14ymedio – Page 184 – Translating Cuba

Cuba: Fidel Castro’s Tantrum with Gorbachev

During Gorbachev’s trip to Cuba in 1989, he and Castro could not hide, despite high levels of diplomacy, the abyss that separated their ideas. (EP)

14ymedio, Frank Calzón, Miami, 3 September 2022 — Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader who wanted to salvage communism with his reforms and openings known as glasnost and perestroika, could not convince Fidel of the pragmatism of these reforms during his visit to Cuba in 1989. Fidel did not like the interest generated by the Russian — younger than he — among Havanans, nor did he like his ideas of renewal.

Now, the state-run press in Cuba has limited itself to succinctly informing about his death, which has been the subject of hundreds of articles and commentaries in the most important press outlets around the world.

In an article this week in the Washington Post, Nathan Sharansky, a human rights activist and former political prisoner in the USSR, wrote that Gorbachev, “expressed regret that the U.S.S.R. had fallen apart, but also emphasized his personal achievements, including the promotion of political and religious freedom, the introduction of democracy and a market economy, and, of course, the end of the Cold War.”

In his book titled Perestroika, published in 1987, Gorbachev — who would become the leader of the Soviet Union the following year — wrote that “the world is not what it used to be, and its new problems cannot be solved by the inherited concepts of centuries past.” Gorbechev did not want continuity. continue reading

Those ideas and his willingness to cooperate with the United States were anathema to Fidel Castro, who always wanted to be the leader of a grand anti-American coalition. The immediate result was that Havana banned the distribution of Russian publications, such as Sputnik and Novedades de Moscú [News from Moscow], and began to repatriate the Cubans who lived in Russia to avoid contagion with the dangerous reformist virus.

Among those who were later disgraced for favoring the reforms were General Arnaldo Ochoa, a national hero decorated by Fidel Castro himself and later executed on the dictator’s orders following a sham trial for drug trafficking.

Regarding Ochoa’s case, the Los Angeles Times stated at the time that “it is possible that Arnaldo Ochoa will be spared from a firing squad by his old friend and leader Fidel Castro, but . . . Castro has decided that his Island’s future lies in . . . Stalinist Communism including purges and show trials for those unfortunate apparatchiks who stray from the party line.”

After the Soviet Union disappeared, Irina Zorina, an intellectual, and a group of Russian dissidents founded the Russian Committee for Human Rights in Cuba and the Russian Embassy in Geneva responded to a call from Carlos Franqui and Freedom House, sponsoring a session to hear the grievances of former Cuban political prisoners who were visiting the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in the Swiss city.

The session was also attended by diplomats, journalists and representatives of human rights organizations. Cuba’s State newspaper Granma ran an editorial commentary illustrated with rats, vodka bottles and American flags, alleging they wanted to convert the Russian diplomatic mission into a tavern.

Sharansky’s Washington Post article comments that during Gorbachev’s, “first trips to the West. . .Gorbachev discovered that the Soviet Union had paid a heavy diplomatic and economic price for its treatment of dissidents. As a result. . .he began to release political prisoners and long-time refuseniks (Jews fighting for their right to emigrate to Israel.) ”

Shanasky also wrote in his book, The Case for Democracy, that “three things are necessary for people to achieve freedom: people on the inside willing to suffer to achieve it; people on the outside to help them; and for democracies to condition their political, economic, and cultural relationships on the regime’s implementation of specific reforms, beginning with the release of political prisoners.”

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Of Spontaneous Leadership and Popular Protests in Cuba

“Let us do with our lives what we want,” demands the shirtless man in the center, before the strict faces of officials and police in El Cepem, Artemisa. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 31 August 2022 — A shirtless man stands up to officials and police to prevent them from confiscating the rafts with which a group of residents of El Cepem, Artemisa, want to get out of the Cuban “socialist paradise.” A woman sits in front of her phone in Santiago de Cuba and launches an acid criticism against stores that only take payment in foreign currency. An old man walks the streets of San Antonio de los Baños shouting slogans against president Miguel Díaz-Canel. Hours before those actions, no one would have believed that either would become a leader, no one would have singled them out as ringleaders of the outrage on this Island.

For decades, Cubans have been waiting for anointed protagonists who will confront power directly and, in the style of Joan of Arc, come to immolate themselves if necessary for the cause of all. Waiting for these bold and magnetic messiahs, many citizens have parked their own civic actions. The demands from outside and within the national borders for these determined and authoritarian caudillos to appear, feared by the ruling party and loved by the people, fascinating and good orators, have also delayed change in this country.

However, life has shown that the leader emerges where forced by circumstances, that the leading role passes from one to another as reality dictates. That momentary chief is the biggest headache right now for the Cuban regime, which, when it finishes putting out the flame of rebellion in one area of the country, another more sophisticated and stronger popular fire appears. In El Cepem, a poor community near El Salado beach, Castroism faced another problem this Monday, its own lack of charismatic figures and solutions to national problems.

A man, with a speech that borders on the philosophical heights, and whose address lacks a single obscenity, has struck the Cuban system to the heart. “If they don’t want us, because we are an illegal community, if we don’t fit in this country because our wages are not enough to buy in hard currency stores, if there is no oil for the thermoelectric plants to work,” then “let us do with our own lives whatever we want,” demands this father of an eight-month-old baby in front of the strict faces of officials and police.

Microphone in hand, while another resident of El Cepem holds the speaker on his shoulder through which his flat and firm voice is heard, this man displays all the arts of a true leader: he summons, unites, protects and confronts those who want to do harm to his group, his neighborhood. What is his name? Where did he learn all those truths that he shoots like argumentative arrows, accurate and irrefutable? It is not necessary to know. The political police will now invent a past for him that is tailored to the campaigns to assassinate his reputation, to which they have appealed so often for more than 60 years. But, for a few minutes, he was the undisputed leader of national despair.

Let’s stop waiting for “the voice.” Any of us, at any given moment, can be chief, director, rector, general or president.

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Cubans Confront the Police to Let Them Leave the Island by Raft

Images of the protests of residents of a settlement in Playa Baracoa. (Collage)

14ymedio, Havana, 30 August 2022 — Despite the repression in each of the places where demonstrations have taken place in recent days, dozens of Cubans staged a new protest this Monday. On this occasion, it was in the town of El Cepem, of the Costa Norte People’s Council, Caimito, in Artemisa, after the police tried to prevent the departure of several illegal rafts. The place, which has taken its name from the acronym of a nearby military unit, has become an illegal settlement with precarious housing and heavy threats from officials to punish the residents with evictions.

“If they don’t want us, because we are an illegal community, if we don’t fit in this country because our wages are not enough to buy in hard currency stores, if there is no oil for the thermoelectric plants to work, let us make the decisions for our own lives,” said one of the neighbors acting as a spokesman for the attacked residents of the place.

In a video broadcast by the exiled Albert Fonse, the moment in which special troops violently burst into several homes is observed, provoking the indignation of the residents. The altercation ended in a confrontation that left several people injured and at least six arrested, according to reports from witnesses to the events.

In the transmitted images, a man is seen who, on behalf of the residents, stood up to the officials, as was captured in another video. “Don’t treat us that way,” the neighbor tells uniformed police officers. “You are like parents who take care of the child and do not let him learn to go out in the street, so when he does go out in the street the child does not know how to express himself.” And he adds: “Allow us the opportunity to decide for our own lives.”

The man, who describes himself as the father of an eight-month-old girl, insists that they are not stealing anything from anyone, and that when they find continue reading

“one of those artifacts,” referring to homemade boats, they represent thousands of pesos raised by each family to be able to go “We don’t want to go against you, we don’t want those people to come and attack us and we have to have this response,” he reiterates.

This Cuban insisted on his request that they not be attacked when they are “making a boat, that what they should do is give us a medal… What they should make is a monument to the rafters,” making it clear that the departure of Cubans represents remittances for the Island.

The flow of rafters responds to the worsening of the humanitarian and economic crisis that the island is experiencing, with a resurgence of repression and economic deterioration, which includes a rise in the cost of living, the devaluation of the Cuban peso and an increase in uncertainty about the future. In the last ten months, almost 178,000 Cubans have entered the United States by land, surpassing the figures recorded in the Mariel Boatlift in 1980 and the Rafter Crisis in 1994.

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Pablo Milanes Calls for ‘New Voices and New Ways of Thinking’ in Cuba

The musician Pablo Milanés in an undated photo. (EFE)

14ymedio, Havana, 31 August 2022 — Famed singer Pablo Milanés announced in a Facebook post on Monday that he had signed the Cuban Civil Society Manifesto, a document drafted by a group of Cubans, some living on the island and others overseas, which calls for change in the country.

He added a dedication “to all those who fight for freedom, and for social and economic change in Cuba.”

He goes on to note, “As I have indicated in my most recent public statements, its proposals meet the requirements of what could serve as a non-partisan effort, one without regard to trends, to old and new disagreements, which would only lead to disunity and inconsistency in any future achievements, which can only be achieved through the unity of all Cubans.”

He encourages others to read the text “in depth” to appreciate “the essential idea” of what the country needs: “new voices and new ways of thinking, which demand new laws, new freedoms, new active participation within the current society, which would lead us to a dialogue of peace and an achievable future given the dire conditions in which people find themselves, with no apparent way out.”

He reiterates his support for “this and any other manifesto that might encourage change in a spirit of sovereignty, inclusion and respect for human beings, their dignity and most basic aspirations,” no matter from where they might arise, “without prejudice and without political-ideological conditioning of any kind, to achieve what we all seek through different paths.”

The manifesto, which was released last week, calls for “profound and urgent change to wrench the country out of an unprecedented crisis and avoid confrontation.” It adds, “The state has meaning only when it represents the interests of all the citizenry, for which a consensus of Cuban civil society has a superior moral force.” continue reading

It places blame for the country’s “alarming situation” on “business centralization by the state, a source of inefficiency and corruption by bureaucratic classes, which have been dragging the population into a disastrous situation for more than two decades.” It also blames “systematic coercion of essential rights such as free oral and written expression as well as artistic creativity, the right to free, peaceful association, to free movement — in particular, the right to be able to leave one’s own country and return to it — and to citizens’ free, independent economic entrepreneurship.”

The manifesto can be signed by emailing concordiaencuba@outlook.com. It is open to those “currently living inside or outside of Cuba since the Cuban nation extends beyond the Cuban archipelago to any part of the world where there are Cubans who identify with the collective aspirations of their compatriots.”

So far more than a one hundred eighty* people have signed it. Among the signatories in Cuba are opposition figure Manuel Cuesta Morua, writer Angel Santiesteban, activist Dunia Medina Moreno and journalist Maria Matienzo. Among those from overseas are musicians Willy Chirino and Paquito D’Rivera, editor Felipe Lazaro, historian Ariel Hidalgo and activist Elena Larrinaga.

It is not the first time Milanés has spoken out against the Cuban regime. The artist, who has lived in Spain since 2004, is among former supporters of the Cuban revolution who have spoken out strongly against the repression of demonstrations that took place throughout the country on July 11, 2021.

His stance, which has been much more critical than those of other members of his generation, notably Silvio Rodriguez, raised huge expectations for his June 12 concert in Havana.

Faced with protests after it was revealed that most of the two thousand tickets to the scheduled performance at the National Theater of Cuba had been sold to government “agencies,” authorities moved the show’s venue to Havana’s Sports City Coliseum.

Officials’ fear that Milanés would repeat on stage what he had posted on social media clouded the event. There was also fear that there would be a repeat of what happened at Carlos Varela’s concert on May 29 when some in the audience chanted “freedom” on several occasions during the performance. A heavy police presence and a very thorough check of bags and cell phones overshadowed the emotion of the audience, who that had not heard one of its most iconic musicians perform live for several years.

*Note: Signature numbers updated as of posting this translation.

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Silivio Rodriguez Criticizes the Cuban Government for Blocking the People’s Protests Over the Blackouts

Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez has once again made statements questioning the Díaz-Canel government. (La Tercera)

14ymedio, Havana, 29 August 2022 — The troubadour Silvio Rodríguez has once again used his blog to complain to the Executive of Miguel Díaz-Canel about its attitude towards the protests, particularly the most recent ones, against the lack of light and constant blackouts. “I think that our government makes a serious mistake when it prevents the people from taking actions for relief. That contradiction will have to be resolved or the people will end up confronting the government,” warns the artist.

Rodríguez publishes in Otra Cita, the continuation of his previous blog, Segunda Cita, a post by the Cuban official economist Humberto Herrera Carlés. It analyzes the supposed effects of the US embargo and how these have worsened, according to his thesis, since Donald Trump expanded the sanctions.

“The blockade is what prevents us the most, what delays us the most, what confuses us the most. Because constant pain blinds us. Knowing that, they made torture a law, so that not even the torturers themselves could stop it,” Rodriguez argues in a comment.

Despite this, the artist demands that Cubans can cry out against whomever they want, which they can no longer do. “I defend the right of everyone to explode and say what they feel,” he adds.

Rodríguez attacks the way of managing that has been imposed in Cuba and stresses that, from his point of view, the country is not socialist. “Socialism is a more equitable concept of wealth distribution. It has nothing to do with the government hoarding everything. All monopolies are undesirable and even more so the absolute ones,” he points out. continue reading

Although the singer-songwriter emphasizes that the workers are striving to carry forward an energy system that is moving rapidly towards collapse – “inventing, taking even from where we don’t have” – his diagnosis is that radical changes will be necessary.

“It is obvious that our way of generating energy has no future. I think that, as it is a strategic issue, of survival, in this sense we have to be radical and even make sacrifices, because our lives depend on it. There is no other way than to put ourselves body and soul for renewable energies,” the artist states.

Despite a devastating criticism that joins the many he has made in recent years toward the Díaz-Canel government and even to the Cuban communist model, Rodríguez softens his speech at the end and asks that the world be viewed positively with the aim of mobilizing against discouragement. “It is going through so much anguish, and what we could and could not do annoys us so much, that the temptation to blame the Government for everything is latent. (…) The haters also realize it and are trying to make sure Cuba is not given the slightest respite. Let’s not help them,” he adds.

On the same day, Díaz-Canel, during a visit to the Máximo Gómez thermoelectric plant in Mariel, and the Ernesto Guevara de la Serna plant in Santa Cruz del Norte, accused the Cubans who recently demonstrated against the blackouts of behaving “indecently,” since, in his opinion they respond to the interests of the “enemies of the Revolution” by creating discouragement and uncertainty. Unfortunately, there are people who, with quite indecent vandalism, lend themselves to such actions.”

The president was referring especially to the recent demonstrations in Nuevitas, which brought hundreds of citizens to the streets on August 19 and 20. In them, the neighbors banged on pots and pans, sounded horns and raised their own voices against the current situation of hunger and crisis, as well as the lack of freedoms. Those protests were suppressed and several people arrested.

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Cuban President Diaz-Canel and the Blackouts: Enemies On All Sides

Cubans are frequently reduced to using candles as their only source of light. (Yoani Sanchéz)

14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 29 August 2022 — It is one thing to say that Cuba will overcome the current energy crisis; what Díaz-Canel did is quite another matter, he insulted the Cuban people who are fed up with so many lies, and with waiting for “The New Man” who will never arrive. Even Silvio Rodríguez spoke up.

During his trip to two power plants — the Máximo Gómez plant in Mariel and the Ernesto Guevara plant in Serna, Santa Cruz del Norte — the communist ruler provided details of the strategy to overcome the national electricity system’s situation which has resulted in continuous blackouts over several months. But also, according to some, he’s freaking out. What is happening to Díaz-Canel?

Who would have predicted it? Once again the embargo or blockade appears as the justification for all the maladies that accumulate on Díaz-Canel’s agenda. That is, Cuba’s communist ruler, after acknowledging that the energy crisis has nothing to do “with enemy activity, nor with any bad behavior of the thermo-electric plant employees” he launched harsh attacks against the United States, faulting the blockade [i.e. the US embargo] for “the systematic effects it has provoked, which left the country without possible financing to carry out the maintenance work, repairs and the new investments needed in that sector.” Up until this point, nothing new.

Once again, taking the Doberman out for a walk. Maybe one of the state newspaper Granma’s journalists should have reminded Díaz-Canel of the Soviet-communist origins of the power plants that are still in operation, with several issues of obsolescence. No. Putin, Díaz-Canel’s principle associate, certainly would not like to receive this type of critique of his technology. continue reading

Without taking responsibility for a single one of the events, Díaz-Canel found a new argument, blaming some “presumed enemies of the revolution” for the whole situation, which is being taken advantage of to “create discouragement, uncertainty, to call for vandalism, to promote disorder. Sadly there are people who, with vandalism, indecent behaviors, lend themselves to these activities.” Inconceivable. What is the communist ruler acknowledging publicly?

Not content, he added that this type of behavior should be separated from “the doubt that the population may have at a certain point, of its demands or of the concerns that are channeled through the [communist] party’s system of services, the government, and the revolution’s institutions.” In fact, he did not realize, or he does not want to realize that it is the same, and he is running out of credit. On this, even Silvio Rodríguez agrees with this blog, which is not usually the case.

In addition, Díaz-Canel should understand that when faced with the dissatisfaction that exists, no party line will suffice, it’s simple, get the electricity to work. Problems are not fixed by covering them up, but rather by resolving them.

When Díaz-Canel wastes Cubans’ time by talking about “the hypocritical, double standard, genocidal, inhumane policies to which they subject the country through unjust sanctions and an intensified blockade” he only wastes energy on an argument which not even he still believes. And all he has to do is resolve, as quickly as possible, a problem which cannot last days, nor weeks, nor months because it could all blow up. When he least expects it.

To simplify Cuba’s communist leader’s statement during his trip to the two power plants in Mariel and Santa Cruz del Norte, “today we have a process of accumulated technological deterioration which cannot be resolved in short order.” And how did we arrive at this situation?

The whole situation corresponds to the communist state-run media’s new propaganda campaign which insists, once again, to a people tired of so many promises and lies, that ” Cuba will overcome the current energy crisis created by the effects over several years of the United States blockade.” Then it remains calm because, with that, it intends to buy time and return to the essence of the revolution, which they have not moved away from in 63 years. Meanwhile, Cubans are fleeing the island in one of the largest exoduses of the last 20 years. [Translator’s note: In fact, ’largest ever’.]

Díaz-Canel observed during his trip to the power plants “intense work, under very difficult conditions, over many hours and with enourmous determination on the part of the power plant employees to recover the power generation capacity as soon as possible and of course, provide more stability, and get us away from these very complex and unpleasant situations which affect our entire population.”

None of that can be criticized, far from it, but did he really expect anything else to happen? Díaz-Canel knows and the plant employees also know that this energy crisis will not be resolved overnight and that its effects will continue, unless a 180 degree turn changes everything.

Díaz-Canel recalled his television appearance in June, during which he said there would be a strategy to eliminate the blackouts by summer, and which Granma described as “a well conceived design.” However, it is evident they must have been talking of another country because this summer, which is not yet over, has been one of alumbrones* more than blackouts and the entire country has been affected by the lack of electricity.

Clearly, it is due to the “accident in the Felton 2 boiler, when the bearing at Felton 1 broke and due to the instability with which CTE Antonio Guiteras, in Matanzas, functions and we have not been able to maintain it to the degree necessary.” Events which they try to present as accidental but which have a peculiar background which should, in any case, be the subject of further investigation.

Somehow, it seems Díaz Canel is crying out for that investigation commission to establish where the responsibility lies when he declared that “for the country’s electrical energy system to function in a stable manner, it is necessary for the hard core where it is generated, which are the Felton and Guiteras plants, to be functioning at full capacity.” If this is known, then what game is he playing?

None. Selling smoke which will dissipate just like the Matanzas fire. Trying to convince Cubans fed up with the situation, that the umpteenth update to the strategy aimed at getting away from the blackouts in the shortest time possible “before the end of the year,” to develop, in 2023, an investment and maintenance group that will stabilize the system and change the energy matrix. And Cubans look at each other knowing that this blah blah blah is more of the same and the way things are going, the problems will continue.

They will continue because the electricity crisis is not resolved with strategies, but with actions. With money, which instead of being dedicated to the hotel industry, should be directed at the capital development of the economy in proportion to the GDP. If this basic infrastructure development indicator, which in Cuba barely reaches 15% compared with 25% in Latin America, there is nothing to do. It is an issue of money and profitability that cannot be repaired with a patch of a few replacement parts. Electricity is either managed profitably or it goes under. Like the rest of the sectors of the Cuban economy.

Financing, once inaccessible, now seems to come mostly to recover unforeseen thermal and distributed generating capacity; in a group of new technologies for generation. The same question then arises, why wasn’t that financing available earlier, and most importantly, from where does it come? Beware of indebtedness, these aren’t the best times for risk-taking ventures.

Díaz Canel neither takes responsibilities for this electricity disaster, nor those of his predecessors, the Castro brothers, who really did very little in all of this. One of communism’s great failures in Cuba has been forecasting, and therefore, the current situation of instability of and decline in electricity supply has not been an isolated event, but rather has been a long time coming. What happens is that when these unforeseen events arise, there is no other option but to see that the social communist system of organization does not have the capacity to confront them.

The response is to continuously follow up on the maintenance and repairs, “to prove how the capacities are being incorporated, how the rest of the system behaves, and which electricity generation results have been achieved.” That is, more of the same as always: bureaucracy and hierarchy, hopefully it will not occur to them to create an OSDE [Organization of Direct Business Services} for all of this. That would be the limit.

What was said does not have a response and now the attacks come from all directions. It’s bad.

*Translator’s note: “Alumbrones” is a word coined in Cuba in the 1990s during the so-called Special Period, to refer to the unexpected moments when the lights came ON, versus the long periods without electricity.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Cuba’s Enemy is in the Plaza of the Revolution

Raúl Castro placed his son Alejandro (on his left in front of his grandson Raúl Guillermo) in what he called the Commission for Defense and National Security. (Cubanet)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 31 August 2022 — If we take into consideration that the security of any country is based on the notion of stability, peace, development, as well as in the strategies to achieve these objectives, there is no doubt that the authoritarian powers on the Island constitute the main threat to National Security.

This concept emerged in the United States shortly after the end of World War II. In the context of the Cold War and facing the threat of nuclear weapons, the term focused on prevention, on the capacity to predict danger and strategies to mitigate its effect. Over time and as globalization erodes borders, the term has acquired other connotations.

Today, a state’s National Security does not only depend on external threats. Included in that concept are common delinquency, mafias, environmental risks, pandemics, catastrophes or uncontrolled migration.

In Cuba, Raúl Castro positioned his only son within something called the Commission for Defense and National Security. As usual, none of the delegates asked uncomfortable questions and no one questioned whether placing Alejandro Castro Espín in that area on a whim was in response to a true national interest or only had to do with having a colonel with the last name Castro mindfully watching over (with his only eye) the monarch’s sacred Family Security. continue reading

It is extremely difficult to define the Cuban system. It is not communist because communism does not exist, pure fiction, something which has never been nailed down anywhere on the planet. Socialism, on the other hand has so many definitions, it would be vague or imprecise to describe Cuba as a socialist state, especially when taking into consideration that on the Caribbean island, laborers are not a force with any political weight, nor do they have the opportunity to propel change in any way.

This small portion of the world has been a territory controlled since 1959 by a clan of individuals who have monopolized decisions, development strategies, and the notion of national security. Since then, Cuba has remained under the yoke of a gang which has used the ideologies of the day at whim to justify its empowerment. This caste has already failed precipitously in the country’s economic development, the conquest and guarantee of individual and collective rights, in achieving the wellbeing of the population and even in the state’s own survival.

The situation becomes more complex when the chiefdom, self-legitimized as a result of historical events, biologically disappears, in addition to the elimination of its contrarians or the best press any generation has had. But they’ve been replaced by a gang of legendless bureaucrats. The replacements (tombs in guayaberas) do not appear in the history books read by schoolchildren, nor have they worked a day in their lives, and no dove ever posed on their shoulder. The forced replacements did not inherit the charisma of their models, they cannot count on popular support, they don’t even have the benefit of the doubt.

The current situation in Cuba is the worst it’s been in decades because, beyond the inflation, lack of bread, or the 18-hour blackouts, people are no longer willing to keep silent. We are the country in Latin America with the most political prisoners, we are at the bottom of most development list, and we compete with the worst countries in rankings of human rights violations.

However, the gang that has recently moved to Siboney refuses to accept democratic solutions. They continue to blame a “blockade” which collapses every time a Cuban buys chicken “made in the USA” in a freely convertible currency (MLC) store. They insist on the threat of foreign military intervention, which even the most recalcitrant opponents in Miami completely discard. They repeat like parrots that all demonstrations of discontent are paid for by the CIA, which must be bankrupt with so many accounts to settle. Officials of team Diaz-Canel beg ordinary residents for sacrifice, babble slogans that seem like tongue twisters, demand “creative” resistance. They appeal to the people to endure face slaps from police, beatings of 11-year-old girls, and all this for a bright future in which no one believes.

Silvia Rodríguez had a point when he predicted that the people will end up confronting the government. It has done so with flowers, songs. . . or stones. Tomorrow could be worse. The main threat to national secuirty is the system itself.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Journalist Ricardo Fernandez Asks for Asylum in Germany with his Family

Ricardo Fernández has been in Germany with his family since last August waiting to obtain political asylum. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 1 September 2022 — Independent journalist and collaborator of 14ymedio Ricardo Fernández has been in Germany with his family since last July waiting for political asylum. The reporter, who suffered an intense siege from the political police, recognizes that so much pressure has left him with a damaged soul.

Fernández has lived through years of harassment and arbitrary arrests. Now, from a refugee camp in Zirndorf in the state of Bavaria, he details the pressures he felt in recent months. “Until that moment I had been the one who had put myself at risk for my ideals, but since the beginning of 2022, the new objective of State Security was my wife, my mother-in-law and my eldest daughter.”

By the month of May, “the situation had already become unsustainable, and I couldn’t sacrifice my family members for a struggle that they didn’t choose.” Fernández recognizes that he didn’t have the “right to offer the lives of others” because of his personal determination to practice independent journalism under a regime allergic to freedom of information.

Once the decision was made to leave the Island, they began the procedures to obtain passports and put family matters in order. “When State Security learned that we were in that process, the harassment multiplied.” A three-hour arrest at the third Camagüey Police Unit, on July 14, confirmed the need to leave as soon as possible.

It was not the first time the reporter was arrested. In July 2019, he spent nine days in a dungeon for the simple fact of visiting the headquarters of the Ladies in White Movement in the Havana neighborhood of Lawton. From that arrest he came out with a warning report for being “illegal” in the Cuban capital, a document that he refused to sign. Last July, he also received new threats.

“I was given the ultimatum that I had a month to leave the country. I am sure that in previous years they would not have told me that way, because I would have categorically denied it, but when they saw me start the process they threw themselves at me like dogs against an injured animal.” Even so, the political police retained the family’s passports and only handed them over at the end of July. continue reading

Boarding the plane, feeling it take off and flying over the Atlantic were bittersweet moments for Fernández, his wife and his three children. On the one hand, they felt relief at leaving the police threats behind, but on the other, the question opened up to them of what would become of their lives from that day on. They didn’t carry a single euro with them.

“The asylum process in Germany, after being approved by the police authorities in charge of carrying out the express deportation of those who cannot present evidence of persecution, is quite simple, and the organization is impressive,” he explains to this newspaper. “There is a large volume of requests for refuge, mainly from Ukrainian families fleeing the war.”

In the refugee center where the reporter is waiting for a response to his case, there aren’t a lot of Cubans. The days take place there in a peculiar way: “Because of the difference in schedule with Cuba and the desire to talk to our loved ones, there is little sleep at night. During the day we are engaged in adapting to this reality.”

Although the surprises before everything new seem to have no end, Fernández and his relatives have also realized that they are “broken inside.” “When we meet to share a coffee, strained precariously, we laugh at our own wounds and compare the hoarding habits that we carry in our souls.”

“Some keep boxes of bottled water; others sleep with the goodies that they accumulate. Everyone stores what they can as if there were no more tomorrow. That’s what we laugh at, avoiding the issues that break our souls. Finally, night comes and everyone retires to connect with their loved ones who were left behind.”

Now, the emergency list is very clear to the reporter: “My priority is to get my family to heal from the psychological damage it has suffered for years of persecution, while supporting my homeland in everything that can serve it.” In the midst of the uncertainty of what will happen to him and his family in the coming days, he avoids thinking of an option in which he doesn’t receive asylum and bets that “the hope of a life in peace will flourish.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Instead of Facilitating the Import of Flour, the Cuban Government Lashes Out Against the ‘Resellers’

The Government has already released a pack of inspectors throughout the province, with instructions to “detect any illegality.” (Cubadebate)

14ymedio, Havana, 31 August 2022 — The shortage of wheat flour in Cuba, with the consequent increase in the price of bread and cookies on the market, has quickly reached its critical point. In addition to the difficulties in making the products, there is the absence of an effective mechanism for the import of the necessary raw material.

However, without offering solutions to the problem of hunger, which will be further aggravated by the arrival of the new school year, or facilitating imports for the self-employed, the Cuban Government, more inefficient than ever, has concentrated its efforts on a raid against food vendors.

“Any small or medium-sized business (SME) can, in theory, import products,” a cookie producer in Sancti Spíritus tells 14ymedio. “Of course as long as you can find them. What you can’t do is go to another country and bring a container of flour, for example, to sell here to producers who need it for their businesses.”

“A month ago,” he continues, “when the disappearance of flour began, I went to Cubaexport to request the import of the quantities I needed. But they can only supply small amounts, so dealing with them doesn’t work. The same thing happened to me with other state import routes: they’re a problem.”

From Havana, they told him about someone who sold flour in quantities: “They told me it was legal, but of course you always know what’s happening.” continue reading

The producer says several of them met and went to the Government to request permission to import a container of flour that they would later distribute among all. “The officials straightened us out,” he laments. “The justification was that you can make contract as a SME or self-employed person, under the terms of the Government, but that collectively you can’t. “That’s reselling,” they told us.

The sellers of Sancti Spíritus have begun to approach the official reporters on the street. “Now they say that from next week we will not be able to sell any product with bread or wheat flour. Do you know about this?” they asked the author of a chronicle published in the newspaper Escambray about the shortage of flour in the province.

The journalist, who advances along Espirituano Boulevard overwhelmed by the “stratospheric prices of almost everything,” has to admit his ignorance when citizens demand explanations from him in the face of the unstable fluctuations in bread and cookie prices.

Another seller suspects that “the provincial government banned its sale and we don’t want to take risks.” At twenty or twenty-five pesos, the packages of cookies exceed 120, that is if you manage to “capture” some improvised merchant passing by on bicycle or on foot.

The rise in prices is an expression of doubt and insecurity on the part of the self-employed, the journalist recognizes, but when he must point out a culprit, he doesn’t look for him in the bureaucracy of state trade, but in the producers themselves.

Once the “enemy” has been identified, Escambray lashes out at the private sector: “What if because of the war in Ukraine, the price of flour went up on the black market, and people could no longer could get it so easily, and if the price of the dollar on the street exceeded 145 pesos…, in short, a string of excuses to justify the rise in price.”

Not satisfied with making the increase in price and disappearance of flour clear to the official culprit, the reporter goes to the provincial authorities. Ricardo García Hernández, coordinator of Programs and Objectives of the provincial government of Sancti Spíritus — the same person who declared the “innocence” of the officials who ordered the destruction of a patrimonial locomotive of 1917 in Jatibonico — makes his position clear: “There is no justification for private companies to continue raising prices.”

The Government has not issued any prohibition, he says. It’s rather a strategy of the private sector to “manipulate the people” and justify the rise in prices.

“Here we haven’t talked about prohibiting anything; we haven’t even restricted prices, although we draw attention to some abusive prices that we’ve detected in recent days with respect to cookies and bread,” says the official, washing his hands of the problem.

He warns, however, that the government has already released a pack of inspectors throughout the province, with instructions to “detect any illegality associated with the production of such food.”

After concluding his meeting with García Hernández, the reporter ignores or pretends not to know why food prices in Cuba are rising: “If the government of the province hasn’t banned the sale of bread, cookies, sweets or any product that contains bread or wheat flour, why then do some insist on constantly raising prices? Why is it so easy to keep squeezing the already battered pocket of the workers?”

As in Sancti Spíritus, other state media have turned to local governments to repeat the pantomime of an “official explanation.” In each of the cases, the official invokes the note published by the Ministry of Internal Trade on August 23: the shortage is due to an “intensification of the blockade [i.e. the US embargo], the current international logistics crisis and the financial limitations of the country,” which has limited its imports of wheat.

On the other hand, the authorities ask for more “creative resistance” and offer examples such as that of Gabriel Pérez, a young man from Guanabacoa who makes “alternative” flour. Together with his sisters, Pérez sold an apartment in Havana and bought a plot of land to “get into the flour business.”

The farmers of the area taught them some cultivation techniques that they then took advantage of to make their brand, Bacoretto. Its product, which the Government exposes as an emblem of self-ownership, manufactures flour from carob, rice, cassava, coconut and banana. “It’s the same thing that has always been done, many years ago, in the Cuban east and in the countryside,” Pérez says, to reassure his clients.

While the official press interviews “inventors” of flour and seeks to absolve the Government of all guilt, Cuban mothers are still concerned about the coming school year and the impossibility of offering their children bread to take to school as a snack. Families continue to buy bags of cookies at inconceivable prices, and producers try to maintain a “low profile” in front of inspectors who, more than criminals, are looking for scapegoats.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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‘El Toque’ Denounces Harassment Against its Journalists in Cuba

Members of El Toque during their virtual press conference this Wednesday. (Captura)

14ymedio, Havana, 1 September 2022 — The editorial team of the independent news source El Toque denounced on Wednesday, from its editorial office in Cuba, the harassment by State Security of nine young journalists, who, as a result, gave up their jobs.

During a conference broadcast on YouTube, the directors, residing abroad, answered the questions raised that same day by an editorial entitled “The night will not be eternal,” using a phrase from the opposition leader Oswaldo Payá.

Four of these young people, Mauro Díaz Vázquez, José Leandro Garbey, Aleiny Sánchez and Meilin Puertas, were “regulated” [Translator’s note: The term chosen by the regime to mean ’forbidden to travel’] before they were able to travel to Argentina, where they had been invited to participate in the Media Party, one of the most important regional journalism events.

José Jasán Nieves, director of the media, explained that on their ignoring the travel ban, State Security subjected them to “direct and indirect” pressure to give up their jobs.

Nieves describes the methods of the political police as “a mechanism of psychological torture,” a “term that may sound strong,” but perfectly describes the actions of the repressive bodies of the Cuban Government, which has declared an “open war” on anyone who contravenes official propaganda. continue reading

According to the report from these young people, they were asked to make public their resignation from El Toque, to film a video of “self-incrimination” that, Nieves alleges, has a lot to do with the famous Padilla Case for its “Stalinist resonances.” It was an exercise of “sadism,” he insists, which Humberto López or some other “person of the regime” will then use to carry out a ’disqualification’ campaign against them, that is a “character assassination.”

For his part, Eloy Viera, coordinator of the El Toque Jurídico space, mentioned that it’s difficult to “find legality” in the actions of the Cuban regime. “Only propaganda is admitted,” he said. The rest is not allowed, and there is a tendency to use the law as a mechanism to “legitimize human rights violations,” appealing to concepts such as national security.

After its denunciation, the editorial team took advantage of the moment to reflect on the context of independent journalism on the Island, from the complaints of the artists before the Ministry of Culture on November 27, 2020, and the protests of July 11 of the following year.

On the other hand, he discussed two points with which the Government usually disqualifies the work of this medium: the monitoring of currency exchange rates in the informal market and the financing of the page. On the first, he explained that transparent and public algorithms are used to reach the daily figure that is made known to users, and as for the economics of the medium, he explained that no program or institution has ever intervened in its editorial agenda.

It’s logical that “a power that needs us to live in an alternative reality” attacks the opposition “with all the repressive force of its apparatus,” added Nieves, who also lamented the exile into which the main directors of the medium have been forced.

“Thanks to technology, it’s becoming easier to continue reporting about Cuba even if we’re not in Cuba,” he said, and indicated that his team, which he described as “multilocated,” will find “ways” to communicate from abroad, “because they will not silence us.”

Nieves specified that the situation is not exclusive to El Toque, but that other media have experienced similar “repressive waves” in recent years, which “is nothing more than another expression of the circumstance and the general crisis that our country is experiencing.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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My Private Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 during the final session of the Supreme Soviet. (EFE/EPA/Vassili Korneyev)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 31 August 2022 — In April 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev appeared before a full session of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party Central Committee to present his initial proposals for what would ultimately be known as perestroika (restructuring). My friend, the poet and journalist Julio Martinez, was the first to warn me that what was happening in the USSR was unprecedented and could have repercussions for Cuba.

At that moment we became “perestroikos,” addicted to News from Moscow, a weekly publication that for years had been sold on news stands but which overnight became a source of revelations on the failures of Stalinism and what had been known as real socialism.

The fantasy that our own country could undertake a similar restructuring, and the informational transparency that came with it (glasnost), thrilled those of us who still believed in the myth of socialism with a human face. Though we were many, few dared to publicly align themselves with this experiment.

Gorbachev’s actions, almost 10,000 kilometers from the island, had a lasting impact on me. At the suggestion from my poet friend, I decided in early 1987 to leave my comfortable position as a journalist for Cuba International, a monthly magazine dedicated to sweetening our reality, to become an op-ed columnist for the newspaper Juventud Rebelde, from where — oh, how naive! — I tried to promote a kind of tropical perestroika.

At a historic meeting with students from the University of Havana’s School of Journalism at the headquarters of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee, the then all-powerful Carlos Adana announced that there continue reading

would be no perestroika happening here and that it had been decided to suspend distribution of News from Moscow, Sputnik and New Times, the three Soviet publications that gave breath to Cuba’s pro-reform intellectual environment.

This was in October 1988. In December of that year I was fired from Juventud Rebelde and prohibited “for life” from practicing the profession of journalism.

The politician who has died at age ninety-one did not succeed in his goal to expand socialism. Instead he caused the fall of Eastern Europe’s communist bloc while managing to turn me into a free man. I am indebted to him and to my friend Julio Martinez, who ended up committing suicide in exile.

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Entering, Buying and Leaving, the Great Achievement Advertised by State Businesses in Cuba

“You should have called all the world’s news agencies. For the first time, good treatment was discovered in a Cuban store.” (Facebook/Caribbean Granma Stores)

14ymedio, Daniel Wilt, Holguín, 1 September 2022 — The Facebook page of Tiendas Caribe de Granma [Caribbean Shops of Granma Province] delighted readers on Tuesday with an unusual “story of the day.” The text began by clarifying that what was coming really happened, in a store in Bayamo, and that “the words used were exactly the same.”

Next, the story presented “a young customer” who went to the El Arte store, in Bayamo, to whom “instantly,” an extraordinary event happened: “The workers of the place welcomed her as she deserved,” because, it clarified, “at that moment she was the only one who was passing by there.” This detail wouldn’t cause a peep out of the people from Bayamo, because it’s one of the stores with the lowest influx of buyers in the municipality.

Without at any time revealing a spirit of mockery in the publication, the story continued: “The young lady walked in and was very interested in one of our garments. She went directly to a spandex dress of polyester, with a white color and fringes, very much in tune with the summer season.”

And it reproduced an excellent dialogue.

“I want to try a size 7.”

“Yes, of course, I’ll show it to you right away, and you can use the changing room in that corner so you can see it and choose the one that suits you best.”

Satisfied, the customer went to the cashier “to make the payment.” Then, the clerk “proceded to accept the payment.” With this, “the sale was successful, and the clerk gave her the receipt and put the merchandise in a plastic bag.”

After being told goodbye by the employee with a “thank you for your visit, come back soon!” the young woman, the only person in the store if we look at the narration, was subjected to the scrutiny of the receipt by the doorman, to verify the merchandise that was bought, and “to review and ensure the integrity of the shop.”

It wasn’t long before the publication, offering the story as “an example of a sale to a customer with great success and satisfaction,” was plagued by humorous comments that laugh at presenting an anodyne act like buying something in a store as an unprecedented achievement. continue reading

“This writing seems too short to me. The author got the exclusive scoop out of all the world’s news agencies. For the first time, good treatment was discovered in a Cuban store,” one mocks. “The tension, the mastery of language, the development of the characters… sublime,” says another, and one of many adds, giving free rein: “I think it’s a very beautiful composition. I was eager to know more. What would be the dramaturgical continuity of the story? What did her mom tell her when she got home with the spandex dress of polyester? What dreams materialized with her dress? Under what armpit did she transport it, by bike taxi, to her abode? With which bra (the latter bought in what other state store?) did she combine it for her Sunday walk? Please, don’t delay in giving us the rest of the story, so we can keep on living.”

“As we are in prehistory, we don’t know how to communicate and are learning. This is the first class on Customer Service. Thank you. I’m waiting for the second one,” says Madelaine Verdecia Enamorado.

Jotabarrioz, for his part, jokes: “Top 5 Cuban clients with the most luck in the world,” and others, such as Yaneth CM, get serious: “The clerk did nothing more than fulfill her position profile. I don’t understand the merit. The truth is, the only thing these publications promote is mockery.”

There is no shortage of those who, in the ten photographs that accompany the writing, all with smiles and in color, observe suspiciously that everything is a fiction. And certainly, only the words “once upon a time” are missing for the unforgettable, almost fantastic adventure in the socialist paradise of the Caribbean, of a correctly made sale.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Two Officials from Nuevitas Added to the List of Cuban Repressors

The two officials on the list of repressors, Roberto Conde Silverio and Alien (or Allen) Velázquez. (Collage)

14ymedio, Havana, 23 August 2022 — On Monday, the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba (FDHC), added to their data base of repressors the two officials who attacked protestors in Nuevitas, Camagüey, during the most recent protests.

One of them is Roberto Conde Silvierio, First Secretary of the Communist Party in that city, accused of ordering “the persecution, repression and intimidation of people” who peacefully took to the streets on August 19th and 20th.

The entry on the list of repressors states that police and paramilitary responded to a call from the official “with physical aggression against protesters, including two girls.”

The second repressor identified is Alien or “Allen” Velázquez, a State Security agent, reportedly the leader of the beatings received by two 11-year-old girls, in the Pastelillo area of Nuevitas, who were trying to prevent the repressors from arresting José Armando Torrente, one of the adults who went to protest on Saturday, August 20, 2022 against the 18-hour blackouts.” continue reading

One of the minors is Torrente’s daughter, Gerlin Torrente Echevarría.

“We warn against possible trauma as a result of the repression against the girls who were assaulted during the protest in Pastelillo on the 19th,” stated Justicia 11J in a statement published on Monday on social media. “As of now, they continue to be in pain and with a fever. According to a family member, one of the girls is suffering from insomnia due to the pain.”

At this time, the legal platform states, police were in the Pastelillo neighborhood, looking for protesters they were unable to find. “The repression continues in Nuevitas, although the state-run media insists on showing a false calm in the region,” the statement said.

In it, they also point out that Roberto Reyes Montenegro has been “forcefully disappeared” and warned that the 58-year-old man is epileptic and also has high blood pressure. “Neighbors say that on the 20th he was put on a truck which was rounding up protesters from Camalote [52 km from Nuevitas in the same province of Camagüey]. His family still has not heard from him,” they said.

Adisnel Hernández Ricardo, missing as of Monday, was confirmed to be under arrest. Similarly, the organization logged the following people as under arrest: Lester Camejo, Orlando Pérez Cruz, Yoandry Lescay, Menkel Menéndez Vargas Chicho Bonilla.

In the case of this last person, Justicia 11J denounced that on Sunday the 21st “his home was razed, an 80-year old woman (who fainted as this happened) and a one-month-old newborn girl also lived there.” “More than 20 red berets participated” in the assault, accompanied by dogs, the organization states.

The organization also reported on a complaint made by El Caimán Libre of “the beating and imprisonment of a mother who was demanding her son’s release,” in the town of Camalote, though her identity remains unknown.

Similarly, they confirmed the identity of a 17-year-old minor arrested, Kenay Perdomo Soria, who partipated in the protest in Camalote on Saturday. “Kenay will be treated legally as an adult despite the Convention on the Rights of the Child which defines a child as anyone under 18 years of age,” states Justicia 11J.

Since June 14, when the cacerolazos [banging on pots and pans] protesting the “scheduled blackouts” began, the organization has documented 77 protests, during which 49 people have been arrested. Among them 14 are from Nuevitas, the latest city to rise up against the government.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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The United States Resumes Interviews for Parole for Family Reunification at its Embassy in Havana

The United States Embassy in Havana. (EFE)

14ymedio, Havana, 1 September 2022 — The United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) reported on Thursday the resumption of the procedures for the Cuban Family Reunification Permit (CFRP) program at its embassy in Havana.

In a statement, the USCIS explains that it will process applications to the program that are pending and that it has already sent notifications to the beneficiaries, but it will not issue “new letters of invitation at this time.” In fact, USCIS started doing interviews on August 18.

The government body warns that the embassy “has limited capacity” and that applicants should not “take any action” without having received an appointment.

The USCIS also warns applicants in its text to have their postal addresses updated. “We will not send you an email or call you to ask for money or the payment of fees,” they reiterate. “Don’t become a victim of an immigration scam.”

The decision to resume the Cuban Family Reunification Program was brought forward at the beginning of last June, when the US Department of Homeland Security explained that the decision was part of the search for “safe and orderly alternatives to irregular migration and its many dangers and indignities.” continue reading

The CFRP, established in 2007, “provides a safe and orderly path” to U.S. territory for “Cuban beneficiaries of approved family-based immigrants,” the institution said at the time. The permission granted by this program allows the family member to travel to the United States and go to an immigration authority there to process their residency.

The United States reduced the staff of its embassy in Cuba in 2017, after about thirty of its diplomats suffered mysterious health incidents known as “Havana syndrome,” whose causes haven’t yet been clarified.

Since then, family visa procedures have been carried out at other embassies outside the island, mainly in Georgetown, Guyana, where hundreds of Cubans still have to wait for the resolution of their procedures, not exempt from irregularities.

The United States Consulate in Havana resumed the processing of visas for immigrants on May 3, processing only the IR-5 category. Two months later, it expanded the visa categories and began processing the immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, including spouses and children under the age of 21.

Despite this restart of procedures, the US immigration authorities have made it clear on several occasions that the headquarters in Georgetown, Guyana, would continue to be “the main place of processing for most Cuban applicants for immigrant visas.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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A Documentary Rescues the Writer Lezama Lima from the Clutches of the Cuban Regime

The film collects the vision of 28 ‘witnesses’ about the writer. (Ivan Canas)

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 21 August 2022 — In order to “stir up the anthill,” on the 45th anniversary of the death of Cuban writer José Lezama Lima (1910-1976), last Sunday the filmmaker Ernesto Fundora, at the Rosario Castellanos Bookstore of the Fund for Economic Culture, in Mexico City, screened his documentary “Lezama Lima: Soltar la Lengua” [Lezama Lima: Loosen the Tongue].

The film assembles fragments of interviews with friends and disciples of Lezama, collected by Fundora between 2009 and 2015, and finally edited in 2018. Despite the fact that the post-production of the documentary is modest and that there are excessive and almost primitive visual effects, his mind does a wonderful job in remembering the formidable author of Paradiso.

Except for images of his participation in a couple of congresses and around hundreds of photographs, very little visual material on Lezama is preserved. Hence the difficulty that we get the sense that Lezama is being offered to us as something more than a voice and a presence among books. However, Fundora succeeds in having those who knew the author evoke a Lezama who is vital, convincing, and nearby.

Just when he had published one of the essential novels of the Spanish language and was getting recognition outside Cuba, death came to him

Some of the testimonies, such as those of Cintio Vitier, Fina García Marruz, César López and Antón Arrufat, shared the friendship of the Cuban teacher since the beginning and middle of the century; in others, such as those of Manuel Pereira, José Prats Sariol, Enrico Mario Santí, Froilán Escobar and Félix Guerra, his influence and teaching during his youth was essential.

For the devotees of the “Lezama Cult,” the writer is still awaiting continue reading

recognition. The 1959 cultural bureaucracy kept him in the crosshairs as “republican junk” until, after the so-called 1971 Padilla Case, he was banished from editorial and public spaces.

Just when he had published one of the essential novels of the Spanish language and was getting recognition outside Cuba, death came to him without the expected “restoration” and in almost absolute solitude.

Several young writers who accompanied him in his last days, such as Prats Sariol and Reinaldo González, recall their sadness at the empty house and the abandonment of his friends, whom State Security “recommended” not to frequent 162 Trocadero Street. He died on August 9, 1976.

During the Special Period, the movies Fresa y Chocolate and Lista de Espera recovered the Lezamian cultural imprint and were, in a way, promoters of the “liberation” of the taboo. Young people avidly sought dramas that were not only disturbing and difficult, but also marked by exclusion, such as the books by Severo Sarduy, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and Lydia Cabrera.

The truth however, is that bureaucrats have done everything possible to bury the ‘Lezamian’ work, cancel its study and constantly define it as “hermetically sealed”

The regime and its cultural machinery then began a meticulous work of biographical rewriting, in which old colleagues such as Vitier took part, presenting Lezama as an author “of the Revolution,” an admirer of Castro and Guevara as “messiahs” of a new “imaginary era,” Latin American, according to the paradigm of Casa de las Américas, and a writer who “some officials” did not “correctly” understand.

The truth is, however, that the bureaucrats have done everything possible to bury Lezama’s work, cancel its study and constantly define it as “hermetic,” “intricate,” “incomprehensible” and “elitist.” The celebration of his centenary was mediocre and there is still no center of study named after him. His scattered and poorly organized library is inaccessible to scholars, and no Cuban publishing house has issued critical or annotated editions of Paradiso, La Cantidad Hechizada, or any of his major books.

Hence, Lezama Lima: Soltar la Lengua acquires an exceptional value as rescue and recollection. Exceptional are the last frames, which offer information and clarity about the ostracism, the false promises of rehabilitation with which the Communist Party deceived him, and the unusual conditions in which he agonized and died.

As Fundora himself states, almost half of the 28 individuals who rendered testimonies of him have died, so the film, enriched by photographs and fragments of poems, recollects the final vision of many of them about the writer.

In addition, the documentary works as an excellent initiation for those who have not read the work of José Lezama Lima and deny, through authorized voices, each of the myths with which the regime has tried to appropriate one of the greats of Cuban culture.

Translated by Norma Whiting

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