14ymedio – Page 249 – Translating Cuba

Cuban Carla Colome Wins the Prize for Young Journalism in the Vargas Llosa-Atlas Network Chair

Cuban independent journalist Carla Colomé and writer Mario Vargas Llosa. (Facebook / Carla Colomé)

EFE/14ymedio, Miami, 15 December 2021 — The Cuban journalist Carla Colomé, exiled in the United States, who works for the independent digital El Estornudo and People magazine in Spanish, is the first winner of the International Prize for Young Journalism in the Vargas Llosa-Atlas Network Chair. She received the prize for her reporting on the July 11 protests in Cuba.

The winner of this award, endowed with $10,000, was announced during a dinner held on Tuesday in Miami at the end of the Liberty Forum, in which the writer Mario Vargas Llosa participated.

The jury, chaired by Cuban writer and journalist Carlos Alberto Montaner , decided to award the award to Colomé, 31, for an exclusive report for El Estornudo entitled July 11 in San Antonio de los Baños: What is seen / what is not seen, published on on 22 July 2021.

Colomé did not hesitate to express her joy at having received the award. “No one asked me, but I want to dedicate this award to all the Cuban children imprisoned on July 11,” the journalist wrote on her Facebook wall. “There are the complaints of the mothers driven crazy by their children. There are the photos of detainees with such young faces, for whom life has not yet flowed.”

The award, says Colomé, “as Cuban independent journalists know well, is an achievement for those of us who create that press. A persecuted, besieged, beaten press.” Regarding the magazine El Estornudo, which hosted the publication and with which she has collaborated for five years, she denounces how the Cuban government have tried to silence the publication: “Like a hydra, they cut it off and other bodies are born. Our journalists have been forced to renounce the magazine, they have been interrogated, persecuted, detained.” continue reading

The journalist also mentions that such an award is also an achievement for all those who do journalism outside the island. “When I left Cuba to study in Mexico, people were leaving and very few continued to do journalism abroad. People cut corners with the journalism that was done on Cuba, and looking for other jobs, much lighter, with fewer problems and better paid,” she says, while adding that “has already changed a bit, due to the number of journalists who had to leave.”

“Most of my work as a Cuban journalist has been outside of Cuba, and it is normal that this is the case, because every day Cuba is more outside of Cuba. Cuba is in Miami, at the Palacio de los jugos. Cuba is in the rumba from New York. Cuba is in the tastiest beans I have ever eaten in Madrid. Cuba is in the refugee camps of Serbia. Cuba, sadly, is in the Darien jungle. Cuba is in the Straits of Florida. Cuba is where they go to buy clothes from Russia or Guyana. That’s how I like to see it and that’s how it is,” the journalist also expressed.

Colomé, who was born on July 11, set out to find out in her report where and how the spark of the protests that shook Cuba with a message of change was set off.

She discovered that a Facebook group called La Villa del Humor had been the initiator of the demonstrations. “The Internet — expensive, restricted as we know — has completely changed the reality of Cuba,” Colomé told People in Spanish. “What happened is one sample of this. If there had been no internet in Cuba, it (the massive demonstrations) would not have happened. That was the way people had to organize, congregate, meet,” she added in her interview.

To protect themselves from retaliation by the Cuban government, the administrators of this Facebook group “changed their profiles and had to take steps to take care of themselves,” she added. “Fear has not extinguished the hope that a democratic Cuba will soon be born. After this the government has unleashed a great repressive wave. There are still children in prison, mothers begging for the release of their imprisoned children, elderly people who went out to demonstrate, to support, or to film, and even those who filmed were imprisoned,” lamented Colomé.

“The repressive wave has been tremendous, it has been a big hunt on the part of the Government,” she stressed.

Colomé, who graduated in journalism from the University of Havana and received a master’s degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), currently lives in New York and has also collaborated with media such as El País, Univision, Vice and Letras Libres, among others.

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Infant Mortality Rate in Cuba’s Ciego de Avila Province is Higher than that of Mexico and El Salvador

Lack of motivation among medical personnel is one of the reasons why maternal and child care programs have declined in quality. (Agramonte cadena)

14ymedio, Madrid, 15 December 2021 — Infant deaths doubled in Ciego de Ávila in 2021 compared to the previous year, going from 23 to 45 babies, up to 12 months, who died so far this year. The effect is also noticeable in the mortality rate, which jumped from 6.4 to 13.8 per thousand, as revealed by the newspaper Invasor in an article that tries to analyze the causes of a problem that goes beyond the pandemic.

Although the tragic jump in the figures that occurred last year can be partially explained by the impact of covid-19 on the overload on the National Health System, professionals confirm that the causes are varied and extend over time. The province has had one of the highest infant mortality rates on the island for years, exceeding the second worst province, Guantánamo, which reached 6.8 last year. The average is also high compared to the island as a whole, which last year closed with a rate of 4.9 per thousand.

“Low birth weight and prematurity have an impact on morbidity and mortality in the territory, fundamentally associated with arterial hypertension, delayed intrauterine growth and teenage pregnancy. Many babies arrive at the Neonatology service with extremely low weights (less than 1,500 and 1,000 grams [3.3 to 4.4 pounds]), threatening their lives and extending their hospital stays,” according to Luis Carmenate Martinez, head of the field of gynecology and obstetrics in the province and an official of the Program Mother and Child (PAMI), speaking to Invasor. continue reading

According to the reporting in the provincial newspaper, the main failures occur in primary care, where adequate monitoring is sometimes not received, this year in part because staff were displaced to the red zones due to covid, or consultations were suspended, but also due to lack of investment.

Ernesto René, who worked for 34 years at PAMI, says that 20 years ago the inter-sectoral work of the program began to be dismantled, which, he categorically affirms, does not work today. The doctor has expressed his opinion in a comment to the article, in which he denounces the lack of a health promotion and education system that, in his opinion, has been dismantled. In addition, he adds, the working groups are not complete and there is a lack of support from the sector.

“Professionals with experience in PAMI have been lost due to policies and decisions of its directors in the province in a totally wrong way, and lacking in science and experience,” he adds.

René also warns of the lack of motivation among health personnel, who end up dropping out. “Professionals of value such as obstetricians, pediatricians or clinical nurses have not been cared for in primary and secondary care and I believe that the motivations and barriers faced by the personnel who work in this sensitive area should be reviewed.”

The doctor, who describes the program as beautiful and loving, believes that it has lost so much that the province returns to mortality levels typical of the last century, which also leads to secondary problems such as depression among the families of those who lose a baby or mother. In Ciego de Ávila, 11 women also died in childbirth, compared to 2 in 2020.

“The maternal mortality rate involves analysis and technical and administrative decision-making in agile and dynamic ways,” judges the professor, who also warns of the risk of adolescent pregnancies in Ciego de Ávila, a leader on the Island of this situation.

The Invasor text highlights another serious problem, although it hardly gives details: infections in hospitals. “The physical conditions of the delivery and caesarean section rooms, and other structures in the Doctor Antonio Luaces Iraola Provincial General Teaching Hospital, has led to an increase in infections associated with health services and the prognoses are not good,” explains Carmenate Martínez .

The article also analyzes the fall in the birth rate, which in recent years has been remarkable, going from more than 4,000 births in 2015 to fewer than 3,300 this year. The problem is of great concern to the authorities, who at the end of 2020 warned that, with 105,038 births registered, versus 112,439 deaths, there is a decrease in the population regardless of migration.

The difficult vital circumstances and the lack of a future that young Cubans face has had a direct impact on the decline in births in Cuba and the aging of the population, something that portends imminent problems due to the lack of generational replacement.

In 2019, Cuba already exhibited a strong growth in infant mortality, increasing by 26% (a rate of 3.9 per thousand) compared to 2018. Despite this, the data continues to be good compared to other countries in the region which have very high rates in infant mortality, being much lower than the rate of 21 in Venezuela or even the rate of 11 in Mexico and 12 in El Salvador.

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Cuba: There is Pork in Cienfuegos, But at 270 Pesos a Pound

The price of pork, when it appears, ranges from 200 pesos per pound at 19th and B streets, in Havana, to 270 pesos on the market stalls in Cienfuegos. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 14 December 2021 — That pork is increasingly absent from the markets is something that any ordinary Cuban knows these days. The strange thing is that there is an authority who certifies this is the case. This Monday, Osvaldo Surí González, program coordinator of the provincial government of Cienfuegos, categorically did so. “Raw pork meat in quantities and in pounds cannot be sold anywhere because it does not exist,” he said in statements collected by official media, presumably referring to state production.

For this reason, the official said, “there is no need to despair” or “line up”, or “mark a place in line” or “look at the lists in the [butcher shop] box in Cienfuegos.”

As a contrast, he said “there is the goodness and willingness of various producers” to sell in a “controlled liberated [unrationed]” manner, although only in the provincial capital, a pound of “clean beef” for each child under seven years of age, as well as for pregnant women, those over 60 and a total of 2,324 “vulnerable families” registered by the municipality’s Social Security. “We can also manage that,” Surí boasted.

In addition, they will offer the same prerogative to “more than 200 combatants of the Cuban Revolution who are bedridden today,” whom they even plan to serve at home. “We have a space there in the box, where we are going to put it, and if we have to deliver it to homes, we will create the system to deliver it,” said the official, who pointed out that an agreement was reached with producers to sell beef at 100 pesos per pound.

The strategy of offering this product seems to be generalized by the end of the year, to compensate for the lack of pigs, whose price, when they appear, ranges from 200 pesos a pound at 19th and B streets, in Havana, to 270 pesos* in the market stalls of Cienfuegos. continue reading

A few days ago, the governor of Villa Clara, Alberto López Díaz, announced via Twitter that he was in Macún, “together with the directors of Agriculture, managing beef and equine meat for the assurances of the New Year’s Fair.” And he added: “It will be sold in bags of one and a half kilograms.”

In cities like Cárdenas, Matanzas or Santiago de Cuba, a pound of pork is 200 pesos, and although she not justify the prices of meat, Justina, who has always had “a little pig in the backyard of her house to eat meat every December 31st,” says that the current price has to do with the cost of the food to raise the pigs and she does not doubt that by the end of the year it will rise more.

“About 20 pounds of feed are currently sold in Santiago at 650 pesos. With this price there is no one who raises an animal,” complains the housewife who lives in the Santiago town of El Caney and has to buy on the black market because there is nothing in the State markets.

“Life is hard. Do I spend 650 pesos every week for feed? There is no one who can handle this burden. Because the pig is not the only one who eats, a chicken that you have there in the yard is also fed,” she adds. “Before, I cooked food, bought some root vegetables and boiled them on a wood stove to increase with the feed, but there aren’t even any vegetables in this country anymore.”

Although by the end of the year it is common for the price of pork to rise, since it constitutes the star dish of the December 31st dinner. This month it has reached its all-time high since 1994, when agricultural markets were authorized to be privately managed on the Island, after years of state control over agricultural trade.

The lack of food for animals is, the authorities have recognized, one of the causes of the decline in pig production.

In order to make this meat cheaper and increase productivity, it was announced a few weeks ago that the state company Holpor, located in Holguín, was going to resurrect the recipe for liquid feed for pigs — which has not been manufactured since the Special Period — given the disastrous figures. This year and only in that province, production is expected to reach 2,566 tons of pork meat compared to the 8,625 planned.

The recovery of the State pig farms that were not operated for a long time is one of more than 60 government initiatives to stimulate food production.

On that occasion, Holpor also said that it did not rule out selling very young pre-fattened pigs to private producers who had suffered in the last year the interruption of the breeding chain due to the lack of food for the animals.

The complaint of these producers is also known. As El Pana, an Artemiseño producer who dismantled his pig pen more than a year ago due to lack of feed, explained to this newspaper, “once you eat the female before putting her on the mount and taking her offspring, everything is over.” The State has already been selling young pigs to cooperatives and state farms but it is still under study whether to extend the sale to private farms.

*Translator’s note: Economic data for Cuba is notoriously hard to pin down, but this figure could represent a worker’s entire week’s wages.

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Dental Services Are Hard to Come By in Sancti Spiritus, Cuba

“They tell you they don’t have the materials, but if you offer a little money they will take care of you,” complained a patient. (Escambray)

14ymedio, Mercedes García, Havana, 6 December 2021 — Ernesto, a resident of the Kilo 12 neighborhood in the city of Sancti Spíritus, has had to wait for the relaxation of measures due to the covid-19 pandemic to go to the dentist. For almost two years he has had several cavities that bother him but since the arrival of the coronavirus on the Island only emergency cases are treated.

Unable to bear the toothaches for another day, he decided to go to the Provincial Dental Clinic this Monday. Upon arriving at the health center, he found the receptionist talking on the phone with her feet up on a piece of furniture; he had to wait about ten minutes for the state employee to attend to him.

“Only emergencies are being seen,” the woman said bluntly, as soon as Ernesto asked if they were offering consultations. “I can’t keep waiting, it’s been almost two years without attention, I get a lot of pain when I drink cold water,” the patient explained. “The autoclave (equipment used to sterilize the instruments) is broken,” justified the employee. “And it is not known when they will fix it.”

Ernesto then asked if he could be treated urgently and given some procedure to stop the pain, but the receptionist told him that there were no materials in the clinic for this procedure either. “I can pass you on, but we don’t even have materials to cover you there,” she added.

The man did not lose hope of solving his ailment and decided to go to a polyclinic in the city to be treated and “at least they would put a temporary filling or a band-aid” as it is popularly known, he told 14ymedio.

When visiting two polyclinics, he found several people in the same situation, who were also informed that there were no materials and continue reading

that the emergencies were being treated at the Provincial Clinic until six in the afternoon, at the same health center where he had gone before and where they assured him that they had nothing to take care of his cavities, they could only open a hole and leave it exposed until there were materials.

“They tell you that there are no materials, but if you offer a little money they treat you. Medical power? Power of lies is what we are,” complained one of the group’s patients.

Facade of the Provincial Dental Clinic of Sancti Spíritus. (14ymedio)

The panorama is repeated throughout the island. In Havana, 34-year-old Niurka Tamaris has “a hole in a tooth” that she has managed to overcome by filling it with gum, pieces of adhesive tape and other emergency solutions. “My quality of life has been reduced, I can’t eat anything cold, I can’t eat sweets and I can’t eat anything that I have to chew too much.”

Tamaris’s problem started in December 2019. A piece of a molar, with an old aluminum filling, broke off. After several attempts to be treated at her polyclinic in the Plaza de la Revolución municipality, she returned home discouraged. “When there was no lack of electricity, it was because the sterilizing apparatus was broken or else there were no gloves.”

The dentist who saw her on her last visit assured her that new supplies would arrive in the summer of 2020 and the problem could be solved. But the coronavirus arrived before then and a split tooth did not classify as an “emergency” to be treated in the emergency room. “They told me the only thing they could do was extract it and I didn’t want to lose it.”

A year and a half later, he still has the problem that threatens to generate an infection. “Now the situation is even worse because they tell you that they are seeing to pending cases according to the order of severity and, a tooth that is missing a piece but does not have an abscess, is nothing that they are going to attend to first.”

“Here they talk a lot about the quality of Public Health but you have to look at people’s teeth, in very bad condition,” says Tamaris. “My sister, who is four years older, does not have a tooth left and my father has needed a prosthesis for four years and there is no material to make it.”

The Ministry of Public Health said last March that “despite the pandemic and the strengthening of the United States embargo, Cuba arrived at World Oral Health Day with dental indicators similar to those of the most developed countries.”

However, infrastructure problems, materials and power outages have become a constant in Cuban state dental services, which are almost the only services allowed in the country. Private practice of the profession is only allowed for those who received their degree before 1959, or outside the country.

The few private practices that still remain on the island are suffocated by the inability to import supplies and to hire personnel who have obtained a diploma in “the revolutionary universities.” Hence, many professionals perform illegal work in the same official premises or maintain a small informal dental office that they feed with products purchased on the black market diverted from state distribution networks.

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After 9 Years, the Families of Paya and Cepera Await the IACHR’s Condemnation of Cuba

Rosa María Payá (second from left) and her mother Ofelia Acevedo (second from right), daughter and widow respectively of Cuban opposition Oswaldo Payá, flank father Juan Rumín Domínguez, accompanied by the director of the Hypermedia publishing house, Ladislao Aguado (left ), and journalist Juan Manuel Cao (right), in Hialeah, Florida. (EFE / Album Payá)

EFE (via 14ymedio), Ana Mengotti, Miami, 13 December 2021– Rosa María Payá, daughter of Cuban opposition figure Oswaldo Payá, will only say “mission accomplished” when justice is done for her father’s death, but she feels content because the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) is close to ruling on whether he was the victim of a “State assassination.”

In an interview with Efe on the eve of the first hearing of “case 9,416” before the IACHR, Payá highlighted that an acknowledgment — and condemnation — by the body of the Cuban State’s responsibility in the apparent accident in which her father and Harold Cepero lost their lives in 2012 would be “very important” for the families.

But also for the people who continue to be victims of repression in Cuba, which, although it has not stopped for more than 60 years, has reached “stratospheric” levels as a result of the protests that broke out on July 11, she stresses.

The hearing will be held on Tuesday, December 14 in a virtual way, and testifying will be Ofelia Acevedo, widow of the founder of the Christian Liberation Movement and ideologist of the Varela Project, Rosa María Payá, daughter of both, Amílcar Cepero, Harold’s father, and the Spanish politician Ángel Carromero, among others.

On July 22, 2012, Carromero was driving a car at high speed, with Payá, Cepero and a Swedish politician, Jens Aron Modig, as passengers, when the car left the road and hit a tree, according to the version official of the events, with which the families of the deceased and one of the survivors disagree. continue reading

Modig made a “pact of silence” and claims not to remember anything, according to Rosa María Payá. Carromero, from the conservative People’s Party, was accused of reckless driving resulting in death and sentenced to 4 years in prison in Cuba, although most of his sentence was served in Spain thanks to an agreement between governments.

Payá’s family denounced from the first moment that it was an attack in which another vehicle was involved, and in 2013, together with Cepero’s family, they filed the complaint with the IACHR, which has taken nine years to convene the first public hearing, although it has had all the information on the case for a long time.

According to Payá, it will not take long to pronounce itself and tomorrow’s hearing will be the occasion for the presentation of the final arguments of the parties, or rather of one of the parties, since Cuba, which is subject to the IACHR despite being suspended of the Organization of American States (OAS) for decades, has not appeared.

“Unfortunately,” she added, if the IACHR accepts the claims of the complainants, as she hopes, the case will not go to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, since it does not have jurisdiction over Cuba, since that country is not a signatory to the constitutive agreement.

However, the complainants will insist once again before the UN and the Council of Permanent Representatives of the OAS with the ruling in hand with a view to “stopping the impunity of the regime,” said Payá, who is part of the leadership of the Cuba Decides initiative.

The Cuban opposition figure, who insists that the evidence presented is “clear” and conclusive “about the commission of an” attack “perpetrated by Cuban state security agents on orders that “could only come from Fidel or Raúl Castro,” referenced the result of an independent report published in 2015.

Prepared by lawyers from the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), the report maintains that the evidence in the case “suggests” a “direct responsibility” of the Government of Cuba in the death of Payá and Cepero, either with the express intention of assassinating them, or with a “wicked disregard” for their lives.

The document compiles testimonies and refers to physical evidence that was revealed “in the months after the event and that was not considered at all by the court that convicted Carromero.”

What happened on July 22, 2012 “was not an accident,” but “the result of a motor vehicle incident deliberately caused by state agents,” the HRF document maintains.

“There is a strong indication that the car was hit by another. We do not know if they died when the vehicle was hit or if they were later removed and beaten to death, which is also possible,” said Javier El-Hage, international legal director of HRF, when the result of the investigation was presented.

The families of the two deceased are represented before the IACHR by lawyers from the Robert Kennedy Center for Human Rights and, Payá added, the Cuban State has not been present despite having been repeatedly notified by the inter-American system body .

The opposition made “a call for attention in capital letters” to all the democracies of the world to act before a regime that represses its people — “with more than 600 political prisoners at present” — and is capable of “assassinating” those who oppose it.

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Cuban Poet Georgina Herrera Dies of Covid

Originally from Matanzas, Herrera was born on April 23, 1936 in the town of Jovellanos. (Radio Taino “La FM de Cuba”)

14ymedio, Havana, 14 December 2021 — On Monday afternoon the poet Georgina Herrera died due to complications from the coronavirus, several days after having been admitted to the Salvador Allende hospital, La Covadonga in Havana. “Today, in Cuba, from covid, the great poet has just died,” Puerto Rican writer Mayra Santos-Febres said in a post. “She was my elder. Now she is my Ancestor. I’m going to miss you, Yoya.”

Santos-Febres met Herrera in 2016, “one of the most genuine voices in 20th century poetry,” as recognized by the official press. “She (Herrera) healed me with a few words of a pain that I did not know I carried,” she said, in addition, remembering that one of the dreams of the Cuban writer was to travel to Puerto Rico. “I looked for how to bring her on several occasions, but I wasn’t able to manage it. Damn international policy that divides us into nationalities, sides, ideologies.”

Herrera’s literary heritage is accentuated by her feminist emphasis and the racial awareness that she places on black women. This, Cubadebate published, “marked her close relationship with Africa and the vital heritage in Cuba, where she also worked as a scriptwriter for radio and television programs and film projects.”

Originally from Matanzas, Herrera was born on April 23, 1936 in the town of Jovellanos, and grew up in a family environment composed mostly of descendants of slaves. Her prolific career began at the age of 16, when she began to publish in newspapers and magazines in Havana. Later she was part of the legendary literary group El Puente [The Bridge].

Her sensitivity and wisdom took her to literature where she was recognized as the Eterna Cimarrona of Cuban letters. In 1970 she was honored with the poetry award from the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba. And she came to preside over the Writers Section of the Film, Radio and Television Association. However, she was never awarded the National Prize for Literature, a fact that has been harshly criticized by her followers.

“Simple and at the same time irreverent in her texts, she places in front of us a lyrical subject that celebrates irreverence, the poetic and cultural maroon,” is how the Cuban essayist Alberto Abreu Arcia defined the personality of Georgina Herrera in his social networks . “A voice that dislodges and subverts everything.”

Cuban poet and editor Teresa Melo shared her feelings on her Facebook wall: “Multiple voice, woman written from her skin, her skins. Woman who wrote ‘how bad it is to die’, anticipated. Although it is now when she enters the river, where it is jungle, where she loves like a small stone, in rebound, in rebirth.”

Herrera’s work has been translated into several languages; titles include Gentes y cosas (1974), Granos de sol y luna (1978), Gatos y liebres (1978), Grande es el tiempo (1989), Gustadas sensaciones (1996) y Gritos (2004)*. Among her recognitions, most notably she received the Alejo Carpentier and Raúl Gómez García medals as well as the Distinction for National Culture.

*People and Things (1974), Grains of the Sun and Moon (1978), Cats and Hares (1978), Great is Time (1989), Gustadas Sensations (1996) ) and Screams (2004)

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Cuban Government Officials May Have Another Nationality

President Miguel Díaz-Canel meets with several Cuban officials. (Revolution Studies)

14ymedio, Havana, 9 December 2021 — The Cuban regime reversed a provision that was in force for only one year and six months and that prevented its officials from having, in addition to the Cuban, another nationality at the time of being appointed as head of State or Government.

This Wednesday, according to the official press, a new provision of the State Council modified article 18 of decree-law number 13 of 2020 on the Work System with State and Government cadres and their reserves, which required officials to be a “Cuban citizen, permanent resident in the national territory and not have another citizenship.”

Of course, the Council of State specified that the appointment of a leader with dual nationality will have to be approved by the President of the Republic, “at the proposal of the corresponding authority, except in the cases provided for in the law,” according to the State newspaper Granma.

The current decree-law specifies, among other requirements, that in order to hold a position within the State or Government, the person must be identified “with the ideology and ethical principles of the Cuban Revolution, and act with modesty, simplicity, transparency, honesty and due discretion.”

The Constitution of the Island approved in 2019 establishes in Article 36 that “the acquisition of another citizenship” does not imply the loss of the Cuban one, but those who have this recognition, “while they are in the national territory, are governed by that condition, in the terms established in the law and they cannot make use of a foreign citizenship.”

The law also establishes that the president, vice president and prime minister of the Republic must be Cuban citizens “by birth” and not have another nationality.

The measure approved this Wednesday could be focused on Cuban emigrants who want to return to the country at some point, but it cannot be ruled out that it is only a nod to international public opinion and will not be put into practice.

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Cuban Yunior Garcia and Venezuelan Leopold Lopez Face an Act of Repudiation in Madrid

The Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López and the Cuban playwright Yunior García Aguilera, at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Complutense University of Madrid, this Monday. (Europa Press / Alberto Ortega)

14ymedio, Madrid, 13 December 2021 — The Cuban playwright Yunior García Aguilera and the Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López were victims of an act of repudiation this Monday at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Complutense University of Madrid. With posters and shouts, a group of radical leftists tried to blow up the event, in which they did end up hearing the testimonies of both about the lack of freedom in Cuba and Venezuela.

“Out with the Miami mafia, coup plotters!” and “López assassin,” read the posters displayed by a group of just over twelve young people. Faced with the shouts, López demanded “tolerance” to begin with the presentations and, finally, the extremists fell silent and the dissidents were able to tell about their experiences under repression.

In his speech, García Aguilera detailed what he experienced during his last weeks in Cuba, including the harassment against his family and the surveillance around his home. “I dream of the day when our scientists find a vaccine against intolerance,” began the playwright, while a young woman kept shouting slogans against him from the back of the room.

“My country is going to celebrate 70 years without democracy,” continued the playwright. “I know people who have spent eight years in jail for writing a poem. That has nothing to do with the left,” said García, one of the most visible faces on the Archipíelago platform. continue reading

“Long live universities, thought laboratories, and long live freedom. May these laboratories find a vaccine for demagoguery,” added Leopoldo López.

Last April the dean of this same faculty, had canceled a planned event with Leopoldo López, organized by the Libertad Sin Ira [Freedom Without Anger] association, the same one that has now organized this event.

“Out with the Miami mafia, coup plotters!” and “López assassin,” read the posters displayed by a group of just over twelve young people at the UCM Faculty of Politics. (EFE)

The leader of the Popular Party, Pablo Casado, has already expressed his rejection. “My resounding condemnation of this new attack by the intolerant and sectarian left against freedom,” wrote the politician on his Twitter account, where he also conveyed all his support for López and García “in their fight against dictatorships.”

The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, also expressed her rejection of the attack on her Twitter account. “Madrid is everyone’s home, it is freedom. We strongly condemn this attack against freedom of expression in a public university in Madrid and we will support all the rectors so that they can always guarantee it,” she wrote on Twitter.

Cuban dissidents visiting Spain have been frequent targets of this type of act of repudiation, especially in the Complutense Faculty of Politics, from whose radical groups the Podemos party emerged, led at the time by Pablo Iglesias, Juan Carlos Monedero and Íñigo Errejón. Similar repudiations have also happened at book presentations, public conferences or at the exit of official meetings.

In some cases, the island’s opponents have denounced the presence at these rallies of people of Cuban nationality who act as the main detonators of the screams or are an active part in the “intimidating choreography,” says journalist Yoani Sánchez who suffered one of these “escraches” while presenting “A Blog to Speak to the World” in 2013, at the Fnac Callao bookstore in the Spanish capital.

“On that occasion, the person who acted as the main organizer was a former colleague with whom I had shared a photography course in Havana. I thought he was there to greet me and remember the past times, but he turned out to be the main leader of the act of repudiation. Along with a dozen other people. Later I learned that he had been living in Madrid for several years.”

“They shouted a lot, chanted the word ’terrorist’ and displayed posters with my face deformed and also a Cuban flag. Obviously they wanted to interrupt the presentation and also intimidate the audience, but no one moved from their chair. Until they got tired and left.”

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Cuban Filmmaker Rolando Díaz Denounces the “Despicable” Acts of Repudiation to Repress 15N

Filmmaker Rolando Díaz (center) with actress Lynn Cruz and director Miguel Coyula. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 7 December 2021 — Repression on the island frustrated “through despicable acts of repudiation” the November 15^thmarch (15N), events that marked “a before and after in the recent history of Cuba,” filmmaker Rolando Diaz denounced in Havana. The creator, who left the country in the mid-90’s, spoke to the public who attended the Acapulco cinema on Monday night to watch his film Dossier de Ausencias, a Dominican film that has just won the Best Production Award at the Festival Ibero-Latinoamericano in Trieste, Italy.

In his words, he not only rejected the acts of repudiation that took place against the activists who participated in the call for the Civic March for Change of 15N, but also sent a message of solidarity to young filmmakers of the Island who are suffering censorship by State institutions.

“Those without a voice have the right to have it. I consider myself part of the national cinema, especially of what has been accomplished by young, highly talented filmmakers, such as Carlos Lechuga, Miguel Coyula, José Luis Aparicio, Fernando Fraguela, Carlos Quintela, Heidi Hassan and Patricia Pérez. The last three are already in exile,” he said during the presentation that was part of the 42^nd edition of the New Latin-American Film Festival, which takes place in the Cuban capital between December 3^rd and 12^th.

Díaz also considered that ignoring “the courage of those who only ask for the right to speak, think differently and demonstrate peacefully” would be “a cowardly act” for not recognizing those truths. continue reading

Speaking to 14ymedio on Tuesday, Rolando Díaz said that, for him, “it is very important” to make this type of “sincere and honest statement” because “the way the official press behaves” is already known

A director of well-known films, such as Birds Firing the Shotgun and En Tres y Dos, Díaz received a public ovation at the end of his speech, and he stated: “I cannot conceive of a country without diverse voices, fear, that fear that I feel for expressing these ideas now, it devours the soul. Those who like movies know what I’m talking about. Fear devours the soul, but dignity is the only antidote to eating ourselves alive.”

Speaking to 14ymedio on Tuesday, Rolando Díaz said that “it is very important” for him to make this type of “sincere and honest statement” because “the way the official press behaves” is already well-known.

“I am afraid that my press conference this Tuesday will only be used in terms of ‘just another one who was in attendance at the event, who participates in a film and no more’. I wholly reaffirm my statement from yesterday, and want to reaffirm that this is my true belief and my true feelings about my presence in Cuba at this Havana Festival.”

In his presentation at the Acapulco cinema, Díaz insisted that, although he is a Spanish national and has been living outside the country for 30 years, he is also Cuban and that, since he had not visited Cuba for a long time, he wanted to make that “kind of statement” before his public.

The director stated that his relationship with the Festival of New Latin-American Cinema “has been controversial” since he left Cuba, because some of his films made outside the country such as Melodrama, (1995), “were badly mistreated” and their “exposure was very limited.” Something similar happened with Si me Comprendieras, another Cuban-themed film, which was even banned from being shown at the University of Havana in 1999.

“I wholly reaffirm my statement from yesterday, and want to state that this is my true belief and my true feelings about my presence in Cuba at this Havana Festival”

“Then I shot Cercanía in Miami, a film with Reinaldo Miravalles, Carlos Cruz and many other Cuban actors and it was not selected. I sent it to the Festival and it was not selected. Aissa’s Roads, a documentary that I also made in Spain about migration, was placed in an international documentary film show but it went under the table,”,added Díaz in his statement.

The filmmaker Carlos Lechuga thanked Díaz for his words with a post published on his Facebook profile, and he highlighted Díaz’s decency and courage to stand up and say things as they are.”

“I admired this director and now I do so much more,” he added.

In the same way, actress Lynn Cruz considered Díaz’s words very important and transcribed her statement on her social networks. “Because it is in this space where both institutionalized and independent people have been censored, where it is possible to question and criticize those who, protected by a cultural policy, exclude films, filmmakers, actors, and film professionals in Cuba.”

Translated by Norma Whiting

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Even the Police Stations Collapse in Cuba

Los Sitios Police Station on Reina Street in Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 13 December 2021 — It is a common sight in some neighborhoods in the Cuban capital, especially in Old Havana and surrounding areas, to see pedestrian stepping off the sidewalk to avoid a building on the verge of collapse. What is strange is to see that one of these buildings is a police station.

This is the case with the Los Sitio Police Station, in Centro Habana, located on one of the busiest streets in the city. Surrounded by rubble and supported by struts, the building, on Reina Street between Rayo and San Nicolás, barely remains standing. Or as ordinary Cubans like to say, it is in “miraculous static,” because it’s hard to understand why it has not yet fallen.

Thus the Cuban Revolution will soon reach its 63rd birthday, among the rubble, filth and poverty.

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Cuban Health Workers Upset by the Distribution of a Cash ‘Stimulus’

“What is the fault of those of us who get sick with covid or anything else?” the health workers complain. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 6 December 2021 — The delivery, on December 15 ,of a “stimulus” in national currency to workers in the health sector is generating controversy among doctors, nurses, dentists, technologists, graduates and other workers of the Ministry of Public Health.

The measure, which the Government presents as a recognition of the labor of its workers during the pandemic, “does not cover those who for various reasons were not present or who voluntarily did not undertake all the tasks.” Thus, all those who at some point, during the pandemic, requested a license, medical leave or worked remotely, will be unable to collect the bonus.

The letter, signed by the Deputy Minister of Public Health, Luis Fernando Navarro Martínez, establishes the rules to be taken into account to make the payment of the stimulus in cash effective “to the professionals, technicians and other health workers who have worked in confronting the pandemic.”

However, the decision to recognize the work of health personnel is overshadowed by the requirements to take into account, when evaluating who is eligible and who is not to receive this unprecedented benefit in the recent history of this country, because “it is for those who really deserve it.”

“Those who ‘of their own free will’, they say, as if I had not assumed the tasks because I did not feel like it, but who was going to take care of my young son then?” a worker at a Polyclinic in the capital tells 14ymedio before issuing a warning: “I did work for a long time during the pandemic, until my mother could no longer take care of my son, continue reading

and since on the 15th they did not pay me the stimulus, I asked to resign and leave,” she says, upset.

Although it is true that for a good part of the sector it will be beneficial, especially in these times of excessive inflation that further devalues the already symbolic state wages, there are discrepancies between those who do meet the requirements and those who find it unfair that other colleagues are not paid equally.

Such is the case of a doctor at the Manuel Fajardo hospital. “Yes, we are going to receive it this month and we will collect depending on the basic salary of each person. The normal salary of about 5,300 is paid on the 10th and then they will pay the same amount as the basic on the 15th, 5,060 pesos in my case, I’m a doctor. ”

This doctor does not believe that it is fair that some receive help and others do not, since he “is aware and saddened that a nurse who was allowed by the 60% law to be able to take care of her child, and a doctor with maternity leave, will receive extra.” At the same time she recognizes that they have a more difficult situation due to having small children and that, therefore, their personal expenses are higher.

The workers at the Joaquín Albarrán polyclinic, in Centro Habana, “are beside themselves from the insult,” according to a person who has ties to some of them. “They tell me that when the union met to explain what the matter was about, there was tremendous uproar, because it was enough to have one unjustified absence for them to not pay someone the incentive,” he says.

“What is the fault of those of us who get sick from covid or anything else?” Asks another worker in the sector. The man explains that he was absent from his position as a nurse in another polyclinic because he was “very ill and with hemoglobin at 6, that is, on the floor,” and adds that, as soon as he recovered, he returned to work. Now, he protests, the situation is that “with those days recorded, I’s invalidated from collecting the famous incentive.” In addition, he blames the union for being willing to comply with all the orders “from above” and not defending his rights as a worker.

Another doctor, excited and grateful for the action by the ministry, commented to her colleagues in a medical office: “I think they are doing it so that if the new omicron strain should cause a lot of damage and we have a setback in this regard, nobody is going to miss work, not even if they have small children, not even if they get sick or anything. ”

Some health centers in the capital have rejected the certificate models presented to the ministry, since “when calculating the parameters, we only took into account the absences, certificates and licenses of this last year,” when the plan was that the last two years of work would be taken into account.

This situation hurts several workers who “classified as eligible” to receive the salary stimulus, but who will no longer be chosen when the new document includes the labor criteria for this year and the previous one. “We are very sorry and we feel sorry for our workers, but it is what it is,” laments a worker from the Human Resources Department of one of these centers who agreed to speak with 14ymedio on condition of anonymity.

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Cubans Pay up to $4,000 to Cross from Guatemala to the Mexican State of Veracruz

At the Casa del Migrante La Divina Providencia there are currently three Cubans and 39 other migrants. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico, 9 December 2021 — The Grijalva River has become one of the routes most exploited in recent months by coyotes to pass migrants from the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, in western Guatemala, to Tenosique, in the Mexican state of Tabasco. Cuban Ernesto Rodríguez told 14ymedio that this is how he crossed in a boat with his wife, his son and 15 other foreigners on November 18.

The group got together on the 17th, he says. “We were in a room without light, we only heard that the route was ’hot’ and that the sailors were already leaving.” Rodríguez, who paid 1,600 dollars to the coyotes to get him to Mexico, says that for getting him to Veracruz they “asked him for 4,000 dollars.’’ Some did pay it. Migrants are taking this route to avoid entering Chiapas, where thousands of Haitians are creating chaos.

The same coyote that left them in Tenosique contacted a truck driver who took them hidden among the load of bananas that he transported to the state of Nuevo León. “On the 20th he left us in a room and only charged us $60, but we soon left for fear of being arrested.” continue reading

The humanitarian visa was processed in Coahuila. “As everything was getting ugly, we left there and traveled until we reached Sonora.” Originally from Holguín, Rodríguez left this Thursday from the La Divina Providencia refuge, located in San Luis Río Colorado, in the state of Sonora which borders the United States, heading towards the immigration station located in the same town, to request information about his wife and his son, who on Sunday were detained by immigration police while he was buying food.

“The humanitarian visa arrived late. With the Stay in Mexico everything was complicated. What I want is that my family gets out,” he explains. The program implemented during the government of Donald Trump — questioned for putting migrants and refugees in danger — was the way for the United States to send 13,000 asylum seekers there, according to a source from the Mexican Foreign Ministry. Since this Monday, it began to be implemented again in cities bordering Texas, Arizona and California.

Given the return of Stay in Mexico, the shelters located in the border area of Sonora are full, “since due to the pandemic we cannot receive more than 42 people,” says Sara Sánchez, who works with the La Divina Providencia refuge. “They are given accommodation for three days. Right now we are full and we had to channel 14 Haitians from the caravan that arrived on Wednesday.”

The Cubans Aledmys and Raúl are also in the refuge. The first also hopes to hear from his family, which was picked up during a detention, and he, to avoid being detained, filled out a form requesting refuge. According to the latest statistics published by the National Commission for Refugees of Mexico (Comar), as of November 30, 8,148 Cubans had requested refuge and 2,538 have been approved. Many carry out the process in order to obtain a humanitarian visa to be able to travel through the country towards the northern border, cross into the United States and request asylum.

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Organoponics and Food Self-sufficiency in Cuba

14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, 10 December 2021 — The insistence of the communist Cuban regime in promoting urban, suburban and family agriculture as a way of achieving food sovereignty is now past a joke. Because it is one thing to amuse yourself in communist conclaves with these types of proposals which take you nowhere. There are darker motives, of that there is no doubt. But something else entirely is their idea of growing pumpkins or taros in parks or gardens, in flower pots, or raising pigs in your back yard; that is a solution to absolutely nothing.

In every country in the world, for considerations of hygiene, coexistence with other people, and social organisation, this kind of practice has been forbidden since the middle of the last century. That this is what they want to do in Cuba, to put something on the table for lunch, or one meal a day, gives you an idea of how little the communist leaders understand, and how little they know about agriculture and stock breeding. To set out on a headlong flight on a matter this important is totally irresponsible.

In this blog, we have several times discussed the proposals which this “national group of urban, suburban and family agriculture” has come up with. The group is the organisation set up by Raúl Castro himself to advance these activities, and which, according to the state newspaper Granma, has just carried out its umpteenth tour, apparently number 90, and, also “through all parts of the country,” in order to “assess the production of vegetables using organoponic technology,” in parks, gardens, yards and flowerpots. No more, no less.

It isn’t surprising that there is a shortage of food in Cuba when a government bets on this kind of production model instead of focussing on more important things. We get the impression we are clearly seeing the death throes of the communist social model when they do this sort of thing. And never more clearly than in products so specific and in so much demand from the Cuban people as vegetable production using organoponic technology. Its like a nightmare, and one of the worst.

Why do we say that urban, suburban and family agriculture can’t solve the food problem in Cuba? continue reading

First of all , because it is a short run production model producing small quantities, just enough for a family’s own consumption, or at most for the people in a couple of streets, and on this basis, unable to resolve a problem which affects most of the society.

The Cuban agricultural sector, instead of producing in smaller spaces, needs to achieve increasing output to scale where it gets to the minimum point on the unit cost curve, with efficient technology, or, to put it into simple terms, growing things on land areas sufficient for what it wants to harvest. Vegetables, for example, require parcels of land of a certain size in order to grow things at the best prices.

Communist ideology’s rejection of wealth is a political obstacle to land distribution which, in other countries, like Vietnam, has been the solution to agricultural shortages.

Secondly, in contrast to what the communist leaders say, this programme is unsustainable, and, on the contrary, is high-risk. We have referred to sanitary conditions, but we have to pay attention to the processes and techniques used in production. To revert to obsolete and unproductive methods is hardly sustainable, calling for higher input than in efficient land plot sizes.

To bring agricultural activity near to urban areas where people are pursuing their lives, entails social risks. For example, crop irrigation; where does the water come from? Perhaps from everyone’s drinking water supply? This is unsustainable, and wasteful, which will end badly. Also one could mention use of fertilisers and plant protection products, which can be applied to organoponics in urban gardens, next to roses or daisies. All very pretty, but dangerous.

Thirdly, and most importantly, no-one can expect any kind of food self-sufficiency, despite Granma saying that they “have stabilised production.” If we want to talk about statistics, the ONEI (National Statistics & Information Office) confirms that during 2021 (January to September period) vegetable production, including all varieties, has experienced a reduction of 214 thousand tons compared with the same period the previous year, that is 8.5% less, so that Cubans had less supply than in 2020, which was already a bad year. Less to choose from all the time.

Granma itself acknowledges, citing an expert in this programme attempting to cultivate taros in public gardens, that the levels of production achieved “are insufficient in most of the subprogrammes.” And, it has to be said, they will continue to be.

This “national group of urban, suburban, and family agriculture” can continue visiting every area in Cuba, and coming up with slogans in all of them, in order to carry on with its tours the following year. At the end of the day, going around like that at least does not get in the way of the work of the farmworkers working their furrows, who are the ones who are really committed to food self-sufficiency in the country, but who are impeded by the government with all sorts of obstacles and intrusions.

Without any doubt, this model of garden agriculture will not increase agricultural productivity, nor assist food self-sufficiency, and certainly not local resilience and sustainability. It is a foolish dream from the past, like when Fidel Castro in the middle of the “Special Period,” gave Cuban families chickens from the state farms to raise in their own homes, just to entertain people who had nothing to do, but will never produce more food nor sort out any kind of self-sufficiency.

The Cuban communist regime needs to understand that if it wants to provide a food supply to the people in this country, it needs to start by forgetting about 30 pounds per capita of agricultural products in their projects, or about worn-out experiments like organoponics, and let Cuban farmers decide what to produce, how much to produce, at what prices, and, above all, free to do it where they think convenient, and employing the area of land they wish, not what has been leased out by the local communists, Organoponics won’t appear anywhere. And won’t destroy the few gardens surviving in parks, accentuate the general destruction of the urban landscapes, or produce infections of back yards, and flower pots, with weeds, insects, and also cause sanitary and social problems.

Translated by GH

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The Official Press Invents an Intense Storm to Explain the Loss of Shrimp at Tunas de Zaza

The official press reports that the company managed to recover roughly one and a half tons of shrimp. (Escambray)

14ymedio, Mercedes Garcia, Havana, December 8, 2021 — Two days after an article appeared in 14ymedio on the breach of a holding pond, the official press responded with an improbable explanation for the “escape” of roughly fifteen tons of shrimp intended for export from an aquatic farm in Tunas de Zaza, a town in Sancti Spiritus province.

According to an article in the local newspaper Escambray, which was later reposted on Cubadebate, the incident was precipitated by intense storms which caused a failure in one of the ponds used by the state-owned Cultizaza company to farm shrimp. “The water in the damn overflowed and, with it, a large portion of its growing biomass,” the article states.

Cultizaza’s director, Luis Orlando Rodriguez, is quoted in the article as saying, “We were able to recover about a ton and a half of the crustacean after the precipitous loss of water from the upper end of the dam.” However, neither local weather reports nor meteorological websites indicate there was any heavy rainfall on either the day of the incident or on previous days in the coastal Caribbean town.

This is confirmed by several area residents, one of them a man named Rafael, who tells 14ymedio that there had only been light rainfall, “with no water running through the streets,” in recent days.

“It takes at least three days of heavy rains before a pond will overflow,” explains Rafael, “and no water was getting into the ponds. Not from a river or continue reading

from any other source. They are only fed with seawater. If there had actually been that much rain, it wouldn’t have been the ponds that were inundated. It would have been the town of Tunas de Zaza because it’s at a very low elevation.”

A company employee who prefers to remain anonymous told 14ymedio on Tuesday that the walls of the giant reservoirs where the shrimp are grown are very thin and have not been properly maintained for a long time. “They emptied the pond from one side and the pressure from five feet of water caused the walls to blow out. When two adjoining ponds are full, they balance each other out. But as one of them was being emptied, it couldn’t withstand the pressure from the one alongside it” she explains.

Responding to pleas from company employees, dozens of residents rushed to the site and gathered up all the shrimp they could before they could spoil. At the time of the spill, the shrimp had been ready for harvest. “A lot of people were even putting them in their pockets,” said Yisel, one of the lucky volunteers.

In his statements to Escambray, Rodriguez insisted that his workers “showed up immediately” and “worked together to collect the animals, which were about to be harvested, so damage was minimal.” He also pointed out that, after being alerted, dozens of local volunteers showed up at the site to help recover some of the shrimp.

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Cuban Customs Extends Free Entry of Foods and Other Products for Six Months

Cuban customs authorized these types of imports on an exceptional basis in July. (Courtesy)

14ymedio, Havana, 9 December 2021 — The unlimited importation of food, hygiene products and medicines is extended for another half year in Cuba. The measure was approved last July, just three days after the outbreak of the anti-government protests of 11J (11 July) and was scheduled to expire on December 31, but it is extended until June 30, 2022 for the time being, as confirmed by the General Customs of the Republic (AGR) this Wednesday.

The regulation provides for non-commercial importation “with no import value limit and free of payment of tariffs” and, according to the authorities, “has had a favorable impact on the population and passengers who arrived in the country.”

The shortage of food, hygiene products and medicines, although chronic in Cuba, visibly worsened starting in 2020, when the pandemic forced border closures around the world. Until then, the market was informally nourished by ’mules’ who traveled to countries such as Panama or Mexico to stock up on these items, which were difficult to find in Cuba, and who resold them upon arrival.

The existence of this parallel market was an escape valve for the population that, despite being forced to pay sometimes very high prices, was able to find products which were difficult, if not impossible, to find in state stores, even those taking payment only in foreign currency. continue reading

The cancellation of flights and limitations on mobility left the population largely unsupplied and that frustration coupled with the lack of freedom, caused thousands of people to take to the streets on July 11.

The government’s response was to authorize these tax-exempt imports “on an exceptional basis” and as separate cargo from luggage, but nothing has improved since then despite the fact that the borders have been reopening.

According to the Government, the extension is due to the impact of the covid-19, but also, and looking ahead, to the fact that “the persistent limitations in the offers of these products is motivated, among other causes, by the intensification of the economic, commercial and financial blockade of the Government of the United States.”

The AGR also reported that the tariff benefits related to the importation by state entities of the same products and, also, of the inputs or raw materials that they bring for private businesses, are extended until the same date of the end of June.

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