14ymedio

More than Fifteen Days Sleeping in Line to Buy a Refrigerator in Santiago de Cuba

The measure was announced in July, when the province began seeing more than 300 Covid cases a day, as reports from the Ministry of Public Health indicated. (El Chago-Santiago de Cuba / Facebook)

14ymedio, Santiago de Cuba, August 11, 2021 — Measures adopted in Santiago de Cuba to reduce capacity in foreign currency stores have only resulted more lines and more coleros.” The provincial government ordered stores to limit the number of people allowed inside to fifty a day during the hours of 8 am to 3 pm. Shoppers are allowed in after presenting an ID card. But every law has its loophole.

“The coleros* notice someone wanting to enter the store. You arrive at the time they are collecting ID cards and that’s it. Then you have to wait several days until it’s your turn. A friend of mine spent more than fifteen days waiting to buy a refrigerator,” explains Norma.

The Santiago resident recently got married and is trying to buy some home appliances. She has discovered, however, that this is the only way to get them other than “dying at the hands of resellers.”

The measures, which were adopted to discourage crowds from forming, took effect in early July, when Covid transmission was rising in Santiago de Cuba. They have also created new business opportunities.

Yamilé, a friend of Norma who has also been trying to shop at hard currency stores recently, claims the cost of buying someone’s place in line has risen from 200 pesos to 500 pesos. “When I got to the Cubalse store, the wait was more than twenty-one days. People were sleeping outside so they wouldn’t lose their place in line. It reminded me of the waiting list for trains during the Special Period.”

The ordeal of waiting your turn is continue reading

just one of a series of problems. Once you’ve paid for a spot, there is no guarantee you’ll be able to get inside to make a purchase. “You have to anticipate there might be blackouts. You could get up early, decide to buy a spot, then — as it happened to me — the power goes out just as you’re about to enter the store. When it comes back on hours later, the whole system has shut down,” relates Yamilé. “It is torture, an ordeal, arrogance you have to put up with.”

Although hard currency stores (known locally as MLCs) bill themselves as the only places to purchase the full range of home appliances, supply shortages are also affecting these stores, forcing many Cubans to turn to the informal market. “What little they have here goes to the street vendor,” a young man reports.

“They advertise on Facebook and Telegram, and provide home delivery, which is included in the purchase price. They give you all the documentation, such as the ownership certificate in the name of the person who bought the equipment and a receipt from the MLC.”

On August 6, the El Chago-Santiago de Cuba Facebook page, which is run by independent journalists, denounced what it described as a smuggling network operating in retail establishments which officials find “difficult to see and dismantle.”

Comments on the page mention a lucrative business that has sprung up involving several people and related to the sale of household appliances that are marketed in MLC stores. Another user posted photos of washing machines that had come from the La Violeta store in the city center.

According to a woman identified as Teresa Cobos, employees began removing washing machines from the sales floor after only ten people had been allowed into the store. “Who were the others for?” she asks. “Doesn’t the province have police who can investigate what laws are being broken and press charges. Or could it be they are ignoring it because someone at the top is benefitting economically?”

A month after mass protests on July 11, city officials reactivated “worker guards” to keep watch over places of employment and MLC stores.

The official press did not indicate if guard duty was voluntary but made clear that its objective was to “respond to any destabilizing attempt,” and to any action that disturbed national calm or that tried to “seize by right of conquest that which belongs to the revolutionary people.”

According to official figures, the number of hard currency stores in the province has grown to thirty since the government instituted the new retail model in October 2019. Limited supplies, very long lines and a collateral business of resellers characterize these stores, which have garnered widespread criticism throughout the country. They are the only ones, however, that still have more than a dozen products on their shelves.

*Translator’s note: A colero is someone who waits in line for others. See “Coleros are winning the propaganda battle against the Cuban regime.”

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Cuba Activists Demand ‘Justice’ for the 11 July Detainees and ‘Transparency’ in Their Criminal Proceedings

So far, the Cuban government has not recognized official figures of detainees, injuries or deaths. (Marcos Evora)

14ymedio, Havana, 12 August 2021 — A letter signed by Cuban activists, journalists, intellectuals, and artists asks the Government of the Island for information on more than 800 people who were detained, and others who remain missing, after the protests of July 11.

The signatories also demand justice and transparency in the legal processes that have been carried out against the protesters.

This initiative was published on the Justicia11J Facebook page and on the Change platform, demanding the approval of the Decree Law on the right to assembly and demonstration. Both norms are provided for in the legislative schedule approved by the National Assembly of People’s Power for the year 2021. The letter specifies that these regulations must be drafted together “with a framework that regulates and does not penalize this right, in accordance with the letters and treaties of which the Cuban State is a signatory.” continue reading

The text asks the authorities to repeal Articles 208 and 209 of Law No. 62 of the Penal Code, which restricts the rights of free association and demonstration. Similarly, it asks for a law to claim constitutional rights before the courts.

They also ask for an Amnesty law for political prisoners, a national reconciliation commission and a public apology from President Miguel Díaz-Canel for promoting the use of force and repression against citizens.

Among the signatories of the letter is the director of the Cubalex Legal Information Center Laritza Diversent, who has provided legal advice to opponents and political prisoners and in this particular case to the families of detainees seeking justice.

Cuban artist Salomé García Bacallao, journalists Ivette Leyva Martínez, Luz Escobar, Cynthia de la Cantera, Darcy Borrero Batista and María Matienzo, art historian and activist of the San Isidro Movement (MSI) Anamely Ramos, as well as researchers Eilyn Lombard Cabrera and Camila Rodríguez, complete the initial list of rubrics to which more than 700 names have already been added.

The July 11 protests began in San Antonio de los Baños, Artemisa province. After learning about this demonstration through videos that circulated like wildfire on social networks, the streets of Cuba became a hive of people, and protests were added in Matanzas, Camagüey, Santiago de Cuba, Cienfuegos and Havana. Shouts of “Cuba Libre,” “Patria y Vida” (Homeland and Life) and “Down with the Dictatorship” echoed through the most important streets of the country.

So far, the Cuban government has not recognized official figures of detainees, injuries or deaths. It has only admitted the death of one person, Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, 36, a resident of the Arroyo Naranjo municipality of Havana.

Along with hundreds of anonymous citizens who came out on July 11 are several of the main figures of the Cuban dissidence and they also ended up in detention. Among them, the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, leader of the MSI; Félix Navarro, from the Democratic Action Unity Roundtable; and José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba.

Ferrer’s wife, Nelva Ortega Tamayo, from the city of Santiago de Cuba, told 14ymedio that she has gone several times to the Versailles State Security investigation center to speak with the opponent, but she has not been able to communicate with him a single time, only once in the last month.

“As long as we do not see him and they don’t give him the right to a phone call, we report him as kidnapped and missing,” said Ortega Tamayo.

According to the list made by several volunteers under the coordination of Cubalex, of the more than 800 detainees, 377 remain in jail, 10 of them in a state of enforced disappearance.

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Cuba’s Looting of Venezuela Continues, From Oil to Beans

In Havana, two one-kilogram packages of mung beans are distributed in the basic ration basket along with other products. (Collage)

14ymedio, Havana, 10 August 2021 — The Government of Nicolás Maduro benefits Cuba, in addition to the oil sent, with shipments of mung beans, rice and soup; this is demonstrated by the Venezuelan products that are distributed in the basic ration basket on the island and that the official media reports are a part of the donation of 240 tons made by “friendly nations.”

The mung beans that are being distributed are part of what Maduro acquires in Venezuela from local producers and are included in the boxes with products from the Local Supply and Production Committee (Clap), which began to be delivered to Venezuelans in 2016 and which have been questioned as a means of winning voters.

“The Clap box is prioritizing beans because they are the grains that are obtained here, since lentils come from cold and high climates and are mostly imported from Argentina and China,” said Ramón Elías Bolotín, director of Legumes and Oilseeds of the Confederation from Agricultural Producers of Venezuela (Fedeagro), speaking to Chronicle One.

But in Venezuela, mung beans are not abundant. The Venezuelan Society of Agricultural Engineers (Sviaa) recorded last year a production of 48.61% of the 72,000 hectares available for legumes, which would barely cover continue reading

12.95% of the needed supply.

Meanwhile, in Havana, two one-kilogram packages of mung beans are distributed as a part of the basic ration basket, packed by the La Dulce Carmelita company in Barquisimeto, in the Venezuelan state of Lara.

In Santiago de Cuba, as in the capital, there are two kilograms of the same grain, but these packages were prepared by the company La Tierra Bendecida, which is located in the Venezuelan state of Portuguesa. The consumption of mung beans is not common among Santiago residents, which has raised doubts about how to prepare them and what they taste like.

“They say it tastes very similar to lentil; many WhatsApp and Telegram groups are sending recipes to prepare them,” says a housewife. “You have to bring them to a boil and change the water twice and finally put them in the pressure cooker with the seasonings.”

In a country where beans are traditionally used to make stew, it is still a mystery how to process this grain. Right now, housewives are warning not to give them too much time on the stove because “they fall apart and do not taste like anything.” However, the precise recipe remains to be defined.

Mi Ángel is the Venezuelan brand of mung beans which the Cuban Government sent to Ciego de Ávila. The beans have been widely criticized in Venezuela for their poor quality. In 2020, a columnist for the newscast Aporrea claimed that this product became “pig food.”

“Having no other option to eat, we are forced to waste minutes and minutes separating a few grains from so much rubbish, dirt, insects … we have even been forced to wash them not only five or ten times, but up to twenty times and more,” Brígido Daniel Torrealba complained. “The irony is that front and center on the package, it says in large type: ’Selected grains’.”

Something similar happened to several people from Santiago who complained through the El Chago-Santiago de Cuba page about the poor quality of beans. In some shared photos “it is observed inside the packages and outside of them, what they identify as earth and a white fungus,” describes the publication.

Another looting, perhaps the main one, is the shipment of oil from Venezuela to Cuba, an “agreement” that is almost 22 years old and remains in force despite the economic crisis in which that South American country finds itself and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. In July alone, Venezuela sent a total of 713,097 barrels to the island.

The shipment of tankers with oil from Venezuela is consistent with the bilateral agreement since Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999. The supply of crude oil was given, first, in exchange for the provision of Cuban medical services, and was expanded to cover services in numerous sectors of the economy, such as mining, sports and electricity.

The benefits that Cuba receives from Venezuela have also been evidenced by the former Venezuelan ambassador to the United States, Carlos Vecchio, who denounced in 2020 the shipment of some 348 million dollars to Cuba in oil while 9.3 million Venezuelans live in severe and moderate food insecurity.

The diplomat said that the Nicolás Maduro regime sent 33 tanker ships to the island, loaded with just over 13 million barrels of “the best Venezuelan light crude, Merey.”

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Cuban Opposition Calls for a National Strike on August 13

Protesters on July 11 in front of the Cuban Capitol, in Havana. (EFE / Ernesto Mastrascusa)

14ymedio, Havana, August 12, 2021 — Cuban activists, inside and outside the island, encouraged by the success of the July 11 demonstrations and the apparent weakness of the regime, faced with its worst crisis since 1959, have announced a national strike this August 13th. This decision does not attract unanimity within the opposition, and not just because it coincides with the 95th birthday of Fidel Castro.

On the one hand, this is the call launched through the Twitter account identified with the name of the well-known philosopher and political scientist Gene Sharp (@ GeneSharp11J), who posted on August 10: “National strike from August 13 until we achieve what we want.” On the other, the call from Miami from the coordinator of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, Orlando Gutiérrez Boronat.

The first call includes a group of demands such as the requirement for the Government to “release without charge the participants in the #11J protests” when thousands of Cubans took to the streets of various cities in the country and shouted “freedom”, “homeland and life” and “down with communism.”

It also demands “that [the government] stop the media campaign to discredit independent creative artists, political, cultural, and civic activists” and end “the repression of those who disagree.” Similarly, it asks for continue reading

an update to the Criminal Procedure Law “to provide those accused with greater guarantees than currently exist.”

Another of the demands of this call is to develop “a plan to support the Cuban private sector that takes into account its needs, its potential, and the current needs of the country as determined in a previous meeting.”

That “the media of the independent press be legalized” and “the right of association be respected and not coerced” are other demands, which conclude with a call for “a binding plebiscite as soon as possible through which the people choose whether they want the country to be run by the Communist Party or not.”

Saily González Velázquez, the young founder and director of the first co-working space for entrepreneurs in Cuba, shared the initiative on her social media networks with the tags: #QuedateEnCasa #SOSCuba #SOSCubaLibreDelComunismo.

In conversation with 14ymedio, González commented that the idea seems “very good” but that so far it “has not had the reach that it needs for it to really happen.”

“I don’t think Twitter is the social network where most of the Cuban people are, rather it is Facebook, where it has been shared in some buying and selling groups, but it hasn’t been enough,” she laments.

She also explains that “due to people’s fear of being judged guilty of incitement to commit a crime,” the call has been shared “from new profiles with few followers and little engagement,” which in her opinion “limits its scope.”

Nevertheless, she says she and her team are going to strike. “I believe that even if it doesn’t come off, at least it would remain as a precedent for future calls.”

For his part, Gutiérrez Boronat, coordinator of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, a platform that brings together opposition organizations in Cuba and outside Cuba, declared this Wednesday from Miami that July 11 was “a national rebellion that shows the world the deep desire that the Cuban people have to live in a state of law.”

The activist expressed his conviction of the need to move to a “new stage of civic struggle” that ends with a “national strike” and the organization of “protests,” and included in his appeal phrases such as “homeland and life,” “we want freedom and the end of communism” and “we want the dictatorship to fall.” Those goals, he asserts, are “the center of our struggle.”

In his opinion, the exile at this time is “more united than ever” and also identified the “national strike” with a “state of conscience” that means “not cooperating” with the Government of the Island.

The dissident and academic Manuel Cuesta Morúa, a member of the Unity Roundtable for Democratic Action (MUAD), considers that “strike announced strike aborted,” especially if they take place “in totalitarian societies like ours.” In his opinion, when “there is no civic space for civil society” this type of call has to occur as happened on July 11, and that “since that date the bet should be on spontaneity and authenticity based on the awareness of people.”

And he concludes: “I don’t believe that a national strike announced with great fanfare on social media will occur.”

The activist and journalist Boris González Arenas views the current scenario with a little more optimism: “We’re on the crest of a wave” and it doesn’t matter where you want to see the beginning, whether on January 2019, when Díaz-Canel “left running from Regla” after a tornado where people rebuked him saying he was a fraud, or on November 26 or April 4, “now we are on a peak and, as always, still more initiatives and more forces are coming.”

“Though I don’t really know where this thing for August 13 is coming from,” he acknowledged, “for me it’s clear that it’s part of that huge wave, and I applaud all these initiatives.”

But the call comes at a time when the workday in state centers is practically paralyzed, with classes suspended for several months in schools, and a good part of the bureaucratic procedures suspended as a result of Covid-19, a situation that will make it difficult to measure the results of this strike.

Translated by Tomás A.

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Cuban Tobacco Growers Denounce State ‘Manipulation’ of Their Prices

Cuba authorities have notified producers that they can charge for the product at the current price, without committing in any way to making a later retroactive payment. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, August 10, 2021 — The tobacco farmers of San Juan y Martínez have run out of patience. With the product picked and without news of the announced price increase, Pinar del Río farmers have sent a letter to the country’s top leaders denouncing a possible manipulation of the information provided to them in order to keep them calm and prevent them from scrapping the planned harvest.

The producers, who supply the State with threaded black tobacco and shade-grown tobacco, to be rolled into cigars and exported, explain that the rise in prices that occurred at the beginning of the year with the Ordering Task* affected the entire sector. As they have complained on numerous occasions, January 1, 2021 arrived without a price having been provided, and it was decreed without having the cost sheet (the model where the necessary data is collected to calculate the planned unit cost of a product or the provision of a service).

Production prices skyrocketed throughout the supply chain: fuel went from 2 to 14 pesos, motor oil from 3 to 55 pesos, machinery tripled in cost and, of course, the wages of hired workers increased. But tobacco only doubled, from 2,560 pesos to 5,641.

The growers explain that, in the midst of this scenario, delays in bank loans during the first quarter of the year ended up sinking them, because, in the best case, most of them had to go into debt or continue reading

sell assets in order to push on.

“We took all these economic measures in order to be able to continue the harvest — despite the fact that it was easy to see the low profitability between costs and the established price — because we were already in the middle of a process that is our reason for being, and our livelihood as farmers,” they say.

But their effort was not rewarded. Although they submitted their complaints described above, the officials of the Saiz Brothers Collection and Benefit Company, the leaders of the Agriculture of San Juan y Martínez and the cooperative assemblies assured them that the State was going to create a new cost sheet to set another price more in line with the reality of the country. Producers relied on this and continued to work amid the growing difficulties.

Tobacco harvested in San Juan y Martínez this year, when it was still not known what price the State would pay for it. (Facebook)

When, in February, the increase in some stockpile prices was announced “in order to increase production,” according to the authorities at the time, the tobacco growers were asked to be patient and wait until May due to “the complexity of the sector.”

“It was reported in various places that a new cost sheet and price proposal have been prepared by the state company since June, and that this was already in the hands of the ministries that are responsible for preparing and approving the resolution,” the producers wrote in their open letter to Miguel Díaz-Canel and the Minister of Finance and Prices, Meisi Bolaños Weiss.

But August has arrived and, more than a half-year having passed, patience has reached the limit, since the new prices have not only not arrived but the authorities have notified the producers that they can charge the product at the current price, without committing themselves in any way to making a later retroactive payment.

“This creates great uncertainty and distrust among the farmers as to whether the promised price increase is a serious commitment for this campaign or was a manipulative stratagem by the institutional framework that sought to avoid a decrease in production without taking into account the damages that it would cause to the producers and their families,” they charge.

The farmers categorically reject being paid at the current price and feel they are victims of a manipulation designed to make them work and produce normally, incentivized by a profit that is now not going to be realized.

“The State has an ethical, economic, and legal obligation to the producers, and to its own process of economic reorganization, to legislate a new pricing law that responds to the commitment assumed by the state company that represents it before the farmers,” they assert.

The signers demand that at least the two final conditions they set are met. First, an official statement about their case and situation; and second, the promulgation of the promised new law on tobacco prices, which will take effect with the payments to producers for the 2020-2021 campaign.

Last May, a producer from Pinar del Río told 14ymedio about their precarious situation. In his opinion, the Ordering Task left them “to face the peak of the campaign with credit based on a previous price deficient by 70%,” which “left people without money.”

The signers of the letter include several members of the Pérez family, who for at least three generations have grown tobacco on the La Isleña farm, located in San Juan y Martínez. The municipality is internationally known as the mecca of tobacco in Cuba for the quality of its product, which in the 1950s employed more than 5% of the island’s working population.

One of the most valued cigars in the world is produced in the Hoyo de Monterrey area, although since the 1960s the decline of the industry has been slow but unstoppable. In 2020, the last year with reported results, the Spanish-Cuban company Habanos earned 507 million dollars, 4% less than in 2019.

*Translator’s note: The so-called ’Ordering Task” — Tarea ordenamiento — 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, including measures relating to agriculture as discussed in this article.

Translated by Tomás A.

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Cuba’s Provincial Press Reports on the Drama in Ciego de Avila Hospitals

For some time, healthcare workers in Ciego de Avila have not been able to fully attend to the needs of their patients. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 11 August 2021 — In Ciego de Ávila they know what is happening and the local press no longer holds back on reporting it. “I knew we lost my cousin due to problems with oxygen therapy. And it wasn’t just hime,” reports a family member in Morón whose relative died of Covid-19, speaking to the local press Invasor.

While the printed edition of the national State newspaper Granma opens with a display to commemorate — two days in advance — the anniversary of the birth of Fidel Castro and continues to recount the worsening of the pandemic in Florida on page 2, the provincial newspaper offers a lesson in journalism to the propaganda organ of the Communist Party of Cuba, recounting the drama within the walls of the area’s hospitals.

The problem with oxygen is becoming worrisome. According to 14ymedio sources, in Ciego de Ávila’s Antonio Luaces Iraola Hospital there is a shortage, one of the most necessary treatments for patients with pneumonia caused by Covid-19. As a result, on Tuesday night the hospital began transferring patients to another facility. The problem? The referral occurs to Morón, where according to the official press itself, the same problem exists, with its worrying consequences.

In the Invasor report, entitled Morón Hospital, Trojan Horse, an engineer explains that the problem is one of pressure. “The medical gas system of a hospital is not built with a pandemic in mind in which one in five patients may need ventilation. There is a limit on oxygen continue reading

pressure (4 bars) for mechanical ventilators to work, and the large number of people linked in by the non-invasive route make the pressure drop (to 3 bars) every three hours below this limit, so patients go into apnea and it’s an emergency,” he says.

The system isn’t working. It has reached a point where daily oxygen consumption is 2,220 liters, due to leaks or a shortage of pressure gauges, an unaffordable waste when life is at stake. Repairs and optimization of the systems is a constant now, since the hospital estimates that the amount that it really needs for the patients it has is 1,500 liters per day.

The article does not skimp when reciting the litany of problems that accumulate in the Morón hospital. “Six hours of waiting for an X-ray, two days without changing a sheet, three buses of sick people that nobody wanted somewhere else, 48 hour medical shifts with no relief, two hours asking for them to give you Captopril (an ACE inhibitor for high blood pressure), a little boy who they even assigned you to bathe if necessary, a feeling of suffocation more common than it should be, a nurse searching the entire hospital for a cannula” to place an IV. The complaints that run through social networks now appear in black-and-white in an official newspaper.

Ciego de Ávila, yesterday, once again logged 1,000 infections and the figure has become a constant for days. The 14-day incidence rate in the province is the highest on the island, with 3,152.5 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. To care for this volume, it has been necessary to mobilize new beds in all the hospitals in the province, 185 alone in the Antonio Luaces Iraola hospital, and to reorganize spaces to accommodate those in isolation and mildly ill patients.

In addition, medical supplies are arriving from abroad, but also from other Cuban provinces, which send everything from thousands of sheets to X-ray or CT machines. And although help is not lacking, neither are those who take advantage of the situation to steal medicines or even to sell the beds.

The newspaper Invasor reports that a rumor is running through the province according to which entering Morón may “cost” 3,000 pesos and, although it has not been able to verify it, it warns of a possible basis in reality: “For some reason (…) Rafaela García, Head of Medical Records and Statistics, has had to get stronger and toughen the oversight on the admissions,” they say.

In the midst of the difficulties, health professionals also face non-compliance with the protocols within the hospital, both by workers and relatives of the sick, who many times, they claim, circulate needlessly through the facilities, or remove their masks.

It is common for the local authorities to deny the seriousness of the situation, but the fact that the local press contrasts it with the testimonies of people affected by reality is a novelty in a provincial press, which slowly awakens to the shock of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Granma dedicated half a page 5 this Wednesday to reviewing the bureaucratic meeting of the previous day in which the extreme situation of Cienfuegos province was analyzed, having already reached the incidence level of Ciego de Ávila in just 14 days, with 3,152.2 cases per 100,000 inhabitants but with a difference. While Ciego de Ávila has a strong and active tourism sector that has contributed to the seriousness of the health situation, Cienfuegos is a quieter area.

“When presiding over a meeting aimed at evaluating the scenario and proposing strategies to reverse it, Manuel Marrero Cruz of the Party’s Political Bureau and Prime Minister of the Republic, highlighted the main causes of the complicated situation: non-compliance with the provisions, accumulation of subjective problems and committing errors and indiscipline,” recites the official newspaper. A speech that has gone down badly with healthcare workers, who perceive a willingness on the part of the Government to divert responsibility for the disaster to them.

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Santiago Lorenzo Hernandez Caceres, Another High Ranking Military, Dies in Cuba

In 1957, Hernández Cáceres was part of the 26th of July Movement. (Granma)

14ymedio, Havana, 11 August 2021 — Reserve Colonel Santiago Lorenzo Hernández Cáceres died this Wednesday in Havana at the age of 82. His death marks the seventh high-ranking military official that dies in Cuba in less than a month. The cause of death has not been released in in any of the cases.

According to Granma (the Communist Party newspaper) Hernández was a founding member of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC). Born in the municipality of San Juan y Martínez, in Pinar del Río province, in a family of modest farmers, and “from a very young age he carried out agricultural work.”

In 1957, he joined the “26th of July Movement,” where he successfully “carried out several missions of clandestine actions and sabotages,” noted the official newspaper.

While in the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), he worked with the Communist Youth Union (UJC) and the PCC, in addition to directing the political sections of continue reading

the Central and Western armies and being the political director for the military troops that Cuba sent to Angola and Ethiopia.

The passing of Hernández Cáceres comes after the deaths in July of five generals who were part of the Cuban military leadership: Agustín Peña, Marcelo Verdecia Perdomo, Rubén Martínez Puente, Manuel Eduardo Lastres Pacheco and Armando Choy Rodríguez, in addition to Commander Gilberto Antonio Cardero Sanchez.

Martínez Puente died at the age of 79 and is thought to be the one who transmitted Raúl Castro’s order to fire the missiles from Cuban Air Force Mig fighters, to shoot down the Brothers To The Rescue planes in 1996, where four American civilians were murdered. The attack occurred over international waters, although the Cuban Government justified the shooting down of the small planes by claiming that the ships had entered the island’s airspace.

Verdecia Perdomo was Fidel Castro’s bodyguard in the Sierra Maestra, and Peña was the head of the Eastern Army of Cuba. Choy Rodríguez was promoted to commander in 1962, when he was head of the anti-missiles troops, Reserve Brigadier General Lastres Pacheco joined Fidel Castro’s guerrillas in 1957.

Translated by: Mailyn Salabarria

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Military Continues to Guard the Streets of Cuba One Month after 11 July

Two “red berets” on guard outside the Plaza Comercial Carlos III, in Centro Habana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 11 August 2021 — One month after the protests of July 11 (11J), the Police and the military continue to guard the streets of Cuba. In Havana they are especially concentrated in areas where there are often crowds or long lines.

Although the usual movement of people in the streets on any given day continues, 14ymedio also confirmed a large number of uniformed soldiers outside the Plaza Commercial Carlos III in Central Havana.

The presence of the “red berets” is notable, as they are known within the Armed Forces as “prevention troops,” who stand guard in groups of two and even four soldiers. Above all, they are seen in the portals and the surroundings of the capital’s markets, whose display windows facing the outside are walled up with wooden planks.

“Something strange is happening, in the stores of the Latin American Stadium and that of Aranguren and Panchito Gómez, I have not seen lines of people waiting to enter. They are not selling anything. Is it a coincidence because today is the 11th and they do not want riots in the streets?” asked a Havana resident who continue reading

went out this Wednesday morning to buy food.

The “red berets” guard in groups made up of two and up to four soldiers. (14ymedio)

This newspaper was able to verify that the scene was repeated in stores such as Trimagen, on Ayestarán Street. In that establishment they only sold one bottle of soda per person and two packages of ‘Pellys’ snacks.

Thousands of Cubans took to the streets on Sunday, July 11 (11J) to protest against the Government, shouting for freedom on a historic day. In response, president Miguel Díaz-Canel went on TV to make a call for people to go out into the streets to confront the protesters and defend the Revolution.

Central Havana was an area where thousands of protesters concentrated that Sunday, and from several streets tried to reach the Capitol building without success, and others succeeded, although dozens of them were repressed by police and State Security agents along the way.

The demonstrations took place with the country mired in a serious economic and health crisis, with the pandemic out of control and a severe shortage of food, medicine and other basic products, in addition to long power cuts.

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Cuba Increases Police Raids to Confiscate Satellite Dishes

Satellite dishes have always been hunted, but in recent years the raids to detect them had decreased in Havana. (DirecTV)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 10August 2021 — The illegal satellite dishes, used by Cubans to access television from Florida, are once again the target of censorship to prevent the dissemination of images of the protests of July 11 on the island. Although they have always been persecuted, in recent years the raids to detect them had decreased significantly in Havana.

“We have been without service for days,” Juvenal, a retiree living in Cayo Hueso, Centro Habana tells 14ymedio. Juvenal had been enjoying, for more than ten years, service through a cable hidden in supposed water pipes that reached his home.” This neighborhood is all wired, this is a satellite dish area and there are families here who only watch those channels.”

Lately, police operations to detect these devices have become more frequent, to the point that in large areas of the city the owners of satellite dishes have preferred to suspend the service while waiting for better times. “They cut it off until things settle down,” Juvenal explains.

Among the crowded streets and densely populated cuarterías of Centro Habana, these antennas abound, one of the first technological elements, at the end of the nineties, which caused a change in the consumption of audiovisual content on the Island. This was followed by the “weekly packet,” USB memories and, for almost three years now, internet connections from mobile phones.

After more than two decades of the reign of clandestine satellite dishes and continue reading

ten years with the weekly packet centralizing content, many Cubans now prefer to take control of what they want to see and make their own programming list, but DirecTV devices, with their corresponding dish to capture the television signal, continue to dominate in the poorest neighborhoods.

“Here there are people who cannot afford a data package to surf the internet or to buy the packet every week, but in almost every house you see the antenna because those who do not pay directly have someone who gives them an extension so they can watch it,” explains Mary, a resident near the church of Carmen, on Infanta street at the corner of Neptuno.

“It has always been something that has to be done in secret but for some time they have not carried out police raids,” explains this woman from Havana. “Since I live on a rooftop, as soon as we saw the police patrols arrive, we cut the cables and pulled them down so they wouldn’t know which house they were connected to.”

The owners of the satellite dishes are the central node, and they decide which programs are seen at what time. From a decoder device, a tangle of cables reaches other homes that pay a monthly fee that currently does not exceed 300 pesos for 24 hours of continuous transmissions. “I have at least two cables from two different sources, because with one I see some channels and with another the others,” explains Mary.

“Here what is watched the most are the Miami programs of América TeVé, also Telemundo, CNN in Español and others that offer series, documentaries and soap operas,” the woman points out. “I haven’t changed to Cuban television channels for years because I’m used to seeing these and the ones from here bore me.”

“The owner of the antenna told us that we were going to be without the service for several days because the police sniffing around here and she decided not to risk it and uninstall hers until the operations are over,” she said. “They said they don’t want people to see the images of the protests.”

In Cayo Hueso there are also technical problems “because the signal is outside the neighborhood, and accessibility to the equipment has been reduced” and “you have to be inventive,” one of the young people who has been in the business of parabolic antennas or as he says, “up on the rooftops,” for 16 years, told this newspaper.

Through the news programs of América TeVé, Univisión, Telemundo and other US channels that extensively cover the Cuban issue, many Cubans have accessed the videos with the demonstrations and police repression, for example. This way they have also learned of the international condemnation of official violence and of the numerous arrests.

For the owner of one of these antennas that provides service to more than thirty families in the neighborhood of Los Sitio, the relationship between the operations to dismantle these devices and the protests of July 11 is evident. “They want to keep people away from that version of popular protest so that they can tell them what they want on their newscast,” he explains to this newspaper, speaking anonymously.

The small businessman has several antennas with their decoder boxes placed in different houses and a brother sends him the activation cards for the DirecTV service from Miami. With that and yards of cables, he distributes the signal across the rooftops, from one balcony to another, and even with the ingenious trick of passing them through false water pipes.

“A few months ago I had a client who complained when I put on a lot of news, because they preferred to watch reality shows or soap operas, but since the protests happened, people called for more news and current commentary,” says the business owner.

“In this neighborhood you could almost walk down the street and connect the phrases of the Miami programs as you listened to them from the windows or the doors,” he says. “It was a matter of time for the police to jump, because people were finding out a lot and that does not suit them.” However, he believes that “this will happen because they can no longer control it nor can they continue to irritate people even more.”

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Havana Auxiliary Bishop Alfredo Petit Vergel, Dies at 85

In 2005, Petit denounced that due to the impossibility of building new churches on the island, Catholics had been forced to create so-called ‘houses of prayer.’ (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 8 August 2021 — The auxiliary bishop of Havana, Alfredo Petit Vergel, died this Saturday in the Cuban capital, at the age of 85, according to a note released by the San Julián De Los Güines parish.

Born on July 24, 1936 in Havana, Petit studied at the College of the Brothers of the Christian Schools until entering the seminary El Buen Pastor, where he completed studies in Humanities and Philosophy, details the text published on the Parish Facebook website.

“The Pío Latinoamericano College in Rome welcomed him until he graduated with a Bachelor of Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, after which he received priestly ordination on December 23, 1961.” Back in Cuba, he served as parish priest of the Havana Cathedral and later of the El Salvador del Mundo parish in Havana’s Cerro neighborhood.

On November 15, 1991, Pope John Paul II appointed Petit bishop of San Cristóbal de La Habana, just at a time when the economic crisis after the fall of the socialist bloc worsened continue reading

on the island. Beginning that year, the number of Cubans who approached the churches also grew after decades of fierce atheism.
In addition, Petit attended the Nueva Gerona parish on the Isle of Youth and at the time of his death he was pastor at the San Francisco de Paula parish in La Víbora and at the Santa Teresita chapel in the Santa Amalia neighborhood, in the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo.

In 2005, during the Congregation of the Synod of Bishops held in Cuba, Petit denounced that given the difficulty and “practically the impossibility of building new churches” on the Island, Catholics had been forced “to create the so-called ’houses of prayer’ or ’mission houses’, located in the peripheral neighborhoods and in the small towns and hamlets.”

Also in an interview he lamented the obstacles that limited the actions of the Church, such as the fact that the Government “has always controlled the number of priests in the country and there have never been enough to cover pastoral needs. Another difficulty has been the difficult access to the media.”

Petit was also one of the victims of the so-called Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP), the concentration camps that existed in Cuba between 1965 and 1968, intended mainly for homosexuals but also religious people and all those rejected in the Revolutionary Armed Forces.

In June 1966 he received a summons and was transferred together with a Jehovah’s Witness and common prisoners to a camp in Camagüey. In the aftermath of his stay in the countryside, his hands had lacerations caused by forced labor, such as when he had to erect a barbed wire fence without protective gloves.

A Bible, which the military allowed him to keep, was his ally to celebrate clandestine masses at night attended by the Catholics in the concentration camp. Petit hid the consecration wine in medicine bottles and his mother took on the job of bringing him the hosts.

Petit remained in detention until 1967, when all those over 27 years of age were ordered to be removed from the UMAP camps. Other beneficiaries of this actions were Fathers Jaime Ortega and Armando Martínez. Upon his departure, Archbishop Evelio Díaz entrusted Alfredo Petit Vergel with the parish of El Salvador del Mundo in El Cerro.

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Violent Arrests and Ridiculous Sentences for Daring to Challenge the Myth of a Happy Cuba

Hundreds of Cubans were detained during the July 11 demonstrations. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Alberto Reyes, Havana, August 9, 2021 — I’m saturated. I read over and over the endless testimonies of what has happened and continues to happen in Cuba since the 11J (July 11) protests and I’m breaking down inside: people willing to arbitrarily detain, beat, torture, attack another human being with dogs, with sticks, with anything that could harm them. Violent arrests, humiliations, beatings, fabricated crimes, ridiculous sentences, intimidations, threats, many threats . . . and something in me refuses to believe that so much evil together is possible.

It’s true that this isn’t something that came out of nowhere. As the prophet Hosea said: “They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.” And much later, Saint Augustine would say: “When one flees from God, everything flees from one.”

From the beginning of this so-called “Revolution,” God was seen as the enemy — God, Christ, the Gospel, the Church, the Christians. That “pernicious superstition,” that backward, retrograde, and bourgeois mentality, that “opium of the people,” the origin of injustice and hatred, had to be uprooted.

Well then, here is the result, here is the New Man, here is the promised paradise, with its new angels adorned with red and black berets, accompanied by their dogs, and, protected both physically continue reading

and legally, walking in groups against vulnerable civilians.

This is what is built when God is banished from the heart of a people.

But I resist, I refuse to believe that the soul has been extinguished in all those people who today are repressing, humiliating, mistreating, abusing civilians who . . . I was going to say, who haven’t done anything wrong, but no. On second thought, it isn’t so.

In reality, all those people who have taken to the streets to demonstrate, to shout “freedom” and “homeland and life!” are guilty. They are deserving of the highest most cruel punishment, because they have dared to challenge the greatest of myths: the myth of a happy Cuba, the myth of a people proud of their communism, the myth of a society that considers itself by decree “the lighthouse of America,” the myth of a communism that works.

Yes, all those protesters deserve condemnation, because they have broken the showcase of Latin American communism, they have demolished the carefully constructed and cared-for image of a Cuba put forward as a social paradigm.

And we already know how the stage works: foreign leaders of all kinds and categories who from their secure capitalist situations defend tooth and nail a system in which they would never come to live; people who, in fear, shout “homeland or death!” while they receive remittances from the “enemy” country or silently await their chance to get out of this nightmare forever. Neighbors who surveil and inform as the best protection for themselves and their children while also dreaming, deep down, of a Cuba where neither they nor their children have to pretend. And a media system of press and television that lies — lies, looking you straight in your eyes — because the lie has become second nature. Yes, where we were going to build a paradise without God, we have built a swamp.

And among the demonstrators of one side or the other, those who attack, those who “carry out orders,” those who are beating, at times sadistically, their brothers.

This breaks me. But despite so much brutal and absurd violence, despite so many institutionalized lies, I want to believe that in all of them the voice of conscience has survived, that they ask themselves questions, that they realize that this is not the way, they are aware that what they are doing is wrong. I understand that they are afraid, I understand that they feel compromised, but I cannot accept so much gratuitous evil.

Maybe I’m just naive. I’ve never been a fan of John Lennon, but his words in “Imagine” keep coming to mind: “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope some day you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.”

Because despite what is happening, we do not stop being a single people, who have been thrown into fighting by those who don’t care about their people, but only about power and impunity over their own people. We are one. And you, who today lend yourself to repress your equals, have a father, mother, brothers, children . . . because you, who today defend the “conquests of the Revolution,” have dreams that you know you will never be able to achieve within this “Revolution;” because you, who today detain and beat, know that a mere slip is enough to go from persecutor to persecuted, and that in a system like this you will never be safe, neither you, nor yours.

I want to believe that we still have time for forgiveness and reconciliation. I want to believe that we can all put ourselves on the right side of history. But each one needs to seek strength in the best of his soul, and decide, once and for all, to do what is right, because it is what is right.

Translated by Tomás A.

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The Cuban Government Has Built a Trap to Attract Capital From the Diaspora

An economist wonders why investment in local development is scarcely allowed. Billboard: Achieve the maximum efficiency and quality. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Elias Amor Bravo, Valencia, August 10, 2021

Not with my money.

And of course, not now. The official Castroist press has reiterated that the Cuban communist government is now considering promoting investment on the island by residents living abroad. One more return to what is supposed to be the principle from which the nation’s economy should never have departed? Absolutely. It is not advisable to be wrong.

In reality, the fundamentals haven’t changed, because the 2019 Constitution does not alter, but maintains the socialist-communist model of economic management. In this text, the ownership of the means of production continues to be “collective” in the hands of the State, the market continues to be prohibited from allocating resources, and private enrichment is penalized.

Nothing has changed in the fundamental foundations of the system, because even expropriation and confiscation remain in the constitutional text as Government weapons to destroy private property and accumulated wealth. You have to be very careful when investing in Cuba, because the economic system is completely different from the one that exists in the rest of the world, except in North Korea.

But the government has decided to build a trap to attract continue reading

Diaspora capital. The capital that is not allowed to be generated in Cuba by the population residing on the Island, is now intended to be brought from abroad. It is no longer just a matter of attracting remittances, but that Cubans from abroad, unlike their compatriots who are prohibited from doing so, can participate privately in the processes of socio-economic development in the nation. It’s what was missing.

All the countries of the world that have residents abroad, organize policies to attract their capital, technology, experience, and relationships. Spain did it in the 1960s, and Mexico, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic do it today, and they are successful at it because they know what to do. Nationals of one country who emigrate to another to work and carve out a future do so always thinking of a return, and for this, part of their earnings are used to accumulate capital, a business, or an activity that allows them that return.

Cubans haven’t been able to act in this way since 1959. Leaving the country in search of a better life and freedom brought with it the conversion into “worms” — enemies of the regime who had to be crushed or forgotten. Under such conditions, who is the government going to ask for money, and what for? I don’t think this policy is going to be successful, but if it is, some of the features it will have, as announced, are worth listening to.

Apparently, the regime intends that the policy of attracting capital from Cubans abroad only applies to those priorities established by the government’s agenda. In other words, a Cuban resident in Spain or France will not be able to invest freely in what he wants or considers pertinent, but in what the regime authorizes beforehand. But of course only after going through a long and complex bureaucratic process whose end God only knows.

Ernesto Soberón, who is behind this whole new “experiment,” has made sure to make this point very clear, so that no one is misled, and this should be enough to close the portfolio and forget about it. Soberón knows how investment decisions are made in a free economy, so his initiative to direct capital from abroad to only certain activities has very little to do with economic rationality. Another failure is looming on the government ledger. Most likely they will end up blaming the embargo, but in this case, the regulatory system is so intrusive that it will end up being the origin of the disaster.

The search for links between the Island and Cubans living in other latitudes offers a stark idea of the regime’s predicament: it is desperate to find financing, which isn’t coming, because tourism and export earnings are paralyzed by the pandemic.

So if this financial need is so urgent, it is impossible to understand why the regime has decided to allow Cubans living abroad to only invest in local development projects and cooperation exchanges – areas absolutely controlled by the State – which will significantly limit the business opportunities that can be developed.

Cubans will not be able to invest in the agricultural sector, in housing or real estate, in other companies (because they are state-owned) or in education or health (because that is prohibited). Ultimately, it is intended to take a bite out of remittances, not only from their usual use of buying necessary goods and services that are not offered by the regulated (rationed system) basket, but also from the possibility of the family in Cuba investing in a business that could generate income for themselves.

Soberón acknowledged that they are still working on the regulations, and that they still need to create the legal bases and consider another series of issues necessary for an effective implementation of this entire process, so they are still far from any final approach on this matter. He added: “All this is being worked on, beyond the manipulation on the subject that there will always be by certain media and sectors.”

Manipulation? Who is manipulating what? And how? It isn’t worth wasting time on something that won’t work, because Soberón doesn’t wants the Diaspora’s capital to come to the island, and Cuban businessmen living abroad should not fall into this mousetrap that the Government is preparing, with what is truly very poor quality cheese.

Instead of liberalizing the economy and leaving behind the socialist-communist model, which weighs down the performance of the economy, the authorities tangle everything up with an issue they have invented in order to continue blaming the embargo or “blockade” for all the evils of the economy.

Now they say that, although for someone to invest in a country they must bring money, market or technology, the main difficulty, not only for Cubans, but for everyone, is transferring hard currency to the nation. And this is due, according to the Government, to the permanence of the blockade imposed by the United States, which is also true in the case of remittances and their possible use in enterprises.

Soberón maintains that if the US government obstructs these shipments, if it prevents money from arriving, that is another problem for the Cuban community that does not depend on what Cuba can do. Once again, the responsibility lies with the United States. In reality, I don’t see how the United States can prevent a Cuban retiree in Spain from sending a payment by way of a Spanish bank he’s done business with all his life to an investment project in Cuba.

In fact, I know of the case of someone who has returned to Spain after verifying how unfeasible it was to return and that he would find himself in a much worse situation than the one he left behind. It will not be an easy matter. The money must be profitable and its allocation must be free, with limits only on criminal activities. In reality, I’m afraid that the regime doesn’t want the Diaspora’s money. What it’s after is another argument to say, once again, that the United States is to blame for everything. They never get tired.

Translated by Tomás A.

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Editor’s Note: This text was originally published on the Cubaeconomía blog and is reproduced here with the author’s permission.

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The Defense of the ‘Young Man With the Placard’ Reclaims the Right to Protest

Considered a political prisoner, Robles remains in prison awaiting trial. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, August 10, 2021 — Luis Robles Elizastigui, the “young man with the sign” arrested on December 4 during a protest on San Rafael Boulevard in Havana, spent 15 days in a punishment cell in the Combinado del Este prison. This was reported to 14ymedio by his brother, Landy Fernández Elizastigui, who managed to speak with him after a month without receiving any news.

During the call, which this newspaper had audio access to, Luis Robles explained to his brother the reason why he was locked up in the punishment cell: they found some photos which, Fernández told 14ymedio, were “some images of the campaigns that have been carried out calling for freedom.”

In any case, Robles assured his brother that he is “calm.” “I’m a little weak because I lost some blood, and my blood pressure got out of control,” he says, but until today what he has done “is rest” to see if his body will recover.

He also mentioned that he was seen by a doctor, who told him continue reading

that he was going to refer him to a hospital outside the prison for a medical check-up, but that this has not happened yet.

Luis Robles has been threatened in prison. “It’s difficult, a very difficult time. They’ve threatened to put you in jail,” he explained to his brother.

Landy Fernández had previously told this newspaper that the lawyer had received a fourth denial of his request to change the precautionary measure to allow Robles to await trial at his home.

“The lawyer showed me the latest application that he presented on August 2, based on the words of the President of the Supreme Court who said in a press conference on July 24 that ’thinking differently, questioning what the process is doing, or demonstrating, constitutes a crime,’” he said.

Considered a political prisoner, Robles is in prison awaiting trial for protesting peacefully last December 4, calling for the release of rapper Denis Solís and an end to repression in Cuba.

Robles, 28, doesn’t belong to any opposition group, but he is suffering in his own body what it means to be a political prisoner in a Cuban jail for exercising his right to protest. His brother reported that in May he had received mistreatment and punishment that caused a skin allergy that triggered severe wounds.

During their Sunday conversation, Robles and his brother also spoke about the family: “My mother is very worried about the whole situation of my father and yours,” Fernández told him, referring to his father, who was sick with Covid.

At the end of July, a Facebook page created with the activist’s name to demand his freedom, published a video in which Luis Robles talks about his thoughts, his wishes, and also the reasons that led him to be a protestor. The material was recorded on December 1, three days before he was arrested by the police and accused of “enemy propaganda” and “resistance.”

Seven months after Robles was arrested for expressing himself with a sign in the streets of Havana, thousands of Cubans took to the streets and plazas of more than 40 cities throughout the island demanding freedom, the resignation of Miguel Díaz-Canel, and the end of the regime. Hundreds of them remain in detention and are being prosecuted for alleged crimes of public disorder, contempt, or transmission of epidemics.

Translated by Tomás A.

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Cuban Youtuber Ruhama Fernandez Arrested Yesterday in Santiago de Cuba

Ruhama Fernández has been a victim of constant harrasment and repression from the police and the state security. (YouTube/Ruhama Fernández)

14ymedio, Havana, Last week, Ruhama Fernández delivered, via direct phone call from Cuba, a powerful testimony during a round-table meeting in Miami with GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, legislators from Florida and several influencers, artists and community leaders from the Cuban diaspora.

14ymedio, Havana, August 10th, 2021 — Cuban Youtuber Ruhama Fernández was arrested by Cuban police Tuesday morning, as she was preparing to leave her house in Santiago the Cuba. She was taken to the police station and criminal investigation unit in the Versalles neighborhood. Fernández was scheduled to participate in an online event this Wednesday, where influencers — inside and outside the island — were planning to debate the future democratization process in Cuba.

Venezuelan writer Deivy Garrido, who has been in direct communication with a friend of Fernández who was able to reach the police station to ask about the detainee, reported on his Twitter account that the Youtuber “was to be accused of ’contempt’ and would continue to be detained for 72 hours” until authorities could reach “a decision.”

Relatives of the young woman and social media users who follow her denounced the repressive act as “another illegal” and “arbitrary” detention by the authorities. The legal services NGO Cubalex pointed out that Ruhama Fernández is one of the “most harassed” continue reading

activists on the island.

Ruhama Fernández is constantly reporting on many of the issues affecting the area where she lives, such as the chronic shortage of food and hardships in which many families survive. She herself has been the victim of harassment and repression by State Security and Police agents, who have not stopped pressuring her to stop doing her work.

For a year now, she has been under constant surveillance from the island’s authorities for for what they call “public interest reasons.” This is a mechanism used by the authorities to arbitrarily restrict the free movement of activists, independent journalists and dissidents and opposition figures in general, a practice that has become a common repressive method.

The debate in which Fernández was going to participate this Wednesday also includes host Alex Otaola, actor Roberto San Martín, Cuban activist Eliécer Ávila, economist Manuel Milanés, the poet Luis Dener, who lives in Norway, and the Youtubers known as Old Hardcore and KarlitoMadrid. The debated was going to be moderated by journalist Gabriel Bauducco. It is sponsored by the Freedom and Federalism Foundation (Fundación Federalismo y Libertad), a private non-profit organization based in Argentina that aims to “promote the values of a free and democratic society.”

In March of 2020, Fernández was one of the winners of the contest for Cuban influencers organized by the Red Cuban Power platform. Recently, she participated in the forum “The role of influencers in the Cuban public sphere,” promoted by the Cuba Program of the School of Politics and International Relations at the Sergio Arboleda University of Colombia.

* Translator’s Update: DEVELOPING STORY:

Fernandez was released in the late night/early AM hours of 8/11/2021, and she posted on Twitter a live audio as proof. She described how 15 agents forcibly entered in her house, confiscated all her video equipment, including her laptop, while filming everything with their own camera man. Fernandez said she will be sharing on social media and live videos soon.

Translated by: Mailyn Salabarria

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“Give That Kid a Real Name!”

“On 11 August 1995 I finally held you in my arms and smelled you for a long time.” (Courtesy of the family)

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 10 August 2021 — I always knew your name was Teo. It is a long story of childhood, literature, an imaginary friend and confidence in believing that you were just around the corner, we just needed to meet. On 11 August 1995 I finally held you in my arms and smelled you for a long time (I am one of those people who widens my nose when someone approaches for the first time).

Yes, that little being in my arms smelled like Teo. As I always dreamed (a mix between Bruce Lee and Diogenes … don’t ask me why I define you that way, everyone who knows you knows the answer). When we introduced you to the closest family, there was no shortage of responses in the style of “Give that kid a real name!” But what else were we going to call you…

Quirky and sharp, you speak little but can destroy or elevate with one sentence. When you had to repeat for the first time, in school, the slogan “Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che,” you refused. You asserted then that Guevara was dead, and you didn’t want to be. The first insult you learned was “filthy” and we had to listen to this from you for several years until you used more vulgar ones.

At the age of five you recited Heberto Padilla’s “tell the truth, at least tell your truth”

On a trip to the native city of your father, Camagüey (the cradle of good pronunciation of the language on this island, according to its own residents), they asked you if you came from the Peninsula beyond the seas because you pronounced “all the letters of all the words”… At the age of five you recited Heberto Padilla’s “tell the truth, at least tell your truth.” At seven you learned German, knew snow and became universal, a condition you have to this day.

Teo, you have connected profoundly with many people. In four words you have defined what it would have taken your father and me (insolent tongues) half an hour of explanation. You throw a phrase like an X-ray that pierces the body, a sentence of darts that pierce the mind. There are people who fear so much sincerity and withdraw, people who cannot stand you. It is, my son, that you are a free man. Free from the inside out, which is the best way to be.

In November 2009, you had to face the reality of having your two parents arrested, you were only 14 years old then but you behaved like a millennial adult: you made phone calls, you reported, you spoke on the radio and you waited. The reunion was like that of the grandfather who receives his two lost grandchildren with love and caresses… everyone who knows you knows that I am not lying. You are like that.

You throw a phrase like an X-ray that pierces the body, a sentence of darts that pierce the mind

Since then, you have had to experience everything and you have done it in that stoic way that does not seek applause or commiseration. You have done it because you have done it, serving as a father to your parents, something that should not be… never should be, but you have assumed it without complaining. I have not met anyone as mature, equanimous and confident as you in these more than four decades that I have lived.

Teo, you had to grow up so fast. Wary of the informants, the false friends who only wanted to use you as a bridge towards us, the lifelong whistleblowers, the classmates who wanted to earn points by making “life impossible” for the son of the dissidents and, however, like Antonio Machado’s verse, you ended up sprouting “serene spring” … which is “in the good sense of the word, good.”

Fashion, material displays, famous brands, the shocks of the moment … only achieve in you an answer very similar to that which is read at the end of the novel “The Glass Bead Game” by Herman Hesse, when one of the protagonists says to the other, who tries to challenge him and provoke him: “You are tiring yourself Joseph.”

I reiterate: you were already here, you always were and we have been only the modest vehicle for you to continue living

Whoever wants to get you out of your boxes and annoy you exhausts himself, you are made of hard, imperishable and beautiful clay. You are from a generation that is going to live and make the Cuba of the future arrive as soon as possible. You have no debts with the past, nor guilt.

Have we deserved such a child? Were these the circumstances to be able to have this luminous being among us? Probably not, but how happy we are to have been part of your shelter, your stairs to climb, your pole to jump and the logs ready to burn in the fire of your existence.

Teo, it’s been 26 years since I held you in my arms for the first time and I smelled you with the force of this nose (quite big by the way… jejeje). I reiterate: you were already here, you were always here and we have been only the modest vehicle for you to continue living, so that your strength continues flowing and your wise imprint prevails over so much tension and so much folly.

By the way, Teo, you smell like eternity. Did you know?

______________

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