14ymedio

U.S. Invests $28 Million in Repairs to Its Cuban Embassy and Staff Housing

14ymedio, Havana, 13 June 2023 — The iconic United States embassy in Havana, located along the city’s seaside Malecón, is undergoing renovation after years of progressive deterioration. Benjamin Ziff, the top U.S. diplomat in Cuba, told the news agency Reuters that Washington is investing twenty-eight million dollars to repair damaged portions of the building.

“The important thing to realize about diplomacy is that it is not only policy; it’s logistics,” said Ziff. There will also be an increase in consular personnel as well as programs to promote human rights and private business on the island.

The project is happening amid new tensions in the always precarious diplomatic relations between Havana and Washington. The news comes after the Wall Street Journal reported that Cuba had reached an agreement with China to build a spy base on the island. The Cuban government initially denied the report while the White House characterized it as “inexact.”

Late last month, however, the U.S. governement declassified secret intelligence documents indicating that it was aware of Chinese spying operations on the island by the time Joe Biden took office in January 2021 if not before.

Ziff notes that investing in repairs to the U.S. embassy will restore the country’s diplomatic presence on the island. “You need to have people. You need to have a building,” he says. continue reading

14ymedio has confirmed that work crews doing maintenance on the building are encountering serious deterioration both in the building itself and in the embassy’s living quarters, which have been vacant since the U.S. drastically reduced embassy staff due to concerns over suspected “sonic attacks” on personnel, which ultimately led to a suspension of most consular services.

A source confirmed that the living quarters are largely empty because there are so employees to occupy them. Doors, toilets and sinks have been stolen from some of the units.

Maintenance work began in May 2022 and will likely continue into the third quarter of 2024. Reuters reports that the delay is due to disputes and a lack of confidence between the two countries.

The roughly twelve-person construction crew, which includes five Cubans, must be accompanied at all times by U.S. contractors with special security clearances. The Cuban government, however, has been slow to issue them visas.

They have also had to deal with a shortatge of constuction materials on the island. For example, if a contractor breaks a sawblade, he has to return to the United States to get a replacement. He then has to apply for another visa to get back into Cuba, a process can take two months, during which time work grinds to a halt.

Machinery imported from the U.S. was also damaged due to the high sulfur content of the fuel. There have also been delays due to shortages of cement and steel rebars.

Ziff notes that some problems were resolved after the Cuban government agreed to streamline its visa process and the State Department sent over stainless steel for the fencing and granite for the building’s new facade.

No sooner do things seem to be moving forward, however, than new problems crop up. So-called “secure” containers to transport sensitive building materials under diplomatic seal are now facing bureaucratic delays. “There is an understanding that it is good for the bilateral relationship to have an embassy that is safe and secure,” Ziff said. “However, trying to bring in materials remains a problem.”

The building officially reopened as an embassy in 2015 during the Obama administration. Prior to that, it was known as the United States Interests Section in Havana. Two years later, employees began suffering from neurological conditions that came to be known as “Havana syndrome” and staff size was reduced.

According to Ziff, intelligence investigations have determined that it is “highly unlikely” that a foreign adversary was responsible for these illnesses. He reports that the embassy’s staff and agenda have returned to “a more solid” footing.

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Cuba Negotiates With Russia for the Delivery of 32,000 Barrels of Oil per Day for a Year

Deposits of the Russian state company Rosneft. (Energy Newspaper)

EFE/14medio, Moscow/Madrid, 13 June 2023 — Russia and Cuba are preparing an intergovernmental agreement for Russia’s Rosneft to supply 1.64 million tons of oil and hydrocarbons annually to the Island, Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz said on Tuesday during a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Mishustin.

The Prime Minister, who is on an official visit to Russia, commented that on Tuesday he spoke with directors of Rosneft, who informed him about the progress of the working group created to prepare the agreement between Havana and Moscow.

According to Marrero, this agreement seeks to guarantee the “stable supply” of oil to Cuba.

Marrero stressed the validity and importance of this agreement for his country and acknowledged that Cuba is experiencing difficulties with the supply of fuels.

Researcher Jorge Piñón, from the University of Texas, informed 14ymedio that the amount of oil that Havana is negotiating with Moscow (1,640,000 tons) is equivalent to 32,000 barrels per day.

“This will cover Cuba’s deficit of 90,000 barrels per day, assuming that Venezuela continues to deliver 57,000 barrels per day. At today’s prices, approximately $58 a barrel for Urals crude oil, the total value is about $676 million per year. How is this debt going to be paid?” continue reading

For his part, Mishustin, who meets for the second time with Marrero as part of his visit, stressed that Russia “considers the strengthening of friendship and partnership with Cuba as an unquestionable priority.”

The head of the Russian Government added that the cooperation between Moscow and Havana “has passed the test of time and repeatedly demonstrated its stability in the face of external challenges,” among which he cited the economic sanctions of the “unfriendly countries.”

Mishustin reported that both countries are working on the creation of a bilateral financial system of payments and have begun to trade based on national currencies, the ruble and the Cuban peso.

On Tuesday, the Cuban Prime Minister met with the former Russian president and vice president of the Russian Security Council, Dmitri Medvedev, to discuss bilateral cooperation, including the technical-military, transport, industry and investment spheres.

In particular, they talked about cultural and humanitarian cooperation and the scholarship program for Cuban students, as well as the creation of a special school for the teaching of the Russian language in Cuba.

Marrero, who has already participated in the intergovernmental council of the post-Soviet Eurasian Economic Union and has held meetings with senior Russian officials, plans to attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum this week.

In the midst of an unprecedented rapprochement, Havana bets on the “generosity” of Moscow, which has already sent several loads of hydrocarbons. The Russian Prime Minister, Mikhail Mishustin, had already promised Manuel Marrero “the execution of large joint projects” in the oil field.

In this regard, Piñón stated in an interview with Radio Televisión Martí, last Wednesday, that Cuba lost one million barrels of storage during the fire in Matanzas and that, given the need to make space to store the 800,000 barrels of high-quality crude oil that arrived on the Island from Russia, it is likely that the loads of two of the oil tankers from Venezuela have been resold.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Official Press Does Not Report It, but Cuba and South Korea Are Exploring How To ‘Strengthen Trade’

South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin in a file image. (EFE)

14ymedio, Madrid, 13 June 2023 — Cuba and South Korea, which do not have diplomatic relations, held talks last month “to discuss the strengthening of trade,” as reported on Tuesday by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Asian country and picked up by the Yonhap agency.

The meeting took place between the South Korean Foreign Minister, Park Jin, and the Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister, Josefina Vidal, according to the agency of diplomatic sources, when Park attended the meeting of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), held in Antigua, Guatemala, last May.

In a press conference, the spokesman of the South Korean Foreign Ministry, Lim Soo-suk, said that “both parties exchanged views on mutual interests, including cooperation at the ACS level.”

Yonhap’s note highlights that the meeting, “not announced,” is the first high-level contact between the two countries since the one that occurred in May 2018, between the then South Korean Chancellor, Kang Kyung-wha, and her Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodríguez.

The Island is the only Latin American state with which South Korea does not have diplomatic relations, and, in addition, Cuba has never hid its closeness to North Korea. However, the agency says that’s Seoul “continues with behind-the-scene efforts to engage with the Latin American country.”

As an example, they report that the South Korean country “provided humanitarian assistance worth $200,000” after the partial destruction, in an unprecedented fire, of the Matanzas Supertank Base, in August last year.

None of this has been publicized by the official press of the Island.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Gaviota and the Chinese Bases: Distracting Attention From the Serious Economic Situation? No, Thanks

Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 13 June 2023 — The Castro regime has been quick to deny two pieces of information circulating in the media and on social networks. This is unusual. The hierarchy that directs the country rarely finds reasons to lower itself to the level of media confrontation, since it exercises absolute control over the state press, propaganda and manipulation. But this time, that hegemonic position has not helped at all.

We refer to the accusation by the Secretary of State of the United States about the presence of a Chinese espionage base in Cuba, which was immediately dismissed by Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez, and also to the announcement made by Gaviota that rumors that Cuban citizens are not allowed to enter the group’s hotel facilities are unfounded.

The two issues, of different relevance, have forced the regime to enter into the “battle of information,” one of the axes of the discourse of the leaders that, apparently, has come to stay. This gives an idea of the level of precariousness, wear and tear and lack of contact with reality of those who hold political power in Cuba at the moment. Does anyone really believe that Fidel Castro would have engaged in a discussion at this level? In the time of the old dictator, it is most likely that none of this would have been really known, because at that time censorship worked 100% and with it the fear of being discovered. The screws have been loosened; there is erosion and a lack of criteria – the ingredients for the end of a political cycle that is already, in some way, happening.

Bruno Rodríguez, in an undiplomatic and strident tone, attacked his Yankee counterpart Blinken, saying that Blinken’s statement was “a falsehood,” and he added that Cuba is not a threat to the United States or any country. Castrista diplomacy had proven that efforts to improve its international image, by bringing to Havana the leader of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, to seal, for the umpteenth time, peace with the guerrillas, have collapsed with the controversy of the Chinese espionage base. continue reading

It’s not usual, among foreign ministers and career diplomats, that Bruno Rodríguez would use such contemptuous words, but the positions of the regime against the United States are known, and whenever they can, they attack mercilessly. Havana also said that the statements of the Secretary of State “lack support,” indicating that the issue of the embargo/blockade was going to appear immediately.

And it did. Rodríguez said that “it is a pretext to maintain the economic blockade against Cuba and the measures of maximum pressure that have reinforced it in recent years. They are the subject of growing international rejection as well as in the United States, including the demand to remove Cuba from the arbitrary list of States Sponsors of Terrorism.” Under such conditions, wouldn’t it have been easier to convene a press conference to offer all the available information and confirm that there is no base or any project to build one?

No. For the diplomacy of the regime, the Chinese base or anything else, no matter how innocent, is used to emphasize that Cuba is not a threat to the United States, or to any country. Well then, let them prove it.

It is not enough to say that “the United States applies a policy that daily threatens and punishes the Cuban population as a whole. The United States has imposed and has dozens of military bases in our region, and also maintains, against the will of the Cuban people, a military base in the territory it illegally occupies in the province of Guantánamo.” In a way, with this argument, the Cuban communist minister approves of a Chinese base against the United States, which someone could interpret as a serious recklessness of Rodríguez, a leap forward in the conflict between the two countries that can have a very problematic end.

The issue of the Chinese base in Cuba spread to the media on June 8, when The Wall Street Journal reported that between China and Cuba there was allegedly an agreement on military matters for the installation of an espionage base. At that time, the Cuban regime came forward and described these statements as false and unfounded, and the person in charge of doing so was the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, who said that “slanders of this type have often been fabricated by United States officials, apparently familiar with intelligence information.”

China joined the denial when Wang Wenbin, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, asked Washington to ” stop interfering in the internal affairs” of the Island and accused the administration of spreading false information. Wang Wenbin went further and accused the United States of “spreading rumors and slander,” a common tactic that “is the country’s trademark, deliberately interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.”

Later, the spokesman of the National Security Council in Washington, John Kirby, also questioned the report released by The Wall Street Journal, and said that it didn’t reflect reality. Then Secretary of State Blinken came out with his statement that there are sufficient indications of the existence of the Chinese base in Cuba.

The Cuban communists must be amused with all the back and forth, and it’s strange that their allies, Venezuela and Nicaragua, have not entered the dance. They will, of course.

The other news that has provoked official denial is the one that began with rumors and circulated on social media, confirming that the Gaviota Business Group had decided to prohibit the entry of Cubans to their hotels. The news was supported by a Gaviota corporate statement signed by a high-level official.

Gaviota denied the rumors, and in a syrupy statement on it’s website defended “healthy and quality recreation as a right for all customers and a premise for this group.” It stressed that all its customers, regardless of nationality, have the right to enjoy the services and facilities… We are committed to providing an inclusive and enriching tourist experience for all our guests, without exception.”

Finally, the statement pointed out that “at Gaviota we work to ensure that our guests have a unique experience and our facilities offer a wide variety of services and activities designed to meet the needs and preferences of each client.”

Gaviota’s statement did not have the same media pull as Rodríguez’s statements about the Chinese base. They are not issues of the same depth, but the two are united by a common denominator, which the regime pursues to impose its explanations.

In essence, let there be talk of anything, no matter how absurd, except the economic situation. It is no longer just that statistical data are not published on the ONEI website to evaluate the situation, it is that they try by all means to divert attention, launching issues that engage Tyre and Trojans in a debate that distances us from the serious economic situation in which Cubans live and the lack of effective solutions to get out of the vicious circle caused by the Ordering Task.*

In this blog we are not going to do it, because we are clear about the objective: Cubans must know that another economic and political system is possible, and that they have it closer than ever. This bickering say very little about who is at the head of the nation.

*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

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With an Exchange Rate of 200 CUP per Dollar, the Peso Reaches a New All-Time Low

The dollar is scarce and there is a lot of demand. (EFE/File/Sebastiao Moreira)

14ymedio/EFE, Havana, 13 June 2023 — The dollar once again reaches 200 Cuban pesos (CUP), a situation that the Island had already experienced in October 2022. This time, according to analysts, it has different characteristics.

If the previous time the dizzying rise was the result of speculation, this time it’s because of the “incomplete recovery after the pandemic, especially of tourism and macroeconomic imbalances, such as the fiscal deficit,” according to Cuban economist Pavel Vidal, a professor at the Javeriana University of Cali (Colombia).

The specialist, in addition, does not see an encouraging future and indicates that most likely the exchange rate “will continue to be above 200” in the future.

Mauricio de Miranda, full professor and researcher at the same university, adds another factor: immigration. “There is a shortage of dollars and a very high demand for them,” he told EFE, which has reported on the phenomenon. continue reading

At the beginning of 2021, with the start of the Ordering Task,* the authorities announced an exchange rate of 1 dollar for 24 CUP. That was always considered by economists as totally far from reality, and it was not long before it was proven that they were right.

On the street, the dollar took little time to reach rates close to 80 or 90 pesos, and a year later, in August 2022, the Central Bank announced a modification, going up to 120 pesos per dollar for individuals and the retail sector.

But today’s situation is different from that of last October, when the 200-peso barrier was broken for the first time, according to Vidal.

In those days, Vidal recalls, there was an “overreaction to the exchange rate.”

In a new attempt to retain foreign currency in the financial sector, the Government announced last April that, after two years, Cuban banks would again accept dollar deposits in cash.

Experts saw in that announcement a contradiction to the spirit of monetary reform that sought, precisely, the opposite: to stop dollarization.

One of those critics was de Miranda, who reminds EFE that in “the national market, the dollar continues to be the currency that solves many things.”

“As long as the Cuban national market continues to offer important goods in foreign currency, the Cuban peso will not recover,” he says.

*Translator’s note: 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
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Now Havana Wants to be Dulcinea

From left to right, Yunior García Aguilera, Rosa Montero, Eva Orúe and Gioconda Belli, during the reading of the manifesto at the Madrid Book Fair. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 12 June 2023 — At the recent Madrid Book Fair, they read out a manifesto: Literature, always on the side of freedom. The regime in Havana, always quick with a smart answer, put out a riposte in the name of Casa de las Americas, with the title: On the side of Don Quixote.

They accuse the editors of the manifesto of “giving in to the campaign by the hegemonic press against anyone who refuses to accept the dictates of Washington.” How very ironic, coming from a people who bend over backwards to the dictates of Moscow, to go out to battle with this faded old cliché. Perhaps they don’t realise that their “joker” convinces no one anymore? Maybe they just have absolutely no imagination left at all? Are they that mediocre that all they can do is cling onto arguments that are so obsolete, so yellowing and worn out with endless, interminable use?

Perhaps it needs to be gently pointed out to the Cuban regime that the principal promoter of this manifesto is Gioconda Belli, winner, no less, of the Casa de las Americas Prize in 1978, amongst many other honours. The Nicaraguan poet and novelist doesn’t need to ’give in to any campaign’ – because she has been, along with her compatriot Sergio Ramírez, at the centre of attacks from a deranged dictator like Daniel Ortega. Also, these two have received the support of an overwhelming majority of intellectuals, along with all of the other people who have been forced into exile – although Havana maintains a stony silence on such immense injustice.

Among the signatories of the Manifesto are some huge names – some of which the centre, at 3a and G in El Vedado hasn’t yet been able to invite to attend. And it’s probable that some names have been gathered in error (something which has already been rectified) but there we see other names like: Rosa Montero, Juan Carlos Chirinos, Joan Manuel Serrat… and the list just keeps growing.

The Cuban authoritarianism’s declaration, having nothing to put forward in its defence, takes futile refuge in the pages of Quixote and tries to pass itself off as Dulcinea del Toboso. They demand that we judge them as good and just people, though everyone knows that there’s nothing left to celebrate there.

The land of Dulce María Loynaz is just a sad wasteland today, in which the hospitals and the schools fall to bits whilst the number of luxury hotels and the number of prisons multiplies. Cuban artistes suffer censorship today like in the worst times of the pavonato, whilst they see all their rights flattened and with no right of reply. Every Cuban tilts against absurd windmills every single day, carrying out great heroic feats just to obtain a plate of food and dreaming about escape from this hell. continue reading

In Cervantes’ book, Dulcinea represents the platonic love of the protagonist – although in reality she is the idealised form of a country girl called Aldonza Lorenzo, whom the author describes, in a cruel manner, with shades of humour, saying that she was the woman who was the most skilled at salting a pig in the whole of La Mancha. And even when Sancho Panza presents Quixote with a supposed Dulcinea it’s really a foul smelling wench with a hairy wart on her top lip. Don Quixote, a prisoner in his own delirium, justifies the woman’s ugliness by saying that she’s been the victim of some “magic curse”.

It’s understandable, that a regime which has nothing at all positive to show in its master plan, would insist on appealing to Utopias. But more than sixty years have already passed and real life could not be more dystopian than it is now. It is utterly unforgivable that they continue with this fraud, passing themselves off as some kind of joke princess with the hairy wart on her top lip. These people neither want nor plan for any project for their peoples’ freedom. The only, only, thing that interests them is clinging onto absolute power at all costs. The reality of Cuba is not a Cervantes one, it’s an Orwellian one.

We Cubans are totally screwed off now with this stupid endless obsession with romanticising the misery and suffering of a people. The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, wants us to be a modern Numancia, although the inhabitants of that village situated on the Muela mountain ended up dying of starvation, from slavery or by suicide. Not long ago, Josep Borell said that Cuba will be the Mallorca of the Caribbean. As the top representative for foreign affairs in the EU he didn’t seem in the slightest bit worried about the more than one thousand political prisoners, nor about all the violations of human rights: he saw only beaches of white sand where European tourists go to get tanned. He only sees the threat from the Chinese and the Russians’ plundering our land whilst Europe fails to grap its own share of the pie.

But Cuba does not want to be any kind Numancia, nor a Mallorca, even less a Dulcinea. Cuba wants to be free. And then, when we are, we will tear down all of those windmills.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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Caritas Warns About the Situation of Thousands of Families After the Rains in Eastern Cuba

Street flooded by the rains in Camagüey. (Escambray)

14ymedio, Havana, 13 June 2023 — The loss of six human lives and innumerable resources during the heavy rains that eastern Cuba has suffered in recent days have set off alarms for several humanitarian organizations both inside and outside Cuba. This is the case of Caritas, managed by the Catholic Church, whose subsidiary in Cuba made a request for help that was published on Monday by Vatican News.

The damage caused by the rainfall, it says, “worsens the difficulties that the Cuban nation is already suffering,” from the “pre-existing economic crisis.”

The Caritas alert is aimed at those who want to help the dioceses – ecclesiastical provinces – of Camagüey, Bayamo-Manzanillo, Holguín-Las Tunas and Santiago de Cuba, the most affected by the bad weather. Drawing attention to the seriousness of the situation and the precariousness in which many families find themselves, the organization explained that, especially in Bayamo-Manzanillo, the panorama was uncertain: 10,000 homes damaged, crops ruined and 470 communities flooded, plus another 25 isolated from land.

Vatican News interviewed several Caritas officials in Cuba, who confirmed the extreme need for material aid in the eastern region of the country. “Streets such as Rosario, República, Palma, Avenida de la Caridad up to the funeral home, also the main artery, Candelario and the Casino Campestre present a worrying panorama due to the flooding,” María Rosa Rodríguez, director of Caritas in Camagüey, explained to the Vatican newspaper. continue reading

Rodríguez said that the scenario faced by the evacuees, who had to put their material goods under protection, is unfortunate. The damage to buildings of more distant villages, such as Vertientes, Amancio and Jimaguayú, have been “innumerable,” and “the oldest houses were destroyed by the excess of water,” he summarized. He added that the groups of volunteers who have come to those places have found “water up to and above the gutters.”

In Holguín, where Vatican News interviewed the local director of Caritas, Mariela Vázquez, the organization reported “great damage,” and announced that “the risks and losses are increasing due to the overflowing rivers.” The most affected towns, he said, are Mayarí, Sagua, Gibara, San Germán and Puerto Padre.

The scene in Santiago de Cuba, from where the official Ana María Piñole reports, is not very optimistic: “Rivers and streams flood everything. In some areas, the fields that were already recovering have been lost. We maintain communication with priests and pastoral teams located in more damaged areas, but the climatic instability still does not allow the expansion of data on the damage, although they say that the situation is unfortunate.”

After reacting slowly to the crisis, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said on Monday that the United Nations agencies operating in Cuba, in addition to his ally Venezuela, have offered their help. The official press deferred coverage of the rains, which did not occupy the front page of the newspapers until several days after the damage began. The information offered by the state media alludes to the “benefit” of the rainfall: it filled the country’s dams and reservoirs.

Some newspapers have echoed Díaz-Canel’s request, such as Tribuna de La Habana, which announced, as of this Monday, a “collection of donations in the municipal governments of each territory.” “Spaces will be enabled in the headquarters of the 15 Municipal Assemblies of People’s Power of the province for the collection of donations,” the newspaper reported.

On June 7, the Institute of Meteorology of Cuba issued a special warning to explain that the cause of the heavy downpours was the combination of a trough in the middle and high levels of the troposphere, over the Gulf of Mexico.

However, the Civil Defense did not issue its usual informative stages of alert and alarm to warn citizens and institutions to take preventive measures.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuba’s Captain in the World Baseball Classic Signs a Contract With a Japanese Team

Alfredo Despaigne will play the remainder of the season with the SoftBank Falcons of the Japanese League. (Capture/Facebook: Guillermo Rodriguez Hidalgo) — Alfredo Despaigne will play the remainder of the season with the SoftBank Falcons of the Japanese League. (Screen capture/Facebook: Guillermo Rodriguez Hidalgo)

14ymedio, Havana, 13 June 2023 — The captain of the Cuban team in the last World Baseball Classic, Alfredo Despaigne, formalized his contract with the SoftBank Falcons of the Japanese League (NPB) on Monday. According to the Swing Completo portal, the pre-agreement “was around the figure of 1.5 million dollars,” although the final amount was not disclosed.

In November 2021, the treasurer of the Cuban Federation, Luis Daniel Del Risco, reported that the teams that hire Cuban players must pay 20% of the salary that the athlete receives. Also, according to data from the Gaceta Oficial of 2021, every athlete hired abroad must pay a tax of 4% on what he receives.

Despaigne had said that “he had not planned to return to Japan,” where he spent six years defending the team that has finally hired him again. The agreement is for the rest of the season, the baseball player stressed. “In the years that I was there, we were four consecutive champions, and let’s hope that the fifth crown will be repeated this year,” he told journalist Guillermo Rodriguez Hidalgo.

The signing of the player from Granma, who has 184 home runs in the Japanese Baseball League, took place in the Adolfo Luque Hall of the Latin American stadium and was attended by the president of the Cuban Baseball Federation, Juan Reinaldo Pérez. continue reading

This player has a batting average p of .263, with 184 home runs and 545 RBIs. His average of bases obtained among the total number of batting opportunities yields .842, in addition to 786 hits.

Alfredo Despaigne’s best season in the NPB was recorded in 2017, with an average of .262, by connecting with 35 long balls and 103 trailers.

On Monday, the contract of Cuban outfielder Alexey Lumpuy with the American team Chicago Cubs was also made official. A native of Camagüey, age 18, he left the Island a year ago. He is an “explosive” athlete, possessing power in his arm and good throwing speed, said journalist Francys Romero. “He is the 23rd player to sign in the current international period,” the reporter said on his social networks.

The Chicago Cubs also hosted the 19-year-old ambidextrous batter, Eriandys Ramón. This Cuban athlete is part of the wave of abandonment of the country in 2022. He was on the team for the U-15 World Cup in 2018 and was currently part of Ray Castillo’s Academy in the Dominican Republic.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Cuban Government Acknowledges Having Used Diesel From the State Industry To Generate Electricity

Since April, Cuba has suffered a crisis due to a fuel deficit that has resulted mainly in shortages of service centers. (14ymedio)

EFE/14ymedio, Havana, 13 June 2023 — The Cuban Minister of Economy and Planning, Alejandro Gil, acknowledged that the diversion of diesel from industry to electricity generation has negatively affected the country’s productive activity.

Gil made these statements in his inaugural speech at the “Three Days of Productive Economics of Cuba,” a meeting of state and non-state economists and businessmen that takes place until Friday at the Chamber of Commerce in Havana.

“In recent months we have had to consume fuel for the generation of electricity, diesel mainly, due to the breakdowns we have had in the thermal plants. And that overconsumption of diesel affects the economy, because it leaves less fuel for use in productive activity,” he explained.

Since April, Cuba has been suffering from a fuel deficit crisis that has mainly resulted in shortages in gas stations and long lines of vehicles waiting to refuel, sometimes for several days.

The Cuban government initially indicated that it was from non-compliance by the fuel supplying countries and that the effects would last at least through April and May. The situation has not improved, and the government has not given any indication of when the situation could normalize.

Gil added in his speech that this situation has led his ministry to make difficult decisions in the face of fuel shortages. continue reading

“From time to time we call an industry and tell it to shut down. We have to stop the production of steel, the production of cement. Why? To try to help the population. And we always say when we pick up the phone that we are also affecting the population. We are less affected by the blackouts, but we are ceasing to produce,” he said.

The minister stressed that the country continues to consume “a lot of fossil fuel for the generation of electricity,” something that is “limiting economic growth.”

“That’s not how the economy can function. The economy depends on the basis of a stability of fuel and electricity generation,” he said.

Gil said that Cuba would not have enough foreign currency to support an economic growth of 4%. However, last December, the minister said that the Government expected the national economy to grow by 3% in 2023, compared to this year’s 2% and the 1.3% growth of 2022, so it would not yet be possible to recover the levels of 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The official announced these figures when presenting the 2023 Economic Plan to the National Assembly of People’s Power.

The Minister of Economy focused his speech on Tuesday on the substitution of imports and the export of goods and services in order to generate foreign currency and to attract foreign investment, which he called a “strategic ally.”

He assured that Cuba is in a “productive recovery process” after “three years of a very complex economic situation.”

The Island is suffering its worst crisis in decades, with shortages of basic products (food, medicines and fuel), frequent blackouts, depreciation of the national currency, partial dollarization of the economy and strong inflation.

The minister said that the country is suffering from “very complicated inflation in recent years” and that this price increase is “one of the most visible problems that the economy has to face and solve.”

In his opinion, part of the price increase is due to Cuba’s strong dependence on the foreign market.

“We import more than 20 cents of the dollar to produce one peso of gross domestic product (GDP). We have a very high imported component. We put a lot of effort in the plans in 2016 and 2017, but we never fulfilled them. We ended up with a tendency to continue importing more to generate GDP, and that is one of the main limitations for economic growth,” he explained.

One dollar is exchanged for 24 Cuban pesos in the formal market (for state companies and legal entities), but in the informal one it has depreciated up to 200 pesos per US dollar.

Currently, he added, national supply is “very restricted” and imports do not meet demand, which has a certain consumption capacity.

“Today, a very high percent, I could say more than 90% of the products sold in our store network [that accepts payment only] in MLC (freely convertible currency) are imported. And in the national currency network, very little is sold, and a good part is imported,” he said.

To reactivate the economy, he advocated replacing imports of intermediate and final goods with “efficient” investment in national production – especially in industries with “idle capacities” – and thus generate added value and employment.

In this way, supply could be expanded, inflation could be addressed, and imports could be reduced. “All that can be done perfectly. We have the opportunity to solve it,” Gil said.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Some 300 ‘Almendron’ Taxis Queue Up For Diesel at an ‘Exclusive’ Gas/Petrol Station in Havana

From Monday, the petrol/gas station El Futuro [the future] will be selling diesel only to private transport companies. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 12 June 2023 – At least 300 private almendron* taxis queued up this Monday at the gas station El Futuro, on Calle 100 / Vento – in the Havana district of Rancho Boyeros. At this service centre, which from today will sell diesel only to private haulage firms, the police were directing the taxis in three at a time, in the order of their arrival.

Some of the drivers, who had actually run out of fuel while they were waiting, ended up having to push their cars in order to stay in the queue.

In a brief publicity announcement on its website the provincial government had warned that in order to be served it is necessary to have the correct operator’s licence.

The maximum allowed quantity of fuel per vehicle is 100 litres, and only in the vehicle’s tank – it’s not permitted to use a separate canister or other container. They explain that “people will be served in order of arrival, governed by a record that will be kept at the service centre”.

“It’s important to explain that one can still get fuel at the four other service centres created for the purpose and that this kind of activity will continue to be maintained in the province”, said the text, without specifying anything.

This measure coincides with the start of the new tariff for private taxis announced last week and which have caused discontent amongst drivers. According to one article published in Tribuna de La Habana, the prices charged will be obligatory between five in the morning until nine in the evening. Outside of these hours, say the authorities, “the tarriff will be by agreement between client and operator (supply and demand)”.

The police were directing the taxis in three at a time, in order of their arrival.(14ymedio)

The official newspaper includes, with details, the different taxi routes and planned pricing. Short journeys are fixed at 45 pesos, medium ones are between 70 and 100, and the longest ones, such as from Guanabo Beach to Old Havana are capped at 170.

The man in the street and in various centres of work isn’t so much worried about the prices but rather the lack of available transport. A young vet said this Monday: “Whether a taxi costs me whatever it needs to, what does that even matter when the problem is that there aren’t any”. She had to pay 2,000 pesos for a 12 km journey.

*Translator’s note: Almendron borrows the Spanish word for ‘almond’ to refer to old American cars, derived from their ‘almond-shape.’

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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A Cuban Was Arrested After His Visit to ICE and His Family Fears That He Will Be Deported on a Flight From Florida

Sergio Pérez going to his appointment at ICE. (Captura/ Facebook: Javier Díaz)

14ymedio, Havana, 12 June 2023 – The Cuban Sergio Pérez was arrested after making what he thought was a routine visit to the office of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) last Friday. His relatives fear that he will be deported on the third flight from Florida to Havana on June 14.

Pérez told the authorities that he has no family on the Island and that in Florida he has a 10-year-old son named Yordano. “I don’t understand why they did this; they know that he has a son here, without a mother,” a family member told Univision 23 journalist Javier Díaz.

Sergio Pérez is one of the 36 Cubans who were arrested by ICE in October 2022 to be deported, but who, thanks to pressure from relatives and lawyers, was released shortly after. Last week he was arrested again, taken to Krome and then transferred to the Broward Transitional Center.

“It’s a huge blow, we’re trying to bear it,” said little Yordano, who arrived in the United States last December and was able to meet with his father Sergio Pérez. “Please don’t deport him because he’s the only family I have here.”

The United States resumed the deportation flights of Cubans on April 24. So far, it has returned 188 people to the Island. In the first days of May, the United States returned 65 migrants on the second flight from Florida. Among the group was Emir Rodríguez, 19, who lost his place at a university on the Island due to his illegal departure on a raft.

The United States Coast Guard returned 25 rafters this Sunday, including 16 men, eight women and a minor, bringing to 3,940 the number of migrants returned to the Island from different nations so far this year, according to the Ministry of the Interior.

According to official data, this is the 50th return made in 2023 by the US authorities, and the total number of returnees is 2,949. This same week, four other Cubans were deported from the Cayman Islands.

Meanwhile, in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott continues with the construction of a floating barrier in the Rio Grande, expected to be completed by the end of this month. Last Friday, he ordered the placement of four-foot-high buoys to prevent migrants from crossing the river illegally.

Abbott is investing a million dollars in this project, part of his controversial Operation Lone Star to contain the illegal passage of migrants. This is added to the barbed wire barrier that he ordered in April last year to prevent migrants from crossing the Rio Grande, among them several Cubans.

Abbott has announced six draft border security laws. One of them declares as “terrorist organizations drug cartels and criminal groups that use Cubans as coyotes to transfer migrants.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Economy and Geopolitics in the New Attempt To Relaunch Relations Between Cuba and Russia

Cuban Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero, in Sochi this Friday, where he met with Putin. Today, Monday, begins his visit in Moscow. (Government of Cuba)

EFE (via 14ymedio), Juan Palop, Havana, 12 June 2023 — Cuba and Russia have announced plans to strengthen their economic and trade relations, but experts doubt that they can achieve a new bilateral golden age, and they glimpse geopolitical interests in difficult times for both countries.

This week the Cuban Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero, is in Russia for the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council and the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, while the opposition warns of a new “Russification.”

The visit, the last after those of several ministers and President Miguel Díaz-Canel himself last November, comes shortly after Havana announced preferential treatment for Russian investors, from transfers of agricultural land in usufruct for 30 years to tax exemptions.

These measures complete a flood of announcements – including the entry of three Russian ruble banks on the Island – and the presentation of a package of reforms of the Stolypin Institute to liberalize the Cuban economy.

Experts consulted by EFE believe that this movement can be understood to some extent by necessity, due to the serious economic crisis that Cuba has been facing for more than two years.

“After the pandemic, the tightening of sanctions and the failure of reforms, Cuba has been economically and financially isolated. Russia can be an alternative to achieve some kind of international reintegration,” says Cuban economist Pavel Vidal, a professor at the Javeriana University of Cali (Colombia).

Cuban economist Tamarys Bahamonde, a PhD candidate in Public Policy and Public Administration at the University of Delaware, also alludes to the “preferential treatment” of the past and the lack of indications that Washington will change its policy towards the Island: “Cuba has no alternative but to look at Russia and Asian partners.”

However, Vidal emphasizes that, for this approach to prosper, “it is necessary to find mutually beneficial economic interests,” something that “is not yet clear.” The great Cuban bet is tourism, he adds, although the sector has not taken off after COVID-19, and Russia is far away.

“For greater integration between the two economies, it is necessary to look for something that is of value to the market and to Russian entrepreneurs,” explains Vidal, who recalls that Russian capitalists seek to “maximize their profits and minimize risk” and must “perceive” that they can achieve this.

It’s not easy. Due in part to negative experiences in “the recent past,” the Cuban government now has “to do much more to convince investors” that “they’re going to find a market with opportunities, institutions and a regulatory framework that guarantees and allows capital to be profitable.”

Regarding the specific announcements, Bahamonde indicates that the use of the ruble on the Island could have some impact if this currency were used “massively” in international transactions, but it is not. Vidal believes that its application in Cuba will not go beyond being something “marginal.”

“It is left to see if the Russians can convince the Cuban government to give more space to the private sector and move forward in a deeper transition from the Soviet-style economic model. The Russians know the shortcomings of this model and have experience in a transition that did not go well and from which they also had to learn things. If they succeed, even coming from the Russians, it would be an important contribution,” says Vidal.

Bahamonde believes that Russia is the “wrong” partner as a model of economic transformation and says that Cuba does not need economic policy recommendations from foreign experts, because its own national experts have already made them decades ago. The problem, he says, is that in the Cuban government there is a lot of “resistance to change.”

“What is needed are not new recommendations, but the political will to do what has to be done” to “implement the transformations that have been recommended for many years,” says this economist, who emphasizes that the transformations have to include “political institutions.”

In this attempt to relaunch bilateral relations, Bahamonde perceives geopolitical interests beyond merely economic ones. “All empires have their interests” and Russia is no exception, he observes.

In this same sense, university professor Michael Bustamente, a specialist in Cuban and Cuban-American studies at the University of Miami, has said: “In the absence of other options, of other partners, and, above all, in the absence of a different policy on the part of the United States, Cuba is opting for a new intensification of its relations with Russia and is trying to obtain whatever benefit it can.

For Moscow, he continues, “Cuba is, as it has been since the 1960s, a chip on the geopolitical board.” He speculates that in the Kremlin, the relationship with Havana could be seen as a kind of “counterweight” to Washington’s “intrusion” into Eastern Europe in the middle of the war in Ukraine.

Havana, for its part, could be seeking to “indirectly put pressure” on the United States to change its policy towards the Island, says Bustamante, although henwarns that such a movement would be counterproductive.

“I know that Washington is worried,” says Bustamante, but he doubts that there will be a change of policy from the United States towards Cuba, because he senses in the Democratic administration a “lack of disposition.”

Bustamante is struck by the fact that these movements by Cuba have not had a response from the European Union, which in addition to being the Island’s first trading partner, is in one of its biggest political crises with Moscow due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“I’m surprised that Cuba isn’t taking care of its relationship with Europe a little more. It will be interesting to see to what extent Cuba can balance this new intensification of its relationship with Russia with a relationship with Europe that continues to be crucial and strategic for the Cuban economy. There is a lot of tension and contradiction, and there are risks for Cuba,” he says.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Cuban State Is Responsible for the Death of Oswaldo Paya, Concludes an OAS Commission

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights says that there are “serious and sufficient indications” to doubt the official version.

14ymedio, Madrid/Havana, 12 June 2023 — More than ten years after the death of the Cuban opponent Oswaldo Payá, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) published on Monday the results of its investigation into the case: “There are serious and sufficient indications to come to the conclusion that state agents had an involvement in the death of Mr. Payá and (Harold) Cepero.”

For the Cuban regime, the text argues, the elimination of both dissidents from the political scene had a strategic value: to cause a hard blow to the structure of the organization led by Payá, the Christian Liberation Movement, and to weaken the opposition.

A detailed report, which includes the data provided by the relatives and a direct witness of the “vehicle crash,” caused by a State Security car, in which the opponent lost his life on July 22, 2012, allows the Commission – an organ of the Organization of American States (OAS) – to contravene the official version disclosed by the Cuban authorities.

The IACHR concluded its investigation on December 19, 2022, but the document was retained until now for unknown reasons, although some pressure was expected to prevent publication or qualify the explosive conclusions of the report. Although it is not an active member of the IACHR, Cuba is a signatory of the OAS charter and, therefore, should comply with the recommendations of its human rights organization.

Last March, a bipartisan group of US senators including Democrats Dick Durbin and Bob Menéndez and Republican Marco Rubio, demanded that the IACHR “accelerate the progress of the investigation into the murder” of Payá and Cepero, arguing that they could do their “critical work” even if the Cuban government did not cooperate.

Faced with the constant refusals of the authorities of the Island to offer a complete and detailed explanation, the IACHR grants “evidential value” to the allegations of Payá’s family and other “multiple elements of evidence”: a State Security vehicle attacked the car in which Payá, Cepero and two foreign citizens were traveling, on a road in the province of Granma.

The authorities’ report blamed the driver, the young Spanish politician Ángel Carromero, of the Popular Party (conservative), for provoking the crash, and as such he was tried for involuntary manslaughter in an Island court. Carromero, forced to corroborate the regime’s hypothesis in front of the cameras of Televisión Cubana, explained, back in Spain, that he had given his declaration under duress.

There is also, says IACHR, an external eyewitness – whose identity is protected – who claimed that a State Security car hit the vehicle in which Payá was traveling, a technique with which the political police had previously tried to intimidate the opponent. In 2008, his family reported that the regime agents had loosened the nuts on the tires of his car and that, just a month and a half before his death, his car was hit by a state vehicle. In both cases, the Cuban authorities ignored the claims.

The crash occurred on July 22, 2012 on a remote road in Granma Province.

The report says that the events of July 2012 constitute, in the first place, a flagrant violation of the right to life, freedom, security and integrity of the person, but that they were not the only rights disrespected by the Cuban Government during the life of Payá and Cepero.

Systematically and to intimidate both opponents, the political police prevented them from free movement through the national territory, placed microphones in their homes in order to listen to their conversations and subjected them to discredit in front of public opinion. In addition, every time international organizations – including the IACHR – requested detailed information about the case, the Cuban State ignored the request, which, as it points out, had judicial consequences.

After Payá’s death, at the age of 60, his wife Ofelia Acevedo and his daughter Rosa María Payá were not given access to the autopsy report, a right that they have demanded on several occasions, and they were prevented from attending the trial of Ángel Carromero, which also constitutes a violation of the laws of judicial process.

Carromero was detained for three months until he was heard by a judge, which, the Commission points out, is a violation of Cuban law. The Spanish politician said that, during his arrest, he suffered beatings from the agents and that in prison he was subjected to unacceptable conditions, lack of food and lack of medical care.

The report also notes that Payá’s family can be considered “victims” of the State’s actions, since not only were their psychological and moral integrity affected, but, after the events, they were also harassed by the political police.

Ofelia Acevedo and her daughter reported that, several days after Payá’s death, they went by bus to visit Cepero’s family, in Ciego de Ávila, and that in the reserved seats there was a paper with their names. When the doors were closed, “without letting travelers board,” the vehicle began to circle around the terminal “at high speed, for no apparent reason.” Both in Havana and in Ciego de Ávila, they said, there were agents of State Security following them.

After its analysis, the Commission addresses the Cuban Government and demands reparation for the death of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, which includes financial compensation for his family, transparency in their explanations and the generation of “conditions of return” to the Island of “all people who as a result of the events have been forced to rebuild their life projects in other places, whenever they wish.”

Likewise, taking into account the seriousness of the allegations in the report, it requires a new and more rigorous investigation by the Cuban authorities, which adheres to the truth in its results, and the adoption of a series of “mechanisms” to stop the criminalization of dissent on the Island.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Without Alluding to Femicides, the Cuban Leadership Celebrates the New Gender Equality Observatory

Independent Cuban observatories verified 34 sexist murders in 2022. (Juventud Rebelde)

14ymedio, Madrid, 9 June 2023 — “The beginning of the presentation of the Observatory was delicate and beautiful: the prestigious Cuban flutist and clarinetist, Niurka González Núñez, performed Mujer Bayamesa, by Sindo Garay.” In these terms, the press release of the Presidency of Cuba on the launch of the Cuban Observatory on Gender Equality was expressed, more or less at the same time that two sexist murders were confirmed, with which the Island reaches 37 in the first six months, more than in all of 2022, when there were 34 victims.

In the midst of an emergency situation, when there are already 1.6 femicides per week, the authorities — with the President of the Republic himself at the helm — dedicated the day to congratulating themselves on having achieved “this effort,” which is none other than the creation of an organization that will collect, process and make visible “indicators related to the situation and position of women and men, from a gender and legal approach.”

At the moment, the official count of femicide victims is far from the figure collected by independent feminist organizations and the independent press, although it is difficult to establish if the methodology is the same, since the official data come from “the judicial processes resolved in the courts of the country in 2022,” while the others refer to those perpetrated in the same period.

The statistics are buried in the last two sub-sections of Section Five, when they are surely the most searched and needed data in the document. In addition, the methodology is poorly explained, since the data are presented in two different sections: victims of intentional homicide due to gender and victims of intentional homicide by their partner or “former intimate partner.”

The statistics show, in reality, that one includes the other, so the general information on femicides is the most adequate. According to this statistic, 18 women were murdered in Cuba, 16 of them by people with whom they had a relationship, couples (six) or ex-partners (ten). continue reading

The remaining two were allegedly murdered by strangers. The majority of the victims (72%) were between 20 and 44 years old, and the cases place Havana at the head, with four victims, followed by Holguín, with three. The highest rate corresponds to Las Tunas, with 0.93 per 100,000 women, and the national average is 0.39.

With these numbers, the official statistics are far from reality, especially if from now on the reference will be the cases that go through the courts. Far from the perception that official data could increase the independent figures, which are nourished by citizen work and verification via social networks, the Observatory’s accounts risk moving away from reality and, consequently, hinder an analysis that helps address a major problem on the Island.

Díaz-Canel preferred to remain complacent and, at this Thursday’s presentation at the Capitol, described the Observatory as an “essential, important and comprehensive tool.”

The president said that from the analyses of those statistics “that cannot be cold,” they must advance in public policies that reduce the gap of inequality between men and women, an issue which, he believes, must reach the local environment.

More optimistic if possible was the Deputy Prime Minister, Inés María Chapman, who far from being more aware of the problems “remembered beautifully that ’there exists only one people; and in this people, in this Cuban color, we are women, we are men, there is the family, there is the whole nation,’” reads the sugary text.

On a day with the harshness of the deaths of Milsa and María Cristina, the minister spoke of Fidel Castro, “dear Vilma” and “so many glorious women who have fought for independence,” before insisting that we must move forward “disdaining hatred and sowing love. Let’s embrace full dignity from the heart, let’s overcome the impossible, and let’s say with a voice of fraternity and tenderness: No to gender violence,” she said.

There were representatives of the collaborating organizations, prominent among which were the ONEI – which provides data – and the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), which independent feminist organizations have accused of working in an exclusive way and more in favor of the Revolution than of women.

Yo Sí Te Creo, Alas Tensas, and the Cuban Women’s Network have not yet pronounced themselves regarding the Observatory or the act, although the first had written a statement a few hours earlier in which it denounced the death of Yaiden Bolaños Morales, in El Naranjal (Matanzas), whose murder is not recorded as a femicide due to the impossibility of accessing the information needed to determine the circumstances.

However, Yo Sí Te Creo says it could meet the criteria of the United Nations and that “the official figures of causes of death in Cuba, by not recognizing femicides, perform biased analyses. An example is accidental deaths, which are increasing in women according to the Health Statistical Yearbooks, many of which occur at night, in unclear situations and without eyewitnesses (such as Yaiden’s), according to our experience in observation. And Cuba’s police investigation protocols do not incorporate indicators of gender violence.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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More Than 40 Intellectuals Sign a Manifesto Against Dictators’ ‘Siege’ on Freedom of Expression

The Nicaraguan writer Gioconda Belli, in an archive photo. (EFE/Víctor Lerena)

EFE (via 14ymedio), Madrid, 7 June 2023 – More than 40 intellectuals from Spain and Latin America have signed a manifesto against the”siege” on freedom of expression imposed by “dictatorial” regimes – an initiative led by the Nicaraguan writer Giaconda Belli, stripped of her nationality by Daniel Ortega’s government.

Literature, always on the side of freedom and democracy, is the document’s title, signed by intellectuals from Nicaragua, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba. It will be read out next Friday at the Madrid Book Fair.

Belli will share the reading with Spanish writer Rosa Montero, Cuban opposition leader Yunior García and Venezualan author Juan Carlos Chirinos.

Between February and March the Nicaraguan authorities withdrew the nationality of more than 300 people critical of Daniel Ortega, including Belli, “for betrayal of the country”.

Among those signing are: Héctor Abad Faciolince, Alberto Anaut, Nuria Azancot, Valeria Correa-Fiz, Antonio Lucas, Inés Martín Rodrigo, Joan Manuel Serrat, Juan Cruz, Alfonso Mateo-Sagasta, Soledad Puértolas, Carme Riera, Germán Solís, Dani Torregrosa, Manuel Vilas, Juan Villoro, Alexis Díaz Pimienta y Fernando Iwasaki.

They demand democracy and respect for human rights in countries “where totalitarian regimes have left the mark of death, prison, plunder, confiscation and banishment on those who have opposed the “dictatorships”. continue reading

“Countries which brand critics as traitors and condemn them in farces that they call ’courts’ without proof nor the right to defend themselves” – they say. “Countries where citizens are subjected to a regime of terror and espionage, where they remove a citizen’s nationality, steal their possessions, force them abroad and refuse their return”.

These are the countries where they shut down language academies and poetry festivals, silence civil society and the independent media are gagged”, they declare.

And they emphasise the need to never forget or be indifferent to these situations, and to support those writers, artists and media who denounce them from exile.

The signatories encourage the writers to work actively and coordinatedly in this fight against the abuse and violation of human rights.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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