Cuban Military Contractor and a French Company to Stabilize the Hotel Saratoga

The Hotel Saratoga will be stabilized while several nearby buildings will be demolished. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 6 December 2022 — Seven months ago, on the morning of May 6, an explosion rocked central Havana, destroying the Saratoga Hotel. It took the lives of 47 people, most of them hotel employees who were finalizing preparations for its reopening, which had been scheduled for May 10. Several neighbors and passersby were also among those killed.

While not as serious, the damage was anything but minor for those who lost their homes, especially the residents of the adjoining building, or their vehicles, which were parked on the adjoining streets. For them, the ongoing wait seems eternal.

“They haven’t yet settled on a plan for what they’re going to do with the Saratoga. They’re not going to completely demolish it, just what’s necessary to stabilize the structure. The estimated time is eight to ten months,” one of the area residents tells 14ymedio.

One resident was told by an attorney that he will not receive any compensation until it is determined who is responsible, something that does not seem to be a pressing issue for authorities. “They’re not saying anything. The culprit and the executioner are one and the same,” he says. continue reading

The source, who prefers to remain anonymous, states that he and other victims have not been told of any third-party insurance that would compensate them for their losses. He does point out, however, that the hotel was covered by an insurer whose name he does not know but who will be the one on the hook for repairs.

“The demolition, stabilization and construction of the buildings’ concrete structures will be carried out by Almest (a real estate company operated the Cuban Armed Forces) and the Military Construction Union (UCM), together with a French company,” he explained. Although it is not yet known which company that might be, the French firm Bouygues has previously partnered with the state to build twenty-two luxury hotels on the island, including the Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski, which faces Central Park in Old Havana.

According to the source, neighbors hope that Almest and UCM will be the ones to carry out the project from start to finish because, it is felt, “they have the best materials, technology and technical staff.” The hotel’s structure is linked to that of 609 Prado — the neighboring property, which suffered extensive damage — and the Baptist church. The three must work together, although the government’s plan is to restore the Saratoga and demolish the two others.

“Diaz-Canel said from the beginning that these buildings were going to share the same fate, though they won’t all be completely demolished. They say that they’re going to redo them, not the same as before in terms of design, but that their previous sizes — the square meters of each apartment — will be respected” he adds.

For the time being, the architectural design of the new buildings will be handled by Havana City Design with funds provided by the government and the Ministry of Planning and Housing. “This is all we know. They’re not even saying what will happen later, although they mention that the decision to tear down 609 Prado and the church might be in the hands of the Ministry of Construction.”

As for the residents, the source says  that they will most likely continue to be temporarily housed at Villa Panamericana. “I estimate this will take four or five years, if they’re lucky,” he admits.

One of the residents, Barbara Tenreyro, regularly posts monthly recollections of the event on social media. On November 6, the six-month anniversary of the explosion, she once again painfully described what she lost that day.

“It’s been four months but it feels like yesterday,” she writes. “That’s when, amidst all the pain of what we lost, we began fighting to have our houses rebuilt, to be heard, for our problem to be given priority in the midst of so much chaos. Because of the delay, many of our neighbors will not be able to enjoy their newly remodeled homes. For them, it will be as though they died the same day as the deadly incident.  For those of us who remain, we hold in our hearts the hope that we’ll be able to return to our homes, to restart our lives. We are eternally grateful to those whose worked and sacrificed to see that we received donations and to everyone who expressed their support during this time.”

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

The Fight Against the ‘Coleros’ is Replaced by New Controls in Havana Food Stores

Residents of Luyanó were complaining that the authorities are turning a blind eye to irregularities between employees and coleros. (14ymedio)

14ymedio biggerThe “Operation to Fight Coleros*,” (LCC) which began in Havana in August 2020, is coming to an end. The innumerable cases of corruption linked to these groups, called to organize the waiting lines outside stores, have forced a change in the sales policy in the capital that will hand over control to store personnel, so there are already those who predict that illicit enrichment will simply change hands.

The Havana Government abruptly made the announcement of this imminent change this Wednesday, which begins to be applied today in the municipalities of Centro Habana, La Habana Vieja, Regla, Cotorro and Arroyo Naranjo, although it will also be extended to the rest at a later date.

Each family nucleus will be able to purchase the ‘released’ products — that is the unrationed ones — controlled in the TRD and Caribe stores, through a ticket system that will include the name of the establishment, the number of the store and the nucleus, the number of consumers and a consecutive number. continue reading

“Everyone will know the day and place they’ll be assigned to buy, so as to avoid the exhausting lines and individuals who take advantage of the current situation to act illegally and enrich themselves”

“Everyone will know what day and location they have been assigned, so as to avoid the exhausting lines and individuals who take advantage of the current situation to act illegally and enrich themselves,” states the Capital’s Government.

There will be five defined ‘controlled’ products for sale: chicken, chopped meat, sausage, oil, and detergent. Regarding sales cycles, families of up to eight people will be allotted 5 kilos of chicken, two bottles of oil, four tubes of chopped meat, one kilo of detergent and two kilos of sausages. The figure doubles for family nucleus of nine to 16 members and triples from 17 on.

There will be extended business hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 10 am to 7 pm, for those who cannot go during normal business hours for work reasons. Sundays are fixed for those who cannot go shopping on their turn or to pick up products that “due to a greater problem” made it impossible to guarantee the day when they were supposed to buy them.” The latter is such a common situation that it threatens to overwhelm Sundays. Another of the weaknesses of the system is the organization outside the stores, which will be done “in order of arrival,” that is, a new lie, although a priori on a smaller scale.

The day of purchase that corresponds to each family nucleus will be set by the order of the consecutive number and depending on the daily capacity of the establishment, which must clearly display at the entrance those numbers of each item that are bought each day and the number that is intended for sale to those who could not attend on the scheduled day. The information will also be offered to citizens through the application, and will contain the distribution cycles and the order, by days, of stores and consumers.

The situation will be in the hands of “a person who enjoys prestige and authority in the community to exercise control of the number of products that the establishment receives daily”

 n any case, the situation will be in the hands of “a person who enjoys prestige and authority in the community to exercise control over the number of products the establishment receives daily, with the aim at defining the number of families that can purchase available products that day.” The chosen one, whose merits are not a guarantee of his power to resist bribery, must review the stocks, define and inform the nuclei what they can purchase that day, as well as take stock at the end of the fulfillment of what was planned.

In the case of the “vulnerable,” who will be defined by the municipal governments and will have a document that accredits them as such, they can buy for themselves or through someone who can help them by presenting their identity card and the certificate.

The article released by the Government to announce to the population what changes are being made contains a series of measures that must be taken prior to the establishment of the new system, which makes it doubtful that it can enter into force immediately.

Among the measures is preparing, at a seminar, the personnel who will have control of the ration books and those in charge of supervising the inventory of products. In addition, there is talk of “setting up a meeting with the administrators or managers” to detail the new format and work on a program that communicates the strategy to the population, as well as a pilot test of the TeToca (it’s your turn) and Ticket applications, which will facilitate the organization.

The authorities claim to have made these decisions after verifying that there were “difficulties in the functioning of the municipal groups” and “insufficient confrontation with the ‘coleros’, resellers and hoarders”

The authorities claim to have made these decisions after verifying that there were “difficulties in the operation of municipal groups” and “insufficient confrontation with the coleros, resellers and hoarders” despite the fact that the authorities have “faced” 1,352 so far this year.  Especially significant is the allusion to the “repeated statements of opinion of the population on the functioning of the LCC (Fight Against Coleros) groups, conditioned by irregularities.”

The reaction to the news, disseminated in the official media, has been mostly positive, including requests that it be extended to other provinces soon, and celebrating the end of the “abuse” and “mistreatment” attributed to LCC groups, although there have been demands made about distribution of products by the store or doubts about the new system that seems hasty at the very least.

Although the character of the LCC group has been controversial from the beginning, the death of an elderly man on November 1 in a line at the store on Melones street in Luyanó uncovered a network of corruption which the authorities had no choice but to stop and that may have been the trigger. The siege lasted only a few days, because shortly after the incident, neighbors already warned of the return of the coleros who, in collusion with the LCC, left the shops bare, on this occasion even “renting” ration books.

*Translator’s note: A line or queue in Cuba is called a ’cola’ (literally ’tail) and ‘coleros‘ are people who others pay to hold their place in line, lines that can be hours, or even days, long.

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

Political Prisoners Take Advantage of ‘Passes’ to Escape Cuba as Rafters

In Cuba, 188 adult protesters were charged with sedition, of which 174 are serving an average of 10 years in prison. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 9 December 2022 — With 24 new arrests this November, the Cuban government keeps a total of 1,034 political prisoners incarcerated, according to what Prisoners Defenders (PD) denounced this Friday. In its latest monthly report, the Madrid-based organization exposed the “inhuman repression” that “dominates Cuba since 11 July 2021 (11J).”

PD clarified that thousands of people are systematically persecuted and harassed on the Island, and that the accusations – and subsequent imprisonment – ​​of activists, independent journalists and protesters have not stopped since the massive protests of 2021.

“The general population is fleeing en masse from the repression,” says the report, which reports that many of the prisoners released by the regime — and even several of those who have left briefly “on passes” — take the opportunity to escape the country by throwing themselves into the sea aboard precarious rafts.

Those who have not been able to get out of prison “are tortured,” laments PD, which presented a report on 101 random cases of mistreated prisoners on the island before the Committee Against Torture. In addition, last June they demonstrated before the Committee of the Rights of the Child that Cuban minors are not safe from government repression. continue reading

The organization points out the upward trend in the number of political prisoners, from the 805 registered in December 2021 to 1,034. (PD)

Through a graph, the organization points out the upward trend in the number of political prisoners, from the 805 registered in December 2021 to the 1,034 recorded on November 30 of this year. The total number of new prisoners listed up to that date is 576.

The 24 inmates reported in November were imprisoned throughout the national territory. That same month, 17 citizens left the list, after full completion of their sentences, in most cases, and the rest left the country through illegal means.

In its report on the 1,034 Cuban prisoners, PD details that, of these, 29 are boys and 5 girls, for a total of 34 minors serving sentences (27) or going through criminal proceedings (7). Although the Government claims to have detained them in “comprehensive training schools,” the minors are in common penitentiary centers, with appalling living conditions and locked up in cells.

In addition, PD provides the information that an average of 150 children under the age of 16 are imprisoned on the Island for various reasons every twelve months. Not to mention the 260 adolescents aged 16 and 17 who, according to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the regime sends in the same period of time to conventional prisons.

Regarding minors prosecuted for the crime of sedition, the average sentence is 5 years, denounces PD, which constitutes an increase in the sentence requested by the Prosecutor for the same crime before the July 2021 protests.

Likewise, 188 adult protesters were charged with sedition, of which 174 are serving an average of 10 years in prison. Up to 30 years of imprisonment was the sentence for 792 inmates. As if that were not enough, the sentences of 17 citizens exceed 30 years of imprisonment and several of them suffer life imprisonment.

The situation of women and members of LGBTI+ collectives is no more optimistic. Trans women have been confined in prisons for men, in total disrespect for sexual diversity. PD also exposes that, while these citizens were imprisoned, a sector of Cubans applauded the new Family Code, which “eliminated the parental authority of Cuban fathers and mothers [so that the government] can snatch from their families the children of the protesters or those disaffected with the regime,” says the organization.

PD concludes that in Cuba there are 751 ’convicted’ of conscience, 253 ’condemned ’of conscience and another 30 inmates of difficult classification. In addition, the organization indicates the existence of another 11,000 civilians who suffer “pre-criminal sentences,” classified by the regime with people “with a tendency to commit crimes in the future,” who were sentenced to between 1 and 4 years in prison “without [any] crime: neither investigated, nor happened, nor committed, nor attempted.”

The new Penal Code, in force since December 1, predicts new sentences and an increase in the number of political prisoners before the end of the year, says PD, because “the mere report by the police authorities indicating ’inappropriate conduct’ allows, without any crime, summary imprisonment year after year for immediate decisions.”

An aggravating factor in the ethical unacceptability of the Cuban government is, for PD, the fact that its leaders rub shoulders with Russian President Vladimir Putin and congratulate him on his invasion of Ukraine, when it is clear the invasion has “the condemnation of most countries of the world.” Another indicator is the indecency of the island’s diplomacy, which makes a special effort to collect votes of support, in international organizations, for the Russian and Iranian dictatorships.

The international position of Cuba, affirms the text, is that of “enemy of Europe and of the freedom of the world,” but it points out that groups from the European Left have been accomplices of the “pantomime” that Cuba has been carrying out since 1959 at the international level.

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

Tension in the Debate on the Book ‘Cuban Privilege’, But No Blood Was Spilled

Gutiérrez-Boronat pointed out that he had come to defend “the truth of the Cuban struggle” and was pleased that the professor was willing to discuss her premises and receive criticism. (Collage) 

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 10 DecemberThe controversial book Cuban Privilege (Cambridge University Press, 2022) – about US immigration policies towards Cuba – by American academic Susan Eckstein, was presented this Friday at Florida International University (FIU). The event included comments from the author and journalist Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat and the moderation of Jorge Duany, director of the Cuban Research Institute of the FIU.

The event, Duany said, “has attracted considerable interest from the community and the media.” The professor considered it necessary to clarify the role of the FIU in organizing events of this type, which consists of “dissemination of knowledge about Cuba and its diaspora,” in addition to creating a “space for the open discussion of ideas in a safe and respectful way.”

As the author of a Cuban-themed book, the FIU considered that Eckstein – despite the fact that her opinions could be “controversial” – was capable of motivating a debate on a controversial aspect of Cuban reality.

He also pointed out that, in the past, the FIU has invited numerous dissidents and organizations opposed to the Cuban government. However, he clarified, in none of the cases, should the opinions of the speakers be considered as official points of view of the institution or its faculty.

He added that the institution expected the audience to behave with “decency” and ensure “civilized discussion.”

Professor Susan Eckstein had twenty minutes to present the main ideas of her book. She said “I had studied the Cuban issue for quite some time,” as well as migratory movements from the Island to the US. “My text is completely focused on US policies,” she insisted, although that also implies explaining the causes and consequences of these policies and, of course, defining Cuban-American influence in Miami. continue reading

Eckstein concentrated on providing data on the measures implemented by different US presidents – although regulated by Congress – starting in 1959 and describing their effect on the growing Cuban immigration in his country.

One of the most controversial ideas mentioned by Eckstein was the questioning of the status of “refugees in the US” of Cuban migrants. According to the academic, the US government doubted, at least since 1980 – with the Administration of President Jimmy Carter – that Cubans could fit into a legal situation of political asylum.

This leads, Eckstein suggests, to a systematic review of migration policies and the benefits received by Cubans, which, as her book states, other migrants have not enjoyed. Those benefits were “an instrument of US foreign policy during the Cold War,” she concluded.

As of today, Eckstein calculated, “there are at least ten Cuban-Americans in Congress,” for which the community should be “proud,” she said, to a standing ovation from the public.

However, she regretted, while Cubans can quickly request asylum, other Latin American migrants cannot claim this reason to reside permanently in the US. Due to time constraints, the academic was unable to finish her argument.

The writer and journalist Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, charged with the academic counterpoint with Eckstein, indicated that he came to defend “the truth of the Cuban struggle.” He was pleased that the professor was willing to discuss her premises and receive criticism, and announced that he would comment on what, in his opinion, is the essential postulate of the book: “Cubans have been considered as refugees despite the fact that what is at risk is not your life, it’s your lifestyle.”

Gutiérrez-Boronat said that the book was written from an “ideological prejudice” of the author. This bias jeopardizes the credibility of Eckstein’s arguments, he opined.

The Cuban listed the misconceptions on which Eckstein bases her arguments, such as the idea that the Cuban regime is based on “altruistic values” or that it is not a totalitarian government. He pointed out the omissions, in the text, of the Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP) camps, the surveillance of State Security, the torture and executions, and many other examples of repression.

“These are not ’low moments’ of the revolution, as the professor affirms, but rather they were there from the beginning,” says Gutiérrez-Boronat. Finally, he criticized the accusation of drug trafficking attributed by Eckstein to the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) and described it as “serious.”

“We continue dreaming of a free Cuba,” said Gutiérrez-Boronat, to which the audience reacted with great applause. At the end of the interventions, Professor Duany announced that it was time for the public to present their questions.

The president of the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association, Rafael Montalvo, congratulated the Cuban community attending the presentation for respecting the nature of the debate. “That’s how it’s done,” he affirmed, while slogans of “Down with communism!” “Homeland and Life!” and “Cuba libre!” were repeated with greater emphasis at the end of the event.

The journalist Ninoska Pérez accused Eckstein, during her presentation, of “being distracted by defending the communist regime in Cuba.” “For you, Raúl Castro, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro are still heroes, and that is insulting,” she said.

Eckstein defended herself against some of the public comments, saying they were “offensive and off-topic.” “This is supposed to be a book launch,” she lamented. “I am also the daughter of refugees,” said the teacher, “I understand the pain they have gone through.”

Some attendees congratulated Eckstein and Gutiérrez-Boronat for holding the event despite extensive criticism and pressure from various activists in Miami. The conversation, which was to be held at the Books & Books bookstore in Coral Gables, had to be moved to the larger FIU facilities. At that very moment, in the vicinity of the university, a group of Cuban-Americans carried out a protest – called for weeks – against the presentation of Cuban Privilege.

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

‘The Ideal Would be to Give All Migrants the Same Thing Cubans Have Enjoyed’

Covers of some books in which Eckstein has written about Cuba. (Collage)

14ymedio bigger

14ymedio, Havana, 8 DecemberA heated controversy in the Cuban-American community of Miami surrounds the book Cuban Privilege (Cambridge University Press, 2022), by American academic Susan Eckstein, which will be presented this Friday at Florida International University (FIU). [Open link to see video of event, which was held in English.]

Although the book is a history of the immigration policies that different US presidents – both Democrats and Republicans – have implemented with respect to Cuba, starting in 1959, the text has been described as “hate speech” by several activists.

In fact, a sector of Cuban-Americans in Florida will wait for Eckstein this Friday in the vicinity of the FIU to “boycott” the presentation with a protest, endorsed by Miami-Dade commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera himself, who believes that Cuban Privilege “fosters hatred of Cuban exile.”

For Daniel Rodríguez, a professor of history at Brown University and the son of Cubans, Miami’s reaction stems from a misunderstanding and a superficial evaluation of Eckstein’s book. “They haven’t even read it,” he assures 14ymedio.

In October, Rodríguez was in charge of the book presentation at the Watson Institute, in the city of Providence (Rhode Island, USA). During the lunch after the event, Eckstein approached him and said, “Did you like the book? As a Cuban-American, did you feel attacked?” continue reading

Rodríguez’s response – whose mother immigrated to the US in 1967, with the so-called Freedom Flights, and married a rafter who escaped from the Island in 1970 – was clear: “I have to be honest,” he replied. “This book is not going to be liked in Miami.” His suspicion was fulfilled.

A few minutes of reading are enough to understand the proposal of the book: since 1959, the United States has granted privileges to the Cuban diaspora, which no immigrant community has enjoyed, especially from the Caribbean and Central American context, and particularly Haitians and Dominicans.

“She is not blaming Cubans for enjoying privileges, but rather points out that the Cuban situation has been more favorable than that of other migrants. Even the Cuban-Americans themselves know that. It is incontrovertible,” he explains.

Professor Rodríguez knows these benefits well. In addition to his parents, he had an uncle who crossed the border from Mexico, several cousins ​​who came through Canada and other relatives who sailed for the US in 1980 from the port of Mariel. After these “extreme” trips, he affirms, they immediately found the “open roads” to settle in a country that received them well.

The planned protest for Friday, he believes, is a “problematic and sad reaction, but also very interesting” from a sociological point of view. Although Eckstein does not intend to make judgments about the nature of US immigration policies, but rather merely describes them, the interpretations have been virulent.

“The debate has to do, rather, with the word ’privilege’,” he says. “What is being rejected is a term and a misconception of the book’s approaches.”

Several activists point out that the book defends the interests of the Democratic Party, or that it was even “dictated from Havana” to harm the Cuban exile, which usually votes for the Republican Party in Florida, one of the “swing” or decisive states in the presidential elections.

This is another error of approach, explains Rodríguez, since Eckstein criticizes both Democratic and Republican presidents, and postulates that immigration policy has not been determined by partisan interests but by deeper causes. “The book doesn’t even focus on the Cubans in Miami,” although it takes them into account in a special way, because of their political influence at the national level.

Cuban Privilege asks the reader specific questions: What has motivated the granting of benefits to Cubans? Why have these benefits not been extended to other communities from dictatorship or totalitarian countries? How do US immigration policies towards Cuba fit in the context of the Cold War? And, most importantly, how much weight do Cuban-Americans have in determining US policy?

The text is particularly useful, says Rodríguez, when it comes to chronicling how the Cuban diaspora became an influential power group and how it began to become aware of itself as a political actor. “These processes are also part of the history of Miami,” analyzes the academic.

“The ideal situation would be to offer all migrants the privilege and legalization that Cubans have enjoyed,” he says, citing one of the final proposals in Eckstein’s book.

However, Rodríguez points out, a full understanding of the book does not mean giving up criticizing it, as the FIU proposes, which will feature the Cuban intellectual Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat to counterpoint Eckstein in the presentation.

More thorny issues will have to be reviewed, such as the apparent rejection of Cubans by other migrant communities in the US –especially Haitians – and also the supposed “right to self-determination” that Eckstein defends for Cuba, ignoring that the country is a dictatorship that rejects democratic processes.

But while it is true that Eckstein has written and spoken in the past about Cuba in drastic terms, a critique of the contents and postulates of Cuban Privilege  – a text, above all, of a historical and sociological nature – should be possible outside of the political views of the author.

All this can and should be discussed, says Rodríguez, but from a starting point of rationality and logical debate. However, he believes, Miami has become a difficult place to raise these kinds of controversies at a deep level. “There is no room for criticism and the defense of different positions, nor for postulating a complex discourse,” he laments.

When it comes to Cuba, Rodríguez summarizes, “there is a lot to analyze and think about, but we need the space for that… In the FIU presentation it is intended to carry out an open criticism and discuss freely with the author. If these spaces do not exist in Cuba, we must create them here.”

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

Private Tutors Rescue Public Schooling in Cuba

For a cost of 300 pesos per month, the student has at least four group classes and an extra hour of personalized attention. (Ministry of Education)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 10 DecemberAlthough Liván studied at the Enrique José Varona University of Pedagogical Sciences in Havana, he owes his work as a tutor to his father. “I finished my social service a few years ago and realized that I didn’t want to continue being linked to a state school,” he told 14ymedio . “My father had been tutoring for the entrance exams for more than 20 years and I started helping him.”

Liván, who has a tutor’s license, began by collaborating with his father to print the bibliography, review some student assignments, and collect payment. But in mid-2021, the old tutor died, a victim of covid-19. “I thought that we were going to have to close the little school but the students began to ask if I couldn’t take care of the tutoring and I have done so.”

With a house near the Manolito Aguiar high school in Marianao, Liván has a group of ten students who come once a week to prepare for the mathematics exam for access to higher education. “They just passed the tests, so now I’m on a break, but I’m happy because all my students passed with good grades.”

Liván inherited many contacts in the official education system from his father and, in addition, he prepares his classes focused on the entrance exams of previous years. “I review based on the content that has come out on these tests but I also have to fill in a lot of knowledge gaps that they bring up. The worst areas they get this far with are geometry and working with fractions.”

For a cost of 300 pesos per month, the student has at least four group classes and an extra hour of personalized attention. “Although now everything is digitized, I also provide the service of printing part of the content and test exams so that the student can practice. It is important to work not only on mathematics, but also on security and concentration. I pretend that they are in front of the Admission Test.” continue reading

“The children’s own teachers tell me what they need more help with. I have a good relationship with them and I try not to question what they do, because I know very well what it is to be in a classroom and also have a lot of paperwork and a salary that is not worth it,” he admits.

“The first thing I tell new students is that it’s not like their school here. You do have to study here and I’m not going to give you any grades. It’s in your hands to achieve, in one fell swoop, acceptance to a university in a subject that you like versus having to prepare one more year for the entrance exams. Liván already has full registration for the next group that begins in January. “I can’t keep up, I have had to say no to those who have come to me in recent days.”

His assessment: “These last are the worst students I’ve had in a long time. The pandemic did a lot of damage, but there are deeper problems here. I get students who don’t even know how to multiply, they’re in the 12th grade of high school and they don’t know how to divide either. Very unfortunate.”

The director of the school where Angélica works as a teacher was categorical a few months ago: “All students have to pass the grade regardless of how things are going with them.” The arguments put forward by the officials of the Ministry of Education who visited the school a few days before pointed out that “no one is to blame for the pandemic and we cannot drag so many repeaters because they did not learn the content due to the confinement of so many months.”

Angelica talked with the parents of some students about tutoring them after school hours at home. “In the morning they have classes in the classroom and in the afternoon they reaffirm the content with exercises and questions,” she details to this newspaper. “Although in the end I had to pass all the students, whether they knew the subject or not, at least those who had tutors learned something.”

In her case, she has no plans to leave her employment relationship in a state school. “I haven’t thought about it but I feel much more comfortable working in a private way because I go at my own pace, I can be more demanding with the students and they behave much better. When they are paying for a tutor it does not occur to them to waste their time in giggles or games.”

After many years of accusing private tutors of being a threat to “absolutely free” teaching in Cuba and keeping them illegal until in 2013, tutors were allowed to obtain a license to work on their own. Now the official press admits that it is almost impossible to be admitted the university without first attending several tutoring sessions.

The vindication comes late for those who were previously “violators of the law,” as the Escambray newspaper acknowledged on Tuesday, but it points to a clear fact: the quality of the Cuban educational system is insufficient, the gaps for students are increasing and a satisfactory educational process depends, more than ever, on how much money a family can afford.

Before tutoring emerged from the ‘underground’ in 2013, “more than a few flatly refused to spend their money on these ‘takers’ and some even promoted a crusade or a kind of witch hunt,” says Escambray.

After taking for granted the need for the tutors, the newspaper exposes that their work leads, albeit indirectly, to “inequality among the children.” Learning should be “a responsibility of the school,” but given the institutional deficiencies, the tutor is used and their activity — in practice — is not limited to supporting the contents, but also overseeing homework, facilitating extra-class work and accommodating the student according to his or her needs.

In addition, it is necessary to distinguish the usual subject tutors –generally in Mathematics, Spanish and History – and those who prepare the student for aptitude exams, such as those necessary to enroll in art schools, the Higher Institute of Industrial Design or the careers that require special requirements, such as Journalism or International Relations.

Systematically discrediting the sector is difficult, because, as Escambray admits, the tutors are usually the most “prestigious educators in the territory.” Retired teachers or professors who need additional income have found in this job the economic incentive that the Ministry of Education, which always pays late and with low salaries, denies them.

Without ambiguity, the newspaper lists old problems: “insufficient faculty, some teachers and professors without the most basic knowledge about the subjects they teach, loss of time on campus, lack of organization in the processes, lack of interest and demotivation in not a few teachers, dogmas in the exams and a long etcetera that does not exclude some other fraudulent and corrupt turbidity.”

“Draining one’s pockets” seems to be the only solution, regrets the text, but it is clear that, in the economic crisis that Cuba is experiencing, many families must choose “between paying a tutor or basic household expenses.”

The report published by the organ of the Communist Party in Sancti Spíritus set off a harsh controversy among readers. One of the commentators accused the text of being “disrespectful” to the Cuban educational system, and blurted out that young people from Sancti Spiritus do not need tutoring services. Those who use it, he says, “are wasting their time.”

One reader pointed out that, after putting food on the table, the poor education of the children is the “main topic” of family conversations in Cuba. While Gualterio Núñez, another commentator, stated that there are many educational expenses that the State “does not contemplate or subsidize.”

In addition to insisting that in any country the “support of private teachers for education” is normal, he lamented that when Cuba returns to normal, citizens will realize the importance that access to a complete and quality education would have had for the development of the country.

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

Saramago’s Havana Book

“The house which I see in the photos is obviously not the house of a proletarian, but of an accomplished and wealthy novelist.” (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 4 December 2022 – A colleague of mine went to Lanzarote – the most eastern island of the Canaries archipelago – and on her return she sent me some photos of the house where José Saramago lived.  I’ve always been an admirer of the Portuguese writer, famous for his large spectacles, his bitter, faithless prose, his reflective atheism and his fervour – scarred with age – for a communist utopia.

The house which I see in the photos is obviously not the house of a proletarian, but of an accomplished and wealthy novelist (he deserved it, without a doubt. He earned it – through his writing, not through government fawning and handouts). There’s a collection of beautiful inkpots on a shelf, pictures of some friends, the bed in which he died, a small green table where I’d like to sit and smoke, palm trees and cactuses on the patio, and, in the distance, a landscape which he described as “dark, and covered in bits of crushed lava”.

And books. Many books. Legions of heavy tomes which now rest on top of armchairs and bookshelves. Titles in various languages and from many cultures. Volumes, owned by a writer who travelled, dreamt and invented with intensity – though not about the other way in which we should live, dream or invent.

Not very much more than a few days ago – on 16 November – Saramago would have been 100. Few people remembered him in Cuba – a rough and volcanic island, much like Lanzarote – where the novelist was welcome, until he made a famous pronouncement which mortified Castro: “I’ve come this far” [“…and if Cuba is to continue their journey I’m staying behind”]. continue reading

I believe [when he died, in 2010] the National Library hung up a few posters and the usual crew got together to formalise his burial. Saramago donated the rights to his works to an island that ended up executing, much to his horror, the three Cubans who attempted to abandon our oppressive stone raft in 2003.

“The worst thing about Islands”, the lucid Portuguese novelist had written a couple of years earlier, “is when they start to imitate the sea that surrounds them. Under siege [from the sea], they [put their people under] siege”

Amongst the photos is one of Saramago’s bedside table. Underneath his spectacles, which now lie closed for ever, is one of his Lanzarote Notebooks: his diaries 1993-1997, which, either through boredom or excess of work, he abandoned. The following year, and after a long wait, the Swedes awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature.

It’s a frenetic decade: the end of the century. In publisher Alfaguara’s classic edition of the Notebooks that I have in my hands, he reflects upon the hypocrisy of Diana Princess of Wales and Mother Teresa, the embarrassment of Gorbachev appearing in a pizza comercial and the failure of the communist project; there are transcriptions of letters from Christian believers, infuriated by The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and there’s an account of how An Essay on Blindness was written; in these, Saramago is intimate, courteous, ironic and endearing, as if he’s conversing at the little green table on his Lanzarote patio.

And of course there’s an abundance of  references to Cuba, to Roberto Fernández Retamar – the grey prominent figure at the Casa de las Américas – to  Cuban writer Cabrera Infante, to the Castro-Guevara duo, and to the local version of socialism during the ‘Special Period‘.

In May 1993, the young poet Almelio Calderón – in exile today – sent him a letter written in pencil. “Our editorial policy is very slow. At the moment there is a huge paper crisis”, he told him before admitting nervously: “There isn’t any”. Fueled by a hope for change that didn’t happen, the young man with no pen concluded by saying: “Here we are living through historical moments, very unique, very important, very intense, and I hope that history will know how to record them in its pages”.

I continue turning the pages. On 5 January 1994 a planned journey to the Island falls through, a journey which he interpretes as “the last opportunity to return to the socialist Cuba that I admire”. At the end of that year he even pledged to stand up for Castro with Clinton.

The most intense link with Cuba in the Notebooks was the obsession which took over him after reading the beautiful Muestrario del mundo (The World’s Sampler) by Eliseo Diego. In 1993, Eliseo -“one of the greatest poets of this century, and I’ve said this both inside and beyond Cuba”, Saramago noted, – had just won the Juan Rulfo Prize. Shortly after, death came knocking at his “modest door”.

Heartbroken by the friendship that was not to be, the novelist retired to his library to read all of Eliseo’s poetry works. And it’s here he makes a discovery: “Matías Pérez” – proclaims a known passage by the Cuban, and which sounds to him [Saramago] like an incantation – “toldero [a seller of canopies] by profession, what was there in your huge pretensions that took you away with such elegance and haste”.

He feels the possibility of a new novel like it were a command from the dead. “Matías Pérez, who are you?” he notes down various times – in Lanzarote, in Lisbon, in Madrid or in Río de Janeiro. He dreams about the hot air balloon and starts to investigate – “I wanted to know the how and the when of such an appealing story” – and he writes to Retamar asking him for a clue, a lead, a ’silhouette’ of this Portuguese guy who disappeared forever over the rooftops of Havana. “Who knows, maybe I’ll go to Cuba to uncover the mystery of Matías Pérez. If not, I’ll just have to invent him, from head to toe”, he notes, and throws in the towel.

The end of the story is, I’m afraid, not very romantic. The sinister Retamar replies years later with a letter. Inside the envelope, carefully folded, there is a newspaper cutting about Matías Pérez, written in almost forensic tones, ending with: “The military authorities of the day carried out a thorough investigation. There was no trace. But months later, the remains of a hot-air balloon were found, in the coastal keys close to the Pinos Islands”.

Saramago must have destroyed the actual article – who knows whether or not he was instructed to by ‘inspector’/ curator Retamar, in order to deter him from writing the story – the ‘Havana novel’ that José Saramago might have written. Retamar, like Mephistopheles, later came to demand a favour: in exchange for that newspaper cutting he wanted a “brief portrait” of Guevara for his magazine.

On 2 July 1996, in his Lanzarote library, Saramago mentioned Matías Pérez for the last time: “If I get the time and I keep my determination up, perhaps one day I’ll get out and look for him”.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

*Translator’s note: Matías Pérez was a nineteenth century Portuguese-born Cuban, who was a canopy tradesman and an amateur balloonist, who disappeared mysteriously during one of his balloon flights from Havana.

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

Largest Group of Cubans to Date, More then 500, Cross the US Border

This Friday, 1,000 migrants turned themselves in to the Border Patrol in Eagle Pass (Texas). (@BillFOXLA)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana | No fewer than 535 Cubans crossed the Rio Grande at the same time this Thursday through the state of Piedras Negras, before turning themselves in to the Border Patrol in Eagle Pass, Texas. The natives of the Island were gathered in an area near the Lehmann ranch together with 74 other migrants from Nicaragua, 49 from Colombia, three from Ecuador, three from Mexico and 12 unaccompanied children.

While their data was being taken from the undocumented, Fox News journalist Bill Melugin reported on his social media that the group was made up of almost 700 migrants. “Border Patrol had taken several full buses by the time our team arrived on the scene,” he said.

This is the largest group that has been documented to arrive at Eagle Pass to date. The Maverick County sheriff, Tom Schmerber, acknowledged in an interview with the local outlet Zócalo, the migratory crisis the region is experiencing, and warned of the arrival of more migrants, who have been located on the Piedras Negras side waiting to cross the Rio Grande until night falls.

Hours later, the communicator reported two other groups that were being registered by the Border Patrol for processing. “Approximately 1,000 migrants have just crossed into the Eagle Pass area illegally,” he posted on his Twitter account. continue reading

The US official attributed the migratory avalanche to the coyote networks that operate in total “impunity” on the Mexican side of Piedras Negras and Acuña. “There are more than 100 smugglers who traffic and have protection from the police,” denounced Schmerber. When it is not possible to cross by the river, the human smugglers “hide the people in vans” and after crossing the border strip they leave the migrants to turn themselves in and continue their process. “If they get deported or detained, that’s not the smugglers’ problem anymore.”

Among the Border Patrol targets, the sheriff identified people from Michoacán and Zacatecas, whom he named by their aliases El Samurai, El Gallo, El Padre and El Cónsul, who have ranches and mansions in Piedras Negras. Migrants are taken to these sites and remain there until they cross over the Rio Grande.

José Quintana arrived in Acuña along with his sister Marisleydis on Sunday. These Cubans were detained on November 14 at a hotel in Mexico City and, despite having an amparo [a writ guaranteeing constitutional protection of rights], they were detained at the Las Agujas immigration station. After five days they were released. “We have family in Texas and they are looking at how to pass us over. I think it will be through the river, but people say it is dangerous,” Quintana told 14ymedio.

This native of Havana mentioned that the hotels are in collusion with coyotes and police. “If you don’t pay to go through, they will hand you over and threaten you with repatriation.” For this reason, some acquaintances recommended people who charge the migrants to stay in their homes until they manage to cross into the United States.

Not all migrants who manage to cross the border turn themselves in. The communicator Bill Melugin reported that 130,000 people escaped from the Border Patrol in the first 10 months of the year. In November there were “at least 73,000 people who evaded the control of the officers, which represents a daily average of at least 2,400 illegal immigrants.”

The exodus of Cubans to the US continues to show record numbers, with a record of 29,872 who entered illegally in October, a number that exceeds the 26,730 who entered in September, according to data from the US Customs and Border Protection Office. (CBP).

According to data from the US Department of Customs and Border Protection, 224,000 Cuban migrants have arrived in the last year.

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Cuba is the Country Most Dependent on Imported Food, After Panama

Between 2018 and 2020, Cuba suffered a deficit in imports of agricultural products that amounted to 1.632 billion dollars. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana | A report published this Tuesday by three United Nations agencies concludes that Cuba is the second country in Latin America and the Caribbean with the highest deficit and per capita dependence on imports of agricultural products, only surpassed by Panama.

The report, prepared by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Cepal) together with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP), explores how the Russian invasion of Ukraine compromises the daily livelihood of millions of Latin American families, including Cuban ones, who are also suffering from the island’s deep economic crisis.

It is no secret to anyone that the country presents notable deficiencies in its agricultural and food production, exacerbated by the scarcity of fuels and key inputs. The low availability of food and basic necessities are part of the causes that drive Cubans to emigrate, and have also led to an increase in the rates of violence on the island.

Between 2018 and 2020, Cuba suffered a deficit in imports of agricultural products that amounted to 1.632 billion dollars, buying more than it exported. The greatest imbalance is observed in food — with the exception of fish — with a negative balance of 1.635 billion dollars. continue reading

The cereal deficit was 668 million dollars, while in corn and wheat it was 181 million. The little that goes into fruits and vegetables also marks a negative balance of 109 million dollars in imports and another 104 million in vegetable oils. In dairy, the imbalance was 204 million, while the figure for meat is 446 million.

Venezuela, which is also experiencing a deep economic and migration crisis, had a deficit in imports of agricultural products of 3.359 billion dollars. Panama, which claims to be the largest economy in Central America, also had a deficit of 1.988 billion dollars.

Although the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean do not depend directly on imports of cereals, corn and vegetable oils from Russia and Ukraine, the report notes, food prices are affected by world trade restrictions. The conflict directly impacts the value of fertilizers, since in 2021 the Russian Federation was the world’s largest exporter of nitrogens, the second of potassium and the third of phosphate.

The UN agencies point out that the world economy has not had a truce in the last 15 years with successive crises, among which the financial crisis of 2008, the trade tensions between China and the United States exacerbated in 2019 and the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 stand out, followed by the breakdown of logistics chains, inflation and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

As a consequence, ECLAC forecasts that the economy of Latin America and the Caribbean will slow down to 1.4% in 2023 after experiencing 3.2% this year. In its latest update of the outlook, published last October, the agency reduced its projection for Cuba from the 3% it had forecast in August to 2% for 2022. The scenario is much less optimistic for 2023, with just 1.8%.

At the moment, the FAO says in the report, the biggest concern is that inflation puts at risk access to a healthy diet for households with lower incomes, in a context in which hunger increased by 30% between 2019 and 2021 as consequence of the pandemic. The World Food Program complements this data with an analysis, carried out in June 2022, which reveals that food insecurity is among the main causes for leaving one’s country of birth.

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

Three Turkish Floating Power Plants Scramble to End the Blackouts in Cuba

The Turkish floating plants next to the Tallapiedra plant, in Havana, this Friday. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez,  Havana | 9 December 2022 — Three floating plants of the Turkish company Karpowership can be seen these days in the vicinity of the Otto Parellada power plant, known as Tallapiedra, in Havana. Of them, only two, the one that arrived on November 15 and one more, seem to be working, connected to the thermoelectric plant through which the ship transports the electricity they produce (110 megawatts each).

The other, a short distance from these, and smaller (with a generation capacity of 15 MW), has stopped working this Friday.

Belonging to Karadeniz Holding, the power stations of this type, of which there are seven in Cuba, according to the official press, distributed between the port of Mariel and Havana – are, the authorities pointed out, “part of the strategy to gradually increase generation and move the country away from the effects of energy deficits.”

Once all of them are synchronized with the National Electric System (SEN), they will only contribute a little more than 400 MW, a figure that is, in principle, insufficient to alleviate the energy deficit on the Island. However, one thing is certain: since the beginning of December, and according to the daily reports of the Cuban Electric Union (UNE), the “affects” on the service have been decreasing. continue reading

From the figures of December 1, when the UNE forecast a deficit of 1,054 MW and an affectation of 1,124 MW in peak hours, it has gone on to have no deficit this Friday.

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‘There is Only One Person Responsible: Fidel Castro,’ Reinaldo Arenas Wrote on December 7

Reinaldo Arenas was born in 1943 in Holguín, a telluric and difficult region, from which Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Fulgencio Batista and Castro himself also emerged. (Reinaldo Arenas Archive) 

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 7 December 2022 — On 7 December 1990, 32 years ago, Reinaldo Arenas committed suicide “without first having to go through the insult of old age.” He himself recounts that, when they told him that he would soon die of AIDS, he went to his apartment and made a wish, half a prayer and half an insult, in front of the portrait of Virgilio Piñera.

“Listen to what I am going to tell you,” he snapped at the deceased, “I need three more years of life to finish my work, which is my revenge against almost the entire human race.” With unfortunate punctuality, three years after that sentence, and maintaining “equanimity until the last moment,” he killed himself in New York.

Of all Arenas’s texts, the most brutal and serene was his brief farewell letter, written to be published. “There is only one person responsible: Fidel Castro.” The phrase falls back on the Cuban reader, lapidary and current. “The sufferings of exile, the pains of exile, the loneliness and the illnesses that I may have contracted in exile, surely I would not have suffered if I had lived free in my country.”

Arenas was born in 1943 in Holguín, a telluric and difficult region, from which Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Fulgencio Batista and Castro himself also emerged. Of Guajira origin, he always kept the rusticity and innocence of a boy from the provinces. Ruffled with hair and imagination, with a deep and seductive speech, the young man soon made his way in Havana and maintained a long friendship with José Lezama Lima and Virgilio Piñera. continue reading

His best-known book, Antes que anochezca [Before Night Falls*], attests to the surveillance, persecution, and imprisonment to which he was subjected by Castro’s political police. The cruelty of the State against the writer, the cornering of him in the most unusual settings – from Lenin Park to a precarious boat heading to the US – could only engender in Arenas a lucid, spiteful memory that was true to itself.

His novels – which he had to secretly send abroad – had already made him famous. But when a journalist traveled to Havana to interview him, he had to solve a labyrinth of clues and tricks, audacity and passwords, to find Arenas in the end, like a happy minotaur, in some dilapidated lot.

The succession of photographs that accompany Before Night Falls allow us to see how his face, mischievous in childhood, flirtatious in youth, and sad and sentimental about to board the boat in Mariel, becomes spectral and serene in 1990.

More than three decades after his death, the work of Reinaldo Arenas continues to be terra incognita for the majority of Cuban readers and almost none of his books are published in his country, thanks to the censorship of the same government that exiled him.

Reading El Mundo Alucinante [Hallucinations*] or Celestino Antes del Alba [Celestino Before Dawn*] clandestinely, enjoying the pages of La loma del ángel [Graveyard of the Angels*] or savoring his poems by the sea, continues to be the most endearing way to remember Arenas on the anniversary of his death.

*Translator’s note: The translated titles are not necessarily direct translations but rather those used in the English editions

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Trunks and Branches Felled by Hurricane Ian Remain on the Streets of Havana

Corner of 17 and K in El Vedado, Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez,  Havana, 8 DecemberThe trees felled by Hurricane Ian in Havana, more than two months ago, seem to be nobody’s problem. The roots of a formidable specimen of Indian laurel, which stand out among the rubble and garbage at the corner of 17th and F, in El Vedado, Havana, attest to this.

Due to the impact of the winds in September, the laurel tore apart the gate of a state office linked to tourism and its trunk remained there until the return of the workers, after the cyclone. Then, workers from the Electric Company cut down the fallen trunk and several branches of the neighboring laurels.

According to an office worker speaking to 14ymedio, all the trees were planted together and belong to the same variety. “A few days after the cyclone, the people from the office tried to clear the place with machetes and left the garbage on the corner,” he reported. “After many days, a truck passed and took what it could.”

The current appearance of the corner of 17 and F, however, leaves much to be desired. Separating the trunk from the roots, they threw the latter into the same flowerbed where the tree was planted. Dirt has been accumulating around the pavement, also broken by the tearing up of the laurel, and even the neighbors have already transformed the place into a small dump. continue reading

Nor has the gate been repaired, its bars having been bent by the blow from the trunk, and there do not seem to be any plans to restore the concrete column that immobilized the gate, and also destroyed by the laurel.

The neglect of Community Services and the careless passage of passers-by does not augur any change in the terrible hygiene of the street. The tree, the trash, and even a rusty aluminum tank that keeps them company have fallen into no man’s land.

For greater irony, the entrance to the building proudly displays the plaque that distinguishes its occupants as a Collective of Heroic Tradition.

It is not the first time that 14ymedio has verified the lack of cleanliness in the streets of Havana, on which Hurricane Ian has left traces that remain more than two months later. “Since the sidewalk is the responsibility of the authorities, no one, neither the company nor the neighbors, will do anything more,” says the worker.

The trees uprooted by the hurricane, the leaves and roots that no one will clean up, and the garbage that people leave are now a common sight in the capital’s neighborhoods. This newspaper denounced how the residents of Parque Trillo, in Centro Habana, must skirt the fallen branches and avoid the poorly paved walkway.

Added to the chaos in public areas is damage to monuments, broken benches and poor quality pavement. None of these realities is discussed in the official press and, of course,  local leaders and the Government of the Island don’t lose any sleep over it.
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Cuba: Havanageddon, Apocalypse of a Dictatorship

Younger organizations avoid caudillismo, they learn to work in a coordinated manner alongside others, they establish linkages with the generations with more accumulated experience. (Photograph from “Juan de los Muertos”, a movie directed by Alejandro Brugués, 2011)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 7 December 2022 — The regime in Havana is aware that its end is near. In the last three years the system’s undeniable collapse has become evident. The “circumstancial” crisis announced by Díaz-Canel in 2019 has been growing and worsening irreversibly. Applying the ’Ordering Task’* amid the pandemic turned out to be a foolish and suicidal act, which increased inflation, stockouts, and popular discontent.

The Cuban economy is like a Carilda Oliver Labra verse: “I am getting messy, love, I am getting messy.” Not only is it more chaotic than ever, but it is underwater in a sea of debt and unproductiveness. As if that were not enough, the leadership today is experiencing its greatest leadership crisis, with cadres that lack charisma, are politically mediocre and incapable of inspiring respect or making effective decisions.

The official discourse can’t manage to generate a single new idea and is limited to recycling old babble. But now the ones who believe the story of the blockade [i.e. the American embargo] as a perennial excuse are ever fewer, very few have faith that the system will turn out to be prosperous and sustainable and no one believes the threat of a foreign invasion anymore. The reality is that Cuba is not a priority for the Government of the United States. “David” has lost his slingshot and desperately seeks to do business with “Goliath.” The ripe fruit is about to fall to the ground and no one seems interested in taking it. continue reading

To stretch out the agony, the continent’s oldest dictatorship manages to strengthen its international alliances. However, its displays of submissiveness to Putin are like a fatal boomerang. Russia is not in a position to help anyone. And any rapprochement with the Kremlin, at this time, is like marking one’s forehead with the number of the beast.

On the other hand, the citizenry has lost its fear at a rapid pace. Never before had the regime had to confront so many protests, in all corners of the country. Social media is a battlefield where the government has lost by a landslide, despite the internet cuts, the creation of an army of anonymous accounts and the millions invested to attempt to control cyberspace. Even at the polls, their false democracy show has lost its audience. If before they used to brag about a participation rate above 95% of the electorate, the latest electoral skirmishes have broken all records of abstentions and no votes.

The brutal repression against everyone who dissents has not managed to suffocate the flames of protest. State Security has fragmented potential threats into three blocks. They take some directly to jail, issuing long sentences while they try to demoralize them, accusing them of being common, violent or marginalized criminals. They force others into exile, pushing them to abandon the country permanently. And for the rest, they simply use their techniques to reduce them to “non-persons,” they fire them or expel them from the university, surround their homes, cutoff their telephones, and submit them to continuous stress with threats, surveillance, and acts of repudiation.

State Security’s greatest achievement has been, perhaps, keeping the opposition fractured. In this way, they prevent opponents from forming a solid block capable of coordinating effective actions and obtaining legitimacy and recognition by international organizations.

To divide us, they exploit distrust among one another, maximizing ego struggles and diverting discussions toward unfruitful and innocuous areas. On social media, the regime counts on hundreds of anticommunist accounts whose only objective is to attack and discredit all leadership or any attempt at unification. And these anonymous accounts, supposedly radical, manage to do more damage than the typical ciberclarias.** 

However, beyond their success, it is also palpable that many opponents are reaching a level of political maturity that allows them to put differences aside and focus on common strategies. Younger organizations avoid caudillismo, learn to work in a coordinated manner alongside others, they establish linkages with the generations with more accumulated experience and they create strong connections with opponents of other dictatorships, like those of Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Cuban civil society is becoming aware of its potential. Little by little they claim spaces that the regime doesn’t know and cannot reconquer. Each chunk of power taken from them is ground gained for democracy which we must all build together.

The dictatorship knows its end is near.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Translator’s notes:  

*The ‘Ordering Task’ [tarea ordenamiento] is a collection of measures that include eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso (CUP) as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency, which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and a broad range of other measures targeted to different elements of the Cuban economy.

**’Ciberclarias’ refers to internet trolls at the service of the government.

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Cubans Are Paying Almost 63 Percent More for Food Than a Year Ago

Food prices in Cuban markets and establishments have only risen in the last two years. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Madrid, 7 December 2022 — The consumer price index (CPI) had its highest growth of the year this October in Cuba, with 4.21%, according to data published this Monday by the National Office of Statistics and Information (Onei). At the end of October, Cubans paid 39.73% more than a year earlier for the goods and products they consume. Monthly inflation in October exceeded the two previous records, May (3.55%) and April (3.54%). Since January this year, prices have risen 28.76%.

If the data is broken down, it becomes clear what citizens already know: the increase in food prices is growing without measure, 62.73% in one year. The section on food and non-alcoholic beverages represents 78.88% of total year-on-year inflation. Regarding the accumulated so far this year, the data is 45.16%.

They are followed by restaurants and hotels, with 11.33%, and goods and services, with 2.93%. The rest barely contribute to raising the overall CPI. “Cuba registered in October 2022 the largest increase in food prices in the last 15 months. Food prices grew by 7% and ’explain’ almost 80% of the general increase in prices for the month, confirming that the country is mainly going through food inflation,” said Cuban economist Pedro Monreal, who regularly analyzes the data on Twitter. continue reading

The specialist said that, although the official data for inflation are not as high as the previous year, general year-over-year inflation in food alone is 62.73%. For all inflation for the year the total number of 45.16%.

The Onei data breaks down the section by product and pork is once again the greatest contribution to the rise in prices in its division. It rose 4.17% in the last month, but its contribution to the monthly CPI exceeds 25%. Rice rose 4.18% in October and its effect is 7%, while ham, with 5.2%, influences 2.5%. The section closes with eggs (2.4%) and garlic (3.2%), whose shares are 2% and 1.6% respectively.

The document also highlights the foods that increased the most this month — black beans, a staple in the Cuban diet, showed the greatest increase with 14%. Pork, poultry, ham and mutton are next, confirming the enormous problems Cubans have in buying protein of animal origin.

Regarding the other areas that most influence the monthly variation effect, restaurants and hotels grew above all in snacks (7% and an effect of more than 9%), lunch and dinner (6.2% and 8 .1%) or prepared food to take away (6.7%, although with an effect of only 0.7%). Soft drinks (4.6%) and breakfasts (4.3%) also rose considerably, although their influence on the increase in this group linked to food is less than 1%.

The rest is goods and services, where toilet paper stands out with a variation this November of 9.5%. The same occurs with hair dyes (4.7%), deodorant (2.26%), manicures (4.7%) and haircuts for men (4.21%). The weight of none of them, however, is substantial for the effect of the CPI variation, all remaining below 1% also although the total contribution of this section is close to 3%.

Regarding other areas, the monthly increase in Education prices is noted, 3.15%, while the number is 1.75% for alcohol and tobacco.

But the year-over-year increases from October 2021 to October 2022 are the ones that best reflect the deterioration in the life of the population in the last year. Although prices for recreation and culture have increased by more than 5% so far in 2022, and when compared to October 2021 the rise is dizzying, with 67%, the highest, even on food.

The year-over-year variation is very high in almost all the areas, so that only clothing and footwear, health and communications remain below 5% and all the rest rise by 10%, highlighting transportation, which is 17% more expensive than a year ago, an impact that hurts the family economy, although the data seems scarce when compared to that 63% of food.

In recent months, the official Cuban press has insistently and prominently published the high inflation in the Eurozone, which has been much higher than usual – especially since the start of the invasion of Ukraine and the rise in prices of energy – although it barely reached 10.6% year-on-year in October, its highest in more than two decades.

This November 30, the most recent data was released, which for the first time in a year and a half gave a breather, falling to 10% year-on-year. Energy (35% year-on-year increase) continues to determine the worst indices, which come from the Baltic countries, which are more dependent on Russia (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania exceed 21%), and the best, with France (7.1%) and Spain (6.6%) closing the table. European consumers have the perception that food has become much more expensive and this is the case despite the fact that it rose 13%, 50 points below that in Cuba. Cubadebate has not published these figures.

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

20 Cubans Arrive in Florida on a Raft with a Russian Kamaz Truck Engine

A group of rafters from Matanzas recorded their journey to Florida. (Collage)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 6 DecemberThe Cuban Leitian Cedré shared on Facebook last Saturday two videos of the journey of at least 20 rafters who managed to disembark in the Florida Straits after 19 hours on the water. “I know that the brothers who could not come in this round will make it and they will be able to get out of suffering at any moment,” he confided.

The rafters, originally from the province of Matanzas, set sail in “one of the best rustics that has come out of Cárdenas,” Cedré proclaimed. A diesel engine from a Russian Kamaz V8 type truck was adapted to the raft. This type of vehicle is used on the island to transport sugarcane or merchandise.

Cedré recommended to those who are about to leave Cuba, to put “the spirit and fight into it a little more so that they see that everything is achieved.” No further details were provided about the rest of the group, while the rafter shared a second video in which they are fueling a boat, in which, he said, they will go fishing.

This Tuesday, the US Border Patrol took into custody 33 Cubans, seven women and 26 men, who managed to make landfall in the Florida Keys. The chief officer of the Miami sector, Walter Slosar, shared the images of two rafts in which the migrants arrived.

Slosar has documented in his networks the arrival of 88 Cubans so far in the last month of the year. Last Monday he reported two rustic boats in which 30 compatriots left the island. On Thursday, he commented on a raft with 25 people, including a child, from Matanzas who disembarked in Marathon. continue reading

As usual in these cases, the rafters have the option of requesting asylum, which implies demonstrating before an official or judge that their fear of returning to their country is justified. If the Cubans convince the relevant authorities, they are given a bond and can request asylum.

The US Coast Guard has thwarted the arrival of several groups of rafters in Florida. (@USCGSoutheast)

Several attempts to achieve the American dream have been thwarted by the United States Coast Guard. This Monday, 126 Cubans were repatriated aboard the ship Pablo Valent. Lieutenant Paul Puddington warned of the patrols being carried out in the Florida Straits, the Windward Passage and the Mona Channel “to prevent the tragic loss of life from these dangerous and illegal sea voyages.”

According to official figures, maritime surveillance has made it possible to thwart the arrival of 2,755 Cubans in Florida in the last three months. The US agency detailed that last year 6,182 rafters were detained.

The intercepted Cubans are returned to Cuba as part of a migration agreement between Washington and Havana, although on some occasions this does not happen, due to situations of credible fear of returning to the Island for repressive reasons. This is the case of 22 people, among whom is the activist Yeilis Torres Cruz, who are at the Guantanamo Base waiting for refuge in a third country.

The migratory crisis that the Island is experiencing is taking place above all by land. According to data from the US Department of Customs and Border Protection, 224,000 Cuban migrants arrived in the last year.

The crossing of the Rio Grand in the Mexican state of Coahuila, to reach the United States, continues to be a common route for island nationals. On Monday, the chief officer of the Border Patrol for the Valle sector, Texas, Gloria Chávez, reported the detention of “three groups of migrants” in the first four days of December, “a total of 420 migrants: 103 family members, 56 unaccompanied children, and 261 single adults from Cuba and several countries in Central and South America.”

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