14ymedio

Cuba Archive Accuses State of Using Therapies and Drugs to Punish Opponents

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara in one of the latest videos released by the State.

14ymedio, Havana, 26 May 2021 — The organization Archivo Cuba (Cuba Archive) has expressed concern for the mental health of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who has been in the Calixto García hospital for 24 days without communication with his friends, and has published a call for action. The NGO accuses the Cuban regime of a long history of psychiatric abuse and asks the World Association of Psychiatry to expel Cuba, and also calls for the medical and psychiatric associations of democratic countries to investigate and denounce this type of abuse.

The organization, based in Miami, presents information from different sources that maintain that Alcántara is being drugged or subjected to electroconvulsive therapy based on the images that the Government has been publishing of the artist in the hospital with the intention of discrediting him. The images show the physical and mental deterioration of the opponent.

Among the initiatives proposed by Cuba Archive is also the invitation to write to Miguel Díaz-Canel and ask the international press to exert pressure in favor of the opponent. In addition, they demand that democratic countries insist on an independent medical evaluation of the artist and that he be released from the hospital if he is healthy, that communication with his loved ones be reestablished, that bilateral relations be conditioned on respect for human rights. They also demand the release of rapper Denis Solis and those imprisoned after the Obispo street protest. continue reading

The organization cites the aspect of mental health, and in support of this its statement is accompanied by a report in which it accuses the Cuban State of confining healthy people for political reasons and applying substances and therapies to them for the purpose of torture, to obtain information, or simply to punish them.

According to the document, Dr. Eduardo Prida, who was a psychologist for the Ministry of the Interior and the Armed Forces of Cuba, has reported on the links between these torture systems and the Soviet regime, thanks to the training of Cuban officers in Lubyanka building (headquarters of the KGB in Moscow) and in the Academy of the Ministry of the Interior, although mental repression in Russia was already in use in the tsarist era.

Documents in the archives of the German political police give an account, as late as 1981, of the Cuban request for a list of 16 drugs designed to psychologically destabilize prisoners who had committed crimes against state security, including cocaine, LSD, methadone and various barbiturates.

In a letter to the Stasi, Cuban Colonel Lorenzo Hernando Caldeiro asks “to exchange opinions and experiences in psychology” to “use these branches of science in the fight against the enemy” and confirms an agreement to send psychologists from the island to various institutions in Germany as part of the 1988 “Exchange Work Plan.”

The text highlights that, in 1988, Amnesty International was able to visit the Carbó Serviá pavilion of the Psychiatric Hospital of Havana, Mazorra, to investigate complaints that had arisen and one of the officials who received the NGO representatives denied the existence of a second pavilion and denied them entrance to it, although it was suspected that this place was the one with the worst conditions.

Armando Lago, co-founder of Archivo Cuba, is co-author of the book The Politics of Psychiatry in Revolutionary Cuba, which includes numerous testimonies of psychiatric torture added to the unsanitary conditions and physical abuse for people who were detained simply for painting graffiti, trying to leave of the Island, exchanging foreign currency, shouting against the Government or killing a cow, among other acts.

In the early 1990s, a senior executive at a major US pharmaceutical company revealed to the director of Archivo Cuba that his company stopped exporting drugs to Cuba after realizing that some were being used for psychiatric torture.

The report also reviews conditions in Mazorra, where there are around 2,500 patients. In January 2010, at least 26 died of cold in this institution, a fact that was known by human rights defenders who raised the alarm and managed to release images taken in the morgue that showed the terrible condition of the inmates who had died.

Eriberto Mederos, known as “the nurse” of Mazorra, was convicted in 2002 by a federal jury in Miami of lying on his citizenship application by concealing his participation in the torture of political dissidents with electric shocks when he worked as a stretcher-bearer at this hospital.

Lago’s book describes 31 cases of dissidents held in psychiatric institutions for a period of 1 day and up to 5 years. A year later, the number had increased by eight. In addition, cases of minors are also documented, including violations, or or administering drugs that inhibit an individual’s will.

The report also includes the suspicions of some prisoners and relatives who maintain that the food or drink they were given was contaminated with some substance, or that they had become ill for no apparent reason after passing through these medical centers.

The text concludes with the analysis of several prisoners who have gone through experiences of this kind at less distant dates, such as the alleged suicide of Ángel Tomás Quiñones González in 1990 at the Mazorra Psychiatric Hospital or that of Leandro Hidalgo Pupo, 20 years old, a talented math student who was admitted to the same center after shouting “Down with Fidel” during an internationally televised boxing match. Since that date there has been no news of him.

Much more recent is the internment of Daniel Llorente, known as “the man with the flag” after he appeared with the American banner in the May 1 parade in front of Raúl Castro shouting “Freedom for all.” In Mazorra he remained confined for eleven months and in 2018 it was certified that he did not suffer from any mental illness. A year later, he was forcibly deported to Guyana with the threat of being “disappeared” if he returned.

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‘Tribuna de La Habana’ Withdraws an Article in Which it Calls a Group of Cuban Artists ‘Mercenaries’

The article was published this Thursday in the Havana daily and deleted less than 24 hours later. (Tribuna de La Habana)

14ymedio, Havana, 27 May 2021 — On Wednesday, the newspaper Tribuna de La Habana published an article on its website in which it described as a “group of mercenaries paid by Washington” the group of Cuban artists who have signed a letter addressed to the National Museum of Fine Arts to demand that their works be withdraw from exhibition, in solidarity with their colleague Otero Alcántara. Less than 24 hours later the newspaper deleted the article.

The text, signed by the paper’s deputy director, Raúl San Miguel, presented the artists’ initiative as an “attack” against the Museum that aims to “create a media snowball to beatify the criminal Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara.”

“The particularity of the demand is part of a known strategy to try to mobilize international public opinion with the aim of sustaining the image of a criminal whose work can never be considered art and, in the case of the signatories, their works if they are not exhibited will not create a situation of chaos in the middle of the strong square which the artistic exhibition spaces on the internet have become,” the note added. continue reading

The columnist also mentioned each of the initial signatories of the letter: Tania Bruguera, Tomás Sánchez, Marco Castillo (former member of Los Carpinteros), Jorge Luis Marrero, Sandra Ceballos, Celia-Yunior (Celia González and Yunior Aguiar) and Reynier Leyva Novo, describing them as “trained in Cuban art schools after 1959” but now “turned into mercenaries in the service of the United States Government.”

In the text, deleted without explanation, San Miguel said that the attitude of the artists towards the institution is “arrogance” and “a felony that will in no way cause any damage to the patrimony of the nation.”

The author described the EFE agency, accredited on the island as a “sponsor of these subversive attacks” and also called out the correspondent for calling Otero Alcántara a “prisoner of conscience,” without noting that it is Amnesty International which applied the designation to the artist, following the Cuban government’s persecution and harassment of him.

According to Tribuna de La Habana, the Spanish agency is “in tune with the efforts to lie to international public opinion about the true mercenary purposes of this citizen and his optimal state of health which was demonstrated by the results of the medical evaluations that he received at the Calixto García University Hospital.”

Regarding the hunger and thirst strike carried out by Otero Alcántara, the most visible face of the San Isidro Movement, the article claimed that it was “assisted with logistical support from the United States Embassy in Havana” and described it as “supposed.”

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Manifesto Supports the Artists of ‘Patria y Vida’ Repressed by the Cuban Government

The artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, behind ‘El Funky’ and Maykel Castillo ‘El Osorbo’, in a scene from the video clip of ‘Patria y Vida’. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Madrid, 27 May 2021 — On Thursday, Cuban Prisoners Defenders (CPD) launched a manifesto in support of the artists participating in the song Patria y Vida (Homeland and Life) who have been besieged by the Cuban government in recent weeks, and called for an end to the repression.

In the text, they refer mainly to the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who has been incommunicado for 25 days at the Calixto García hospital in Havana, and the rapper Maykel Castillo El Osorbo, who disappeared after his arrest, more than seven days ago, accused of “attack”, “contempt” and “resistance.”

In addition, the Madrid-based organization reports that Eliexer Márquez El Funky was also detained for a few hours, on May 18, and “a precautionary measure that prevents him from leaving his home freely” was imposed, after he was threatened with penalties similar to those applied to Castillo. continue reading

CPD also has words for the seven people arrested in the Obispo street park when they were demonstrating to try to get to the house of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, at that time on a hunger strike, in Old Havana, shouting “Patria y Vida”: Esteban Rodríguez, Mary Karla Ares, Thais Mailén Franco, Inti Soto, Ángel Cuza, Yuisán Cancio and Adrián Curuneaux.

“The video Patria y Vida, created by the desire for national reconciliation and to bring hope to the interior of Cuban society, was received by the dictatorship with a brutal and aggressive deployment towards artists and citizens,” says the manifesto, which says that” all members of the musical event have been defamed in the official media” and the Cubans, “have been repressed for using the phrase in social networks, on posters or on the walls of their homes,” at the same time demanding that the Cuban State “release and immediately exonerate all those convicted of and charged with ’crimes’ of conscience, the recently detained and indicted and the more than 100 current cases.” They also solicit ” solidarity from the international community” to demand that the Island “comply with the commitments acquired in the field of human rights and cease the state of terror that has been established.”

The signers of the document are headed by the co-creators of the song who are “still free.” The organization lists: the producer Anyelo Troya, the director Asiel Babastro and the singers Alexander Delgado, Randy Malcom, Descemer Bueno, El Funky and Yotuel Romero, followed by numerous organizations, activists, artists and intellectuals inside and outside the island. On its page the CPD offers the opportunity to publicly sign on to the manifesto.

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‘All-Included’ Deals at Cuban Hotels Do Not Apply to Domestic Tourism

Dozens of customers wait in long lines at the Cubatur office located on the ground floor of the Habana Libre hotel. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez and Lorey Saman, Havana/Mexico City, 20 May 2021. Since 7 am, dozens of customers have been lining up for more than two hours at the Cubatur office on the ground floor of the Habana Libre hotel to get in on a summer getaway deal advertised by the state-run agencies. Faced with the downturn in international tourism, the government has bet on Cuban nationals to fill its hotels.

“People come here with gigantic bundles of money, like this one young guy who just took out his wallet…it’s tremendous!” exclaims a smiling woman, who on Thursday morning made it over to the central office of Cubatur in Havana’s El Vedado neighborhood.

Indeed, one needs a good sum of cash to pay for these “all-included” hotel packages — among the offers that most attract Cubans’ attention. Prices range from 984 pesos ($40 USD in exchange) per person, per night — not counting transportation, which is paid separately and generally comes out to about 600 pesos. continue reading

“The more economical offers are sold out, leaving the most expensive ones,” asserts another customer who, after checking with the tour operators, decided to get in line. “The minimum reservation one can make is for two days, with a money-back guarantee should the offer be cancelled due to the pandemic.”

The agency announced that the Islazul hotel chain prices were going down, therefore “they removed the signs outside that listed the costs,” according to customers who had arrived quite early.

The tourism packages can only be reserved in pesos, at the state-run offices within the country. No option to purchase from abroad exists should a relative or friend wish to gift a vacation to a resident of the Island.

The package prices run from 984 pesos to more than 3,000 per person, per night. (14ymedio)

“Somebody who goes to these things a lot told me that right now those hotels are like voluntary work camps — I don’t know how true that is, we’ll have to wait and hear what people have to say when they come back,” suggests another customer.

Along with the pool and the beach, the principal attraction of stay at the country’s hotels continues being access to a more varied menu than can be found in private homes, which are very affected by food shortages. Even so, various reports gathered by this newspaper warn of stricter regulations governing these “all-included” packages.

“They’re only allowing one heavy meal at lunch and dinner, while only a part of breakfast is included as a buffet item — the rest has to be ordered à la carte, such as cheese, egg dishes, sausages, and yogurt,” shared a Matanzas resident, speaking with 14ymedio after purchasing two nights at a Gaviota hotel in Varadero.

The woman, who claims to take such a trip annually (“except for 2020, because of the pandemic”), says that the hotel guests “act crazy” in the dining room. “When the servers bring out beer, the people stampede to get in line like they do at stores.” In her view, the food shortages affecting the country are evident “because the menu offerings are more limited and the amounts are smaller.” In any case, she observes, the getaway is still “enjoyable after so many months of being cooped up.”

In other parts of the country, such as Matanzas, since early May only residents of that province have been allowed to purchase packages for various hotels in Varadero*. At that tourist hub, the Island currently welcomes thousands of Russian vacationers, thanks to connections re-established in mid-April between Russia and Cuba, including seven weekly flights.

Meanwhile, some Matanzas businesses have offered discounts to Cuban customers who book before 31 May. Similar offers are available from Havanatur in Holguín, with a 10% discount for the Playa Costa Verde hotel, if the package is purchased by 30 June for stays between 1 July and 15 September.

In Mexico, the Vagamundos agency, which works with the Viva Aerobus airline, as of 7 May began promoting tourism packages to Varadero. A few hotels included in this promotion are also ones in the summer domestic tourism campaigns in Cuba, such as Kawama, Villa Tortuga, and Los Delfines.

Although no specific departure city is identified, tourists could book between four and six nights between 1 June and 31 December, 2021. Rates for four nights run from 784 to 1,186 dollars, with Tuesday and Saturday departures.

The packages include proof of Covid-19 vaccination three days prior to departure from Mexico, a health-check fee, ground transportation to the hotel, and travel insurance. The packages are available to “tourists or Cuban residents of other countries, and they may not depart from the tourist hub,” according to the agency. In addition, “family members will be allowed in the hotel as of the second day” as long as they show proof of a prior negative Covid-19 test and have booked their stay in advance.

In early March, Taíno Tours — a subsidiary of Havanatur — also offered tours departing from Mexico of between 200 and 400 dollars per week at Varadero hotels. These are “therapeutic” packages designed to “prevent diseases and health problems,” with treatments that include Interferon, PrevenHo-Vir, and Biomodulin-T — pharmaceutical products promoted by the Cuban authorities since the start of the pandemic to prevent coronavirus and other infections. However, according to independent analyses, these products have no proven scientific consistency.

*Translator’s Note: Varadero is in Matanzas province.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

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The Most Closely Watched Patient in the World

Members of State Security patrol the hospital where Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is admitted. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 26 May 2021 — It is easy to spot them: they wear their hair short and closely observe everyone who passes near the Calixto García Hospital in Havana. They are the members of the State Security who patrol the hospital where the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, the most closely watched patient in the world, has been admitted since May 2. Since he was taken to the hospital by State Security, he has only been seen through crude, highly edited videos that the political police themselves disseminate.

Otero Alcántara’s friends insist on speaking directly with him but they have not been allowed to visit him, nor does the artist have access to a telephone to communicate without intermediaries. The days are accumulating and the official version is becoming more and more untenable, according to which, after more than a week on a hunger and thirst strike in protest of the repression, this 33-year-old Havanan arrived at the hospital in perfect condition and with some enviable health indicators.

If he is in good physical shape, why has he been held there for more than two weeks? What is really happening in the long days that the artist spends between the four walls of a hospital room? All the answers that come to mind when asking such questions are, to say the least, disturbing. The official medical apparatus’s complicity with the repression has a long history on this Island. The publication of medical records of dissidents in the official media without consulting them, and the confinement in asylums of people who protested peacefully in public places are part of this worrying collusion. continue reading

If, to that, is added the strict surveillance operation that surrounds the Calixto García Hospital since Otero Alcántara’s arrival at one of its pavilions and the arrest of several activists who have tried to get closer, then the concerns grow even more. Among those who could gain access to the place, surrounded by some protection, are the most important figures of the Catholic Church, members of the foreign diplomatic corps and foreign media correspondents whose job it is to report what is happening on the island. But none have done so.

It is unknown so far if there have been efforts by any of them to access the room where the artist spends his days, but it is most likely that most of these bishops, ambassadors and accredited reporters have weighed the cost of making a request of that nature to the Cuban authorities. For the moment, their paralysis suggests that they have measured the price of interceding or reporting on the situation in Otero Alcántara and, after evaluating the pros and cons, they have chosen to keep their distance and not bother Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution.

While the accomplices are silent and the undecided remain in the shadows, the life of a man who until recently was pure energy may be falling over the precipice into a dark abyss. The irreverent artist who organized an independent art biennial, protested the removal of the bust of a communist leader and carried the Cuban flag over his body for several days, now looks quiet and bony in the images filtered by the ruling party: a patient with a dull gaze dull and debilitated body.

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Little by Little, The Dollar is Imposed on Neighborhood Stores in Cuba

Every day, the list of state foreign exchange businesses grows. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 21 May 2021 — One day, they close due to a supposed renovation or the need to take inventory, and weeks later they open in another currency. That is the story of many neighborhood stores that have gone from selling in Cuban pesos to offering their products in freely convertible currency (MLC), a dollarization that spreads throughout Cuba.

The list of these state businesses grows every day. This transformation causes discomfort among the population, who perceive the change with a feeling of economic instability and monetary discrimination, but the process seems unstoppable for the authorities, thirsty to collect foreign currency at any cost.

The El Bimbón ice cream parlor, located at the intersection of Infanta and Manglar streets, in Havana, is an example of this reconversion. Until recently, the place had an attached store that sold basic necessities in pesos, but today, to be able to acquire its poor catalog of merchandise, payment must be made in dollars. continue reading

This transformation causes discomfort among the population, who perceive the change with a feeling of economic instability and monetary discrimination, but the process seems unstoppable for the authorities

“I’m the last in line, but I warn you that this store is in dollars now,” a woman in her 70s clarified this Thursday to a customer who approached the line. Inside the premises, the offer was very limited: tomato sauce, pasta, chopped meat and frozen chicken. A few months ago, more or less the same merchandise was sold in pesos.

Faced with the avalanche of complaints about the social differences that deepen these markets, the Minister of Economy, Alejandro Gil, tried to calm things down last December and assured that the opening of foreign currency stores for the sale of food and hygiene products was “a social justice and socialism decision”.

“An undersupplied market does not attract foreign currency,” the Minister explained then, referring to what many Cubans have classified as “monetary apartheid” that divides society between those who have dollars to buy products in these shops and those who must comply with the network of stores in national currency.

A few weeks ago, the El Bimbón store was closed, allegedly because several workers tested positive for the coronavirus. Days of rumors concluded with the store reopening, but this time with somewhat more assorted shelves and merchandise exclusively for sale in MLC.

After the reopening of several stores, merchandise is sold exclusively at MLC. (14ymedio)

“Now, to buy chicken or chopped meat, I have to walk at least 12 blocks and, on top of that, stand in an endless line, and I’m no longer feeling healthy enough to be doing this,” another customer complained this week. The store is a few meters from a multi-family building known in the neighborhood as “Fame and Applause” because it is home to artists and television presenters.

“All those people who appear in the official media live right here and have not said a word about this injustice,” laments Mateo, a 67-year-old retiree who lives on nearby Amenidad Street. “Since this store switched to foreign currency, the whole neighborhood is hanging on by its fingernails, but these people don’t say anything, they continue parade their faces in the news in order to support and applaud the Government”.

In mid-October, the State-run daily Granma published that the country “will not dollarize its economy” and that the stores in MLC “are necessary, but temporary”. In the article, the official organ of the Communist Party quoted Minister Gil, who assured that the monetary system “is thinking” for Cuba “to work with a single currency: the Cuban peso.”

Raúl Castro himself, in his report to the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party, acknowledged that “the stores in MLC were created to encourage remittances from abroad”. However, it does not seem that their end is near, to the contrary.

A few blocks from Infanta and Manglar Streets, on the corner of Santa Marta, another market has been closed for months. A rumor has reached the residents of the place that, when it reopens, its sales will be in dollars. “There’s a store 20 meters from the entrance to my house, but I still have to travel one kilometer to buy a piece of chicken, it is not easy,” says a neighbor.

Something similar happens in the Panamericana Aranguren store, in El Cerro, the epicenter of lines and hubbub: it has been closed for more than a week, supposedly due to an outbreak of the virus among its workers. Neighbors fear that it will reopen with an assorted stock, but in the new mode of sale in foreign currencies.

Neighbors fear that the Panamericana Aranguren store will reopen with an assorted stock, but in the new mode of sale in foreign currencies. (14ymedio)

“I asked the delegate of the Popular Power and she told me that this issue had not been discussed at last Monday’s meeting, but that, even they did not have that information because those things came from higher up,” complains a neighbor. “Sometimes I think of Cuba as a very tall building and that our leaders live in the clouds.”

“There isn’t one hardware store left that does not sell in dollars in this country. The one on Infanta and Desagüe streets previously had a varied array in convertible pesos, but now, even to buy a valve, an elbow joint or a screw you have to go with the blessed little MLC card”, comments the worker of a private cafeteria across from the store La Especial.

“Today they put up water pressurizers for sale at La Cubana (previously called Feíto y Cabezón) and no one can even enter the store: they allow 50 people a day in to buy and on top, there’s a limit of one pump per card,” warned a frustrated buyer at full volume who ended up returning on foot through Reina Street when he saw the long line in front of one of the most important hardware stores in the capital.

Not a year has passed since their opening, and the stores that sell food and hygiene products in foreign currency are already going through a crisis

Not only do long lines and the inability to pay in national currency mark these stores. Not a year has passed since their opening, and the stores that sell food and cleaning products in foreign currency are already going through a crisis. Supply shortages and very long lines mark the days in the most criticized shops in the country, the only ones, however, that still have more than a dozen products on their shelves.

Given their elitist nature, the markets in MLC provide a new modus vivendi to thousands of Cubans who have magnetic cards in foreign currency. They buy grains, meat and dairy products, hardware, furniture and preserves that they then resell in the informal market. Eager customers pay to not wait in long lines, to avoid COVID-19 contagion.

“Lines after lines are in dollars, but with service as if they were in Cuban pesos”, a man lamented this Thursday upon exiting a market in MLC on Galiano Street. “No matter what currency you pay with, the disaster is the same.” In the lines, under the sun, some customers nodded, while others preferred to look away.

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Cuban Government Tries to Discredit Otero Alcantara with the Leak of a New Video

In the video, Otero Alcántara is seen talking with a woman who seems to be a hospital employee as they walk through the courtyard of the facility. (Collage)

14ymedio, Havana, 25 May 2021 — Cuban State Security has released two new videos of the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who as of Tuesday marks 23 days held in the Calixto García Hospital in Havana. The material was leaked by a Facebook profile under the name of Kamilita Cuba which poses as a supporter of the San Isidro Movement.

The post that introduces the videos has the clear intention of discrediting Otero Alcántara: “Look at Luis Manuel, a nurse friend from Calixto sent to me, I don’t know what to think anymore, look at him skanking around with the nurse, I no longer believe in him, I thought he would be our salvation, but I was wrong,” writes the Internet user.

In the video, Otero Alcántara is seen talking with a woman who looks like a hospital employee as they walk through the courtyard of the facility. At one point he jokes with her by simulating a boxing match. There is no element that allows us to know on what date the material was filmed or if it is prior to the last recording, in which the artist is seen, very deteriorated, in his room with a maternal uncle. continue reading

This, in a video also leaked by State Security, insisted a few days ago that the date of that visit to the hospital was May 16, but it could not be confirmed either.

This Tuesday is the fourth video released of the artist, presumably without his consent. The first was made public on May 2 and Otero Alcántara is seen entering the Calixto García Hospital, after he was taken from his home against his will on the eighth day of his hunger and thirst strike.

The second material was shared by the doctor Ifrán Martínez, a specialist at the center and who holds the position of surgical deputy director. On May 7, a third recording was published, very similar to that of this Tuesday, in which the artist is also seen walking through the hospital courtyard. On that occasion, the artist, who looked at the camera as if he knew he was being filmed, made an L with his hand, a gesture used by activists to ask for freedom.

The recordings published this Tuesday come out after a group of artists published an open letter to the director of the National Museum of Fine Arts to demand that their works stop being exhibited both physically and virtually until they release Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara from Calixto Garcia.

The letter has been signed so far by 13 artists: Tania Bruguera, Sandra Ceballos, Tomás Sánchez, Marco Castillo, the duo Celia and Yunior, Reynier Leyva Novo, Cirenaica Moreira, César Leal, Jorge Luis Marrero, Juan Pablo Ballester and Jorge Wellesley.

Apart from the “immediate release” of Otero Alcántara, the artists demand “guaranteed access for his family, friends and colleagues to his residence” in Old Havana, “to check his physical and mental health,” as well as the elimination of the police cordon “that has been in place since November 2020.”

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A Group of Cuban Artists Sign a Letter for the Release of Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara

National Museum of Fine Arts of Cuba, in Havana. (EFE)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 24 May 2021 — On Monday, a group of Cuban artists demanded of the director of the National Museum of Fine Arts, Jorge Fernández Torres, that all the works of their authorship be withdrawn from exhibition until Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is released from the Calixto García Hospital in Havana, where he has been held for 22 days.

In an open letter, Tania Bruguera, Sandra Ceballos, Tomás Sánchez, Marco Castillo, Reinier Leyva Novo and the duo Celia and Yunior — Celia González and Yunior Aguiar — asked, “under the Copyright Law,” that their works “are covered in such a way as to impede their communication with the public, and that those that are not exhibited but that belong to the collection also be removed from the Museum’s website.”

Apart from the “immediate release” of Otero Alcántara, the artists demand “a guarantee of access for his family, friends and colleagues to his residence” at 955 Damas Street, in Old Havana, “to check his physical and mental health” as well as the elimination of the police cordon “that has been in place since November 2020.” continue reading

In the letter, they also point out that the “detention” situation in which Otero Alcántara finds himself “is illegal” and they appeal the response to the petition for habeas corpus presented on May 5 in his name noting that the artist “is not under arrest, nor being prosecuted.” In addition, they specify that when he was taken to the hospital he was carrying out “a peaceful hunger and thirst strike through which he expressed demands that so far have not been met.” That is, the return of his works illegally confiscated by state agents on April 16, compensation for the damaged or destroyed works, and the cessation of police harassment.

In conversation with 14ymedio, the artist Tania Bruguera stated that to her it is “important to make a gesture, which, although symbolic, makes it clear that there is a group of artists who are going to stand in solidarity with a colleague” who is the victim of repressive acts. She believes that “we are in times in which it is not possible to continue looking away” because that “could mean the lives of our colleagues.”

“Remembering the poem by José Martí that says: ‘if that is the flag, I don’t know, I cannot enter there’. Because if Luis Manuel is kidnapped in a hospital, I don’t know, I cannot have my work in the Museum of Fine Arts,” she said. “We cannot continue to fail to see the correlation that exists between the privileges that some artists have and the lack of privileges and rights that others have,” concluded Bruguera.

The document, delivered to the institution this Monday morning by one of the signers, the artist Celia González, and the curator Solveig Font, is open to more artists to sign, if they so wish.

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Cuba: The Hard Currency Store in Sancti Spiritus Hasn’t Opened Yet and There is Already a Line

Cans of tuna, tomato sauce, pasta, fruit juices, honey, rum and wine are for sale, but only in dollars. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 24 May 2021 — Faces glued to the windows and eyebrows raised after reading the prices, is the reaction of many residents of the city of Sancti Spíritus when they pass in front of the Quinto Siglo store, the most recent of the markets in that province that has switched from offering their products in Cuban pesos to requiring payment in freely convertible currency (MLC).

In the city, which is experiencing strict commercial restrictions due to shortages and the pandemic, there were only two important stores that still accepted payment in Cuban pesos. The penultimate of these stores has just succumbed to “the green wave” of dollar-only sales. Although it has not yet opened its doors, the merchandise that will be offered in MLC is already visible through the windows.

“With these prices, who can buy here? Chickpeas at $17.24 a five-kilogram bag, lentils at $11 and a bag of milk for $40. This looks more like a boutique than a basic goods store,” a woman from Sancti Spíritus lamented on Monday morning, after having come to the place when she heard the rumors of its upcoming opening. “The prices are very high and they sell a lot of products in large packages, but people don’t have those amounts to pay at one time.” continue reading

“The store has not opened yet, because they continue to prepare it but people are already lining up to get on the lists and everything,” a retiree who patrols the place in search of new customers tells 14ymedio. He warns people that they should “write down their name in a notebook around the corner, to guarantee a turn.” Hundreds of registrants have already put their names on the list, although the opening date has not yet been announced.

Inside the premises you can see many of the products that have disappeared from the stores that sell in Cuban pesos: cans of tuna, tomato sauce, pasta, fruit juices, honey, rum and wine. “This is like going to a museum of the past, a few years ago this was what there was in any neighborhood shopping that sold in Cuban pesos or convertible pesos, but now it is only for those who have dollars,” lamented a customer who “got on the list three days ago.”

“If someone had told me that at this point I was going to be lining up for several days to buy some Castile flour, I would have laughed in his face,” says the woman. “But now I am not only waiting, I even feel privileged to have the dollars that my brother sends me from Miami to be able to shop here.”

“People have no doubts: in another year everything will be sold in dollars or it won’t be for sale,” she says. “I hope I’m not here to check it out: if I’m going to pay in the US currency, I’d be better off doing it there.” As she speaks, at least two more people have stuck their faces to the glass to look into the interior of Fifth Century, and the gestures of the reaction are repeated: most of them start out with a curious look, and end up walking away with indignation.

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Out of Dollars, the Cuban Government Suspends Hard Currency Exchange at Airports

People waiting in line to exchange currency. (EFE)

14ymedio, Havana, 20 May 2021 — Without warning, currency exchange bureaus at Cuban airports abruptly stopped selling hard currency on Thursday due to a shortage of hard cash. The news came in an announcement by Cadeca, the state-run currency exchange agency, on social media a few hours before the measure took effect.

“In light of the limited availability of foreign currency at exchange bureaus at present, we are forced to suspend redemption of freely convertible currency at offices in international airports as of May 20, 2021,” the statement reads.

Cadeca maintains that the steep drop in tourism caused by the pandemic has led to a “significant deficit” in foreign exchange earnings. It adds that, to date, it has been able to operate within the established limits but the lack of liquidity has become unsustainable in the extreme.

Airports had been exchanging up to 7,200 Cuban pesos, or 300 convertible pesos (CUC), per person at the official rate of 24 pesos to the dollar. The unofficial rate has been as much as 55 to the dollar. continue reading

In January, Cadeca president Joaquín Alonso Vázquez explained that, during the currency unification process and for the first six months of this year, the agency would be able to exchange CUCs for Cuban pesos or another available currency. “Sometimes customers want dollars but, if we don’t have dollars at that time, we have to give them euros,” he said.

But the cash shortage became so critical that the agency had to suspend the sale of all foreign currency at the country’s most importand exchange bureaus.

Customers have reacted to the announcement with outrage at the lack of foresight that has suddenly caused them to run out of money. “And they’re only telling us this now? Suppose I had a flight tomorrow and had planned to exchange my money. What am I supposed do? Eat it? Why did they wait to notify me the night before?”

Until recently it was illegal to take Cuban money out of the country. Travellers had to trade in their pesos or CUCs before leaving. With the suspension of hard currency transactions, however, they have no choice but to try to exchange their money for hard currency overseas where, except for places like Cancun, the Cuban peso is not convertible.

Increasingly more and more stores, even those selling basic necessities, will only accept payment in freely convertible foreign currency. Consumers complain that, just when they want to exchange pesos for hard currency, there isn’t any.

Other social media commentators are expressing serious concern over the gravity of the country’s financial situation and are asking for the government to take corrective action because “the patience of the Cuban people has its limits.”

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A May 20th Rebellion in Havana

The official media should review the events that occurred in Havana on May 20, 1955, when the University Student Federation (FEU) wanted to commemorate the advent of the Republic.

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 19 May 2021 — Addicted as they are to the celebration of patriotic and revolutionary events, the official media should review the events that occurred in Havana on May 20, 1955, when the University Student Federation (FEU) wanted to commemorate the advent of the Republic with an act of protest against the dictatorship.

To make up for the presumed omission, 14ymedio recalls what happened taking as a reference the data provided by the volume dedicated to the year 1955 of the chronology entitled We will fight until the end, compiled by Rolando Dávila Rodríguez and edited by the Publications Office of the State Council in 2011.

That day, Friday May 20, 1955, from the early hours, the National Police (PN) deployed a huge operation around the perimeter of the University of Havana in order to prevent access to passers-by and vehicles. At nightfall, the electricity in the area was interrupted and the chairs that had been arranged for the audience were requisitioned. continue reading

The day before, Colonel Conrado Carratalá sent the president of the Emergency Court of Havana the result of the investigation carried out on the event organized by the FEU, where he said: “I have been able to learn that indeed, preparations are being made to that end, in which agents closely linked to past regimes intervene and whose primary purpose is to alter the public peace, as well as to provoke disorders that make the intervention of the public force necessary, circumstances that they will take advantage of to unleash their criticism, while trying to to foment annoyances and uneasiness among the popular masses.”

To answer these accusations, José Antonio Echevarría, president of the FEU, warned: “The de facto regime, fearful of the formidable demonstration of rejection that the people will demonstrate in the act of the university staircase, will try to prevent the celebration of this, using it as a smear campaign, thereby trying to confuse public opinion.”

Among those invited to the event was the lawyer Fidel Castro, who had been released the previous Sunday from the National Prison for Men on the Isle of Pines along with 26 of the 30 convicted for the assault on the Moncada barracks, in Santiago de Cuba, on July 26, 1953.

From early hours, the National Police (PN) deployed a huge operation around the perimeter of the University of Havana in order to prevent the access of passers-by and vehicles.

To respond to the blackout, at 8:30 pm a small electricity generating plant was put into operation and the first speaker, René Anillo, gave the opening remarks of the event. Immediately, the police opened fire on the hill. After a tense calm, José Antonio Echevarría took the floor and the police responded with another strong shooting.

On Saturday the 21st Fidel Castro denounced in the newspaper La Calle that he had not attended the event because when he went to the University of Havana a thick police cordon prevented him from entering the premises. “Many citizens were beaten and the act suspended without any justification, despite its orderly, peaceful and civic nature,” he said.

In that same statement, Castro stated: “Those who act like this and provoke like this cannot wish for peaceful coexistence in moments when the country is so desperate for peace (…) How can it be thought that the exiles will return to Cuba, if those who have just been released from prisons barely five days ago are already being persecuted with undisguised fury.”

But perhaps the lament of the recently amnestied that is most relevant at this time is this: “With deep sorrow we are verifying that the regime is not willing to give guarantees to its adversaries.”

So it was that May 20th, under that dictatorship.

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Six Cuban Evangelical Leaders Call for the Release of the Obispo Street Detainees

In their missive, made public this Friday, the evangelical pastors claim that the individual “can express their freedom of expression in any space.” (Capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 22 May 2021 — Six evangelical pastors have addressed an open letter to the Cuban State to request the freedom of those detained in Obispo Street in Havana on April 30, after a demonstration in favor of the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, then on a hunger strike in his home.

In their letter, made public this Friday on their social networks, the religious figures claim that the individual “can express their freedom of expression in any space,” and mention all those who today, three weeks later, are still deprived of liberty: Esteban Rodríguez , Luis Ángel Cuba Alfonso, Mary Karla Ares, Yuisán Cancio Vera and Inti Soto Romero.

“We demand the Cuban State the immediately release of the Obispo Street detainees without legal consequences for them or their relatives,” demand the signatories, coming from the Methodist Church, the Apostolic Movement and other religious currents, while interceding “for the life of other prisoners or detainees being held for political reasons on the Island.” The letter is forceful: “A country cannot remain in peace without consensus, where the opinions of some are law and those of others a crime.” continue reading

Amnesty International (AI) also criticized last week the repression and human rights violations by the Cuban government, especially mentioning the case of the detainees in Obispo. At the beginning of May, the Cuban Justice rejected the habeas corpus presented in favor of these detainees.

“Mary Karla and other journalists, artists and defenders of #DDHH [Human Rights] are still in prison or under strict surveillance in their homes in #Cuba, just for the fact of protesting and defending rights,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, the regional director of AI for Latin America. “We demand her release and an end to the repression of the Díaz-Canel government,” she added.

According to reports from the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH), April was the most repressive month so far this year: 1,018 actions were registered against human rights activists and independent journalists, of which 206 were arbitrary detentions, including 13 which included the serious use of violence.

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Cuban Government Will Regulate Foreign Exchange in Bank Accounts of State Companies and Private Sector

The legal rule will go into effect on June 3. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 20 May 2021 — The Cuban Government is limiting the use of accounts in freely convertible currency (MLC) of state companies and self-employed persons authorized to sell in dollars, following the approval this Wednesday of Resolution 157/2021 of the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC).

The legal rule, which will come into effect on June 3, stipulates that all operations in both the state and private sectors must be carried out in Cuban pesos and foreign exchange may not be extracted from commercial exchanges.

According to Elías Amor, a Cuban economist living in Spain, this is “yet another blow to the control of foreign exchange… The regime has set its sights on the private sector, practically decimated by the crisis of the pandemic, and now it wants to ’intervene’ in the scarce resources it possesses, especially in foreign exchange,” Amor wrote on his blog Cubaeconomía. continue reading

Last year, the Government had authorized the opening of current accounts in foreign currency for private entrepreneurs so that, with the mediation of a state company, they could sell their products abroad.

The BCC also defined the sources of income of the bank accounts in foreign currency of the self-employed: the intermediary state companies, foreign investors established in the Mariel Special Development Zone and accounts in pesos “backed by CL” with which they have a commercial relationship, “in accordance with the current procedures” of the BCC “on the allocation and use of liquidity in foreign currency.”

Meanwhile, state entities authorized to carry out sales in dollars must register their inventories in Cuban pesos and pay, in the latter currency, salaries, electricity, water, transportation expenses, among other services.

“The dollar is drained directly into the state coffers once people buy the products or services they need, and the stores prepare all their accounts in Cuban pesos, despite the fact that the sale prices were in dollars,” reflects Amor.

The economist called the new change on the island, a “muddle of accounting and falsification of economic information… The country’s currency situation is critical. Under these conditions, maintaining the exchange of the Cuban peso with the dollar at 24-to-1 is a serious mistake. Another devaluation is becoming urgent,” he said.

Private businesses employ around 30% of the country’s active force and contribute 13% to the State coffers through taxes, according to official data collected in a report from the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH) last March. .

The Madrid-based NGO stated that “the failure of the Cuban economic system is becoming increasingly evident.” If self-employment is important today, a generator of half a million jobs, “it would be much more important to create the conditions for its healthy development that would promote density in the business fabric and generate a multiplier effect from which it would benefit, above all, the village”.

This Thursday and without prior notice, the exchange houses (Cadeca) at Cuban airports stopped selling foreign currency due to lack of cash. The news was announced by the state entity in a message spread through its social networks a few hours before the measure went into effect.

Cadeca maintains that the low influx of tourists due to the pandemic has caused a “significant deficit” in foreign exchange and that to date it has been able to operate within the established limits, but the lack of liquidity has reached an unsustainable extreme.

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Seven Years of 14ymedio: ‘La Edad de la Peseta’*

First cover of ‘14ymedio ‘on May 21, 2014. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Havana, 21 May 2021 — Today marks seven years since the first cover of the newspaper 14ymedio. Do I regret having founded a general newspaper together with a group of colleagues? No … not at all: thanks to this our early mornings are as intense and noisy as midday; on top of that, it must be said that this profession, defined as the worst option “for making friends,” takes a heavy toll when it comes to “thinking well of” certain people…; editorial shock is the most common state of mind… life is going to hit the headlines and at the “last minute”; the philologist that I once was has been totally absorbed by the reporter and the editor… there is no rest, there is no peace… nor any possibility of going back; politicians look at us with reluctance and citizens with complaints; the newsroom’s phone does not stop ringing and we can barely cover a part of the stories that come to us; our digital site continues to be blocked on servers in Cuba and, yesterday, part of the team “went dark” when they cut our internet connection.

Anyway, today we toast this newspaper that raises our cortisol and adrenaline, that is not ‘thought well of’ by those who would the gag, the complicit silence or the servile applause; which is a repressive objective but also the target of some words of encouragement… that has made us find the meaning of being here and now. In short, it has allowed us not to pack our bags to leave our country and – staying in it – to not shut up…

Translator’s note: The title of a film by Cuban director Pavel Giroud, translated into English as “The Silly Age.”

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No Money to Finish Construction on Mariel Housing Project

Spacious houses under construction on Almendares Street, across from La Pera Park. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, May 18, 2021 — Some months ago the place was alive with construction activity. Now, however, there are no bricklayers or engineers anywhere in sight, and the din of building tools is nowhere to be heard. Construction of nine houses for senior executives of the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM) in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución district has halted because the workers building the project have not been paid.

The site is located on Almendares Street, between Bruzón and Lugareño, in front of La Pera Park. The houses being built here are notable for their spacious layouts, large cisterns and multi-vehicle covered parking.

“Back when they were paying the workers good wages, everything here ran like clockwork,” a watchman at the site told 14ymedio. But after months of not being paid, the original building crew quit. “Like everything else here, it started well but ended badly.” continue reading

Gone are the days when the crew put up walls (at an unusually fast pace for a Cuban building project), poured reinforced concrete roofs and installed wood flooring. Now, the two-storey complex has hit a roadblock and no one can say how long it will take to be resolved.

Unable to pay the the workers’ high-wage salaries, the Mariel Specialized Services and Integrated Project Management Company (ESEDIP), which overseas the project, hired a much cheaper crew, which ended in disaster. “The workers would come, spend all day looking around for supplies they could sell, then sit on the park benches and drink rum,” says the watchman.

Non-payment of wages to state-sector employees has become common in recent months. It began when the government decided to do away with the country’s dual currency system, which has forced state-owned companies to try to get their internal finances in order. Since then, employees from various sectors have reported loss of income and delays in getting paid.

“The pandemic took a big bite out of our projected earnings for this year and last,” says an ESEDIP accountant who prefers to remain anonymous. “We’re trying to adjust the numbers so we can restart some projects that are currently on hold but we still don’t know when we’ll be able to do that.”

ZEDM’s earnings were below expectations and its commercial activity was 7.9% lower than in 2018 according to a report by the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Commission. Though data is not available yet, it is widely believed that the Covid-19 crisis has led to an even steeper decline.

Between January 2014 and October 2020 the port facility moved only two million TEUs (a maritime unit of measurement based on the volume of one twenty-foot long metal shipping container). Though company officials describe it as “a new milestone,” it pales in comparison to ports in the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica, which processed the same amount of cargo traffic in two years rather than seven.

Among the projects sidelined by the crisis are the nine units being built to house senior executives of ZEDM. Few here understand the reason for locating the project in this neighborhood, 36 miles from the port of Mariel. “Why are they being built here, an hour’s drive away? Isn’t gasoline going to be a huge expense?” asks Alfredo, a neighbor who lives a few yards from the site.

He is concerned that, given their size, the four cisterns on the site will affect the water supply to other houses in the area. “Once they start filling them up, the neighborhood will be without water,” he worries

The project remains stalled as ESEDIP tries to dig itself out of its financial hole. Meanwhile, vandalism and theft of materials threaten to further delay its completion. The growing demand for building materials also means the project (the Ministry of Construction issued building permit 130/2019 for it) must be under round-the-clock surveillance.

“They were selling me cement that I needed to finish my house but I haven’t been able to get it done,” one neighbor says. His source dried up out after security cameras were installed on the site to prevent the ongoing pilfering that consumed huge piles of sand and other aggregates before they could be used for their intended purpose.

The country has seen a huge increase in the cost of P-350 cement, a key material in Cuban building construction. In February the price of a bag rose to over 1,000 pesos on the black market and it has virtually disappeared from the shelves of state-owned stores, where the official price is 165 pesos a bag. Though construction of tourist hotels has not been affected, the shortage has led to many building projects being put on hold.

Meanwhile, progress on a building located near the ZEDM houses, which is destined to be the tallest in Havana, continues apace. Unofficially known as “López-Calleja Tower” in reference to the general in charge of military-run companies in Cuba, “it has not had any delays or labor and material shortages” reports Marcial.

“Hotels are the high priority now. Mariel is old news. Not even the official press talks about the port anymore,” he adds.

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