In 1957, Hernández Cáceres was part of the 26th of July Movement. (Granma)
14ymedio, Havana, 11 August 2021 — Reserve Colonel Santiago Lorenzo Hernández Cáceres died this Wednesday in Havana at the age of 82. His death marks the seventh high-ranking military official that dies in Cuba in less than a month. The cause of death has not been released in in any of the cases.
According to Granma (the Communist Party newspaper) Hernández was a founding member of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC). Born in the municipality of San Juan y Martínez, in Pinar del Río province, in a family of modest farmers, and “from a very young age he carried out agricultural work.”
In 1957, he joined the “26th of July Movement,” where he successfully “carried out several missions of clandestine actions and sabotages,” noted the official newspaper.
While in the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), he worked with the Communist Youth Union (UJC) and the PCC, in addition to directing the political sections of continue reading
the Central and Western armies and being the political director for the military troops that Cuba sent to Angola and Ethiopia.
The passing of Hernández Cáceres comes after the deaths in July of five generals who were part of the Cuban military leadership: Agustín Peña, Marcelo Verdecia Perdomo, Rubén Martínez Puente, Manuel Eduardo Lastres Pacheco and Armando Choy Rodríguez, in addition to Commander Gilberto Antonio Cardero Sanchez.
Martínez Puente died at the age of 79 and is thought to be the one who transmitted Raúl Castro’s order to fire the missiles from Cuban Air Force Mig fighters, to shoot down the Brothers To The Rescue planes in 1996, where four American civilians were murdered. The attack occurred over international waters, although the Cuban Government justified the shooting down of the small planes by claiming that the ships had entered the island’s airspace.
Verdecia Perdomo was Fidel Castro’s bodyguard in the Sierra Maestra, and Peña was the head of the Eastern Army of Cuba. Choy Rodríguez was promoted to commander in 1962, when he was head of the anti-missiles troops, Reserve Brigadier General Lastres Pacheco joined Fidel Castro’s guerrillas in 1957.
Translated by: Mailyn Salabarria
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Two “red berets” on guard outside the Plaza Comercial Carlos III, in Centro Habana. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 11 August 2021 — One month after the protests of July 11 (11J), the Police and the military continue to guard the streets of Cuba. In Havana they are especially concentrated in areas where there are often crowds or long lines.
Although the usual movement of people in the streets on any given day continues, 14ymedio also confirmed a large number of uniformed soldiers outside the Plaza Commercial Carlos III in Central Havana.
The presence of the “red berets” is notable, as they are known within the Armed Forces as “prevention troops,” who stand guard in groups of two and even four soldiers. Above all, they are seen in the portals and the surroundings of the capital’s markets, whose display windows facing the outside are walled up with wooden planks.
“Something strange is happening, in the stores of the Latin American Stadium and that of Aranguren and Panchito Gómez, I have not seen lines of people waiting to enter. They are not selling anything. Is it a coincidence because today is the 11th and they do not want riots in the streets?” asked a Havana resident who continue reading
went out this Wednesday morning to buy food.
The “red berets” guard in groups made up of two and up to four soldiers. (14ymedio)
This newspaper was able to verify that the scene was repeated in stores such as Trimagen, on Ayestarán Street. In that establishment they only sold one bottle of soda per person and two packages of ‘Pellys’ snacks.
Thousands of Cubans took to the streets on Sunday, July 11 (11J) to protest against the Government, shouting for freedom on a historic day. In response, president Miguel Díaz-Canel went on TV to make a call for people to go out into the streets to confront the protesters and defend the Revolution.
The demonstrations took place with the country mired in a serious economic and health crisis, with the pandemic out of control and a severe shortage of food, medicine and other basic products, in addition to long power cuts.
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Satellite dishes have always been hunted, but in recent years the raids to detect them had decreased in Havana. (DirecTV)
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 10August 2021 — The illegal satellite dishes, used by Cubans to access television from Florida, are once again the target of censorship to prevent the dissemination of images of the protests of July 11 on the island. Although they have always been persecuted, in recent years the raids to detect them had decreased significantly in Havana.
“We have been without service for days,” Juvenal, a retiree living in Cayo Hueso, Centro Habana tells 14ymedio. Juvenal had been enjoying, for more than ten years, service through a cable hidden in supposed water pipes that reached his home.” This neighborhood is all wired, this is a satellite dish area and there are families here who only watch those channels.”
Lately, police operations to detect these devices have become more frequent, to the point that in large areas of the city the owners of satellite dishes have preferred to suspend the service while waiting for better times. “They cut it off until things settle down,” Juvenal explains.
Among the crowded streets and densely populated cuarterías of Centro Habana, these antennas abound, one of the first technological elements, at the end of the nineties, which caused a change in the consumption of audiovisual content on the Island. This was followed by the “weekly packet,” USB memories and, for almost three years now, internet connections from mobile phones.
After more than two decades of the reign of clandestine satellite dishes and continue reading
ten years with the weekly packet centralizing content, many Cubans now prefer to take control of what they want to see and make their own programming list, but DirecTV devices, with their corresponding dish to capture the television signal, continue to dominate in the poorest neighborhoods.
“Here there are people who cannot afford a data package to surf the internet or to buy the packet every week, but in almost every house you see the antenna because those who do not pay directly have someone who gives them an extension so they can watch it,” explains Mary, a resident near the church of Carmen, on Infanta street at the corner of Neptuno.
“It has always been something that has to be done in secret but for some time they have not carried out police raids,” explains this woman from Havana. “Since I live on a rooftop, as soon as we saw the police patrols arrive, we cut the cables and pulled them down so they wouldn’t know which house they were connected to.”
The owners of the satellite dishes are the central node, and they decide which programs are seen at what time. From a decoder device, a tangle of cables reaches other homes that pay a monthly fee that currently does not exceed 300 pesos for 24 hours of continuous transmissions. “I have at least two cables from two different sources, because with one I see some channels and with another the others,” explains Mary.
“Here what is watched the most are the Miami programs of América TeVé, also Telemundo, CNN in Español and others that offer series, documentaries and soap operas,” the woman points out. “I haven’t changed to Cuban television channels for years because I’m used to seeing these and the ones from here bore me.”
“The owner of the antenna told us that we were going to be without the service for several days because the police sniffing around here and she decided not to risk it and uninstall hers until the operations are over,” she said. “They said they don’t want people to see the images of the protests.”
In Cayo Hueso there are also technical problems “because the signal is outside the neighborhood, and accessibility to the equipment has been reduced” and “you have to be inventive,” one of the young people who has been in the business of parabolic antennas or as he says, “up on the rooftops,” for 16 years, told this newspaper.
Through the news programs of América TeVé, Univisión, Telemundo and other US channels that extensively cover the Cuban issue, many Cubans have accessed the videos with the demonstrations and police repression, for example. This way they have also learned of the international condemnation of official violence and of the numerous arrests.
For the owner of one of these antennas that provides service to more than thirty families in the neighborhood of Los Sitio, the relationship between the operations to dismantle these devices and the protests of July 11 is evident. “They want to keep people away from that version of popular protest so that they can tell them what they want on their newscast,” he explains to this newspaper, speaking anonymously.
The small businessman has several antennas with their decoder boxes placed in different houses and a brother sends him the activation cards for the DirecTV service from Miami. With that and yards of cables, he distributes the signal across the rooftops, from one balcony to another, and even with the ingenious trick of passing them through false water pipes.
“A few months ago I had a client who complained when I put on a lot of news, because they preferred to watch reality shows or soap operas, but since the protests happened, people called for more news and current commentary,” says the business owner.
“In this neighborhood you could almost walk down the street and connect the phrases of the Miami programs as you listened to them from the windows or the doors,” he says. “It was a matter of time for the police to jump, because people were finding out a lot and that does not suit them.” However, he believes that “this will happen because they can no longer control it nor can they continue to irritate people even more.”
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In 2005, Petit denounced that due to the impossibility of building new churches on the island, Catholics had been forced to create so-called ‘houses of prayer.’ (Facebook)
14ymedio, Havana, 8 August 2021 — The auxiliary bishop of Havana, Alfredo Petit Vergel, died this Saturday in the Cuban capital, at the age of 85, according to a note released by the San Julián De Los Güines parish.
Born on July 24, 1936 in Havana, Petit studied at the College of the Brothers of the Christian Schools until entering the seminary El Buen Pastor, where he completed studies in Humanities and Philosophy, details the text published on the Parish Facebook website.
“The Pío Latinoamericano College in Rome welcomed him until he graduated with a Bachelor of Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, after which he received priestly ordination on December 23, 1961.” Back in Cuba, he served as parish priest of the Havana Cathedral and later of the El Salvador del Mundo parish in Havana’s Cerro neighborhood.
On November 15, 1991, Pope John Paul II appointed Petit bishop of San Cristóbal de La Habana, just at a time when the economic crisis after the fall of the socialist bloc worsened continue reading
on the island. Beginning that year, the number of Cubans who approached the churches also grew after decades of fierce atheism.
In addition, Petit attended the Nueva Gerona parish on the Isle of Youth and at the time of his death he was pastor at the San Francisco de Paula parish in La Víbora and at the Santa Teresita chapel in the Santa Amalia neighborhood, in the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo.
In 2005, during the Congregation of the Synod of Bishops held in Cuba, Petit denounced that given the difficulty and “practically the impossibility of building new churches” on the Island, Catholics had been forced “to create the so-called ’houses of prayer’ or ’mission houses’, located in the peripheral neighborhoods and in the small towns and hamlets.”
Also in an interview he lamented the obstacles that limited the actions of the Church, such as the fact that the Government “has always controlled the number of priests in the country and there have never been enough to cover pastoral needs. Another difficulty has been the difficult access to the media.”
Petit was also one of the victims of the so-called Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP), the concentration camps that existed in Cuba between 1965 and 1968, intended mainly for homosexuals but also religious people and all those rejected in the Revolutionary Armed Forces.
In June 1966 he received a summons and was transferred together with a Jehovah’s Witness and common prisoners to a camp in Camagüey. In the aftermath of his stay in the countryside, his hands had lacerations caused by forced labor, such as when he had to erect a barbed wire fence without protective gloves.
A Bible, which the military allowed him to keep, was his ally to celebrate clandestine masses at night attended by the Catholics in the concentration camp. Petit hid the consecration wine in medicine bottles and his mother took on the job of bringing him the hosts.
Petit remained in detention until 1967, when all those over 27 years of age were ordered to be removed from the UMAP camps. Other beneficiaries of this actions were Fathers Jaime Ortega and Armando Martínez. Upon his departure, Archbishop Evelio Díaz entrusted Alfredo Petit Vergel with the parish of El Salvador del Mundo in El Cerro.
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Hundreds of Cubans were detained during the July 11 demonstrations. (Facebook)
14ymedio, Alberto Reyes, Havana, August 9, 2021 — I’m saturated. I read over and over the endless testimonies of what has happened and continues to happen in Cuba since the 11J (July 11) protests and I’m breaking down inside: people willing to arbitrarily detain, beat, torture, attack another human being with dogs, with sticks, with anything that could harm them. Violent arrests, humiliations, beatings, fabricated crimes, ridiculous sentences, intimidations, threats, many threats . . . and something in me refuses to believe that so much evil together is possible.
It’s true that this isn’t something that came out of nowhere. As the prophet Hosea said: “They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.” And much later, Saint Augustine would say: “When one flees from God, everything flees from one.”
From the beginning of this so-called “Revolution,” God was seen as the enemy — God, Christ, the Gospel, the Church, the Christians. That “pernicious superstition,” that backward, retrograde, and bourgeois mentality, that “opium of the people,” the origin of injustice and hatred, had to be uprooted.
Well then, here is the result, here is the New Man, here is the promised paradise, with its new angels adorned with red and black berets, accompanied by their dogs, and, protected both physically continue reading
and legally, walking in groups against vulnerable civilians.
This is what is built when God is banished from the heart of a people.
But I resist, I refuse to believe that the soul has been extinguished in all those people who today are repressing, humiliating, mistreating, abusing civilians who . . . I was going to say, who haven’t done anything wrong, but no. On second thought, it isn’t so.
In reality, all those people who have taken to the streets to demonstrate, to shout “freedom” and “homeland and life!” are guilty. They are deserving of the highest most cruel punishment, because they have dared to challenge the greatest of myths: the myth of a happy Cuba, the myth of a people proud of their communism, the myth of a society that considers itself by decree “the lighthouse of America,” the myth of a communism that works.
Yes, all those protesters deserve condemnation, because they have broken the showcase of Latin American communism, they have demolished the carefully constructed and cared-for image of a Cuba put forward as a social paradigm.
And we already know how the stage works: foreign leaders of all kinds and categories who from their secure capitalist situations defend tooth and nail a system in which they would never come to live; people who, in fear, shout “homeland or death!” while they receive remittances from the “enemy” country or silently await their chance to get out of this nightmare forever. Neighbors who surveil and inform as the best protection for themselves and their children while also dreaming, deep down, of a Cuba where neither they nor their children have to pretend. And a media system of press and television that lies — lies, looking you straight in your eyes — because the lie has become second nature. Yes, where we were going to build a paradise without God, we have built a swamp.
And among the demonstrators of one side or the other, those who attack, those who “carry out orders,” those who are beating, at times sadistically, their brothers.
This breaks me. But despite so much brutal and absurd violence, despite so many institutionalized lies, I want to believe that in all of them the voice of conscience has survived, that they ask themselves questions, that they realize that this is not the way, they are aware that what they are doing is wrong. I understand that they are afraid, I understand that they feel compromised, but I cannot accept so much gratuitous evil.
Maybe I’m just naive. I’ve never been a fan of John Lennon, but his words in “Imagine” keep coming to mind: “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope some day you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.”
Because despite what is happening, we do not stop being a single people, who have been thrown into fighting by those who don’t care about their people, but only about power and impunity over their own people. We are one. And you, who today lend yourself to repress your equals, have a father, mother, brothers, children . . . because you, who today defend the “conquests of the Revolution,” have dreams that you know you will never be able to achieve within this “Revolution;” because you, who today detain and beat, know that a mere slip is enough to go from persecutor to persecuted, and that in a system like this you will never be safe, neither you, nor yours.
I want to believe that we still have time for forgiveness and reconciliation. I want to believe that we can all put ourselves on the right side of history. But each one needs to seek strength in the best of his soul, and decide, once and for all, to do what is right, because it is what is right.
Translated by Tomás A.
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An economist wonders why investment in local development is scarcely allowed. Billboard: Achieve the maximum efficiency and quality. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Elias Amor Bravo, Valencia, August 10, 2021
Not with my money.
And of course, not now. The official Castroist press has reiterated that the Cuban communist government is now considering promoting investment on the island by residents living abroad. One more return to what is supposed to be the principle from which the nation’s economy should never have departed? Absolutely. It is not advisable to be wrong.
In reality, the fundamentals haven’t changed, because the 2019 Constitution does not alter, but maintains the socialist-communist model of economic management. In this text, the ownership of the means of production continues to be “collective” in the hands of the State, the market continues to be prohibited from allocating resources, and private enrichment is penalized.
Nothing has changed in the fundamental foundations of the system, because even expropriation and confiscation remain in the constitutional text as Government weapons to destroy private property and accumulated wealth. You have to be very careful when investing in Cuba, because the economic system is completely different from the one that exists in the rest of the world, except in North Korea.
But the government has decided to build a trap to attract continue reading
Diaspora capital. The capital that is not allowed to be generated in Cuba by the population residing on the Island, is now intended to be brought from abroad. It is no longer just a matter of attracting remittances, but that Cubans from abroad, unlike their compatriots who are prohibited from doing so, can participate privately in the processes of socio-economic development in the nation. It’s what was missing.
All the countries of the world that have residents abroad, organize policies to attract their capital, technology, experience, and relationships. Spain did it in the 1960s, and Mexico, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic do it today, and they are successful at it because they know what to do. Nationals of one country who emigrate to another to work and carve out a future do so always thinking of a return, and for this, part of their earnings are used to accumulate capital, a business, or an activity that allows them that return.
Cubans haven’t been able to act in this way since 1959. Leaving the country in search of a better life and freedom brought with it the conversion into “worms” — enemies of the regime who had to be crushed or forgotten. Under such conditions, who is the government going to ask for money, and what for? I don’t think this policy is going to be successful, but if it is, some of the features it will have, as announced, are worth listening to.
Apparently, the regime intends that the policy of attracting capital from Cubans abroad only applies to those priorities established by the government’s agenda. In other words, a Cuban resident in Spain or France will not be able to invest freely in what he wants or considers pertinent, but in what the regime authorizes beforehand. But of course only after going through a long and complex bureaucratic process whose end God only knows.
Ernesto Soberón, who is behind this whole new “experiment,” has made sure to make this point very clear, so that no one is misled, and this should be enough to close the portfolio and forget about it. Soberón knows how investment decisions are made in a free economy, so his initiative to direct capital from abroad to only certain activities has very little to do with economic rationality. Another failure is looming on the government ledger. Most likely they will end up blaming the embargo, but in this case, the regulatory system is so intrusive that it will end up being the origin of the disaster.
The search for links between the Island and Cubans living in other latitudes offers a stark idea of the regime’s predicament: it is desperate to find financing, which isn’t coming, because tourism and export earnings are paralyzed by the pandemic.
So if this financial need is so urgent, it is impossible to understand why the regime has decided to allow Cubans living abroad to only invest in local development projects and cooperation exchanges – areas absolutely controlled by the State – which will significantly limit the business opportunities that can be developed.
Cubans will not be able to invest in the agricultural sector, in housing or real estate, in other companies (because they are state-owned) or in education or health (because that is prohibited). Ultimately, it is intended to take a bite out of remittances, not only from their usual use of buying necessary goods and services that are not offered by the regulated (rationed system) basket, but also from the possibility of the family in Cuba investing in a business that could generate income for themselves.
Soberón acknowledged that they are still working on the regulations, and that they still need to create the legal bases and consider another series of issues necessary for an effective implementation of this entire process, so they are still far from any final approach on this matter. He added: “All this is being worked on, beyond the manipulation on the subject that there will always be by certain media and sectors.”
Manipulation? Who is manipulating what? And how? It isn’t worth wasting time on something that won’t work, because Soberón doesn’t wants the Diaspora’s capital to come to the island, and Cuban businessmen living abroad should not fall into this mousetrap that the Government is preparing, with what is truly very poor quality cheese.
Instead of liberalizing the economy and leaving behind the socialist-communist model, which weighs down the performance of the economy, the authorities tangle everything up with an issue they have invented in order to continue blaming the embargo or “blockade” for all the evils of the economy.
Now they say that, although for someone to invest in a country they must bring money, market or technology, the main difficulty, not only for Cubans, but for everyone, is transferring hard currency to the nation. And this is due, according to the Government, to the permanence of the blockade imposed by the United States, which is also true in the case of remittances and their possible use in enterprises.
Soberón maintains that if the US government obstructs these shipments, if it prevents money from arriving, that is another problem for the Cuban community that does not depend on what Cuba can do. Once again, the responsibility lies with the United States. In reality, I don’t see how the United States can prevent a Cuban retiree in Spain from sending a payment by way of a Spanish bank he’s done business with all his life to an investment project in Cuba.
In fact, I know of the case of someone who has returned to Spain after verifying how unfeasible it was to return and that he would find himself in a much worse situation than the one he left behind. It will not be an easy matter. The money must be profitable and its allocation must be free, with limits only on criminal activities. In reality, I’m afraid that the regime doesn’t want the Diaspora’s money. What it’s after is another argument to say, once again, that the United States is to blame for everything. They never get tired.
Translated by Tomás A.
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Editor’s Note: This text was originally published on the Cubaeconomía blog and is reproduced here with the author’s permission.
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Considered a political prisoner, Robles remains in prison awaiting trial. (Facebook)
14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, August 10, 2021 — Luis Robles Elizastigui, the “young man with the sign” arrested on December 4 during a protest on San Rafael Boulevard in Havana, spent 15 days in a punishment cell in the Combinado del Este prison. This was reported to 14ymedio by his brother, Landy Fernández Elizastigui, who managed to speak with him after a month without receiving any news.
During the call, which this newspaper had audio access to, Luis Robles explained to his brother the reason why he was locked up in the punishment cell: they found some photos which, Fernández told 14ymedio, were “some images of the campaigns that have been carried out calling for freedom.”
In any case, Robles assured his brother that he is “calm.” “I’m a little weak because I lost some blood, and my blood pressure got out of control,” he says, but until today what he has done “is rest” to see if his body will recover.
He also mentioned that he was seen by a doctor, who told him continue reading
that he was going to refer him to a hospital outside the prison for a medical check-up, but that this has not happened yet.
Luis Robles has been threatened in prison. “It’s difficult, a very difficult time. They’ve threatened to put you in jail,” he explained to his brother.
Landy Fernández had previously told this newspaper that the lawyer had received a fourth denial of his request to change the precautionary measure to allow Robles to await trial at his home.
“The lawyer showed me the latest application that he presented on August 2, based on the words of the President of the Supreme Court who said in a press conference on July 24 that ’thinking differently, questioning what the process is doing, or demonstrating, constitutes a crime,’” he said.
Considered a political prisoner, Robles is in prison awaiting trial for protesting peacefully last December 4, calling for the release of rapper Denis Solís and an end to repression in Cuba.
Robles, 28, doesn’t belong to any opposition group, but he is suffering in his own body what it means to be a political prisoner in a Cuban jail for exercising his right to protest. His brother reported that in May he had received mistreatment and punishment that caused a skin allergy that triggered severe wounds.
During their Sunday conversation, Robles and his brother also spoke about the family: “My mother is very worried about the whole situation of my father and yours,” Fernández told him, referring to his father, who was sick with Covid.
At the end of July, a Facebook page created with the activist’s name to demand his freedom, published a video in which Luis Robles talks about his thoughts, his wishes, and also the reasons that led him to be a protestor. The material was recorded on December 1, three days before he was arrested by the police and accused of “enemy propaganda” and “resistance.”
Seven months after Robles was arrested for expressing himself with a sign in the streets of Havana, thousands of Cubans took to the streets and plazas of more than 40 cities throughout the island demanding freedom, the resignation of Miguel Díaz-Canel, and the end of the regime. Hundreds of them remain in detention and are being prosecuted for alleged crimes of public disorder, contempt, or transmission of epidemics.
Translated by Tomás A.
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Ruhama Fernández has been a victim of constant harrasment and repression from the police and the state security. (YouTube/Ruhama Fernández)
14ymedio, Havana, Last week, Ruhama Fernández delivered, via direct phone call from Cuba, a powerful testimony during a round-table meeting in Miami with GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, legislators from Florida and several influencers, artists and community leaders from the Cuban diaspora.
14ymedio, Havana, August 10th, 2021 — Cuban Youtuber Ruhama Fernández was arrested by Cuban police Tuesday morning, as she was preparing to leave her house in Santiago the Cuba. She was taken to the police station and criminal investigation unit in the Versalles neighborhood. Fernández was scheduled to participate in an online event this Wednesday, where influencers — inside and outside the island — were planning to debate the future democratization process in Cuba.
Venezuelan writer Deivy Garrido, who has been in direct communication with a friend of Fernández who was able to reach the police station to ask about the detainee, reported on his Twitter account that the Youtuber “was to be accused of ’contempt’ and would continue to be detained for 72 hours” until authorities could reach “a decision.”
Relatives of the young woman and social media users who follow her denounced the repressive act as “another illegal” and “arbitrary” detention by the authorities. The legal services NGO Cubalex pointed out that Ruhama Fernández is one of the “most harassed” continue reading
activists on the island.
Ruhama Fernández is constantly reporting on many of the issues affecting the area where she lives, such as the chronic shortage of food and hardships in which many families survive. She herself has been the victim of harassment and repression by State Security and Police agents, who have not stopped pressuring her to stop doing her work.
For a year now, she has been under constant surveillance from the island’s authorities for for what they call “public interest reasons.” This is a mechanism used by the authorities to arbitrarily restrict the free movement of activists, independent journalists and dissidents and opposition figures in general, a practice that has become a common repressive method.
The debate in which Fernández was going to participate this Wednesday also includes host Alex Otaola, actor Roberto San Martín, Cuban activist Eliécer Ávila, economist Manuel Milanés, the poet Luis Dener, who lives in Norway, and the Youtubers known as Old Hardcore and KarlitoMadrid. The debated was going to be moderated by journalist Gabriel Bauducco. It is sponsored by the Freedom and Federalism Foundation (Fundación Federalismo y Libertad), a private non-profit organization based in Argentina that aims to “promote the values of a free and democratic society.”
In March of 2020, Fernández was one of the winners of the contest for Cuban influencers organized by the Red Cuban Power platform. Recently, she participated in the forum “The role of influencers in the Cuban public sphere,” promoted by the Cuba Program of the School of Politics and International Relations at the Sergio Arboleda University of Colombia.
* Translator’s Update: DEVELOPING STORY:
Fernandez was released in the late night/early AM hours of 8/11/2021, and she posted on Twitter a live audio as proof. She described how 15 agents forcibly entered in her house, confiscated all her video equipment, including her laptop, while filming everything with their own camera man. Fernandez said she will be sharing on social media and live videos soon.
Translated by: Mailyn Salabarria
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“On 11 August 1995 I finally held you in my arms and smelled you for a long time.” (Courtesy of the family)
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 10 August 2021 — I always knew your name was Teo. It is a long story of childhood, literature, an imaginary friend and confidence in believing that you were just around the corner, we just needed to meet. On 11 August 1995 I finally held you in my arms and smelled you for a long time (I am one of those people who widens my nose when someone approaches for the first time).
Yes, that little being in my arms smelled like Teo. As I always dreamed (a mix between Bruce Lee and Diogenes … don’t ask me why I define you that way, everyone who knows you knows the answer). When we introduced you to the closest family, there was no shortage of responses in the style of “Give that kid a real name!” But what else were we going to call you…
Quirky and sharp, you speak little but can destroy or elevate with one sentence. When you had to repeat for the first time, in school, the slogan “Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che,” you refused. You asserted then that Guevara was dead, and you didn’t want to be. The first insult you learned was “filthy” and we had to listen to this from you for several years until you used more vulgar ones.
At the age of five you recited Heberto Padilla’s “tell the truth, at least tell your truth”
On a trip to the native city of your father, Camagüey (the cradle of good pronunciation of the language on this island, according to its own residents), they asked you if you came from the Peninsula beyond the seas because you pronounced “all the letters of all the words”… At the age of five you recited Heberto Padilla’s “tell the truth, at least tell your truth.” At seven you learned German, knew snow and became universal, a condition you have to this day.
Teo, you have connected profoundly with many people. In four words you have defined what it would have taken your father and me (insolent tongues) half an hour of explanation. You throw a phrase like an X-ray that pierces the body, a sentence of darts that pierce the mind. There are people who fear so much sincerity and withdraw, people who cannot stand you. It is, my son, that you are a free man. Free from the inside out, which is the best way to be.
In November 2009, you had to face the reality of having your two parents arrested, you were only 14 years old then but you behaved like a millennial adult: you made phone calls, you reported, you spoke on the radio and you waited. The reunion was like that of the grandfather who receives his two lost grandchildren with love and caresses… everyone who knows you knows that I am not lying. You are like that.
You throw a phrase like an X-ray that pierces the body, a sentence of darts that pierce the mind
Since then, you have had to experience everything and you have done it in that stoic way that does not seek applause or commiseration. You have done it because you have done it, serving as a father to your parents, something that should not be… never should be, but you have assumed it without complaining. I have not met anyone as mature, equanimous and confident as you in these more than four decades that I have lived.
Teo, you had to grow up so fast. Wary of the informants, the false friends who only wanted to use you as a bridge towards us, the lifelong whistleblowers, the classmates who wanted to earn points by making “life impossible” for the son of the dissidents and, however, like Antonio Machado’s verse, you ended up sprouting “serene spring” … which is “in the good sense of the word, good.”
Fashion, material displays, famous brands, the shocks of the moment … only achieve in you an answer very similar to that which is read at the end of the novel “The Glass Bead Game” by Herman Hesse, when one of the protagonists says to the other, who tries to challenge him and provoke him: “You are tiring yourself Joseph.”
I reiterate: you were already here, you always were and we have been only the modest vehicle for you to continue living
Whoever wants to get you out of your boxes and annoy you exhausts himself, you are made of hard, imperishable and beautiful clay. You are from a generation that is going to live and make the Cuba of the future arrive as soon as possible. You have no debts with the past, nor guilt.
Have we deserved such a child? Were these the circumstances to be able to have this luminous being among us? Probably not, but how happy we are to have been part of your shelter, your stairs to climb, your pole to jump and the logs ready to burn in the fire of your existence.
Teo, it’s been 26 years since I held you in my arms for the first time and I smelled you with the force of this nose (quite big by the way… jejeje). I reiterate: you were already here, you were always here and we have been only the modest vehicle for you to continue living, so that your strength continues flowing and your wise imprint prevails over so much tension and so much folly.
By the way, Teo, you smell like eternity. Did you know?
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As she explains to 14ymedio, “the refuge (it is not asylum), automatically gives me permanent residence in Costa Rica, which means legal status in the country, with access to social security, education, finances, and a work permit.”
Journalist and editor at ADN Cuba magazine, Karla María Pérez flew by Copa Airlines from San José to Panama last March without problems, but she was not allowed to board the plane there to continue to Cuba, according to what she told this newspaper at the time. They gave her no further explanation, “despite the fact that I met all the requirements, my paid extension [of the passport that lasts six years and must be extended every two years] whether I am resident or not on the Island, my PCR test, my ticket.”
An airline employee let her to listen to an audio “of an unidentified person from Migración de Cuba” who said, “No, it has nothing to do with extensions or with any legal requirements; Karla is prohibited from entering Cuba.”
Upon learning of her approval for refuge, Pérez wrote on her social networks that it was in Costa Rica, her second country, where she became an adult and has spent continue reading
the last four years of her life. “The Cuban dictatorship banishes me and Costa Rica, in this ’return’, welcomes me with open arms and recognizes my right to a little piece of land,” she said.
The young woman was expelled from the Marta Abreu de Las Villas Central University “for political reasons” in 2017 when she was studying journalism. She was linked to the Somos + Movement and had published on digital sites critical of the Government. She then traveled to Costa Rica thanks to a scholarship and graduated last December.
“The goal is to continue fighting the dictatorship from journalism, as I have been doing for more than four years,” she now tells this newspaper. “I don’t lose hope of being able to return to my country. To be free to choose, basically.”
It is a common practice for airlines to prevent Cubans who have exceeded two years off the island from boarding their planes, the regulatory time to maintain residence established in the Cuban Immigration Law that came into force in 2013. With this legislation, the authorities filter out the emigrants who, after spending 24 months outside the national territory, maintain a critical position with the regime.
The situation has been repeated on other occasions because the airlines that fly to Cuba have signed agreements that oblige them to carry a passenger back if they let him board without first having confirmation that he can enter the country.
Regarding the protests of July 11 (11J) on the island, in which thousands of Cubans participated, Pérez says that “they are a dream come true… I totally identify with the demands of those people who took to the streets, stripped of fear, to ask for freedom. Perhaps I would be currently imprisoned in Cuba, because on June 11 the house would have been too small for me.”
The reporter takes the opportunity to send “much strength” to her comrades who are fighting inside Cuba, “especially to fellow journalists” and points out: “Out here we will continue to denounce and press, because the silence is over. We are not going to shut up. From 11J there is no return. It is forward!”
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Image posted on Facebook by the user Tîcö Äwö Ôrümîlä, who confirms that he had to bury his grandmother in a mass grave in the Juan González cemetery, in Santiago de Cuba. (Screen capture)
14ymedio, Havana, 6 August 2021 – Reports of burials in mass graves in Cuba that have circulated through social networks and some independent media, and have been denounced by NGOs such as the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH), were denied this Friday with a brief note in the State newspaper Granma that came, as is usual with the official press, late and bad.
“A minority lacking information, but the majority moved by bad intentions, many people have re-posted images on social media corresponding to the burials of those killed by covid-19, in supposed mass graves, opened in the town of Juan González, 13 miles west of Santiago de Cuba,” says the note, which maliciously designates the unofficial media as “non-independents.”
According to the version of the Communist Party newspaper, the dissemination of information on “the loss of corpses” has led it to interview José Gonzalo Borrero Sotomayor, provincial director of Community Services and a chemical engineer, who assures that the transfer of the bodies has not been — one would say “they have tried to deny it” — improvised and forced by the gravity of the pandemic. Rather, for some time is has responded to the problems of space affecting Santa Ifigenia, the necropolis where the ashes of Fidel Castro are also. continue reading
The cemetery was inaugurated in 1868 and has become insufficient for a city that has grown to reach half a million inhabitants. In addition, its location prevents expansion, says Borrero Sotomayor, and is prone to flooding, reasons that have forced an expansion of the Juan González cemetery.
“The necessary use of mechanical means to expand the capacity of the cemetery, existing years ago in Juan González, could generate the impression that informal excavations are being carried out there. However, each operation has been carried out according to the technical standards established for this activity by the Ministry of Economy and Planning,” the official explains.
Burials must be done in such a way that each coffin is covered by 1.5 meters of earth or, in the case of graves that house several, respecting the same distance between the upper part of one and the lower part of the other. “All this is fulfilled to the letter,” since it is a matter that requires the greatest sensitivity, says Borrero Sotomayor.
The manager assures that no body has been lost and adds that the works to expand the burial capacity in Santiago de Cuba had been underway for a long time before the pandemic reached the island. The one that is most advanced will be located in an area known as Hicaco, on the Siboney highway and, although it is designed to house 10,000 bodies, in a few months its first block, of 365 graves, will be finished.
The other projected cemetery will be located at kilometer 10 of the Central Highway in the direction of El Cobre. Once the time for the exhumation* has elapsed, the remains of family members can be transferred from Juan González to these facilities, according to Granma.
Roberto Alejandro Ibarra Ruiz published on August 1 on his Facebook wall a video in which a group of gravediggers was seen burying two coffins in a mass grave allegedly located in that necropolis.
“On July 24, I buried my grandmother in the Juan González cemetery and, as you can see in the video, they are burying her in a grave, mixed with the people who died of Covid-19, when she did not suffer from that disease. So, what are we talking about? How long are we going to continue living on lies?” he wrote.
Ibarra’s publication sought to respond to the official television presenter, Humberto López, who assured that a similar complaint was a hoax that used images from Brazil to make them pass for a cemetery in Cuba. With the video of his grandmother’s funeral, Ibarra questioned the reporter and demanded that he show the video, but got no response.
Granma claims to have spoken with the young man and clarified with him that the burial had taken place in row 4, pit 16, and not as he suggested, although the young man’s version is unconfirmed, since he has not published anything else since that day.
*Translator’s note: In Cuba it is common practice, after a certain time has passed, to move human remains from the grave they were buried in to mausoleum and reuse the original grave. This is described in a note on Colon Cemetery in Havana: “While it is the final resting place for the vast majority of those who were buried here, it’s not final for everyone. Recent burials in the cemetery only remain in the ground for three years, after which they are exhumed and laid to rest in a specially constructed building.”
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
A coffin is transferred to a cemetery in Santiago de Cuba in August 2021. (Jorge Carlos Estévez García / Facebook)
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez/ Natalia López Moya, Havana, 8 August 2021 — An image invades social networks since the unstoppable increase in deaths from Covid: that of white coffins, a very unusual color in Cuba, where gray and black reigned until now at funerals. “There is no black fabric,” they tell 14ymedio employees of funeral homes in various provinces.
The pandemic has forced the use of different materials due to the increase in deaths. The State Communal Services company must search all over the country to obtain the wood, the cardboard and “the cloth cover for the box,” an improvisation that causes discomfort among the families of the deceased.
“Now they are all of poor quality,” lamented a relative this Friday, who was waiting to be transferred from the La Nacional funeral home in Havana to the Colón Cemetery.
The resurgence in deaths from Covid-19 has hit especially all the supplies related to wakes and burials: coffins, wreaths, dedication ribbons, tombstones and even niches to deposit the mortal remains.
“They could hardly load the box because it seemed like it was going to fall apart,” continue reading
Margarita Luaces tells 14ymedio. Lucase is the sister of a Covid-19 patient who died last July in Morón, Ciego de Ávila. “The coffin was an made of bad wood, covered in cloth and the bottom of a very fine cardboard, we were afraid that the corpse would fall out on us.”
“My brother’s was a white coffin, something that shocked us because it was not the most common but they told us that it was the fabric they had available, it did not have any of the metallic ornaments that they used to use and as soon as they lowered it into the pit one of the corners opened up, it was a terrible image,” she adds.
“The coffins for adults, Model 900, are being lined with whatever fabric they can get, white, blue, whatever there is,” confirms to this newspaper a funeral employee of Ciego de Ávila, the province that has recently become one of the epicenters of the covid in Cuba and with the cemeteries packed daily with new burials.
This is also the case in neighboring Sancti Spíritus. “We have problems with the brads to place the lining, so the boxes are coming out with less,” acknowledges an employee of the company Producciones Varias. “The blackouts affect us a lot, you can’t use the saw to cut the slats and you have to do it with a machete,” he adds.
“If the family member brings me the fabric, I will line the box to their liking, but almost no one has time to bring anything because, between the death of the relative and the rush to bury him, there is no time for anything,” explains this worker with more than two decades of experience in the sector. “They are taken straight from the hospital to the cemetery in most cases.”
Numerous videos and photographs of very poor quality coffins arriving at cemeteries have begun to circulate in recent weeks on social media. The reports of mass graves, the bad smell around the cemeteries and the extensions of the mausoleums, have focused attention on the funeral services.
“Traditionally, here, white coffins are used only to deposit the remains of small children and people with Down syndrome,” an employee of the funeral home on Calle 37, between 60th and 62nd, in Cienfuegos explains to 14ymedio. However, the Communal Services worker does not rule out that they will soon have to resort to other tones given the rise in deaths.
But he has not only had to improvise with the colors. “I had a wreath made for my grandfather who died of a heart attack and he only had six flowers and everything else was leaves, they didn’t have a ribbon available so we had to cut some curtains to make him some pretty bows,” a young woman lamented this Sunday, at the Marcos Abreu funeral home, on Zanja Street at the corner of Belascoaín in Havana.
In the large room, that day the coffins were mixed, with some in dark cloth and another in white cloth, and all the bodies that were veiled had died of other causes, according to an employee. “In the case of burial they go in their box, but they are already going to the crematorium in bags because the demand for coffins is very high and there are no materials,” the employee admits under anonymity.
At another important funeral home in the Cuban capital, La Nacional, workers confirm that the situation is tense and the coffins they have are of very poor quality, with some lined in dark and others in white. “Those who died from covid here in Havana go in bags directly to the crematorium, they do not go in a coffin.”
“The coffin is what you see, like the flower wreaths, but there are many other problems that nobody fixes until you have to run with the procedures of a funeral,” says Mónica Estrada, sister of a deceased by a stroke in Morón. “The funeral home didn’t have any coffee to sell to the mourners.”
“There are not enough hearses a self-employed worker who lives behind the cemetery and is dedicated to making markers and placing the inscription chosen by the family, told me that he has a waiting list until September because his orders have skyrocketed and he has no material. “So we had to bury my sister without a marker or anything in place.”
“When you arrive at the cemetery it is another problem, because there are many families crying because of how quickly everything has gone and others who are going to remove the remains of a long-dead relative from their family vaults, to make room for the one who has just died,” he says. Estrada. “You have to remove one dead person to put in another because there is no space.”
Last February it was announced that the Cuban authorities were in talks with Industrias VEQ, one of the companies that manufactures the EcoAtaúd [EcoCoffin], which is produced in Mexico at a much lower price than the traditional one out of wood. The coffin is made of polyaluminum, a material that comes from the containers with a mixture of two raw materials, 70% plastic and 30% a thin layer of aluminum.
This media spoke with the company in the Mexican capital but the employee could not confirm if that contract was signed and if those coffins have arrived on the island.
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
The Ciego de Ávila hotel temporarily becomes a pediatric hospital for mildly ill patients with covid-19. (TripAdvisor)
14ymedio, Havana, 5 August 2021 — The authorities continue to mobilize resources towards Ciego de Ávila, which already has an incidence rate of 2,700 cases of Covid-19 per 100,000 inhabitants, which is classified as extreme risk by the World Health Organization. This Wednesday, the authorities reported the conversion of the Ciego de Ávila Hotel, a modest three-star establishment in the center of the city, into a pediatric hospital to accommodate cases of mild infections.
With the centralization of children in the hotel, the Camilo Cienfuegos military school, where children were previously isolated, will take in sick adults, and the Las Cañas motel makes 53 beds available to pregnant women under 25 weeks.
The Minister of Health, José Ángel Portal Miranda, added that an attempt is being made to transfer most of the sick to “assistance centers” because, although home isolation is within the protocol, the situation requires putting an end to contagion between cohabiting people. In addition, the measure aims to bring the sick closer to hospitals, since a delay in care can be lethal. The ambulance shortage has been emerging for weeks as a serious problem for coronavirus patients.
According to the official press, ambulances have been sent to Ciego de Ávila from other provinces of the island and the authorities have authorized 100 pedicabs to provide different services in the different health areas continue reading
of the municipality and the Antonio Luaces Iraola provincial hospital.
The center has also been forced to reorganize itself to obtain 185 new beds that will be installed in areas such as the reception area, the ophthalmological center and the blocks of internal medicine and pediatrics.
The aid that has arrived from China joings that mobilized from within Cuba, which has been forced to relocate a multitude of resources in this province. Ciego de Ávila is going to receive, according to the authorities, 400 beds with their mattresses and a reinforcement of healthcare workers to cover isolation centers, an increase in consultations for respiratory infections, and a reopening of primary care areas that have had to be closed.
About twenty Cuban doctors who were providing services in Venezuela arrived at Jardines del Rey International Airport on Tuesday to provide services in the province and another 200 arrived on Wednesday.
Jorge Luis Tapia Fonseca, Deputy Prime Minister, announced that the 134 beds set up at the University of Medical Sciences can be doubled to “guarantee the necessary conditions and eradicate organizational difficulties.”
Ciro Ugarte, director of Health Emergencies of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), warned this Wednesday of the current severity of the pandemic on the Island. “This is due to the Delta variant, which has been reported by the authorities in several places in the country, “he warned. The official stressed that the economic situation, the lines Cubans must wait in to shop for necessities and the “exhaustion of the population regarding the measures that have been adopted to protect them,” affect the worsening.
Of the 98 deaths reported this Wednesday, the highest number since the pandemic began, 23 occurred in Ciego de Ávila, well ahead of Havana (with 11), which has four times the population.
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
An official clarified that, on average in the province, about 12 funeral services are held daily, a figure that has skyrocketed in recent days. (Iliana Hernández / Twitter)
14ymedio, Havana, 9 August 2021 — Corpses transported in trucks, funeral services overwhelmed, and collapsed hospitals, are the complaints that, from various parts of the country, reach the 14ymedio newsroom. Complaints also flood social networks, one of the few avenues where Cubans pour out their pain for the loss of loved ones who die without medical attention or optimal assistance.
This is what happened in Guantánamo, where the complaints have reached the local telecenter in that province. Ihosvany Fernández, director of Community Services, had to respond to the complaint of an Internet user who published on his Facebook account the photo of a truck destined to transport goods when it was used to transport five bodies.
Fernández, before giving other details, acknowledged that the image was real and explained the situation of the fleet of funeral vehicles: “We have 29 and 17 are operational, which is 58%.” The director of Communals also clarified that on average, in the province, about 12 funeral services are held daily, at least eight in the city of Guantánamo and four in the rest of the province; a figure that has skyrocketed in recent days.
“On August 4 we worked with 67 [deceased], on the 3rd with 61 and on the first day of August with 80,” of the latter 69 were in the city. “The funeral transport has already collapsed. We are working continue reading
with two Etecsa [State phone company] vans and two commercial trucks,” he added.
“We act on the protocol according to the death certificate issued by public health. These corpses are treated in a logical way, to explain it to the population where the corpse is disinfected with chlorine, the corpse is sprayed in the bag where it is introduced,” explained Fernández.
“It is very difficult, from eight deaths a day to 69, no one was prepared, that is why the issues with the transport decisions that we have had to make,” admitted the official when clarifying that “the morgue is not prepared for that,” it only has capacity “to have five or six deceased there” and not “to receive 50 or 60 a day,” he said. He also announced that they are working on installing another cremation furnace in the province because the only one that exists does not provide enough capacity and has suffered breakages due to the increase in deaths.
The crisis has reached a point in health centers, where some doctors and nurses have not shown up for work. Dr. Pablo Feal Cañizares, who heads the national commission to support Guantánamo, when talking in the official press about the intervention process with the Abdala vaccine, said: “Today we have more than 300 nurses and more than 100 doctors, where it is not clear they are actively engaged.”
In other provinces of the country, not only funeral services have collapsed. The health system has also been overwhelmed and the responses from doctors and officials are even more frustrating. This is the case in Santa Clara, from where a relative sent a video to the 14ymedio newsroom to expose the vicissitudes suffered by a 69-year-old woman whohad a stroke at home on Monday.
When the ambulance arrived at Jacinta Rivera Rodríguez, the nurse made arrangements to transfer the patient to a hospital. “There is no bed and, given the conditions, he had to die at home, was the answer given to the ambulance by the doctor at the coordination center,” the relative complains.
After much insistence, Jacinta was transferred to the Arnaldo Milan Castro hospital in Santa Clara, where she was placed in a space for respiratory cases, a space that includes part of a corridor of the health center. “They have her ventilated in an open room where there are Covid patients.”
The video shows how the area with beds and stretchers with sick patients stretches from the entrance to the hospitals. “She needs to be in an intensive care room now but they say they have no capacity,” the relatives denounced and after complaining to the deputy director of medical assistance at the hospital, they informed her that “she has to stay here until she dies.”
From the Holguín Pediatric Hospital, a source confirmed that health personnel do not have a rapid test to test patients. “They do a plaque, if they have serious lungs, you have Covid and you stay hospitalized. If you do not have serious lungs they send the child home.”
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
Los Quimbos is made up of 100 marginal homes in which more than 500 Cubans live, without water or sewage, and many without electricity. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Elias Amor Bravo, Economist, August 7, 2021 — Once again the Castro regime is tripping over itself to pass a series of laws aimed at, according to the official press, “strengthening the Cuban socio-economic model.” These actions, adopted with urgency but little forethought, have received the approval of the Council of State.
Government, Council of State, Communist Party: the triad of those responsible for the failure of the economy. They have not covered their tracks so there is no way that history will absolve them. Nothing more and nothing less than eight separate laws, issued as decrees, which presumably will be published in the Official Gazette in the coming days. They deal with the so-called “socio-economic strategy of the country.”
Regulations about which very little is known. Given the way parliamentary and the governmental regulatory processes work in Cuba, we will not find out what is in them until they take effect, without their ever having been subject to public scrutiny.
Among the regulations that got the green light from the Council of State — the regime’s supreme decision-making body and therefore the party responsible for whatever ends up happening — is a law on micro, small and medium-sized companies. It allows for the creation of continue reading
these types of businesses in a way “coherent with the legal framework,” recognizing their role as an “actor which has an impact on the productive transformation of the country.”
This law seems to mark a return to a situation that existed until 1968, when Fidel Castro’s fateful “Revolutionary Offensive” abolished all legal private enterprise throughout the country. Now, fifty-three years later, this appears to be an attempt to roll back that decision. We’ll see if the regulations governing these businesses encourage them or not. One has to be vigilant.
The council gave its approval to a law on non-agricultural cooperatives, which will regulate their formation, operation and dissolution. Expanding the cooperative sector throughout all areas of an economy seems reasonable, even in a free-market economy, where cooperatives work well. They should work even better in Cuba, especially in sectors where they are currently not allowed, like banking, education and even health care. This is another piece of legislation to which we will have to pay attention since we do not yet know enough about its contents.
The council adopted on a law on self-employment that updates some general provisions and regulates other particulars. Undoubtedly this is another important piece of legislation since it is not yet known in which direction the regime intends to go in controlling the growth of one of the few areas in the communist economy in which private enterprise is possible. It would be a mistake if its operation were restricted given that inappropriate limits have already been set for newly formed medium-sized businesses. In any case, self-employed workers should have the same legal protections and abilities as any company to operate with autonomy and independence, free of excessive government control.
Also approved is a law on private sector employment and a special social security provision for self-employed workers. It will cover partners in non-agricultural cooperatives and in micro, small and medium-sized businesses. The goal of this law is to offer these workers the protection of social security benefits. Its guidelines establish a means of control and suppression of private sector conomic activity, which to a large extent is dictated by the very nature of the country’s economic and social model.
On the other hand, it establishes a method for financing social security, which is beginning to have problems paying for pensions due the aging of the population and low tax collection rates.
Likewise, an amendment to Decree-Law 113, adopted in July 2012, was approved. It modifies the tax code and is aimed at increasing tax revenues, affected by the country’s serious economic crisis. Although its contents are unknown, it will try to relieve the financial pressure caused by a recession that has been dragging down the Cuban economy since the second half of 2019.
Another law — one dealing with the conservation, improvement and sustainable management of soils and the use of fertilizers — was incorporated into the set of guidelines that received the Council of State’s approval.
Agricultural supplies are in short supply because they cannot be bought abroad due to the lack of foreign exchange earnings. And in sixty-three years no communist leader has bothered to produce them. It remains to be seen how this legislation will deal the situation, which is limiting agricultural production.
Also mentioned in the Granma article is the law on real estate records. It establishes public registries of property ownership, applying information and communication technologies, as provided in the Decree-Law 335 of the public records system.
Having failed to address the dark issue of expropriations that took place between 1959 and 1968, it is patently absurd that the regime devotes so much attention to pubic real estate records when, in many cases, these registries attributed property titles to owners other than the actual ones. This is another assault on legality that will have to be corrected by a government at the service of all its citizens,
The provisions approved by the Council of State, with their complementary regulations, were announced in Granma and will be published in the Official Gazette of the Republic but, as always, with barely any public or parliamentary debate and without input from the Cuban people.
These provisions are being approved solely on the basis of communist political imperative even though their feasibility depends on acceptance by the population. The experiments in this case are being driven by the current economic and social situation, which is pressuring officials to act, though they are not going in the right direction.
Cuba’s communists have already shown this year that they intend to govern without listening to the people. Currency unification was a politically a high priority but caused the worst economic crisis in the country since the Special Period.
The July 11 demonstrations were a clear sign that the people cannot take it anymore. It is not a question of the Council of State approving more and more regulations in hopes that the social situation will calm down. It is about committing to measures that really transform the legal and economic framework so that the nation can prosper in freedom.
This, on the other hand, is just entertaining an impossible idea. We are far beyond that point. To “strengthen the process of updating the Cuban economic model” is to turn our backs on reality, to go down a path different from the one Cubans want while trying to save what little remains of an experiment that has been a historical failure. Meanwhile, we will continue to wait for the guidelines to be published in the gazette to find out what they say and question them if appropriate.
The Council of State has lost an historic opportunity to provide the changes the country needs for the good of all Cubans. It is actively complicit in incompetent and unsuccessful actions by a government that places legislation on the table for its approval based on ideological communist obligations.
The Council of State could have returned these decrees to the government, or to the National Assembly, without approving them, as is its legal right, thereby taking a clear stand on the uselessness of these measures when it comes to restoring nation’s economy.
They are complicit in the disaster and are as responsible as the Communist Party, to which they are beholden, for the national disaster. Every day that goes by makes it more likely history will judge them harshly.
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14ymedio, Havana, 11 August 2021 — Reserve Colonel Santiago Lorenzo Hernández Cáceres died this Wednesday in Havana at the age of 82. His death marks the seventh high-ranking military official that dies in Cuba in less than a month. The cause of death has not been released in in any of the cases.
