14ymedio – Page 338 – Translating Cuba

Melia Suffers a Reverse in a Spanish Court Over Its Hotels in Cuba

The Hotel Sol Rio y Luna Mares, in Playa Esmeralda, Holguin, is on land that belonged to the Sanchez Hill family before 1959.

14ymedio, Havana, July 10, 2020 – The court of Palma (Baleares),which is in charge of the Sánchez Hill family case against the Melía group over the exploitation in Cuba of two hotels, has rejected three petitions from the company, according to Vozpópuli, which revealed on Friday the contents of the resolution approved on July 6.

Melía, which managed the hotels Paradisus Rio de Oro and Sol Rio y Luna Mares on lands expropriated in Holguín from the family after the 1959 Revolution, alleged that the demand is a covert attempt on the part of the heirs to evade the European rules and apply extraterritorial law in Spain. At the root of the adoption of the Helms-Burton Law in 1996, the European Union preventively created a cutoff statute that annulled the effect of foreign resolutions.

The court rejected this allegation upon considering that this supposed intent isn’t proved. The Sánchez Hills initiated the lawsuit in 2019 under the U.S. law, but the Spanish court dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction, so the family decided to invoke the crime of illicit enrichment, which can be investigated in Spain. Upon reopening the case for this presumed crime, the court believes that there is no proof of intent to use Helms-Burton. continue reading

Melía’s second petition raised a prejudicial question to the European Union Tribunal of Justice so that it would indicate how to proceed. This type of consult is done by European judges so that the cases raised are adjusted to the communitarian right when there is some doubt. The Palms court thinks it’s not necessary to appeal to Luxembourg and that the case can be resolved with the strict application of applicable Spanish law.

Finally, Melía asked that measures be adopted to maintain the confidentiality of the trial and requested the Sánchez Hill family to sign a non-disclosure agreement, since they think the documentation could be used for a future trial in the United States. The Court considers that there is no reason to adopt measures that are “restrictive and contrary to the principle of publicizing the proceedings in a democratic society”.

Melía told the Spanish newspaper that it is not surprised by the decision and is sure that the court will rule in its favor because “there are elements of facts and rights so the lawsuit will be dismissed in its entirety”.

The Spanish court can’t judge claims for goods confiscated in Cuba, but it can pass judgment on what is raised now as a personal claim of action for compensation from a company headquartered in Spain.

However, the hotel still will enter an appeal before this Saturday. If it does so and is rejected, proceedings could be initiated for the Sánchez Hill family to reclaim 10 million euros.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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‘Granma’ Hides the Anniversary of the Sinking of the ’13 de Marzo’ Tugboat

Image of an act of tribute in Miami to the victims of the ’13 de Marzo’ Tugboat. (Twitter)

14ymedio, Havana, 13 July 2020 — The official newspaper Granma chose to commemorate the arrival in Cuba of the alleged remains of Ernesto Che Guevara, while it hid the anniversary of the sinking of the ’13 de Marzo” Tugboat, and the anniversary of the shooting of General Arnaldo Ochoa on Monday, both events that occurred on July 13, 1994 and 1989 respectively.

The official organ of the Communist Party, much given to marking historical dates and reminders, has overlooked one of the most fateful events in Cuban history. The sinking of a boat in the summer of 1994, which left 37 people dead, including at least several children between the ages of 6 months and 12 years.

In the early morning of July 13 of that year, 62 people tried to escape from Cuba to the United States aboard the 13 de Marzo tugboat. The ship was intercepted and sunk by three other ships, Polargo 2, Polargo 3, and Polargo 5, according to testimonies collected from survivors. Many of the bodies of the deceased were never retrieved. continue reading

Unlike the drum and the cymbal with which the remains of Guevara were received on the Island in 1997, the sinking of the tugboat was barely reported in the official press and those involved were never tried, despite the fact that witnesses reported that the Polargo rammed the ship and blasted jets of water onto the deck to prevent its exit from Cuban waters.

A day after the sinking, Granma published a note from the Ministry of the Interior in which it was stated that the boat had “capsized” and that only “antisocials” were traveling on it. Shortly after, when the details of what happened were revealed, the official newspaper assured that the Polargos had been involved in a “regrettable collision” during the maneuvers to prevent the theft of the boat.

No one was tried for the sinking of the tugboat and the event was erased from the calendar, public debates and academic research. Something similar to what happened with Case 1 of 1989, for which another July 13, five years earlier, General Arnaldo Ochoa, Colonel Antonio de la Guardia, Captain Jorge Martínez and Major Amado Padrón were shot.

Much of the trial against these officers, for an alleged drug trafficking crime, was broadcast on national television and for many analysts it marked a before and after in the Cuban political process.

The alleged links of the accused with the Colombian cartels, their shady deals with ivories in Africa, and the trafficking activities attributed to them during the oral hearing have for decades been the source of speculation about a possible involvement of the Cuban leadership, especially Fidel Castro, in such maneuvers.

At the Supreme Court, presided over by General Juan Escalona Reguera, then Attorney General of the Republic, capital punishment was requested for four of the accused, a sentence that was supported and ratified by the Council of State a few days later.

For many faithful party militants, the execution of Ochoa catalyzed their break with the Communist Party and their disappointment with the political model. In the international community, numerous voices also rose in rejection of what they called “institutional murder.” But, despite its importance, the official press has not referenced that court case or its implicated parties.

On the other hand, the authenticity of the remains of Ernesto Che Guevara that rest in the Santa Clara Mausoleum has been questioned on several occasions. An extensive investigative report published in the Mexican magazine Letras Libres casts doubt on the finding. “Only a DNA test carried out by totally independent experts will make it possible to verify whether the skeleton attributed to Che really belongs to him,” says the report.

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Some 40 Cuban Health Workers Have Fled From Qatar In The Last Few Years

The Cuban Hospital of Qatar, inaugurated in 2012, is considered “the jewel in the crown” of the international Cuban medical missions”. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, July 12, 2020 — In spite of the vigilance and fear of being discovered in the middle of preparations, some 40 Cuban health workers have escaped from the official mission in Qatar. In order to accomplish this, they had to pretend, lie or disguise themselves, according to an extensive report published on Friday in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

The article reports the testimony of three professionals who worked in the modern installations of the Cuban Hospital in Dukhan, 80 kilometers west of Doha. The health workers relate the story of their flight, “worthy of a Cold War spy movie”, says the text, in which the anonymity of those interviewed is preserved in order to avoid possible reprisals.

“I remember I was very afraid of being discovered. I dressed like an Arab. I put on a tunic and a scarf. I had to disguise myself every time I visited the U.S. Embassy in Qatar,” said Yadira, a young nurse who escaped from the official mission and now lives in the United States. continue reading

The Cuban Hospital in Qatar, inaugurated in 2012, is considered “the jewel in the crown of the international Cuban medical missions”, a prosperous business managed by the Company for Cuban Medical Services. Yadira worked for more than two years in the installation and remembers the control over the Cuban staff.

“I’ve always been a rebel, and it’s very difficult for me to follow orders I don’t find logical. Some people accept certain things; others, no. They wouldn’t let me get married. There were many reasons why I didn’t feel free to choose,” she explains. “I had time to prepare my flight; I trained myself mentally and avoided doing anything that could give me away.”

Alexis, another nurse who served in the hospital for more than three years, shares similar experiences. “The pressures start when you arrive. In the airport, before saying hello, they take your passport and make you know that all your movements will be controlled. They make you aware that you are simply a chess piece and that you will be moved as they choose.”

Qatari Government sources insist that the hospital center is a private organization, but the lack of transparency even involves the amount of money that Cuba receives for each professional. “They never told us how much the Corporation was paying for each one of us. Unofficially it was said that they were paying 13,200 euros monthly for each nurse. We were receiving a monthly salary of 1,000 dollars,” comments Alexis.

The location of the hospital, in a zone with very high temperatures the whole year, near the main gas and oil field of Qatar Petroleum, also favors control over the personnel. “It seemed incredible how in the middle of a desert there could have been something so amazing. It had technology that I couldn’t even imagine existed,” admits Rolando, another of the nurses who escaped from the Cuban mission.

The three health workers benefited from the parole program for medical professionals created by the U.S. in 2006, which was in force for more than a decade. “I had to go several times to present documents and tests that showed my identity. And yes, that was very stressful. I had to go disguised to the appointments. If they found out what I wanted to do, they surely would have sent me back to Cuba,” remembers Rolando.

“After some months they advised me that my request had been approved. But as I didn’t have my passport, I had to wait until I could take my vacation in Cuba. Once in Holland, with a visa in hand, I could buy a ticket for Miami,” he says.

The fear of reprisals if the authorities detected their intentions obliged the workers to sharpen their wits. “A short time after arriving at the hospital, the abandonments began. They started by going to Europe and the U.S. The pressure on us grew. We had to attend weekly meetings and listen to constant political harangues. There were people dedicated to controlling us,” says Alexis.

“At the peak of the exits, two or three professionals were deserting every 15 days. Around 40 people left, and there would have been much more if the program hadn’t been abolished in 2017,” commented the nurse, who also had to resort to dissimulation to avoid the possible presence of snitches.

After making contact with the U.S. Consulate in Qatar, Alexis acquired the traditional attire of Qatari men—a thawb, the white tunic, and a ghutra, the scarf—to go to his meetings in the embassy.

“Through a fake email account I made contact with the Embassy. It’s very complicated because the Cuban personnel in Qatar are isolated in the desert, and the Government of Cuba is interested in keeping them there. They have control over your movements, they know when you go out and the hours you do. You have no right to take private transport and can only travel in buses to specific places and at concrete times,” he relates.

“It was hard to make appointments at the Embassy when you supposedly were going somewhere in Doha to buy something and to leave from there disguised as an Arab to go to the Embassy, with the fear that they were photographing you and that someone might see you,” Alexis says.

“I made four visits to the U.S. Embassy, all incognito, with my cell phone turned off and a very high stress level. I used parasols, caps and everything that could keep someone from recognizing me. The Embassy is about 300 meters away from a highway, in a flat space where there’s nothing. You have to cross it and it’s said there are people from Cuban State Security taking photos of everyone who enters and leaves.”

The “deserters”, as the official Cuban propaganda calls them, are punished with being prohibited from entering the Island for a minimum period of eight years, the loss of their professional accreditation and family separation, but even so the escapes continue. “There was a psychological shock. Everyone was speculating, jokingly, about who would be the next to abandon the mission,” says Alexis.

“There were previous cases that didn’t turn out well, and you had to have a plan B and C. The consul escorted me on the return trip to Cuba. The layover in Holland offered me the opportunity to do what I had to do to escape. It was a hard decision, because since then, I haven’t been able to hug my family,” remembers Yadira.

The coronavirus, with infection rates going up on the Arabian Peninsula, has been converted into a buoyant economic opportunity for the battered economy of the Island. To the 300 professional health workers who recently landed in Kuwait are added almost 200 of the Henry Reeve contingent who were working in a field hospital in the Industrial Zone of Doha.

“We were isolated in a golden cage, and we couldn’t drink alcohol or eat pork, which in Qatar is a right for foreigners who can get a license to buy them. They weren’t letting us do so many things and there wasn’t much we could do,” Alexis concludes bitterly.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Violating Private Correspondence: Routine At Correos de Cuba

The envelope sent by the Anaya publishing house was opened and reached its recipient this Monday morning. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Havana, 13 July 2020 — The envelope was placed over our apartment’s mailbox. The postman never rang the bell, no one alerted us that there was a letter to collect, but there it was. My first feeling was surprise, and then relief that, finally, and after months without receiving even a telegram, some correspondence could reach the “cursed” address where I live.

However, the joy was short-lived. The envelope was opened roughly and the papers inside were visibly wrinkled. The letter had traveled from distant Madrid and the sender is the publisher Anaya, with whom I have published several books on the WordPress content manager, but not even the “innocent” letterhead of a publishing house nor the distance traveled by the shipment had deterred someone from violating my correspondence.

It is nothing new. Disrespect for privacy has become the norm of life on this island, where the institutions themselves violate the intimate space of citizens and the State postal service, Correos de Cuba, is one of the many scrutinizing eyes of State Security and the political police. It would be strange if the envelope had reached my hands intact, respected and on time. continue reading

It matters little that the Constitution establishes that “correspondence is inviolable. It can only be seized, opened and examined in the cases provided by law.” We all know and intuit that in this country, the right to privacy is held almost as an immoral and petty-bourgeois act. Those who opened the envelope that should have come to my hands sealed do not accept the intimate space and fear any individual zone that they cannot access.

These are the same people who condemned me during my adolescence to board at a pre-university where dozens of students had to bathe in showers without doors or curtains; those who confiscated school notebooks to read the verses that we scribbled on the last page and those who have fueled the hundreds of thousands of eyes throughout the country dedicated to monitoring every block through the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.

Today, an opened envelope that arrived at my door suddenly reminded me of all that.

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A New Call For Possible Dialogue In Order To Overcome The Crisis

Masked police agent controls line to buy food in Havana (File photo)

14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, July 8, 2020 — The virulence of the economic crisis that is battering Cuba, as a consequence of containment measures for the Covid-19 pandemic, is becoming more serious and profound than expected. Spaces for dialogue are opening up because of the surge in outbreaks, which create uncertainty about the future.

The data and information trickle in drop-by-drop for the authorities to confirm. And if it’s true that no data exist on the economic situation, some that are known, like the statistics on travelers, are frightening. In May, only 993 visitors arrived, which represents a decrease of 99.7% compared to the same month last year. Tourism has disappeared from the Island, and possibilities for recovery are scarce.

Certainly it won’t happen in 2020. The authorities will go back to their sales pitch to explain the failure, but they won’t have far to go. The forecast for economic development in Cuba has to be revised downward and thus assumes that the economy can collapse, given the great importance of the State in all economic activity. continue reading

There is nothing now that allows anyone to have any real confidence in the future of the economy. Our estimate of the drop in the economy’s GDP was initially situated around -6.2% when CEPAL* showed only -3.8%. The data and information that come from the Island require caution and point to a particularly important decline, probably in the neighborhood of -10%, almost three points lower than the initial estimate. This puts Cuba among the countries that could be the most affected by the crisis in Latin America, although it won’t be the only one.

The fact that we’ve revised our initial prediction downward shows the lack of confidence and credibility in the authorities to surmount the present crisis. It’s difficult for any country to try to confront such a situation on its own, so this whole experience is going to be harder and more complex than was believed.

In reality, there isn’t any analyst who thinks that a true recovery of the Cuban economy will happen in the last two quarters of the year, so 2020 will be remembered as a time when the Cuban economy came close to collapse, because of the intensity and unexpected origin of the crisis.

The updated forecast contemplates a complex international scenario for tourism, with risk factors of difficult control from the Cuban perspective, which will have a potential negative effect on recovery. This downward trend of tourism will coincide with lower remittances, a low level of foreign investment and fewer exports of minerals and tobacco.

As a consequence, hard currency will be scarce, and that will put the brakes on imports. In addition, on the internal front, the agricultural sector won’t be capable of producing sufficient food for the whole population. The authorities know this, and the building industry isn’t going to bail out the economy because the State’s budget has committed resources to current expenses, which will have limited impact in terms of growth.

In sum, these factors, together with inattention to the self-employed, abandoned to chance by the Government, depend on the political goodwill of the leaders and their ability to promote measures that really serve to bring the economy out of the hole it’s in. Perhaps if, instead of making individual decisions based on communist orthodoxy, all sectors of the economy, State and private, came to the table for a dialogue, the Regime leaders would realize the enormous importance and the social support they would have; for example, if they approved a special fund to help the economy recover.

Decisions of this type could serve to establish the basis of an economy centered on a common goal, incorporating an integral plan of reforms and support for the private entrepreneurial fabric. At the same time, resources could be generated for the social protection of the least-favored groups because of the crisis.

The authorities of the Cuban Regime still haven’t accepted that they have a long and difficult process of recovery ahead of them, a great challenge in the coming months, which will demand far-reaching measures that, alone, might not give them the results they need. The moment for dialogue and consensus has arrived.

Unilateral Communist decision-making must end. If they want to light the way to the first fruits of recovery, they have to participate in all the plans for aid proposals, and they must have the funds and tools available to transform the economy. Díaz-Canel’s government must understand that the survival of the Cuban economy depends on being able to confront the task of economic reconstruction by collaborating with all State and non-State economic agents, and by promoting a climate of political and social dialogue on new foundations, which will help Cuba return, as soon as possible, to a sense of sustainability and fiscal consolidation.

The challenge in the next few months is to support a progressive return to growth and consolidate the first fruits of the recovery. Without dialogue, it will be impossible.

*The United National Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Blackouts and Covid Outbreaks Appear in Havana

The authorities will control the perimeter affected in Lawton from 8:00 pm as well as the seven bus stops on routes 1 and 23 so no one can get off. (Amy Goodman/Flickr)

14ymedio, Havana, July 9, 2020 — The epidemiological situation is complicated in Havana, and the light at the end of the tunnel never arrives. This couldn’t be better said. On Wednesday, while part of the capital was living in a blackout that lasted for nine hours, the authorities, in their daily meeting about supervising the pandemic, were claiming that the “consumption of electricity” is stable.

It was only one of many good-news articles that they wanted to send through the official press. There’s chicken, “there’s no problem with the supply of flour,” the bank branches in the whole country are working and Guantánamo and Santiago de Cuba are keeping a lid on Covid-19.

Transport is also in a favorable situation, and even the sale of tickets is beginning on Thursday in the province of Matanzas, which has entered into phase two, for travel beginning on Tuesday, according to Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila, the Minister of Transport. continue reading

Everything is going well, according to the Government. Less so in Havana, of course, where there hasn’t been electricity, transport doesn’t function (the First Minister said he received complaints of overcrowding, and the President requested staggering work hours to avoid crowds), and the pandemic hasn’t abated.

On Tuesday, they activated isolation measures for four blocks of Pilar-Atarés, in the municipality of Cerro, yesterday they announced the closure of a quadrant of Lawton, in Diez de Octubre, and the strengthening of monitoring measures in Arroyo Naranjo. Without forgetting that a focus point in Centro Habana is still active.

Some 7,000 people were affected by the isolation in Lawton, where they detected four cases of coronavirus in the last few days, covering the perimeter between Fonts, Aguilera and Calle 13 to the west; Calle D in the south, Porvenir to the west, and Calle 14 y Juanelo to the east. The area is divided, in turn, into two zones: one for the population that lives in one of them, which includes 10 blocks, where PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests were given; while for the remaining group, 16 blocks long, they will do rapid testing.

Among the measures that the residents have to live with, in addition to tests and monitoring, is the use inside and outside their homes of masks, which is difficult to supervise; although, according to the official press, severe actions will be taken if citizens violate the provisions.

In addition, hawking remains prohibited, as does the increased sale of chlorine, hypochlorite and disinfectants, and the homeless population will be attended to. The authorities also have said that they will distribute food and water to homes of the vulnerable population and will organize commercial activity to minimize the usual tumult associated with buying.

The authorities will control the perimeter from 8:00 pm, as well as the seven bus stops on routes 1 and 23, so that no one will get off.

Until the results of the tests are released, no one can leave the zone, insisted Luis Antonio Torres Iríbar, President of the Consejo de Defensa Popular (Popular Defense Council). He urged that food be guaranteed for the residents and asked for “conscience and discipline.”

The situation in Arroyo Naranjo is different. There have barely been two cases of Covid-19 in 15 days, with known sources of contagion and contacts, who tested negative. However, its proximity to the province of Mayabeque, where there have been cases, has been the motivation for taking measures.

In this sense, the norms are more general: maintaining distance, using a mask, washing hands, disinfecting homes and other areas with a solution of water and alcohol.

Also, more medical attention has been requested, and supervision for taking temperatures and testing the population, beginning with work centers. Supplies of food and articles of hygiene are equally needed.

“You have to remember that these places are on the front line of Covid, not in the first phase of recuperation, and, thus, they must comply with all the measures,” said Torres Iríbar in reference to the affected zones in the capital, like Centro Havana, San Miguel del Padrón, Cotorro and Cerro. In Cerro, the most recent, confirmed cases now reach 20, although El Cotorro continues to be the municipality with the highest rate of incidence.

Yanet Hernández Pérez, the Vice Governor of Havana, claims that the province fulfills the five criteria noted for being in the first phase of recuperation: the rate of incidence, the reproductive index, the number of active cases, the positives whose source of infection is known in the last 15 days and number of events open to the public.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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‘Scientific’ Meetings Don’t Put Food on Cuban Tables

Current Cuban president Miguel Díaz Canel, when he was vice-president, with then General-President Raul Castro. (Archive)

Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 11 July 2020 — A brief note in the state-owned newspaper Granma, reports on a meeting between Cuban president Díaz-Canel and scientists and experts from prestigious Cuban institutions, held to discuss issues of food and nutritional sovereignty. The article offers an analysis of the problem that has always affected the Cuban economy, exacerbated as a consequence of COVID19, and all of this, says Granma, “from an integral point of view, where all the links with regards to food and nutrition are considered.” Pure propaganda.

On this occasion, experts from the Soil Institute addressed the analysis of the needs of Cuban agriculture, from the perspective of fertilizers and pesticides. Nothing new. These are intermediate products that have to be imported because they are not produced on the Island, but which, in the absence of foreign exchange cannot be imported, thus limiting the objective of producing more. As usual. A problem caused by the poor development of an economy subsidized and led by the state for too many years, with criteria that are not the most appropriate. While these issues are addressed, valuable time to take action is lost.

But no. It does not seem that this is the objective of these type of meetings with scientists, but that there is a certain disposition in the official propaganda to follow a script already written in the “scientific” article that Díaz-Canel published some time ago. The matter goes a long way, without a doubt. continue reading

And from this “scientific” perspective that Díaz-Canel wants to use to analyze the problems that affect his government, it was said at the meeting that the traditional unproductiveness of Cuban agriculture to generate food for the entire population must be “addressed taking into account other processes that also intervene, such as the introduction of scientific results, problems in marketing and distribution, affordable consumption, nutrition, good habits and, ultimately, the role of food and nutrition in the health of our people.”

Believe it. Said and done. Not a single reference to the crucial issue that grips the Cuban countryside and prevents it from being prosperous: the legal framework of property rights, the land tenure regime, in short, allowing Cuban farmers to truly be the owners of the production factor and to freely decide what they want to do, without interference from the communist state.

This question, essential for sufficient food to be produced, was not raised at Díaz-Canel’s “scientific” working meeting, and I am very much afraid that it is beyond any consideration under official communist doctrine. In fact, at the first “scientific” meeting, similar issues such as “the design of policies and legal norms for agricultural extension and also for bioproducts” were discussed, but nobody raised the need to return the ownership of the land to those who work it and produce Strange as it may seem, there is not a single jurist in Cuba who publicly defends this need, which the longer it goes on, makes it increasingly difficult to avoid the imminent collapse.

In the same issue of Granma, there is a report of a visit to the provinces of Artemisa and Mayabeque by Machado Ventura (age 89 and serving as second secretary of the Cuban Communist Party). At the time of the visit, recent rains had had a negative impact on the supply of food products to the capital. The problems of Cuban agriculture come from yesteryear, and they no longer respond to the proclamations and messages of leaders such as Valdés Mesa (age 75, Politburo member), Marrero (age 57, prime minister), Machado or himself. All these messages fall on deaf ears and lose their validity because numerous problems accumulate in the countryside that have to do, essentially, with the legal framework of property rights.

The Raulista reforms — implemented under former president Raul Castro — based on the delivery of land under lease, have not served to increase production, because the farmer legitimately aspires to be the owner of his land, and not a mere tenant of the state. We must review the model, and stop talking about nonsense, such as bioproducts, local food production in pots in the cities, the cultivation of pineapple by the local CDRs (Committees for the Defense of the Revolution) and other nonsense that we have heard from leaders of the communist regime.

The issue is that in 2020 there is no pork, nor rice, fruit trees are scarce and vegetables even more so, while state security represses and denounces the road workers for doing their work serving the population, and the markets are empty because nobody moves the products from the fields to the city. That Díaz-Canel tells me that this whole and very real problem has to do with scientific research, undoubtedly of quality, that is carried out in the country. Nada.

If the Cuban leader really wants to undertake the production of food he needs to meet with the independent agrarian producers, who have already created associations to defend their interests outside the communist government. He needs to listen to what they are going to tell him, and he needs to willingly accept their advice, and if he sees fit, he needs to arrange for the adoption of some of their proposals, and things will go much better.

This, and no other, is the dialogue that is urgent in Cuba, and as soon as possible, to avoid the food crisis announced by the United Nations World Food Program.

By meeting with independent producers, he will get first-hand information about what is happening in the Cuban countryside, and not the distorted advice that comes from Machado Ventura or Valdés Mesa.

The Cuban guajiro knows what has to be done to produce more and is aware that, if the accounts don’t balance, it is the fault of the government, which subjects him to ideological obedience, aggressive taxation and local communist control, to prevent him from prospering. The food crisis is not only due to a problem of importing fertilizers and pesticides for the soil, but there is much more, and that even though scientific contributions can help, there are many other things that need to happen to solve the problem of producing enough food for everyone.

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Farmers Must Provide Food to the Ration Stores

The authorities are calling on the campesinos to plant every meter of land available. (Flickr/tTnman6)

14ymedio, Havana, July 9, 2020 — Beginning now, the campesinos (farmers) who are members of farming cooperatives will be responsible for supplying the bodegas (ration stores) in their region. According to what several of them told 14ymedio in the province of Pinar del Rio, the farmers must take 30 pounds of food for each consumer to the nearby bodegas.

An employee of the administration of the Hermanos Saíz cooperative in Pinar del Rio confirmed the implementation of this measure, which would apply to the whole national territory. “These are times of sharing the little that we have and for the community to involve itself more,” he clarified to this newspaper. “We are reuniting with the campesinos and explaining the difficulties of the moment to them, and up to now, all have committed themselves to supplying the bodegas”.

“Yesterday we had a meeting with the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the cooperative, and he told us that we have to supply part of the food to the bodegas near our fields,” Roberto, a farmer and proprietor of a farm in San Juan y Martínez (Pinar del Río) told us. continue reading

He warns that “If there isn’t food in our town, it’s the fault of the 15 or 20 campesinos with farms who live nearby.” The measure was announced to the farmers on the tour that José Ramón Machado Ventura, the Second Secretary of the Communist Party (PCC), is making across the Island.

Machado Ventura got together with the First Secretaries of the PCC in each province and also with municipal Party authorities to communicate the decisions taken in the face of the supply crisis that is happening in the country. “He’s giving a policy talk, mentioning the international situation and Donald Trump, and he calls for planting everything that can be planted,” comments Roberto.

“But there’s no fuel, no supplies, no fertilizer, and the Government doesn’t contribute anything,” he complains. In the meeting held this week in the cooperatives of San Juan y Martínez, they were told that “if the campesino achieves a harvest, 80% will go to the State and 20% to him,” because “they have to guarantee food for the people and avoid imports.”

Roberto, who owns his land and has been a member of a cooperative for two decades, explains that if he manages to harvest 1,000 ears of corn, he must give 800 to the State so they can distribute it “with very low prices, because they pay .80 Cuban pesos (~3¢ US) for each ear, although it’s the highest quality, and in the street we can sell it for 2 or 3 Cuban pesos (8 to 12 cents US).”

“This is feudalism,” concludes this campesino. He graduated in agricultural engineering and belongs to a long line of producers of meat, fruit and grain. “They are counting the number of people on each farm in order to calculate how much food for self-consumption can stay with the farmer, but they’re acting like they’re doing us a favor to leave something.”

The Ministry of Agriculture has distributed a list for each Cooperative of Credits and Services (CSS) and Cooperative of Agricultural Production (CPA) with the number of users inscribed in the closest bodega. “Now the 30 pounds per capita is the responsibility of the campesinos who form part of these cooperatives.”

“Inside every cooperative they have assigned quantities for each farmer, who is required very month to bring to the store meat, vegetables and fruit, but it’s expected that soon this will also include rice and beans,” says the campesino. “For example,I have to supply 12 families, and I don’t know how I’m going to do that.”

The residents in the zone who aren’t farmers but buy in the rationed market fear that this is the preamble to eliminating the quota of rice, mainly imported, which is sold through this system. “Here people sense that the next thing is that the State won’t send anything more to the ration stores.”

“I don’t know, what’s the Government going to do? If they’re saying that everyone who has a yard has to grow pumpkins and pineapple, and now they tell us that we are the ones who are going to supply the bodegas, then what are they going to take care of?” he questions.

Carlos Manuel, a neighbor in the same location, has a lot of doubts. “Now they’ve created a system of paying by invoice for this method; if I have two bunches of bananas, I have to go to the bodega to deliver them, and they give me an invoice to collect in the bank, in less than 72 hours they say, but no one believes them because they’ve owed us money from the harvest for several months now that they haven’t paid.”

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

“If there’s a moment of overproduction, which is unlikely because the drought is affecting us a lot this year plus there’s almost no fuel, then we can be left with the extra if the State isn’t interested,” he adds. “The only thing that’s going to happen is to take away more enthusiasm from the farmers, who are already very upset with everything that’s happening.”

“Every year they try to get us to commit to something, and eventually tons of forms are filled out, but the food exists only in the reports and formal commitments that no one fulfills, and it isn’t achieved or guaranteed,” says Carlos Manuel with skepticism. “We farmers here are waiting for the waters of failure to calm, but for now we have to bring something to the bodega in order to comply and not be singled out.”

For years there has been speculation about the end of rationing in Cuba, a system of distribution created in 1963. The officials have repeated on several occasions that it’s preferable “to subsidize people and not products”, but the rationed quota still is given to every citizen equally, even to those who have a level of income that is higher than the average.

Rice, grains, oil, sugar, salt, eggs, chicken and bread are some of the foodstuffs that are still subsidized, while other goods have been removed from the ration book, among them liquid detergent, bath and laundry soap, toothpaste, beef and cigarettes.

With the arrival of the pandemic in Cuba, some products, like sausage or frozen chicken, which before were sold in the free market, have returned to the ration book.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Spelling is Indeed Important on Cuba’s Black Market

Last year, an image went viral in which a teacher greeted the beginning of the course with a ’Benbenidos’ [Correct spelling: Bienvenidos] on the board. (@ SofiaJimnezMar1 / Twitter)

14ymedio, Marcelo Hernández, Havana, 8 July 2020 — “What is the mattress size and what quality?” It was the message that Ángel Guzmán received through WhatsApp a few hours after posting an ad on an online classifieds site. The fact that the client wrote in this way “so correct, with the accents and everything” prompted him to take the merchandise to his home even though he’d never seen his face.

“People who write me with mistakes do not look good to me and I cannot risk moving a product from one municipality to another and meet someone who’s not serious who rejects the mattress or does not want to pay me,” the sharp merchant tells 14ymedio. “Someone who writes me calling me puro, bro, asere or tío, I don’t even answer them. I don’t do business with people who write like that.”

Nothing in his education seemed to destine him to have that level of demand in the use of the language. From working-class parents, as a teenager, most of his Spanish classes in elementary school were taken through the so-called teleclasses. “No one was watching the television and the ‘emerging teacher‘ we had wrote with a lot of misspellings on the board.” He admits that he has not read much either and that in his house “there is not a single book.” continue reading

The most important language lesson of his life was learned when he lost a big transaction. “A woman contacted me through Telegram and told me that she was interested in a complete bedroom set: bed, mattress, display cabinet, chest of drawers and bedside tables. It totaled were more than 2,500 convertible pesos,” says this 25-year-old man from Havana.

It took Guzmán three days to organize the order with the help of carpenters dedicated to the private production of furniture. “I rented the truck and prepared everything, but I did not notice that all the messages that woman sent me were very poorly written. I hardly understood anything and that should have warned me she wasn’t a person capable of closing on an order like that.”

The suspicion materialized. The day he arrived in front of the customer’s door with all the furniture on the truck, she told him that she had changed her mind. “She treated me very badly, in a very rude way, even the husband threatened to call the police if I didn’t take back the entire order. They didn’t even look at the bedroom set, they just changed their minds or maybe they never had all the money. I stayed and they hosted me,” he regrets.

In 2009, the Ministry of Higher Education, alarmed by the evident deterioration of written expression in Cuba, decided to take measures to prevent future professionals from leaving the universities with serious misspellings. A national diagnosis made in the middle of the same year brought to light alarming problems with accents, punctuation and verbal conjugations.

But little has changed in a decade. Errors in writing and speaking are frequent in the national media. Recently, a presenter on the television newscast called Juan Guaidó “the intrauterine president of Venezuela” instead of using the correct word: “interim.” The headlines of the main news programs are riddled with a lack of accents, changed letters and incorrect uses of certain words.

Nely runs a thriving home delivery business that has grown significantly with the pandemic. Through instant messaging services, she offers her products, closes deals with customers and plans delivery. “They once wrote to me asking if I had chickpeas but the word was written in a way that I didn’t understand what they wanted.”

Nely admits to turning on the automatic spellchecker and asking someone close to her whenever she has a question about how to spell a word. “My business is to convince clients without having to call them, because that consumes more data and can be more dangerous, so I have to write well without excessive familiarity or mistakes.”

The popular greetings used on the street — “¿Qué bolá?” (What’s up) or “¿Cómo está la cosa?” (How’re things) — are not appreciated either. “It’s one thing in a Telegram group where people are sharing information on merchandise and prices, but it’s another thing when you’re putting in an order with a seller. Then you have to seem serious and respectful, and if you don’t see it that way, I say I don’t have any of the product left and that’s it.”

“Vusco toayas de taya grande,” [‘I’m looking for large towels’ – with 3 of 5 words misspelled], reads a merchant on her mobile phone. She imports furnishing, appliances and household goods from Panama. “I never bragged about having good spelling, because I didn’t even finish the 9th grade, but I have to ask my son to help me understand what they are trying to say in that message.”

“My son who is studying at the university told me: Mami, you don’t have to wait for Cervantes* to sell something, but be careful with those people who write with their feet,” acknowledges the informal vendor.

For “At Your Service,” a small private business that was born with the restrictions of the pandemic to bring products to the homes during the confinement, it is very clear. “The person who communicates via WhatsApp and takes the orders is a graduate in philosophy and has very good spelling, the rest of us are only dedicated to transporting orders.”

“When someone writes to us, they can be sure that we will say ‘good morning’, we will be kind and we will write without mistakes. With that we already have half the business done,” he says.

At “Your Space,” another food delivery business, they have also chosen to shore up their written communication. “Before, I worked in a restaurant and when we wanted to hire waiters, I was looking for young people with good looks, mainly beautiful people with a nice smile,” says Jorge Ángel Chang, the manager of the initiative.

“Now, when I had to look for the two people to manage our WhatsApp account, and Telegram and the messages on Facebook, I only paid attention to whether — if they were women — they had short nails, because typing with long nails is very problematic, whether they knew how to write well and treat customers with kindness, and of course, they had to have excellent spelling because that is ‘our face’’ today. In the end, I have a retired teacher and an editor working from home.”

*Translator’s note: Miguel Cervantes (b. 1547) is a Shakespeare-like figure with regards to his use of and influence on the Spanish language. See here.

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The U.S. Includes Cuba and Venezuela on Its List of ‘Foreign Adversaries’

The U.S. Department of Energy says that countries indicated as “foreign adversaries” could attack the country’s power grid. (EFE)

14ymedio, Havana, July 8, 2020 – The U.S. Department of Energy published a warning this Wednesday in the Federal Register that includes Venezuela, China, Iran and North Korea on its list of “foreign adversaries”. According to El Nuevo Herald, the Department’s decision is part of the implementation of an executive order signed in May by President Donald Trump.

This order is meant to protect the facilities and control systems necessary for operating the power grid from the “malicious activities” of foreign actors, and it orders the Department of Energy to define them.

In the Department’s consideration and based on reports from the intelligence community, according to the same newspaper, the countries mentioned could attack the U.S. power grid.

Other countries considered sponsors of terrorism, like Syria and Sudan, have been taken off the list. continue reading

The executive order, specifies El Nuevo Herald, defines the term “foreign adversaries” as governments and foreign actors that have shown “a long-term pattern or conduct significantly adverse to the national security of the United States”.

The Department specifies that the foreign actors indicated “are employing innovative combinations of traditional spying, economic espionage and supply chain and cyber operations to gain access to the energy infrastructure” in the United States.

The executive order prohibits the acquisition of equipment or software from these countries that could make the U.S. power grid vulnerable to cyberattacks.

Although it’s unlikely that U.S. businesses would import software from Cuba and Venezuela because of possible sanctions, says the Miami newspaper, the designation of both countries as “adversaries” adds to the “maximum pressure campaign” that the administration launched last year to force the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, to leave power.

In May, the Department of State returned to including Cuba on its list of countries that “don’t cooperate completely” with the U.S. in the struggle against terrorism, a measure that prohibits the sale of arms to the Island and that also affects Venezuela, Iran, Syria and North Korea.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Without The Countryside There Is No Country

14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, July 6, 2020 — There are serious challenges in the Cuban agricultural sector for more and better production, and Diario de Cuba has confirmed the discontent in large sectors of the campesino population over the repressive measures being applied by the Communist government.

These measures go beyond the precariousness that exists in the country, and what are considered “illegal” practices in Cuba are accepted practices by everyone who farms in countries where the free market regulates production.

In Cuba, the Government’s denunciations against the farmers have their origin in the terrible and deficient administrative judicial structure of the country, which, far from contributing to tackle the problems, makes them worse in an exorbitant way. There are all kinds of denunciations. The League of Independent Farmers, one of the organizations that promote the campaign, “Without the countryside there is no country”, has offered us some clues. continue reading

If there are problems in the food and feedstuff supply for animals, why does the Government have to sanction and repress an efficient producer who has a surplus and sells it to other producers? What reason prevents a pig farmer from obtaining some income from the sale of excess food that will certainly end up being allocated to other intermediate suppliers or the needs of the business itself? But no. This practice has been repressed by the authorities as a consequence of the denouncements that are multiplying among the producers themselves, pressured by the Communist organization, which at the local level maintains an iron control over operations to prevent them from being profitable and growing.

Another example has been the State’s intervention in harvests. Who said that expropriations don’t exist in Cuba? Far from advancing toward a necessary liberalization of the production and commercialization of agricultural products, the Government, in a return to the Communist norm since June 18, has reinforced centralization and State control over economic activities. In reality, intervention in the harvest of a producing farmer means his ruin and the impossibility of resuming the activity, in addition to the sanctions that can be applied.

Moreover, the Regime uses its communication media to blame the producing farmer as someone guilty of hoarding food and creating hunger. Instead of promoting the social image of the campesinos, as agents charged with sustaining the population in these difficult times, they are converted, in the eyes of the population, into thieves whose goal is to hide the harvests dedicated to Acopio, Cuba’s State Procurement and Distribution Agency. An injustice.

This campaign by the authorities to undermine the social base of the free campesinos in Cuba is provoking the first fears founded on the continuous aggression and the instruments of repression that exert a chilling effect on the freedom of economic participants. A sale of a product at a price which doesn’t agree with Acopio, for example, results in the immediate confiscation of the harvest. And the problem is none other than Acopio’s prices. While Cubans have to face elevated prices in the markets where they make their purchases, the producer is barely paid for his work, and furthermore, the debts of the State, prolonged in time, end up generating problems of solvency.

The League has denounced equally the scant attention paid by the Communist leaders to the needs of the farmers, something so simple as repairing a roof by supplying the construction material that the farmers can’t freely acquire. Rains affect the harvest, but without insurance that covers the damage, the losses ravage the field, and the State doesn’t assume its part of the responsibility. This occurs even with tobacco, a product intended for export that provides very important hard currency to the Government, income which barely reaches the producer.

To these problems are added infestations and infections that can’t be combatted because of the lack of pesticides and treatments that, instead of being produced in the country, have to be imported from the exterior. I don’t know what they are waiting for to advance in creating substitutions for imports. The Government is limited to blaming the embargo, but it doesn’t provide solutions to the problems.

Many of us ask how it’s possible that agriculture in Cuba produces these types of problems. That campaign, “Without the countryside there’s no country” is fully justified, because it looks for a 180-degree change in present conditions, certainly complicated, in those who engage in agricultural activity in Cuba.

The demands for freedom by food producers and the suspension of taxation for at least 10 years to strengthen development have been answered with more vigilance and repression. The consequence is that the shortage of food will increase, and Cuba will approach that food crisis spoken about by the United Nations World Food Program, which the Cuban authorities don’t want to recognize.

Time is running out for urgent changes, and hardship approaches. The problem of food is not going to be solved by planting in the yards of city homes, or in pots or on balconies. It cannot be solved until the ownership of the land is returned to the farmers and the free market in order to decide what they deem appropriate for their production and harvests.

It’s not a matter of leasing more land. Raúl Castro’s formula hasn’t given the predicted results. What needs to be done is to reverse the Communist agrarian reform, which has been a big historic fraud for Cuban campesinos, and which has prostrated the formerly competitive Cuban agriculture, in a structural crisis. The Cuban countryside can return, but it needs support and freedom. And thus, it has to be said very clearly, “Without the countryside there is no country”.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuba’s 26th of July Celebration, Never Again

Raul Castro embraces his successor, Miguel Diaz-Canel, on the last July 26th celebrated in Cuba.

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 8 July 2020 – As part of the measures related to the pandemic, it has been confirmed that the 67th anniversary of the assault on the Moncada barracks will not be celebrated with massive events. Instead, “activities in accordance with the epidemiological situation, as was done on May 1^st – Labor Day – are promoted.” The slogan “Siempre es 26” [the 26^th is forever] will be repeated and old and new allegorical songs will be heard, but perhaps most significantly, this will surely be the last July 26th in which Raúl Castro formally appears at the forefront of the decisions in Cuba.

Gone are the days when the 22-year-old fled at full speed down Garzón Street in Santiago de Cuba after tossing his weapons and putting on civilian pants that he carried as a precaution. Realizing that the Moncada barracks operation had failed, he abandoned his position in the Palace of Justice from where he had to cover the assailants’ withdrawal.

At least that was what Raúl Castro himself recounted when he was captured and taken to the Santiago de Cuba Vivac prison. His statements were then published by the newspaper Prensa Universal and later quoted by the journalist Marta Rojas in the Granma newspaper. continue reading

The constitutional Army of the Republic had 19 dead and 30 wounded in the assault on the nation’s second military fortress. That the current Army general can boast of not having stained his hands with blood in that action does not exempt him from other accusations referring to later events, but that is another matter.

No historian has revealed the criminal record of Army’s victim. This indicates that those who died on that side of the conflict were not the henchmen of a dictatorship or oligarchs of the exploiting class, but humble men who found in the military profession a worthy way of feeding their families.

We already know what happened next. Tortures, murder of detainees and a thousand other abuses, but the first thing that happened on that fateful day was the 19 soldiers killed by the revolutionary fire.

Whenever I hear a call to overthrow the current dictatorship through arms, I ask myself the same questions. Who will lay out the dead? What would be the chosen fortress? What chance of success could such an action have?

Today nobody is allowed to rent a place under the pretext of raising chickens and then house the fighters there as the “Moncadistas” did at the Siboney farm. It would be impossible to get so many tickets for the same destination or to rent so many rooms in the hotels of a province. Not to mention getting the weapons, the training ahead of time, and ensuring that the secret purpose does not reach the ears of State Security.

Nobody disputes the resounding failure that was that military operation, one that supposedly tried to solve at a stroke the ills accumulated in 50 years of the Republic.

To mitigate the frustration, numerous allegories have been promoted, including that it was “the small engine that served to launch the great engine of the Revolution,” so that in order to fairly evaluate the final success of that action, it would have to be measured by today’s results after 61 years of operation of the metaphorical great engine.

If we were guided by the foundational and programmatic texts of this phenomenon called the Cuban Revolution, it could be generally summarized that its proclaimed primary purposes were freedom, sovereignty and social justice. Free citizens in a sovereign nation where justice reigned could carry out two more tasks, identified as building a socialist system: satisfying the ever-growing needs of the population; and training the “New Man” who should be educated, supportive, honest, civic, free.

The failure did not end at Moncada, because by suppressing the existence of opposition organizations, abolishing the independent press, and bypassing the rule of choosing rulers with the participation of the electors, freedom was torn out by the roots.

Sovereignty has been reduced to discourses since Cuba joined the bloc of socialist countries, allowing the island to become a foreign nuclear base and sending troops to Africa to guarantee the geopolitical interests of the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Today, more than ever, we depend on imports and, “paradoxically,” Washington’s decisions have repercussions more than ever on internal politics and on the daily life of Cubans.

The efforts of social justice were not fulfilled because workers’ wages are not enough to support their families, while a ruling caste lives in opulence. The deplorable current state of hospitals and schools shows that all that scaffolding to support the Health and Education model did not rest on the efficiency of the production system implemented on the Island, but on the subsidy from the socialist camp. When that political fiction was extinguished, it was necessary to return to reality and, consequently, accept social differences as something natural.

Failure has its maximum exponent in the decrease of production and the enjoyment of material goods to the absolute minimums, because state control and planning have ruined the economy. As if that were not enough, that best human being, who was going to star on the public stage, never appeared in this present, which demagogically announced itself as a near bright future.

Hopefully something like what happened on that July 26th 1953 will never happen again.

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Venezuela is Preparing to Send a New Shipment of Fuel to Cuba

The vessel Sandino was already sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Treasury but continues to transfer crude. (Shipspotting.com)

14ymedio, Havana, July 6, 2020 — For the second time in the last six weeks, the vessel Sandino was loading fuel this Sunday in the El Palito refinery, in the state of Carabobo, west of Caracas, according to information published by the local press.

With a source on the maritime tracking site marinetraffic.com, El Carabobeño says that the fuel is being shipped under the Cuban flag, and before it used the flag of Panamá, a strategy known as reflagging, which the Governments of Cuba and Venezuela use to evade U.S. sanctions.

The ship was constructed in 2009 and has already made one previous trip to the Island, on May 27, from Puerto La Cruz in Anzoátegui, said the same newspaper. In addition, three other ships from Venezuela—the Terepaima, the Petion and the Teseo—are in Cuba.

The Venezuelan newspaper notes that the El Palito refinery is at less than 50% of operability and can no longer cover the demand of the Venezuelan market. “It’s evident by the long lines of vehicles that start to appear again on the outskirts of the service stations with subsidized fuel en Carabobo and other regions of the country,” it explains.

The Petion and Sandino already have had sanctions imposed by the U.S. Treasury Department, but they have continued transporting crude between Venezuela and Cuba.

The Petion belongs to Trocana World and is operated by Caroil Transport Marine, a company registered in Cyprus. Both businesses are under the control of the brother of Brigade General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Callejas, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and the head of Department V of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. In addition, he is the ex-son-in-law of Raúl Castro and the Director of GAESA, the business consortium of the military on the Island.

This past March, Venezuelan opponents complained that Caracas was continuing to supply crude to the Island. Julio Borges contended that the “gifts” from Venezuela to Cuba rose to more than 40 trillion dollars in oil in the last 20 years. This is in addition to the humanitarian aid sent and the electrical plants financed.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Fourth of July and the ‘Ladies of Havana’

George Washington in 1772, in the earliest known portrait of him. (Washington and Lee University)

14ymedio, Frank Calzón, Miami, July 4, 2020 – In addition to honoring the independence of its country and the founders of the nation, the United States is celebrating prominent foreigners who helped General George Washington in the feat.

Washington, in addition to being the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army that defeated England, was elected President for three terms of four years, and, like Nelson Mandela years later, ignored those who wanted him to remain permanently in power, retiring to live with his wife, Martha, on their farm in Mount Vernon in Virginia, where he died years later.

Among the foreigners who gave aid to Washington in critical moments were the young Frenchman the Marquis de Lafayette and Henry Frederick, Baron of Von Steuben, who after serving under the orders of Frederick the Great of Prussia, offered his sword to the American colonies, instructing the patriotic Americans in the military arts. continue reading

This noble Prussian died in New York in 1794, while Lafayette was returning to his country to participate in the French Revolution and to challenge, risking his head, the French extremists who created power to make the revolution by basing it on tyranny and terror (something sadly familiar to Cubans) .

Thaddeus Kosciuszko, the military engineer who fortified Saratoga and West Point, and another Frenchman, Rochambeau, whom Washington presented as a “work colleague in the struggle for liberty,” also collaborated. Washington had a lot of reasons to appreciate him, because he knew that every army needs a quartermaster as well as good strategies and great soldiers.

In 1781, the situation of the Continental Army was complicated. In the war, which was approaching Yorktown, the British Commander-in-Chief, General Cornwallis, was counting on finally defeating the Americans.

The historian Stephen Bonsal says that Rochambeau wrote in these moments: “The Continental troops are almost without clothing and footwear. They’re at the limit of their forces.” Rochambeau didn’t hesitate to send the young Admiral De Grasse to secure aid from the islands of the Caribbean, as Charles Lee Lewis, another historian, tells us in his book, Admiral De Grasse and American Independence.

“I can’t hide the fact that the Americans had almost no resources,” wrote Rochambeau. According to the author of this book, Jean-Jacques Antier, when De Grasse arrived in Havana, the Spanish flotilla had already left for Spain, and the colonial Governor of the Island didn’t have enough resources to help the Americans. However, public opinion in the city supported the North American cause, and contributions quickly began to arrive. “The ladies of Havana surrendered even their diamonds and managed to collect the amount of 1,200,000 pounds.”

De Grasse navigated to Philadelphia with sufficient money to face the war that was looming, and this time Washington, traditionally very reserved, couldn’t contain his emotion and embraced De Grasse. The battle of autumn 1781, as well as the war, ended with the defeat of Cornwallis in Yorktown, and, as Bonsal said: “The millions donated by the ladies of Havana can be considered as part of the foundation on which the American nation was erected.”

Today, the contribution of Cuban Americans in maintaining freedom is doubtless less important: electing their governors, paying taxes and respecting the laws, like any person in a democratic society who appreciates liberty.

This fourth of July, we Cuban Americans have not forgotten Cuba and the Cubans who are 90 miles away, and we know that the United States is a nation that was formed and is formed with men and women from everywhere, with their sons and grandsons, men and women who chose freedom, and who contributed to its defense with their lives, their fortune and with what George Washington called their “sacred honor.”

On the day of American Independence, millions of Cubans remember the “Ladies of Havana” who helped Washington, and the Damas de Blanco [Ladies in White], who today, like them, defend the cause of freedom.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Electric Scooter, a Vehicle for the Times

An electric scooter can be an investment now that home delivery services are booming due to the pandemic (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Cynthia de la Cantera, July 1, 2020 — The stars have aligned for anyone who sees the electric motorcycle as a great business opportunity. At the end of 2019 there were already about 200,000 of these vehicles in Cuba. The recent boom is fueled by a combination of several factors: an inadequate public transport system, gasoline shortages, the vehicle’s ease of driving and the job opportunities it provides during the pandemic.

“With all the transportation problems we have in this country, where taking a taxi is difficult even if you have the money, it was more feasible for me to buy a motorcycle, despite how expensive they are,” says Camila Alonso, a young woman who invested 1,500 convertible pesos (CUC) she had saved for one of these vehicles. “With a scooter, you don’t have to wait forever at a bus or car stop. Travel times are shorter,” she reasons.

Getting one, by contrast, was more time consuming. She could have afforded to buy a new model, which comes with a guarantee, at a state-owned store. The motorinas, as they are known locally, are made in China under the brand name Minerva and assembled in Santa Clara by the Angel Villareal Bravo Company. According to an article published late last year in Granma, the price for one of these scooters was 999 CUC, seemingly quite reasonable for a brand new product. continue reading

“We get a lot of scooters that came with a guarantee but that broke down after a month of operation,” says Brian Arocha, a mechanic at a shop in Havana’s Vedado district who has found a niche market servicing these popular vehicles.

The young man claims the scooters sold by the state are not of great quality but notes that the need for transportation is so great that buyers will resort to anything,” especially if it’s cheaper than buying a car or an internal combustion motorcycle,” he says.

Smugglers, always attentive to market demand, sensed an opportunity and began importing the scooters through Panama’s Colón Free Trade Zone. Cuban customs regulations allow such a vehicle to enter the country for 200 pesos provided it does not exceed 1,000 watts of power and cannot go faster than 50 kilometers per hour.

Brian claims these e-scooters are of better quality than those sold in outlets run by the Cimex and Caribe retail chains: “Those stores don’t have experienced staff assembling the scooters so they make bad [electrical] connections. Over time, this results in false starts, short circuits and mechanical problems.”

This, along with the inconvenience of buying the product at a government-authorized store that requires payment with a certain type of card,* convinced Camila to buy a used scooter from a private importer. For three days she poured over online classified ads on Revolico and Porlalivre until she found the scooter that was just right for her: a Raybar, model EA3, in red.

Prices for a high-quality electric scooter are comparable to the Cuban Minervas. A Mishozuki Tiburon, one of the most expensive and popular models, costs between 2,500 and 2,800 CUC new and between 1,900 and 2,000 used. Virtually none of the new imported models goes for less than 2,000 CUC.

Nevertheless, many people view the purchase price as an investment. The pandemic has led to a boom in home deliveries and having a motorcycle can be a big help when it comes to finding a job.

There are classified ads on Revolico by businesses looking for drivers to deliver pizza, prepared food and produce. For Alvin Pino, the owner of a food delivery business, the popularity of motorinas has helped him boost profits. “They’ve really stimulated home delivery. There are more electric scooters now so this service has grown,” he says.

Others see a scooter as a job opportunity and post ads offering to transport “anything that fits in a box or a backpack.” As of yet, that does not seem to include people, whose weight can impact the battery by requiring more frequent charges, notes Camila, who doubts that the vehicles’ engines would allow them to be used as taxis.

The average range of these vehicles is thirty miles, adequate for getting around urban areas. To fully charge a scooter, however, usually requires four to eight hours of electricity, which could cost as much as 130 pesos a month.

In spite of frequent blackouts in Cuba, which have become more frequent since last September due to what the government describes as a “temporary” situation, there is often no problem recharging batteries. It is certainly simpler and less complicated than filling a car’s tank with gas, and also less polluting. Scooters are also faster and require less physical effort than bicycles, which many citizens appreciate given the island’s tropical heat.

But there are disadvantages. Motorcycles are used mainly by young people and require no license unless they are over 1,000 watts and can reach speeds over 30 miles an hour. This suggests the vehicles are low risk and do not require adequate protection measures, such as the use of a helmet. However, in the first four months of 2019 alone, there were 207 motorcycle accidents in which 10 people lost their lives and another 121 were injured

“Motorcycles are generally purchased by people who travel, who make deliveries and who work in sales. People who work in tourism, who get remittances from overseas and who work in the private sector also buy them. They’re usually business owners, not employees, because there are places where someone who is self-employed still can’t buy a motorcycle,” says Brian.

In spite of all this, the pandemic has put the market on hold. As long as “mules” are unable to travel, private imports of electric scooters are frozen.

*Translator’s note: State-run stores that sell goods in hard currency require customers to pay using dollar-denominated bank cards from accounts opened with convertible currencies such as the dollar or euro.

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