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That effort led him to knock on many doors and more than a few saw him as a provocateur. He wanted to show the national journalistic tradition that includes figures like Félix Varela and José Martí, a tradition that was broken when independent publications “were closed and then prohibited” and all that was left “in circulation were those belonging to the State.”

The ISA leadership did not like this character of inclusiveness. Hernández-Güero recalls that a month before the discussion of his thesis the dean summoned him along with his tutor, critic and curator Mailyn Machado, to inform him that the project had not been approved. He had only two options: to take the state test or to present a compendium of his artistic work.

He opted for the second choice and happened on the book project. On the day of the presentation, a convenient power outage occurred at ISA and his thesis “never had a real conclusion” even though he finished with the maximum of qualifications.

Hernández-Güero, born in 1983, is aware that much of his research and his artistic production “has a critical sense and a high socio-political content, which makes official institutions or those who lead them uncomfortable.”

The artist established residence in Venezuela and he travels frequently to Cuba, where he recently participated in a show at the Chaplin Cinema under the title Contamination, a part of the Festival of Young Filmmakers.

However, his stay outside Cuba has not freed him from censorship because he seeks to “annoy, disturb the viewer, not only with the art, but in the face of reality that is lived and thought.” Something that he knows “is often not welcome institutionally.”

Three years ago, his work At Fault, with a 23-foot bent over flagpole and the Venezuelan flag “hoisted” on the ground, was displayed in Ciudad Banesco during the FIA ​​Youth Fair in Caracas. The piece was installed before the opening and organizers covered the flag with a black bag. The result resembled a covered corpse.

The piece caused so much turmoil in the social networks that finally they removed the flag and left only the bent over flagpole. “From that moment the work changed,” clarifies the artist and now the display of the work includes some of the tweets published during the process and “documentation of how they dismantled [the fabric].”

The whole media phenomenon and the condemnation was integrated into the work. Because the censorship, in the words of the artist, “is a boomerang that tries to hit who it is thrown at, but usually ends up hitting the thrower.”

He has had to deal with similar situations on several occasions and believes that censorship is an inseparable companion “when the work has as its research subject the great social taboos such as politics, power, religion, sexuality, pornography, among others.”

Hernandez-Güero’s work constantly questions power. Not only political power, but also “the symbolic power of visual images and conventions that are deposited in the social imaginary as indestructible, immovable or untouchable truths,” he explains.

In these circumstances he is always exposed to reprimands or warnings that end up “completing the work or expanding it to another plane,” often one unsuspected by the artist himself.

The most recent of his works takes the name Historical Coincidences and mixes, in the same image, portraits of great personalities who have assumed similar postures and attitudes before the camera, regardless of time, place or context.

Most are premeditated appearances, but in other cases it is an instant captured without any pose. His intention is to “demystify these figures” and to question “the perception of them in the historical and social imaginary.” The elaboration is simple: superimpose one face on another, which gives way to new faces and “other possible expressions, but unrecognizable, unknown by all.”

They are works with a great political content and, at the end of last year, five of the pieces of that series received prizes in the October Young Salon, at the Valencia Museum of Art.

Hernandez-Guerero does not prefer one medium over another. As for the new technologies, he believes that knowing them previously offers more possibilities to “know their potential.” Because the greater an artist’s arsenal, the more possibilities he will have to “navigate within the creation.”

In Central America, Nicaragua functions as the gateway for the voracious superpower. Daniel Ortega has about 50 combat tanks sent by Moscow and his territory serves as a site for Russian military advisers. The corrupt system of the Sandinistas creates a favorable scenario for the former KGB official’s desire for expansion.

Russia has just lifted Raul Castro out of the quagmire after Caracas cut oil shipments

However, Havana remains Russia’s main ally on this side of the world. The suspicion that arose between the two countries, after the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the coming to power of Boris Yeltsin, has been dissipating. With Putin in command, something of the USSR has been reborn and diplomatic ties are tightening again.

In the neighborhood of Miramar, west of the Cuban capital, the Russian embassy seems to have become more prominent in the last five years. Shaped like a sword plunged into the city’s heart, the building is jokingly called “the control tower,” from where the stern stepmother scrutinizes everything that occurs in her former and yearned-for domain.

Russia has just lifted Raul Castro out of the quagmire after Caracas cut oil shipments. In the years of the idyll with Chávez, Cuba received about 100,000 barrels a day of Venezuelan crude, but in recent months that amount has been reduced by more than 40%. The government was forced to cut fuel delivery to state-owned vehicles and restrict the sale of premium or specialty gasoline.

The Russian oil company Rosneft has come to Raul Castro’s aid and pledged to provide the island with 250,000 tonnes of oil and diesel, some 2 million barrels. The rescue operation leaves a trail of doubts about how the Plaza of the Revolution will pay Moscow, amid the country’s lack of liquidity and the recession.

Shaped like a sword plunged into the city’s heart, the Russian embassy is jokingly called “the control tower”

Added to the alarming signs is the fact that in recent days the son of the Cuban president, Colonel Alejandro Castro Espín, met with the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Pátrushev, to address the cooperation between both nations in the area of computer security. In 2014, in Moscow, the dauphin signed a memorandum of cooperation in the area of ​​intelligence.

The reunion between the old allies has been sealed with a symbolic gesture. Russia is taking care of the repair of the dome of the Capitol of Havana, which it will cover with natural stone, new bronze plates, and gold leaf that will shine under the tropical sun. A defiant message addressed directly to Washington, the city where the near twin of the imposing Cuban building stands.

As the Russian advance unfolds in various parts of Latin America, Donald Trump looks the other way. Enveloped in the scandal of possible Putin interference in the elections that favored his arrival in the White House, the tycoon is more interested in the Middle East or in erecting a border wall with Mexico than in approaching that region more distant from the Rio Grande.

As the Russian advance unfolds in various parts of Latin America, Donald Trump looks the other way

His indifference is evident not only in his words. The US president has just proposed substantial budget cuts to the assistance provided to all of the continent, a posture that contrasts with the ground won by the Kremlin in the economic and military sphere, propping up authoritarian and decadent regimes. The Cold War is reborn in Latin America.

But this time Moscow has returned without that mask with which it hid its geopolitical longings adorned with phrases such as “support to the proletarians of the world” or “disinterested development aid to the poorest nations.”

Now it displays a cruder and more direct diplomacy. It is not willing to subsidize but intends to buy. It no longer hides under an ideological cloak, but exhibits that crude pragmatism that oozes the capitalism that the Communists ended up adopting.

If once it lost positions and had to take refuge — inside its own pride — to lick its wounds, now Russia wants to step up the pace and regain lost ground in Latin America. It knows it has allies in the region willing to skip all ethical and patriotic considerations to help it confront the United States. And it knows it must hurry, because many of these compadres are becoming more unpresentable every day.

Its cronies on this side need a Moscow that provides them with armaments and watches their backs in international organizations. They see it as a burly bear ready to show it teeth to Washington as often as needed. In exchange, they grant it positions in their nations, intelligence information and the calculated fidelity of those who expect much in return. They dream of making Russia “great again.”

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Editorial Note: The original text in Spanish was published this Saturday May 27 in the Spanish newspaper El País.

Beyond the conspiracy theories, officialdom has managed the informal market as trap for the nonconforming, a framework for gathering information about the deep Cuba, an element of blackmail against its citizens and a lure to hunt down political opponents.

Although it is a practice that has been engaged in for many years, in recent months there has been an increasing tendency to accuse activists of alleged economic infractions

The Plaza of the Revolution has turned its bad economic management into another way of keeping society in its fist. It knows that families will do everything possible to put food on the table and will turn to the underground networks to buy everything from their children’s shoes to the dollars that at the official currency exchanges are taxed at 10%.

In many cases it is just about waiting, like the spider who knows that sooner or later the little insect will fall into its sticky threads. State Security only has to wait for a dissident to buy coffee “under the table” or to dare to have the bathroom retiled by an unlicensed tile setter.

Although it is a practice that has been engaged in for many years, in recent months there has been an increased tendency to accuse activists of alleged economic infractions. They are charged with crimes that ordinary Cubans commit every day under the patronizing eyes of the police and with the complicity of officials or state administrators. However, in the case of an opponent, the law has the capacity to be narrower, more rigid and more strictly observed.

In all international forums, Raúl Castro’s government boasts of not having political prisoners and it supports this argument by severely, but politically selectively, criminalizing such trivial matters as keeping four sacks of cement or a few gallons of fuel at home, without being able to show the papers that prove they were purchased in state stores.

Journalist Henry Constantin is accused of “usurpation of legal capacity” for working as a reporter in an independent publication, but dozens of ex-military are appointed managers of tourist facilities without ever having studied hotel management or business management. None of them have been reprimanded for serving in a position for which they are not formally qualified.

The lesson is that no matter what degree of economic illegality you commit, keep your mouth shut and don’t criticize the government

Karina Gálvez, a member of the Coexistence Studies Center, is being prosecuted for alleged “tax evasion” during the purchase of her home. However, before the new tax imposed on real estate transactions came into force, thousands of Cubans thronged the notaries to complete their paperwork under the previous tax laws, far removed from the real estate market rates. Not one was sanctioned.

Eliécer Ávila, leader of the Somos+ Movement, had his home broken into in a police raid and is charged with the offense of “illicit economic activity.” His “crime”: possessing a laptop, rewritable discs and several disposable razors. Unlike those thriving artists who import the latest iMac from the market or “Daddy’s kids” – children of the regime’s leaders – who have a satellite dish to watch Miami television, the activist committed the offense of saying he wants to help change his country.

The lesson is that no matter what degree of economic illegality you commit, keep your mouth shut and don’t criticize the government. It is not the same to buy beef in the informal market when you pretend ideological fealty to the regime, than it is to do the same when you belong to an opposition movement.

The black bag can become a wall, a noose, a hidden trap for those who do not applaud.