14ymedio

Deserter From Nicaraguan Anti-Riot Police Reveals He Was Trained By Cubans

Julio César Espinoza Gallegos, in an interview for the Nicaraguan channel “Noticias 12.” (Capture)

14ymedio, Havana, March 17, 2021 — Julio César Espinoza Gallegos deserted from the Nicaraguan police in August of 2018, four months after the beginning of the big repression in April, but only now has he spoken with his country’s press, which he told, among other things, that his training was carried out by Cuban officials.

“I passed my anti-riot course with Cuban people and the training is for psychological preparation: that we go forward, forward, and never back. One is prepared for those types of shocks,” he told Nicaraguainvestiga.com.

“They had come to Nicaragua with the objective of training men and not women. They would say that if we were going to back down, we had better get out of the ranks of the Police,” he says from his new residence in Costa Rica, where he exiled himself in November 2020 because of the threats he was receiving.

Espinoza, who is now 32, joined the corps in 2012, in the Department of Special Police Operations (DOEP). Today, he considers himself tricked by the Sandinista propaganda that, he says, insisted to new agents upon their entry on how much the government of Daniel Ortega does for each one of them and that convinces them that the protests by Nicaraguans are “sheer madness.” continue reading

As part of his training, the ex-agent speaks of mentions of a supposed Yellow Revolution. “They knew that at any moment what happened in April was going to blow up, because the anti-riot police were prepared for that,” he says.

In April of 2018, when Nicaraguans began their protests against social security reforms, Espinoza joined as a reinforcement. “They send me to Masaya, which is where it blows up, and I end up injured by a stone-throwing,” he says. That was what kept him apart during three months of active repression.

In that period, and especially starting from the incident in which various opposition figures were killed in a home in a fire started by police and paramilitaries, is when, he says, he opened his eyes and realized that he had not sworn to repress the population, for which reason he decided to resign.

“The commissioner…tells me to work with them because they’re going to promote me, they’re going to give me rank, they’re going to assign me a vehicle and a weapon. I tell them no,” he remembers. At that moment, two intelligence people from El Chipote, the feared prison of the Somoza era, interrogated him and warned him of the consequences if he didn’t return to work.

As he says, a few days later they came to find and arrest his entire family. Espinoza was accused of terrorism, vandalism, kidnapping, and treason.

“Because I didn’t want to repress, they take these reprisals against me,” he says now from an exile which the pandemic has complicated and while he waits for a response on his asylum request.

Although it wasn’t until this crisis that Espinoza left the corps, he accuses the police of having “bloodstained hands” since long before and maintains that those who participate do so because “they like to kill… The police isn’t a job that is going to fire you, in the police you have to receive orders and if you have to kill, you’re going to kill,” he affirms.

Nicaragua will go to the ballot box on November 7, a process that many fear will be irregular. This Sunday, the ex-guerrilla and ex-Sandinista minister of health Dora María Téllez, now a fierce critic of the regime, asked the European Union to take measures before a fraud can consume them. “The Ortega regime doesn’t understand sweet words, the Ortega regime understands blunt messages,” she said.

According to the EFE agency, this Tuesday the Commission of Good Will, made up of Nicaraguan intellectuals, announced a plan to unite the opposition, with the goal of confronting the elections as one bloc. The group finds itself “adjusting the strategy for the rapprochement of the democratic opposition blocs, for which reason working sessions are being developed with the support of the Organization of Independent Professionals of Nicaragua and the Protest Group for Nicaragua.”

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Cuban Mothers Complain: TV Cannot Replace the Classroom Teacher

Cuban parents are increasingly concerned, the longer TV replaces the classroom teacher. (ACN)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 16 March 2021 — Elena Meriño’s work table has changed its geography since her children have stopped going to school. Mountains of books and notebooks and loose sheets of homework pile up alongside her work commitments. Since the coronavirus pandemic arrived in Cuba a year ago, the dining room of her apartment became her office, and the living room, the classroom of her children who are now in second and fifth grade.

The pictures on the main wall of the room were taken down to mount the blackboard that helps them keep the order of the day and better visualize the exercises. A small table and its chairs were installed at the foot of the television, where children watch teleclasses almost daily.

“We accommodate ourselves here as best we can, two friends of the children who live in the building and who do not have a television come over. The mother cannot look after them while they’re watching the classes because she spends the day on the street working. She makes cookies at night and then she spends the day going from door to door, knocking to sell her product. As it was within my power to help her, I offered myself, although it really is complicated for me,” says Meriño while giving the children an exercise. continue reading

In Cuba, the first closure of schools was decreed at the end of March 2020 as a result of the start of the pandemic, which has caused 62,206 infections and 373 deaths since its beginning a year ago.

“The teacher is irreplaceable,” Eugenio González Pérez, Deputy Minister of Education, told the official press, insisting on the importance of watching teleclasses “as a complement.” However, the parents’ concern increases as this alternative to school lengthens in time.

“At the end of the day I am their teacher,” says the mother, while complaining that this year the television classes “go very fast”, especially the subject of Mathematics. When the course was suspended “they working on calculations above number 12,” she explains, but they have started with something else without concluding that topic.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do, I’m worried the children won’t learn well and these grades are important because they are the basis for everything that comes afterwards. I can’t even complain, I remember that content perfectly and I can help my children and some of his friends, but I don’t even want to imagine what the parents who don’t understand it are going through and of course, it is impossible for them to explain it to their children. The worst thing is that I am already imagining the restart of school, whenever they decide to start, with the teachers skipping over all the content and passing all the children without their having the knowledge,” she reflects.

Yenia Del Monte lives in a small room in the La Timba neighborhood with her three children, her brother, her mother and her grandmother. She has been divorced from the father of her children for two years, so between her and the children’s grandmother they have assumed the upbringing of the little ones. At noon no one is in that room because the zinc roof heats up and everyone goes out to the common patio to get some fresh air while the children play.

Del Monte has an old television that still works but she cannot see the signal from the Educational Channel on it because she has not been able to buy the decoder box for the digital signal, the only way it has worked since it had its analog blackout. The mother also has no money to pay for a private teacher and even less for a computer where her children can watch teleclasses online.

“I have chosen to forget about everything that has to do with school because otherwise I was going to go crazy. At first I would struggle with that and I would run from one house to another so that the children were up to date, but no one can live that way. I spend the day fighting for money so that they can eat at home and looking for where to buy food, I don’t have a minute for anything else. Either they eat or they learn and well, they can learn later in school, but if they don’t eat, they go hungry,” laments this 26-year-old mother.

Del Monte’s mother, a young grandmother, is clear: “All of this has been a total disaster, they are counting on that we all have the same resources at home and it is not like that.”

She also wants to make clear her opinion about teleclasses: “Children at this age are not prepared to learn without a teacher in front of them. If they do not have a mother or someone by their side, they are left without learning. Few children are motivated yo study at this age and the content is hard. I hope that when they return to school they will dedicate time to consolidate what they had already taught before starting to teach the new things.”

Another of the concerned mothers is Amparo Santos. She is in charge of a teenage daughter who started in the seventh grade this year and she has also become the teacher at home, like so many other mothers, and outraged by the quality of the teleclasses that the Ministry of Education has made available to the students.

“The math classes are very difficult and they are also very hurried. All the parents in my daughter’s classroom think the same, but we have to find solutions. I think they are not well thought out, they assign homework exercises that they never explain. The answers are in the book, but not everyone knows how to calculate them,” explains Santos, who confesses herself privileged because when she was a student, mathematics was her favorite subject.

Santos has observed in the case of her daughter and her friends that many of them find it difficult to learn new content in just half an hour and without having a teacher in front of them. These are topics that the kids have never seen and they explain it too quickly.

The teacher in her teleclass does not take time to explain the homework, so the parents do not know if the children solved the exercises well. “If I’m honest, the teleclasses have been of little use to me, I have to explain everything to the child. They go very fast, every day is new content and to top it off they assign a lot of independent work that is impossible to do in a week.”

Alina Ibarra does not have the same luck as Santos and Meriño. A barely graduated pedagogist in the specialty of Spanish-Literature, she does not have at her hands the tools to explain fifth-grade mathematics to her 10-year-old daughter. She also does not have time because, although she spends the day at home, her workday is twelve hours.

“I work editing and translating documents online and I am a single mother so I have no choice but to work tirelessly to support my small family that is made up of my child and my grandmother,” she says.

“What I did was find a private teacher. He charges me 50 pesos an hour, but I had no choice, the alternative was for the child to remain without learning. I am lucky that I can pay for this service, which is also excellent, because I know that there are other mothers who have had to resign themselves and watch how their children spend the day at home without learning anything at all,” says Ibarra.

“The issue is that for fifth grade they are giving a lot of new content and they go very fast, it is not like before that it was only about homework. To top it off, there are many teleclasses that I have seen where the teachers have terrible diction and I don’t even know if he understands what they say. Although in the classroom we have created a WhatsApp group and the teacher does everything to help us, nothing replaces the teacher in front of a classroom,” declares Ibarra, a statement that coincides with the testimony of other parents consulted by this newspaper.

Ibarra notes that at first she tried on her own to teach her daughter at home, but was unsuccessful. Her idea was to download all the audiovisual material from the free Cubaeduca portal and then teach classes with the girl at night, but the website does not always update the schedule on a weekly basis. Between those setbacks and the few hours she had available to dedicate to it, she ended up hiring the private teacher.

The Ministry of Education recently reported that this March 15 began a “new grid” in the programming of the Educational Channel which includes the subjects that were not being taught so far and they promise to correct some of these problems pointed out by parents. It will be aimed at all the provinces and municipalities that are in the phase of limited Covid transmission, except Pinar del Río, which will have its own program.

Among the new subjects that are already being transmitted are sixth grade Geography; English, from third to sixth; History, seventh and eighth; and Chemistry, Physics, and Biology, in twelfth grade.

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Cuba: Tourism Plummets 95.5% in Cuba Compared to Last Year

Tourists upon arrival at Jardines del Rey International Airport. (Capture)

14ymedio, Madrid, 17 March 2021 — The collapse of tourism in Cuba as a result of the pandemic has colossal magnitudes. The arrival of travelers to the island has fallen by 95.5% in the first two months of 2021 compared to the same period of the previous year, according to the academic and university professor José Luis Perelló told the Chinese state agency Xinhua .

“During the first two months of 2021, some 35,600 international travelers arrived on the island, representing 4.5% of the 792,507 foreign visitors for the same period as of the end of February 2020,” he said.

Although a plummet in the numbers for this key sector for the national economy was expected, as in the rest of the world, the figure far exceeds the world average, set this January by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) at a drop of 74%. According to these data, in Europe, despite the activity in the sector over the summer, it touched figures that exceeded 70%. Asia, due to strict border closures, reached 84% and the Middle East 75%. continue reading

America was the least affected region, with a 69% drop. The most spectacular data that is known is that of Venice, which lost 99% of visitors, numbers that are explained by its rapid transition from being one of the most tourist-centric cities in the world to one of the main epicenters of the pandemic .

Cuba’s poor results come at a time when the border is open and, although there are travel limitations, tourism is strongly promoted and encouraged by the authorities, who urgently need to recover the foreign exchange received by second most profitable industry — after the sale of medical services to other countries — and they expected to do so in the high season from November to March.

To that end, the airports were reopened, first in outlying tourist centers and later, on November 15, in Havana. However, epidemiological data began to spiral out of control, coinciding precisely with the return of travelers and Cuba is currently experiencing the worst of the coronavirus and is beginning to see its health systems overwhelmed.

However, the Cuban government trusts that vaccinations will allow Europeans to recover; among the main sources for tourism are Spain, Germany, England and France, according to Perelló.

Of all of these, the most promising is, in any case, the United Kingdom, where the rate of vaccination advances by leaps and bounds and there are already more than 25 million immunizations among almost 90 million British people, although less than 3% of the population is fully vaccinated with two doses. In addition, the country has strong restrictions, having suffered a terrible third wave, which it hopes to be able to ease in June.

Worse are the other three, Spain has fully vaccinated just under 4%, and with France and Germany at 3.4% and 3.7% respectively. In addition, all of them suspended the process with AstraZeneca for a few days, waiting for the European Medicines Agency to confirm the safety of this vaccine. About thirty people who were administered among the 17 million injected doses have suffered intravenous thrombosis, although the first versions indicate that this vaccine is safe and that the benefit outweighs the eventual risk.

Cuba has tried to attract tourists with a supply of vaccines, which it provides for free upon arrival on the island. But Cuba’s own vaccine, Soberana 02, is not yet available and it is doubtful that tourists, who are receiving the vaccine for free in their countries of origin see this as an incentive to pay for a vacation to Cuba, to which we must add the cost of a PCR test before traveling to the Island and the cost of paying the Cuban government for medical insurance, which has always been mandatory but now includes Covid coverage.

Tourism depends not only on this landscape. The internal situation also must be taken into account. Cuba is experiencing one of the worst moments of the pandemic and, although in recent months it was able to maintain good figures selling the image of a safe destination, now that prestige is at risk. The Island is the only country that has not started the vaccination process and will not do so until the summer. In addition, current case numbers are, by far, much worse than in previous waves, which may have an impact on international perceptions.

The ills of tourism in Cuba, according to the national authorities themselves, did not begin with the pandemic. Last year, the island was already experiencing a very strong setback, due in part to the records achieved in previous years.

In 2017, the mark of 4.7 million visitors was reached but last year, just before the pandemic began, it was known that 2019 closed with a drop of 8.5% compared to the previous year. At that time, tourism revenues, which were already much worse than in recent times, accounted for 10% of gross domestic product.

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Walter Martinez, the ‘Hero’ of Cuban Journalism in Cuba Has Fallen From Grace

In Cuban journalism schools, where Martínez was also cited as an example of a “committed reporter,” his work is no longer mentioned. (VTV)

14ymedio, Havana, 17 March 2021 — Revered by Fidel Castro and a frequent face on Cuban screens, the journalist Walter Martínez has disappeared for months from the TeleSur channel broadcasts on the island. His accumulated faults and his most critical positions towards the Nicolás Maduro regime have terminated his program Dossier.

Martínez went from being a frequently mentioned source in the official Cuban media to being silenced, after accusing the director of TeleSur, Patricia Villegas, of running the multinational network in a despotic way. The presenter also called out Villegas for claiming powers over the Venezuelan ruler and for handling large amounts of money.

In addition, the reporter accused the directors of Venezolana de Televisión (VTV) of faults and last June insisted that Nicolás Maduro had publicly mocked him. “He did not have the guts to say: ’Walter Martínez, you’re out’, he used a euphemism attacking the work of the elderly,” Martinez wrote on his Twitter account at that time. continue reading

The journalist insists that the reasons that the channel has offered for the exit of his program are only a “disguise” with a “false positive,” supposedly to protect him from the virus, but that they mask “acts of censorship for issuing opinions and for denouncing attacks and non-payment of professional fees.” A month earlier, he had denounced that the president of VTV prevented him from entering the channel.

In Cuban journalism schools, where Martínez was also cited as an example of a “committed reporter,” his work has not been mentioned. “Two years ago he was an idol at the Havana School of Communication and now when I planned to include him in my thesis, the tutor recommended not to do it,” a student told 14ymedio.

“At first there were rumors but with everything related to the pandemic, many thought that the program had gone off the air due to internal adjustments byTeleSur, ” a reporter from Tribuna de La Habana, who preferred to remain anonymous, explained to this newspaper. “But little by little it has come to be known that he is no longer seen as a trustworthy person in Cuba.”

“They made as an idol, but with the same power that they raised him up they sank him because he is very mouthy, and here they cannot handle people like that well. It was believed that he was a protégé of Fidel Castro and it turns out that they erased him as if he had never existed,” adds the source.

During Castro’s long convalescence, which began in July 2006 and lasted until his death in November 2016, Martínez was able to interview and meet with him on several occasions. The former Cuban leader also referred to Dossier in a glowing way.

In April 2014, Martínez was awarded the Félix Elmuza Distinction, conferred by the Council of State at the request of the Cuban Journalists Union. During the award ceremony, “his contribution to disseminating the truth, with authentic information and professional ethics, was praised in an outstanding manner,” according to the official press.

The Uruguayan-Venezuelan journalist, who was also a correspondent from several armed conflicts, became known on the island for his program Dossier, which was initially included in a selection of the TeleSur programming that was broadcast on Cuban television and later, on a broader grid of the multinational chain.

“He had many followers among retirees and people who still maintain their loyalty to the Government,” acknowledges a seller of audiovisual materials on Infanta Street, in Havana. “He had his audience among those who support the system but who prefer that type of journalism rather than that offered by the presenters on national television.”

“But now many of those people have been left without the program and without an explanation of what happened with Walter Martínez,” the vendor said. “In any case, his best moment was when there were no ways to be informed other than watch Dossier or the Primetime News, but since Cubans have internet on their mobiles, fewer and fewer people have watched him.”

TeleSur is a channel that was born with the participation of the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay and Venezuela, but in recent years the chain has suffered from the deep Venezuelan economic crisis and the dropping of its signal in several countries including Bolivia and Ecuador.

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Cuba Today: No Pension Checks in One Sancti Spiritus Neighborhood Because the Postman’s Bike Has a Flat Tire

The postman who previously served the neighborhood was fired a few months ago for charging mandatory tips.

14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus 17 March 2021 — The means of transport used by Correos de Cuba (the Cuban Postal Service) for home deliveries is the bicycle. And not only to bring the press, parcels or correspondence, but also checks to pensioners. In Sancti Spíritus, at least 27,000 retirees, more than 70%, depend on this service to receive Social Security payments. Most couriers have to supply their own bicycle.

Neighborhoods like La Esperanza have spent years with the same postman, who is already like a member of the families, infallible in his deliveries. In contrast, the residents of the VientoNegro neighborhood have not enjoyed the same fate.

For starters, their postman was fired a few months ago for charging mandatory tips. “At the beginning, when he started, almost everyone who receives a check on a monthly basis gave him a five or ten peso tip out of gratitude,” a resident of Viento Negro tells this newspaper. “But then he made that a mandatory fine for everyone and people complained to the Post Office and they dumped him.” continue reading

At first, the new postman did not give any problems. However, the deliveries suddenly stopped coming. When Luis Alberto, a resident of Bartolomé Masó street, did not receive the press for several days, he went to the Post Office to ask. The answer seemed amazing: “They told me that the problem was that the postman who attends my area has a flat tire on his bike and that until that is fixed there are no deliveries.”

In addition, they made the excuse that “as it’s a new year, there must be a new contract,” and in addition there are “the new rates” because of the ‘Ordering Task*’. Luis Alberto appeared to renew his contract “and at least advance that process,” but it did little to help.

“To my surprise they gave me the same argument, that they cannot do it until the postman solves the flat tire problem,” he explains. “They say it takes a long time, because there are no tires anywhere.”

“And what happens if I have to receive parcels?” Well, they would notify him and he would have to go pick them up himself. Luis Alberto, disgusted, also complains about the poor state of the facilities in the Post Office: “They have a tremendous mess, no one can imagine its like inside, tremendously bad appearance, everything thrown every which way on the floor and one thing on top of another. Now I understand why many things are lost and do not reach their destination.”

Luis Alberto Laments that now the only option left for him to read the newspaper is to go to the post office on the boulevard in the morning, “Where there’s a lady who sits outside and sells them for three pesos,” he says, or to go outside the the amusement park (los caballitos), where there is also another reseller. Both in the city center, far from his home.

*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 and pensions (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency, which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and others.

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The Failure of an Operation: I Continue to Do Journalism in Cuba

State Security agent who was part of the State Security surveillance operation on March 8 and 12. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 15 March 2021 — “You can’t go out today.” It is the ninth day in a short span this year that I get the same blunt message from a State Security agent who prevents me from crossing the threshold of the building.

Decried by various international organizations, besieging independent journalists and activists has been the dominant repressive strategy in recent months, along with arbitrary arrests lasting several hours.

I’m one of those who has suffered from it from time to time since December 2014, when artist Tania Bruguera called for a performance without permission in the Plaza of the Revolution. In addition, since May 2019, a ban on leaving the country has been weighing on me, and I have been the victim of several arbitrary arrests, suspension of my cell phone line and threats to my family members. continue reading

However, the harassment escalated since last November. During that time, almost a score of artists from the San Isidro Movement (MSI)were imprisoned and some of them went on hunger strikes for the release of rapper Denis Solís, sentenced in a summary trial to eight months in prison for an alleged crime of “disrespect”.

Decried by various international organizations, besieging independent journalists and activists has been the dominant repressive strategy in recent months

But the State Security agent who identified himself as Ramses did not provide any reason last November 23^rd to prevent me from leaving my building with my two daughters. He didn’t know why he was doing it, he told me. He was only following orders.

“We are not going to allow you to influence the public space”, he told me on November 25^th, once again blocking my way.

The following day, the political police, disguised as cleaning men, violently evicted the MSI activists from their headquarters, and on the 27^th, a peaceful demonstration of 300 artists in front of the Ministry of Culture ended in a meeting of about thirty of them with the vice minister Fernando Rojas.

Since then, they have not given me a break. In December, they didn’t let me leave the house for a whole week. “You can’t go out”, they repeated every day. On the 10th, fed up, I told the officer on duty: “Tomorrow I’m going to leave whether you like it or not, this is turned into an abuse”, and he remained silent. On December 11^th I was able to hit the street.

In December, they didn’t let me leave the house for a whole week. “You can’t go out,” they repeated every day

On January 27^th, two months after the demonstration, a new “siege” of my front door began that would last four days in a row. That Wednesday, several members of the 27N group once again planted themselves before the Ministry, located in El Vedado, to attend a meeting with Rojas and demand the release of some of his colleagues who had been arrested early that morning. Within hours they were violently evicted and transferred by bus to a police unit.

On February 2^nd and 22^nd, the operation was repeated for no apparent reason. That time, they also cut my mobile service. In no case do the officers give explanations, but repressive acts do not fail to take place on significant dates, such as International Human Rights Day or the anniversary of the death of Fidel Castro.

“Luzbely, you can’t go out today.” Again, the order was issued on March 8^th, International Women’s Day, which is why the agent on duty, a skinny man she had never seen before, felt compelled to cynically say goodbye: “Congratulations!”

On March 12^th, I ran into the same guy. The night before, on national television, the presenter Humberto López denounced, during his spot on the News program that some opponents had planned a protest in the Plaza de la Revolución, something completely false.

This March 15^th is the third day of this month that I am under surveillance. This Monday’s agent is accompanied by two female officers and he refused to show me his ID. He says that I have already seen him “at other times”.

Translated by Norma Whiting
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New Information Comes to Light About Cuban Medical Missions in Mexico

Five hundred doctors arrived in Mexico in December and 160 of them returned to Cuba at the beginning of March. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Havana, March 16, 2021 — Mexico has paid over six million dollars for 585 Cuban doctors who were working in the country from April 24th to July 24th last year.

In total, it wasn’t only the 135 million pesos, as stated by The Secretary of State for Health, Oliva Lopez Arrellano, nor the 135,875,000 which was indicated afterwards by the head of government in the capital, Claudia Sheinbaum, but actually nearly 15 millions more. Altogether, they paid 150,759,867 pesos (over seven million, five hundred thousand dollars).

The information was provided by the Mexican digital media La Silla Rota (The Broken Chair) following a request through the transparency website InfoCDMX – in which public institutions are, in theory, legally obliged to respond – after a delay of half a year (the application was made September 8th, apparently).

According to this media, the figures provided by the city did not include the Cubans accommodation and food, which were also charged to Mexico: a total of 14,844,785 pesos (some 744,000 dollars). continue reading

The InfoCDMX response also set out that the Henry Reeve Brigade contingent was accommodated in 292 rooms in two hotels: the Benidorm, in Colonia Roma district, and the Fiesta Inn, in the Central Historic area.

The Silla Rota was surprised to note that “Although the Cuban doctors left on July 24th, according to official information, the billing dates are different… In the Benidorm, the bill was produced on July 10, 2020, and in the Fiesta Inn, on July 29”.

That’s not the only inconsistency in the contractual data relating to the Cuban missions in Mexico. For a start, the latest data publicised only refers to 585 nurses who worked in the capital, not to the nearly 200 more who went to Veracruz on the same dates, about whose costs nothing is known.

Nor is it known how much the Mexican government paid for the five hundred doctors who came from the island in December. 160 of them went back to Cuba this March, but nothing is known about the rest of them.

Neither is it known which government department paid the money. The transparency response named the Secretary of State of the Mexican capital city, but we know that both the postholder, Lopez Arellano, and the head of the City government Sheinbaum emphasised that the Cubans were hired “through an agreement with Insabi”, the Institute of Health and Wellbeing set up by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and which has been widely criticised in the country over the distribution of drugs for children suffering from cancer.

Given the opaque way in which both governments have dealt with this matter, the only recourse for the Mexican media has been to go to the government transparency websites. Last September, Latinus (a digital platform in Mexico) managed to find out there that all of the nearly 700 doctors who arrived in Mexico in April to help fight the Covid-19 pandemic, 585 of them in the capital, and the rest in Veracruz, were working without immigration permission.

This digital medium, based in the United States, indicated that there is no evidence of these doctors having a “proper documented” stay in Mexico, such as “temporary residence documents, or temporary or permanent study permits”, nor any document indicating a legal status for the health workers in the National Migration Institute (INM) database, nor could they find “details of Cuban nationals, in May this year, having obtained any of the documents cited, and in which they had entered information that they were in the health and support services sector”, as communicated by the INM Director.

Getting into the transparency websites is not infallible, but nevertheless, La Silla Rota explains that it made various requests for information which were not replied to by InfoCDMX.

Last November, they say, the site removed the inspection process, and so, it did not provide the itemised information requested by the digital medium “by date of arrival, speciality, medical institution or investigation centre to which they were sent (federal entity), as well as what were their duties, pay and benefits, and, as applicable, their date of exit and exit location from the country. Also, if their stay is extended, for how long and the documentation for that.”

Translated by GH

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Tania Bruguera Denounces a Six-Hour Kidnapping by Cuban State Security

In a live broadcast on her social networks after her release, the activist said that “Cuba is not the same”, “things have changed” and asked the regime to also change its repressive methods. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 16 March 2021 — The artist Tania Bruguera denounced, this Tuesday, that she was kidnapped for almost six hours by State Security when she was walking with a friend near her home in Havana. In a live broadcast on Facebook after her release, the activist said that the purpose of her communication was to denounce what “many Cubans who lose their fear” are going through with the regime.

Bruguera insisted on pointing out that what she experienced is nothing more than a sample of how the Government, with all the strength and power it has, attacks a human being for thinking differently.

“I am quite careful when I use words, in this case I will consciously say that what happened to me today was a kidnapping,” she said when she began the story of how she was approached by four plainclothes officers and taken to the Infanta police station in a private car that “did not have any sign of belonging to any organization.” continue reading

“I am quite careful when I use words, in this case I will consciously say that what happened to me today was a kidnapping”

At the police station, according to her account, State Security “spoke to themselves”, she preferred to spend those hours in silence, while the agents wanted to “create division, fear and mistrust among the different people who, today, are working so that things change.”

She stressed that the important thing is to understand “what is the system that the Government is using” to scare people who “are doing what they think should be done” and are not afraid to make their positions known. In this regard, Bruguera told 14ymedio that the methods the regime uses to coerce and “scare people are no longer working.”

“Today we have people who are being threatened that they wull lose their jobs, friends whose children are harassed at school because their parents think differently, people who have been mistreated and defamed on Cuban television. What happened today is not an isolated case, it is a mediocre, absurd exercise of power and belongs to the 20th century and not the 21st,” she said at another point in the video posted on Facebook.

The artist made it clear that “Cuba is not the same,” “things have changed” and asked the regime to also change its repressive methods. “We must stop, once and for all, the political violence that exists.” She also advocated starting work “on a law against political violence against citizens. Here everyone has the right to think as they want and to be respected as such.”

Bruguera took the moment to call for the union of civil society: “Today’s Cuba depends on us, that we are above this silly disunity and those little egos and that we are all together to build that Cuba that we are beginning to experience, a Cuba with democracy where everyone has the right to exist. ”

The artist told this newspaper that what the Government fears the most is “the union between different groups, between people who think differently and the possibility that very diverse people can reach common points of agreements to work together. There is a history of more than 60 years where, each time this has happened, they have attacked to create discord and division between the groups, because it is what they fear the most.”

“I will continue working for that Cuba, I will continue to do what I believe is necessary so that the abuse and political violence in Cuba cease and so that the right to have rights is respected.”

“I am going to continue working for that Cuba, I am going to continue doing what I think is necessary for the abuse and political violence in Cuba to stop and for the right to have rights to be respected,” the artist said at the end of the broadcast on her social networks.

When Bruguera was kidnapped by State Security she was with the artist Juliana Rabelo to show her a delicatessen on the corner by her house. Rabelo asked the agents who they were and where they were taking Bruguera and only received the answer: “Keep your distance, Yulaisy.”

After learning that the activist was missing, Carolina Barrero, Camila Lobón and Rabelo filed a writ of habeas corpus in favor of Tania Bruguera before the Provincial Court of the capital.

Bruguera was one of the artists who stood on November 27 in front of the Ministry of Culture to demand dialogue after the arrests of Denis Solis and the strike by the San Isidro Movement. Since then she has been arrested and interrogated several times for hours. In addition, she has been prevented from leaving her home, which is why the artist has considered herself to be on “house arrest without any explanation” during those days.

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Private Activities in Certain Areas Will Need Permission from Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior

Notary Office at 20 de Mayo Street, Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana | 1 March 2021 — The Ministry of the Interior will have the last word in carrying out some social, economic and political activities in certain areas of Havana. The authorities justify the creation of the rule based on the need “to guarantee the protection and fulfillment of the missions related to security and internal order”.

With this decision, taken by the Council of Ministers and published in the Official Gazette on February 24, technical installations, construction, repair or work maintenance, and licenses for the exercise of the different forms of non-state management will require a ministerial authorization, as well as changes in use, transfer and transmission of real estate, homes, premises, land and spaces.

The standard defines two categories to be applied in the different areas it establishes: “to consult” and “to inform”. continue reading

In the case of those that are subject to consultation, there are productive and service, political, cultural, sports, recreational and religious activities when they are carried out on public roads. In the second case, it will be enough to report the fulfillment of the activities according to the established norms.

The largest number of government, political, tourist and diplomatic entities are concentrated in the affected areas and roads of interest.

The largest number of government, political, tourist and diplomatic entities are concentrated in the affected areas and roads of interest

The largest number of government, political, tourist and diplomatic entities are concentrated in the affected areas and roads of interest. The areas are located in the popular councils Siboney-Atabey, Cubanacán, La Coronela, Plaza, Vedado, Príncipe, Colón Nuevo Vedado, Ceiba-Kohly, Vedado-Malecón, Sevillano and Tallapiedra, as well as others in the municipalities of Marianao, La Lisa and Boyeros.

The new regulation means a return to the practice of requiring an authorization to exchange or acquire a home in what in previous years were called “frozen areas”. At that time, the entity that gave the go-ahead was the Directorate of Personal Security of the Ministry of the Interior.

The decree does not specify whether the procedures to open a privately owned business in the so-called areas to be consulted can be carried out in the “single window” created to streamline paperwork and bureaucratic processes and defined as “an innovative tool” for the management of the private sector.

In addition, it is determined that the urban nucleus of Antilla (Holguín) also has special regulations, since the place “constitutes an area of high significance for tourism and is located in the municipality of Antilla, in the province of Holguín.” Currently, Gaviota is building a luxury hotel in this area, at the entrance to the Great Bay of Nipe.

Translated by Norma Whiting

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Should the Opposition Dialogue with the Cuban Government?

Left: Yes, because we don’t have the capacity to wage war. / vs / Right: I don’t criticize someone who wants to dialog, but I don’t dialog with murderers.

The moment in which thirty artists left the Ministry of Culture after meeting with Vice Minister Fernando Rojas for almost five hours. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 15 March 2021 — Since last November 27, when some thirty artists managed to force a meeting with the Vice Minister of Culture, Fernando Rojas, after the unprecedented demonstration of some 300 people before the ministry, the question has divided activists: should the Cuban opposition recognize the Government as an interlocutor in a dialogue that guides the country towards a transition to democracy?

The promise offered by Rojas that day was broken by the same authorities days later, refusing to recognize the conditions set by the artists, already organized as 27N (27th November). At the same time, State Security has not stopped monitoring and harassing independent journalists and activists in recent months.

Even so, that demonstration, organized in support of the San Isidro Movement (MSI), several of whose members had been staying in the group’s headquarters and on hunger strike for the freedom of rapper Denis Solís, and who on November 26 had been violently evicted from their headquarters, generated a new hope.

The last episode was the premiere of the song Patria y vida, on February 16, by the duo Gente de Zona, Yotuel Romero, Descemer Bueno, Maykel Osorbo and El Funky, whose motto has been endorsed by the main opposition organizations, within and off the island. continue reading

It is under the name of Patria y Vida, that the MSI launched a platform this March to convene a “national dialogue” with all actors in society, including the Government, and build a Cuba that represents “a safe home for all,” in addition to overcoming the serious crisis that the nation is suffering through “peaceful and civic solutions.”

However, not everyone agrees to include the government as a negotiating party.

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, leader of the MSI, put the dilemma on the table, declaring to 14ymedio that “there cannot be a dialogue in Cuba without the systemic part, without the regime part,” but that this “has to be with character.” From an official account, the following day, the MSI clarified that “the Cuban government has never wanted to speak with Cubans” and that the dialogue proposal “does not include it.”

“This is a citizen dialogue to debate among ourselves the future of our country,” they pointed out.

In a press conference offered last Friday, Alcántara himself and other members of the MSI, Michel Matos, Iris Ruiz and Amaury Pacheco, expounded on the subject, clarifying that the Government would not be the main interlocutor.

“I don’t see any other way to transition towards a democratic rule of law other than by dialoguing at some point with the current Cuban totalitarian authorities,” said Matos, who recalled that, in other countries, “every time a dictatorship has ended it has been under the parameters of agreements, negotiations, road map protocols or a dialogue agenda, where an understanding is reached on a key point that involves the transition.”

“I have heard expressions like ’pack your bags and go’ directed towards the communists, and I ask if this is realistic,” he said. “The other alternative that remains to get out of such a terrible situation is one that we cannot afford and are unable to do, which is basically war.”

Similarly, Amaury Pacheco expressed: “As a civil society we have put dialogue on the table and the Government has backed down. This exchange is needed to have a program of how we are going to travel because the Communist Party is not going to pack their suitcases and leave. We have to plant conscious programs and let the public know them.”

Within the San Isidro Movement itself, one of the most forceful in rejecting the dialogue has been Maykel Osorbo, who in a live feed on his Facebook profile was very clear: “I do not criticize anyone who wants to dialogue, but I do not dialogue with murderers.”

Osorbo, one of the authors of the song Patria y vida, and who has suffered several arrests in recent weeks, believes that the right circumstances are not present and he puts himself as an example of being harmed by the repressive policy of a government with the whom he does not contemplate sitting down.

“I do not dialogue because my life is in danger. There is no dialogue with dictators. I say it from personal experience. They beat me every day, they harass me, they threaten me. With that violence they do not dialogue with me. We went to dialogue on January 27 and we all saw what happened,” he points out in reference to the day that the Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso, ended up slapping the protesters who approached asking for a conversation.

The artist also doubts that sittingdown with the regime is actually being considered as an option and indicates that the references to other sensibilities must refer to the opposition that he calls traditional, citing José Daniel Ferrer as an example.

Martha Beatriz Roque, who belongs to that traditional opposition, has also established her position through an article published on Cubanet in which she details other historical moments of calling for a national dialogue, as Oswaldo Payá proposed in his day with the initiative of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), which ended up being shipwrecked with the tragic death of its Payá, its founder.

“It has always been said that dialoguing with the dictatorship is the same as speaking with the deaf, without sign language. In fact, those who vote for dialogue, in some opposition circles and also in exile, have been called by the derogatory noun: ’dialogueros’,” says the politician and member of the Group of 75.

In her opinion, the public debates between defenders and detractors of the dialogue only benefit the Government, which sees the disunity among the opponents and so she believes that any difference should be aired in private, but above all proposes that it can be based on a premise to talk about dialogue , the only common point that in her opinion unites the opposition “and that should be the basis of any understanding: the freedom of political prisoners.”

Meanwhile, the harshest statements have come from exile. The influencer Alex Otaola has cried out against dialogue with a short and direct phrase: “You cannot dialogue with the repressor.”

In a video on his YouTube channel, the popular communicator mocks those who ask to sit down with the Government to start the process and accuses them of being collaborators of the regime. “Maduro has gained years in power due to the softness of Capriles, of this and the other, while Venezuelans continue to die,” he denounces.

Otaola considers that these calls to talk are cosmetic and the Government launches them to influence Washington by making it appear that it is willing to negotiate within the island. “With whom is this platform going to dialogue? Among all Cubans of all political currents, all thoughts … Smoke and mirrors, no more. You can not dialogue with dictators,” he says.

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Even the Stores Selling in Dollars are in Crisis in Cuba

A line this Monday outside the MLC store on Boyeros and Camagüey streets, in Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 15 March 2021 — 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. Little supply 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.

“It is not worth coming here, among the resellers and the shortage of supplies, this looks like a bodega,” as the ration stores are called, a customer told 14ymedio, this Monday, while waiting on the outskirts of the market that sells in freely convertible currency (MLC) on San Rafael Street in Havana. “I arrived at 5:15 in the morning and the line was was doubled back. Where were so many people going out to if the curfew is until five?”

The markets in MLC have become the new modus vivendi of thousands of Cubans who have a magnetic card with foreign currency. They buy grains, meat products, dairy products and preserves that they then resell in the informal market. Eager customers pay others to wait for them in the long lines, to avoid contagion by Covid-19 and also because they don’t have access to hard currency. continue reading

“They are out of stock, but if you compare them with the stores that sell in Cuban pesos, they seem luxurious,” a customer reflects on the outskirts of the Boyeros and Camagüey markets. “Everyone who has gone out today, the only thing they have is peas and malt, but I’m here because I need to buy yogurt and flour,” he says. “A few years ago I didn’t have to stand in a line for beef, but now you have to stand in line even for bouillon cubes.”

The resellers do not use the official exchange rate for the dollar, set at 1 in 24, but instead are guided by the price of the fulas [dollars] in the informal market. “People complain that the merchandise is expensive but I’m selling this large can of concentrated tomato puree for 800 pesos because it costs me about 18 dollars, plus a whole morning. I put the dollar at 47 CUP [Cuban pesos] so I’m almost giving away the merchandise.”

Currency stores have caused deep discontent among broad social sectors. Faced with the avalanche of popular complaints about the social differences that these markets deepen, 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 cleaning products was “a decision of social justice and socialism.”

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

However, to the same extent that a large part of Cuban society criticizes the opening of these shops, others have seen their resources grow, serving as a bridge between merchandise in dollars and anxious customers who cannot find these products in the stores that sell in Cuban pesos or convertible pesos.

“Call me for more details on what I’m getting tomorrow. Top-notch merchandise from the dollar stores,” reads an ad. “Leave the Line to me and avoid leaving the house, from the market to your table,” adds the classified. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,” specifies the short text that invites you to follow “the offers on WhatsApp.”

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Cuba’s Private Sector Has Become an Example of Resistance

The preparation and sale of food remains one of the most attractive choices in the private sector according to the OCDH. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Madrid, March 12, 2021 — Cuba’s private sector, whose workers are referred to as cuentapropistas, suffered a 25% decline in 2020 compared to the previous year. This was mainly due to impact of the Covid-19 pandemic but also partly because of the crisis caused by the country’s economic system.

The island’s calamitous situation is analyzed in depth in an article, “Environment, Private Enterprises and Economic Rights,” published on Thursday by the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH).

For starters, it confirms the official data: private businesses employ around 30% of the country’s active labor force and contribute 13% to state coffers in the form of taxes. continue reading

From 2010, when the regime legalized self-employment, until January of 2020, the private sector grew 59%, with 459,234 legally registered cuentapropistas throughout the country. However, 158,000 of them have since gone out of business. The causes, according to Rosello Consultores and confirmed by the OCDH, are “losses resulting from Covid-19 [65%], the country’s economic crisis [30%] and other factors [5%]”

“The failures of the Cuban economic system are becoming increasingly obvious,” says the OCDH in its report. “The various issues and ongoing crises have only aggravated and simultaneously made more explicit the shortcomings of the Cuban economy, which is still tied to the primacy and monopoly of the state, its commitment to centralized planning and the rejection of prosperity, which the Communist Party calls ’accumulation of wealth.’”

Against this backdrop, the report continues, self-employment has been one of the few “ruptures” with the “Stalinist economic model,” becoming not only “an example of efficiency” but also “an example of resistance” in the current “adverse” environment.

According to the report, the most attractive activities in the private sector continue to be the preparation and sale of food, transportation of cargo and passengers, leasing rooms in private homes and telecommunication services, which represented 22% of operating licenses in 2020 and 78% of the 127 approved self-employment categories.

The organization states that last year saw “increased economic rights violations, persecution and surveillance of the self-employment sector.” Authorities also carried out 1,400,000 “control actions” while fines amounted to 32 million pesos, 44% more than in 2019.

“Given its entrepreneurial nature, the private sector expresses a repressed pluralism and constitutes a countercultural platform for civic reflection,” says the OCDH, which counted forty-seven public protests and demands for economic rights by Cuban cuentapropistas. “Despite their legitimacy, they were ignored by the media and the seventeen official national unions,” it adds.

The Madrid-based organization highlights that Cuba has been in a “a deep economic and financial crisis” since 2019. Among the causes it cites are a drop in oil prices and “breach of supply contracts” by the Venezuelan national oil company PDVSA, the three billion dollars set aside to pay the foreign debt, and sanctions imposed by the United States under the Trump administration. Contributing factors include a decline in foreign tourism as well as purchases of agricultural products from the United States.

In addition, “certain elements of Cuba’s legal and economic system itself, which, although they are not temporary, are seen as partof the permanent crisis,” for example the high taxes,” which, according to the OCDH, in 2018, were above the average for Latin America and the Caribbean and above the average for the OECD countries themselves,” notes the Observatory.

The report concludes, “Self-employment generates half a million jobs, and makes significant contributions to the state budget and to GDP. Given how important it is today, it even more crucial to create conditions to encourage its development. A strong and healthy business network would create a multiplier effect which would benefit everyone, especially the people.”

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Patriotism and Mediocrity

Screen capture from the video clip of ’La Bayamesa’. (Juan Carlos Borjas / Cubadebate)

14ymedio, Eloy M. Viera Moreno, Havana, 13 March 2021 — A few weeks ago a group of Cuban artists composed a song under the suggestive title of Patria y Vida (Homeland and Life) and disseminated it through the networks. The Cuban government gave a meteoric response, and in a matter of a few days it has released three songs, with their corresponding video clips, worthy of that “revolutionary intransigence” ordered by the Communist Party in the 1970s.

Of mediocre workmanship and rather bad taste, these productions aim to associate national symbols with our national traditions, without subtlety and with little aesthetic value. When Cubans sang to their nation, did they do it the same way? Let’s look at examples.

At the beginning of the Ten Years’ War, the love song La Bayamesa, composed more than a decade earlier by three young people, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Francisco Castillo Moreno and José Fornaris, dedicated to the then girlfriend of one of them, was turned into a hymn of praise to our sovereign land in the imagination of our mambises. It was widely performed, both the original and the version with lyrics attributed to José Joaquín Palma and its popularity reached Europe, while inside borders we continue to enjoy it like the first day. continue reading

At the end of the 19th century, a white Cuban just 18 years old and his brother, Eduardo and Fernando Sánchez de Fuentes, composed Tú, one of those “round trip songs”, as habaneras — a popular genre of music — were called then. Soon the emigrants supporting independence appropriated its melody and lyrics, feeling in it the description of the dreamed of free Cuba, especially in its final statement: “Cuba is you.” It is a true “tobacco label turned into song”, according to the journalist Orlando González. Of enduring value, today connoisseurs include it among the three best-known habaneras of all time.

A Dutchman, Hubert de Blanck, who settled down with a Cuban woman, improvised on the piano for six minutes , with the best of his virtuosity, a melody by Perucho Figueredo when even that march was only the promise of a national anthem for a long-awaited country. Such is the excellence of this musical composition, which today resonates permanently in the Tomb of the Unknown Mambí of the recently rebuilt National Capitol, reminding us of genuine Cubanness.

Two black musicians, Lico Jiménez and José White, put their lives and heritage at the service of a nation in need of a homeland. The latter composed La bella cubana, a song frequently sung at many independence parties since the mid-nineteenth century. It had such acceptance that authorized voices consider it one of the three most emblematic songs of Cuba and it was used in the past as a musical theme by the CMBF Radio Musical Nacional station, a distinguished promoter of good music in Cuba.

With the above examples still in the ear, it is difficult to judge the texts of the three “response songs” to Patria y Vida. The songs included barricade jargon, their quality diminished by urgency. Appeals to be intolerant of opposing opinions, as if this land does not belong to all of us, are the continuation of the “revolutionary violence” of the last six decades. To promote this intimidation now is to promote once again acts of repudiation and the actions of the notorious “rapid response brigades”, the result of which would no longer be the same as in other times of citizen meekness.

On the other hand, as far as I know, none of the Black Cubans belonging to any of the multiple sides that fought against discrimination, and for the inclusion of blackness ,ever publicly wore expensive African clothes. Without a foothold in Cuban tradition and history, it seems to me that this visual metaphor, so abundant in recent years, responds to commercial interests. Mixing that clothing with the national symbols and selling the multimedia result as a sample of Cubanness is an unforgivable show.

For the discerning, I answer why I do not also judge the piece Patria y Vida. The reason has nothing to do with the music or its aesthetic appreciation. Quite simply, none of the patriotic testimonies of imperishable quality mentioned were made with public money or under the patronage of any government.

On the contrary, in most cases the money of the authors and performers were devoted to a sovereign and dreamed of better homeland. For the time being, consequently, I criticize those songs made with the resources of the State, resources which would have been better invested in solving the many deficiencies in the lives of Cubans today.

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Finger Amputated Due to Lack of Antibiotics in Cuba

The only solution to prevent the hand from becoming gangrenous was amputation of the phalanx. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 10 March 2021 — “Mommy, where did you leave the tip of your finger?” asked Yuneidis Cabañas Rivera’s three-year-old son when she returned from the hospital. The young woman lost a phalanx of the middle finger of her left hand after an infection could not be treated in time due to the lack of antibiotics in Cuban pharmacies.

Cabañas was cleaning a frozen chicken last January when she pricked her finger on a bone splinter. At first it seemed only a small wound, but little by little the inflammation and pain began, she told 14ymedio. Cabañas is a resident of the Martí neighborhood, in the Cerro municipality, in Havana.

Four days later, Cabañas could no longer bear the discomfort and decided to go to the emergency room at the Joaquin Albarrán Clinical Surgical Hospital, near her home. The doctor checked the young woman’s finger and recommended that she apply cold water creams and also start a cycle with the antibiotic ciprofloxacin. continue reading

But, to the pain suffered by the advance of the infection was then added the discomfort of not finding the necessary medicine in any pharmacy. “We spent three days visiting various pharmacies, but nothing,” laments Mercedes, Cabañas’ grandmother who helped her in the search for the missing antibiotic.

“The government says that we are a medical power but they are incapable of supplying antibiotics,” says Cabañas. “I went to the hospital three more times to change the prescription for another type of medicine, but I didn’t find those either,” adds the young woman who always encountered the same responses in pharmacies: Antibiotics are not coming in.

To avoid crowds in pharmacies, hospital managers have warned doctors that they should not prescribe drugs that are unavailable, but every day it is more difficult for doctors to find a drug that the patient can later buy without major setbacks.

Two weeks after the incident, a friend with medical knowledge who visited Cabañas recommended that she return immediately to the hospital and demand that she be treated “properly”: “If you have to get tough, you get tough but you’re going to lose your finger.”

Back at the Albarrán hospital, the young woman, accompanied by her grandmother, staged “a giant fit.” At first the doctors tried to save the entire finger and admitted her to try cures. There was no type of pain reliever or local anesthetic for the treatments and they were very harsh. “I couldn’t sleep the night before thinking about the procedure.”

Finally, on February 16, doctors could not avoid amputation of the upper phalanx of the middle finger on her left hand, because the infection did not recede and the entire hand could become gangrenous. Along with the loss, Cabañas suffered severe pain without any treatment.

Last December, amid a severe drug shortage on the island, Dr. Emilio Delgado Iznaga, director of Medications and Medical Technology of the Ministry of Public Health warned that the problem would continue for the next 12 months. The country will have “a very tight basic table of drugs due to financial tensions,” the official said, a prognosis that has worsened over the weeks.

Almost two months after the onset of the infection and three weeks after the phalanx was amputated, the area is still red, swollen and painful. Now, the great concern of Cabañas, who has not yet been able to find antibiotics in pharmacies, is that the infection will return and even spread to the entire hand.

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Cuba Postpones Rollout of the Soberana Vaccine

Phase III trials of the Soberana vaccine will involve 44,000 people.

14ymedio, Havana, March 8, 2021 — Rollout of the Cuban vaccine will begin later than had been expected. At the end of December Vicente Verez, director of the Cuban Finlay Institute, predicted that vaccinations could begin in the first half of 2021 but scientific realities have forced him to temper his optimism. He now admits that the vaccinations will probably not begin until the summer.

In an interview on Saturday on the Peruvian radio and television program “Exitosa”, Verez discussed the development of Soberana [Sovereign] 2. The vaccine has just begun Phase III trials, which are scheduled to last three months. The director of the Finlay Institute calculated that it will take another month to certify and produce the vaccine at a higher volume and that vaccinations would begin sometime around July. Asked if he believed it would be possible to be marketing it by August, he indicated he thought that was a realistic date.

Hopes of vaccinating the Cuban population in the first half of this year or, as had been previously predicted, to begin the process in March, have been dashed. The postponement also calls into question the government’s decision not to participate in the COVAX program, an international funding initiative designed to allow countries to acquire cheaper or donated vaccines. Although some wealthy countries have joined the effort, most are contributors to the fund and, as such, have agreed forego any of its benefits in order to allow cash-strapped nations to acquire vaccines at market-rate prices. continue reading

Cuba has not offered an official explanation as to why it decided not to participate in an initiative that would have already allowed it to begin immunizing its high-risk populations — the first COVAX vaccines began arriving at the end of February — as it continues to develop its own treatments.

The interview turned to the topic of exports when the moderator asked about possible shipments of Soberana 2 to Peru. Verez confirmed that the vaccine would would certainly be ready to ship by August. He declined to discuss the purchase price, which is covered by the terms and conditions of the contract negotiated by the parties to the agreement and based on different variables, though he assured the interviewer that it would be very competitive, much more so than vaccines currently on the market.

Clinical trials of Soberana 2 are now beginning simultaneously in Havana and Iran, where they are being conducted by the Pasteur Institute. Verez explained that 44,000 people in the Cuban capital have been chosen to participate, a very large sample size given to the relatively low prevalence of coronavirus on the island compared to the worst-hit countries. This trial’s participants will be divided into three groups. One of will receive only a placebo, the second group will get two doses of Sovereign 2 while the third will be given two doses of the vaccine as well as one dose of Sovereign Plus, a complementary medication announced last week as the fifth vaccine but that, according to Verez, is actually intended to act as a booster.

Though he declined to quantify the efficacy of the new vaccine candidate while Phase III trials are still ongoing, preliminary Phase II results are showing an immune response rate of 84% after two doses (administered twenty-eight days apart). After an additional dose of Soberana Plus, the rate could climb to as much as 95%, though he added, “We have to wait awhile before we know the final results.”

Verez explained that studies to create a new vaccine candidate in Cuba began nine months ago. It uses recombinant protein technology, which involves the reproduction of viral proteins found in the tips of the coronavirus and introduces them into the human immune system so that it learns to defend itself.

Among the questions left unanswered are how well it works in children, a population in which Soberana 02 will also be studied, and how well it responds to the variants strains emerging around the world.

Verez added that analysis of Soberana 1 results is also moving forward quickly though he did not provide any further information. This vaccine is currently in Phase II.

Cuba is also working on Abdala and Mambisa, two vaccine candidates being developed by Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB). The Abdala vaccine is awaiting authorization to begin Phase III trials while Mambisa, which is administered through the nose, is in Phase I.

Covid-19 remains uncontained and the infection rate is not trending downward, as might be expected after a slight tightening of restrictions which, now several weeks later, were obviously insufficient. On Sunday, 858 infections and four deaths were reported, for a total of 5,101 new cases at the end of the first week of March, according to the Ministry of Public Health.

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