Cuban Andy Cruz won a gold medal at the last Tokyo Olympics. (EFE)
14ymedio, Madrid, 20 June 2022 — The Olympic champion and great Cuban boxing star Andy Cruz is joining the list of athletes who are leaving the island. According to Willie Suárez, a Cuban journalist residing in the US, the boxer is in the Dominican Republic, where he has been found after the authorities realized that he did not appear at the Playa Girón National Boxing Championship.
“We can already confirm it. Andy Cruz is on his way to professional boxing. Andy was expected at the tournament yesterday and did not appear. They automatically went looking for him everywhere and did not find him. Andy is already out of Cuba and very soon, will be live with Willie Suarez,” the specialist announced on his Boxeo Cubano Facebook page, from which he reviews current sports on the island.
The official magazine Jit had announced hours before the start of the tournament in Playa Girón: “The two-time Olympic champions Roniel Iglesias, Arlen López and Julio César La Cruz lead the registered stars, a list from which Andy Cruz is absent.” According to commissioner Alberto Puig de la Barca, “he was absent from the last days of training and the travel to the competition venue.”
Since then, according to Willie Suárez, he was sought everywhere. Cruz was considered one of the great stars of national boxing, however, he was excluded from the Domadores de Cuba team, which participated this May in the Palenque de la Feria de San Marcos, in Aguascalientes (Mexico).
The training of this group meant the return to professionalism in this sport after decades of amateurism, promoted by Fidel Castro, who described professional boxing as “inhumane and lacking in principles.” continue reading
Rolando Acebal, his main trainer, attributed the exclusion of the man from Matanzas to “a decline in his performance and attitude in the gym.” According to the expert, it was “a somewhat strategic decision… Now it’s not very healthy for it to go to that high,” he added. That exclusion could have been the trigger.
“Andy left Cuba, just as all of us who were born in it left it, and one day we sadly said goodbye to him. He did not betray anyone or abandon anything. Being young, Andy finally dreams of living in freedom and with the opportunity to fight for a better future where there are options without them being imposed,” added Suárez in a Facebook post in which he adds that there are people responsible for exits like this.
“Cuba is the cradle of talent where on every corner a boxer is born with the possibility of being an Olympic and world champion. In Cuba they are forged but they cannot be forced to think in one way or live in the old fashioned way based on ideologies that not even their parents share,” he considers.
In his opinion, absurd situations occur such as not allowing boxers to have tattoos, and other more serious ones, such as coaches not defending their fighters from political charges, school employees stealing food from athletes, and journalists pressure athletes to say things based on their own convenience.
An example of the latter, according to the reporter, are the latest statements by Cruz himself who, after being excluded from professional competition, said that he would continue to focus on doing his job and denied “those false comments that are being made on social networks” in reference to those already speculating about his departure. In Suárez’s opinion, the boxer was being pressured to stay.
“The Federation did everything possible including compromising him, putting pressure on him by producing a video in front of ‘Jit journalists’ where Andy is seen expressing his gratitude for the opportunity to box in Cuba and debunking rumors on social media (which were always true). The Cuban sports administration did not count on the cunning of Andy who (apparently) was already prepared to take the step he took,” adds Suárez.
The boxer is one of the athletes who were awarded by the Government of Cuba after obtaining Olympic medals in Tokyo 2020 (held in 2021 due to the pandemic). The champions were presented with high-end Mercedes-Benz cars in January and most of them were very grateful to the authorities and the late Fidel Castro. With the departure of the boxer, there are now two winners who have left their vehicles on the island, after the departure of canoeist Jorge Enríquez, who arrived in the US in March.
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The baseball player Roidel Martínez was removed from the Under-23 team that participates in the World Championship that takes place in Aguascalientes (Mexico). (Facebook)
14ymedio, Havana, 14 June 2022 — The loss of outfielder Roidel Martínez was a foregone conclusion after he was excluded from the Under-23 team participating in the World Championship that takes place in Aguascalientes (Mexico). The player, according to journalist Francys Romero, “made his request this Monday in the province of Pinar del Río.”
As published by the communicator in Baseball FR!, the athlete went in the morning to the headquarters of the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (Inder) and the Provincial Commission “with his discharge letter drawn up.” And although there were managers who tried to dissuade him, his departure, he let them know, “was already decided.”
Through his social networks, the man from Pinar del Río shared a video on June 7 in which he exposed his annoyance to the journalist Osbel Benítez Polo for being removed from the Under-23 national team with no more argument than “we have seen, we have spoken and you cannot be on the team,” the coaches told him.
In the same video he explains that, at the end of the training, the coaches called him to inform him. The athlete told them that he accepted the determination, but that they should detail the reasons why he was not included. “It’s that you can’t be, you can’t be, we decided that you can’t be.”
The place of Martínez, who had had two training sessions, was taken by the Granma player, Francisco Venecia. “Nobody told me that I couldn’t be here because I did something wrong or because such a thing is said,” explained the player. “If you ask me now, I’ll tell you that I want to ask to leave and not play more ball any more,” he said.
In the 61 National Series, the left-handed batter has an offensive line with 76 hits, 11 doubles, a triple and four home runs. According to Francys Romero, “none of the outfielders of the team that competes in Aguascalientes had a better performance than the one from Pinar del Río.” continue reading
Martínez’s exclusion recalled that experienced by Luis Enrique González and Darlin Jíménez, who were “erased” at the last minute from the list of the U-23 team that traveled to Mexico in 2021 for the World Championship held in the state of Sonora. In this event, the escape of 12 athletes was recorded, half of the team led by Eriel Sánchez.
“Days later, both González and Jímenez requested their discharges, which they received in a fairly rapid time, between 1 and 3 weeks,” Romero recalled.
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A group of Cuban rafters intercepted by the US Coast Guard before reaching the Florida Keys. (Twitter/@USCGSoutheast)
14ymedio, Havana, 13 June 2022 — The United States Coast Guard repatriated 95 Cubans to the island on Saturday aboard the ship Pablo Valent. According to a statement the rafters were arrested between last Tuesday and Wednesday after several interceptions in Playa Marathon, Cayos Marquesas and Cayo Víbora.
Since October 1, 2021, the date that marks the beginning of the current fiscal year, 2,319 Cubans have been intercepted in their attempt to reach the United States. “The possibility of being arrested while illegally migrating through the Caribbean is high,” warned Lt. Simon Juul-Hindsgaul.
On Tuesday, agents assigned to Key West were warned of a “rustic boat” near Marathon Beach. The Coast Guard did not release details on the number of rafters detained.
In recent months, the exodus of Cubans seeking to enter the United States using sea routes or following different routes through various Central American countries such as Nicaragua, Panama and Honduras, has increased alarmingly.
On Wednesday morning, an “overloaded raft” was located 22 miles south of Cayo Víbora, and members of the Cayo Hueso Coast Guard proceeded to intercept and detain it. continue reading
That same Wednesday there were two other interceptions of groups of rafters near Cayos Marquesas. The first occurred at five in the afternoon 30 miles from Key West and a second occurred at night, when a raft 20 miles away was located. Lieutenant Juul-Hindsgaul asked the rafters “not to go to sea and to choose a legal way to emigrate to another country.”
Petty Officer José Hernández warned last May that, in the face of the exodus of migrants, “air and surface patrols in the Straits of Florida, the Windward and Mona Passages” were increased.
This reinforcement in surveillance allowed the Coast Guard to stop three groups of rafters last Monday. The 21 Cubans were expelled last Thursday and taken to the island aboard the Pablo Valent ship. Days before, the repatriation of another 81 Cubans was registered.
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Cuba’s introduction of electricity before 1959 reached one of the best figures in Latin America in those years. (DC)
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Havana, 29 June 2022 — As popular indignation grows due to the continuous power outages that affect a large part of Cuba, the authorities deploy all kinds of justifications to place the responsibility for the blackouts as far as possible from their own management. There is no shortage of repeated phrases blaming the US embargo, the damage caused by the fall of communism in Europe and, of course, the allusions to Cuba’s former Republican period as a dark and miserable time.
Camagüey’s local newspaper, Adelante, has tried to placate its readers this week by reminding them that before 1959 “Cuba only generated 397 megawatts, 397,000 kilowatts, distributed in isolated systems, not interconnected, typical of an underdeveloped country. Only 56% of the population was connected to electrical service. Data that must be put in the context that electrification was a process that had only been implemented worldwide for a few decades.
The article in the Camagüeyan newspaper not only hides that detail, but also avoids saying that Cuba’s electrification was one of the best in Latin America in those years. The article seeks to create in the audience a sense of relief in the face of current problems if they are compared with the situation that their grandparents experienced. A rhetorical trick that is less and less effective in a society tired of attempts to instill fear through the past. In the absence of solutions in the present and progress in the future, the Cuban regime can only be a caricature of the country that existed before Fidel Castro came to power.
With this clumsy strategy they managed for decades to silence democratic demands, assuring that an opening process on the Island would bring back the excesses of the previous dictatorship. When the demands have turned to the inefficiency of the economic model to produce the most basic foods, the official spokesmen come out to recall the corn flour, without any accompaniment, that typified the national dishes during the Machadato.*There are public officials who have even dared to say that a dissident or independent journalist would work as a prostitute if she lived in Cuba in the first half of the 20th century.
All this verbal juggling, which once could generate fear and social paralysis, now reaps ridicule and ends up adding fuel to the fire of social annoyance. People have stopped hanging their heads and shutting up when one of those old stats is thrown at them. Only a system without a tomorrow can believe that it is going to break an entire population by taking the ghosts of yesterday out for a walk.
*Translator’s note: The term ‘Machadato’ refers to Gerardo Machado’s increasingly repressive years as Cuban president (1925-33) overlapping with the worldwide ‘Great Depression’ which began in 1929.
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The Cuban authorities expected much more from the Biden government than they are getting. (14ymedio)
EP/14ymedio, Madrid, June 21, 2022 — Cuba’s Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez, has reproached the U.S. President, Joe Biden, for not having a policy of his own towards Cuba and for maintaining the “maximum pressure” of his predecessor, Donald Trump.
“President Biden doesn’t have a policy of his own towards Cuba. It shared elements of the previous Democratic government’s policy. If you read the Democratic electoral platform, it contains another policy towards Cuba,” Rodríguez said in a video posted on social networks.
Rodríguez also recalled the electoral promises “in his own voice” of now-President Biden. “He promised U.S. voters and also Cubans living in Florida, but unfortunately the policy applied by President Biden is President Trump’s maximum pressure policy,” he said.
“It’s a policy that not only causes harm and suffering to the Cuban people, that prevents the development of our economy, that encourages irregular emigration to the United States, but it’s also a policy that damages the national interest of the United States,” he said.
During the election campaign, both Biden and Kamala Harris, the current Vice President, announced that they would reverse some of the measures taken by their predecessor in office with respect to Cuba, including limits on remittances, flights and consular services. Those announcements encouraged Havana, which thought that a second thaw would take place, similar to what happened in Barack Obama’s term, in which Biden was Vice President.
However, the White House has strictly complied with its commitment and, in mid-May, it announced the reestablishment of commercial flights to Cuba, which until now arrived only in Havana, the resumption of the family reunification program and the suspension of the $1,000 per quarter limit on remittances. continue reading
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has argued that these actions are “in support of the Cuban people and in the interests of U.S. foreign policy.”
However, the Administration has maintained the bulk of its policy towards the island, spurred by the repression after the 11J protests, according to senior U.S. officials. The clearest demonstration of that position was the refusal to invite Cuba to the recent Summit of the Americas held in Los Angeles.
Last Thursday, Washington announced that it has taken measures to impose visa restrictions on five unidentified Cuban officials due to their links to the trials and the imprisonment of 11J protesters.
These sanctions, according to the statement, are linked to “unfair trials” and the sentences and imprisonment of protesters. According to the U.S. Government, the Cuban authorities “deny citizens their basic human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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‘The Tower of Babel’, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, exhibited in the Kunsthistorisches (Art History Museum), in Vienna, Austria. (DC)
14medio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 8 June 2022 — The Biblical story relates that, shortly after the universal flood, humanity spoke a single language and wanted to erect a tower so high that it reached the sky. Such arrogance aroused the wrath of the God of the Old Testament, who used a sui generis strategy to frustrate the attempt: to confuse the languages. The Almighty could have destroyed the city of Babel with fire, but it was not necessary. It was enough for him to prevent men from being able to understand each other, to communicate.
“Divide and rule” has been the favorite practice of State Security in Cuba. Repression, imprisonment or exile have not been able to annihilate an opposition that is renewing itself and surviving the constant harassment of the dictatorship. But that opposition has also failed to become solid. The continuous attacks between one and the other, the ideological differences, the caudillismos and the sectarian thought have kept it fragmented, confronted, Babelic.
Nor is it a new phenomenon among Cubans. Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, the Father of the Nation, was betrayed and abandoned by his own comrades-in-arms. It would be very difficult for José Martí to earn the respect of the mambises chiefs and he would even challenge one of them to a duel. His differences with Maceo are well known and who knows what internal pressures threw him to an early and useless death in Dos Ríos.
I remember every detail of my first interrogations. State Security took me to one of those houses with walls lined with long curtains. I knew there were cameras everywhere. Every word I said could be manipulated and used against me. In the center, a table showed the contradictions of a country where misery reigns. Filled with crystal glasses, there was everything that was scarce in the stores. Instinct prevents you from touching food, until the hours go by. So you eat and they record you doing it. And if another day they decide to torture you and you report it, they will take those images of you eating shellfish. And they will say: look everyone, this is the torture he talks about! And unfortunately many people will believe them, because the seafood tactic never fails. continue reading
In each interrogation, the officer insisted on speaking ill of other opponents to me. His objective was to confont Tania Bruguera and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. He mentioned horrible videos that I refused to see and that probably didn’t even exist. But the description of those images that he narrated stayed in my mind, as much as I wanted to ignore them. This is how they play with your psyche. I am convinced that they did the same later with some of the members of Archipiélago. They probably told them horrible things about me, activating their egos, mentioning videos that don’t exist either.
Social networks have constituted for Cubans a new space of struggle, but they are also a double-edged sword. The army of anonymous profiles created by the regime is not only made up of cyberclarias [cyber catfishing]. There are thousands of these profiles posing as opponents. The same template used by some declaring themselves 100% Fidelistas is used by others confirming themselves 100% anti-communist. The pattern is the same and its mission is very clear: attack other opponents.
Anyone who browses Twitter can see how many characters are used to disqualify anyone who has any leadership. This army is much more effective than the traditional cyberclarias. From an apparently radical discourse, suspicions are spread, opinion matrixes are sown, sterile confrontations are generated, reputations are dismembered.
Already the tactic of accusing dissidents of being paid by the CIA does not convince anyone, so they resort to another resource: accusing you of being from the G2 [Cuban State Security]. They know they are so discredited that they use their own discredit to crush the image of an opponent. And even if you are someone who shook the entire dictatorship, some will believe and suspect you.
The opposition must not be monolithic. To build democracy, open and free debate, the confrontation of ideas, the diversity of thoughts are vital. But to achieve a solid opposition that commands the respect and support of the international community, it is necessary to cultivate ethics and political maturity. No group is the absolute owner of the truth, no leader is exempt from errors, no strategy is infallible. When we learn to communicate without imposing our voice on others, we will be much closer to defeating Operation Babel. If we can understand each other, despite our differences, we can reach the clouds and, as the Greeks would say, take the sky by storm.
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The Cuban consulate in Barcelona is located at the beginning of Paseo de Gràcia, the second most expensive street in the city, and coexists with luxury shops. (Facebook/Consulate General of Cuba in Barcelona)
14ymedio/EFE, Madrid/Miami, 9 June 2022 — While Cubans inside the country suffer from food shortages, and basic services and infrastructures are collapsing, the government – which usually blames the United States embargo for all this – hides that it spends fortunes on its external image, according to a report on ’’ the oversized influence of Cuba’, published this Wednesday by the Miami based NGO Cuba Archive, which is led by Maria Werlau.
It is one of the reasons, according to Cuba Archive, that the Cuban regime has enjoyed not only “historical impunity” despite the systematic abuse of human rights, but also that it has numerous defenders around the world and that has managed to boycott the Summit of the Americas “thanks to his accomplices.”
Even after the demonstrations of July 11 and 12, 2021, which were followed by systematic repression, Cuba was chosen, as the NGO points out, to participate “in three subsidiary bodies of the United Nations Economic and Social Council Nations and has received many millions in direct assistance from dozens of governments, including democracies such as Switzerland and France, as well as small island nations,” some hard hit by the covid-19 pandemic.
“The big question is always how Cuba can have such great influence and how it has been able to go beyond international law. That [Mexican President Andrés Manuel] López Obrador dares not to go to the Summit of the Americas is because Cuba has a oversized influence,” Werlau told EFE.
“I went every year to the United Nations and looked in the directory [of the organization] who are the diplomats of each country,” adds Werlau. “I counted the diplomats one by one” in the bluebook, which has the list of diplomats by countries accredited to the UN.
Cuba Archive also notes in its report that the island generates its main source of income with the “export of its slave labor” in collusion with many governments and international organizations, such as the Pan American Health Organization and the World Health Organization. continue reading
In March 2021, the NGO points out, “Cuba reported 29,954 temporary workers in 74 countries” and during the pandemic it managed to increase these exports: “In September 2021 it reported 57 brigades made up of 4,982 ’collaborators’ in 40 nations.”
The Government of Cuba “devotes colossal resources to maintain an enormous police state, a gigantic propaganda apparatus and an intelligence service that is among the best in the world,” says Cuba Archive.
In this regard, it cites the “numerous and extremely expensive network of official international representations,” which includes 126 embassies, 20 consulates and 43 diplomats in the permanent mission to the United Nations in New York. This, according to Werlau, offers a measure of how “unwarranted” the Cuban presence is even “in remote islands.”
“Cuba has more embassies and more diplomats in New York than many much larger and more powerful countries, including Spain, Italy, Canada, Thailand, the Philippines, Mexico, Colombia, Poland and Peru,” cites the organization, which also indicates that nations with a population similar to Cuba in Latin America, such as the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Bolivia, “have between three and four times fewer embassies and about six times fewer diplomats at the UN in New York.” Belgium, the Czech Republic and Greece, whose population is also similar, Cuba Archive also compares, have between 40 and 43 fewer embassies in the world than Havana despite the fact that their GDP is much higher than that of Cuba, as are their exports.
These embassies around the planet not only promote Cuba’s “geopolitical and economic objectives”, but are also “intelligence centers dedicated to recruiting a great world army of spies, collaborators and propagandists among diplomats, government officials, intellectuals, academics, artists, scientists, businessmen and others,” whose purpose is “to sow and nurture networks of solidarity in the most remote points of the planet.”
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Chilean President Gabriel Boric, right, during his interview with the US network Telemundo, this Thursday. (Capture/Telemundo)
14ymedio, Madrid, 9 June 2022 — The president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, has once again, this Thursday, marked the terrain where his political ideas dwell, and it continues to seem far from Cuba. “I come from a left that is profoundly democratic, that values and respects human rights unrestrictedly, regardless of who is in power,” he declared in an interview with Telemundo in the framework of the IX Summit of the Americas, held in Los Angeles.
In the interview, he asserted that “today there are prisoners in Cuba for thinking differently and that for us is unacceptable,” referring to those arrested for the protests of July last year. Similarly, he was critical of the United States, which he says “was wrong” for not inviting Havana, Caracas and Managua to the meeting.
“I prefer to discuss with Cuba, tell Mr. Ortega to free Nicaragua’s political prisoners to his face, and I prefer to tell him at a summit of equals. How can we guarantee that the elections in Venezuela are fully democratic next year,” he said.
Boric also believed that the US applies a “double standard” by arguing not to invite these three countries saying that “dictators should not be invited to the conversation,” because “they have no problem having relations with Saudi Arabia” or “in continuing to support the occupation of Palestine by the State of Israel.” continue reading
When asked if the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who like the Chilean criticized the absences, had made a mistake in not attending the Summit, Boric replied that he is not “the one to judge” and that he prefers to talk and use all the multilateral spaces, since the Chile cannot afford “the luxury” of missing it.
It is not the first time that the Chilean has made clear his distance, at least in public statements, with the so-called Bolivarian left, the direct daughter of Castroism. Months ago, in an interview with the BBC, he stated: “I come from the Chilean Americanist libertarian socialist tradition. That is my ideological space of reference. I am a democrat.”
Boric’s statements have earned him, for example, the criticism of Nicolás Maduro, who alluded to the Chilean, without naming him – and that of other new leaders such as the Colombian Gustavo Petro and the Peruvian Pedro Castillo – putting him in the bag of “a cowardly left.”
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Built on the idea that the universities should be protected spaces, the buildings of Villa Clara’s Marta Abreu Central University are located outside the city. (Trabajadores)
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 18 June 2022 — The majority of university students in Cuba were born between 1998 and 2003. According the Ministry of Higher Education, as reported in the newspaper Granma, preliminary enrollment for the 2021-2022 academic year was 292,507 students, distributed across Cuba’s fifty universities and 113 majors. The most prestigious schools, all founded before the 1959 Revolution, are the University of Havana (UH), the University of Oriente (UO) and the Marta Abreu de Las Villas Central University (UCLV).
Founded on the idea that the universities should be protected spaces, UCLV’s buildings are located on the outskirts of the city. To get to campus, students and teachers must take a motoneta, a six to eight-seat vehicle which requires waiting in a long line. Those who cannot afford this option have to wait for the Line 3 bus, which is always full and whose drivers often do not stop to pick up passengers. The UCLV campus is bright and spacious. Seen from above, its three main buildings spell out LUZ, the Spanish word for light.
14ymedio talked to one UCLV student about daily life at Cuban universities, economic insecurity, transportation issues, the scholarship situation and the desire to emigrate.
Question. What’s it like to be a Cuban college student today? Do you feel you are achieving something, getting ahead, building a future?
Answer. One of the hardest things to be in Cuba today is a student, especially a college student. You need money to survive in this country and the meager stipend the university gives you only lasts two weeks, if you economize. And though many of us have chosen majors because we like them, because we are passionate about them, we don’t see a future in them.
Economically speaking, college students in Cuba are no different from anybody else. Once they get their degrees, the only thing most will have to show for it is “a little piece of paper to hang on the wall.” They will have find work in something outside their field of study.
Economically speaking, college students in Cuba are no different from anybody else. Once they get their degrees, the only thing most will have to show for it is “a little piece of paper to hang on the wall”
Q. Talk to me about the scholarship. What is a normal day like at the university?
A. It’s really trying. Beginning every morning, you have to hide any small appliance we might have brought from home so university staff doesn’t see it. We are not allowed to cook on campus because [they claim] the electrical wiring isn’t compatible.
We also cannot have water heaters. You have to bathe using cold water, both summer and winter. If you do have a water heater, you have to hide it or you risk losing your scholarship indefinitely. And then there is the big taboo: You cannot have people of the opposite sex in your building (though everyone is an adult) and you cannot play loud music.
Q. Do you feel you are being watched? Are there informants in your classroom or among your teachers? What role does the University Student Federation (FEU) and the Young Communist League (UJC) play in university life?
A. What Cuban today does not feel he is being watched every day? Politics and controversial views are things best discussed in the privacy of the continue reading
bedroom or, even better, not discussed at all if you don’t know the other person well. I don’t think there are informants in my classes. I am not sure about the professors but certainly among the department heads there are. The FEU and the UJC are almost like ghosts. They do not address the real needs of the student body. You only hear from them when they need to hold a meeting or organize some political activity.
We also cannot have water heaters. You have to bathe using cold water, both summer and winter. If you do have a water heater, you have to hide it or you risk losing your scholarship indefinitely
Q. How is the quality of instruction there? Is there a lot of ideology in class content?
A. The quality of instruction varies. There are professors with PhDs who make a real effort to impart everything you will need to know in your chosen field and more. But there are those with masters degrees who go out of their way to give the most boring, useless classes you could imagine. For most professors, ideology is our daily bread. Students can be called upon at
any given moment to engage in “ideological work” because apparently three courses on Marxist theory — full of seminars and conferences designed to train students to paraphrase what the professor says like a robot — are not enough.
Q. How much money do you need and what does it go towards?
A. As the saying goes, “education is free but it will cost you.” Theoretically, it’s possible to attend university without having to pay for anything except transportation. But depending on where you live, that can really add up. In my case, the cost can be anywhere from 30 to 150 pesos per trip.
These days it’s impossible to survive the rigors of college life solely on the deplorable food they serve in the dining hall. A cup of coffee costs 5 pesos but a decent meal can go for almost 100 pesos. That would come to more than 300 pesos a week if a student ate only at the school cafeteria and dispensed with many things such as going to parties with friends. Stipends range from 200 to 400 pesos depending on what year a student is attending school.
Very few still believe they can be a force for change. Most use social media to express their opinions.
Q. Cuban universities were once restless, modern places. Students were often the first to join protests and demonstrations but the revolution seems to have put an end to that. What are Cuban college students thinking about today? What do they have to say about today’s domestic situation and political prisoners?
A. For the most part, Cuban college students just try to quietly get through what are supposed to be the best years of their lives. Studying and getting good grades, working towards a degree they can later use to find work, hanging out with classmates and avoiding as much as possible anything that might disrupt this routine.
Others simply tolerate any injustices they might see in the country or at the university. Very few still believe they can be a force for change. Most use social media to express their opinions in spite of the problems this might cause them at school.
As I said before, one of the main activities of the university is ideological work. The university is one of the few places where, if you don’t get information on the domestic situation from your own sources, whether that’s the official press or independent media, then you’re not going to find out what’s going on in the rest of the world.
I remember that, when the San Isidro Movement began, none of my classmates knew what was going on until they got home. Only when events had gained momentum did the university director make every effort to “explain” what was happening. In other words, to let us know what we should think or say in case we wanted to comment on the matter.
It’s incredible that there are still young people who blindly believe everything the government or the university tells them
Q. What do you think when you see someone your age becoming a propagandist for the regime?
A. You have no idea how much this question is discussed at the university. It’s incredible that there are still young people who blindly believe everything the government or the university tells them. Many find it intolerable that there are those among us, going through the same program that we are, who are cynical enough to say with total certainty that the country is advancing, that it is broadening its ideology or, as they told me, that [the regime] is beginning to accept the voice of dissent.
Q. Do you read the independent press? How do you know what is really going on in Cuba? Do you watch the nightly news or follow programs such as Con Filo or La Pupila Asombrada?
A. To be honest, I had no idea what was going on in the country until recently. A couple of years ago I started following some independent outlets. The demonstrations that took place in Cuba have forced me to search out unofficial news sources to understand what was really going on, things the nightly news was definitely not covering.
Since I spend weekdays on my studies, I can only watch the news on weekends. But even then, most of the time I lower the volume so I don’t have to listen to all the nonsense they’re “reporting.” Con Filo or Hace Cuba are some of the worst programs produced in this country. There are programs that feed on a lot of bogus news, most of it self-generated, or defame journalists and independent media by simply claiming “they are paid by the CIA to say that.”
Q. Would you leave Cuba to study or work somewhere else? Would you stay? What future do you see for yourself?
A. If you ask that question of most of this country’s students, university or not, the answer would be, yes, they would leave. No conscientious young person in Cuba sees a future in which he can feel fulfilled, in which he can practice his profession and use the knowledge he has spent years studying to acquire, years when most people were already working, making small fortunes through self-employment. I don’t think anyone who had the chance to leave, even if it were for a short time, would turn it down.
The future I see for myself is very uncertain. Maybe I’ll be lucky and end up like one of the few who can practice his profession. But I really doubt I’ll feel that I’ve accomplished very much in my life. I might just be one of those Cubans who spends his youth studying only for knowledge-sake, not to make money. I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see how this university adventure turns out and what’s waiting for me at the end of the tunnel.
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Raúl Castro and Miguel Díaz-Canel during the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba. (Revolution Studies)
Elías Amor Bravo, Economist. 16 July 2022 — Another character from the Party, who has decided to enter directly into economic affairs, is Joel Queipo Ruiz, identified in the State newspaper Granma as a member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Party and head of its Economic-Productive Department, a name that sounds like a soft drink.
In Cuba, as you know, nothing is accidental, and if someone enters the arena, they don’t do so by their own decision, but because they have previously been authorized by the hierarchy. This Queipo, according to Granma, visited the province of Santiago de Cuba on June 14, along with more than half a dozen other communist leaders, to check the continuity of the agreements of the Eighth Party Congress. And he even directed his steps to the Antonio Maceo thermoelectric plant, in Santiago de Cuba, at a time when the blackouts have become the main source of concern and criticism of the Regime by the population.
There he became interested in the process of its generating units, and, in particular, “dialogued in the workshops with those who, to keep them running, are true examples of the creative resistance currently called for in the face of the intensification of the blockade.” Granma’s report seems to be tailor-made by someone “promotionable.”
What can I say? Minister Gil [Cuban Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy Alejandro Gil Fernández] must be thinking the same thing as I am, right now. Maybe Cuban president Díaz-Canel is looking for a replacement and some fresh air to buy time. It seems evident that Gil’s team is being identified as the culprit of the current economic situation; its days may be numbered, and this greater attention to Queipo may be related to a spare part in sight. The truth is that you never know what could be better, or worse.
Queipo pointed to the need to achieve the famous “productive chains” of Díaz-Canel, and in the information collected in Granma, he repeated this mantra on several occasions, both with reference to the role that corresponds to “the Party in the current complex scenario,” and in allusion to the conclusions of the Second Economic-Productive Conference Cuba 2022, which he attended as a representative authority.
The fact that a political leader is a prime mover doesn’t sit well. Even more so when the team that runs the Cuban economy is convinced that the responsibility for the current disaster is not theirs, and that all they can do is fold their sails and wait for favorable winds to blow again. continue reading
But that position is suicidal, even in the Castro regime, where 62 years don’t seem like a long period of time. So changes in the economic direction of the country may be closer than ever, as happened once to Murillo when the “ordering task*” guidelines were a real disaster for the economy.
Queipo has entered strongly into this scenario of the economy’s terminal crisis and has declared with a solemn tone “that it is necessary to unify key areas of political-economic assurance to the new economic actors and territorial organisms of the State, and the elevation of the economic culture of the population.” These populist and Party messages mean nothing.
However, he has placed himself opposite Gil, who only talks continually about “fulfilling the plan.” Queipo’s agenda is broader, but it doesn’t go to the core of the problem, which is the economic and social model, and it entertains itself by betting on the “chains” that are considered necessary to increase production and reduce inflation. This shows the same naive interpretation of the fight against price increases, in absolute accord with Gil and his team.
In a populist attempt to reach new entrepreneurs, Queipo proposed the mapping of the Cuban Business Guide to all territorial levels, “so that economic actors from the same locality are recognized and linked,” and asked that the Third Conference multiply its meetings at the local level. By the way, the Business Guide is the result of the joint work of the National Association of Economists and Accountants of Cuba, the Yellow Pages of the Telecommunications Enterprise of Cuba S.A. and the private company SME Dofleini S.R.L.
At the same closing ceremony, Malmierca said the same thing as always “that the socialist state enterprise is at the center of the effort to reactivate the national economy and will continue to strengthen with the linking of the country’s new economic actors.” Not even he believes it. Speculation goes through everything. He knows that he has been amortized for a long time and is wasting chips in a game in which he has little to win.
Reading between the lines of the information in the state press, it seems evident that Díaz Canel is not going through the best political moment of his career and that, once again, he is looking for support in the empty shell that is the Communist Party. When will they understand that the only support they can have is that of the Cuban people in their call for free, democratic and multi-party elections, and then go home?
*Translator’s note: Tarea ordenamiento = the [so-called] ‘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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Yindra Elizastigui (left) and her son (right), the activist Luis Robles. (Collage)
14ymedio, Havana, 17 June 2022 — Yindra Elizastigui, the mother of activist Luis Robles, imprisoned a year and six months ago after demonstrating peacefully on San Rafael Boulevard in Havana, denounced in a live broadcast on Facebook this Thursday that five years in prison for her son is unfair, and that in the Combinado del Este prison, where the young man remains incarcerated, he has received constant mistreatment such as being photographed without clothes and against his will.
“Recently, my son informed me that they took him out of the cell and took him to an office with more people, prison leaders and members of State Security and others, and forced him to take off his clothes,” Elizastigui said, and added that Robles refused. “He said that he was not going to take them off because that was not in any law, and they told him: ’If you don’t take them off, we’ll take them off.’ He had to take off his clothes and they photographed him with a cell phone from the front and from the back.”
The mother, after making the complaints at the Ministry of the Interior, received as a response from the regime that the photographs were taken for “an investigation into a publication made by a newspaper in which it was reported” that Luis Robles had been beaten.” They say they took those images “to show the world that my son had no traces of physical abuse on his body.”
Without specifying which media outlet the Ministry of the Interior referred to, she said that “physical abuse was reported and that he was put in a punishment cell for five days, something that I believe because before he spent seven to nine days in a cell of punishment that almost cost him his life and where he shed his skin,” Elizastigui detailed before adding: “I believe in my son because the one who is in there is him, and I have proof that they have gone to extremes with my son.”
She also took advantage of the moment to remember that it is not the first time that Robles has been mistreated “physically and psychologically.” continue reading
“My son informs me that whenever someone feels like it, abusing their position and power, they take them out of the cell at two or three in the morning until six in the morning.”
said alleged that in 2019 she voted for the approval of the Constitution of the Republic and even “motivated and encouraged” the population to vote in favor. “That Constitution that in Article 54 states that we have freedom of expression,” she said.
“I have dared to do this direct today because in reality I already feel outraged, I feel uncomfortable with what is happening with my son,” she explained to emphasize that it is the only way she has to be heard by “those who need to hear.”
“Perhaps many of the people who are seeing me and listening to me will say that it took me a long time because my son Luis Robles has been imprisoned for a year and six months, unjustly to me, and I know that for many as well.”
At the end of last March and after a year and three months in prison, Luis Robles, known as the “young man with the placard,” was sentenced to five years in prison for demonstrating peacefully with a sign in his hands calling for an end to of the repression and the freedom of the Cuban rapper Denis Solís. He was arrested on December 4, 2020 for protesting on San Rafael Boulevard in Havana and charged with the crimes of enemy propaganda, contempt and disobedience.
Elizastigui confessed that she did not know who Denis Solís was or why her son had gone out to demonstrate asking for the freedom of the protesting rapper. “I don’t know why Luis did it, but perhaps he identified with him and felt motivated to do it, each person is different and we have to respect that.”
According to the court ruling, to which 14ymedio had access, in Robles’ trial it was “proved” that the young man “responded to a summons” from the Cuban influencer “Alexander Otaola to speak out” against the arrest of Solís, “from the police authorities, of the leaders of the State and the Government,” and of “carrying out an act aimed at destabilizing internal order, demonstrating publicly in the streets against the Cuban economic and social system.”
The phrases “Freedom. No more repression. #free-Denis [Solís]”, which were on the poster carried by Robles, “opposed the decisions of the authorities” that determined the arrest of Solís, justified the Provincial Court of Havana, where the activist was prosecuted.
At the beginning of this March, the 29-year-old made public a letter in which he reiterated his fight and his objective: “freedom for the people of Cuba.” In the letter, Robles returns to the reasons that led him to carry out the peaceful protest that today has him in jail.
“I decided to break the silence because I got tired of seeing how my country is destroyed and the government does nothing to fix it,” he explains, “because I think that Cuba’s greatest enemy is not outside but sitting in the presidential chair.”
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US President Joe Biden during the Ninth Summit of the Americas. (EFE)
14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 13 June 2022 — A certain sense of failure has been the conclusion conveyed by many media about the recent IX Summit of the Americas held in Los Angeles. But in fact it has been the opposite The defenders of the failure thesis rely on the fact that the absences of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela have tarnished the efforts of the President of the United States, Biden, to give the meeting new political weight and momentum in order to maintain the space for regional cooperation. What is the OAS? None of that is true.
In fact, an important agreement was reached at this summit, the “Declaration of Los Angeles on Migration and Protection,” supported by twenty American countries, including the United States, Mexico and several Central American nations. The Declaration includes, for the first time, a series of concrete commitments to contain the migration crisis in the region. Which, on the other hand, is one of the main problems in Latin America.
The absence of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, certainly questioned by some attendees, is, however, a political success of this Summit. In the specific case of Cuba, its ideological approaches have not changed since it was expelled from the OAS in 1962. Cuban President Díaz-Canel himself took charge of the will of the Havana regime to intervene in support of “the struggle of the peoples against imperialism.” Language like this hardly has a place in international peace forums. Díaz-Canel has committed one of the biggest blunders of his mandate.
Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, absent due to Biden’s veto, have very little, almost nothing to contribute to the OAS. They are not even capable of taking advantage of their own projects of regional union that were born in times of expensive oil, and that have slowly been dying due to the lack of resources and concrete initiatives. In addition, at a summit in which the debates on the migratory crisis was going to be the focus, what could those three countries say, having seen how very important parts of their population flee from the ideological implantation of communism? They have little or nothing to contribute, except to apologize to the rest of the countries for creating these migratory problems in the region, but Venezuela has not yet addressed its neighbor Colombia to acknowledge the massive flight of its nationals to this country. continue reading
For this reason, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua chose, for obvious reasons of political interest, not to participate in the summit in which they were going to be identified as the origin of a serious regional problem, and they preferred, especially Cuba, to attack the summit and look for allies who could voice the complaint.
The reaction of some leaders was as expected: the presidents of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador; Bolivia, Luis Arce; and Honduras, Xiomara Castro, did not go to Los Angeles, instead sending their foreign ministers, possibly taking advantage of the occasion so as not to be compromised with the migratory problem caused by their respective countries.
And then, some attendees were especially aggressive with an issue, that of the vetoes, which was believed to have been overcome since 2015, when Cuba attended a Summit of the Americas for the first time, in Panama, after six previous editions.
Even the Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, asked that the hosts of the summits stop having the right of admission over the invited countries and went even further, defending a restructuring of the Organization of American States (OAS). Fernández attended the summit with favorable data on Argentine migrations, so as president pro tempore of the Castroist CELAC, he questioned the absences.
Mexico, represented by its foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, also came to say more or less the same thing and condemned the United States, saying that “20 countries spoke out against the exclusions, 10 did not speak out and only 2 were in favor.” Even the Chilean president, Gabriel Boric, who was making his debut at a Summit of the Americas, made it clear “either we save ourselves together, or we are going to sink separately (…) We cannot settle for being clubs that exclude countries that think the same” and added, “the model is exhausted.”
All these criticisms have a background. The leaders of Latin America do not want Luis Almagro at the head of the OAS General Secretariat , nor at the head of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Cuban-American Mauricio Claver-Carone. They are the enemies that must be beaten, the pieces of the big game, on which the Cuban regime has put a high price.
For this reason, Biden did well to forget about the “absentees.” There was not the slightest reason to criticize, and he focused his speech on unity, centering the objectives of the summit on problems such as the migration crisis, post-pandemic economic recovery and climate change. And it seems, according to reports in the media, he has been successful.
For example, Bolsonaro, towards whom Biden maintains a cold and distant position, and who aspires to re-election in Brazil in October, focused his speech on an internal electoral key, on fighting against the record levels of deforestation in the Amazon and in defense of a regional environmental policy.
All in all, the main result of this IX Summit of the Americas has been the “Declaration of Los Angeles on Migration and Protection.” A pact signed by 20 countries, under the sponsorship of the United States, which has established responsibilities in the migration crisis, to put a stop to “illegal migration.” An issue in which Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua would have been blurred in the face of reality.
Just for having stood up to illegal migration at the regional level, and calling it something that is not acceptable, with the commitment to secure borders, the summit can be called a success. The 15,000 people who during that time cross the jungle areas of Central America to try to reach the United States, with a high presence of Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans, is an example of the scope of the summit pact, which, if implemented properly, can end up putting an end to these illegal migration processes. The message to Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela is clear and also democratic, something to which these countries are not usually accustomed.
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The coach of the Cuban karate team, Eliecer Llamos, referred to those who “for one reason or another” decided to abandon them and hoped that “life smiles at them.” (Capture)
14ymedio, Havana, 14 June 2022 — Four Cuban karatecas have left the team while they were in Guatemala. As confirmed by Swing Completo on Monday, they are Darían Díaz, Yaidel Hernández, Sunilda Ventosa and Gerardo Almenares, almost half of the group made up of nine athletes and the coach, Eliecer Llamos.
All of them arrived in Guatemala last Wednesday to take part in training in the cities of Escuintla and Mazatenango.
The publication points out that the athletes “decided to leave the group before the end of the event” that began this Sunday. It will culminate on the 20th and will serve as preparation for the Central American and Caribbean Games in San Salvador in 2023.
The team’s trip was financed by the Executive Committee of the Guatemalan Olympic Committee with $11,186.12, so that Cuban athletes could cover the cost of air tickets, food, drinks and travel insurance.
Cuban karateca Elisabet Vasallo had warned in March of this year that this discipline was in “decline.” The athlete complained through her social networks: “For a long time generations of high-performance karatecas, athletes with talent and special conditions have been destroyed.” continue reading
The bronze medalist at the 2018 Central American and Caribbean Games in Barranquilla pointed to the selection by “trainers” and said that they weren’t “fair or neutral” in the choice of athletes.
Although the specific day of the escape of the four athletes is not known, on his Facebook account, Eliecer Llamos posted a message on Thursday, June 9, in which he refers to those who “for one reason or another” decided to abandon them and said he hopes that “life smiles at them.” Of the nine who traveled to Guatemala, Vivian Prada, Baurelys Torres, Bárbara Lynn, Maikel Noriega and Lázaro Chapman remain.
Originally from Cienfuegos, Darían Díaz, one of the escapees, was selected as the best karateca on the island in 2020. In that year he also won gold in the Cardín Cup and won the Elite National Tournament.
The karate commissioner in Cienfuegos, Bernaldo Pérez Román, highlighted the work of Yaidel Hernández, which led him to be one of the four prominent representatives of the province.
Cuban sport is experiencing an alarming drain of athletes. The escape of players has spread to other disciplines. In May, the abandonment by five members of the wrestling team was confirmed: the two-time world champion Ismael Borrero, Leonardo Herrera, Amanda Hernández, Cristian Solenzal and Yolanda Cordero, during their stay in Mexico for the Pan American Wrestling Championship.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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The sentences of the 11J (July 11th) protesters in La Güinera are still among the most severe. (Capture)
EFE (vía 14ymedio), Washington/Havana, 17 June 2022 — The United States Government announced on Thursday that it has taken measures to impose restrictions on the visas of five unidentified Cuban officials due to their links to the trials and imprisonment of demonstrators who took part in the protests of July 11, 2021 (11J) on the island.
In a statement, the State Department headed by Antony Blinken announced the sanctions, which respond to Presidential Proclamation 5377, by which the United States can suspend the entry into the country of Cuban government officials and employees.
According to the statement, these five officials are linked to “unfair trials” and the sentences and imprisonment of Cuban protestors who took to the streets on July 11, 2021.
The U.S. Government claimed that the Cuban authorities “deny citizens their basic human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
The incident occurred almost at the same time that the Attorney General’s Office issued a new statement reporting four final judgments against 33 11J participants who had appealed.
Of these, “30 were punished with prison sentences (20 are between five and ten years, and 10 are between ten and 18 years), while two were sentenced to correctional work without internment and one to limitation of liberty.”
The sentences were handed down on June 14 and 15 for people convicted of sedition, sabotage and public disorder in Havana and Mayabeque. continue reading
One of the judicial appeals reduced the sentences to up to 15 years in prison for 17 people who demonstrated in the Havana neighborhood of La Güinera, but the sentences were so harsh that they still face a high number of years in prison, a total of 206, with individual cases of up to 17 years.
As reported by the Prosecutor’s Office three days ago, the country’s courts have issued 76 final sentences against 381 people for the protests, not counting those it announced on Thursday.
The NGO Prisoners Defenders pointed out on June 8 that a total of 168 protesters have been prosecuted for the crime of sedition alone, and 246 have final prison sentences of 10 years or more.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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The Government’s goal was to reach 24% of electricity generation from renewable energies by 2030, but at the beginning of 2022, the progress is only 5%. (Sierra Maestra)
14ymedio, Havana, 16 June 2022 — The Cuban population’s weariness of a summer without power grows and jumps from social networks to the streets. If Tuesday was a day of protest for the university residents of Camagüey, on Wednesday came the banging on pots through the streets of Manzanillo, in the province of Granma. The prolonged power cuts threaten a protest a day.
In the midst of this storm, the ruling party has promoted a space for the celebration of the International Renewable Energy Fair, which is held in Havana between June 22 and 24.
“Cuba needs to catapult the use of renewable energies,” is the headline in the State newspaper Granma. In 2014, the island approved a policy for the development of these energy sources, which then accounted for 4.3% of the electricity generation of a country extraordinarily dependent on fossil fuels. The goal was to reach 24% by 2030, but at the beginning of 2022, the halfway point, the progress seemed like a mockery. Only 5%.
“The implementation of the FRE (Renewable Energy Sources) Policy is behind schedule; at the end of 2021 we should have had 649 MW/h in operation, but today it reaches only 47% of what was expected, 304 MW/h,” Rosell Guerra, director of Renewable Energy at the Ministry of Energy and Mines, said in an interview with IPS at the beginning of 2022.
The explanation is very simple. Public policies need funding rather than voluntarism, rather than fantasies. In the same article, the official pointed out that since 2014, $500 million has been invested in renewables, a figure that contrasts with the $1.5 billion invested in hotels.
Guerra attributed the lack of progress to U.S. sanctions and the current bad economic situation, although the Cuban government didn’t take advantage of the chance to invest more even in the best years of that period, when the thaw in U.S. relations with Cuba relieved the perpetual crisis on the island. On the other hand, the regime has not stopped attracting financing for tourism, a sector that makes money easily and quickly, and which collects foreign currency that, according to the authorities, is indispensable for imports. What is not clear is what can be imported if industries stop producing due to lack of energy, as is already happening in Sancti Spíritus. continue reading
In its 2014 plan, Cuba had foreseen that $3.7 billion would be needed, most of which would go to bioelectric plants, key to the renewal of the Cuban energy combination, thanks to the bagasse of sugar cane. The plan was good on paper: the cane went to sugar production and the bagasse went to the electricity system, to which it had to contribute 14% in 2030.
The reality is different: not only has the planned conversion not been made, but the industrial failures leave dramatic episodes such as the loss of 300 tons of bagasse this April due to a fire at the Mario Muñoz sugar plant in Matanzas: precisely the one that delivers the most energy to the national system.
The rest of the amount (and for a 10% contribution to electricity) had to go to the construction of wind and photovoltaic parks. Cuba, with a radiation of more than 5 kilowatts per square meter per day, has a high potential to produce solar energy and, in fact, this is what has advanced the most. The parks that have been built contribute more than 78% of the country’s renewable energy, 238 megawatts per hour. But the amount, once again, is insignificant, and furthermore, the necessary investment figures have increased.
By 2022, officials in the sector had already put the foreign investment indispensable for the change of the energy matrix at $6 billion. Despite the fact that the authorities have introduced some tax exemptions for companies that want to invest in renewables on the island, the money has not yet arrived and is not expected to arrive right now when the international economic crisis is tightening. Cuba, in particular, has had to renegotiate its debts due to the defaults of the last two years, both with the Paris Club and with its main partner, Russia.
In any event, Cuba is very late in updating its energy system. According to Cuba Energía, between 2016 and 2019, 95% of production came from fossils that, in addition to being highly polluting, are finite: 52.3% were extracted from crude oil and 17.6% from gas. The remaining 30.1% came from the burning of cane (27.1%), firewood (2.7%) and hydropower (0.2%). The remaining 5% is attributed to renewables, which is made up of more than 45% solar, more than 30% hydropower, 14% wind and almost 8% biogas.
Renewables in Spain, a country that receives a large amount of solar radiation as well, accounted for 46% of electricity generation in 2021, although the greatest weight was carried by wind, with more than 23%.
Cuban thermoelectric plants, with more than 30 years of operation and a well-known lamentable state, don’t produce much, and the country allocates about $2.8 billion a year to the electricity sector, which includes the purchase of fuels, despite the fact that it obtains large quantities for free — which have been decreasing — from Venezuela, as a result of its personnel agreements (the sending of Cuban doctors and security services mainly) for oil.
The island’s plants are generating less than 40% of their installed power. The reserves are at zero, and the scheduled blackouts exceed the limits of the trained patience of Cubans, with cuts that exceed 12 to 14 hours. The day before yesterday, the protests forced the restoration of electricity in Camagüey. Last night, in Manzanillo, the effect of the pan-banging also worked to restore power. The authorities are managing the discomfort, but Cubans are realizing that their screams can change things.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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14ymedio, Madrid, 20 June 2022 — The Olympic champion and great Cuban boxing star Andy Cruz is joining the list of athletes who are leaving the island. According to Willie Suárez, a Cuban journalist residing in the US, the boxer is in the Dominican Republic, where he has been found after the authorities realized that he did not appear at the Playa Girón National Boxing Championship.
