The priest, who accompanied the prayer in the Church of the Virgin of Mercy in Havana, asked for a plea “for the future of the Cuban homeland and the children.” (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 24 September 2022 — On an island with more than a thousand political prisoners, the patron saint of prisoners has become the image before which countless Cuban families pray. On September 24, the patron saint of inmates received flowers and candles in her parish on Cuba Street, in Old Havana, under the watchful eye of a police operation with uniformed and civilian agents.
Dressed mostly in white, in honor of the Virgin and the great orisha Obbatalá, with whom the Virgin is syncretized in the Santeria religion, residents from the vicinity arrived throughout the day and also others who traveled from distant municipalities. Most of them were united by a special reason: to pray for people locked up in prison, in a country with more than 90,000 prisoners.
From early in the morning, several tables were placed outside the temple for the private sale of prints, religious accessories, flowers and other offerings dedicated to the Virgin. But inflation hurt the enthusiasm of buyers, who widened their eyes when they heard that each candle cost 50 pesos. Many decided to retrace their steps and enter the temple empty-handed.
Dressed mostly in white, in honor of the Virgin and the great orisha Obbatalá, with whom the Virgin is syncretized in Santeria, they arrived throughout the day at the temple. (14ymedio)
The flowers also were more expensive, and the small bouquets, with only a few butterflies, cost 100 pesos, while others a little more elaborate and with more variety cost about 400. For residents of the poor neighborhood of San Isidro, where the church of Nuestra Señora de la Merced is located, paying such prices means a choice between putting something on the table and spending a good part of their salary on stems and petals. continue reading
The priest who accompanied the prayer requested a plea “for the future of the Cuban homeland and the children.” The request was followed by entreaties and hands that came together to pray. There was also no shortage of those who brought an image of a relative sentenced to prison to accompany them inside the church and at the time of approaching the altar with the image of the Virgin.
In other parts of Havana, such as the mouth of the Almendares River, a group of practitioners of Santeria also joined in a ceremony to remember the orisha as the “creator of the earth and sculptor of being.” White clothes were more common in the city throughout the day, and there was no shortage of domestic ceremonies with prayers for Cubans imprisoned in the hands of traffickers and coyotes during their migratory route.
In other parts of Havana, such as the mouth of the Almendares River, a group of practitioners of Santería also joined in a ceremony for Obattalá. (14ymedio)
The numerous Cuban women, especially those over 50, who were named “Mercedes” or “Mercy,” in honor of the Virgin, also celebrated, although on this occasion white meringue cakes — so characteristic of these syncretic celebrations — were scarce due to the lack of flour and eggs. The economic crisis forced Cubans to celebrate more modestly but just as emotionally as in other years.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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.
Like the false villages that Gregorio Potemkin raised along the river to make Catherine the Great believe a fiction of prosperity, Cuban statistics are formed by a daring of lies and exaggeration. (ONEI)
14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 25 September 2022 — The recent publication of the Cuban National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) entitled “Investments, selected indicators” in the first half of 2022 concludes that investments reached 31,726.2 million pesos, an increase of 41% compared to the same period in 2021, when investments stood at 21,823.2 million pesos.
This significant growth, however, has to be pondered and discussed, which is the purpose of this post. It should be borne in mind that the “ordering task” of 2021 disrupted monetary variables with the disappearance of the CUC, the unification of the Cuban peso and the corresponding price and wage adjustments. This means that the ONEI publication is the first one that allows a comparison of the two periods and the various issues that deserve to be analyzed.
For example, with the inflation that has shaken the Cuban economy in recent years, monetary amounts have to be deflated, that is, corrected, to show the effect on prices, in order to determine their real value. Before 2021, inflation in the Cuban economy was low, but the Ordering Task* increased the rate that year by 77.2%, something unknown in the historical records.
This means that 2021 pesos didn’t have the same value as those of 2022, if annual inflation in the first half of 2022 stood at the CPI indicator (the only available) at 30%. Therefore, in order to obtain the real value of investment growth in the first half of 2022, the nominal growth, 41%, has to be divided by the increase in prices, 30%, so then investments increase compared to the previous year, but just over 10%. That is still a significant number, but lower than that offered by ONEI, and of course, insufficient to meet the needs of the Cuban economy. continue reading
Failure to provide the real value without the corresponding deflation is a mistake. ONEI should include nominal and real data in its estimates, as other statistical services do in countries affected by high inflation.
Taking into account this 30% increase in consumer prices, as a measure of the conversion of the nominal variables into real, when comparing the evolution of investment in different components, such as construction and assembly, equipment and others, it turns out that in the first, the nominal increase was 38% (7% in constant values).
In the second component, the nominal increase was 50%, which, corrected for the effect of inflation, was really 20%; and in the third case, the nominal increase of 48% becomes 18%.
This behavior of the three components of the investment results in their distribution or weight in the total to remain almost stable, with an increase in construction and assembly and other components; but the investment in equipment is reduced in terms of participation in the total. This design doesn’t meet the needs of the Cuban economy.
Another surprise comes from the territorial distribution. The data indicate a notable reduction in Havana’s participation in the total, which fell from 63% in 2021 to 56% in 2022. The significant loss of investments in Havana was channeled to other provinces such as Mayabeque, where investment multiplied by five, or to Santiago de Cuba and Holguín, where the increases were lower, but with higher levels. In general, most of the provinces increased their participation in the total, except Havana, where this adjustment took place. It seems that the authorities have wanted to carry out an investment policy that compensates for the deep territorial mismatches that exist.
The publication also offers investment data by economic activity, and again, concentration is highlighted, but with downward and upward trends. This is the case of business and real estate services, which with 33.8% of the total again occupies first place in the regime’s investment preferences. But as happened in Havana, it presented a downward trend, since in 2021, the percentage reached 40.6% of the total. What business services lost was gained by the manufacturing industry, which went from 13.4% to 18.7% of the total, and investment in electricity, which went from 6.9% to 8.3%.
Investment in mining and quarries decreased from 12.7% to 7.5%. Health and education, culture, administration and defense services seem stable in the two-year comparison, and the same is true of agriculture, which still doesn’t attract investment.
The investment design that emerges from this ONEI report points to a scenario of continuity in which little is innovated and what is reversed follows rigid and bureaucratic formats adapted to the interventionist nature of the regime. There is nothing suitable for what the Cuban economy needs in order to prosper.
*Translator’s note: *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.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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 only propaganda that has taken over public billboards, television spots and newspaper covers is directed at the Yes. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 27 September 2022 — María Julia, a 67-year-old from Camagüey, never read the full text of the Family Code put to a referendum this Sunday in Cuba, but she voted Yes because in the nucleus of the Communist Party of which she is a member called to “support the Revolution and show up at dawn at the polls.” In Havana, Yania, 42, checked the No box even though she has been dreaming of marrying Yesenia for years and this new legislation opens the door to same-sex marriage. She did so because she believes that “under a dictatorship there is no valid election.”
The supporters or opponents of this Family Code, which the experts classify as advanced, and jurists as necessary, are not homogeneous blocks nor are they divided along a clear line. Only the third referendum in Cuba in more than 60 years, this one was much more than a consultation on ‘solidarity gestation’*, the ways of dividing assets between a couple at the time of marriage, or the replacement of the concept of parental authority with that of parental responsibility. For many, this referendum was the only opportunity to send a message, through the polls, of disagreement with the Miguel Díaz-Canel regime.
The victory of Yes, with more than 66% of the valid votes, is not the victory that the ruling party had dreamed of, having bet all its propaganda resources on the approval of the Code without allowing voices to appear in the national media that would question or reject it. With more than 26% abstention, Castroism has come face to face with the lowest turnout at polling stations in its entire history. That figure in a democracy could be a sign of the times, but under a dictatorship – where not going to vote sends a signal and can cause serious individual reprisals – it is a clear gesture of defiance and confrontation. continue reading
Nor did the attendees behave according to the official script, which would have preferred a resounding acceptance of the new legislation. More than 27% of those who came to the polls said No, canceled the ballot or left it blank. In the end, less than 47% of the electoral roll said Yes to the Family Code. This figure shows a fractured society based on an issue, but also a population that has used, to a large extent, abstention and rejection to send a clear message to the Plaza de la Revolución.
If instead of a law to regulate family issues it had been a referendum on the draconian Penal Code, imposed without popular consultation and profoundly repressive, the message of repudiation of the Executive would have been much stronger and more massive. Cuban totalitarianism chose, however, to put to the vote some citizen rights that should have been approved de facto without going through an election. Perhaps Díaz-Canel thought it was going to be an overwhelming success and that he would wash his face before the international community, but he ended up reaping bitter spoils.
The Friday before the referendum, Díaz-Canel called for support for Yes also “for our socialism.” This Sunday he found his ability to convene has been significantly reduced, that the mobilization mechanisms no longer achieve the same effect as they did a few years ago, and that more than half of Cuban voters have punished, in one way or another, the system that he represents.
*Translator’s note: “Solidarity gestation” refers to legalizing methods to have children beyond a male/female couple conceiving and gestating their own child.
________________________
Editor’s Note: This text was originally published in Deutsche Welle in Spanish.
____________
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.
Migration agents and the Honduran police have been accused by several Cubans of extorting them. (Twitter-Honduras National Police)
14ymedio, Havana, September 22, 2022 — On their journey through Honduras to the United States, Cubans are extorted by agents of the National Institute of Migration (INM). Migrants, regardless of whether they have an official safe conduct pass that authorizes them to lawfully transit, are forced to pay $20 at each checkpoint, according to a report by El Heraldode Honduras.
A journalist from the Honduran newspaper infiltrated himself among the migrant groups and witnessed the abuses committed by the Migration authorities. The bus on which they were traveling was arrested, the agents came on, and the warning was direct: “Be quick, this is a checkpoint, each one of you is going to give 20 dollars, put it here,” said one of the uniformed personnel as he brought them a tray.
Another of the Cubans told the same Honduran journalist that at the Choluteca control station the police randomly selected their victims. He and two other compatriots were pointed to: “Pam, pam, pam. You, you and you. They took us to an office and said that every Cuban who passes by that checkpoint must leave 20 dollars even if he has a safe conduct pass,” he said.
This type of extortion had already been reported to 14ymedio last January by Arnaldo Rodríguez, a native of Artemisa. At that time, the Honduran police took away his passport and forced him to pay a fine of $218 to the INM. This sanction, which is established in article 104, paragraph 1, of the Migration and Aliens Law, was suspended as a form of amnesty last August. continue reading
Anselmo Mayedo, who left the island in 2021 and is currently in Mexico waiting for his brother and nephew to join him, told 14ymedio on Thursday that he took the Managua route and crossed through Honduras, where he was “threatened by the police” and suffered the theft of $400. The entry from Nicaragua to Honduras, he says, is made from Danlí, Trojes, Guasaule, La Bucana or El Porvenir.
“The group of six Cubans took a bus to get to El Porvenir. We got off and walked through the woods until we reached Trojes, where the police took us and confiscated our passports,” says Mayedo.
The INM reported that this year 50,059 Cuban migrants, 30,374 Venezuelans, 6,444 Ecuadorians and 3,918 Haitians have entered Honduras irregularly. They followed, in order, 1,000 from Colombia, 811 from India, 806 from the Dominican Republic, 720 from Senegal and 647 from Angola, among others, for a total of 101,392 irregular migrants.
Some 77.3% of migrants entered Honduras through the municipalities of Danlí and Trojes, department of El Paraíso, bordering Nicaragua. In recent months, El Paraíso has become a new route that migrants, mainly from Cuba, Venezuela and Haiti, are using to continue toward the United States.
Honduran authorities claim that the majority of migrants who enter the country do so irregularly, at “blind spots” through human traffickers, known as coyotes, who don’t always take them to the border with Guatemala.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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.
In 2021, the governments of Colombia and Panama imposed a quota of 500 migrants a day on who can pass through the Darién jungle. (EFE)
EFE/14ymedio, Panama, 24 September 2022 — A total of 134,178 migrants in transit to North America have arrived in Panama this year after crossing the Darién, the dangerous border jungle with Colombia, above the historic figure of 133,726 in 2021, the Government reported on Friday.
“Panama is strengthening its humanitarian and security teams that work in the border communities, because this Friday, the number of migrants who entered the country after crossing the thick Darién jungle reached the figure of 134,178,” reported the Ministry of Public Security (MINSEG).
MINISEG added that to date, 343 boys and 231 girls have been registered in the communities of Bajo Chiquito or Canaan Membrillo and in reception stations, where they are provided with health care, food and housing in response to human rights agreements.”
The Ombudsman’s Office reported that “the number of travelers is equal to that at the end of 2021,” and announced a meeting, this Friday, of its head, Eduardo Leblanc, and his Colombian colleague, Carlos Camargo, to continue looking for ways that guarantee “the safe passage” of this population. Leblanc stressed that Panama “is the only country that collects statistics or biometric figures for the number of migrants.” continue reading
While last year the vast majority of irregular migrants were Haitians, in 2022 it’s Venezuelans who cross the most — 80,000 so far this year according to the National Migration Service (SENAFRONT), all bound for North America, especially the United States.
Migrants who leave the Island also use the dangerous jungle as a way to get to the United States, a crossing where several Cubans have already died. A boy under the age of 14 died in November 2021 of a heart attack on the crossing, and his family spent seven days in the jungle.
The Darién jungle is considered one of the most dangerous migratory routes in the world, both because of its own wild environment and the presence of armed groups. Migrants report that they suffer attacks and sexual assaults by criminals, some of whom have already been arrested and convicted in Panama, according to the authorities.
This newspaper has received the testimony of several migrants who were victims of rape during their crossing through the Darién but refused to make their cases public or to file corresponding complaints with the Panamanian authorities. Last year, a 45-year-old Cuban woman told Doctors Without Borders how she, along with a group of women, was raped in front of everyone as she passed through the jungle.
Panama welcomes irregular travelers in migratory reception stations (ERMs) located on its border with Colombia (south) and Costa Rica (north), where they take their biometric data and receive food and medical care, in the only operation in the region that consumes millions of dollars per year, according to the Government.
According to data provided to EFE this Friday by SENAFRONT, so far this year at least 26 migrants have died while crossing the Darién, a 266-kilometer stretch of thick, dangerous and inhospitable jungle.
One of those cases is the murder, this week, of a six-year-old Venezuelan minor, when armed men assaulted a group of migrants in the jungle.
Those allegedly responsible for the death of the child and for a gunshot wound to his father’s cheekbone, also a national of Venezuela, would be Venezuelans, Colombians and Panamanians, according to the testimony of the survivor, said the director of SENAFRONT, Oriel Ortega, on Friday.
“We’re going to capture these people (…) we condemn this vile and cowardly act. How is it possible that, on top of robbing these defenseless human beings, they attack them using firearms?” asked the head of the agency in charge of border security in an interview with the local TVN network.
Ortega explained that the members of this “criminal” group offer help to migrants to cross the jungle and then commit their “villainy.” But most of those who died this year in the jungle drowned. Among the victims are many nationals of countries in Asia and Africa who are not familiar with flowing rivers such as those of the Darién, Ortega explained.
There are times when we find bones or corpses already in an advanced state of decomposition and buried along the route. They are marked with geo-referenced GPS systems,” he added.
Last July, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) warned that 192 migrants had died so far this year during their transit through Central America and Mexico.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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 Cuban government proclaims, without the endorsement of the WHO, that Abdala has an effectiveness of 92.28% against the coronavirus. (CIGB)
14ymedio, Havana, 24 September 2022 — The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) will grant a loan of 46.7 million euros ($45.25 million) for the purchase of protective equipment and the production of 200 million coronavirus vaccines in Cuba.
This agency will channel a credit granted by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE), the main financier of the governments of Nicaragua and El Salvador, to strengthen the infrastructure of the Cuban industry in the development of injectable antibiotics, parenteral solutions (serums), generic drugs and biosimilars, UNDP reported in a statement on Thursday.
This loan is expected to achieve the production of 200 million vaccine doses, as well as to increase the economic productivity of the national biopharmaceutical industry with the development of “innovative medicines and the modernization of technology.”
“This operation, in particular, will contribute to facing the health crisis through the development of vaccines that will reduce the risk of people becoming infected with the COVID-19 virus and will also contribute to the economic reactivation of the country,” said Dante Mossi, president of the BCIE, last January, when the bank approved the financing. continue reading
Part of the money will be used for the purchase of diagnostic medical equipment, health supplies and protective materials used by professionals in the treatment of people infected with coronavirus and other communicable diseases.
The BCIE, created to finance Central American integration in 1960, accepted Cuba as an “extraregional partner” and became the first multilateral organization in the area to incorporate the Island into its members after the triumph of the 1959 Revolution. The institution has not detailed the terms of the operation, but its credits are usually granted on “soft” terms, with interest rates of 3-4%.
The new resources come at a time when BioCubaFarma is in financial trouble because it hasn’t been able to collect most of the $200 million in profits allegedly obtained from the sale of the Soberana and Abdala vaccines, confirmed Eduardo Martínez Díaz, president of the pharmaceutical business group, on September 14.
In 2021, the state-owned company spent half of its resources on the development of drugs against COVID-19 but has not been able to recover the investment from its exports. Although it hasn’t revealed which countries bought its products, this newspaper published in 2021 that Vietnam bought five million doses and lots of Sovereign were sent to Iran, although in that case the serum was made in conjunction with Tehran. There were also shipments of one million vaccines to Venezuela last January.
Cuba also sent seven million doses of Soberana 02 and Abdala to Nicaragua in 2021, at a unit cost of seven dollars per dose, for a total of 49 million dollars, according to a document presented last June by the regime of Daniel Ortega, when it sought to access a loan of 116 million with the World Bank.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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.
Despite the poverty and the impossibility of making profits in dollars, the Government continues to sell agricultural inputs in foreign currency. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Yankiel Gutiérrez Faife, Camajuaní (Cuba), 24 September 2022 — Like most Cuban farmers, Ernesto gets up before dawn and has coffee. Half of his house is made of boards; the other is covered with fiber cement. He isn’t poor, but the money he earns has to be reinvested in crops.
His land, located on the outskirts of Camajuaní, Villa Clara, used to be fertile and welcoming. But it has been dry for years and doesn’t produce unless it’s fertilized with expensive fertilizers, sprayed with insecticides and weeded. “When you can’t get these resources,” the farmer tells 14ymedio, “the harvest is lost.”
Ernesto wants to grow 15 bean plants. Between the payment of the workers, the plow and the liquids, he has to spend 25,000 pesos on planting. A small fortune that took him three months to gather, in addition to getting used to remote management through Revolico, the buying and selling website where he got six liters of the herbicide glyphosate, for 1,675 pesos each.
The driver of the tractor that had planned to drag the plow charged him 6,000 pesos, plus fuel money, another 2,200. “All I have been able to achieve has been with my money, without credits or loans,” says Ernesto. “And I haven’t even been able to start planting with that.”
“What’s lucky is that I sell almost everything from what I produce,” he concludes, “and I also have something left for my house. If not, I have nothing.” continue reading
Rarely does the State pay attention to them when they complain to farm agencies, and the resources never arrive on time when bought. (14ymedio)
A few kilometers from Camajuaní, on a farm in the town of La Sabana, Armando grows mangoes and guavas that he then sells to Acopio. This State company distributes them to the Los Atrevidos canning factory, in Remedios. “The people of Acopio seemed serious,” he says, “until one day they really let me down.”
Armando planned to send six boxes of ripe mango, and they kept waiting for him all weekend. Under the heat of August, some mangoes began to rot. “I couldn’t wait any longer,” says the guajiro, who had to sell the lot to a merchant from Camajuaní, who quickly dispatched it.
“When I called Acopio to complain, they shamelessly explained to me that without fuel for the trucks they couldn’t buy the mango,” he says. “With that level of instability, how can you trust the State to do business?”
Miguel also lives and works in Camajuaní but, unlike Ernesto and Miguel, his resources are very scarce to keep his crops in good condition. Lately he doesn’t even sell what he harvests, but dedicates it to the consumption of his own family.
Old and with ailments, Miguel depends on his squalid checkbook. “It doesn’t give me enough for insecticides,” he laments. He has tried to thrive with other alternatives: earthworm hummus, animal feces and a mixture made with tobacco wedges and rotten vegetables, “but even so the pests don’t give up.”
An attempt is made to eliminate pests with earthworm humus, animal feces and a mixture made with tobacco and rotten vegetables, but they don’t even give up. (14ymedio)
Bordering on extreme poverty, Miguel’s house doesn’t even have a bathroom, just a toilet of boards in the courtyard. Despite the poverty and the impossibility of making profits in dollars, the Government continues to sell agricultural inputs in foreign currency. Most farmers don’t have or don’t know how to apply for a freely convertible currency account. These are very new processes, modes of payment to which they aren’t accustomed and a suffocating bureaucracy that turns marketing into a nightmare.
Some of them, the wealthiest, have been able to hire laborers and equipment. Others follow the tradition of facing the countryside alone, from sunrise to sunset, and resign themselves to austerity and the departure of the children, who rarely remain in rural villages.
Ernesto, Armando and Miguel are not affiliated with any cooperative. Rarely does the State pay attention to them when they complain to farm agencies, and the resources never arrive on time. “What there is goes to State producers,” they’re told.
Díaz-Canel has a special affection for Camajuaní, and it’s not enough for him to pave the way for the well-shod mafia, omnipotent in the territory; now he also supports his “chosen” farmers. (14ymedio)
It’s not strange that these three men, accustomed to difficulties and bureaucracy, have been perplexed by a recent headline in the the Communist Party newspaper Granma, which spoke of another Camajuaní producer: “If Yusdany can, why can’t others?” said the paper, citing none other than Miguel Díaz-Canel.
The plump president, on an official visit to the town of Villa Clara, had gone to the brand-new private “slaughterhouse” of Yusdany Rojas, a 31-year-old farmer. Rojas feeds the huge amount of 800 pigs on his farm, while he sows tobacco to sell to those who remove the veins of the leaves. In addition, he grows cane and other crops on its land and has space for a “small” sausage factory.
Díaz-Canel is portrayed with the young Yusdany, fascinated by the growth of the pigs and the “self-management” of the farm, where problems don’t take their toll. “He needs land,” says Granma, so that the local bureaucracy feels pressured in the face of the dilemma: the five pieces he owns are no longer enough.
“We were used to the State giving us everything for a long time as if we were pigeons,” he says, and his words almost sound ironic, “but now they have freed our wings and what we have to do is learn to fly.”
Yusdany sells his products to tourism and State-owned companies. The bank is lavish when it comes to granting loans, and the pigs are in good health. “Very soon I will have 3,800 pigs,” Rojas promises, and no one doubts it.
Almost 4,000 pigs, 86 employees, 5 pieces of land that will soon multiply and the personal blessing of Díaz-Canel. The president has a special affection for Camajuaní, and it’s not enough for him to pave the way for the well-shod mafia, omnipotent in the territory. Now he also guarantees that “chosen” farmers, such as Rojas, will prosper and entertain them in the official media.
Ernesto, Armando and Miguel ask themselves the same question, which becomes a complaint: If Yusdany can do it, why can’t we?
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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 third case of monkey pox is a 27-year-old woman from Cienfuegos province. (General Hospital Calixto García/Facebook)
EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 25 September 2022 — The Ministry of Public Health confirmed this Saturday the third case of monkey pox in Cuba in a 27-year-old woman who is hospitalized, isolated and under medical care.
The patient, a Cuban resident in the central province of Cienfuegos, has no connection with the other two cases confirmed in August, the institution reported. They were a 60-year-old Cuban resident in the United States and a 50-year-old Italian tourist, who died days after testing positive for the disease, according to the Cuban government.
Regarding this third case, health authorities indicated that it was through contact with a Cuban citizen residing in the United States who had suspicious symptoms of the disease.
He “arrived in Cuba on September 3 of this year and returned on the 13th of the same month,” they added. The diagnosed young woman started with symptoms on September 15, went to the doctor a week later, and the next day the infection was confirmed. continue reading
“The established focus control actions and epidemiological surveillance are being carried out,” said the Ministry of Health. “In relation to the contacts of the previously reported cases, they are already discharged, and there is no transmission of the disease in the focus checks,” the source added.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared this disease — also called “simian smallpox” — a “global health emergency” on July 23, when more than 16,000 infections had been reported in 75 countries.
The disease is caused by a virus and can be transmitted from animals to humans or through direct contact with people who have the symptoms, according to specialists.
WHO reports that the symptoms include fever, headache, muscle pain, low energy, inflammation of the lymph nodes and rashes or lesions on the skin.
Patients can spread the disease to other people while they have symptoms, and the virus is transmitted through body fluids (pus or blood from skin lesions), scabs and objects used by the sick.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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.
Image of the interior of the José Lezama Lima House Museum, located at 160-162 Trocadero Street, in Central Havana. (José Lezama House Museum)
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 25 September 2022 — Although we are wandering creatures, we are always looking for a home. For no one is a house enough; we must affirm our domain with small ornaments, paintings, touches, ashtrays, scratches on the wall, even breaks. That’s why hotels — no matter how luxurious they are — have something sterile and prostibulary that expel us to welcome the next one.
The trip exists to get home, no matter if it’s real or imaginary. The young people make lists and draw maps, and symbolically anticipate that coming home through small talismans: a lamp, a portrait, a book to which they cling. If these objects represent anything, it is loyalty to ourselves, the confidence that there will be a future and it will be — even in poverty — warm and welcoming.
Nothing is frivolous inside a house; everything has its meaning. Cuban mothers — for whom all junk is a treasure — were enraged when, carelessly, we broke a plate. Or if the cat we raised with care and civility knocked down a vase with its tail.
The secret space between the wall and the door was the favorite hiding place of childhood, as was the interior of the closets, where the jackets and ties of the old people made us sneeze. On the hallway boards, my brother and I marked our height with pencil: our whole life is contained in those lines of graphite, year by year, inch by inch, until we stop growing. continue reading
Inside the home there are free spaces and forbidden regions. The first time I opened a drawer, I did it with fear. The wardrobe, formidable, threatening, had three doors. I took hold of the handle and looked, on tiptoe, at the contents of the drawer.
There is no way to list what I saw — what we all saw at some point — because already the memory, treacherous as it is, populated it with false artifacts, invented by me. However, the only thing I clearly distinguish is a pair of gold-mounted mirrors, which belonged to a deceased relative.
Even now I remember the effect they caused on me, when I put them in front of my face: vertigo, dizziness, the terror of looking with the eyes of the deceased. From then on I was more suspicious of drawers.
“The dead should die with their things,” García Márquez wrote with disgust. Nothing worse than looting the memory of those who left. One feels — and rightly so — that he is disrupting the portion of existence that it took others a lifetime to accumulate. However, it’s natural that books, statuettes and lead soldiers don’t hinder the flow of the lives to come. We have to make room for them.
Sentimentality leads me to make only one exception: libraries.
Every reader of Lezama has embarked on the pilgrimage to the house at Trocadero 162, in Havana. There, library and home are one thing. The forgetfulness of the bureaucrats has been good for the place. They haven’t removed the figures that he had on his shelves and that acquire so much meaning in his work. Their gravity remains in the pictures and seats, and it could not be destroyed even by the cyclone that flooded the house a few years ago.
His friends, who still live and remember him, return to that time and to that library. Dislocating the showcases and disrupting the order of the specimens would mean, in a way, burning a fragment of their legacy.
Libraries, therefore, have to survive us.
The last station in the home, the one we have left when we have left or are far away, is the void. It was the master of Trocadero himself, heir to the Chinese dragons and the Japanese sages, who taught us how to taste it. The word is tokonoma, the empty creator of the house, a refuge made of nothing and silence where we can enter and rest.
The emptiness is the “unsurpassed company, the conversation in a corner of Alexandria,” which “surrounds our whole body with a silence full of lights.” There is nothing abstract about this. In fact, it is the only real thing when — in the cold and waiting for the train at the station — we look for the lukewarm interior of our pockets. In the background, intact as a ghost, is the promise of home.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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.
Cuba holds a referendum on September 25 to approve the new Family Code. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez and Herodes Díaz, Havana/Santiago de Cuba, 25 September 2022 — In the early hours of this Sunday morning there was a notably small turnout in the voting centers for the referendum on the Family Code, and the majority of the voters were elderly, according to 14ymedio reporters in Havana and Santiago de Cuba.
About eight and a half million Cubans have been called to participate in this referendum, the third that is being held under the current political system. The referendum will approve or reject a text that in recent months has generated intense controversy about equal marriage, adoption by homosexual couples and surrogacy.
According to the National Electoral Council (CEN), at 11:40 in the morning, almost five hours after the opening of the polls, 37.03% of registered voters had gone to vote.
Voters are divided among more than 24,000 polling stations, which will be open from 7:00 am to 4:00 pm on this day, a Sunday of uncertainty with the advance of Tropical Storm Ian that is expected to reach the status of hurricane in the coming hours and to hit western Cuba.
The proximity of the storm has launched Cubans into the streets in search of canned food, bread, cookies, candles and other products that will allow them to handle confinement in their homes when the winds and rains become stronger. However, shortages have worsened in recent hours, causing longer lines in front of bakeries and markets. continue reading
“It’s very early Sunday and on the eve of a hurricane, said the official in charge of reviewing the voters’ identity cards, trying to justify the low turnout. Voters were picking up their ballots at a school polling place in the neighborhood of Cayo Hueso in Havana. A few meters away, a line to buy bread summoned more people than the referendum for the Family Code.
“I came early so I could leave,” said Missy, a 28-year-old who cast her vote in a school in the Pueblo Nuevo neighborhood. “My daughter is in elementary school and for a few days she was called on to take care of the polls. She didn’t want to come, but the teacher told her that even if it was two hours, she had to fulfill that commitment.”
“It was early and she came back done in. She told me that very few people had gone to vote so far and that the snack they gave to the students who guard the ballot boxes is terrible: a cold roll with bad picadillo and a bag of hot Coral soda,” the mother complains.
At Missy’s same school, her mother and grandmother voted. “Even if they don’t believe me, they marked the yes and I marked the no,” the young woman explains. “Because they are immersed in Party militancy, but although I’m a lesbian and the issue of equal marriage suits me, I prefer to wait to have other rights first.”
Nearby, in Los Sitios, Dalmar and Julito have been placing the multicolored flag that identifies the LGBT+ community on their balcony for days. This Sunday they went to vote early and both marked yes. “We want to get married as soon as possible and appeal to solidarity motherhood to be able to have a child together,” they tell this newspaper. “We have struggled a lot to get here, and although it’s not an ideal situation, our rights cannot continue to be postponed.”
“Between the dead and those who have emigrated, we have 54 people on the registry who aren’t going to come to vote,” one of the organizers of a school in Cerro, near Ayestarán Avenue, explained loudly, through the telephone line. “When we’re done, we’ll know how many people are no longer in Cuba,” he said.
The exodus of recent months, the largest that the Island has suffered in its entire history, estimated to be close to 200,000 people, has taken away part of the electorally active population. So emigration also marks an election where the expectation of leaving the country soon has made many desist from approaching the polls.
“Why should I go, if I plan to leave this country?” explained a 19-year-old boy this Sunday morning on an improvised basketball court located in an open field in Nuevo Vedado. “Let those who stay decide. When I take the plane, I will no longer have to be governed by any of these laws; I will already have those of the country wherever I go.”
Along with him, other young people of similar ages repeat a similar speech. “I already have everything to leave for Nicaragua, so it’s like I’m not here,” adds another of the players, who from early morning preferred scoring a basket to dropping a ballot in a box.
“I haven’t seen young people,” emphasizes Manuel, a man from Havana who went to vote early and marked the no box. “When I entered school, it was around nine in the morning and there was only one old man. Then I took a tour of other schools in my neighborhood and only saw other elderly people.”
The presence in the early hours of voters over 60 years old may be due not only to the fact that among young people sleeping on Sunday morning is a more widespread habit, but also that the militants of the Communist Party and active members of organizations such as the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution are mostly people who exceed five or six decades of life.
One person who did arrive with the first light of Sunday and was surrounded by cameras and microphones at his polling place in the municipality of Playa was Miguel Díaz-Canel. The ruler took advantage of the moment to qualify the enthusiasm he had shown in previous days: “The expectation is not that it will be a unanimous vote, but I do believe that it will be a majority on the part of our people.”
According to the official press, Díaz-Canel assured that “against the Code there is a whole platform that starts from the demonization and discrediting of the Cuban Revolution,” and described the call for a referendum as courageous “in the conditions that the country is going through: shortages, blackouts, scarcity, with an important part of the economy paralyzed.”
Even Díaz-Canel didn’t rule out that there could be a “protest vote” and explained that, “in such complex issues where there is a diversity of opinion and in the midst of a difficult situation there can even be people who vote in order to protest.”
The official press also showed the former Cuban ruler Raúl Castro in the moment of voting, although his presence in the official campaign to promote the yes vote for the Family Code was very scarce.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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 Cuban Government is facing the closest vote in its history. (Granma)
14ymedio, Havana, 22 September 2022 — The Cuban government has called on the population to vote yes in the referendum on the Family Code held this Sunday. Far from the monolithic opinion that has been imposed in the official discourse — and maybe in private — voting is like a Russian doll for those who are outside the institutional fold. Pluralism, rich in nuances and diverse, is immersed in the middle of debate. Going to vote or not? And, in that case, yes or no?
The Spanish politician and professor of Constitutional Law, Diego López Garrido, warned years ago of the risks involved in some referendums: “People, many times, don’t respond to the issue in question, but to who makes it or how they do it,” he commented on the relevance of this type of voting. The expert agreed with the opinion of many political scientists who point out the dangers of minorities being unprotected by a referendum. “The issues that concern individual rights or rights that affect a minority are legislated, but they are never decided with a popular consultation,” he said.
Some Cubans agree with this, such as the journalist Reinaldo Escobar, from this newspaper. “Rights, no matter how long they have been violated, should not be submitted to a referendum. Neither the abolition of slavery nor the vote for women nor the use of public services without racial discrimination, to give just three examples, have had to wait for to be approved at the polls.” continue reading
“This Code recognizes rights that we Cubans have and cannot enjoy until today. That, for me, is more than enough.” / “If they’re putting the Family Code to the vote, why not take multiparty free elections to the vote?”
In a similar sense, although more clearly in favor of abstention, the Cuban artist and co-author of the popular song Patria y Vida, Yotuel Romero expressed himself on Tuesday. “If you can’t elect your president, how can you expose your children to a Family Code chosen by someone you didn’t vote for? If they’re putting the Family Code to the vote, why not take multiparty free elections to the vote?” he said on his social networks.
The DemoAmlat organization, which has promoted the vote of the diaspora — deprived of this right despite having Cuban citizenship in perpetuity — through an electronic voting platform, doesn’t hesitate to describe the operation of a referendum on the Family Code as “pinkwashing, after decades of repression and forced labor as a state policy against the LGBTIQ+ community.”
“If the project means an extension of rights, and there is no provision that obliges a totalitarian regime like Cuba to consult with citizens, why submit it to a referendum?” asks this institution.
The playwright Yunior García Aguilera has also unequivocally expressed his opinion against submitting an issue like this to consultation while everything else is imposed from the leadership of the Communist Party. “The embarrassing thing here is having to submit common sense to a referendum, after we were impaled by the worst Penal Code on the continent, without consulting anyone.” However, he also points out that rejecting the dictatorship doesn’t mean “putting anyone’s rights on hold.”
Among those who consider that voting and doing it in a positive way is the least of all evils in this context is the independent journalist Mario Luis Reyes. “This Code recognizes rights that we Cubans have and cannot enjoy until today. That, for me, is more than enough,” he admits with sadness, adding: “I understand that the rejection of the dictatorship causes many people, out of pure reaction, to want to vote no so that the regime suffers a symbolic ’defeat,’ but if the ’no’ wins, the most defeated ones will be ourselves.”
Also from activism, Manuel de la Cruz, a member of the San Isidro Movement and a former political prisoner, promotes the positive vote and asks those who think differently that abstaining or rejecting the Family Code will not bring any democratic improvement. “To the people who will vote no so that their children aren’t taken away, come up with a strategy that includes more than that, because under the old code, they will also be able to take children away,” he says.
Few surprises exist in the religious sphere, where the opening of marriage, gender self-determination or surrogate wombs are enough to raise hives. The clergy has demonstrated in all countries of the world in which similar rules have been approved and have raised their voices with all the means at their disposal, managing to mobilize many from the temples. Although their room for maneuver in Cuba is more limited, they have not had any problems circulating their clear commitment to voting, but in a negative direction. “We see with disappointment that these and other proposals that were notoriously questioned by society are still intact in the Code that is now presented for a referendum,” the Cuban bishops said in an institutional statement.
Far from the voices of the Government or the communicators and intellectuals with greater capacity to raise their message, popular opinion is more divided than ever. People aren’t afraid to express the meaning of their vote, even if it’s not the one promoted by the ruling party, and the Government could see its strategy of closing ranks endangered.
The content of the Family Code is prolific and extensive. It addresses some of the topics that have generated the most controversy, from the issues of equal marriage and adoption by people of the same sex, “solidarity management” or parental authority, to other less commented ones that entail guaranteed and important improvements: the end of child marriage, care of the elderly, care of children, the right to an economic regime for both parties in marriage and the fight against domestic violence.
In these last issues, very diverse organizations from the Church to YoSíTeCreo in Cuba agree that it’s already late for the assumption of rights that are more than consolidated in many parts of the planet, and that they can be derailed because they’re included in the same legal corpus as other issues that generate a notable dissent, in addition to punishing the regime by a predictably high abstention as a method of protest.
Four days from the referendum, the Government is facing the first election that it may lose but, as some analysts point out, even that has been guaranteed “life insurance.” Suffice it to say that reactionary, conservative and counterrevolutionary ideas will win. Even if that means admitting that the Government’s power has decreased.
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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.
Physics instructor Pedro Albert Sánchez during a broadcast on social media. (Facebook/Captura)
14ymedio, Havana, 20 September 2022–Physics instructor Pedro Albert Sánchez was transferred from Valle Grande prison to a hospital, after a week on a hunger strike, according to information provided to 14ymedio by opponent Manuel Cuesta Morúa. Although it is unknown to which hospital he was taken, another prisoner in that jail confirmed that the academic’s health had deteriorated greatly in the last few days.
Albert Sánchez has been imprisoned since November 3, 2021 and, last July, the Attorney General sought a five year prison term but his trial has not yet taken place. The instructor was arrested after announcing a march “for freedom of thought, of expression and peaceful demonstration.”
During the most recent family visit Sánchez received in prison, on September 13th, he refused to receive the food they took him. “I have no way of expressing the frustration and powerlessness I feel right now,” the instructor’s son, Pedro Antonio Albert who lives abroad, stated in a video he shared on Facebook at that time.
“My father’s situation is truly worrisome and I fear for his life,” wrote Pedro Antonio on social media, to accompany his statement. “A physics and mathematics instructor who has taught thousands of students in Havana and Pinar del Río,” that is how the young man described his father and added that the academic is suffering from cancer and ulcerative colitis. continue reading
“His only crime has been freely expressing what he thinks,” stated Pedro Antonio. “My dad is going to die, he has been on a hunger strike for two days. My brother and I are worried because we know that when our father makes a decision no one can intervene and make him change his mind.”
“I don’t want the worst to happen, but I know that it can,” said the young man. and on Tuesday the family’s greatest fears are becoming reality with Albert Sánchez’s transfer to the hospital due to his deteriorating physical condition.
The instructor, heir to a long tradition of marchers, among them emblematic personalities such as Andarín Carvajal, a Cuban athlete who participated in the marathon at the Saint Louis Olympics in 1904, sought to revive citizen freedom on the Island with his initiative of walking through part of Havana.
However, just the announcement of that walk in solidarity with the Civic March of November 15, 2021 was enough to arrest and later transfer him to Valle Grande prison.
“Let him go, because my father is not a criminal. He is a professional, with dignity, which is what you all lack,” the young man stated while addressing agents of the Cuban political police. “That man has more dignity than all of you.”
Translated by: Silvia Suárez
____________
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.
Sausages from the Sancti Spiritus plant are being made with 50% ground chicken and beef, and 50% starchy fillers and water. (Captura/Centrovision
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Havana, 23 September 2022 — “Everything coming out of the slaughterhouse is being swallowed up by the sausage factory,” says a resident of Kilo 12, a Sancti Spiritus neighborhood named for the province’s meat producer. He reports that, for several days, meat has been increasingly hard to find. Not even the black market, where it is worth its weight in gold, has been spared the debacle.
“They used to set aside the pork loins and the cuts of beef, and you could buy those. But that was then. It seems sausages are more profitable than raw meat,” he says. The state-owned company’s sausages are produced with a particular customer base in mind, one that pays better: tourist hotels and the network of hard currency stores.
The man claims that a plant employee he knows, who works in quality control, told him a large container of imported pork entered the country two weeks ago. Half the shipment was sent to the plant, which has since greatly increased production.
Opened in 2019 after a six-million-dollar investment, the Sancti Spíritus sausage factory is the only one of its kind in Cuba. The company’s directors boasted of these figures on the local television station, Centrovision. During Wednesday’s broadcast, however, workers admitted that all production is focused on meeting the demands of the tourism industry and filling the shelves of hard-currency stores. continue reading
What Cubans get, if anything, comes from the company’s “parallel production line,” which supplies its mass market “product leader.” It also produces ground meat, hamburgers and chorizo. According to the employee, anything that is left over is made available to retail and dining establishments.
The factory has the capacity to produce six tons of cured meats but is currently operating on a half-day schedule due to a shortage of spare parts. One official, whose name Centrovision did not reveal, stated that the parts needed to return the plant to full capacity are available on the island and that the “only” issue to be resolved is the meat supply.
Another unnamed official stated that they had been making sausages with pork but, due to shortages, have had to use alternatives. “They’ve been made with ground chicken and beef. The formula is 50% these kind of meats, 50% water and starchy fillers” she says.
“I’ve bought them. They’re not bad. They’re better than they were six months ago when they were making them with horse meat,” added the Kilo 12 resident. “It’s too bad they’re so expensive. They’re meatier.”
In 2021 Cuban pork production fell 53.5%, to 132.90 tons, compared to the previous year. It was part of a trend that also saw beef fall 13.5%. Similarly, lamb fell 32.5% and poultry 20.8% according to the National Office of Statistics and Information.
____________
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.
Schoolchildren concentrated in La Piragua, in Havana, for the official concert in favor of the yes on the Family Code referendum. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 23 September 2022 — In its desperate struggle for the yes to win in the referendum on the Family Code this Sunday, the Cuban Government has mobilized not only workplaces but also schools.
Barely thirty kids, from nearby schools, arrived this Friday at the corner of G and Malecón, in El Vedado, Havana, where a march was called for 3 pm that would be enlivened, as they pompously announced, with “dancing and congas.”
Dragging their feet, accompanied by teachers who walked with the same reluctant step, they received a cap and fans, all made of cardboard, with the colors of the rainbow and the slogan “Code Yes” from the hands of officials stationed in front of a car of the Union of Young Communists (UJC).
Some of them, after receiving these, didn’t hesitate to flee the place. “We’re going to stop by — there’s a camera — so they know we were there,” a teacher told a group of teenagers while they deserted the activity before it even started. continue reading
Another group followed in the footsteps of a UJC official who harangued them with a whistle, to walk to the next point of call, La Piragua. This esplanade, located on the Malecón at the heights of the National Hotel, has recently moved to the Anti-imperialist Tribune, in front of the United States Embassy and a few feet from there, as the center of propaganda events organized by the Communist Party of Cuba.
Barely thirty kids, from nearby schools, arrived this Friday at the corner of G and Malecón, in El Vedado. (14ymedio)
In the evening, a concert will take place, the official press explained. Los Van Van, Haila María Mompié, Arnaldo and his Talisman, the La Colmenita Children’s Theater Company and actors of the Teleseries Calendario will participate.
Around 3:30, La Piragua was observed guarded by a huge police operation, with parked patrols and agents stationed on every corner. Immediately several buses arrived with more students, all dressed in their uniforms.
“We’re going to stop by — there’s a camera — so they know we were there,” a teacher told a group of teenagers while they deserted the activity. (14ymedio)
As part of the event, the authorities established stalls for the sale of handicrafts and food. The prices were high: for example, bread with pork, at 250 pesos, and bread with ham, at 200. To drink, they offered Coca-Cola and Mahou brand beer, something striking if one of the propaganda posters that “decorated” the stalls is taken into account: “Against Spanish Colonialism.”
“In no way is this a voluntary event. It’s a forced concentration of students where they are taking advantage to sell food, drinks and handicrafts at unpayable prices,” lamented a passerby who stopped for a moment hoping to buy something to eat.
As part of the event, the authorities established stalls for the sale of handicrafts and food. (14ymedio)
Around 4:30, many among the crowd of young people began to scurry away, little by little, under a harsh sun and in the face of the impossibility of spending so much on a drink.
The schools in the capital have been wallpapered with posters containing the slogan “Code Yes,” and students have already been warned of the obligation to “take care of the ballot boxes” [i.e. observe the voting in person] on Sunday, “for at least four hours,” according to a high school student from Nuevo Vedado.
To drink, they offered Coca-Cola and Mahou brand beer, something striking if you take into account one of the propaganda posters that “decorated” the stalls reads: “against Spanish colonialism.” (14ymedio)Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
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.
He shares the surveillance of the cars with a friend who takes care of his position so that, from time to time, he runs a race to take a client to his house. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 24 September 2022 — As I adjust my helmet, he tells me that he is 29 years old and has an ulcer. I get on the back of the motorcycle and we head down Calle Reina heading to Carlos III. The Belascoaín traffic light forces us to a stop, where he tells me that he was born in the middle of the Special Period and that he is part of what he has called “the sand generation.” “We were the children who grew up without milk and without toys,” he adds, just as the green light gives way to the wide avenue.
He has tried almost everything to survive: “I worked as a waiter in a state cafeteria; I was a house-to-house distributor for the weeklypacket; I got a job at a gas station but I didn’t last long there; I let myself be carried away by the dream of working in the Mariel Special Development Zone but that quickly deflated; I was a coachman in Old Havana; and finally I ended up in El Trigal Market.” We are already arriving at Zapata Street and a close trust – as if we had known each other all our lives – marks our conversation.
“But I can’t leave this country because I have my mother and my grandmother here, I know that if I ‘go out to see the volcanoes’ I will never see them again.”
“At first the idea of El Trigal was good,” he confesses. “I bought bananas from the farmer for 80 centavos in pesos and sold them to the customers, who were mostly paladares [private restaurants] and cafeterias, for 1.50.” But El Trigal market, a prototype of what could be extended throughout the island to eliminate obstacles to agricultural trade, ended up collapsing. “One day we arrived and we were no longer allowed to buy directly, we had to go through the state company Acopio, which then offered the bananas at 2.50 CUP [Cuban pesos] and there was no business for us to sell them.”
The tower of the Plaza de la Revolución is on the left as we cross part of La Timba. “I had to leave there and I started driving an electric tricycle to offer my services to the self-employed who went to buy at the Mercabal on 26th Street, but that was dying little by little and now it is closed and without anything to sell… Nor do I have the health to continue in that job, which involved carrying a lot of weight and I have a herniated disc and hip problems.”
“I started driving an electric tricycle to offer my services to the self-employed who went to buy at the Mercabal on 26th Street.” (14ymedio)
Now, he makes a living parking cars outside a Havana store. He shares the work of keeping an eye on the cars with a friend who steps in for him, so that, from time to time, he can speed off to take a customer home. “It doesn’t pay much but at least I have a job, most of my friends are at home with their arms crossed because they can’t find anything.”
We can already see Tulipán street, without traffic at that time of the afternoon, and the young man comments: “It’s just that, as I told you, we are made of sand, we are disarming ourselves.” We turn and he continues: “But I can’t leave this country because I have my mother and grandmother here, I know that if I ‘leave to go look at the volcanoes’ I will never see them again.” The train station, with its empty rails and platforms, is the scene of his harshest comment: “I don’t want to have children here, but I can’t emigrate either, so it seems that my family ends with me.”
In front of my concrete block he says goodbye. I get off the bike and hand him back his helmet. I see him go away and out of sight as if the breeze from my street had finished disseminating the grains of sand that he had still managed to retain inside his shirt.
____________
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.
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 24 September 2022 — On an island with more than a thousand political prisoners, the patron saint of prisoners has become the image before which countless Cuban families pray. On September 24, the patron saint of inmates received flowers and candles in her parish on Cuba Street, in Old Havana, under the watchful eye of a police operation with uniformed and civilian agents.
