14ymedio

A Recording Made by Miguel Coyula Reveals the Tensions Between Filmmakers and Cultural Authorities

Faced with an alarmed leadership, Ramón Samada, president of ICAIC, rebukes Coyula for filming the start of the meeting. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 3 July 2023 — Film director Miguel Coyula made public this Sunday several video and audio fragments recorded during the meeting held on June 23 at the Chaplin Cinema, in Havana, attended by more than a hundred filmmakers and authorities from the Ministry of Culture and the Communist Party.

Gathered in the Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers, the creators opposed the officials’ prohibition of recording the discussion. During the exchange, the controversy generated as a result of the censorship and unauthorized transmission on Cuban Television of the documentary, directed by Juan Pin Vilar, also present in the dialogue, was addressed.

“I hope that some of the young people present are recording, because they will be doing a lot of good to the archives of Cuban culture,” said Pin Vilar during his speech, in which he also warned the leaders that it was possible that the producer of the film, the Cuban Ricardo Figueredo, and another producer of Argentine nationality whom he did not identify, will take legal action against those responsible for broadcasting the documentary.

The president of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC), Ramón Samada, questioned Coyula directly, forbidding him to record the meeting, to which he replied that he is not a member of any official institution and that recording these events is his “job.” continue reading

Other filmmakers also disagreed, pointing out that, in contrast to the refusal to film the meeting, the authorities were recording the discussion.

The actor Luis Alberto García quoted the well-known phrase of Fidel Castro in 1961, during his speech that came to be known as Words to the Intellectuals: “Within the Revolution everything, against the Revolution nothing,” he paraphrased, and questioned the authority of officials to decide “what is inside of the Revolution and what is against it.”

In addition, he addressed the censorship of films such as Santa y Andrés and Vicenta B., both by director Carlos Lechuga, currently in exile in Spain. The filmmakers don’t find “any problem” for them, he continued, but their exclusion from the pro-government film environment responds to a need to punish the author, he opined. “They have to stop censoring. Every year this is some problem… Dissidents should be treated differently,” said Luis Alberto García.

Coyula also filmed the leaders who, from a table on the stage, listened to the speeches. Among them were Alpidio Alonso and Fernando Rojas, Minister and Vice Minister of Culture, respectively, as well as Vice Prime Minister Inés María Chapman and the head of the Communist Party’s ideological department, Rogelio Polanco. From time to time, however, they intervened to repeat the warning not to record. “Here no one was prohibited from entering with a cellphone. Here no one was prohibited from anything. Let’s not challenge each other,” Samada stressed.

Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez Yong, one of the filmmakers present, detailed the tension during the event in an interview with 14ymedio. However, his conclusion was optimistic: “I think that even so the possibility of working together with many of the problems that affect us was raised,” he said.

They discussed, according to Rodríguez, problems of a logistical nature that depend on the administration of the State, but also what has to do with the ideological and the political. “Everything will also depend on us (the filmmakers) being able to organize ourselves,” he said.

A statement by Deputy Prime Minister Chapman and an official communiqué from the Ministry of Culture, both published after the meeting, affirmed the government’s willingness to engage in dialogue. However, the material contributed by Coyula, which brings new nuances to the controversy between artists and censors, exposes that there is little willingness, on the part of the regime, to resolve the concerns of “problematic” artists.

____________

COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

The United States Demands the ‘Immediate Release’ of the Political Prisoners of the 11 July 2021 Protests

Political Police repression of demonstrators from the protests of July 11, 2021 in Havana. (Marcos Evora)

14ymedio, Havana, 9 July 2023 — On the eve of the second anniversary of the massive protests of 11 July 2021 (11J), the United States Embassy in Cuba again asked the regime in Havana to release the detainees arrested during these demonstrations. In a message sent to Martí Noticias, the diplomatic headquarters pointed out that the human rights situation on the Island continues to be “grim.”

“About 700 demonstrators and more than a thousand political prisoners in total remain behind bars. We reiterate our prior call for the immediate release of political prisoners, unjustly detained,” a spokesman for the State Department said in an email.

This Tuesday marks two years since the historic anti-government demonstrations of July 11, 2021, to which the regime responded with repression and a tightening of the penalties for those arrested, with sentences of up to 10 years in prison for both adults and minors.

The diplomat recalled that Joe Biden’s administration ordered the State Department to investigate “accountability” for the abuses committed by the Cuban regime. Several rounds of sanctions and visa restrictions were imposed on people with direct links to the “hard treatment” of the demonstrators. continue reading

Two weeks after the pressure against the demonstrations, the U.S. Government sanctioned the National Revolutionary Police (PNR), as well as its senior commanders: Óscar Callejas Valcarce, the head of the PNR, and the deputy director, Eddy Sierra Aria. This law blocks any assets they may have under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibits any type of negotiation.

According to the Martí Noticias’ report, published this Saturday, the spokesman for the Embassy assured that the United States maintains its support for the Cuban people in their search for “human rights, prosperity and a future of greater dignity.”

Therefore, he added, the U.S. Government ordered that alternatives be explored to directly support the population of the Island. As part of these actions, measures were approved to strengthen “entrepreneurship and allow families to reconnect with each other.” This allowed the authorization of regular and charter flights to other destinations than Havana, in addition to regulatory changes for group travel and the sending of remittances, as well as the resumption of consular services. “All while the U.S. continues to deny resources to the Cuban armed forces,” the diplomat said.

However, the diplomat recognizes that the regime continues its repression against dissident voices. The family members of the protesters are also harassed and threatened when they dare to talk about the deplorable conditions under which their loved ones are in prison. He ends his message with: “We are with you.”

The U.S. Embassy also responded this Saturday to the statements of Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, who on several occasions has blamed the “blockade” for the shortage of medicines on the Island. On Twitter, the diplomatic headquarters denied that the economic embargo prohibits exports of American medicines and even said that it is “easy” to obtain the purchase license from the Department of Commerce.

It explained that, so far in 2023, the United States has approved almost 900 million dollars in medical exports to Cuba, a figure that exceeds the 800 million that were registered in all of 2022. “So the embargo can’t be used as an excuse for the lack of medical care in Cuba,” the report adds.

Initially, the Cuban minister could have responded to an update from the U.S. Census Bureau, which revealed that U.S. exports to Cuba have exceeded 2.1 million dollars in various products, between January and May 2023. However, he said that the medicines suffer the “same prohibitions” imposed by the blockade.

The shortage of medicines on the Island mostly responds to the lower production of BioCubaFarma, which last May warned that the industry did not have enough raw materials to guarantee the most in-demand drugs, both for open sale and for hospital use.

At that time, the company’s director of Operations and Technology, Rita María García, explained that the Government does not have enough financial liquidity to buy more inputs or finished products, in addition to problems in the supply of packaging in the international market.

Translated by Regina Anavy

____________

Test Trip of the ‘Perseverancia’ to Cuba’s Isla de la Juventud To Enter Into Service ‘Before the End of July’

The ferry Perseverancia on its test trip on Tuesday. (Cubadebate)

14ymedio, Madrid, 7 July 2023 – A year after the imminent launch of a new ship to serve the Isla de la Juventud was announced with great fanfare in the official media, the first test trip of the Perseverancia finally took place.

The Cuban Minister of Transport, Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila, visiting Girona to supervise this “technical crossing,” described it as “successful,” but said that since the boat “transported few personnel and little rolling cargo, other navigation tests at full capacity” will be carried out. The operation of the boat, he said, will begin “before the end of the current month of July.”

The trip between Batabanó, in the province of Mayabeque, and the port of Nueva Gerona on the Isla de la Juventud, a journey of 65 miles, will have an estimated duration, as it was said at the time, of five hours. However, the minister explained that “the real time for a round trip can be or exceed 12 hours.”

The ferry has twice the capacity of the old catamarans that performed the service and can carry 430 passengers in addition to vehicles and cargo. continue reading

Tuesday’s article doesn’t give any explanation for the delay in the start-up of this transport service, which in July 2022 was reported to be “in the next few days.”

Neither the schedules nor the ticket prices of have been defined yet, although it is anticipated that “It will not be the same as the catamaran, because this is a much more expensive boat.” The trip on the current catamarans, which users have complained about because of their poor condition, costs about 50 pesos.

Nor was it clarified where the Perseverancia came from. The Noticero Nacional said last year that it was acquired for a “million-dollar” amount somewhere in Asia — which most Cubans understand as China — and it crossed seas and oceans to reach the Island. The report then highlighted it as a “trial by fire,” but there have been no further words about it.

On June 22, the authorities announced the resumption of the Cubana de Aviación route between Havana and Isla de la Juventud, with four weekly flights, operating until October 28.

Translated by Regina Anavy

It Took the Cuban Police More Than a Year To Capture a Cattle Thief

The detainee in Santo Domingo, Raidel Perera Romero, had been denounced by the neighbors. (Fuerza de Pueblo)

14ymedio, Madrid, 7 July 2023 — Raidel Perera Romero, a fugitive from justice for more than a year, has been arrested by the Police in Santo Domingo, Villa Clara. According to Fuerza del Pueblo, a page related to the Ministry of the Interior, the “antisocial element,” who had an 11-year prison sentence for robbery with force, was hidden by the “intricate areas” of the towns of Manacas and Mordazo.

It was the neighbors themselves who denounced him, after he committed several cattle thefts. Now, the Facebook post says, “he will have to comply with a penalty for the crimes of robbery with force, evasion from prison and theft and slaughter of livestock.”

Villa Clara leads the ranking for cattle theft, which in 2022, according to official data, amounted to 82,445 head throughout the Island: 45,315 cows and 37,130 horses, the equivalent of 22 million pounds of meat.

In that province alone there were 12,243 cases, compared to 4,079 in the previous year, or triple the amount. In second place is Holguín, which lost 9,825 head in 2022, doubling the number for 2021 (4,655), and in third place, Matanzas, which went from 2,926 to 8,159 losses.

Last May, desperate because of a crime that doesn’t let up, the Government pointed out last year’s approval of the “the slaughter and consumption of beef for self-consumption,” has led to the increase in cattle thefts.

Translated by Regina Anavy

____________

With 66 Percent of Buses Out of Service, Havana Residents Are Also Facing Water and Power Shutoffs at Start of Vacation Season

Only 34% of Havana’s 894 public buses are working due to lack of maintenance. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 6 July 2023 — With the start of the vacation season at hand, 66% of Havana’s buses are out of service according to a statement made on Tuesday by José Conesa González, coordinator of Industry and Transport. The crisis has been made worse by other problems that the city’s families have been experiencing for months, including shutoffs to the water supply and delayed delivers of basic rationed goods that date back to May.

At a meeting of the Temporary Working Group in Havana on July 4, at which the performance of various municipal services was reviewed, each official presented data that painted a desolate picture for Cuban families.

In statements made to the government-run newspaper Tribuna de la Habana, Conesa González said that only 294 (just 34%) of the 894 Provincial Transport Company’s buses were operational. Despite the discouraging figures, he took pains to point out that the situation is expected to improve once six schoolbuses go back into service during the first half of July.

Playa de Este will get thirty school buses and also will resume public bus service. He added that public transport to the seaside community of Regla will remain suspended until August, when the route will rely on only four vehicles.

Conesa González also provided an assessment of the electrical service conditions in Havana, pointing out that 200 transformers that serve residential customers are damaged due to “excess consumption.” This is not the first time that provincial officials have used this excuse to justify the electricity shortage. In late June they indicated that the daily demand had exceeded 25% of what was anticipated and “demand is more than what the electrical system can handle.” continue reading

In the city’s poorest neighborhoods as well as in Miramar, where many foreign embassies are located, the water supply will continue to be a headache for residents. César Hernández Carrazana, coordinator of Construction Programs and Objectives, explained that 87,214 people are still without service. He assured residents that his agency is working to repair the pumps needed to reestablish connections in the most critical areas. He acknowledged, however, that a large part of the operation depends on new equipment which must be imported.

Twenty-three pumps have been ordered but the first twelve will not arrive until July 31 and the remainder will arrive not until the end of August. The water shortage is also affecting other provinces. Last week demonstrators in Guatemala, a neighborhood in the town of Mayarí (in Holguín province) demanded the restoration of service after three months of shortages and instability.

To calm public discontent, officials announced they were planning to install “easy access points” such as water tanks in critical areas. In the coming days one will be installed in Eastern Havana’s Villa Panamericana for use by those living multi-family buildings.

Additionally, sixty-two tanker cars will provide water to the families in Old Havana, Revolution Plaza, Central Havana, La Lisa, Playa and Marianao. These will not, however, meet all the needs of the population according to Leonel Díaz Hernández, director of Aguas de La Habana (Havana Waters), who also warned that those attempting to profit from service will be prosecuted.

The city’s residents are also waiting for the government to fulfill its May quota of rationed goods. Julio Martínez Brito, the official in charge of food distribution for the province, said that this month’s supply of cooking oil is being acquired at a rate of fifty tons a day and promised that delivery of July’s one-pound allotment of sugar will be completed this week.

Orestes Llanes Mestre, coordinator for Inspection, Control and Hygiene, also warned that those who engage in “civil disobedience and illegal actions” will be dealt with harshly.

____________

Cuban Artist and Dissident Otero Alcantara Begins a Hunger and Thirst Strike

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, 35 years old, is serving a five-year sentence for the crimes of insulting national symbols, public disorder and contempt. (Screen capture)

EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, July 8, 2023 — The Cuban artist and dissident Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara has started a hunger and thirst strike demanding his release from the Guanajay prison, where he is serving a five-year sentence, according to the activist Claudia Genlui speaking on Friday.

This is the sixth strike by the leader of the San Isidro Movement, who has been imprisoned in Cuba since July 11, 2021 (11J), when he tried to join the anti-government protests that broke out that day in the country, the largest in decades.

According to Genlui, an exile in the United States, Otero Alcántara “refuses to accept jail as his fate, refuses to accept the endless bars, the stone beds, the white light that never goes out, the 20 minutes of telephone calls a week, the hyper-monitored monthly family visit.” The 35-year-old opponent is serving a five-year sentence for the crimes of insulting national symbols, public disorder and contempt.

It is not the first time that the artist has adopted this measure; in April 2021 he was on a hunger and thirst strike for more than five days, for which he was admitted to a hospital in Havana.

Time magazine included him among the hundred most influential people in the world in 2021, while Amnesty International considers him a “prisoner of conscience.”

His decision comes a few days before the second anniversary of the 11 July 2021 protests and almost two weeks after the Cuban opposition figure Guillermo Fariñas also began a hunger and thirst strike that was joined by several members of his organization, the United Antitotalitarian Forum (Fantu). continue reading

Fariñas, a winner of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize in 2010, on Friday resumed the thirst strike that he had suspended four days ago, while maintaining the hunger strike that began on June 25.

As reported on social networks by Fantu, the dissident took this step because there has been no progress in the conditions he put in place at the start of this strike.

Specifically, Fariñas suspended the thirst strike for four days on Monday while waiting for the European Parliament to approve a motion to request the breaking of the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (ADPC) that the European Union (EU) has maintained with Cuba since 2017, one of their four demands at the start of the protest.

The motion, however, will be put to a vote next Tuesday. The Spanish Member of the European Parliament Javier Nart assured Fariñas by telephone this Thursday that the initiative will go ahead because “conservatives, liberals and popular party members have a majority in the plenary session of the Eurochamber,” said Fantu.

According to the latest health report, Fariñas, 61, is suffering “a lot of sleepiness, fatigue, weakness and joint pain” and has “sporadic states of alertness, when he talks.” In addition to demanding the EU end of the ADPC, Fariñas included in his conditions to end the hunger strike the “unconditional” release in Cuba of “all political prisoners.”

Likewise, Fariñas urged the Organization of American States (OAS) to impose a “naval and air siege” on Cuba in application of its Inter-American Democratic Charter, although the island is not part of that body. So far there has been no response to this demand.

Finally, the dissident assured that he would maintain his protest “until all the military personnel and their espionage teams currently based in Cuba, belonging to the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation, are withdrawn.”

Fariñas, one of the best-known Cuban opponents internationally, told EFE at the beginning of the strike that he was arrested last week at the Santa Clara airport, after an incident due to the loss of his suitcases upon his return from a stay several months in Miami (USA).

This is the 28th hunger strike carried out by Fariñas. The longest, 14 months, was in 2003 and the last one dates from 2016, when he fasted for a hundred days, most of them hospitalized, to ask the Cuban government to release a group of sick imprisoned opponents.

____________

Madrid, the Last Stop for the Cuban Ballet of Camaguey Performing ‘Swan Lake’

Swan Lake performed by the Cuban ballet of Camagüey. (Facebook/Cuba Camagüey Classical Ballet)

EFE (via 14ymedio), Madrid, July 7, 2023 — The classic Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa, performed by the Cuban ballet from the city of Camagüey, faces its first weekend of presentation to the public at the EDP Gran Vía de Madrid theater before its return to the Island.

The dance piece directed by Regina Balaguer tells the love story between Prince Siegfried, performed by the main dancer, Yanni Ulices García, and Princess Odette, performed by Rosa María Armengol, a young woman trapped by the curse of the sorcerer Voth Roberth, who turns her into a swan during the day and a human being at night.

The climax of this work, staged by dancers between the ages of 19 and 21, is to break Odette ’s spell, which will happen with the promise of true love.

In statements to EFE, the director of the ballet group for more than 25 years, Regina Balaguer, explains that Swan Lake has many versions, but assures that in this one “love triumphs.”

She also says that preparing the dance performance was very “intense” work, because for many dancers it was the first time they had contact with the famous choreography.

Similarly, Balaguer relates that the show requires a lot of effort from the dancers, “especially from the protagonist who plays two different roles, Odette and Odile (the black swan).” continue reading

It is the third time that this company has performed in Madrid; it had previously done so with the romantic ballet Giselle in 2009 and in 2018 with Carmen, the contemporary neoclassical work by choreographer Peter Breuer.

“Cuba and Spain have always had good relations, mainly in culture and dance (…) ballet has always had preferential taste in the Spanish country. Whenever we come, the public has welcomed us very well,” said Balaguer, who is also a deputy of the National Assembly of People’s Power on the Island.

For the former Cuban dancer, each of her performances are like a “child.”

“A child of mine and of everyone who collaborates (…) The effort is collective,” clarifies the director, who leads a team of more than 90 to stage the ballets.

The work, which has already been presented in the Spanish city of Barcelona with “very good reception,” will be performed in the Spanish capital until August 6.

____________

An NGO Related to the Cuban Government Regrets Its Exclusion From the EU-Celac Summit

The president of the ACNU, Norma Goicochea, also stated that the forum is not organized by the EU but by a platform of organizations. (Twitter/UNAC)

EFE (via 14ymedio), Madrid, 8 July 2023 — On Friday, an NGO affiliated with the Cuban government criticized a forum organized within the framework of the European Union and Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (EU-Celac) Summit, which will take place on July 17 and 18.

The Cuban Association of the United Nations (ACNU) – not related to the UN – said that the forum Civil society, youth and local authorities, convened by the EU for July 13 and 14, has been characterized by the “lack of timely information and the exclusion” of participants.

According to Cuban state media, at a press conference, the NGO charged that the format proposed for this forum “does not conform” to the decision adopted by the foreign ministers at a meeting held in Buenos Aires in October 2022.

The president of the ACNU, Norma Goicochea, also stated that the forum is not organized by the EU but by a platform of organizations, which in her opinion is not the usual practice in this type of initiative.

Similarly, she criticized the proposal for ignoring Celac and its social articulation based on an “integrationist, supportive and social justice” approach for the Latin American and Caribbean region. continue reading

The president of the ACNU also criticized the fact that the number of face-to-face attendees has been limited, which in her opinion “unacceptably reduces the participation of the varied and broad spectrum” of civil society organizations from the Latin American continent.

Goicochea said that the individual and collective associates of the ACNU “will have representatives at the People’s Summit,” a meeting that is held in Madrid days before the CELAC-EU meeting in Brussels, and which she described as “a plural, democratic exercise participatory from a bi-regional approach”.

____________

A Letter Addressed to President Diaz-Canel Demands ‘Freedom Without Banishment’ for Cuba’s Political Prisoners

Several uniformed personnel during a repressive operation of the Cuban regime in the demonstrations of July 11, 2021. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 5 July 2023 – — More than 300 opponents, activists and family members have called for “freedom without banishment” for Cuban political prisoners in a letter addressed to Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel. With the subject “Voices for the freedom of our Cuban political prisoners” and dated July 3, 2023, the letter insists that “economic, civil and political freedoms” are not recognized in the country and that “regulations are created that legalize the violation and punishment of citizens’ rights and duties.”

“The past has been controlled, manipulated and erased; the present is controlled and distorted, and the future has an uncertain design where human rights are not essential in a democratic culture,” the document adds. For the signatories, among whom are more than 40 relatives of political prisoners, the government doesn’t allow “every person to express their ideas freely and to be respected in their entirety in any circumstance, without fear of being persecuted, mistreated or condemned for their opinions.”

The text voices complaints to the Communist Party, the Parliament and the Prosecutor’s Office about the conditions in which they keep the opponent José Daniel Ferrer García, confined in a prison in Santiago de Cuba “under constant physical, verbal and psychological aggression.” It also holds the authorities responsible for the “hundreds of men, many of them over 60 years old and even women who are mothers of minor children and others who are adolescents and young people, all of them confined under unjust sentences”

The signatories point out that in Cuban prisons “the human rights of those inmates are violated, including those with any disability, and that because they are political prisoners, mistreatment, beatings and the punishment of isolation cells are applied to them more sternly.” In addition, there is “a lack of attention to the health” of the prisoners and “a lack of medicines for the control of their diseases and the precarious diet to which they are subjected.” continue reading

“Ignoring this situation is cruel and inhuman,” the statement insists before concluding with a call to all Cubans to “visualize the situation of people imprisoned for their ideas, who have been sentenced to long years in prison.” “Let’s remember that the popular demonstration of July 11, 2021 was a reaction of the people and angry youth who loudly demanded Freedom, Freedom, Freedom.”

This Tuesday, Nelva Ortega, wife of José Daniel Ferrer and one of the signatories of the letter, was unable to talk with her husband — the leader of the Cuban Patriotic Union (UNPACU) — in the Mar Verde prison, where they had scheduled a conjugal visit. According to the dissident’s sister, Ana Belkis Ferrer, the authorities only allowed the woman to glimpse her husband, after taking her down the corridor that leads to his isolation cell.

Ferrer’s sister reported that the opponent, imprisoned since August 2021, remains in “cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions” and constantly suffers “physical and psychological tortures.”

Ferrer continues to refuse, according to his relatives, to wear the uniform of an ordinary prisoner and does not accept any negotiation about his exile. In addition, he persists in condemning any relief of US sanctions on the Island and expresses his support for Ukraine in the face of the invasion of Russia.

They also recalled the deplorable state of health of the prisoner, who does not receive medical attention despite “strong pain in his hands, arms, legs, back, head and teeth.” The medicines, arbitrarily administered by his jailers, the family reports, have to be delivered from outside the prison.

After numerous requests to obtain proof of Ferrer’s life, the authorities agreed to have his family visit him on June 22, after three months without being able to see him. His wife and his two children found that the leader of the UNPACU is in a terrible state of health, half-naked and confined in the isolation cell.

“It is totally confirmed that my brother is being murdered in the slowest, most perverse and cruel way that can exist, and in the midst of such a difficult and worrying situation, he sends his message of gratitude to all supportive people, friends, brothers of struggle and ideas, media, institutions and justice-loving governments,” his sister said. “He states that he does not lose hope of getting out of such a hell alive, but that if he does not succeed, remember that he was always willing to give his life for the freedom of his people”

Translated by Regina Anavy

____________

For the First Time in History, Three Cubans Will Be in the Major League Home Run Derby

Randy Arozarena, Luis Robert Jr. and Adolis García are the Cubans in the the Major League Home Run Derby. (Collage/Instagram)

14ymedio, Havana, 6 July 2023 — Cuban baseball players continue to make history in the Major Leagues. Athletes Randy Arozarena, Luis Robert Jr. and Adolis García will compete in the Home Run Derby that will be held on July 10 at T-Mobile Park in Seattle. It’s the “first time” that three athletes born on the Island will participate in this event, which began in 1985, journalist Francys Romero reported on his social networks.

This year, outfielder Randy Arozarena, a naturalized Mexican who plays for the Tampa Bay Rays, will show why he is a key player on the American team. In the first half of the 2023 season, he achieved 16 home runs.

This home run contest is joined by Luis Robert Jr., hired for $50 million by the Chicago White Sox in 2020, who has connected 25 home runs in the current season. His personal best is surpassed by Shohei Ohtani in the American League.

At first, Robert Jr. had no interest in participating in the Derby, he told MLB magazine, stating that “he was not a born homer and did not know if his game could be successful in the event.”

The Texas Rangers baseball player, Adolis García, was enthusiastic about his participation in the Home Run Derby. He was placed in fourth position and said he was prepared for a first-round confrontation with none other than his friend Randy Arozarena (fifth pre-qualified). continue reading

The Home Run Derby will be held one day before the Star Game, where Nolan Arenado will participate. This athlete, the son of Cubans, ruled out participating in representation of the Island in an international tournament. “My father is from Guantánamo,” he told MLB. “Although I don’t speak the language, I am proud of my heritage. Cubans are strong people.”

Upon learning that with the elimination of the repatriation rule for Cubans residing abroad it could be the opening to integrate some selection within the Island, he ruled out that possibility. “I’ll have to talk to my parents and my family about it and see what they say. But from now on, I assume that they would say no until things change there (in Cuba),” he replied to Pelota Cuban journalist Yordan Carmona.

Arenado has won ten gold gloves, six platinum gloves, five silver batters and has been selected for the All-Star Game eight times.

Translated by Regina Anavy

____________

The Spanish Melia Opens a Luxury Hotel in the Building of the Extinct Petroleum Union in Havana

The hotel, one block from the Plaza de la Catedral, occupies number 113 of Empedrado Street, where the National Bank was located for more than 60 years. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 6 July 2023 — A room costs between 295 and 383 euros a night this month at the new INNSiDE Habana Catedral hotel, inaugurated last Saturday by the Spanish group Meliá in Old Havana. If the traveler prefers the “Townhouse Suite,” with 560 square feet, king size bed and view of the bay, the price goes up to the stratosphere: 1,825 euros per night.

The prices of the restaurant, according to 14ymedio, follow the same trend. The dishes range from the 700 pesos for a “vegan salad in the style of the chef” to the 2,600 for a beef fillet with potatoes and red wine sauce, through a ceviche at 1,300 pesos, a honeyed rice with seafood at 1,800 or a fish at 2,000 pesos. As for desserts, you can order a brownie or French toast for 450 pesos, or fruit salad for 400 pesos.

On the menu, which has the prices in Cuban pesos (CUP) and in foreign currency, they apply an exchange rate of 120 pesos for freely convertible currency (MLC).

This Thursday, the place was empty. “Four employees for a single customer,” said a young woman from Havana who told about the experience of having a coffee. “There is not even a fly there, and they look at you as if you were an extraterrestrial.”

She paid 264 pesos for the coffee. “A small amount of coffee, I kept it simple,” she says. It was not enough for a bottle of water, which costs, small, 264 pesos, and large, more than 300. “Fortunately they put a glass of water next to the coffee. It was the size for a three-year-old boy, but better than nothing.” continue reading

As happens in establishments of this type in the capital, the INNSiDE Habana Catedral does not accept cash, and customers must pay by card. To accept payments, there is have an electronic reader for CUP and another for MLC.

The hotel, one block from the Plaza de la Catedral, occupies number 113 of Empedrado Street, where an office building was located for more than 60 years.

The emblematic and modern building was erected in the early 1950s, not without controversy, as the chronicles of the time testify, on the site of an 18th-century colonial house that had to be demolished. “Instead, and completely out of place in that area, there will be a seven-story ultra Miami skyscraper,” reads the newspaper library of the Diario de la Marina. The property, intended for office use, ultimately had five floors, some of them belonging to the extinct Petroleum Union.

Before being reopened by Meliá, it had been under construction for almost seven years. On its website, the hotel says that it was “conceived to give the most curious travelers an impressive urban experience,” and they invite the foreigner who can afford it: “You will find infinite peace in our pool with unparalleled views of the lighthouse and the sea. Are you ready for the adventure?”

Although luxury hotels are still being opened on the Island, the tourism data do not justify it. The sector, the country’s third largest source of foreign exchange – behind the sale of medical services and remittances – has not managed to recover even half of the international visits recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the latest official figures, between January and August of this year, Cuba received 1,390,000 tourists, barely 44.5% of the total registered in the same period of 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic.

Translated by Regina Anavy

____________

A Third of Those Enrolled in Mais Medicos De Brasil Come From Bolivia, Paraguay and Cuba

In the last call of the program, 58% of the slightly more than 34,000 registered were nationals trained in Brazil. (EFE)

EFE (via 14ymedio), Sao Paulo, July 5, 2023 — Some 36% of those enrolled in the Mais Medicos (More Doctors) program, one of the hallmarks of the Brazilian Government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, are professionals trained in Bolivia, Paraguay and Cuba, according to data sent by the Ministry of Health to EFE. In the last call of the program, 58% of the just over 34,000 enrolled were nationals trained in Brazil, with priority in access, while the rest, 42%, were foreigners or Brazilians educated outside the country.

Of those trained outside, 14% of the total number of registrants (4,846 professionals) trained in Bolivia; 13% (4,294), in Paraguay; and 9.5% (3,235), in Cuba, followed by Argentina and Venezuela, with much lower numbers.

Lula’s Government, aware of the criticisms made of the program in the past, has tried to increase the representation of Brazilians with a variety of incentives, such as salary supplements and educational opportunities.

The high percentage of doctors trained abroad has been one of the most controversial points of the program since it was launched in 2013 during Dilma Rousseff’s mandate (2011-2016) to solve the deficit of health personnel in remote regions such as the Amazon.

According to the current law, approved by Congress at the end of June, doctors who practice abroad and sign up for the program can work in Brazil without having to undergo a knowledge test for the first four years. continue reading

The Federal Council of Medicine, which regulates the profession, said in June about those trained outside that it is “against their right to exercise the profession in the country without first proving their preparation.”

In addition, the Brazilian right has denounced for years that part of the salary paid to Cuban doctors, who until 2018 formed a majority of those enrolled in the program, was diverted to the Government of the Island.

In fact, former President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) threatened to expel them, which led the Cuban government to end its official participation in the program and caused vast areas of the country to be left without medical attention.

Many Cuban doctors, however, decided to stay in Brazil, even without being able to dedicate themselves to the profession, and now they have the possibility of signing up for the program again.

The number of people enrolled in the latest edition of Más Médicos has broken records, according to the Government, and is well above the open vacancies, almost 6,000, a sixth of them destined for the Amazon region.

Translated by Regina Anavy

____________

With the Murder of Saray Moya in Ciego De Ávila, Cuba Registers 48 Femicides This Year

Saray Moya Moreno died at the hands of her partner on Monday, according to several independent observatories. (Facebook/María Caridad Grau)

14ymedio/EFE, Havana, July 6, 2023 — The independent feminist platform Yo Sí Te Creo en Cuba (YSTCC)[I Do Believe You] documented this Wednesday a new sexist murder that occurred in the town of Chambas, in the province of Ciego de Ávila. With the death of Saray Moya Moreno, this Monday, at the hands of her partner, the number of femicides registered on the Island so far this year rises to 48.

The activists sent their condolences “to the affected families and especially to the sons and daughters” of the murdered woman. “In the faces of delinquency and impunity, we urge family members and children of legal age to pressure and demand justice from the corresponding institutions,” they stressed, in a message disseminated on social networks.

In addition, they ask for “citizen collaboration” to verify two other alleged femicides that occurred in the province of Santiago de Cuba. This group points out that since 2019, when it began to count sexist crimes on the Island, they have counted 166 that have been verified.

YSTCC and the Observatorio de Género de Alas Tensas (OGAT) [Tense Wings Gender Observatory] also confirmed on Wednesday another sexist crime, the twelfth recorded last June, the month with the most deaths of women at the hands of their partners or ex-partners so far this year. continue reading

According to the statements that her relatives offered to CubaNet, on June 19, the young Yunisleve Fernández reported at the Torrientes Police Station, in the Matancero municipality of Jagüey Grande, that her aggressor had brutally beaten her. Upon learning that Fernández had gone to the authorities, her ex-partner, who is not named by the media but apparently lived under the same roof as the victim, threatened to kill her. Four days later, on June 23, Fernández was murdered with a knife in front of her four-year-old son and her mother.

The Island exceeds, in just six months, the total number of feminicides verified throughout 2022 (36), according to the records of the activists and collated by 14ymedio, in the absence of official public statistics.

These groups insist on their calls to the authorities of the Island to declare a “state of emergency for gender violence,” and regret that the Cuban Government has not taken measures in this regard.

The work of independent feminists and their dissemination in the unofficial media has contributed to putting the focus on the cases of sexist murders and disappearances of Cubans in recent years.

YSTCC has highlighted that “nothing would have been possible without all those people who share content, verify data and are support networks for survivors.”

These groups, which have social networks and victim help phones, advocate for a comprehensive law against sexist violence and the implementation of protocols to prevent these events, as well as the creation of shelters and rescue systems for women in danger and their children.

Last April, President Miguel Díaz-Canel assured that there would be “zero tolerance” for this type of violence. In June, the official Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) created the Cuba Observatory on Gender Equality, which includes statistics on “women who have been victims of intentional homicide as a result of gender violence in the last 12 months.”

The Supreme People’s Court of the Island reported in mid-May that in 2022 there were 18 convictions for sexist murders, all with penalties of more than 25 years in prison. It did not give more details, and it is still not known to which cases those sentences correspond.

Translated by Regina Anavy

____________

In Cuba People Go Hungry but Communist Experiments Continue

Cuban farmers have been hit hard by lack of inputs, fuel shortages and drought. (Flickr / Kuhnmi)

Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 6 July 2023 — The steps that Cuban communist leaders say they are taking to “strengthen local food systems in all municipalities of the country” can give much worse results. This blog has previously warned that transferring production, which should be attended to at the national level, to the territories is a loss of efficiency, because resources are not used properly. If the authorities persist in the effort, let them be warned. This is not the way to achieve sovereignty or food and nutritional security.

The effort to transform local food systems has been one of the latest ideas of communist leaders for a little more than a year, as part of the actions to deal with the serious economic situation in which the economy finds itself, because of the Ordering Task.* The leaders’ slogan is that “there should be no patio, plot or piece of land unplanted.” But the State continues to maintain thousands of idle acres, which do not produce and do not become profitable. Behind this initiative is Prime Minister Marrero, who will end up reaping one more failure in his long political career.

It seems unbelievable that the communist leaders believe that there are strategies to strengthen local food systems in all the municipalities of the country. Apparently no one has explained to them what economic geography is and the remarkable disparity that exists between some areas and others for a productive dedication to agricultural tasks. That disparity favors the specialization and the search for economies of scale to produce at minimum unit costs.

Therefore, in Cuba before 1959, there was one head of beef cattle per inhabitant on the plains of Camagüey and the best sweet potato obtained in the fields near the capital. No one would think of raising cattle in the latter area or planting sweet potato on the Camagüey plains. The Spaniards had already realized these circumstances since colonial times. If it is now intended that the same thing will occur in each municipality and province, not even those commissions created to implement the measures will be successful. continue reading

Why have the communists come to these measures to take advantage of local systems? According to Marrero, because of the “financial restrictions faced by the country, the impacts of climate change, the global food crisis and the origin of food in imports.” And once again the question is, what do local systems have to do with these problems that belong to the agenda of governments? Isn’t there a covert intention of the regime to transfer its problems and responsibilities to others? Is there no one in local and provincial governments who doesn’t realize the trap they are setting for them? Well, it doesn’t seem so. And so, if no one or nothing says otherwise, this transfer of power will soon take place and will create first and second class Cubans at the same time.

The point is that with these measures it will not be possible to reduce the importations of food and, at the same time, increase the sources of national production. Quite the contrary. The dependence of imports on the financial resources that can be obtained once again poses the problem of the payment of debts, which the communists never talk about. But in reality, if Cuba does not have access to the international financial markets it is because it does not comply with payment of its debts, and, logically, no one wants to lend. So tell me what this has to do with local and provincial governments.

In addition, what no one understands is that 2 billion dollars are allocated to food imports, and at the same time, national productions of rice, beans, corn and pork continue to have low yields, very low production levels and very high financial costs. Something happens in the structure of the land that prevents Cuban agriculture from prospering.

Going to the 7,000 communities of the country to produce food, reaching the popular councils, constituencies, self-consumption, patios and plots, offers an idea of the current desperation of the leaders to produce food. A flight forward that will end up disrupting the productive structure, more or less the same thing that happened with the harvest of the 10 million. The leaders want everyone who has land to have to produce. Although they recognize that the level of self-sufficiency is insufficient for the demand, the official slogan is maintained: “We must sow and achieve compliance with what was designed in each municipality.”

Accompanied by this plan, the leaders want to perfect the process of contracting agricultural productions and at the same time, enhance the so-called urban, suburban and family agriculture program, with an agro-ecological approach based on the reserves and potential of each locality.

The actions proposed for this are hilarious, to classify them in some way. The communists propose “the transformation of urban farms, the use of the agricultural areas available in labor centers, the promotion of a popular productive movement, the consolidation of structures for obtaining organic fertilizers and bio-products, and the commercialization of productive surpluses, freely and directly, by families.” Except for the latter, which is conditioned by low yields, the other measures are absurd.

The regime insists that “we have to continue planting, because yields are limited due to objective conditions of the soils, substrates and irrigation systems.” However, no one assumes any responsibility for the idle lands that belong to the State and that cannot be obtained because of the obstruction of the local leaders who are responsible for applying the legal rules that have been published for this purpose.

And so, entertaining themselves with this nonsense, the population still does not find in the shops the food that it needs or must pay very high prices for the few items that are obtained in the informal markets. No matter how urgent Marrero says it is to apply these reforms, the truth is that a year has passed since the measures were implemented, and the results are even worse than before.

Once again, we warn that food sovereignty will not be achieved through this initiative to consolidate local food systems and even less so with the approach of the Law that is oriented to the elements of sustainability and resilience, when the priority should be yields and production. Communism, as an economic ideology, has no remedy.

*The Ordering Task is a collection of measures that include eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency, which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and a broad range of other measures targeted to different elements of the Cuban economy.

Translated by Regina Anavy

____________

‘Traitors’ to the Regime, the Two Cubans Who Fled in a Hang Glider Get Asylum in the United States

López and Hernández left Tarará in an ultralight delta wing, of the Trike type, with registration number CU-U 1619, which was used for the recreation of tourists. (Twitter/Florida Keys Sheriff)

14ymedio, Havana, 6 July 6, 2023 — The United States granted political asylum to the two Cubans who landed at the Florida keys in a motored hang glider last March. David López Alfonso and Ismael Hernández Chirino will have to stay up to ten more days in the Krome migrant prison in Miami, waiting for the judge who granted them international protection to issue the order in writing.

According to Univision journalist Daniel Benítez, the pilots “won their cases,” and although there is a possibility that the US Prosecutor’s Office will challenge the sentence, it is likely that it will not make any appeal.

This newspaper had access to several testimonies offered to the asylum court by legal experts, including those of lawyer Siro del Castillo, who presented a contextualization of the case of López and Hernández before the court. The director of the Cubalex legal aid NGO, Laritza Diversent, also collaborated with the defense team, led by lawyer Wilfredo Allen.

In his testimony, Del Castillo reminded the court that the Cuban government would have no mercy on both pilots and that the regime’s press had launched a campaign to demand their return. López and Hernández left Tarará, in the municipality of Habana del Este, in an ultralight delta wing, of the Trike type, with registration number CU-U 1619, which was used for the recreation of foreign tourists.

The Cuba Aviation Club — an entity, said the lawyer, led by former spy René González, “who at the time traveled to the United States with a plane that was stolen from Cuba” – argued that the action of the pilots was a “desertion,” and it asked for “the corresponding sanctions for the seriousness of the case and the return of the stolen equipment.” continue reading

Del Castillo stressed that both the Aviation Club and the Civil Institute of Aeronautics – which regulates Cuban airspace – are institutions that respond directly to the Government of the Island. To demonstrate this, he quotes González himself when he says that the Club “recognizes the political orientation of the Cuban State and its Constitution.”

There is, therefore, a relationship of “dependence” between the regime and the aeronautical institutions, according to the expert, which has led them to sign statements, for example, of support for the invasion of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. This link, Del Castillo suggests, discredits the authority of the Aviation Club in terms of moral claims such as the one it intends in the case of López and Hernández.

Finally, and quoting the former spy again, Del Castillo argues the danger in which both pilots will find themselves if they return to a country where they are considered political “enemies”: “It is very difficult to make a revolution without having to guillotine someone. The important thing is that the guillotine is not the main instrument. Every revolution generates a counterrevolution and has to defend itself,” González said publicly in 2018, according to the lawyer.

Cuban pilots, Del Castillo concluded, will not have an opportunity for a fair defense in Cuba, where they have already been described as “traitors” by the highest authorities, and the Constitution of the Republic itself calls for “the most severe sanctions.” Both the fact that they stole a state air vehicle, and their relationship with the tourist sphere are, the lawyer considers, aggravating for their case and could lead to “major prison terms.”

Both pilots were part, during their Active Military Service, of the Cuban border guard corps, managing vehicles similar to the delta wing with which they escaped the country. “It is not surprising that the Cuban authorities, to give more weight to the accusation of ’traitors’ with a claim of a maximum penalty against López and Hernández, who are accused of having passed to the authorities of the United States, information about the air patrol system on the coasts of Cuba, would allow the government prosecutor’s office on the Island to accuse both of disclosure of secrets concerning the security of the State,” says the lawyer.

The judge was convinced, among other arguments, with the assertion that the action of López and Hernández “was motivated solely and exclusively by their desire to live in freedom,” as “hundreds of Cubans” have done in recent decades, “using boats and even planes owned by the Government.”

The latter was the case of Rubén Martínez Machado, a Cuban who managed to escape in a Russian-made Antonov plane on October 21 and land at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, located in the middle of the Everglades. The 29-year-old was a pilot of the Cuban Air Services Company, belonging to the Cuban Aviation Corporation, and he left the Island through Sancti Spíritus.

Customs agents interrogated the pilot as soon as he landed, and he was immediately put in the custody of the authorities. Martínez is currently free after a judge granted him political asylum.

Translated by Regina Anavy

____________

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: