The deceased Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez signed a Cooperation Agreement between Cuba and Venezuela in 2000, but the economy of the latter has lost its strength since then. (Embassy of Cuba in Venezuela)
14ymedio (With agency information), Havana, 16 August 2017 – The effect of the Venezuelan crisis on the Cuban economy is greater than expected, judging by the latest data from the National Statistics Office (ONE) that reveals a 70% fall in trade between the two countries in only two years.
The trade in merchandise was $2.2 billion in 2016, compared to $4.2 billion a year earlier and $7.3 billion in 2014. Cuba has had to reduce imports from Venezuela and there has also been a cut in fuel shipments which has affected Cuba’s domestic economy, which fell into recession for the first time last year with 0.9% fall in the Gross Domestic Product.
Venezuela’s exports fell to $ 1.6 billion in 2016 from $ 2.8 billion in 2015 and $ 5.1 billion a year earlier. On the other hand, Cuba exported to Venezuela 642 million dollars in goods in 2016 compared to 1.4 billion dollars in 2015 and 2.0 billion in 2014. continue reading
Cuba’s trade in goods totaled $12.6 billion in 2016, down from $15 billion in 2015. The economy has grown by 1.1% in the first half of the year, according to official figures, but the tightening will continue and could be extended, according to the government.
Cuba’s dependence on Venezuela continues to be very strong and Cuban has no solid alternative plan, the prospects in this regard are not good. In 2017 so far, the Venezuelan government has sent Cuba 13% less crude oil and other fuels, compared to the same period last year.
The governments of Cuba and Venezuela maintain an alliance forged by the late Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. As a part of this alliance the island exports professional services to Caracas, particularly in the health sector, in exchange for oil and fuel. At the high point of the accords, in 2008, Havana received some 115,000 barrels of crude oil a day at subsidized prices, but due to the economic crisis in Venezuela, that amount has been reduced to 72,350 barrels a day.
Cuba intends to supply these energy deficiencies through Russia after more than a decade without having to resort to that country.
In 2007 the Cuban Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Health and Medical Services of the Solomon Islands signed a cooperation agreement. (The Island Sun)
14ymedio, Havana, 14 August 2017 — The government of the Solomon Islands, an archipelago located in Oceania and part of the British Commonwealth of Nations, has suspended the sending of medical students to Cuba, according to comments from the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Medical Services, Tenneth Dalipandam speaking to the local newspaper, the Solomon Star.
The official said Friday that authorities are considering “training the Cuban graduates to a certain level” before they reconsider “sending students” to the island in the future.
The President of the Education Committee of Parliament and Human Resources of the Archipelago, Nestor Ghiro, also previously stated that graduates in Cuba “are not doctors until they complete certain stages of training in [their home] country to qualify as doctors.” continue reading
Ghiro pointed out that they cannot even be called “doctors” until their training is completed in the Solomon Islands.
In 2007 the Cuban Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Health and Medical Services of Solomon Islands signed a cooperation agreement. The legal instrument opened the way for fifty young people to study medicine in Cuba, a figure that reached 150 students seven years later.
Cuba covers the costs of the schooling and the Government of Solomon Islands is responsible for paying for air tickets and other student expenses. Most of these young people study at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), which since 2005 has graduated more than 28,000 doctors from 103 countries.
The two nations established diplomatic ties in December 2003 and a decade later the first Solomon Islands embassy in all of Latin America was opened in Havana.
The Solomon Island’s cancellation of sending students to Cuba is not an isolated event. The professional quality of Cuban graduates has been questioned in countries such as Uruguay, Brazil, Costa Rica and Pakistan, among other nations.
Chilean doctors graduated from ELAM have also faced serious difficulties in passing the theoretical-practical exams required to practice their profession in Chile.
In 2012, of the 477 students graduating from foreign universities who presented themselves in Chile to take the National Examination of Medical Knowledge, only 20% passed. The majority of those who did not pass the exam had obtained their degrees in Cuba.
In Cuba, “the material situation of the schools is deplorable,” says the author. (I. Zahorsky / Flickr)
14ymedio, Pedro Campos, Miami, 12 August 2017 — The Government of the Castro brothers has always maintained that their fundamental social achievements have been “free” health and education, available to all people, which became an international calling card, to try to counter criticism of their massive, flagrant and systematic violations of the political, civil and economic rights of the Cuban people and, in passing, to seek outside influence and obtain economic benefits.
That these achievements have not been “free” is more than proven by the fact that the regime has never been able to hide that it appropriates the results of the production of all the state enterprises, the majority of the country, and it deprives employees of most of their salaries. Everyone knows that Cuba, along with Venezuela, has the lowest minimum ($10) and average ($23) monthly salaries in Latin America. continue reading
Today, although Cuba has more doctors per inhabitant than any other country in the region, the truth is that more than 50,000 of them, particularly the specialists, are carrying out “missions” abroad. In addition, the conditions and technical resources of neighborhoods clinics, polyclinics and hospitals, which serve the population, do not support stable and quality services, while appointments for exams, admittance to a hospital or surgery can come when the patient is already beyond hope.
A very different situation is presented by the clinics and special hospitals for the top leaders and for the rest of the high military and political bureaucracy that is attended in exclusive facilities, such as the clinic for Security Personnel, the CIMEQ Hospital and some floors of the Hermanos Ameijeiras National Hospital. Another privileged segment is foreigners who pay with foreign currency and who are seen at the Cira Garcia Clinic, all in Havana.
With regard to education, the material situation of primary and secondary schools and higher education institutions is deplorable; they do not have the necessary materials for an average international quality education. Due to the low salaries in the teaching profession, many educational institutions at all levels never have a complete team of teachers. Worst of all, since there is no internet access, modern education, which in most Latin American countries is based on this medium, is practically absent, with only limited availability in universities.
But most importantly, the fundamental, undeclared goals of the “free” health and education services are not to maintain a healthy and educated population capable of meeting life needs. Rather, the first goal is to try to guarantee a working population with a high technical and professional level and in good health that can be exploited in state-owned enterprises and international services, particularly medical services, which bring in foreign currency for the Cuban government. Secondly, the goal is to guarantee, through this patronage blackmail, a people who are committed to continuing to thank the “revolutionary government” for those benefits.
State-ownership, which is now predominant, until recently controlled all sources of labor and income, except for the exploitation of the approximately 20% of land in private hands. That situation has changed, but still today most of the workforce is engaged in state, military and para-state enterprises.
Nevertheless, the systematic deterioration of the health and educations services, as a result of the system’s inability to produce and manage resources, worsened since the fall of the USSR and the “socialist camp,” which aid from Venezuela is not making up for, has generated corruption and widespread discontent in the population.
Another important result of this deterioration is that the most vulnerable sectors such as the elderly, single mothers and the disabled have faced large cuts in the social assistance system, precisely because they contribute the least to the state coffers.
Such that, today, it is no longer even possible for the system to guarantee the control of a prepared and healthy labor force, to hyper-exploit in the generalized slavery frameworks of state-socialism, nor to guarantee the support of the majority of the population for the “free” services. And the state’s international goals are also affected since the countries receiving Cuban doctors are diminishing with the fall of the populist-state wave in Latin America and because, as the Cuban reality becomes better known abroad, there is more rejection.
If this is how “fundamental achievements” perform, we can imagine how the remainder do.
Eliecer Ávila, leader of the Somos+ (We Are More) dissident group. (Héctor Estepa / El Confidencial)
14ymedio, Havana, 14 August 2017 – The Office of the Attorney General of Cuba declared the “final dismissal” of the case against the activist Eliécer Ávila, accused of the crimes of receiving and illegal economic activities. The court also ordered the seizure “in favor of the Cuban State” of most of the property seized during a police search in April.
On 5 August, the leader of the Somos+ (We Are More) Movement received on a document signed by the prosecutor Bileardo Amaro Guerra dated July, to which he gave 14ymedio access. In it he is informed that the accusations have been “filed.” “We have considered the lack of criminal record of the accused and the attitude maintained during the process,” explains the text. continue reading
The measure adopted by the Public Prosecutor’s Office corresponds to what was stated in the Law of Criminal Procedure, whereby the prosecutor has the power to dismiss a case “if he considers that the act is not a crime or is manifestly false, or the accused as authors or accomplices are exempt from criminal responsibility.”
Avila has decided to appeal the seizure of his belongings, of which only three personal organizers, an almanac and an old travel insurance policy were returned to him. The remaining belongings, whose list in the judicial document covers ten pages of objects seized during search, will pass into the hands of the State, including a personal computer and mobile phone.
Avila’s defense lawyer, Osvaldo Rodríguez Díaz, has appealed the prosecutor’s order because the document is full of “gibberish.” “In its content it refers to activities of a non-governmental organization,” in reference to Somos+, but the accusation against the activist is based on an alleged economic crime.
Rodríguez also questions that, given the economic nature of the allegations, the case has been taken to Villa Marista, the headquarters of State Security in Havana.
The prosecutor’s document says Avila “sells clothing at home, when what was actually seized is something else,” says the defense lawyer, for whom the arguments are “far from being considered serious by that instance, of legality and truth.”
Wilfredo Vallín, President of the Law Association of Cuba, confirmed to 14ymedio that “the final destination of the items that are seized in a search should be decided by the court” and that “what is seized in a house is to be presented in court as evidence to indict the person.” He describes the prosecutor’s order as “a totally illegal procedure” in this case because “it is a group of objects of high value.”
The search in Avila’s house happened after several members of his movement held a protest at the International Airport Jose Martí of Havana to demonstrate against Customs, which confiscated the belongings of several activists who returned from a seminar organized in Colombia by the Center for the Opening and Development of Latin America.
Police records and searches of dissidents have become a growing practice in the past year, and the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation has denounced this in its reports.
Fidel Castro, born 91 years ago, has been reduced to slogans that Cubans pay no attention to as they pass by them. (EFE / Ernesto Mastrascusa)
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, 14 August 2017 — With so much secrecy, so much myth and legend, it is not even known for sure if this August 13 was the actual date of the 91st anniversary of Fidel Castro’s birth. His life was so surrounded by exaggerations and lies that even the moment he was born and the name with which he was registered are open to question.
However, beyond any doubt, the day was propitious to reflect on the legacy of the former Cuban president, an imprint that has been reduced in officialdom’s Conceptualization of the Socialist Model to “his concept of Revolution” and the stubborn “conviction that yes we can achieve victory” with our own efforts. continue reading
That concept of “Revolution” – which is presented as his political will – is so ambiguous that it can be taken both as a result obtained and as a goal to be achieved. This theoretical hodgepodge is evidence of the lack of depth of the author’s thinking and his tendency to political opportunism, which allowed him to create slogans to encapsulate different moments.
Official media reproduce such a definition as a method for achieving dissimilar goals, the final fruit of a process or a tangle of moral values close to the commandments of good behavior. However, in the absence of the violent component – which typifies any academic definition of Revolution – lies its main failure, to which is added the absence of the class approach that could be expected from a Marxist-Leninist.
The main teaching Fidel Castro has left us, which teachers warn their students they should pay attention to because “it will be on the test,” is voluntarism. The Commander-in-Chief instilled the idea that whomever is willing to defend a position at the risk of his own and others’ deaths, becomes invincible.
It does not matter if the cause to be defended is erroneous or valid. The cardinal rule, according to this theorem, is to accept a goal with unlimited enthusiasm and persevere in its realization at whatever price necessary.
Intensive grazing brought to Cuba by a French scientist, construction ‘microbrigades’, consecration in scientific research centers, special programs of rabbits, geese or buffalo, the doctor for 120 families, all called by the name ‘Plan Fidel’ and many other initiatives carried the personal imprint of one who considered himself an indisputable specialist on any subject he was superficially interested in.
Nothing and no one could stop Fidel Castro, except his own indiscipline and the sudden reluctance that came over him when he discovered some new object of obsession.
A monument recently erected in Crimea to his memory says that “victory is perseverance,” a bitter reminder that Fidel Castro was the worst disciple of his own teachings. He was only consistent in the act of never admitting that he was defeated, as defined in his favorite motto: “turning the setback into victory.”
Athletes may be able to inherit their legacy to win a competition seemingly against them, but in politics and economics it is nefarious to obsess over an apparently miraculous solution.
One should not persevere in the error, is also what we learned from Fidel Castro.
The 20,000 places for care of the aged are not enough in a country with two million people over age 60. (EFE)
14ymedio, Mario Penton, Miami, 10 August 2017 – The Cuban population is aging at an inverse ratio to the investment required to support this share of the citizenry. Almost 20% of Cubans are over 60, and a recent government study sees aging as “the nation’s biggest demographic challenge.”
Health spending fell from 11% of GDP in 2009 to 8% in 2012, according to data from the Statistical Yearbook of Cuba. The investment in social programs affecting the elderly has been reduced since Raúl Castro initiated timid reforms in the country’s economy.
The economist Carmelo Mesa-Lago has calculated that the number of hospitals in the country has decreased by 32% since 2007, while personnel engaged in public health has fallen by 22%. Despite the steady increase in the number of elderly people in the country, there are only 20,000 places in some 300 grandparents’ homes (for day care) and 144 nursing homes. continue reading
According to sociologist Elaine Acosta, there is evidence that a significant share of Cuba’s 2,219,784 people who are over 60 “lack effective opportunities to enjoy a dignified old age.”
In addition, the expert believes that “the difficulty of social policy to anticipate and plan the resolution of problems related to old age only aggravate the crisis of care that faces Cuban society.”
In the face of what could be the end of trade with Venezuela, the aging population of the island, which has seen the purchasing power of its pensions reduced by almost 50% since 1989, is facing an unsustainable pension system in the medium term, Mesa-Lago explains.
The situation is complicated, because Raul Castro’s government eliminated many of the goods and services formerly provided ‘free,’ drastically reducing the items covered by Social Assistance, as well as the number of beneficiaries.
In 2016, 54,968 older adults received social security pensions, some 8,415 fewer than in 2011. This population segment has also been hit in recent years by the elimination of subsidies for several products in the ration book, and the resulting quadrupling of prices.
Proportion and growth rates of the population aged 60 and over in some Latin American countries. Source: ECLAC
A study published by Cuba’s National Bureau of Statistics and Information (ONEI), reports that 79% of Cuba’s elderly live in urban areas, while the remaining 21% live in rural areas. Women make up just over half of the island’s aging population, at 53%, with men accounting for 47%.
The phenomenon of aging generally occurs in societies that have achieved a high rate of human development. Among the elements that influence a country’s aging statistics are migration, fertility rate and mortality.
In the case of Cuba, life expectancy was 79.5 years in 2015, one of the highest in the Americas. However, the low level of fertility – 1.6 children per woman, closer to European figures – and a steady migration have contributed to raise the average age of the country, which in 2016 reached 40 years.
Percentage share of elderly population by province. Source: ONEI
The impact of the aging of the population reaches all spheres of society and has repercussions on the economy, because an important segment of society ceases to produce and has to be sustained by an ever smaller population or workers, notable in the Cuban case. Social services face an increase in the demand for services to the elderly and there is also a direct impact on the pension system.
Relative to population, Cuba’s oldest provinces are Villa Clara, Havana and Sancti Spíritus, in which the population over 60 is 23%, 21% and 21% of the population, respectively. The youngest province on the island is Guantanamo, followed closely by Artemis and the Isle of Youth.
Population in thousands over age 60, by province.
In the case of municipalities, the youngest are Yateras and Caimanera, both in Guantanamo province, with only 13% of the population over age 60. Those with the highest proportion of elderly are Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution municipality – the location of the headquarters of Cuba’s octogenarian rulers – where 27% of residents are over 60, followed by Placetas and Unión de Reyes, both with 25% elderly populations.
“According to estimates by the United Nations Population Division, Barbados and Cuba will be the most aged countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in the immediate perspective,” the ONEI reports.
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, which funded part of the study, notes in its research that in 2025, 25% of the Cuban population will be over 60, a figure that will reach 33% of the population by 2050.
The ‘Summer of Love’ began in January of 1967 with a major event in response to the recent ban on the use of LSD. (San Francisco Chronicle)
14ymedio, Ernesto Santana, Havana, 12 August 1917 — The year 1967 was crucial and socially and culturally very spirited, as demonstrated by the Summer of Love in San Francisco, California, which marked the beginning of the hippie movement in the United States. The epicenter was the Haight Ashbury, an urban area of two square miles which attracted thousands of young people from all over the country.
San Francisco was already a notable focus of the Beat Generation, whose greatest poet, Allen Ginsberg, was a sort of Golden Gate – a great bridge – between that generation and the new movement that made this great open city its mecca. The countercultural tsunami that began at that time, was felt throughout the world and its effects are still very difficult to measure objectively.
In fact, that Summer of Love began in January with the Human Be-in, a big event in response to the recent banning of the use of LSD, to which many artists and intellectuals who were leading the indefinable revolt were invited. The motto was “Leave your fears at the door and join the future.” continue reading
In June, the temperature rose still further with the Monterey Pop Festival. Meanwhile, hundred thousand young people from all over the United States and other countries descended on San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury neighborhood, giving shape to a ‘flower power’ garnished with psychedelic rock, free love, a lot of drugs and growing opposition to the Vietnam War. What was called the Age of Aquarius had begun.
In Monterey, several of the great contemporary musical leaders performed, including the The Who, The Animals, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company, among others. The song written to promote the festival was San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair), sung by Scott McKenzie and written by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, which became the hippie anthem. The San Francisco Chronicle baptized the event the ‘Summer of Love.’
The ‘hippie’ tide left a legacy that still lingers. (San Francisco Chronicle)
But that warm, colorful, lysergic and loving season ended with many shadows as well. The media abuse, caricaturization and manipulation – turning it into a tourist attraction – was such that in October, as a controversial metaphor, the “Burial of the Hippie” was performed. Protagonists of the Summer of Love would end up dispersed in hippie communes and farms in areas around San Francisco.
The famous murderer Charles Manson would also be one of the undertakers of that flowery adventure. His stay in Haight Ashbury and his hippie aspect led to the macabre homicides of his tribe casting a shadow over the countercultural movement which, above all, celebrated life, love and peace.
However, the hippie tide left a legacy that still lingers in ecological consciousness, in a wide range of music, in opposition to war, in overcoming sexual prejudices, in defense of freedom of expression and civil rights, and even at the root of the rules of the World Wide Web. And the memory remains that, at least for a brief time, a utopia, an alternative society could be experienced.
Cuba and its eternal summer (not of love)
In our country, rock, since its arrival in 1956, promised to have a long, fertile and enriching life. When rock ‘n’ roll came to Havana – mainly through films such as Blackboard Jungle and Rock Around the Clock – there were frenetic dance moves in the movie theaters.
In 1967, the Beatles were the gods of a mass secret cult despite the fierce prohibitions of ideological commissars who watched with alarm the proliferation of combos and the growing sympathy of young people for the music of the Anglo-Saxon cultural empire. The hippies were sick, decadent, petty bourgeois: the antithesis of the New Man.
If those hairy people loved rock, peace and freedom, young Cubans had to settle for the Nueva Trova, national dance music and military hymns and marches. They must prepare to hate and kill the enemy designated by the Maximum Leader and his club of solitary hearts; they must obey blindly. Any doubt, any different individual opinion was ideological diversionism. The Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP) were already trying to straighten out the deviants before the Summer of Love.
A documentary of those years, Youth, Rebellion, Revolution, directed by Enrique Pineda Barnet, shows a meeting between Cuban students and those of other countries and illustrates the violent, intolerant and alienated spirit that many young people assumed at the time. The opinions expressed in the movie seem pathetic now, although the old commissars wish they were still in vogue.
John Lennon statue in a Havana park. (Turismoencuba.com)
“A hippie is a loser… hippies represent a stage of youth rebellion, a step towards politicization. Not in general, but of a part of those people,” say some voices in the film. “It’s an apolitical youth, already integrated into a system that is much more pernicious than hippies. Hippies are an ornament,” says another. “The revolutionary is the best artist of the 20th century,” says one of the boys.
A Latin American youth pontificates: “Protest art is sold like they previously sold romantic art. Within the protest there are lines: the yellow line of protest without cause, then there is the green line of those who preach peace and then there is the red line of those who really protest. Among the many signs, one prays: “The light of the dawn is before us. We must rise and act. Mao Zedong.”
In Cuba, just in case, John Lennon, apostle of that counterculture, is sculpted seated, his mouth closed, a friendly pose: a bronze statue that allows hundreds of tourists to sit next to him every day.
The artist Luis Manuel Otero performs the third piece of the series ‘With all and for the sake of a few’ in front of the window of the Giorgio G. VIP store. (Facebook)
14ymedio, Havana, 12 August 2017 — The artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara has places the Manzana Kempinski Hotel in the center of its actions. This time he was photographed with an enormous sledge hammer poised a few inches from the window of the Giorgio G. VIP store in the gallery located on the ground floor of the exclusive accommodation.
The controversial creator explained to 14ymedio that the shop he chose “is super expensive” and inside “a garment or accessory costs 300 times the salary of a Cuban,” a reason that led him to select the place that, in addition, has “ties to the hotel.”
The artistic action is the third of the series With All and for the Sake of a Few that Otero has been engaged in since the inauguration of the Kempinski Manzana, managed by a Swiss company and the Gaviota Group which is controlled by the Cuban military. continue reading
The provocative image of the creator, sledge hammer in hand, was published on the social network Facebook and is entitled What Michelangelo Pistoletto did not think of, referring to the exhibition of the outstanding Italian artist in Havana. Among the most well-known pieces of this painter and art theorist, there is a performance art piece in which he smashes a mirror with a sledge hammer.
“Pistoletto’s work speaks of the deconstruction of the image, but my call is more to action than to representation. To destroy the real and not the representation of the image,” details the Cuban creator. Although he recognizes that it is only the “space of the threat” and that “the threat becomes a real event.”
“In the end it’s about that, how to do it without doing it, how to break it without breaking it,” he says.
Pistoletto alludes in his piece to “breaking the glass, breaking the institution” but the Cuban wants to pulverize that space “outside the institution, an allusion to the dichotomy of the world of art that does not go abroad and stays in its bubble, elitist, and it does not go out.”
The main idea of the series carried out by Otero is precisely to “break the border” that separates Cubans on the island from the exclusive accommodation, especially because of the low wages workers receive on the island.
Recently, the young artist held a raffle in which he sold 250 numbers at a price of 2 CUC each (about 17 months average salary in Cuba), to cover one night’s accommodation in the luxurious facility, the only five-star plus hotel in the country.
With 500 convertible pesos collected, the raffle winner checked into the Manzana Kempinski Hotel and shared with the organizers the images of his stay in the luxurious property.
In the first part of the series, the artist settled in the gallery of luxury shops on the ground floor and placed a sign at his feet asking, “Where is Mella?” with an image on his head of the communist leader Julio Antonio Mella, whose sculpture was removed after the restoration of the property.
For Otero, the building has become “the symbol of that visual rupture within Old Havana” where “the supposed capitalism that is entering the country” touches down.
The poster was part of a cleaning initiative organized by the José Martí Cultural Society. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havana, 11 August 2017 — Military boots and olive green trousers drawn on a poster have provoked great anger among communist militants who seem to have managed, through their complaints, to get the organizers of a sanitation campaign to remove the poster from the streets and sewers near Havana’s Malecon.
The initiative, with the motto “Clean the Coast,” was organized for this coming Sunday, 13 August, coinciding with the 91st anniversary of Fidel Castro’s birth. The date, coupled with the image, has been considered “disrespectful” to the deceased ex-president by some citizens, forcing, according to sources from one of the organizing entities, a cancellation of the day.
The cleaning activity was organized by the José Martí Cultural Society (SCJM) and the José Martí Youth Movement (MJM), but ultimately it has been replaced by other activities in the capital, said Reinaldo Perera, a member of the first of these associations. continue reading
“No, we are not going to undertake the activity that was initially planned in the area of the sidewalks on the Malecón to clean the sewers from the 23rd street to a little further down. It was only going to be a sanitary cleaning,” Perera points out.
However, another employee of the SCJM, who preferred to remain anonymous, told 14ymedio that “the poster was withdrawn and the cleaning canceled because several members of the Communist Party called to complain about the misuse of Fidel Castro’s image.”
“Showing that part of the body and particularly the military boots was not pleasing to many people,” according to the worker. “We were warned that we had to remove all the signs we had placed in the areas surrounding the Malecon.” Some, he adds, were also afraid that the poster would be interpreted as the announcement of a police operation.
Yussy, a 28-year-old transvestite, is among the frightened. “When we saw the poster everyone was scared because it said that on that day they would not let us go to the Malecón and the police would crack down on the jineteras (female hookers) and the pingueros (male hookers),” he says outside the Yara cinema, a few yards from the Habana Libre Hotel.
“It would not be the first or the last time they did something like this, but people did notice it because of the boots, an area of the body that is not shown that much; on posters they usually put the face and maybe also the shoulders,” reflects Yussy.
An employee of the cinema says that the poster caught people’s attention and tourists “were endlessly taking pictures… An elderly gentleman, very upset, asked if the management of the movie theater had put up the poster,” she said, and added that he was going to call whomever he had to to protest what he considered a lack of respect.
The Government has prepared numerous activities of remembrance on what would have been the former president’s birthday. Starting Wednesday, at the Expocuba fairgrounds, south of the capital, there are children’s games, displays of the operation of locally manufactured induction cookers, and a sale of hygiene products from the Suchel company.
Since the beginning of the month the Casa del Alba Cultural, located in Havana’s Vedado district, has had an photographic exposition titled Fidel: Intimate Portrait, with snapshots taken by his son Alejandro Castro.
Thousands of miles away, in Crimea, a eight-foot high monument was inaugurated with the image of Castro and the words: “Victory is perseverance.”
A driver repairing the classic American car he uses to provide shared fixed-route taxi service in Havana (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez, Havana, 7 August 2017 — The new measures to regulate the private sector are arriving drop by drop, with last Saturday’s announcement affecting taxi service, calling for the creation of piqueras – taxi stands/stops – fixed itineraries and prices of five pesos for each stretch of 8 kilometers.
According to the Deputy Minister of Transportation, Marta Oramas Rivero, this initiative is intended to “bring order” to the services offered by the almendrones – the classic American cars used in shared fixed-route taxi services. Saturday’s midday television news announced new regulations for private passenger transport in Havana.
“The price of the total route is the sum of these segments,” Oramas said, who also detailed that the new program could be voluntarily taken advantage of by the “private carriers who decide to do so.” However, the announcement has begun to generate suspicion in a sector that, in recent months, has experienced an increase in controls and requirements. continue reading
Last February, the government imposed prices on the 7,100 almendrones in the capital. From the time licenses were first issued for this service in the 1990s and up until now, rates have been governed by the law of supply and demand.
In response to the already imposed regulations, many drivers eliminated intermediate stops and opted only to carry passengers traveling their complete route, a situation that contributed to further complicating transportation in the country’s most populous city.
The new piqueras, which will come into operation “soon,” will be operated “by a state entity and not by a cooperative,” clarified Oramas.
Carriers, however, still lack the necessary information, since it has been explained that those who join the initiative must “establish contractual relations” with the state entity in charge but it is unknown who will manage the piqueras.
“After working for a decade in [state-owned] Taxis-Cuba, I decided to make a living with my own car,” says Walfrido, 38, a regular at Fraternity Park, where he picks up most of his passengers. “If the piqueras are going to be administered by this [new] company I won’t join because it is very inefficient.”
Walfrido fears that “they are going to start organizing the stops and end up telling you where the car has to go.” During his years as a taxi driver in a state entity he often had to “stop picking up customers to transport guests from the government, people who were going to some activity or officials,” he recalls.
Without an independent union to represent them, the chances of the drivers putting pressure on the Government are minimal. However, with the strength that they do have, they have the ability to shut down circulation in the cities.
The vice minister defines it as an advantage that those who are part of the experiment will be able to access the sale of fuel in the wholesale market at a different price, and will be able to purchase of “parts and pieces,” according to availability, to enable them to keep their cars running.
The promise to obtain gasoline or diesel at a lower cost than in state-owned service centers could be a good stimulus if it were not for the fact that many of the owners of these vehicles are now being supplied in the “informal” market. The diversion* of fuel from the state sector maintains an illegal stable supply at prices ranging from 10 to 15 CUP per liter (roughly equivalent to $1.50 to $2.25 US per gallon).
Some welcome the possibility of buying discounted parts. “If they are going to stock the stores I am interested, but as it is right now there is very little to reduce [prices on],” says Rodobaldo, a driver who serves the route to La Lisa. “The month it takes me to buy a light to replace a broken one, that month I am ruined,” he says. “So if they lower prices and have the supply,” it would be welcome.
Each botero – or “boatman,” as the drivers are called – will be able to decide which route to work and “will be guaranteed the exclusivity of the service” offered on that route, said Marta Oramas Rivero, so that “only those designated to work on it” will be able to serve it.
The cars associated with the experiment will be marked with stickers showing their itinerary and the piquera they operate from, while those who do not join the experiment will be identified with a mark that indicates that it is a ‘free’ taxi.
But there are still more questions than answers. “They have not clarified whether the partners [in the scheme] will pay reduced taxes, who will pay the salaries of state employees who will work at the piqueras or if the government will control the expense of that fuel at a lower price according to the kilometers traveled,” says Walfrido.
“This experiment is green, green. It is going to fail and end up affecting a lot of people,” he laments.
*Translator’s note: “Diversion from the state sector” means, in Cuba, all the myriad ways workers, managers and officials steal from the state. Without this “diversion” across a wide range of resources and across the entire country, the Cuban economy would come to a standstill.
Raymel Casamayor takes musical walks through Havana, sharing musical genres rarely heard these days. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 8 August 2017 — Every Sunday, Raymel Casamayor meets with several friends in Havana’s Maceo Park and, together, they go for a walk through the nearby streets with a speaker connected by bluetooth to a mobile phone through which all kinds of Cuban rhythms are heard, beyond the rumba and reggaetón that dominate the area.
His musical walks have become the ReConstrucción project, which has been running for more than five months and aims to make sounds that have been overtaken by other, more popular ones, accessible to the public. “People have not had access to other rhythms. They have not had a way to gather and save other music; every day a new one begins and the others are left behind,” he says.
Casamayor offers a break from the monotonous reggaetón. (14ymedio)
The idea occurred to Casamayor, a sound technician, when he started living in Central Havana and noticed that many people did the same thing but with another type of music. He says that they first lent him a speaker and he started going out into the street with a friend, playing other rhythms to see what would happen. continue reading
“We played Cuban music, Benny Moré, la Sonora Matancera … I really thought people were going to throw eggs at us, but it was the opposite,” he says.
Samba, chachacha, rumba, something from Nueva Trova, boleros and even a merengue are among the musical genres Casamayor plays. (14ymedio)
“Every Sunday we are in Maceo Park and when, sometimes, I have to travel to another province, I do it there,” he says.
In Santa Clara he has undertaken his musical walks through the neighborhood of El Condado and has also passed through Holguín, where he sampled his playlist in Gibara, during the celebration of the film festival last April.
Because of the heat, the members of ReConstrucción pass out hats among those who come to listen. (14ymedio)
Casamayor breaks with the monotonous reggaetón just before five in the afternoon on Belascoaín and San Lázaro streets and begins to link a samba, with a son, with a cha cha cha, a rumba, something of the New Trova, boleros and even a meringue
The heat of the implacable Cuban August has led him to change the start time of the show. “Before we left early, about four o’clock, but now with this sun we are leaving at five,” and he passes out hats among those who approach to listen to the soundtrack of Casamayor.
As they turn into Laguna Street, at the back of the Ameijeiras Hospital, some neighbors recognize Casamayor and stop to dance. (14ymedio)
Some of his listeners make requests. “Last Sunday a man asked me to copy a selection of songs on a flash memory and I bring it here, I give them the song they like and it’s good because later they remember it,” he says.
As they turn into Laguna Street, behind Ameijeiras Hospital, some neighbors recognize Casamayor and stop to dance. In a few minutes the block heats up, those who weren’t there come as they spread the word. In a small walker, a baby leaps to the rhythm of a son while his mother also wiggles her hips.
Some young people join the group to ask for music by Yasek Manzano. “We’ll have it next week,” the ReConstruction members promise. (14ymedio)
Ada Maria, 64, comes to a halt when she hears Van Van’s The Tired Ox, and invites her little granddaughter to dance while telling her that this was the music she danced to at parties with her friends when she was young.
“Kids and parents love that we do this because there are very few places to take the kids this summer,” she says.
Some young people join the group to ask for music by Yasek Manzano and the friends of ReConstrucción tell him that, although they do not have any pieces by the jazzman, they will look for it. “We’ll have it next week,” they promise.
Children playing in an wading pool to beat the heat. (14ymedio)
At the corner of Calle Escobar and Concordia, in a plastic wading pool at the edge of the street, several sweating children are cooling off. They receive Raymel with such excitement that he himself gets soaked, but the undamaged speaker continues to spread music to the four winds.
A private fruit and vegetable cart of the type that will no longer be licensed.
EFE/14ymedio, Havana/Miami, 8 August 2017 — The government said Monday that it will not extend “for a very long period” the recent discontinuance of new licenses to open private restaurants and rent rooms to tourists, a measure greeted with concern in the self-employment sector.
The Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Security, Marta Elena Feitó said yesterday, almost a week after the new measures to regulate self-employment were announced, that the brake on licenses will continue for as long as “the approval process of the legal norms that will underlie this policy.”
When the new measures were announced, which, according to the Government, seek to curb irregularities in the private sector, the government said that the suspension of licenses would be maintained until “the system was perfected,” an explanation that caused uncertainty in the autonomous sector, which now includes more than half a million workers. continue reading
“We are not talking about a very long period of time, we are not talking about years, we are talking about a normal process of work for the approval of these rules,” state television said.
Regarding the permanent suspension of five types of license, such as for traditional carters, the paper explained that this is a “continuity measure,” since no permits have been granted for these activities for more than a year.
Feitó insisted that people who already have a license for self-employment can continue to exercise it, while the permits that were already in process (about 1,600) will continue the process for their eventual issuance.
She also highlighted the grouping of related activities under a single license, as in the case of professions related to cosmetic services, and mentioned the creation of two new licenses: “bar service and entertainment” (hitherto included in the license for restaurants) and “baker-confectioner.”
On the other hand, the Ministry of Finance and Prices (MFP) of Cuba published a press release on the sudden closure of the Scenius cooperative, specializing in economic, accounting and tax advice. The Government attributes the drastic measure to repeated violations of the “approved social scope” without specifying the violations.
The government’s action came after the independent magazine El Toque reported the situation of Scenius workers, who say they will defend their work “through administrative and political channels.”
“This is an internal process between the Ministry of Finance and the Scenius Cooperative and it is the responsibility of the Board of Directors of the Cooperative to carry out the discussion process with the partners and to apply what is established in the legislation for such purposes,” said a note published in the official MFP portal.
The Ministry points out that the cooperative, which “is not the most important in the country,” nor the only cooperative that provides similar services, and exhorts its managers, “who have been disseminating information” — referring to the contacts they have had with the independent press — to act with “responsibility and transparency” with the members of the non-agricultural cooperative.
“As set out in Decree-Law No. 305 of 2012, the Cooperative is dissolved if it is in breach of the purposes and principles that underpinned its constitution, and this is within the power of the body that approved it,” the official statement said.
Alfonso Larrea Barroso, a lawyer by profession and commercial director of the cooperative, told 14ymedio that they have hired a lawyer to appeal the decision of the Ministry of Finance and Prices.
Larrea regretted not only the end of the project but the fact that more than 320 people will be out of work after the closure. In Cuba there are 431 cooperatives of this type, a type of organization that the rigid system of socialist planning of the island, set up along Soviet lines, authorized to boost the economy. In his recent speech in front of the National Assembly, Cuban President Raúl Castro attacked this form of management.
“We decided to set up the cooperatives, we tried with some and immediately we launched ourselves to set up dozens,” the ruler added.
The Scenius cooperative, created in 2014, was responsible for evaluating the quality of the accounting records of several state-owned companies and was involved in the preparation and execution of economic plans, the execution of investment budgets and the management of collections or payments.
The outskirts of Baracoa after the passage of Hurricane Matthew. (EFE)
EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 8 August 2017 – Guantanamo builders are being trained in constructing ceramic brick vaults, a technique typical of Mexico, within a project to accelerate the completion of hundreds of houses affected by Hurricane Matthew, as was published this Tuesday in the island’s official media.
The construction solution, which is a part of an initiative brought to Cuba by the United Nations Development Program, does not require formwork, nor does it need steel or concrete, so it is cheaper than sheet roofing, the most common in Cuba.
The extension of this technique, applied for more than 200 years in Mexican states such as Jalisco, Michoacán, Querétaro and Oaxaca, could solve the “omnipresent problem” of the shortage of materials to build plate roofs “with the use of local resources, according to the state newspaper Granma. continue reading
In the eastern province — the most affected by the passage of the intense hurricane Matthew on 4 October 2016 — “the producers of ceramic bricks abound and there is a state industry, which together with the abundant availability of the main raw material (clay) should facilitate the extension of this practice,” the newspaper says.
Cuban masons, architects and engineers are being trained by Ramón Aguirre Morales, director of the Institute of Mexican Vaults and Regional Technologies.
Aguirre Morales explained that the ceramic brick domes are built in Mexican territories where “seismic activity is frequent and the vaults have not collapsed, because they are strong and safe constructions”
The bricks used are five centimeters wide, ten high and twenty long, weighing approximately 1.5 kilograms, smaller than those usually produced in the Cuban province.
Their smaller size and weight favors the building of arches and the support of one brick with another, said the Mexican expert.
Guantánamo was the province most affected by Hurricane Matthew, a category 4 on the 1-to-5 Saffir-Simpson scale, and the third most devastating in the history of the Island, where it caused material damages for 97.2 million dollars of damage, without loss of human lives.
The storm affected 46,706 homes, of which 8,312 were collapsed completely (17.8% of the total homes), according to official data.
Baracoa, the first Cuban town founded by the Spanish, was the place that received the direct attacks of Matthew and 90% of the 900 buildings of its historical center were partially or totally damaged.
14ymedio, Mario Penton, Miami, 3 August 2017 — Fewer than 42,000 Cubans have emigrated since 2013 according to official statistics published in Havana. However, US officials say they have welcomed more than 141,528 Cubans during the same period. The enormous discrepancy between these data is explained by the lack of transparency of the Cuban Government, which conceals the magnitude of migratory movements by counting them in the general category of citizens traveling abroad.
“Cubans do not migrate in great numbers, but they travel more and more,” said Ernesto Soberón Guzman, an official with the Foreign Ministry. In 2016, 723,844 Cubans went abroad, according to the National Bureau of Statistics and Information (ONEI). continue reading
Cuban Immigration. Sources: Cuban government and US Homeland Security. Orange line: Cuban emigrants admitted to the United States (US figures). Grey line: Cuban emigrants (Cuban figures)
If tens of thousands of Cubans who left the country do not appear as emigrants, it is because many of them return before the end of the two-year term that marks the end of their rights as residents on the island, explains Cuban sociologist Elaine Acosta.
“Others have decided to undertake the process known as repatriation, which allows them to regain their residence in Cuba and stay abroad,” adds Acosta.
Cuban law considers that those who remain abroad “continuously for a term longer than 24 months and without the appropriate authorization,” to no longer be citizens.
Those repatriated are counted in the official statistics as resident in the country, although in reality they live abroad. The same thing happens with those who return before the expiration of the 24-month period of a stay abroad.
This management of the figures shows a sudden decrease in emigration. Prior to the 2013 reform, more than 45,000 people left, but in 2014, for the first time in over half a century, ONEI says that more people returned to Cuba than left.
Number of trips abroad by Cubans (Source, Cuban government)
These figures contradict the figures published by the United States, which registered the entry of 141,528 immigrants from Cuba since 2013, not including rafters, while the ONEI only reported a general total of 41,935 émigrés during the same four years.
In addition, the figures from Havana include all Cubans who leave the country permanently, whatever their destination. Ecuador, which was also a popular destination for Cuban emigration, received 33,700 people from the island since 2013. And in the same period Spain registered more than 15,000 new residents who were born in Cuba. That is, the sum of Cuban immigrants in Ecuador and Spain, not including the US, which is the primary destination of Cubans, exceeds the total number of migrants counted by Cuba’s ONEI.
Residents in Spain born in Cuba according to the National Institute of Statistics. Historical series since 2010. (INE)
Elaine Acosta, the sociologist, believes that both segments (the emigrants who maintain their Cuban residence and the returnees) have significantly increased the number of trips abroad from the island, as in the last five years almost half a million have gone abroad.
On the other hand, returnees were only about 14,000, according to the ONEI. This category implies that the citizen recovers his or her rights on the island, among which include participating in the electoral process, receiving free care in the national health system, being able to own property, and the coveted permit to pay import duties once a year in Cuban pesos (CUP) – versus in Cuban convertible pesos (CUC), worth 25 times more.
“The quality of migration statistics leaves much to be desired because they respond to an ideology and there are no studies to break down the figures,” explains the sociologist, who regrets that the ONEI figures do not say how many Cubans who travel abroad have another nationality or residence. Another shortcoming noted by the specialist is that only the number of departures is counted, not the number of individuals who have traveled abroad.
For the sociologist, based in Miami, the national press uses the official figures to “depoliticize” the causes of the exodus. “This is an instrumental use of emigration to reinforce the thesis of economic migration and hide the reality that people are living,” he adds.
Osmanis Gálvez, 42, who emigrated to the United States three years ago, says he returns to the island at least once a year. He was recently repatriated after paying 100 CUC in an office of the Ministry of the Interior.
“I will not go to live in Cuba, but this is a way to inherit my mother’s house and bring her the products she needs without having to pay for them in dollars at Havana customs,” he says.
Frank, a Cuban who has resided in Miami for two years, did not need to be repatriated because on obtaining his permanent residence in the United States, he immediately traveled to Cuba and was able to “enter” before the two-year term expired. Since then he has been traveling once a week to Cuba as a “mule”to carry products to supply the island’s growing black market.
Although travel is one of the most common desires among Cubans, it remains the preserve of those who maintain work and residence outside national borders or have relatives abroad to finance the escape, since on the island the average official monthly salary isn’t even $30, and a plane ticket to Miami costs almost a year’s salary.
The indictment also demands the seizure of Karina Gálvez’s house. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Havana, 5 August 2017 — Economist Karina Gálvez received the prosecution’s petition on Saturday for the alleged crime of “tax evasion.” According to this petition, the member of the Center for Coexistence Studies (CEC) could be sentenced to three years of house arrest and confiscation of her home, she informed 14ymedio.
“A messenger from the Tribunal, on a motorcycle, came to my mother’s house to give me a document that I had to sign as received,” she says. “The paper, sent by the Municipal Court of Pinar del Rio, details that the prosecutor has arrived at provisional accusations.”
The prosecution is asking for “three years of deprivation of liberty plus the same period of limitation of freedom.” This latter means a person cannot travel abroad, must inform the authorities when leaving the province, and is obliged to have work. continue reading
The accusation also requires the forfeiture of the house that Gálvez acquired after the flexibilizations for the purchase and sale of houses promoted by the Government of Raúl Castro at the end of 2011.
In the next five business days, her lawyer will present a plea to ask for acquittal or a lower penalty. “Starting with this communication, my lawyer will have access for the first time to the case file,” says the economist.
However, neither the lawyer nor the defendant has been informed of the date of the oral hearing.
In January, Galvez was arrested and taken to the headquarters of the State Security where she spent six days under arrest. The police searched her home and since then the house has been under investigation and is sealed, which prevents access for the owner or her family.
Other members of the Convivencia magazine have been cited by the police and have received warnings, including the director of the publication, Dagoberto Valdés, who last October was told by an official that “from today” his life will be “very difficult.”
Amid this wave of pressure, members of the CEC, which organizes training courses for citizens and civil society, issued a declaration of commitment to their work in the island. “We are not leaving Cuba, we are not leaving the Church and we will continue working for the country.”
14ymedio (With agency information), Havana, 16 August 2017 – The effect of the Venezuelan crisis on the Cuban economy is greater than expected, judging by the latest data from the National Statistics Office (ONE) that reveals a 70% fall in trade between the two countries in only two years.
