Almost 20 Years Waiting for the Architects to Avoid a Disaster in Central Havana

“The building was built in 1948 and has never been touched.” (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 29 October 2021 — Peeling walls, cracks in the ceilings of several apartments and, above all, structural cracks keep the 21 families who live in a building on San Nicolás street near the corner with Salud, in Central Havana, in suspense. “This building was built in 1948 and has never been touched. It was reported for maintenance in 2004, architects from the community came, did the lifting and we are still waiting for them,” Miladis, one of the residents of the building, tells 14ymedio.

The 2019 tornado damaged the corner of a room in this Havanan’s apartment. “When I informed the municipal government, an architect came and told him that I needed to find a way to knock down the damaged wall and rebuild it, so that it would not fall into an access corridor of the building. And do you know what the architect told me? That it was my problem if a piece of concrete fell on someone’s head.”

Like Miladis, many residents of the building are willing to fix their homes, but due to the high prices of construction materials — due, among other causes, to the inflation that the country is experiencing — they do not have the means to carry out repair work independently. continue reading

Due to the proximity of the building to the sea, the saltpeter has been wearing down the walls. (14ymedio)

The problem is repeated throughout the neighborhood, with the exception of some houses where the recent painting of the facade reveals a private business, a private guest house that is preparing for the arrival of tourists or the existence of an emigrant in the family who sends those dollars with which you can still get some products to repair homes.

However, Miladis had to make urgent repairs because, over time, water from the downpours began to seep through the same room that was damaged in the tornado. “I had to sacrifice myself and I had a hard time with food to be able to buy a couple of bags of cement and fix that corner,” she says. “It was a repair on the outside of the apartment and whoever did the maintenance had to expose himself to the danger of hanging himself in order to fix the damaged area.”

For about two years, various building materials have disappeared from state stores. The only option to get the products at the moment is the informal market, where for example a bag of cement exceeds 1,000 pesos, or go to the foreign currency stores, where it costs 10 dollars and is scarce.

The fear that her apartment will collapse is not only what worries Miladis the most: the other apartments are in the same situation and the structures of the entire property have begun to give way. “The building is exposed to the saltpeter, its proximity to the sea makes everything worse.” Indeed, the buildings near the Malecón suffer especially the effects of the sea and none of the various government programs have solved the problem of frequent collapses.

Across from Miladis’ building there was an apartment on the second floor in very poor condition and its owner had to demolish it with his own efforts, because he never received help from the capital’s government, Miladis recalls. “It was a scandal because the neighbor threw all the rubble onto the street and they wanted to fine him, but he was between a rock and hard place and the authorities had to send for the rubble to be collected.”

As in the case of Miladis, there are thousands in the capital, which will be 502 years old on November 15. When asked what solution she saw for his building, she was blunt in her answer: “What is needed is another government.”

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Facebook, Authoritarianisms and the Thumbs Down

When the protests began in Cuba on July 11, Facebook accounts and their ability to broadcast the demonstrations live were the fundamental elements for a gagged population to find its voice. (Marcos Evora)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sanchéz, Generation Y, Havana, 31 October 2021 — The giant is wounded and there are many reasons to gloat over his misfortune. The social network Facebook is once again involved in scandal that calls into question its working methods, the use it makes of its users’ personal information and even the immense power it has achieved over governments, local laws and ethical standards. Nothing new in its more than three decades of existence.

However, among its critics there are not only people concerned about the addiction generated by the tool or the traps of its algorithm, but also several authoritarian regimes that do not support the civic plaza that Mark Zuckerberg’s creature has become. They rub their hands, watching the insults rain down on the US conglomerate that has recently been accused of prioritizing profits over network security.

Undoubtedly, public scrutiny is positive given the voracity of this technological behemoth that can influence the electoral course, sink reputations and bury transcendental issues in benefits of banalities. But those are not the reasons why dictatorships abhor Facebook. It is not the challenges about security flaws or dependencies generated by the “like” network that are behind the onslaught of the oppressors against the company.

When the protests began in Cuba on July 11, Facebook accounts and their ability continue reading

to broadcast the demonstrations live were the fundamental elements for a population, muzzled for more than half a century, to find its voice. The confluence that had been created in cyberspace, in a country where the right of association is severely limited, broke the barrier of mistrust and fear that had paralyzed citizens until that moment.

Despite the cuts in internet access that occurred in the following days, social networks and instant messaging services have continued to be the fundamental scene of the rebellion. The Archipiélago platform, the main organizer of the civic march called for November 15, has used the potential of the digital group to unite more than 30,000 members. For them, Facebook has been the only possibility to meet and debate.

In the same country where school textbooks include enormous doses of political indoctrination and the Orwellian television screen is an innocent caricature of the political police, the official media rejoice in the questioning of Zuckerberg in congresses and in the press of democratic countries. They applaud the setting of limits on the tool, but not because they are concerned for the privacy of its users, or want to protect them from the excesses of advertising. They do it because it is in their interest that the network fails, thus closing the gap that has been opened in their strict internal controls.

When the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana rejoices in the media beating against Facebook , it is not thinking of protecting us but of gagging us.

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This article was originally published in DW Español.

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

Cuban Businesswoman Saily Gonzalez Files Defamation Lawsuit

Activist and businesswoman Saily Gonzalez with the lawsuit she filed in Santa Clara. (Twitter)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, October 29, 2021 — The activist and businesswoman Saily Gonzalez has filed a lawsuit in Santa Clara for moral damage to dignity and honor. The suit is filed on her behalf and on behalf of the signatories to the March for Civic Change. Miryorly Garcia filed a similar lawsuit in Havana and expectations are similar suits will be filed in other cities such as Cienfuegos shortly.

The signatories are members of Archipiélago, a group which has called for protest marches throughout Cuba on November 15. The suit is in response to a ruling by the Office of the Attorney General declaring the march to be illegal. In an interview with 14ymedio, Gonzalez said the government statement was the precursor to a string of accusations against her group which were later made in the official press and on the TV news program Mesa Redonda (Roundtable).

“If we challenge this statement, if we oppose it, more people will realize that the truth is on our side,” she says.

Filing a lawsuit for Gonzalez is an exercise in civic engagement. “We have been defamed by a few people acting as individuals but who are figures of power.” She describes that power as dictatorial, defending itself by attacking her group with lies. continue reading

“One of the fundamental problems here in Cuba is that historically citizens have not been aware of their rights or of the tools they have to exercise them,” Gonzalez adds. “And that’s one of the things has been most attractive to me about Archiépelago from the beginning: responding to authoritarianism with civic action. [This is] one more example of civic action, of recognizing our rights, even if the dictatorship refuses to recognize them.”

In the documents filed in Santa Clara and Havana the activists remind the courts that when Archipiélago filed permit applications to hold the march, the official response was that it was illicit because the stated reasons for such a march were not valid. However, the activists argue, “[The response] offers no legal explanation as to why non-violent public expressions in support of the rights of all Cubans, of the release of political prisoners, and of a peaceful, democratic solution to the ever more obvious differences within society would be illicit.”

The lawsuits challenge three specific points made by officials: that the march’s promoters are trying to effect regime change; that the march is part of a broader strategy of regime change in Cuba directed from other countries; and that some promoters of the march have links to subversive organizations or to agencies financed by the U.S. government. None of these claims, the plaintiffs say, are backed up by evidence. “The statements by officials are based on politically influenced personal opinion which reveal bias and amount to unfounded characterizations of the signatories,” the documents say.

Not a day goes by without the government trying in some way to discredit the planned march. In Thursday’s closing speech during the current session of the National Assembly, President Miguel Diaz-Canel barely touched upon the serious problems plaguing the country — the energy crisis, currency unification, the Covid pandemic, falling GDP and hyperinflation — to instead emphasize that “no one is going to spoil the party.” It was a reference to another event scheduled on November 15: the lifting of Covid restriction and a total reopening of the country, including to tourism.

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‘No One is Going to Spoil the Party!’ Warns Diaz-Canel, Sheltered by Castro and the Dome of Power in Cuba

Raúl Castro greets Miguel Díaz-Canel this Thursday in the National Assembly. (Cubadebate)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 29 October 2021 —  “We are already vaccinated against covid-19, and against fear, we have always been. We have a Homeland and we defend life. And we continue to be homeland or death,” Miguel Díaz-Canel claimed this Thursday at the closing of the Seventh Ordinary Period of sessions of the National Assembly. “We will win!” he shouted, accompanying the deputies who responded to the slogan. And his voice broke. A coincidence, no doubt, but one that is still symbolic of the complex moment that the Cuban regime is experiencing.

The president had just closed a speech with a “No one is going to spoil the party,” a speech in which he reviewed only some of the serious problems that plague the country, starting with the energy crisis, the Ordering Task*, the covid-19 pandemic, the falling GDP and hyperinflation.

Even so, Díaz-Canel, surrounded by the dome of power and in the presence of former president Raúl Castro, considered that there is much to celebrate thanks to the improvement of the covid-19 data, which allows this coming November 15 to be a day the country reactivates on several fronts, including the reopening of borders – and, therefore, tourism – and the general resumption of the face-to-face school year.

In addition, just one day later, on November 16, 502 years have passed since the founding of the Cuban capital, another reason for celebration, which will be held the day before, on the exact day that the opposition has called for a peaceful march throughout continue reading

the country.
In his speech, the president did not deviate one iota from the argument that the ruling party maintains in recent days and there were few or no surprises, since he made a compendium in which nothing was missing from what has already been read and heard. Much of his time was devoted to talking about the “destabilization plans of the United States.”

“The enemy’s formula has been to bet that our great material difficulties weaken the forces of the people and that the people get on their knees in front of them,” he warned. Although Díaz-Canel wanted to make it clear that “war actions, invasion and occupation are not ruled out against a socialist project like the Cuban one,” he stressed that the initial strategy is usually different: “demoralization and surrender.”

The president described as “opportunism of the adversary” the demonstrations of July 11 to which, without mentioning, he clearly referred when he regretted that “a climate favorable to irritation and discontent was created just in the months in which the pandemic escalated in the country, electricity cuts became frequent and the services on offer contracted.”

The president also emphasized the accusations against the US Embassy in Havana, against which he presented its Cuban counterpart in Washington as a haven of peace and diplomacy. Meanwhile, he accused, “US diplomatic officials meet with the counterrevolutionary leaders, provide them with guidance, logistical support and directly or indirectly provide financing.”

Díaz-Canel said that in the face of permanent harassment from the United States, the Cuban people are called to resist in a heroic way, as they have done in the pandemic, basically through management with their universal and free health system — something not as exceptional as the authorities usually advertise — and creating their own vaccines.

“Our development and the well-being of the people will have to depend on the effort we make, aware that the cruel policy of the United States will persist, as long as the criminal desire to take over Cuba’s destiny persists in that country. Socialism is not to blame for our problems. It is the only explanation for how that we have survived this fierce and genocidal siege without giving up on our own self-development,” he shouted.

The president’s speech also made reference to the laws unanimously approved this Thursday, the future Family Code, the State budget for 2022 and the importance of strengthening socialism. “Socialist democracy requires innovation, permanently changing the forms of democratic participation,” he said, calling on the population to get involved and participate.

Díaz-Canel still had room to proclaim the defense of human rights that, in his opinion, is constant in Cuba; and argued that the only limit to rights is in the Constitution, another clear reference to the opposition and the Civic March for the Change of 15 November, whose organizers consider it protected by the Constitution.

“The Law of Laws cannot be interpreted for convenience. Much less in the interest of those who are the first to not respect it. Rights are not unlimited. Their limits are in the Constitution,” he argued.

But Archipiélago, the platform that is calling for the march, does not back down nor plan to enter the game of the use of violence. On the contrary, the group published a statement yesterday on its social networks in which they asked for understanding with their demands and that they be brave by rejecting the call for the use of force made by the Government.

“We appeal to your consciences, if you are planning to throw a stick at a protester, please look at your children and think of the youth of 15N, at their parents. What do you solve by hitting a citizen? Hitting does not serve to kill ideas. If you do not agree with our way of thinking, then tell us in frank conversation from mutual respect. Do not let yourself be carried away by hatred,” they urge.

The statement also requests understanding from relatives who do not support the march for those close to them who do. “What we want is a better country; if the way things have been done to date has not worked, it is time to think about changes. Thinking like this does not make us bad, nor ’worms’, nor criminals. It makes us different.”

*Translator’s note: Tarea ordenamiento = the [so-called] ‘Ordering Task’ which is a collection of measures that includes eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and others. 

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

Ecotaxis Celebrate a Year in Havana But Without Using Solar Energy

The Ecotaxis are driven by women, and the requirements to obtain a place are to have a driving license and some experience in this type of vehicle. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 30 October 2021 — After a year in which the first Ecotaxis ecological tricycles began to circulate in Havana, it has not yet been possible to “start up the solar panels to charge the vehicles,” a situation that 14ymedio warned about last April and that the official press has confirmed this Friday.

An article published in Tribuna de La Habana recounts the twelve months that the tricycles have provided services as part of public transportation in the Cuban capital. “A total of 633,836 km have been traveled, which is 2,700 km per month per vehicle,” the text says.

Passengers have benefited from a total of 119,000 trips, which is equivalent to an approximate of 350 daily trips and more than 750,000 clients “boarded the Ecotaxis during this year, and among the beneficiaries of the service the residents of Centro Habana and Habana Vieja stand out, as well as passers-by and visitors in the city.”

However, despite the triumphalist tone of the article, the local newspaper recognizes that “among the pending issues to be solved” is for “the motorcycles to work under the concept of zero emissions, since it has not been possible to start the solar panels to charge the vehicles.”

This newspaper pointed out the problem in last April’s continue reading

report about these vehicles, which arrived on the island in part thanks to the Small Donations program of the Global Environment Fund, which included the installation of a photovoltaic park with a power of 10 kilowatts (kW) to charge the tricycles.

But tricycles still need fossil fuel to operate and their batteries are charged connected to the national electrical energy system, which is supplied, 95%, by fossil fuels.

An employee of Agency Number 9 of Taxis Cuba, which manages the Ecotaxis, then told 14ymedio that the photovoltaic modules “are already installed,” but “they are not yet used” to supply energy.

For the moment, the equipment “is charging for approximately seven hours, from ten at night to five in the morning,” connected to conventional power outlets, the site worker said. “Only one converter is missing” for them to start working.

At present, a total of 23 teams operate under the Ecotaxi system, of which 11 cover the route that goes from the National Bus terminal to the Parque del Curita, Parque de la Fraternidad and Cienfuegos street, until reaching the train terminal. The rest go from the railway terminal to the Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital.

A technician from the Ecotaxis agency fears that “with all the time that has passed, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the panels to start working.” The employee, who prefers to remain anonymous, reports that “the installation of the photovoltaic cells was made for the launch and the photos with the donors, but after that no further work has been done on the matter.”

“The vehicles have also had some problems and of the initial 23 it is a rare week in which they are all rolling on the street.” The technician says that “with the cost of living as it is, some of the drivers who had been enthusiastic at the beginning have asked to leave and are no longer at the helm.”

The Ecotaxis are driven by women, and the requirements to obtain a place are to have a driving license and some experience in this type of vehicle. They do not have a fixed salary and the worker who owns the tricycle has to pay 125 pesos daily to the state company, for the use of it — and the one that works as an assistant to the principal has to pay 300.

With its six seats, in an Ecotaxi trip the driver could earn at least 24 pesos for each one which would add up to 432 pesos after completing the 18 trips of the day. If they have to pay 125 to the company, the daily profit would be 307 pesos before subtracting 10% for the National Tax Administration Office (Onat).

A year ago, earning more than 300 pesos a day might seem tempting but with inflation and the rise in the cost of basic products, “the accounts are very tight,” acknowledges the employee. “Many of them have had to bear the cost of a repair out of their own pocket because if they wait for the State to fix them, they stay idle for days and they don’t earn anything.”

Yellow and with colorful “100% ecological” and “zero emission” stickers, Havana tricycles are neither as environmentally friendly nor as advantageous in terms of employment as they were originally painted to be.

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Providing Three Meals a Day Is Difficult but Cubans’ Obsession with Bread, Even if Low-Quality, Makes It Easier

Though the baker sells several varieties, only garlic bread was for sale on Thursday. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 29 October 2021 — A long line of people waited outside the bakery on Carlos III Avenue to buy garlic bread, the only kind for sale on Thursday morning. The cost was 6 pesos each, limited to ten a customer.

“Like public transportation, this bakery has odd hours. I try to get here early to avoid the crowd,” says one customer seated on a small stool she brought from home. Meanwhile, an employee controls the flow of people entering the shop, allowing only two in at a time.

I really like the garlic bread because it saves me having to add my own oil and garlic. We eat it just by itself,” adds the customer.

“Garlic? No way! I mean, it’s edible but no garlic has ever been near that bread,” responds another customer, eliciting laughter from those around her.

The bakery sells other breads, such as sandwich bread for 25 pesos, but there is not much demand for it. There is also the popular barrita, a top seller due to its low price of 5 pesos. There is always a selection but, when supplies run out, customers can wait as long as thirty minutes to an hour before a new batch arrives. continue reading

When supplies run out, the wait can last from thirty minutes to an hour before a new batch is ready. (14ymedio)

Wheat flour has been in such short supply that in May bakeries began using corn flour as a substitute. Recently, long lines have started wrapping around bakeries and police have had to intervene after arguments and fights broke out. Though the situation improved somewhat over the summer, the bakery in Carlos III is still not back to the kind of normality that perhaps no longer exists in Cuba: being able to buy something without having to wait in a long line under a blazing sun.

Cubans are obsessed with bread in part because it serves as a substitute for many other foods that have been disappearing from their tables. Bread with oil, bread with mayonnaise, bread with guayaba jam and many other such combinations have become a way to get by between meals or now serve as substitutes for traditional dishes made with rice, beans and meat.

Bread made from refined flour ends up in a school backpacks as part of a between-class snack and as a replacement for the tasteless hospital food served to patients in hospitals. Fervent consumers will flock to wherever it is being sold, especially if the price is lower than for bread made from elaborate recipes at privately owned bakeries

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‘No to the Cuban Dictatorship’s Blackmail of Offering Exile in Exchange for Freeing Political Prisoners’

Anamely Ramos said that in the previous hunger strike by Maykel Castillo, she was by his side, although in this one she will not be able to be because he is in prison. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 26 October 2021 — Maykel Castillo ‘Osorbo’ is on a hunger and thirst strike in a dungeon at the Kilo 5 and a Half prison, in the province of Pinar del Río, according to art curator and activist Anamely Ramos. After several hours of uncertainty in which the San Isidro Movement (MSI) expressed its concern about the absence of the daily call that the artist makes to his family, the rumors that other inmates had sent to their relatives about the possibility that he was a ’plantado’ were confirmed.

“They [the prisoners] have taken care of him all this time and when they shouted Patria y Vida, when they heard about the Latin Grammy nomination, they felt that their hope resurfaced beyond the imprisoned body. ’He cannot die for us’, they repeat over and over again, calling their families and asking them to report the Maykel situation,” Ramos wrote on her Facebook profile on Tuesday.

The activist, who is currently doing postgraduate studies at a university in Mexico, has expressed her closeness to Osorbo even from a distance, emphasizing that the singer and author of the song that has become an anthem for change in Cuba is aware that he is imprisoned for having been part of “a song that inspired a people,” but he vindicated his example for other people.

“Maykel is the example that all human beings can improve and grow, he is the example that no matter how much violence they have thrown against you, you can always love and fight peacefully for freedom. Maykel alone represents all mobility that the ’Revolution’ promised and did not fulfill,” she adds. continue reading

Her words came hours after the virtual press conference called by the San Isidro Movement in which she herself emphasized the rejection of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Osorbo himself to be released in exchange for exile, a negotiation that dates back to several weeks ago, according to Tania Bruguera, and that facilitated the departure from the country of the artists Hamlet Lavastida and Katherine Bisquet to Poland.

“We do not accept the political blackmail of the exile and exile of the Cuban dictatorship as a condition to free the political prisoners in Cuba,” the group said in summary.

Although the press conference was initially called to give “unconditional support” to the Archipiélago collective and the Civic Marches for Change scheduled for November 15, the MSI took the opportunity to demand the release of all political prisoners, among whom it cited Otero Alcántara and Osorbo expressly.

Anamely Ramos reiterated the “total solidarity” of the MSI with Archipiélago and insisted that the country lives in a “situation of terror,” with continuous reprisals for those who disagree politically, which materialize in expulsions from jobs, threats to families and other bullying practices.

Fernando Almeyda, one of the Archipelago spokespeople who also participated in the conference through Zoom, considered that his organization has already achieved “something important” with this call, although he fears that the Government, prisoner of a “tremendous fear” in the face of the protests, will respond with attacks.

“We know that we can face many very difficult scenarios on November 15,” said Almeyda, who stressed that opponents face “a system that has only violence left.”

Almeyda stressed that the initiative has a peaceful nature, and encouraged those who do not feel safe to participate in the protest in an alternative way with cacerolazos — the banging of pots and pans –or on social networks.

Hours later, the head of the Ideological Department of the Communist Party of Cuba, Rogelio Polanco, directly accused the United States Government of being “the true organizer and promoter of the provocation mounted for November.”

The official affirmed that senior officials of the Washington Administration “participate openly” in promoting the march with the intention of bringing about a change in the island’s political system.

“The supposed peaceful march is a provocation as part of a strategy of a soft coup and its purposes coincide with the main lines of attacks, slander, lies and threats used by those who, financed by the US Government, oppose the Cuban political system and they are trying to destabilize it and restore capitalism,” the official stressed on the Roundtable program on State TV.

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Before November 15, Products Reappear in Cuba as if by Magic

This line this Friday in Central Havana, where products that had been missing for months had been put on sale in Cuban pesos. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 30 October 2021 — As if by magic, products that had been absent from the shelves of Central Havana for months have appeared. The neighbors, as expected, did not take long to gather around the shops in the neighborhood.

Chicken, hotdogs, shampoo, toothpaste and cologne were on sale this Friday in stores like La Mía, on Belascoain Street. “This is good today, for a long time now they didn’t have so many things for sale in the same place,” commented a man in line. “That’s because of November 15,” another man replied, “after that day, we go back to chicken one day and, if anything, mincemeat the next.”

And yes, the toothpaste, ran out first thing in the morning.

When they had collected 160 identity cards from the people in line, it was noon and 100 people were still waiting around the corner for continue reading

their cards to be taken. Several members of the “coleros confrontation brigades” at the door of the store organized the flow of customers, who, with their rationbook in hand, had overcome the last obstacle before entering the market.
“This is disrespectful, they have passed a few people ahead of everyone, I have been playing the game for a while,” lamented a neighbor of about 50 years, standing in the line. “Groups to confront the coleros for what? If the coleros are first in line; then they also all leave with their packs full and even one of them may not find anything left to buy.”

State businesses that offer products in national currency are going through a shortage crisis that is almost commonplace, which began in 2019, and that the authorities called ’temporary’, and which reached its zenith with the covid pandemic. After the protests of July 11 and, in the last month, with the call for a Civic March for Change for November 15, Havanans have seen, not without suspicion, a discreet improvement in the offer of products, especially in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods of the capital.

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Cuba: The End of the Party

Yunior García, one of the leaders of the Archipiélago, at the time he received the official response declaring the march of 15N “illegal”. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Miami, 30 October 2021 — The Cuban march on November 15 has been called by Archipiélago. This group is not a political party and does not intend to replace the communists in the country’s leadership. It takes its name from diversity. It is not true that Cuba is only an island. It is a large island – larger than the Netherlands and Belgium combined – and with many habitable islets, and also the Isle of Pines and the abundant keys.

Nor are the members of Archipiélago are at the service of the “Americans” or, specifically, of the CIA. This is the classic infamy with which the regime tries to discredit and disqualify those who oppose its forced unanimity. What the many members and supporters of Archipiélago want is to express themselves and tell their truths under the Constitution’s protection.

The Constitution guarantees freedom of thought, but, simultaneously, it subjects what is said to the socialist goals designed by the institutional order of the text itself. It is deliberately ambiguous since its model is the Stalin’s 1936 Constitution and its derivatives. On one side, it establishes the fundamental rights. On the other, it suppresses them.

In the Cuban case, when Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, on behalf of the ‘Christian Liberation Movement,’ presented more than the ten thousand signatures (in fact, more than 14,000) that were required to submit to a vote a referendum on a constitutional amendment that would authorize the multiparty system, the Cuban Parliament (the ‘National Assembly of People’s Power’) did not bother to answer him.

In 2012, he was murdered along with Harold Cepero. They were too bothersome. Human Rights Watch tells it: after a confusing incident, in which only the Cubans died continue reading

, despite the fact that both had got out of the car on their own feet, unaided. This was told to me by Ángel Carromero, a young Spanish man who was driving the car on the day of the crime.

Previously, the Constitution, the communist aims of Cuban society and the role of the Party had been “armored,” so that it was highly unlikely to modify the course of Cuban events. However, it is practically impossible to prevent such changes towards openness. When will they happen? Once there is a critical mass that demands them or, otherwise, when certain people with effective power have the political will to carry them out.

Both forces converge in Cuba. On July 11, it became clear that young people want to expand society’s participation margins, but, at the same time, there are thousands of cadres from the Communist Party itself who call themselves “reformists” and are eager to initiate a substantial change that allows them to abandon collectivist and authoritarian superstitions forever. It has been 62 years of continuous failures.

In this sense, the cases of Leo Brouwer, Pablo Milanés, and Silvio Rodríguez, despite being different, are very significant. They repeated the “we have come this far” of José Saramago, when three young black men were executed in Havana on April 11, 2003. Brouwer sharply distanced himself from the Cuban regime due to the repression exercised against civil society on July 11 of this year. Hundreds of peaceful people were beaten and imprisoned, which was intolerable to this great-nephew of Ernesto Lecuona, a great guitarist and a great composer.

Pablo Milanés has lived in Spain since 1992, so his clear break with the regime, expressed in previous circumstances and now reiterated, is not surprising. More significant was the position taken by Silvio Rodríguez. He talked for more than an hour with the young playwright Yunior García Aguilera, an animator from Archipiélago, and with his wife, Dayana, a filmmaker, after García Aguilera’s arbitrary arrest. From that meeting came out a formal request from the singer-songwriter to the dictatorship to release the hundreds of detainees who had not used violence.

Silvio Rodríguez said on Facebook, “The meeting with Yunior and Dayana was good, I am not exaggerating if I say fraternal; there was dialogue, exchange, we listened to each other with attention and respect. The most painful thing for me was hearing that they, as a generation, no longer felt part of the Cuban process but something else. They explained their arguments, their frustrations to me. I tried to make them understand that at my age everything was also much slower than we expected it to be.”

Silvio Rodríguez has taught Miguel Díaz-Canel a lesson on how to deal with the opposition. But he has received another quite obvious lesson – he has heard that Yunior and Dayana “do not feel part of the Cuban process.” The story of the Sierra Maestra is so old that it’s not possible for young people to bond emotionally with those stories. Silvio was born in the 1940s. Yunior in the eighties. If Silvio were as rational as he appears he would tell Díaz-Canel to get ready for the end of the party. It’s just around the corner.

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It is Forbidden to Bring Veterinary Vaccines to Cuba Due to the Risk of “Biological Aggression from the United States”

A young man sitting next to his pet at Havana’s Malecón at the end of September 2021. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana | 26 October 2021 — Vaccines and other biological products for veterinary use “can be vehicles for building diverse and powerful biological weapons.” That is the argument of the Ministry of Agriculture of Cuba to prohibit its importation and its exclusion in Resolution 430/2021.

The agency considers that “veterinary vaccines, antisera, culture media, products obtained by genetic engineering and genetically modified organisms” may “contain in their composition strains of pathogenic microorganisms different from those that circulate” in Cuba, and that this type of aggression has been used by the United States.

Pharma biologist chemist Ernesto Mediola assures 14ymedio that he understands Cuba’s position, but does not share the bans “because the drugs are regulated and go through meticulous health protocols.”

“Strictly speaking, viruses, bacteria, toxins, to name a few, could be used to cause disease, but to state that a patented vaccine is the basis of a biological weapon is an extreme position.”

The news has not been well received by a community of animal lovers and protectors that have been waiting for months for veterinary drugs, and vaccines in particular, to reach clinics and stores in the country. Stories of critically ill or dead animals from preventable continue reading

diseases can be heard everywhere.

“We placed an ad stating that we would be willing to pay whatever it took to buy it here because last year we had another little puppy die from distemper”

Duque died of parvovirus when he was only six months of age. The vaccine that was needed to immunize him against the disease did not reach Cuba in time, after an emigrant cousin sent the owner of the puppy a dose of the pentavalent that also immunizes against distemper, adenovirus, hepatitis, and kennel cough.

“We placed an ad stating that we would be willing to pay whatever it took to buy it here because last year we had another little puppy die of distemper,” the troubled owner of the two dead animals told this newspaper. “But they are practically not selling it on the black market because, with the reduction of flights, they almost never arrive.”  In addition, the vaccine must maintain a strict cold storage chain.

Roberto Miró, who runs a small place where he trims animals’ nails and treats them against scabies and ticks in Santo Suárez, explains to this newspaper that “you have to buy the vaccine only from a source in which you have a lot of confidence because, if the packaging was not at the right temperature all the time, it’s like throwing your money away.”

A dose of pentavalent exceeds 1,500 pesos in the informal market and there isn’t a constant supply. Most of the veterinarians who practice privately, seeing animals in their homes, have preferred to withdraw immunization with these antidotes from their catalog of services. “What would I have to charge to give the injection if the vaccine costs me that much? Few clients are willing to pay that amount,” Miró acknowledges.

In the main veterinary clinics of Havana, the product has been conspicuous by its absence for more than a year, even in the exclusive Almiquí, with high prices in convertible currency, the pentavalent has barely arrived a couple of times in recent months. “Animals die of diseases that would be very easy to prevent with a timely vaccine,” says Miró.

The Ministry of Agriculture also prohibited the import-export of  “hormones and growth promoters, drugs, narcotics, psychotropics, blood samples, strains of microorganisms” and equipment, devices and materials for veterinary laboratory diagnosis.

In the information offered for travelers, the agency specified that the importation of antibiotics for veterinary use is permitted, as well as antifungals, antiparasitics, vitamin supplements, instruments and accessories for pets, which must be in their “original containers, duly labeled and identified with the commercial and generic name or international common denomination.”

“My dogs have not been able to go out to the street for almost two years because I have not been able to vaccinate them”

Mendiola believes that the ban is more aimed at the centralism of a government that is questionable, given the lack of medications. Cuba has reached such extremes that, in the face of the scabies plague they are experiencing, those affected have had to resort to an antiparasitic that is used in animals. “It is not recommended because it can generate adverse reactions. Before prohibiting, Cuba should open the entry of drugs in general,” warns the chemist.

In the absence of protection, many pet owners reinforce the measures. “My dogs have not been able to go out to the street for almost two years because I have not been able to vaccinate them. I already suffered a lot with the death of a ten-year-old dog who got sick with distemper and I do not want to go through that again. What we do is leave them at home and we have rags with chlorine at the entrance to clean our shoes and avoid bringing them diseases from the outside,” says a resident from El Cerro.

“We have American pentavalent, just brought from Miami,” states an ad in one of the most popular sites of classifieds sales in Cuba. I administered it to the animal at home,” it reads. “Life is priceless,” the ad concludes immediately after the price of the drug: 1,800 pesos.

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The Regime’s Two Obsessions: Preventing Protests on November 15 and Saving the Biennial

Rogelio Polanco Fuentes, secretary of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee, appeared on the TV news program Mesa Redonda (Roundtable) to condemn calls for anti-government demonstrations on November 15. (Cubadebate)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, October 26, 2021 — Just nineteen days remain until November 15, when national protest rallies are scheduled to take place. Not a day goes by that the issue does not attract attention, both from organizers and supporters of the Civic March for Change and from the regime, which has made it clear that it will spare no effort to prevent a repeat of the July 11 demonstrations.

Unlike their strategy of years gone by of ignoring and marginalizing the opposition, officials seem to have realized that, having lost their monopoly on information with the advent of an independent press and social media, the best approach is to talk a lot. Their goal is to discourage Cubans who oppose the government because of the problems it has created and cannot solve, but who have not yet decided whether or not to take take part in street protests.

The latest salvo came on Tuesday from Rogelio Polanco Fuentes, secretary of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee, who appeard on the television program Mesa Redonda (Roundtable). His statements contained nothing new but were entirely devoted to planned protest rallies on November 15.

Defending the decision not to allow lawful public demonstrations, Polanco stated, “We are not going to legitimize imperialist interference in our internal affairs or unleash growing desires for a neo-colonialist revival that some continue reading

have been calling for and that would worsen the crisis situation. This is not an act of civic engagement. It is an act of subordination to Yankee hegemony.”

Polanco discussed demonstration permit applications submitted by Archipiélago, the group calling for the protest, claming their actions amounted a coordinated strategy. As evidence, he cited the applications’ wordings, which were nearly identical regardless of the province in which they were filed.

The organization convening the rallies is made up of groups from across the island, so it is not surprising that their actions would be coordinated. Likewise, Polanco was surprised the United States had expressed support for the protest immediately after Archipiélago’s announcement, as though Washington needed a day of reflection to express a policy of support for the Cuban opposition, a policy it has maintained for more than sixty years.

“In response to the challenge posed by protest promoters and their attempt to provocatively ignore officials’ refusals to grant them permits, on October 21 provincial headquarters of the Office of the Attorney General began issuing warnings to these citizens, notifying them that, if they failed to comply with these decisions, they would be subject to criminal charges of disobedience, unlawful demonstration, criminal incitement and other offenses proscribed by and subject to penalty under current criminal legislation,” he said. He justified these warnings by noting that even citizens who have not committed a crime can be summoned to appear before judicial bodies.

Polanca later resorted the usual rhetoric, describing the November 15 marches as a “soft coup,” claiming such actions are lifted from the “playbook of non-violent struggle” which led to the so-called Color Revolutions in Eastern Europe at the end of 20th century and the Arab Spring of 2011. He also lumped them with the anti-government demonstrations in Venezuela from 2014 to 2017.

When it came time to talk about financing, Polanco followed the same script, citing the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Center for Opening and Development in Latin America (CADAL), which he claimed had spent $200,000 on Cuba.

As the newspaper Escambray did two weeks ago, Polanco tried to link these organizations to Manuel Cuesta Morúa and Yunior García Aguilera who, it noted for the umpteenth time in recent weeks, attended a seminar organized by CADAL at a private university in Madrid. “The subversive, conspiratorial and seditious nature of these gatherings is clear. You’d have to be delusional to think you can tarnish the dignity of our invincible Revolutionary Armed Forces,” he said.

There was no shortage of references to Cuban exile organizations in Miami, which the regime has labelled as terrorist for decades. Among those mentioned were the Cuban Democratic Directorate, led by Orlando Gutierrez Boronat, the Cuban-American National Foundation and media outlets such as ADN Digital, Radio Martí Noticias and Cubanet, all described as having receiving millions of dollars to promote subversion.

Other individuals the article singled out were Ramon Saul Sanchez, whose name regularly appears in such lists, as well as Saily Gonzalez Velazquez, an activist and cafe owner who has had to shut down due to harassment by authorities. Gonzalez closed her business, Café Amarillo B&B, saying she would not reopen until “the rights to think and speak are respected in Cuba.” The article accused Gonzalez of inciting violence and accepting support from the National Cuban-American Foundation.

“The real organizer and promoter of November’s provocation is the U.S. government, as facts and statements show,” said Polanco. He stated that the march is doomed to failure and that no one will be able to stop the “explosion of pent-up happiness, joy and hugs” on November 15, when borders, tourism and schools are scheduled to reopen.

Hours after Polanco’s spiel, the government released a letter singed by a long list of foreign artists in support the Havana Biennial.

“The intended boycott has a blatantly imperialistic and destabilizing tint, hostile towards Cuba and the Biennial,” it reads. “No one in Cuba is imprisoned for his or her political beliefs or ideas, including artists. There are people, accomplices to Washington’s subversive plans, who have been imprisoned for their attacks on a constitutional order endorsed by more than 85% of the voters in 2019.”

Among the letter’s signatories are Elena Poniatowska (winner of the 2013 Cervantes Prize), Paco Ignacio Taibo II (director of the Economic Culture Fund) and Laura Esquivel (author best known for the novel “Like Water for Chocolate, on which an acclaimed film of the same name was based). All three are Mexican and supporters of the government of Manuel Lopez Obrador. The letter was written in response to a campaign launched by Cuban dissident artist Tania Bruguera and others urging artists not to attend this year’s Havana Biennial.

As for Bruguera’s initiative, as she herself reported this Wednesday on social networks, she continues to gain support*. The most recent to join it were the artists Cildo Meireles, from Brazil, the Serbian Marina Abramovic, dedicated to performance art, and the Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. “In the last hours they have joined their voices with just force and have said no to the Havana Biennial by signing the letter of support for the boycott,” said Bruguera. She also announced that the Brazilian photographer Rosângela Rennó, a participant in other editions and invited to this edition, announced he will not participate.

*Translator’s note: As of the posting of this translation, the initiative has 605 signatories.

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A Fight to Buy Washing Machines Leads to the Arrests of Two Customers in Sancti Spiritus

The line to enter the La Habana store in the city of Sancti Spíritus this Wednesday, October 27, 2021. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Mercedes García, Havana, 28 October 2021 — The sale of 12 Samsung brand automatic washing machines for $388 raised quite a stir this Wednesday in the vicinity of the La Habana store in the city of Sancti Spíritus. Everything ended with the arrest of two women and a blackout, which forced the suspension of transactions at the cash register.

“The situation was terrible. There were two lines, I was in the one that was for normal products and the other was to buy the washing machines,” explains Esperanza, a woman from Sancti Spiritus who has had hard currency (MLC) account for months, some “reserve” dollars.

“A tremendous brawl broke out” and quickly the line “was filled with policemen” but the agents preferred “not to get into the fight and stood to one side to wait for the women to finish beating each other.”

“One of the police officers initially said: ’We are going to let them be, no one is going to stab me like the one in Havana’,” says the woman from Sancti Spiritus. The uniformed woman mentioned the police officer who was wounded with a knife and kidnapped by a man for several hours last Tuesday. “Once the discussion calmed down a bit, the women were arrested and taken away,” she sums up.

Esperanza’s bad time, she says, only started with the fight. Already continue reading

inside the store she experienced the daily life of a Cuban. If she felt sorry for seeing two women “hitting each other” by a washing machine, she was more frustrated when she entered the establishment and found it “so short of supplies,” she says.

“I went through this store to see what food they were selling, what was available, but there was nothing,” she complains. “The only thing they sold was a few pieces of beef at 45 dollars and that fortune was not going to be spent,” she said, confirming that on the city’s black market this type of meat “appears” at 70 pesos a pound.

Esperanza looked the shelves up and down, over and over again, and decided to buy two cans of anchovy-stuffed olives for $1.80 each. She had to spend 40 minutes in the line due to the lack of a connection with banks to be able to approve magnetic card payments. And just when her turn came, she stumbled again with the harsh reality day-to-day life in Cuba: “The power went out. You know!”

The shop assistants were running around like crazy telling the customers they had to leave. “Until the power comes on, we cannot continue to sell, there is very little [diesel] oil left in the generator and electricity cannot be sustained in the store,” said one of the state employees.

Finally her card was accepted by the bank reader and she was able to buy “informally,” says Esperanza with relief.

Little supply, very long lines and a collateral business of resellers mark the days in foreign exchange stores, the most criticized in the country and, however, the only ones that still — given the severe economic crisis that the Island is going through — have more than a dozen of products on their shelves.

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Cuban Reporter Iliana Hernandez Released After Several Hours of Arrest

Hernández, who has Spanish nationality in addition to Cuban , is also “regulated” by the authorities, with a travel ban that prevents her from leaving the country. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 28 October 2021 — The independent reporter Iliana Hernández, a collaborator of CiberCuba, was released on Thursday night after spending several hours in police custody. The activist was arrested at noon in Cojimar, a neighborhood east of Havana, when she was a few blocks from her home, family sources told 14ymedio.

After being released, the activist told this newspaper that they first took her to the Cojímar police station and then to the Altahabana police station in Boyeros, and almost the whole time she was “inside a patrol car.”

“I made a statement because I had two accusations of defamation, one that was filed by the delegate of my constituency and the other by the owner of the identity card who appeared at my house a while ago. They wanted to put a measure of home confinement on me but I told them that is a lack of respect and I did not sign the document, only the statement I made,” explained Hernández.

“I called the Cojímar unit but they told me that she had only been there for half an hour because State Security officials had transferred her to another place,” Hernández’s mother, Maricelis Cardosa, informed this newspaper after learning of the arrest.

The reporter was detained in a police car by officers as she was continue reading

walking home from a visit to one of her neighbors. “There were two patrol cars, they were waiting for her, she hadn’t realized it but the agents were there when she turned the corner,” added Cardosa.
“She said to me, mamá, I’m going to visit my friend and she arrived safely but at the exit they intercepted her. My daughter does not tell lies nor has she committed any crime. They took her a block and a half from here, they took her because it gave them what they wanted, to intimidate the people so that no one comes out on November 15,” she denounced.

Hernández, who has Spanish citizenship as well as Cuban, is also “regulated” by the authorities, with a travel ban that prevents her from leaving the country. She was one of the hunger strikers who held a protest at the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement last November and since then has lived under constant harassment from State Security, which closely monitors her home with police operations to prevent her from going out on the street.

In recent days, Hernández was able to leave her house two or three times, but episodes such as this afternoon show that the surveillance on her continues. The reporter has also had her telephone line and mobile data service cut off for long periods of time without ever receiving a response from the telecommunications monopoly Etecsa.

The director for the Americas at Amnesty International, Erika Guevara denounced the arrest of Hernandez as “arbitrary detention.” For her part, the activist Thais Mailén Franco, who was imprisoned for almost five months after her participation in the Obispo street demonstration, wrote on her networks: “return Iliana Hernández to the people.”

The activist Saily Gonzalez also denounced the arrest, writing: “Iliana Hernández has been kidnapped a few minutes ago. But Iliana is not alone. We are all very aware and already reporting, increasingly sure that these atrocities cannot continue to happen. in Cuba.”

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Potholes on Cuban Roads Kill

The pothole in a road in Holguín, in which Octavio Almaguer Ricardo had the accident that cost him his life. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 29 October 2021 — Octavio Almaguer Ricardo lost his life last Monday due to a pothole. The day before, the man, in his 50s, had an accident with his motorcycle in Holguín, on a road near his house, which local residents assure this newspaper is “deadly” due to the number of holes it has.

“It was almost dark, late at night, he had left the house to leave some friends at the entrance of the road. He took the pothole, was thrown and the motorcycle fell on him,” a person close to the victim who prefers anonymity told 14ymedio.

As soon as he learned of the accident, which occurred in San Rafael Adentro, at kilometer 5 of the Mayarí highway, the informant approached the scene of the events, where an eyewitness told him that Almaguer “was going down a small hill and hit the pothole, and right there he fell.” In his opinion, the speed of the bike plus the momentum of the descent caused him to speed up. “That’s when the bike’s steering suffered a slight movement and the crash resulted.”

“That pothole is the first on that road, it is terrible, that is the softest but the entire road is full of potholes, the others seem like mortar holes,” says this source.

The victim, with a serious head trauma and multiple fractures in continue reading

one leg, was transferred to the Holguín provincial hospital and underwent surgery, but nothing could be done to save his life.

Octavio Almaguer leaves a wife, two children and his two elderly parents. The family was, in the words of this friend, “was in extreme pain.”

For his part, Ernesto Almaguer Díaz, the victim’s cousin, posted what happened on his networks, expressing his regret and publishing a photo of the pothole that caused the accident, while blaming the poor state of the roads for the death of his relative.

“This pothole, about a hundred meters from the entrance to the Bird Slaughterhouse in San Rafael Adentro, Holguín, is responsible for the accident that took my cousin Octavio Almaguer Ricardo,” he denounced. “Holguín and Cuba are full are full of things like this. What is the tax paid for the use of the roads in Cuba — known as the license fee — for? How many more lives in Cuba are going to be taken by the poor condition of the roads in Cuba?”

In the first four months of this year, the National Road Safety Commission reported one death every 20 hours from traffic accidents in the country. In statements to the official newspaper Granma, the Secretary General of that institution, Reynaldo Becerra Acosta, pointed out that from January to April 2021 there were 2,403 accidents that resulted in 1,804 injuries and 155 deaths.

There is an average of one accident every hour and 12 minutes, one death every 20 hours and one injured every one hour and 36 minutes. Among the main causes, the report does not mention the poor condition of the roads, but points to other causes, such as not paying attention to vehicle control, disrespect for the right of way, speeding and damaged equipment. Official data collected in Cuba for several years indicate that traffic accidents are the fifth leading cause of death.

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Yunior Garcia and Carlos Lechuga Win the Norwegian Fund for Cuban Cinema

Cuban filmmaker Carlos Lechuga during a recording. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 29 October 2021 — This Friday the winning projects of the eighth edition of the Norwegian Fund for Cuban Cinema 2021 were announced. In the list of artists published by the diplomatic headquarters of that country on the island, the playwright Yunior García and the filmmaker Carlos Lechuga stand out. García won with the proposal for the fictional short 8 minutes and Lechuga with his feature film Vicenta B., both still in production.

Thirty-seven projects participated in the event, which has been supporting independent Cuban filmmakers since 2014. The projects were subjected to “a technical review and assessment by a respectable jury” and 11 of them were selected for their “presentation, history and creativity.”

Completing the list are: Letters that no longer exist by Sheyla Pool, The intermittent forest by Lázaro Lemus Lugo, The Call of the Ciguapa by Diana Moreno Castellanos, Her in the nude by Karelis Herrera and Yenny Pérez, Julia by Sailín Carbonell, The land of the whale by Armando Capó Ramos, Libertad by Carla Rodríguez Herrera, Malena by Lisandra López Fabé and Friday the 13th in Havana by Raydel Ricardo Araoz Valdés.

“The sun has just died. Eva only has 8 minutes of light to reach her destination as she runs hurriedly through the streets of Havana and the others are also desperate to use the time they have left. Uncertainty and chaos reign. In a city that is fading, perhaps forever. Search for God or sex, hoard goods to survive, settle pending accounts, everything is concentrated and multiplied in the streets where Eva passes without stopping. Her destiny is continue reading

uncertain, but she does not stop running,” is the synopsis that García has released on his social networks about his project.
Lechuga, who also received an award last month at the San Sebastián Film Festival, contributing 30,000 euros to his Vicenta B. project, described his film as “the story of a country where there are many mothers and no children.”

According to the organizers of the Norwegian Fund, the main objective of this call “is to promote the development of filmmakers and strengthen the Cuban film sector as a cultural expression, promote the diversity of the national audiovisual scene and encourage creativity, artistic expression and innovation.”

The amounts available in the contest for the winners range between 100,000 and 250,000 Cuban pesos. “Only projects that can ensure their completion and delivery of the final copy of the film will be supported, within a period of six to 12 months, counted from the moment they receive the aid,” they specified.

The jury for the award was made up of the producers Claudia Calviño, Yumey Besú, Marisol Rodrígues, and the screenwriter and director Arturo Infante.

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