14ymedio – Page 311 – Translating Cuba

Angel Santiesteban’s Personal War

Santiesteban makes film scripts, practices journalism and is very active in the Freemasons. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana | 7 February 2021 — Ángel Santiesteban Prats (1966, Havana) is perhaps the living Cuban writer, residing in Cuba, who has had the most problems with the political police. He is also one of those who has garnered the most recognition for his literary work. He writes film scripts, practices journalism and is intensely active in the Masons. He doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t drink alcohol or coffee, he doesn’t speak ill of anyone and he spends the day working.

Reinaldo Escobar. In August of last year, you received the 2020 Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissidence. You had already finished the script for the film Plantados and had turned the script into a novel. What has happened since then?

Ángel Santiesteban. When I was awarded the prize, the film was already finished, but could not be released in 2020 as planned due to the COVID-19 misfortune, as Lilo Vilaplana says, the director of the film “the year of broken dreams.” The jury considered that I would find myself in trouble with the regime for having participated in the writing of the script. Anyway, within a dictatorship, if you don’t wave official flags, you always have problems. continue reading

Reinaldo Escobar. Is this the first time that you have taken a film script to the novel genre?

Ángel Santiesteban. It is the second novel that I wrote after making the script; a process that is commonly done in reverse, but I have always had a knack for seeing the scenes and describing them. All my literature is a movie that I describe. In my mind, I make up the scene, see the characters do everything and see all that surrounds them. They are actors and actresses on stage in my mind.

We have worked on Cuba’s social and political problems associated with the dictatorship that has oppressed us for the last 61 years

Reinaldo Escobar. And what’s on your desk now?

Ángel Santiesteban. Once the film Plantados was finished, and during this whole wait to show it, I completed another script at the request of Lilo Vilaplana about the events of the Tugboat 13 de Marzo [March 13^th]in 1994, that vile murderous act that was forged against innocent victims.

In both scripts, we have worked on Cuba’s social and political problems associated with the dictatorship that has oppressed us for the last 61 years.

Next March, the movie Plantados will be released in theaters in Miami. Let’s hope for the much-needed reception to excite the producers so we can continue to make a denouncement film, a film that tells the truth about Cuba. All on the basis of art, that is our first demand. Lilo and I have tried to do it in the best possible way, from our artistic resources.

Reinaldo Escobar. Does the novel Plantados have a publication proposal, and if so, where and by when?

Ángel Santiesteban. Lilo was approached by an important publishing house and he proposed to publish a novel. He knew that I was at a creative moment, and he told them that I would let him know, but I have let it rest, other urgent creations have emerged simultaneously, such as the script for the 13 de Marzo and a novel that I had started writing before, which is very advanced and I need to finish so as not to drag out truncated projects.

I hope to return to the Plantados novel which I finally titled “La Ciudad Desnuda” [The Naked City] because that’s what they called the part where the semi-naked planted prisoners lived together, refusing to wear the common prisoners’ uniform.

Reinaldo Escobar. What other scripts are you working on?

Ángel Santiesteban. After finishing 13 de Marzo, we have made another one about the current Cuban reality, and, in addition to a couple of stories for medium-length films, we are now working on a kidnapping that the former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, ordered some criminals in Colombia to carry out. The Colombians later revealed the whole plot, and those involved who have been able to be brought to justice have already been convicted, except for Correa, who is in Europe, in a country without an extradition agreement with Ecuador.

At this moment there is another proposal for a budgeted script, which is very important because filming is assured.

After finishing the script about the events of Tugboat 13 de Marzo in 1994, we have made another one about the current Cuban reality

Reinaldo Escobar. Parallel to your activity as a writer, you have an important presence in Freemasonry. How have you evolved in that fraternity?

Ángel Santiesteban. It is a passion for the family tradition that I inherited from my mother. Since I was a teenager, I was busy looking for literature about the Masons; José Martí and most of the heroes of the independence were Masons. I started in Freemasonry at the allowed age: 21. Since then, it has had a fundamental place in my life. It has been a school contributing to my formation as a human being, as an artist and as a Cuban.

The Masonic fraternity is a family that occupies us, and that brings a lot of personal satisfaction. I was presented at my lodge “Knights of the Sun” in 1987, and since then I have ascended the steps to become Venerable Master of my lodge on two occasions, I have been Grand Dean of the Meritorious Association of Veteran Masons for two periods too, where I have been able to represent those who have been in the fraternity the longest and have sacrificed the most, and that fills me with great pride to know them as extraordinary people. And it is to such an extent that in 2012 I was serving my first term as Grand Dean and the political police waited to incarcerate me until I handed over the position in January 2013, in February of that same year. They knew that it was very strong and that Masons could be hurt and start a confrontation.

I am the Representative of my lodge before the Masonic High Chamber and the Spiritual Father of my lodge, and perhaps the outside world may not know the meaning and importance of these positions, but Masons do.

On the other hand, I hold the effective 33^rd degree, which decides the fate of Scottish Freemasonry. It occupies a lot of my time, but it has been a life vocation, an emotion that in these 34 years of permanence, remains like the first day.

Reinaldo Escobar. Why did you abandon your blog Los hijos que nadie quiso [The Children Nobody Wanted] (The last post is from October 2017)?

Ángel Santiesteban. Because when I started the blog in 2008, it was the most sensational thing I had found up to that point. I was never able to access it from Cuba, because they had it blocked. Other friends managed it from overseas. After producing my writings and sneaking them out of prison while managing to evade the guards – I wrote them by hand – they digitized it and sent it abroad to be uploaded to the blog.

I always remember the blog fondly because it gave me the visibility I needed to face the injustices of the dictatorship

Reinaldo Escobar. Was it then that you started independent journalism?

Ángel Santiesteban. After I got out of jail, I started to collaborate with Cubanet and no longer posted my writings on the blog. Until I had direct access to the internet, and since then, I have been working on Facebook, which I take on as a fighting tool. I interact directly and with immediacy, so now it seems more effective than the blog. For the last three years, literary work and scripts have consumed me, so I had to stop working for Cubanet. But I always remember the blog fondly because it gave me the visibility I needed to face the injustices of the dictatorship.

Reinaldo Escobar. How do the political police treat you now since you have been released from prison?

Ángel Santiesteban. Once they released me in 2015, they tried to re-imprison me for the same alleged crime, even accused by the same person, who continued to lend herself to such infamy – though today she has asked me to forgive her by admitting that it was a truncated passion, something that was spoiled and she did not want to understand at the time – then came the kidnappings by the political police, the threats, all that tension with which we have had to learn to live.

Reinaldo Escobar. You have said that in prison you acquired conditions that affect your health. Can you give details?

Ángel Santiesteban. Upon my release from prison, I took care of having surgery on lipomas I had detected since my confinement. They had appeared on my body and grew incessantly. I noticed them because the same political police always insisted about the state of my health until they exhorted me, with marked intention, for me to examine my body. I did it once and found those bumps that grew incessantly.

My departure was complicated. On one occasion they sliced a lipoma open and closed it again without touching it, which was a very bad sign. I began to think that perhaps I was reaching my end, and it did not occur to me to do it in any other way than to continue striving to work harder and better.

I am proud to have accompanied them on 27N. I stayed with them until the last moment to run their luck

Reinaldo Escobar. A new wave of young artists has assumed a very critical position against the regime. How does that affect you?

Ángel Santiesteban. I am proud to have accompanied them on 27N. I stayed with them until the last moment to run their luck. A Mason brother invited me to join the group, I thanked him, but I explained that they were not contaminated like me, that this was their moment and their space, that I was there to support them. He was there because at that time he thought that the more people in the crowd, the fewer blows per person.

It is the first step backwards that I have seen the dictatorship take, of the many that it will have to continue taking in the nearest future. Many communicated with me and cried, they believed it was the end. When I saw them go inside the Ministry of Culture and that the political police did not repress that, I thought we were also close. But I soon understood that they were buying time, that they knew that allowing repressors to enter the ministry could cost lives, and that the next day there would be thousands. They understood that they were in the most dangerous moment of the “revolution,” and I think they came out in the most intelligent way. They were deceived.

Reinaldo Escobar. Despite everything you have suffered, you remain in Cuba. Is it an irrevocable decision?

Ángel Santiesteban. I maintain a personal war with the regime. It has never occurred to me to leave Cuba and I don’t think I will at this point, unless the dictatorship falls and I am absent for a long time to share with my wandering family around the world, like many, and take care, as I should, of my literature.

Translated by Norma Whiting

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Even with Price Rollbacks, Can the Regime Control Inflation Caused by Currency Reform?

Marino Murillo, Cuba’s so-called Reform Czar.

Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 5 February 2021 — It seems the subject of prices continues to be one of the main problems stemming from the recent currency unification reforms. A problem for which the the communist model, with its emphasis on economic planning and state intervention in the economy, is incapable of setting prices for the goods and services it provides at an adequate level. The state-run newspaper Granma has echoed authorities’ statements about their decision to initiate a “review process” to prevent excessive price increases from affecting the public’s purchasing power. That it has done it, is doing it, and will do it is a story that is not over. What does this “review” sound like?

The reasons behind the explosion in wholesale and retail prices, which is creating public alarm, are many and complex. Some have a medium and long-term impact (such as the lack of monetary control and government debt) while others have their origin in the currency unification process and the disparate, controversial measures that the authorities had wanted to apply this past January.

Clearly, there are problems with price controls. There have been very few instances in which communist authorities’ goal of setting maximum allowable price ceilings on consumer products has been met. This suggests that, if prices rise between 2% to 5%, they will have reached this cap. And this will happen either because all the calculations required by the producers have not done things correctly, or alternatively, because some consumers are willing to pay the highest prices. continue reading

In other words, supply does not respond to lower prices unless demand justifies it. And that is why, despite controls and ceilings set by the regime, there has been an increase in consumer prices. This has become a social problem only because more and more sectors of the population have taken note of the growth in speculative pricing and the subsequent surge of price gouging.

Once the government officials became aware of the problem, economics minister Marino Murillo announced they would be reviewing everything, using the political argument that economic inefficiencies cannot be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices.

Since Murillo is the person responsible for the guidelines, the first thing one might ask him would be what inefficiencies does he believe are being passed along to consumers. There are some clues. It is worth noting that these inefficiencies were not present before currency unification. This is not to say that prices were not going up before January, just that they were not doing so with same intensity as they are now. That is why the public was not openly expressing its discontent back then.

These inefficiencies must, therefore, have something or a lot to do with the way currency unification was implemented, and possibly with two key measures of the process that were not well considered by those responsible for the economy.

First of all, the devaluation of the Cuban peso has seriously impacted the business sector — making imports more expensive and domestically produced alternatives without a positive impact very hard to find — without having a positive effect on exports. This has disrupted the market for wholesale goods and will continue to do so for the rest of the year. The government has yet to determine a stable exchange rate, though the current unofficial rate provides some idea of where it might eventually settle, and further devaluations can be expected.

Secondly, the elimination of subsidies and grants only leaves vulnerable sectors of society, which rely on them to augment their meager salaries and pensions, helpless. Meanwhile, some providers of goods and services — mainly state-owned companies and organizations which are financed by these subsidies — have taken advantage of currency unification to raise prices beyond what is legally allowed, causing inflation.

Price adjustments have been made to grants and subsidies for the Family Aid System, restaurant and food workers and postal rates, and are under review for water utility rates, the school snack program and other goods and services. The review the regime is conducting of its own companies aims to determine whether the standards were was correctly applied or not.

Under this scenario, an enterprise that manages to achieve a high profit margin will trigger a review, the reason being that the regime does not want to give the impression that the profitability of their own companies is dependent on prices, regardless of the organizational, administrative and underemployment problems they may have. Like robbing Peter to pay Paul. In this way, the issue of the quality-price ratio of government grants and subsidies remains unresolved, keeping the potential threat of upward pricing pressure alive.

It is clear that the effects of devaluation have not been enough to halt traditional policies such as price controls and centralized planning. It is one thing to impose them under normal economic conditions but another to prevent market forces from responding to changes in pricing during a period of devaluation

Authorities have demonstrated that the more many anti-inflationary measures they put in place — including price controls on high-end products and services, and limits on free-market wholesale prices — the more unit production costs increase. If they do not pass along the costs of higher wholesale prices, their companies risk serious capital shortfall and insolvency.

Initially, the regime responded by unfairly blaming private sector business owners for the rise in prices, launching a wave of inspections, levying increased fines and sanctions, and trying to turn public opinion against retailers who provide services to consumers. Later, in what seemed like a timeout in a boxing match when one fighter is being pummeled by another, it acknowledged in Granma that “it is inevitable that prices will rise.”

The regime’s only aspiration is “for prices, as well as costs and expenses associated with them, to be applied correctly.” The all powerful communist regime, with full power to intervene in the economy, has taken away Cubans’ property rights to the means of production and stigmatized the free market as a tool for assigning resources, acknowledging that it can do nothing to fight inflation caused by currency unification.

At a time when economic forces are interrelated and decision makers are hoping for balanced solutions through prospective actions, the communist government is falling back on the old, reactionary paradigm of price and cost controls. These are inefficient and do not even come close to solving the problem. It’s throwing in the towel.

To say that “due to strong public sensitivity, the pricing policy adopted as part of currency unification will undergo a process of review and analysis in order to reconcile how companies make their profits with how to offer acceptable prices for the income level of the population” is to say nothing. It is an acknowledgement of the failure of an economic system and its policies.

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Mexican Doctors Rebel Against Being Required to Study in Cuba

Mexican doctors protested this Monday in Mexico City’s Zocolo plaza.

14ymedio, Lorey Saman, Mexico, 9 February 2021 — A score of doctors demonstrated Monday in Mexico City’s Zocalo plaza in protest against Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government requiring them to study their specialty in Cuba.

“They say that the infrastructure there is greater than what we have in Mexico, but here we have more hospitals and there is a greater need for specialist doctors,” declared Ingrid Izar Cuéllar to the local media; Dr. Izar was one of the doctors who protested this Monday in front of the Palacio Nacional, the seat of the Mexican Executive and also, since he took office two years ago, the residence of López Obrador.

The Mexican president had announced in May of last year that they would start a program of scholarships for doctors to live abroad, due to the lack of vacancies in the country. Months later, in November, the health authorities reported not only the doubling of positions but also the launching of up to 1,600 scholarships abroad, with destinations in Canada, the United States, Argentina, Cuba and Australia.

In fact, when doctors took their specialty exams, they were asked if they wanted to go abroad and which country they preferred. continue reading

However, when the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt) published the call for the scholarships last December 15, they were only for Cuba. On that occasion, health consultant Xavier Tello noted that Mexico would pay the Cuban government a total of 40 million dollars as “tuition” for this program.

Those aspiring to residencies were up in arms, because it was not even optional: if they did not accept the place on the Island, they would lose it, and their exam results would not be considered.

“It is unfortunate for the aspirations and dreams of doctors who yearn to do a specialty outside the country, that they are not given the opportunity to do it in the place they prefer,” Belinda Cázares Gómez, president of the Mexican Medical Association, told 14ymedio. “It is frustrating, moreover, that if they do not accept studying in Cuba, they will lose their exam passing grade and their efforts will not be recognized.” And she adds: “I don’t think they were even warned.”

“Because of the conditions associated with the pandemic, doctors prefer to stay in their own country and not go out to take risks,” says Dr. Cázares.

Along the same lines, Dr. Izar told Imagen Radio: “We are in the middle of the pandemic and we demand a position here because our selection certificate is about to expire in two weeks.”

Those, like Izar, who passed the National Medical Residency Examination last November, must begin their residency on March 1, but those who chose to go abroad, in this case Cuba, must apply for the Conacyt scholarship before February 12.

“For Rehabilitation Medicine, 449 applicants were selected, of which only 149 obtained a national position,” said Izar. The remaining 300 have to go to Cuba, “obviously doing all the paperwork, which costs between 15,000 and 20,000 pesos, at our own expense,” not to mention “nor are you assured of acceptance.”

With the 1,100 dollars that Conacyt will pay each month for each scholarship holder who goes to Cuba, Izar reflected, two doctors could do their specialty in Mexico, since what is paid to residents in national territory is half the cost. “That is why we think that those economic resources should be redirected to our country and not to Cuba, because we do not know what study plans they manage, what hospitals they offer, we know nothing, everything is phantasmal.”

Dr. Belinda Cázares adds in an interview with 14ymedio: “The doctor who wants to do a specialty wants to have the certainty that his studies have the right academic conditions, that they are what he aspires to, that within the Cuban academic infrastructure he can know which are the study programs and the hospitals where he will work and what opportunity he will have here to occupy a position as a trained specialist once he finishes his specialty” in Cuba.

The president of the Medical Association sees it as positive that other countries receive Mexicans to study specialties and carry out scientific exchanges, but she asks: “What guarantee will these doctors who will go to Cuba to do a specialty have of obtaining a professional license to be able to practice when they return to the country?”

Cázares says he has “very certain information” that there are medical degree students graduated in Cuba but who were later not granted professional licenses in Mexico by the Mexican General Directorate of Professions “because the Cuban academic programs are not compatible with the Mexican ones.”

The issue of forced specialties in Cuba is a new episode that divides the healthcare profession and the president with regards to the Island. The College presided over by Cázares was, precisely, one of the signatories of the letter addressed to López Obrador last June in protest against the hiring of Cuban doctors to work in Mexico.

“We first asked why we as a guild had not been informed”, says Cázares, “what were the specialties of the Cuban doctors who were coming to the country because of the pandemic.” On that occasion, the schools heard “many concerns from the healthcare personnel… They didn’t know if they were doctors, intensive care or emergency physicians, nurses, we didn’t know their academic quality,” he says. “The authorities were very secretive, even the Cubans didn’t talk much.”

Another complaint of the doctors was that they did not even enter the spaces where the COVID patients were being treated. “Did they come to support us?” Cázares asks doubtfully. “The Secretary of Health of Mexico City [Oliva López] answered us that they were observers, epidemiologists, who came to do work of that nature.” Thus, denounces the doctor, “there was a double discourse: did they come as support for the pandemic or to be observers?”

The more than 700 Cuban Brigadists were in Mexican territory during the first wave of the pandemic, distributed between Mexico City and Veracruz returned to Cuba last October. The National Welfare Institute paid the regime more than 6 million dollars for their services, although the contract between the two parties was never made public.

Despite the uproar, Lopez Obrador “imported” again, two months later, a brigade of 500 healthcare workers, joined by a new contingent of 200 last January. Unlike those who worked during the first wave of the pandemic, stationed in civilian hospitals, this time they are in military hospitals, “attending” with the help of the Navy and the Armed Forces, as the Mexican president himself said and a medical source confirmed to 14ymedio, which makes the information about them, if that were possible, even more opaque.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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No News of 22 Rafters Who Left Cuba’s Isle of Youth in November

Fabio González, the son of Yanet Paz, was one of the three underage youth traveling by boat. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Lorey Saman, Mexico, February 8, 2021 — The families of a group of 22 Cubans who have disappeared in the Gulf of Mexico since November 29 are desperate. The migrants, three habaneros and 19 piñeros, including three minors, left the Isle of Youth for Cancun, in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, but it’s not known if they reached their destination.

Family members of the rafters filed complaints in several Mexican cities, including Chetumal, Cancún and Islas Mujeres, without obtaining a response from the authorities.

Yanet Paz, mother of one of the minors who was on the boat, tells 14ymedio that two lawyers have also presented the case before the National Human Rights Commission in Mexico. Along with the Cubans, Paz says, the three Mexican boatmen they were traveling with are missing. continue reading

The boat left Mexico for the Isle of Youth to pick up the Cubans and return to its starting point. The last they heard about the rafters, from the call to a relative, is that they were near the Mexican coast. “One of the boatmen said that they had run out of fuel and were being towed by another boat. Since then nothing else has been known,” says Paz.

Her son, Fabio Francisco Paz González, is only 16 years old, and although it’s been more than two months, she says that she still has faith and hopes that he will appear along with the other migrants. His goal was to get to the U.S., where she is living.

“No, I didn’t know anything about that trip; my boy didn’t tell me. Three days after leaving Cuba, I found out that he had left in a boat. Since then I’ve searched for him everywhere.”

The 421 kilometers that separate the Isle of Youth from Cancun are one of the most common routes for Cubans trying to escape their country. Another of the most frequent points that serves as a port of departure is the province of Pinar del Río, just under 200 kilometers from the Mexican coast.

According to data published by the Mexican press, between 2014 and 2017, 393 Cubans were rescued on the high seas when they were seen by cruise ships, cargo ships or tourists, who reported them to the Mexican Navy. The average number of people per boat ranges from a minimum of 4 to a maximum of 18.

On November 28, 14 Cubans were rescued by personnel from the Secretariat of the Mexican Navy when they were navigating in the vicinity of Isla Mujeres. The rafters had been on the high seas for more than five days and had intended to reach the coast of Honduras.

In addition, Cubans try to enter the U.S. through South Florida. On January 1, the Miami Border Patrol detained 12 rafters in Key West, the first in 2021 to reach land in a homemade boat.

In 2017, the Obama Administration eliminated the wet foot/dry foot policy that benefited Cubans who stepped onto U.S. territory. However, dozens of the island’s residents continue to jump into the sea in precarious boats to escape a life without a future in their own country.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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More Than 20 Families Live in the Ruins of the Home of a Cuban Hero

The former residence of Enrique José Varona, an intellectual who became vice president of Cuba, located on Calle 8 between Línea and Calzada, in Havana’s Vedado. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Eustaquio García, Havana, 6 February 2021 — Two plaques, one from the 1930s and the other from the 1940s, are the only evidence passersby see on Obrapía Street, between Bernaza and Villegas in Old Havana, that shows that the patriot Manuel Sanguily lived there until his death in 1925. Manuel Sanguily was one of the few Cubans who participated in the two wars of independence and held high positions in the government.

If it weren’t for the plaques, nothing would speak to the history of the old nineteenth-century manor house, almost in ruins, where more than 20 families live divided into different rooms.

The facade of the house clearly shows where one of the balconies collapsed in 1990, the year Yarianna Milanés Acosta was born; she now lives in the house with her two young children. Since then, more than 30 years ago, it has remained the same, with the risk that another piece of the balcony could collapse. continue reading

The young woman says that a family began to build a large five-room house, in what was the old garage, with the aim of renting it out to international tourists, but everything stopped long ago. “The man in charge was told that they are planning to give us all houses soon, something that has not happened and we doubt that it will happen,” says Acosta.

“I arrived here in 1961, very young,” Abelina Matos Peña, who is almost 80, told 14ymedio. “Since then, my family has been growing and we have had to divide the house.” Although in the past there was some interest on the part of the Office of the Historian to repair this property and turn it into a museum, she assures us that nothing happened.

In 1975, a fire broke out in the warehouse next to the building, which was already in poor condition, and in 1989, the City Historian, Eusebio Leal, was interested in turning it into a state center. “But the Special Period arrived and all those plans were abandoned,” explains Matos.

“My mother has written several letters to all possible government agencies where she explains the poor condition of this house and the need to leave here for a better place,” adds Milanés Acosta. “Even the fact that is is the old house of Manuel Sanguily does not mean they pay attention to us. Here all the walls seep and the mice are the owners of this place.”

On Obrapía Street, between Bernaza and Villegas in Old Havana, the patriot Manuel Sanguily resided until his death in 1925. (14ymedio)

Manuel Sanguily’s birthplace is not the only one that has been abandoned by the authorities. The same happens, for example, with the former residence of Enrique José Varona, an intellectual who became vice president of Cuba, located on Calle 8 between Línea and Calzada, in Havana’s Vedado district. The entryway to the house is completely propped up and almost all its walls are cracked.

This is the abode where the essayist Jorge Mañach, one of his greatest admirers, visited Varona to interview him when he had only a few years to live. Mañach’s testimony was published by the modern magazine Avance.

Today, only one plaque indicates that the so-called “teacher of youth” lived there. The current owner of the old mansion, 14ymedio learned, has put it up for sale, but did not want to give further statements.

The same oblivion would be the fate of the last house of the Dominican General Máximo Gómez, if it were not for the fact that the Historian’s Office has assumed its repair to transform it into a museum.

Three years ago, the magazine El Toque showed the palpable deterioration and abandonment of that large house located in Calzada y D, in Vedado, where the great military strategist — who resigned as president of the newly launched independent nation — lived his last years until his death, in 1905. There is no trace of the bust of the hero, which was tucked in a corner of the interior garden, but one of the builders who works in the restoration assures that it was removed to be renovated.

With the Revolution, in 1959, most of the houses of historical personalities that had been converted into state centers or museums were abandoned, especially those mansions that, due to their size, repair or maintenance could only be maintained at the expense of considerable material resources.

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In Cuba, No Dollars, No Light Bulbs

Ever since Fidel Castro launched the “energy revolution,” old refrigerators and energy saving light bulbs have been in the spotlight. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 8 February 2021 — The light bulb began flickering and two days later it was dead. Nena, a retiree in Central Havana who was using her old Singer sewing machine at the time, knew the darkened room was not a good sign. For more than a year, stores in Havana have not been selling lamps or bulbs for Cuban pesos.

“My first idea was to take the bulb from the patio and use it in the room but when I tried it, the lamp still didn’t work,” she says. “My sons thought maybe it was the starter but it turned out to be more serious than that. The lamp’s transformer had broken.”

For Nena replacing the lamp has been “a mission impossible.” Due to the national economic crisis, many basic consumer items — from rugs to cement to candles — have disappeared from the shelves of state-owned stores. The situation has gotten worse during the months-long pandemic, when only grocery stores have been allowed to remain open. continue reading

“They closed everything: stores that sell shoes, plumbing supplies, even electric mixers. As if the coronavirus was going to prevent those things from breaking and people didn’t need to replace them,” complains Nena.” When some of those products became available again, they could only be found in hard currency stores. To have white light, you need greenbacks,” she notes ironically.

There was so much pent-up demand that when light bulbs became available again, they disappeared within a few days. Nena regrets that resellers used the opportunity to buy up everything they could and then jack up their prices. “I remember that a few years ago you could clap your hands and bulbs would come out of nowhere, incandescent as well as fluorescent,” she recalls.

Ever since Fidel Castro launched the “Energy Revolution,” old refrigerators and energy saving light bulbs have been in the spotlight.

Brigades of social workers, who basically served as Castro’s Red Guards, went from house to house, identifying high energy appliances, which were replaced with more energy efficient ones. Imports and sales of incandescent bulbs, both in pesos and in hard currency, were banned. The lucky few who managed to hold onto one hid it from prying eyes.

Energy-saving bulbs, also known as compact fluorescents (CFLs), replaced incandescents but were unpopular due to their short lifespans and low light levels. The new bulbs’ coiled shape became a symbol of the Energy Revolution, as the program was named in 2006.

Juan Alberto, who at the time was a teenager with dreams of singing on a stage filled with brightly colored lights, must now grope his way around his room because he has been unable to find a replacement for a broken lamp for two months. “I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve stubbed my toes and how far I’ve walked looking for someone who will sell me one,” he says.

Juan Alberto learned that one could buy light bulbs, electrical cables, lamps and all manner of electrical supplies needed for both indoor and outdoor illumination at stores that only take payment in hard currency. The problem is that he does not have the required debit card linked to a bank account with foreign currency or a relative overseas who would send him dollars to make the required bank deposit.

“I have not seen a single light bulb in any store since the end of last year. It finally dawned on me that this could be an unsolvable problem.” After visiting more than a dozen state-owned stores, Juan Alberto only managed to find some obsolete DVDs, antiquated musical equipment and an electric hair straightener covered with dust.

Until he went to the renowned La Cubana hardware store, popularly know by its traditional name, Feíto and Cabezón, where Juan Alberto’s spirits sank. The fluorescent bulb he needed was right there in the store’s display window for the exorbitant price of eleven dollars. Frustrated, he walked several more blocks down Reina Avenue until he came across a man who whispered, “LED and fluorescent bulbs.”

For 150 pesos, a little more than six dollars, this underground merchant was selling one of the most desirable items to be found on the streets of Cuba. “I bought two, just in case, but when I got home, I found out the problem was the lamp, which isn’t for sale anywhere,” claims the Havana resident, who now recalls what he was told about hard currency stores during their rollout.

“I heard on television that they were supposed to be stores that only carried high-end merchandise. But a light bulb is not a luxury item. Nor is a chicken breast, nor a piece of cheese. We’ve learned to live without these things. But without light?” he asks. “Pretty soon we’ll have to go back to living in caves.”

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To Stop the Virus, Havana Prohibits Shopping Outside One’s District

The capital already operated under the same rules to try to stop Covid-19 between August 27 and October 1 of last year. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 9 February 2021 — Havana’s Government decided to once again impose a restriction on residents, against shopping in any municipality in the capital city other than their own. The measure goes into effect on Wednesday, as a part ot the measures to try to stop the spreading of Covid-19. Measures already in effect include limitations on transport and a night curfew.

The same rules to stop the spread of the virus were already in place in the capital between August 27 and October 1. As during that period, Havanans must show their identity card, or an authorization of they live at a different address than that shown on their identity document.

A Temporary Use Card will be issued, as they were previously, to make purchases for all those residents without an officially registered address in the capital, which caused some problems last summer. continue reading

Luis Carlos Góngora Domínguez, vice president of the Provincial Administration Council, said that the measure does not apply to foreigners with permanent residence in the country, who may buy in all municipalities, “as well as other categories of people whose official identity document does not contain their residence address.”

Stores that require shoppers to pat with freely convertible currency and agricultural markets are also outside this rule.

The authorities sat that “they will work to achieve an equitable distribution of basic necessities, including those that meet the needs of children and the elderly,” and that they have launched “a network of 154 places” that will offer supplies at least one once a week, “to meet the demand of those populations where commercial coverage is not adequate.”

The growing shortage of basic products forces residents of the Cuban capital to travel to various municipalities in order to buy food. While some areas of the city, such as Centro Habana, La Habana Vieja, and El Vedado have a wider commercial life, other areas have fewer state sales outlets.

When the same measures were implemented last September, one of the collateral effects was that many goods disappeared into the black market, in addition to an increase in the home delivery of processed food, as well as food in general, cleaning products and articles from informal networks.

Luis Antonio Torres Iríbar, president of the Provincial Defense Council, declared this Monday that “the epidemiological logic would indicate a total closure,” but that “Cuba does not have the millions in reserves to do so and it is necessary to go out every day, looking for food and services.”

In this latest outbreak of the coronavirus, the capital has remained in the lead in the number of daily cases, sometimes having more than half of the infections reported in the country as a whole. This Tuesday was no exception: of the 580 positives registered on Monday, 292 are in Havana.

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Cuban Police Pursue Tania Bruguera While Germany Invites Her to an Art Exhibition

Tania Bruguera at her home in Havana in 2015 during a staged 100-hour reading, analysis and discussion of Hannah Arendt’s book ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 8 February 2021 — The Hannah Arendt International Institute of Artivism (Instar), founded in Havana by the artist Tania Bruguera, has been selected to participate in the 15th edition of documenta, the prestigious contemporary art exhibition held in Kassel, Germany, currently scheduled for June 18 to September 25, 2022. On this occasion, the theme of the community of social art and the usefulness of art in society will be addressed.

It is the second time that Bruguera has participated in this exhibition, having previously attended in 2011. On this occasion, her participation becomes even more relevant, if possible, due to the discrediting campaign launched against the artist by the Cuban government media and the harassment she has been subjected to on the part of State Security, which has prevented her from leaving her home under threat of arrest since 27 January, when a dozen artists were physically attacked by the Minister of Culture himself, Alpidio Alonso, while carrying out a peaceful sit-in in front of the official headquarters.

“This invitation should not be ignored by the Ministry of Culture, an institution with which we independent artists from Cuba are trying to have a dialogue in which our work is recognized and our spaces are legalized,” Bruguera explains to 14ymedio. It would not hurt for the ministry to see this, she says, as a sign that independent artists have “a force that is not in competition with the institution” and that they can “reach places of great prestige on their own.” continue reading

Tania Bruguera, whose work has always been critical of the regime, has been periodically harassed by the Government since December 2014, when she tried to organize a performance in the Plaza of the Revolution with the title of Tatlin’s Whisper #6, but the most recent attack began on November 27, when she was one of the most visible heads of the peaceful demonstration in front of the Ministry of Culture, where more than 300 artists and intellectuals demanded the freedom of those who were detained after their eviction from the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement, and the end of the persecution of artists.

Since then, Bruguera has been briefly arrested on several occasions and the official press has published articles dedicated to the artist, calling her a “mercenary” and accusing her of receiving financing from abroad, as is business as usual with regards to critical figures who acquire some relevance. On January 14, Bruguera filed a complaint at the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT) in response to the broadcast of a program in which “they distorted, defamed and fostered negative opinions” about her, and she argued that a “government that is believed to be above the law and constantly violates the Constitution” must be fought.

“The best response that can be given to the defamation and attacks of the National Television Newscast and the official organ of the PCC is to let them know that today the inclusion of the Hannah Arendt International Institute of Artivism (#INSTAR) in documenta 15 has been announced, the most important exhibition of plastic arts in the world,” she wrote on her social networks after hearing the news of her selection to appear at the exhibition.

The artist believes that this decision is “the recognition of independent art in Cuba… I think it is not a celebration for Instar, it is a celebration for independent artists. It recognizes their need and relevance, and the impact they have,” she said. Instar has worked since its founding on civic education through art and has been a great supporter and promoter of independent artists.

The documenta exhibition is held every five years and includes a selection of between 80 and 100 artists from around the world chosen “for their quality and their track record.” This time the Indonesian group ruangrupa will be the artistic director for the exhibition. “It is something new because previously it had always been a chief curator who made the selection and for the first time a group has been chosen.”

“What the group has proposed is that this time the decisions will be made not by a single person, it is a little slower, but more democratic. All the people in the group, plus the team of curators, plus the other invited artists will be the ones who approve and vote and discuss the relevance of whether or not a project becomes part of the group. In this case I am happy to say that Instar was approved unanimously by all the jurors,” said Bruguera.

Instar’s participation in documenta, which has been in development now for a year and a half, also means that the artist is learning about other projects similar to those of her collective. “Exchanging ideas, experiences with similar projects of social art, political art, civic, learning and creating an international support network with other projects from the five continents,” she adds.

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Cuba Eliminates the Limited List of Jobs Allowed in the Private Sector

Economy Minister Alejandro Gil described the changes in self-employment rules as “a very important step.” (14ymedio)

EFE, via 14ymedio, Havana, 6 February 2021 — The Cuban government eliminated the constrained list of activities allowed in the private sector, leaving a list of just 124 occupations which can be engaged in only by government entities, a long-awaited reform that opens the doors to the expansion of self-employment in the midst of a serious economic crisis.

The decision had been announced last July within a package of measures to confront the recession and the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it was not approved until this week by the Council of Ministers, according to a summary published this Saturday by the official newspaper Granma.

“That self-employment continues to develop is the purpose of this improvement,” said the Cuban Minister of Labor and Social Security, Marta Elena Feito, who noted that the private sector employs 600,000 workers and represents 13% of the employed population. continue reading

At the moment, it has not been specified what the 124 activities are that the private sector will not be able to engage in, but the elimination of the list of permitted occupations implies going from the 127 that were included in it to more than 2,000 collected in the National Classifier of Economic Activities, said the minister.

Feito also acknowledged that the health crisis and the reinforcement of US sanctions have “had a hard impact” on the self-employed, a large percentage of whom operated in the tourism and services sectors.

According to the Minister of Labor, interested parties must present a project and the paperwork will be handled through a single window, “which will make it possible to unleash the productive forces in this sector,” she said.

She also appealed to the “responsibility” of the provincial and municipal authorities “for the attention, control and evaluation of the performance of this sector, as well as the results of the inspection and the confrontation with illegalities,” reported Granma.

For his part, the Minister of Economy, Alejandro Gil, described the elimination of the list as “a very important step in terms of expanding the possibilities of working in self-employment, to give a timely and positive response to the implementation of the monetary ordering in the country.”

Although the Cuban State, governed by the Cuban Communist Party (PCC, the only legal party), has maintained its monopoly of the national economy since the 1959 Revolution, in the last decade it expanded the number of activities that people can engage in as self-employed.

Cuban economists and the private sector itself had been demanding the elimination of the list of permitted activities for years, considering it a drag on the country’s economy.

The measure comes a month after Cuba launched its long-postponed monetary and exchange unification, a far-reaching economic reform that includes the elimination of the Cuban convertible peso (CUC — which claimed parity to the dollar), an increase in wages and prices and the withdrawal of generalized subsidies.

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The Cuban Dictatorship Lives in a Fictional World

Despite the fact that extreme measures have been taken in some provinces, it has not been possible to contain the outbreak of Covid-19 in Cuba in the last month. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello, Havana, 6 February 2021 — There are two major problems that have been present in the month of January: The return — with more force — of the Chinese virus; and the ’Ordering Task’*. In the case of the Chinese virus, the last day of the period ended with 906 positive samples, which implies a significant rebound. From April 15, 2020, a little more than a month after the pandemic arrived, there is an accumulation of 862 positive cases.

The problems in medical supplies, the shortage of PCR Covid tests and the delay in the results from the laboratories that have collapsed, have been defining for this month, in which the inefficiency of the Public Health system has been clear.

To which must be added the lack of ambulances, which means they have had to use public transport buses to move patients infected with the disease; and the reporting of the death of a 5-year-old girl from Matanzas whom they were unable to rush to the provincial pediatric hospital. The ambulance appeared five hours after it was requested and was not properly equipped, and the little girl died two hours later. continue reading

The number of infected children that is announced is also alarming; as well as the way in which the number of deceased has grown. In fact, January has been the deadliest month of the pandemic and Luis Antonio Torres Iríbar, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba for Havana, has said that: “Havana could get worse.”

Despite the fact that extreme measures have been taken in some provinces, the outbreak has not been contained. In particular, the two aspects that most affect the crowding of people are: transport, very scarce; and the lines at the stores and markets, due to the shortages of food and hygiene products.

Without knowing who is responsible for the crazy ideas of the economy, although the public face is Marino Murillo, at the worst moment of the pandemic the government put into effect the ’Ordering Task’* and only 20 days later “President” Díaz-Canel said that the Ordering had to be ordered; in the first place, due to the number of complaints that have been received from the population due to high prices, given the empty pockets of ordinary Cubans.

Order is nowhere to be seen in the first month that has elapsed this year, but there is a lot of annoyance in a society that has had to endure an 11% drop in its Gross Domestic Product during 2020. It is as if the regime was saying to the people: “Whoever can, save themselves.”

In summary, it can be said that the dictatorship continues living in a fictional world that does not take into account the needs of the people and thus violates our elemental rights.

If there was a November 27, now there will be a January 27 in which the figure of the Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso Grau, has stood out, beating an independent journalist to take away a cell phone, with which he was filming him.

The protests of the San Isidro Movement and the group of November 27 continue, now demanding the Minister of Culture resign, and noting the National Capitol building as the meeting place.

Inflation continues to be rampant, with unstoppable prices, despite the regime’s threats of fines and seizures, measures it will probably implement shortly, through legal channels.

On the other hand, the religious issue has been on the social scene for several months now. A group of priests and practicing Catholics in Cuba and other countries around the world wrote the document: “I have seen the affliction of my people”, which was published on January 24. Immediately, the official site Razones de Cuba [Cuba’s Reasons] replied on January 28 with the article ’Counterrevolution sheltered behind the cross and the cassock.’

It is not necessary to explain that the official response was more of the same, to mention that it was charged that the document was signed by counterrevolutionaries financed by United States intelligence agencies. It also states that for months, several Cuban priests launched themselves to incite the parishioners from the pulpit of their churches, with broad media support from Miami.

Videos showing police abuse are on the rise on the social networks, which are forwarded and become viral. But one in particular has circulated with statements by Colonel Ramón Valle Luna, in which he can be seen boasting that he had three deaths and that Fidel and Raúl said: “Don’t even touch me.” Irrefutable proof of the violation of human rights in Cuba, where all power is concentrated in the figure of the First Secretary of the Communist Party [Raul Castro] in turn.

*Translator’s note: The Tarea Ordenamiento (Ordering Task) is a series of government actions that include ’unifying’ the two currencies — the Cuban Convertible peso and the Cuban peso — resetting wages and pensions, resetting prices, and other measures.

Editor’s Note: This text is the introduction to the Report of the Cuban Center for Human Rights of January 2021, which you can consult [in Spanish] at this link.

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The Political Police Threaten Carolina Barrero and ‘Advise’ Her to Leave Cuba

Barrero is a graduate of the Faculty of Art History at the University of Havana and worked at the Wifredo Lam Center of Contemporary Art. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 7 February 2021 — The art historian Carolina Barrero reported this Saturday that Cuban State Security has opened a police file on her for the alleged crime of “clandestine printing.” During an interrogation, a State Security agent urged the young woman to return to Spain, where she currently lives.

The complaint against Barrero was made by Lieutenant Colonel Kenia María Morales Larrea, an officer who has dedicated herself to threatening artists like Tania Bruguera in recent years. Morales has also participated in police searches of the homes of independent journalists and activists.

Although Barrero has not had access to the alleged investigation file, the State Security officials verbally assured him that they have a period of up to ten days to formally notify him if the complaint is withdrawn or maintained.

As the art historian told 14ymedio, the agents assured her that “the file is secret” for the moment and right now “only criminal investigators have access to it.” continue reading

Barrero was summoned this Saturday morning to the 209 Picota street station, between Paula and San Isidro, in Old Havana. She was summoned by Lieutenant José Antonio Ramírez Hernández to appear before the criminal investigator, Captain Gustavo Figueredo Pérez.

On her social networks, the activist for artistic freedom and against censorship said that Ramírez suggested to her, “on a personal basis,” that the best thing for her was to return to Spain “because after her departure” from the country it could become complicated, alluding to a possible travel ban.

As Barrero explained to 14ymedio, while State Security was questioning her, they searched the house where she was staying in Old Havana and “seized” her iPad, her printed drawings of José Martí and some sheets with signatures collected online calling for the firing of the Minister of Culture Alpidio Alonso.

“The State Security accuses me because of this printed image. It is a Martí made of stars, with a trace of tenderness and dreams. There is not a hint of offense in that drawing, it is all respect and illusion,” Barrero wrote on her social networks. During the interrogation, she invoked her right to remain silent and did not comment on this accusation.

“If they are going to build case against me out of this to imprison me in a summary trial, let them do it, but let it be clear to them, they are not going to blackmail me or threaten to build an alleged crime. I told them yesterday, I didn’t hide to do it, I would print it a thousand times,” she added.

According to Article 241 of the Penal Code, clandestine printing can carry “a penalty of deprivation of liberty of three to nine months or a fine of up to two hundred and seventy shares* or both.” This crime applies to a person who “makes, disseminates or circulates publications without indicating the printing press or the place of printing or without complying with the rules established for the identification of their author or their provenance, or reproduces, stores or transports them.”

Barrero detailed that the printing of this drawing was made legally in one of the many privately licensed places in the city.

Last Thursday Barrero was arrested in the middle of the street, the day after delivering in the National Assembly, together with the curator Solveig Font, the appeal to request the revocation of the Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso. At that time, the petition was signed by more than 1,200 Cubans in response to Alonso’s performance on January 27, when he led an attack against a score of artists , including Barrero, who were holding a peaceful sit-in in front of the Ministry of Culture.

*Translator’s note: The Cuban penal code sets fines as a number of ’shares’ with the value of one share defined elsewhere in the code. In this way all the fines can be changes at one time with a single modification.

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La Niña de Placetas, An Escambray Legend, Dies in Miami

Zoila Águila Almeida, La Niña del Escambray, appears here with a Thompson machine gun. She was an insurgent until 1964. Her husband was executed and she became a political prisoner. (Photo published in ‘Escambray: La Guerra Olvidada’, by Enrique Encinosa)

The former anti-Castro guerrilla Zoila Águila Almeida, died in exile, a victim of Covid-19, at age 82

In 2018, the author wrote the following article with the hope of receiving news about Zoila Águila Almeida, La Niña de Placetas.

14ymedio, Idolidia Darias, Miami. (Originally written in 2018 and reprinted here in February 2021) — I’m writing with the hope that more people will join in looking for updated information on Zoila Águila Almeida, La Niña de Placetas, or La Niña del Escambray, the woman who played a key role in Cuban history when she bet in favor of armed struggle, the only way to confront the nascent communist dictatorship.

At a very young age, Zoila Águila, a native of Placetas, joined the insurgents who rose up in the Escambray Mountains against communism, and that is why she earned the nickname “La Niña” (The Girl). Those who knew her say that, in the fight against the militia, what she lacked in age, she more than made up in value.

Discredit and false testimonies were techniques used in El Escambray to invalidate the rebels. Fidel Castro called them murderers, thieves, rapists and highway robbers, among other qualifying labels, and the State media immediately repeated the terms. This created feelings of strong rejection against the insurgents by those who didn’t live in El Escambray, or who had close relatives who rebelled, or were in jail for being in the insurgency. Hundreds of Cubans, ignorant of the truth, started to hate them and joined in vilifying them. continue reading

She was the only woman to join the armed struggle and spend all her time at the frontline participating in combat

Thus, La Niña de Placetas faced the worst accusation. She was the only woman to join the armed struggle and spent all her time at the frontline participating in combat, first in Porfirio Guillén Amador’s guerrilla group and later in Julio Emilio Carretero’s.

Those who were close to her in the fighting knew her courage and her energy at the time of the encounters with the militia. The way in which she countered the attacks and defended her comrades in struggle became a legend, that is why the regime used all kinds of baseness to sully her and hurt her honor as a woman: her capacity to be a mother, to engender life.

There were no shortage of phrases hinting at relationships with all the guerrilla men. Nothing could be further from the truth, since her husband, Manolo Manso de La Guardia, was with her until the moment they were ambushed at sea, when they were traveling on a ship that was supposed to take the group commanded by Julio Emilio Carretero to the United States.

Because of Alberto Delgado’s betrayal, they were all arrested on March 9, 1964 and the men were executed at La Cabaña in June of that same year (Manolo Manso was among them), while La Niña was sentenced to thirty years in prison. In April, Cheíto León, who had been in command of the insurgents at El Escambray, verified that his compatriots had not arrived in Miami.

León’s suspicions grew, as did those of the insurgent Rubén Cordobés, and they contacted Alberto Delgado on April 28, 1964. The informer was executed.

Pedro Guillén, younger brother of the insurgent Porfirio Guillén — one of the first leaders of the guerrillas at El Escambray who died in combat in Sabanas del Moro — states that La Niña was a woman of integrity and courage and that she went to the mountains in the year 1961 because of the growing dissatisfaction with those in power.

“We remember her as small in size and immense in heart, with her Thompson machine gun in her hand. She was not afraid of anything or anyone. During the sieges, she was a panther and the first to break them with a clean shot.”

She became the only woman who participated actively and directly in the fighting against the militia in the mountainous area near Fomento.

Contrary to what some people around here think, she never carried out missions as a messenger or collaborator from the plains. She was too well known by friends and enemies. The guerrillas loved and respected her as the most precious jewel”, said Pedro Guillén in an interview with Héctor Maseda (published on the Conexión Cubana blog).

The woman’s ordeal began with her sentence to prison because, in addition to depriving her of her freedom, they subjected her to all kinds of torture and humiliation. It is known that she was very rebellious against her tormentors and that she resisted physical torture.

From the time she was arrested, numerous techniques, typical of the repressors, were applied. She was deprived of sleep, they subjected her to intense interrogations that lasted for weeks, they kept her standing in the same position for hours and there was no shortage of execution drills, a technique used frequently at that time against the insurgents to obtain confessions and acceptance of blame.

Expletives and interrogations, as a woman and a mother, were not missing either.

In 1969, five years after her companions had been arrested and shot, she was taken to the Guanajay jail. Confined to the hideous cells, the tormentors managed to cloud her mind.

Cary Roque was a Cuban political prisoner confined within the walls of that horrendous prison along with 45 other women, who also served sanctions for their political ideas. She tells us that La Niña spent two years there without speaking to anyone

She was very energetic, distrustful and did not associate with anyone. The women in the political prison who also suffered torture and humiliation understood what was happening to her.

There is evidence that, in addition to the prison in Guanajay, she was confined to one in Guanabacoa and to another one, ironically called Nuevo Amanecer [New Dawn] Farm.

Despite her mental state, there was something about her that remained intact, because she always stood her ground and never understood the words “to give in.” The guards beat the women with hosepipes and she was no exception.

Like the other rebels in the political prison, she burned mattresses and made protests, and was repeatedly taken to punishment cells.

Enrique Encinosa’s book “Escambray: The Forgotten War,” published in 1987, is a collection of testimonies from the warriors of that era, and highlights that La Niña spent hours sitting on her cot in the women’s prison, dressed in rags and without speaking to anyone. When she was allowed to go out to the yard, she would perch in the bushes, where she would spend long periods of time, her eyes lost on the distant horizon.

She was one of the last prisoners to leave Cuba. She had served eighteen years of her sentence and although her physical body came to Miami, the remnants of her sanity were left to wander through the filthy and damp cell walls and through the wards of Cuban psychiatric hospitals, where she received electroshock “therapies.”

Despite having been imprisoned and cut off from even her family most of the time, the communist regime never had enough. As is its custom against adversaries who fight for just ideals, it used all the avenues it could to denigrate the rebels in El Escambray, all the political prisoners and especially La Niña.

In the 1970’s, a series entitled ‘Sector 40’ aired on Cuban Television. In it, they dedicated multiple scenes related to the rebels and the alleged “crimes” they committed.

In the 1970’s, a series entitled ‘Sector 40’ aired on Cuban Television. In it, they dedicated multiple scenes related to the rebels and the alleged “crimes” they committed.

They presented La Niña de Placetas as a woman who had no qualms about allegedly murdering newborn children to prevent their crying giving away the rebel group’s position in the mountainous area near Fomento.

But people who knew her, among them Pedro Guillén, who confirmed it to me and to independent journalist Héctor Maseda, state that what was said about her was slander of the worst kind. “She never gave birth in the mountains; she miscarried twice during her time as a rebel,” says Guillén, who knew her personally.

Under adverse conditions like the ones she faced, miscarriage is not uncommon. There was no logic to the lie that Cuban Television coined, saying that she gave birth twice in the middle of fighting, evading sieges, carrying a weapon and advancing through the mountains, quickly at times and at others at night or in the rain.

Her virtue was attacked because the regime did not want to accept the patriotism of a woman who, faced with the dilemma of being a mother or a combatant, decided to do what she, at that time, believed was correct.

Knowing La Niña’s trajectory, it is logical to think that leaving the mountains and returning to Placetas was never in her plans. Going home meant giving up on her purposes and ideas and facing the machinery of terror that finally fell on her when she was captured.

In silence and surrounded by damp and foul-smelling walls, La Niña endured pain for her partner and for her compatriots executed at La Cabaña.

She chose a tough but dignified path. My tribute and respect for her compels me to appeal in all possible ways so that we do not forget her.

Below is a reproduction of the information shared by Luis G. Infante, from The Cuban Political Prison project, about steps that are being taken to update any information related to the Cuban patriot.

In silence and surrounded by damp and foul-smelling walls, La Niña endured pain for her partner and for her compatriots executed at La Cabaña.

Miami, April 9, 2018: During about the last ten years, there has been no evidence of either the existence or the survival of Zoila Aguila Almeida, La Niña de Placetas, also known as La Niña del Escambray.

There are those who claim that she died; others among us have reservations about it, since we cannot verify it. The truth is that there is no record to verify any of the speculations.

The last location we had of her was when she lived in an impoverished apartment building on South Beach, at the southern end of the City of Miami Beach. Near the end of the 80’s, some of us went there and she didn’t welcome us. She barely cracked the door open and spoke a few words. Enrique Encinosa describes something similar in his book Escambray: The Forgotten War.

Servilio Pérez, a former politician who lived on South Beach, took an interest in her and took care of her, to the extent that she allowed, through the person in charge of the building. When South Beach became what it is today, developed into an urban zone of high prestige and a tourist destination, contact with La Niña was lost. We assume she was forced to move. Even Servilio Pérez had told us before he died that he did not know of her whereabouts.

La Niña has disappeared from us and we do not know about her and whether or not she’s alive. She must be somewhere.

From the copy of a baptism certificate that the former politician Hernán Reyes “El Tite” gave us, the Presidio Politico Histórico Cubano-Casa del Preso [Cuban Historical Political Prison-Prisoner’s House] has taken up this matter, because it is painful that we cannot find the whereabouts of La Niña, wherever that may be. We have already been in contact with different state and municipal departments in the hope of finding her if she is alive, or having the certainty of her death, if unfortunately that turns out to be the case.

Editorial Note: Idolidia Darias published the above text in her blog in 2018, which she authorized us to reproduce here. She is the author of “Escambray: The History that Totalitarianism Tied to Bury”.

Translated by Norma Whiting

Fines Skyrocket for “Speculative Prices” and for Violating Covid Rules

Line to buy sweet potatoes at the EJT [Youth Labor Army] market on 17 and K streets in El Vedado. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, February 3, 2021 — Fines of up to 15,000 pesos and the confiscation of their merchandise are the penalties to which merchants who violate the new rules on prices and rates published in the Gaceta Oficial Extraordinaria (Extraordinary Official Gazette) of last January 29 are exposed.

The decree-law establishes different penalties, ranging from 5,000 to 7,000 pesos for not displaying on a board the products and prices they offer; from 8,000 to 10,000 for “retaining, reserving, delaying or not putting the products on sale that are destined for retail marketing,” or even from 12,000 to 15,000 if they don’t comply with the ordered measures, for which they consider the prices “abusive” and “speculative.”

The former are defined in the document as those “above a reasonable range, compared to similar products or within the same product family, and that seek to achieve a level of earnings or excessive profit”; and the latter, “the fixed products, mainly of basic need, superior to those established by the competent authority, linked to repurchase, resale or both, with the objective of obtaining profits.” continue reading

The measure is published amid a growing shortage in the country’s agricultural markets, where many products have disappeared from the pallets to plunge into the informal market. Beans, onions, fruits and foods such as yams or yucca are in short supply in state, cooperative, and private stores, while they have become a frequent offering on instant messaging threads, classified ads, and overseas shopping sites.

These provisions join those established in the same Gazette to punish those who fail to comply with health protocols, with sanctions between 2,000 and 3,000 pesos.

All this was brought up by the Havana authorities in their daily meeting on Tuesday, where they again asked for “promptness” in the delivery of the results of the PCR Covid tests that are carried out.

This Wednesday, the Cuban Ministry of Public Health reported 893 new positives for the coronavirus and two deaths from the disease. The total of active cases stands at 5,563; the total since the beginning of the pandemic, at 29,529; and 220 deaths.

Of the total number of daily infections, 34 had a source of infection from abroad, and 25, the official report indicates, are linked to international travel.

No less than 58 patients are in critical or serious condition, six of them under 60 years of age.

With more than half of the day’s infections (492), Havana continues to top the list of affected provinces. For the first time in recent weeks, Guantánamo (138) surpasses Santiago de Cuba (82) in daily infections and is in second place.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cubans Stuck in Colombia Want a “Humanitarian Bridge” to Panama

“Many illegal boats have been leaving, but we don’t have the money to pay for them, so we had to remain on the beach,” says a Cuban migrant in Colombia, waiting to get to Panama.

14ymedio, Lorey Saman, Havana, February 4, 2021 — More than a thousand migrants trapped in Necoclí, Colombia, are staying in tents and experiencing hunger and disease due to poor sanitary conditions. On Thursday, a first group managed to leave on a boat for the Panamanian border. When they get to Capurganá, they will try to enlist the support of local authorities to create a “humanitarian bridge” that will allow them to reach Panama, the neighboring country, without having to cross the inhospitable Darien jungle on foot.

“Many illegal boats have been leaving,” Emanuel Novoa, “but we don’t have the money to pay for them, so we had to remain on the beach.” Novoa is a habanero who came from Uruguay to this border point in the Colombian department of Antioquia. He shares a destiny with dozens of Cubans (23, according to official sources, although it’s said in the town that there are actually a lot more).

He was lucky on Thursday, Novoa tells 14ymedio, since he was finally able to get on a boat that will take him to the Panamanian border for 65 dollars, instead of the 400 that the coyotes are charging. From the tourist town of Capurganá, a few hours away, he’ll be just 45 minutes by boat from the Panamanian port of Puerto Obaldia. However, crossing the border could be complicated. continue reading

Because of the pandemic, the border between Colombia and Panama was closed on January 15. Hundreds of migrants remained in Necoclí, most of them from Haiti, Cuba and Africa. The growing makeshift camp has alarmed the authorities, and they’re finally making decisions in order to prevent what could be a serious source of COVID contagion.

“It wasn’t until the arrival of the press here in Necoclí that things began to change, especially because of the Telemundo correspondent,” confesses Novoa, who is just 26 years old. “Only then did we see a light at the end of the tunnel regarding the sale of tickets by the government company that is transferring tourists to the other side of the Gulf of Urabá.”

On Tuesday, the Colombian authorities, in coordination with Panama, began to sell tickets, and the legal transit of migrants in boats is scheduled to begin on Thursday.

Daniel Muñoz, the Telemundo reporter who “worked the miracle,” tells 14ymedio about the suffering the migrants have endured. “They’ve spent this time sleeping in crowded tents or outdoors, without water or food for the children. Older people have had diarrhea and vomiting.”

According to the journalist, most have survived through the help of nearby residents. “To cook they gather wood, pieces of trees, papers or garbage. They prepare what the villagers give them, such as ripe and green bananas or used oil, which is a blessing, because the migrants can at least fry an egg,” adds Muñoz.

Necoclí has registered a low level of Covid-19 infections, the reporter explains, but the situation in the settlement is extreme, because, among other factors, the municipality doesn’t have drinking water. “Imagine how easily the virus can be transmitted in this place, when nobody uses a mask and you can’t wash your hands or use any gel.”

The migrants harbor the hope that, due to the pandemic, Colombia and Panama will create a humanitarian bridge, as several legislators have requested, but the authorities haven’t declared anything yet, and this is something that has never happened before.

However, Novoa insists: “The authorities explained to us that we won’t travel through the different camps in Darien. They will take us to a Panamanian city so we don’t have any contact with the residents.”

According to his version, Cuban migrants would be transferred first to Capurganá (in Chocó, Colombia) and from there to other points, “always with the advice and guidance of the Colombian government, which will support us along the way and receive us at each site.”

Novoa was a teacher in Cuba, where he was in the third year of Special Education at the Enrique José Varona Higher Pedagogical Institute, but on January 31, 2020, he decided to leave the island to improve his future. “I got to Suriname and wanted to stay there, but I realized that there was a lot of unemployment in that country and a very low standard of living.”

That took him to Uruguay, his second stop. “I had to go through Guyana and Brazil and ran into very corrupt policemen along the way,” says the young man, who was even swindled by a Cuban posing as a coyote. “When I reached Brazil, with the help of Venezuelan friends I met, I got to Uruguay and spent ten months there.”

His goal, in any case, was to go to the U.S., and he left on December 15 after collecting some money and organizing a caravan with 14 other compatriots. The group followed trails and avoided migratory checkpoints in Brazil, Peru and Ecuador until they reached Ipiales, in southern Colombia. From there, negotiating with “corrupt policemen,” he continued by bus through Cali and Medellín, until he reached Necoclí.

In the makeshift camp of people, there are also pregnant women and small children. Surayma Bosque, one of the members of the group encouraged by Novoa, traveled with her husband and two children, ages 3 and 6.

“I left Cuba due to the lack of opportunities, the economic situation and the repression, but above all to find a better future and freedom,” says Bosque. In Uruguay, where they couldn’t find work, they didn’t do well and embarked on this adventure, which has stopped for the moment.

“It’s a sacrifice for my children and for me, but I think it will be worth it to reach our destination and be able to offer them a better future. That’s why all we Cubans are struggling to get to the U.S.,” she says with certainty.

The 33-year-old habanera knows that she has embarked on a “long journey where many things can happen,” but she is convinced of something: “If I can’t enter the U.S., I will stay in Mexico. Returning to Cuba is not an option for me, and I have faith that we will achieve our goal.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Denis Solis Sent to a Work Camp in the Largest Prison in Cuba

The Combinado del Este maximum security prison is located in Havana. (EFE)

14ymedio, Havana, 5 February 2021 — The rebellious rapper Denis Solís, who is serving eight months in the Combinado del Este, the largest prison in Cuba, for an alleged crime of contempt, was transferred this Friday to the work camp inside the prison itself.

The authorities lifted the ban on making phone calls and he can now also receive visitors. His aunt was going to see him this Wednesday, but finally was unable to do so, according to the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara speaking to this newspaper. Otero Alcántara is the leader of the San Isidro Movement (MSI), which has mobilized for the freedom of Solís since his arrest. “Yesterday his aunt came by to pick up some coats to take to him. They are not letting food pass at the moment, only clothes, because he may now wear civilian clothes,” he details.

According to Solís’s uncle, Vladimir Lázaro González, the authorities prohibited him from any telephone communication following a call from the musician Maykel Castillo, known as ’Osorbo’, who in those days was organizing a concert via social networks to raise funds for the rapper. continue reading

Denis Solís González, a member of MSI, was arrested on November 6 by an agent who had broken into his house without a warrant, without explanation and without identifying himself, as the rapper himself recorded and was broadcast on social networks that same day.

These same images, according to the Cuban Prisoners Defenders organization, served as the “arbitrary” basis for the accusation of “contempt,” which took place just three days later. Preventively deprived of his liberty, he was subjected to a summary trial on November 11 and sentenced to eight months in prison.

He was first in the Valle Grande prison, in Havana, and since last December 8, in the Combinado del Este Penitentiary Center, a maximum security prison.

The arrest and imprisonment of Solís was the origin of the protest of some members of the MSI, who gathered on a hunger strike at the headquarters of the group, in Old Havana, for more than a week. They were violently evicted from there by agents dressed as healthcare workers on November 26, which in turn provoked the solidarity of more than 300 artists who, the next day, gathered in front of the Ministry of Culture to request dialogue with the authorities.

The artists and activists who have demonstrated in favor of Solís, the MSI or the 27N (27th November) group have been harassed by State Security and subjected to an intense smear campaign by the regime.

The last episode of these protests was the delivery of a legal appeal before the National Assembly to request the removal of the Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso, who, on January 27, attacked a score of artists who were holding a sit-in in front of the official headquarters .

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