though it claimed to have put an end to large Estates and all monopolies, only succeeded in creating an immense monopoly, the largest concentration of wealth that could have been conceived, which later engendered a corrupt bureaucracy, administrations designated by that State which has squandered all the goods that did not belong to it, and has dragged the population to a life of needs and calamities.

Now, only one owner has to be expropriated, the supreme landowner, the only monopoly that has been left standing. Now it is up to the State to be expropriated by those people whom the current constitution itself recognizes as the legitimate owner.

Now that people have the right to expropriate the expropriators and get rid of all those corrupt administrations that control those companies, not one by one, but all at once, urging all the grassroots groups in the centers and companies under the guardianship of that State, and, on their own account, create democratically elected workers’ councils to direct all those means of production instead of that bureaucracy.

Each work nucleus is more productive if it feels that the center belongs to it and that it is going to obtain part of the profits from what it produces, and those councils, should they deem it necessary, will hire the ones who will direct them most efficiently.

The people must declare the State as incompetent, for having entrusted and appointed all those corrupt bureaucrats. They must replace it, due to its lack of ethics and for having systematically violated their rights. Not only rights of free expression and association, but even of life, having ordered the sinking of two ships on two different occasions, the Río Canímar and the 13 de Marzo. Both events led to the deaths of numerous citizens, as well as thousands of executions in summary trials lacking any procedural guarantee.

That Government was never elected, but rather it was handpicked by others who were not chosen by the people either. The Constitution was drawn up by constituents who were also handpicked by the sovereign will of a so-called historical leadership with all-encompassing powers based on the supposed glories of a distant past. Therefore, this Government lacks any legitimacy and must be temporarily supplanted by a civic council of men and women who have earned the admiration and respect of all the people. Not to govern, but to restore the rights and freedoms of the citizenry, to convene a new constituent, and to organize free elections.

There will be those who say that I am delirious, that I am building castles in the air, but a rebellious philosopher of the great American nation, Henry David Thoreau, who influenced great men like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and José Martí, said: “If you build a castle in the air, you haven’t wasted your time. The castle is there. You just need to lay its foundations.”

Translated by Norma Whiting

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Havana’s Coppelia Ice Cream Parlor Opens a ‘Line for Failures’

Telephone reservations at the ‘Cathedral of Ice Cream’ have not prevented the long lines or frustrating wait. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 3 October 2021 — A week ago the Coppelia ice cream parlor in Havana resumed table service but only for customers with a telephone reservation. The new access mechanism to the ’Cathedral of Ice Cream’ has not prevented the long lines or frustrating waits that have been an inseparable part of the place for decades.

“This damn country!” a child was heard saying this Saturday as he waited under the shade of a tree with other kids to enter one of the public service areas. The little boy’s expression provoked laughter and also the mother’s scolding: “Child, do you want me to be imprisoned? Do me a favor and calm down.”

Nine days have passed since the reopening and criticism of the new mechanism is already being heard. Tricks to skip it are also proliferating. Regular customers at the store on the central corner of 23 and L, in Havana’s Vedado district, prefer to take their place in the “line of failures,” the line where those who trust that several of the users with reservations will not show up.

“The guards’ business has already started. This will never change here,” said a man who complained about the parking area for vehicles — under the sun — where they had to wait to enter. “It is clear that it is convenient for them to have this line hidden back here, so that we do not see the ’line breakers’ who pass for a few pesos without calling or waiting.”

There were also those who learned of the requirements to have a reservation only when arriving at the place. Like a lady who was surprised to find out. “They don’t invent anything good, everything is putting the people to work. I’m from San Miguel del Padrón and I don’t have a phone, so if I’m around here and it occurs to me to have an ice cream, should I go home and ask the neighbor can I borrow the phone to make a reservation? “

The woman mentally calculated her possibilities looking at the dozen people who were waiting and gave up on ice cream: “I’m leaving, there are many people here, if nobody fails to reserve then I will only have to line up and sunbathe for fun.”

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Despite Low Production in September, Venezuela Increased Oil Shipments to Cuba

PDVSA and its joint ventures registered a drop in their exports in September, but not to Cuba. (EFE)

14ymedio, Havana, 5 October 2021 — Venezuela’s oil exports posted their worst level of the year in September, but the country’s shipments to Cuba reached 58,000 barrels per day (bpd), a substantial increase over the 40,000 sent in August.

These deliveries occurred in a month in which the thermoelectric plants have failed on the island, which has caused constant blackouts, some lasting up to nine hours, in Santiago de Cuba, Matanzas, Cienfuegos, Holguín and Pinar del Río, which exhausts the patience of the Cubans.

The authorities insist that “the situation will improve,” but the Electricity Union announces power cuts daily, like the one this Tuesday. As explained by the company, due to breakdowns in five units, the Otto Parellada, Máximo Gómez, Diez de Octubre and Antonio Maceo CTE are out of service, and Unit 4 of the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes CTE is under maintenance. And so, the blackouts are expected to continue.

In Venezuela there have also been power outages, which the Venezuelan Minister of Electric Power, Néstor Reverol, attributes “sabotage.” According to the former Deputy Minister of Energy, Víctor Poleo, on the contrary, the problem lies in the fact that continue reading

since 2005 “there has been almost no maintenance or investment in the electricity system.”

The mismanagement has resulted in the lack of the products necessary to dilute Venezuela’s heavy oil, which affected its exports and extraction in the Orinoco Belt.

In an effort to try to resolve the crisis, the national oil company PDVSA will use a shipment of Iranian condensate that arrived in the country last week to promote three key projects that seek to increase crude production in the Orinoco Belt and which are being developed in collaboration with the US company Chevron and the China National Petroleum Corporation.

PDVSA and its joint ventures exported 414,000 barrels per day in 19 shipments in September, a 34% decrease compared to the previous month and the lowest average since October 2020.

About two-thirds of the shipments went to Asia, the main destination for Venezuela’s oil, while 77,500 bpd of crude and refined products went to the Middle East.

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Cuban Prosecutors Seek Eight-Year Sentence for Streaming Protests from San Antonio de los Banos on July 11th

Yoan de la Cruz streamed a live feed of protests on July 11th. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, Cuba, October 4, 2021–Cuban prosecutors seek an eight-year prison sentence for Yoan de la Cruz, a young man who on July 11th streamed a live feed of the first protests in San Antonio de los Baños, considered to be the start of the anti-government protests throughout the entire country. The information, the details of which are unknown, was shared by his mother via several activists.

The young man is being held in the Melena del Sur, Mayabeque prison, practically incommunicado and due to COVID-19 restrictions, he is only allowed to call his family by phone, according to his aunt, Odalys Hernández Rizo speaking to 14ymedio.

“They were accusing him of public disorder, but eight years for that is ridiculous,” said Yoan’s aunt, who emphasizes that the three appeals submitted to date have been rejected by the Cuban justice system.

His mother confirmed that, in addition, he is being charged with contempt. “He did not do anything to deserve that many years. All he did was film. Now they accuse him of contempt. He is a good young man. The entire town loves him,” she shared in a message on the social media accounts of various groups: those in favor of the protests on July 11th and those of the city of San Antonio de los Baños.

The request for eight years in prison for those who protested on July 11th is becoming the norm in cases that have yet to be tried. Initially, dozens of protesters who were processed in summary trials this summer received fines and less severe sentences.

Last week, for most of the 16 Cubans who protested in Placetas, the Public Ministry sought a similar number of years behind bars for charges of disorder and contempt. Among them are twin sisters, Lisdany and Lisdiany Rodríguez Isaac, facing 10 years because local prosecutors are charging them with two counts of assault.

To our knowledge, the most severe sanctions are against Robert Pérez Fonseca, accused of two counts of assault and two counts of contempt, in addition to instigating a crime and public disorder. In his case, the prosecutor sought 12 years; his family attributes this to his ripping a photograph of Fidel Castro during the marches in San José de las Lajas, Mayabeque.

The peaceful presence of Yoan de la Cruz has been confirmed by various people on social media. “Yoan de la Cruz, a Cuban from Ariguanabo, but much more; a brave young man who, with a cell phone and a few megabytes, showed the entire world that in San Antonio de los Baños there is a small town full of brave people like him, who have had enough of living imprisoned and took to the streets to shout, ’Freedom!’ Free him already, cowards! They think they are so big to feel that a young man with a phone in hand makes them tremble in the house of cards where they live,” said one of his friends a few days after his detention.

“He didn’t throw stones, he didn’t break glass, he didn’t strike anyone, he didn’t yell down with anyone. Please, release him already. They are making a mother, a grandmother, a family and thousands of friends suffer,” said another of his many colleagues who advocated for his release, which almost three months later, seems less certain.

The list of people detained in Cuba for protesting on July 11th surpassed 1,000 and more than half remain in prison.

Authorities confirmed that all those detained following July 11th are processed according to the country’s legal and penal codes; however, this is completely contradicted by the testimonials of those who have been released and their families as well as Cubalex, a law firm that is following these cases.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Cuban Writer and Journalist Marta Rojas Dies

Rojas was born in Santiago de Cuba in May 1931. (Twitter / @ LuisMorlote)

14ymedio, Havana, 4 October 2021 — The Cuban writer and journalist Marta Rojas died this Sunday in Havana as a result of a heart attack, according to the Cubadebate portal. Winner of several national awards, author of more than a dozen books, and a staunch defender of the official line of the regime, she was born in Santiago de Cuba in May 1931 and later moved to Havana where she studied Journalism.

Shortly after graduating, when she was 23 years old, she witnessed the assault on the Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953, about which she wrote several articles.

Rojas was working for the magazine Bohemia when the revolution led by Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. Later she collaborated with the newspaper Revolución until, in 1965, together with other journalists, she founded the State newspaper Granma. In the official gazette she was Chief of Information, war correspondent in South Vietnam and she also covered several of Fidel Castro’s trips.

Rojas won the José Martí National Journalism Prize in 1997 and the Alejo Carpentier Prize for novels in 2006. She was an associate professor at the Faculty of Social Communication at the University of Havana and published several books such as La Generación de Centenario, Eljudicial del Moncada and El que debe vivir. She also wrote some novels, including El columpio del Rey Spencer and Santa Lujuria..

Alejo Carpentier defined Marta Rojas as an: “Agile and talented writer, with a deep journalistic vocation, shrewd eyes, direct and precise style, the gift of showing many things in a few words.”

On its social networks the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac) lamented the death of the journalist and member of merit of the organization. “Deep pain at the loss of one of our most beloved intellectuals,” wrote Luis Morlote, president of Uneac. “Cuba mourns her departure (…) we will always remember her,” he added.

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Cuban Artist Lavastida Downplays Document Signed Under Pressure in Villa Marista: “They dictated to me what to say.”

Artist Hamlet Lavastida, left, during his interview with writer Carlos Manuel Álvarez. (Capture)]

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 29 September 2021 — This Tuesday, Hamlet Lavastida denounced that during his time in prison in Cuba he was pressured to sign documents which portrayed him as a collaborator of State Security. In an interview with writer and journalist Carlos Manuel Álvarez, conducted from Warsaw, where he flew on Saturday after being released from prison, the artist spoke about the psychological violence to which he was subjected during the three months he was in Villa Marista prison, headquarters of the political police in Havana.

Lavastida explained that the agents always create characters and set up “a theater” to interact with the detainees, and for this reason he also began “to put on a series of dramatizations.”

“I began to make the famous act of repentance and retractions, to write that I never wanted to participate in political life, in any activism group,” he said, and recounted that he was presented with a paper which stated that he collaborated with them. “I remember that officer Darío suggested it to me and basically dictated what I had to say,” Lavastida declared during the interview, which was broadcast live on the Facebook page of the magazine directed by Álvarez, El Estornudo.

The artist decided to go ahead and tell all before State Security uses those signed documents against him. “It doesn’t really affect me much, because my real commitment is to creation, you can use that against a person who wants to have a political career,” opined Lavastida, who stressed that in his life “he had never had anything to do with the Police or with Security” and that everything he experienced was “new” to him. continue reading

Writing those “texts of self-repentance,” he found, was the “slightly more noble” way to get out of jail

Writing those “texts of self-repentance”, he found, was the “slightly more noble” way to get out of jail. “Doing it by denouncing others seemed less honorable to me and self-incrimination, of course, was not going to help me.”

His prison cell in Villa Marista was an “excessively small” place that he shared with four people, he said. “I was trying to walk those six steps, trying to do something with my hands, from the nervousness of not knowing what was going to happen with my case.” The food, he points out, “was not bad but was very scarce”, to the point that some prisoners “counted the spoonfuls” every day.

Regarding the interrogation sessions he experienced in those days, he recalled that they asked him all the time to help the agents “clarify the situation” and that they insisted on the story that he was “sent by the State Department.” The phrases most often repeated to intimidate him were along the lines of: “your mother is going to suffer a lot” or “you get 15 to 20 years for incitement of a crime.”

That was the offense of which he was accused, as reported by State Security to his family after he was transferred to Villa Marista. Lavastida had returned to Cuba from Germany on June 21, after completing his residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien gallery in Berlin. Five days later, after fulfilling the regulatory period of isolation (for potential Covid exposure) in a center arranged by the Government in the Flores neighborhood of the capital, he was arrested.

The accusation was based on a conversation in a private group chat of 27N (27 November) on Telegram, which was filtered and analyzed at the moment by official presenter Humberto López on state television.

The artist is currently in Poland with his girlfriend, the Cuban poet Katherine Bisquet, with whom Carlos Manuel Álvarez announced he will interview this Wednesday.

During the conversation, Lavastida alluded several times to the number assigned to him in prison: 2,239. His life will be marked by it for a long time, said the artist.

Translated by Silvia Suárez
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Cuban Baseball Team Returns Home From Mexico with Half its Players and Without a Medal

In the image the 12 players who returned to Havana this Monday. (Radio Rebelde)

14ymedio, Havana, 4 October 2021 — Baseball player Geisel Cepeda, 23, was the last to leave the Cuban team at the U-23 World Cup in Sonora, Mexico. The athlete abandoned his teammates when they were going to return to the island and did not get on the plane, thus also leaving the contract he had with the Mochis, in Mexico, to seek a contract in the US Major Leagues.

The news, confirmed this Sunday by sports journalist Francys Romero, ends the list of escapes among the members of the youth team, which totals 12, 50% of the 24 who traveled to Mexico to try to win the title.

Just one day earlier, this Saturday, Loidel Chapellí Jr., 19, Yandi Yanes, 23, Bryan Chi, 22, and Miguel Antonio González, 21, had all left the team. The list is completed by the pitchers Yeinel Zayas, Luis Dennys Morales, Uber Mejías, Dariel Fernández, receiver Loidel Rodríguez, outfielder Reinaldo Lazaga and infielder Diasmany Palacios.

Cuba’s official press described the walk-offs of the players as “vile abandonments” and blamed the United States for the desertions due to the rupture, in 2017, of the agreement reached between the Major Leagues and the Cuban Baseball Federation by which the Island promised to “free” the players hired by a team from the neighboring country provided continue reading

they met various conditions of age and years of service, in exchange for the payment of an economic bonus that had to go to the Cuban authorities.

The press has also attributed the escapes to the weakness of the players. “The merchants of baseball players went in search of promising talents and achieved their objective,” taking advantage of “the provisions of the United States Government towards Cuba and its athletes (closed doors) and also the moral and ethical weaknesses of those who left the team.”

The roster had been chosen, according to the coach himself, Eriel Sánchez, by the national baseball authorities from a list preselected by him. The manager had clearly said what was an open secret, that qualities external to sports were valued when choosing the final representatives, and these qualities included patriotism, understood as one might suppose, to mean fidelity to the ’Revolution’.

However, the ideological selection mechanism has not worked, judging by the results.

Cuba’s National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (Inder) has spoken out in this regard and insisted on the same ideas as the official press, ensuring that the players’ departure “confirms the cynicism with which the Trump Administration annulled the agreement,”,which is a” cruel handicap that prevents the natural flow to the circuits of that organization.”

Sportscaster Pavel Otero said on Cuban television that the team faces “one of the most hostile scenarios in the history of our sports movement.”

“Do not doubt that those unscrupulous human traffickers, at the service of the enemies of the Revolution, will continue to insist,” he said.

The Venezuelan team won the tournament this Sunday by beating the host, Mexico, 4-0. Cuba, which lands in Havana this Monday at 5 am, was in 4th position after falling to Colombia.

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In Cuba, Classes… and the Slogans… Return

High school students returned to classes in Cuba this Monday (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 4 October 2021 — The outdoor area of the José Miguel Pérez high school, located in the Nuevo Vedado neighborhood in the Plaza de la Revolución municipality of Havana, remained completely empty for many months.

A week ago, and with the easing of the anti-covid measures, it began to fill up in the afternoons with young people playing soccer, basketball and other sports.

But as of this Monday, the students of some secondary education return after months of absence in the classrooms, and the school has once again become the scene of the pre-university school morning assembly. The slogans, the applause and the distance of more than one meter of safety between the students in the line to access the educational center have not been lacking.

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Uber Mejias, One of the 11 Cuban Baseball Players, Who Defected in Mexico, Arrives in the US

Uber Mejías has applied for asylum in the US, according to reports from the journalist Francys Romero (@francysromero)

14ymedio, Havana, October 3, 2021 — The pitcher from Santiago, Uber Mejías, is now in the United States, having “crossed the frontier and requested political asylum”, according to information from the journalist Francys Romero. “He will shortly start the documentation process to become a free agent”.

Mejías was the second baseball player, in this outflow of 11 as of now, from Eriel Sánchez’ team, which took part in the sub-23 World Baseball Championship. He walked out on 23rd September from the team hotel located in Ciudad Obregón, in the Mexican state of Sonora.

The young man was with Loidel Chapellí Jr. as Cuban team members in the World events sub-15, sub-18 and sub-23. In preparing for the tournament in Mexico he sent funds in the range of 90 – 92 thousand. “The righthander is one of the most interesting Cuban prospects for the MLB (Major League Baseball) scouts“, Romero emphasised.

The Cuban rising stars deserted without documentation. Their options are limited to “wait in Mexico and follow the process for free agency, or ask for asylum at the US frontier”. Mejías opted for the second, “although we have no exact confirmation, he is the first baseball player (at least as far as we know) to continue reading

enter US territory”, according to the journalist.

Among these stories is that of the pitcher Dariel Fernández, another of the baseball players who deserted, and, from what we know, got into contact with the representative Carlos Pérez, the Havana agent based in Miami who has a wide range of Cuban baseball players in the Big Leagues, including Raúl Valdés, Edwin Rios, Tyron Guerrero and Yandy Díaz.

News broke on Saturday that, with the desertion of Loidel Chapelli Jr, 19 years old, Yandi Yanes, 23, Bryan Chi, 22 and Miguel Antonio Gonzalez, 21, a total of 11 baseball players have broken away from the Cuban team in Hermosillo, Mexico.

Before the pitchers Yeinel Zayas, Luis Dennys Morales, Uber Mejias, Dariel Fernandez, there were also the catcher Loidel Rodriguez, the outfielder Reinaldo Lazaga, and Diasmany Palacios, the infielder.

Meanwhile, on the island, the sports authorities have insisted on blaming the United States for the sports stars’ escape. The National Institute for Physical and Educational Sport (Inder) last Sunday accused the blocking of the agreement between the Cuban Baseball Federation and the Major League Baseball of stimulating “the traffic of athletes for political reasons”.

Translated by GH

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Cuba: The Island Flees Inside a Suitcase

Every day many Cubans make the decision to leave; they get on a plane without looking back. (EFE)

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 3 October 2021 — In a drawer I keep a box with photos that I avoid looking at. They are images filled with the faces that have left, hundreds of friends, colleagues and relatives who no longer inhabit this Island. The escape of athletes, artists, rafters or officials accelerates as the country sinks. Right now, we live in times of a resounding crash and constant goodbyes.

The flight of 11 Cuban baseball players during the U23 World Baseball Championship in the Mexican state of Sonora, has been the most recent chapter of this bleeding, but every day many others make the decision to leave, they get on a plane without looking back, go through the jungle or cross the sea. They are expressing with their feet what they dare not say out loud: the system is a failure and the country is unlivable.

The final destination can be anywhere. Yesterday a friend announced that she is going to Iceland, another island that she only knows is “far from Cuba and they are not building socialism.” The neighbor on the corner tore up his Communist Party card and now works for a cleaning crew in Miami; meanwhile a childhood friend is organizing a marriage of convenience to emigrate to Italy.

Some regret having waited so long. “My sister warned me continue reading

and I thought this was going to improve, but it goes backwards like the crab,” the clerk at a nearby agricultural market tells me. “I’d rather start from scratch anywhere than spend the rest of my life here,” she says. Two customers who down a glass of juice nod their heads after listening to her.

All those who come to the conclusion that “you have to go out and get out now” have that look of absolute resolution that is seen in the turning points of life. I have noticed this harshness in widows, in families who have lost everything after a fire and even in prisoners sentenced to long sentences. It is as if after having been stripped of everything, they understand that they have one last power left: the power over their bodies.

And this faculty of deciding to distance yourself — physically or mentally — from what hurts and angers, is what the thousands of Cubans who emigrate every year are exercising. Neither the triumphant headlines in the official press, nor the slogan-lit school assemblies each morning, nor the promises of a “prosperous and sustainable” model just around the corner deter them. They are fed up.

At the beginning, Cuba officialdom justified their escapes by labeling those who went into exile as bourgeoisie after their properties, industries and businesses had been confiscated. Later, they were called “escorias” – slag, dregs, scum – because they were the disposable by-products of the “foundry of the New Man.” Even today, they are described as weak people before “the siren songs of capitalism.”

Skillfully, Castroism has also used emigration as a valve to release social pressure. It is no coincidence that the great Cuban migratory waves, such as the departure from the Port of Mariel in 1980 or the Rafter Crisis in the summer of 1994 have been preceded by serious economic hardships and an increase in citizen discontent. The popular protests of July 11 have also been played their part in the stampede and we are already living it.

The shame that practically half of a sports delegation escapes from a competition is something that is not cleaned up with the hefty dollars in remittances sent later by the emigrants. The phenomenon only occurs in countries-prisons in the style of the communist bloc of Eastern Europe, the dynastic dictatorship of the Kims in North Korea, in Belarus … and on this Island. We are on the list of nations that feel like bars; of systems that are experienced like cages.

We expect months of saying goodbye every day, because they will not be able to put a policeman next to every Cuban who travels in an official delegation. The leaks may also touch the highest levels of power, because rats leave the ship when it sinks, not because they are “rats,” but because they are smart. They feel that it is only a matter of time before this empty shell of the system is buried by the waters of change.

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Cuba: Report Records Five Actions Against Foreign Currency Stores and Patrols in September

Protest in the form of a prayer in the street, registered by the Cuban Conflict Observatory. (OCC

14ymedio, Madrid, 2 October 2021 — “The repression and terror” instituted by the Cuban government “fail to neutralize this new generation of dissident citizens.” The Cuban Conflict Observatory (OCC) reaches this conclusion in its latest report, made public this Friday, which includes 312 protests in September.

Since September 2020, when 42 demonstrations took place, until the same month this year, the Miami-based organization observes that “the increase in protests, month by month, has remained constant.”

“Even those who insist on considering the national social outbreak of July 11 exceptional (it included 584 protests with the participation of some 187,000 Cubans) have to take into account that a total of 2,718 protests have already accumulated in the course of a year. And they continue to grow,” emphasizes the NGO, which also reports: “It has been proven that trying to quell protests by resorting to violence multiplies them and could open the door to others who demonstrate in a less constructive way.”

Thus, last month there were five violent actions against the so-called ’dollar stores’ — which accept payment only in foreign currency — and police patrols, as well as the burning of a house during the blackouts that affected Matanzas, Cienfuegos and Ciego de Ávila. “We do not know if they are state self-provocations,” the document says. “Nobody has attributed them.”

What the Observatory confirms, in any case, is that since 11J (July 11th) “the whole world — including supporters of the old Cuban revolutionary myth — woke up to the new reality of an oligarchic, totalitarian and mafia state that has broken the social pact of communism, in which political and civil rights were trampled upon in exchange for providing certain social and economic security.” Since then, says the OCC, “the genie came out of the lamp and they have not been able to continue reading

make it go back in.”

It has not served, the organization notes, “to approve in 30 days several decrees (which had not even been discussed for years) and to proclaim in the race that priority will be given to social attention to marginal neighborhoods (which grew for more than 62 years in full abandonment).” On the contrary, this “has reaffirmed the awareness that the power elite only makes concessions under effective public pressure, such as that of July 11.”

The NGO also states that since the 11J demonstrations “new expressions” of protest have emerged, such as calls by evangelical churches to pray in public “in favor of changes” or cacerolazos — protests featuring beating on pots and pans — which had not previously had roots in the Island.

The prayers in the streets, says the OCC, “put the repressive bodies before a difficult dilemma, because it is a terrible image to violently contain a group of residents who kneel in the street in front of their homes to ask God to make the changes the country needs possible without violence,”

The report also mentions the exile of the artist Hamlet Lavastida and the poet Katherine Bisquet to Poland, which, “has only managed to put into international circulation two artists who can now give direct testimony of their experiences under state terror.” The organization foresees that “the impact on the European Union media will not be long in coming.”

Meanwhile, from prison, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel ’Osorbo’ Castillo, says the document “challenge their jailers by declaring themselves on a hunger strike .“

The report says “the perfect storm self-induced by national politics,” continues, including the “collapse of the health system,” “uncontrolled inflation” due to the implementation of the so-called Ordering Task*, and “energy insecurity,” which translates into constant blackouts, for which they blame “the policy of not making capital investments in this sector when resources were available for it under the thaw with the United States caused by Barack Obama, and the restructuring of the payment of the foreign debt.”

That citizens have become aware of these realities, the text continues, “has dismantled the myth of the official propaganda that all the evils that afflict the citizen have an external cause and are generated by the US Government (be it Trump or Biden ) and the ’Miami Mafia’.”

Regarding the management of the pandemic, the OCC highlights the “government attempt to blame doctors for poor service in hospitals,” which did not go well for the regime, because “it provoked multiple public responses, rejecting this slander and holding accountable to the Government for its disastrous management of the pandemic.”

This coming quarter, the Observatory ventures, appears “complicated.” On October 10, the document reports, the anniversary of the beginning of the First War of Independence, a group of religious figures has called for a “national day of prayer and reflection,” and on November 20, “the birth of Father Félix Varela,” they note that peaceful marches have been called in various cities.

“The only thing that is easy to predict is that the protests will not stop and that the elite will insist on crushing them uselessly.” Hence, the organization warns, “violent variants of personal protest may arise, not incited or summoned by any sector of civil society.”

In this regard, the OCC references the five “individual protests, led by unknown persons, in which some form of violence was used” registered in September. “Although it is an old tactic of the Ministry of the Interior — promoted by Cuban advisers in Venezuela — to infiltrate peaceful protests and generate violent events to justify state violence,” the text continues, “it is not ruled out that there are citizens against whom the State’s repression leads them to the conclusion that it is preferable to throw stones or Molotov cocktails at a State building from anonymity than to stand up in a non-violent protest that is condemned in advance to be violently repressed by military and paramilitary groups of the State.”

“The ultimate responsibility for the paths chosen by the resistance to oppression rests in the hands of the oppressors, not the oppressed,” asserts the NGO. The citizen actions called in October and November “have been announced publicly and in advance, sufficient for the authorities to hold the conveners responsible “if the State again opts to violate its own Constitution and exhorts its military and paramilitary bodies to another day of violence and repression against peaceful citizens.”

This time, The OCC warns, “the world is watching.”

*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 other measures throughout the economy.

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Pitcher Bryan Chi Becomes the Ninth Cuban Player to Escape in Mexico

Player Bryan Chi (top left) is the ninth Cuban athlete to escape in Mexico. (Collage)

14ymedio, Havana, 2 October 2021 — With the escape this Saturday of Bryan Chi, 22, and Miguel Antonio González, 21, there are a total of nine players who have escaped from the Cuba team in Hermosillo, Mexico. With these ’desertions’, there are only 15 athletes left in the delegation of the Island participating in the U-23 World Baseball Championship, in the state of Sonora.

Chi left the national team hours before the bronze match against Colombia, sports reporter Francys Romero explained on his Facebook account. “Eight days of unprecedented exodus in the history of Cuban baseball emigration,” added the Miami-based expert.

For his part, González’s departure “occurred between 4:00 pm and 5:00 pm (Mexico time), according to three sources close to the situation,” Romero explained.

González, born in the province of Granma, was the captain of the Cuban team in the 2017 U-18 World Cup that was played in Canada. “He came from hitting .218 / .417 / .439, in 107 at-bats with the Alazanes de Granma in the last 60 National Series,” Romero explained continue reading

in his text.

“There could be more flights in the next few hours, taking into account the proximity of the return to the island,” the journalist warned.

Before Chi and González, pitchers Yeinel Zayas, Luis Dennys Morales, Uber Mejías, Dariel Fernández, as well as catcher Loidel Rodríguez, outfielder Reinaldo Lazaga and infielder Diasmany Palacios had fled.

Lazaga, Fernández and Palacios fled the same day and with them “the record for the most dropouts in a Cuban baseball delegation was broken,” Romero said at the time. The most numerous had been in Mexico itself, in 1996, when five players who participated in the Copa de Clubes Campeones escaped.

Team manager Eriel Sánchez downplayed the flights of players. “There is no situation. There is no problem at all,” he said. “There is a good team, a leadership group and a complete delegation that we are going to be in position for the results,” he said in statements to Cuban television on September 26.

Questioned about some absences in the delegation, Sánchez said before the Cuban baseball team traveled to Mexico, in order to be a player worthy of representing the island at an international level, not only was it enough to play well, but the player had to “be a patriot.”

The island’s sports authorities have insisted on holding the United States responsible for the athlete’s abandonment. Last Saturday, the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (Inder) blamed the blocking the agreement between the Cuban Baseball Federation and Major League Baseball, for stimulating “the trafficking of athletes in defense of political interests.”

On its social networks, Inder insisted that the players’ walking-off “confirms the cynicism with which the Trump Administration annulled the agreement,” which also created a “cruel disadvantage that prevents the natural flow to the circuits of that organization.”

Cuban television commentator Pavel Otero said that the Cuban baseball team “is facing one of the most hostile scenarios in the history of our sports movement.”

“Do not doubt that those unscrupulous traffickers of people, at the service of the enemies of the Revolution, will continue,” says Otero after announcing the news of the escape of the first athletes.

The streak of Cuban athletes leaving in recent months, including those of the Judo competitors Ayumi Leyva and Nahomys Acosta, who left the island’s delegation last month during a stopover in Madrid, Spain, has damaged the image of Inde .

At the end of June, the athlete Raudelis Guerra also left the basketball delegation in Spain, on the way to the qualifying tournament for the World Cup, which took place in El Salvador. Guerra escaped from the entourage at the Madrid-Barajas Airport itself, where part of the national team made a stopover to continue on its way to the Central American country.

Almost a month earlier, there were other cases of desertions of athletes and collaborators who were part of the Cuban delegation at the Baseball Pre-Olympic in Florida. Second baseman César Prieto, pitchers Lázaro Blanco and Andy Rodríguez, and Jorge Sile Figueroa, team psychologist, left the delegation.

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