14ymedio – Page 289 – Translating Cuba

‘Lay Down Your Arms,’ Asks General Lopez-Calleja’s Nephew

Rodríguez Halley is an actor and an audiovisual creator. (Captura)

14ymedio, Havana, 14 July 2021 — Carlos Alejandro Rodríguez Halley, nephew of General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, sent a strong message to his uncle and to the island’s power leadership: “Lay down your arms.” The young man called for the beginning of a “process of transition to democracy” after the protests that took place throughout the island in recent days.

López-Calleja, Raúl Castro’s ex-son-in-law, although he has kept a low profile within the regime’s politics, is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, executive president of Grupo de Administración Empresarial, S. A. (Gaesa) and is considered by analysts as the man behind the economic power of the Castro family.

“At the moment I am not in Cuba, I left for fear of reprisals from my own family for projecting myself in my social networks in favor of human rights and continue reading

dialogue between intellectuals and artists with the government,” said Rodriguez Halley.

The young man said that his family is part of the power elite on the island and mentioned that his words were addressed to them, to the Cuban military, and with special emphasis he mentioned his uncle López-Calleja and his cousin Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, Raúl Castro’s grandson.

“I call for harmony and for them to lay down their arms. Let a process of transition to democracy begin in Cuba. The people have shown that they no longer want you in power, listen to your people,” he added.

Rodríguez Halley called for an end to violence, imprisonment and repression: “do not be responsible for more bloodshed.” The people demonstrated in the streets, he said, “that they do not agree with their government, a failed government that has led to a situation of health, economic, social and political crisis.”

Lopez-Calleja’s nephew also rejected the position of the island’s regime of blaming the U.S. Government for what is happening in the country. The U.S. Administration “has demonstrated that it is not going to intervene militarily in Cuba,” he said.

“Enough repression, lay down your arms. I make a call from the love I have for my family, for my country, for all Cubans and for humanity. Let us not forget that ’homeland is humanity’,” he concluded.

At the Eighth Party Congress held last April, López-Calleja was appointed a member of the Political Bureau. The military consortium Gaesa controls a large part of the tourism business and other strategic sectors on the island. Analysts had been predicting for years the military man’s rise to positions closer to the top of Cuban power.

Rodríguez Halley is an actor and audiovisual creator, and has worked in films such as Caballos, by Fabian Suárez and in 2019 he independently wrote and directed the short film Un chino cayó en un pozo, awarded a Diploma al Mérito by the jury of the Panama Human Rights Film Festival (BannabáFest).

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

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Cuban Telecommunications Monopoly Etecsa Censors SMS Texts Containing the Words ‘Psiphon’ and ‘VPN’

This Monday and Tuesday, most of the cell phones on the Island were without a web browsing service. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, July 15, 2021 – After the popular protests last Sunday, the Cuban Telecommunications Company S.A. (Etecsa) has not only censored instant messaging services such as Telegram and WhatsApp, but has also implemented a filter that prevents mobile phones from sending text-only messages that contain the letters VPN (Virtual Private Network) and the name of the Psiphon tool.

With this censorship, Etecsa could be trying to prevent the users of the state monopoly from passing on details about the use of VPNs (virtual private networks), essential to circumvent the blockade against the independent press media, the only ones reporting on the July 11 demonstrations, and also block the uploading of videos of these protests to social networks.

“I wanted to tell my cousin in Cárdenas that if he couldn’t open Facebook Messenger, he could use the Psiphon VPN, but he never responded to the text messages I wrote him,” Darío, a 22-year-old young man who used the anti-censorship tool only a few days ago, tells 14ymedio.

“When I called my cousin to check, he told me that he hadn’t received anything by SMS. That’s when I sent him another message, in which I separated the letters “V P N”, and then he received it,” he said. “The worst thing is that Etecsa charged continue reading

me for all the previous messages as if they had sent them and they had reached their destination. It’s a scam!”

The Etecsa customer is never warned that messages will be subjected to a content filter.

Another customer of the company reported that the word “Psiphon” is also blocked in SMS, and messages sent from Cuban nationals that include the name of this tool never reach the recipient’s inbox. “They don’t want people to find out how they can access certain services that have been blocked since Sunday.”

This newspaper conducted the same test with several combinations of messages in which the initials VPN were included together, separated by spaces, and by periods. The same procedure was repeated with the word “Psiphon” and all of these checks, carried out from a dozen mobile numbers in five provinces of the country, produced the same results: the SMS only arrived if a space or a period was inserted between each letter.

Psiphon is a widely used tool in Cuba, but for three days its use exploded due to the cutting of many internet services. The application includes different mechanisms to avoid censorship that are used by a variety of servers, proxy servers, and VPN technologies. Several press outlets recommend using it to read their content from countries with censorship.

For years, users of the only cell phone company in the country have suffered from online congestion and limited areas of coverage, but also from the strict blocking of key terms and phrases on mobile messaging, also known as SMS, its acronym in English.

Five years ago, this newspaper published a list of words that were censored at that time. Several users, annoyed that their messages were collected but not delivered, then verified that SMS containing references to “human rights,” “hunger strike,” and the names of various dissidents and independent journalists, never reached their destination.

The contract that each user signs with Cubacel (Etecsa’s cellular network) when activating a mobile phone line specifies that among the causes for terminating service is any use “that violates morality, public order, the Security of the State, or serves to support the carrying out of criminal activities.”

Customers are never warned that their messages will be subjected to a content filter or that part of their correspondence will be blocked if it refers to dissidents, concepts uncomfortable for the ruling party such as “human rights,” or blogs critical of the Government.

With more than six million cell phone users, telecommunications censorship in Cuba is not a new tool for the Plaza de la Revolución. This Monday and Tuesday most of the cell phones on the island were without a web browsing service. Activists frequently denounce the blocking of their mobile phones on December 10 (Human Rights Day) or when they try to meet.

Blocking uncomfortable digital sites has also been a frequent practice for the ruling party. On the list of the inaccessible you’ll find everything from foreign sources such as Cubaencuentro to local newspapers such as 14ymedio. Many users manage to circumvent censorship by sending news by email and making offline copies of the pages, which are passed from hand to hand thanks to technological devices such as USB memory sticks or external hard drives.

With the arrival of internet connection service to mobile phones in December 2018, instant messaging services such as Telegram, WhatsApp and Facebook’s Messenger have become very popular among citizens, activists, and informal merchants. More difficult to control than SMS, these platforms played an important role in last Sunday’s assemblies.

Translated by Tomás A.

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Cuban Officials Mobilize Public Sector Workers to Confront ‘Mercenaries’

“Acts of revolutionary reaffirmation” were reported at several locations in Havana.

14ymedio, Havana, July 14, 2021 — While key locations in Havana, such as the Capitol, continue to be heavily guarded by police, there are increasing reports of large scale mobilizations of “rapid response brigades” at workplaces throughout the city.

Simultaneously, young Cubans of military age are being recruited and reservists are being mobilized.

An employee at a state-owned textile plant was summarily fired after refusing to participate in a counterdemonstration.

“I was at the Sunday protest at Ayestarán and Aranguren and saw people in civilian clothes with rocks and baseball bats in their hands. Several protesters had been hit in the head and were bleeding,” Natasha Medina told 14ymedio.

“I went with my cousin, who was very frightened, so I couldn’t stay long,” said the young mother, who works as a translator. “I took a lot of photos but, as we were leaving, eight guys told us we had to delete the photos and videos. I refused but continue reading

they told us that, if I didn’t, they would arrest us and my cousin freaked out.”

Something similar happened when employees of a publishing house went to “a farm owned by the UJC (Union of Young Communists) looking for sticks” to hand out to company workers to “defend themselves from provocations by mercenaries.” A source at a publishing house told 14ymedio that several employees at the farm said they were not going to be giving sticks to anyone.

In the city of Cardenas elite troops from the Revolutionary Armed Forces barged into the house of Daniel Cardenas Diaz, beat him, shot him and took him into custody. The incident was recorded on video, which was widely distributed on social media. This incident, which occurred on the corner of Velazquez and Palma streets, followed a speech by President Miguel Diaz-Canel in which he called upon government loyalists to confront the protesters who were calling for freedom throughout the entire country last weekend.

“Why did they do this in my house? There’s nothing here. The broke everything. They took everything away,” laments Marbelis Vazquez, wife of the detainee. A puddle of blood remains in the middle of the living room floor, evidence of military aggression. “They shot him down… and loaded him in the back of a truck like a pig,” she adds.

“Acts of revolutionary affirmation” were also reported on Wednesday in Vedado’s Mariana Grajales Park, where loudspeakers were installed early in the day to play a selection of songs by pro-government songwriters. “They are already mobilizing factory workers from here in the neighborhood to attend the event. I also see groups of people have arrived from nearby workplaces,” says one resident.

“This is unheard of,” noted a young Sancti Spiritus resident outside a Havana hard currency store on Wednesday morning. “The place is closed and heavily guarded but there’s no explanation why, though everyone knows it’s because of fear it will be ransacked, as happened other parts of Cuba.”

“But even with all of this, and the alarming pandemic figures, jeeps with loudspeakers roam the streets, exhort people to come out and defend the Revolution,” he adds. “Isn’t all movement supposed to be restricted after 2:00 PM because of the virus?” For the young man from Spiritus, it is becoming increasingly difficult to “understand these people.”

The use of force does not seem to have affected the morale of protesters, as indicated by an act of repudiation directed at two women suspected of being chivatonas, or state security informants. The scene, in which loud voices were heard but no acts of physical violence against the alleged offenders were witnessed, seems to have occurred in a small town somewhere in the country’s interior, though no one has said exactly where.

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Against the Wall, The Cuban Government Authorizes Unlimited Imports of Food and Medicine

Travelers arriving to the country via Cayo Coco and Varadero are exempt from this new measure. (Canal Caribe)

14ymedio, Havana, July 14, 2021 – The Cuban Government announced this Wednesday that it authorizes “under special circumstances” imports of food, cleaning products, and medicine for passengers arriving to the island. The entry into the country of these goods will be “without limit of import value and free of tariffs,” said Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz.

The measure, which will be in effect until December 31, 2021, was announced by Marrero in the Roundtable program, where he also explained that these products “must be differentiated from the rest of the luggage.”

Marrero emphasized that currently the entry of medicines is exempt from payment of customs duties and that their non-commercial import of up to 10 kilograms is authorized.

The prime minister pointed out that tourists arriving in the country via Cayo Coco and Varadero are not eligible for these new measures, and that, according to a recent measure, they can only enter with one suitcase.

Marrero acknowledged the shortage of drugs in continue reading

hospitals and pharmacies. He said that the current crisis is due to the foreign exchange deficit and this has caused drug shortages. According to him, antihypertensives, antibiotics, analgesics, contraceptives, vitamins and products for stomatological use are the ones in short supply.

Last April, amid the precipitous economic deterioration and aggravated by the pandemic, several activists launched a petition via Change.org for the Government of Miguel Díaz-Canel to open a “humanitarian corridor” that would allow the introduction of medicines and basic necessities into Cuba.

The request intensified this weekend on social media with the hashtag #SOSCuba and trended on Twitter after dozens of international artists offered their support to the hundreds of Cubans who called for “a humanitarian corridor.”

Ernesto Soberón, general director of Consular Affairs and Cuban Residents Abroad, had assured this Sunday that this is a campaign “to represent Cuba in total chaos” and that it does not correspond to the real health situation or its indicators of COVID-19.

The new import measures come after protests, Sunday, July 11, which have left people dead, arrested and injured throughout the country.

Translated by: JGR Penton

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We Started Speaking the Same Language and Suddenly Dozens of People Were Joining In

“There was a police cordon on San Rafael where they tried to disperse us. Then there was an altercation with protesters who were marching ahead.” (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, July 12, 2021 — “It was very moving, something I had never experienced. I had seen it in videos from other countries but, here in Cuba, never in my lifetime,” confesses Yonder, one of the young Havana residents who, on Sunday afternoon, left their homes to call for freedom in Cuba.

“As I was walking towards 23rd and Malecón, I saw kids randomly hanging out, looking all around, and they began to join us. We started speaking the same language and suddenly dozens of people were joining in,” says Yonder, who is 32.

“Police officers were just standing there because they couldn’t do anything,” he adds. By the time he and his friends got to Galiano Street, there were already about five-hundred marching against the dictatorship, he claims. “A sea of people shouting ’homeland and life’, ’freedom’, ’we are not afraid.’”

A few hours after videos of protests in the town of San Antonio de los Baños went viral, thousands of Cubans in several cities across the island continue reading

raised their voices and peacefully took to the streets to join anti-government demonstrations.

“One of the most emotional things I experienced was when an incredibly enthusiastic older man in flip-flops joined us. He hadn’t finished putting on his shirt and face mask when people began applauding him,” says Yonder.

He describes bystanders appearing to be “surprised, astonished,” applauding them as they walked past. Others shouted “strength” or “freedom” from their windows or from the street.

“At certain points — never with us on the street — some people shouted slogans like ’Long live Fidel’, ’Long live the revolution’, ’Look at the worms.’ The marchers yelled back, ’Go hungry, we’re doing this for you too.’”

Police had blocked the main streets so Yonder and other protesters had to take alternate routes to get to the Capitol. When they got to San Rafael Boulevard, he noticed a man in a wheelchair was marching too. He notes that many older people joined them but, unable to keep up the rapid pace, shouted “enough already,” “freedom” and “right now” in support.

“There was a police cordon on San Rafael where they tried to disperse us. Then there was an altercation with the protesters who were marching ahead. We reorganized a little but I had to run. It was a stampede. I didn’t see anyone on the ground. We were all helping each other. We changed direction and headed towards the Chinatown gate.”

Along the way, the police arrested anyone they saw filming or shouting cheers. “I saw a lot beatings; they hit a lot of people. Many were taken away in trucks. When they had fifteen or twenty people in a truck, they took off. People with head injuries who were still bleeding. They were put on those trucks and taken directly to the police station, not to a hospital.”

The police also arrested a taxi driver who had stopped his vehicle in the middle of the street as a form of protest. “They dragged the driver away to jail, beating him. Then one of the soldiers got in the taxi and drove off.”

As this was happening, a large crowd near the Marti Theater in Central Havana was trying to move towards the Capitol while another large group was approaching Central Park.

Shortly before leaving for home, Yonder saw stones flying overhead, directed at the police. “I tried to get out, out of safety concerns. but I was worn out. I hadn’t eaten anything since the day before and I was dying of thirst.” Between Ayestaran and Aranguren streets he saw a sign that stuck in his mind: “Diaz-Canel, resign.”

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The Bishops Say the Cuban People Have the Right to Express Their Hopes and Needs

“Crises are not overcome by confrontation but by seeking understanding,” says the COCC. (14ymedio)

14ymedio Havana, July 13, 2021 — “In light of events our people have experienced, we cannot close our eyes or look away as though nothing was happening,” declared the Cuban Catholic Bishops Conference (COCC) on Monday. The statement followed protests that that took place across the island in which thousands expressed their frustration at the nation’s deteriorating economic and social situation.

The Catholic church expressed concern that “these appeals will be met with inaction, which is helping to perpetuate the problems rather than resolving them.”

“Not only do we see that the situation getting worse but that we are moving towards a rigidity and hardening of positions that could produce negative responses with unpredictable consequences that would harm us all,” the COCC said.

In their statement the bishops assert the government “has responsibilities and has tried to adopt measures to alleviate these difficulties.” They insist, however, that “people have the right to express their needs, desires and hopes and, in turn, to publicly express how some measures that have been taken are seriously affecting them.

The bishops insist that “a favorable solution will not be reached by decree or by calls for confrontation.” They emphasize the importance of open dialogue, common agreements and “concrete and tangible steps which allow all Cubans, without exclusion, to contribute to building the nation.”

“Crises are not resolved by confrontation but by seeking understanding,” says the COCC, which warns that “today’s aggressiveness opens wounds and feeds resentments for tomorrow that will require great effort to overcome.”

The bishops urge Cuba’s leaders “not to encourage the crisis situation but, with serenity of spirit and good will, to listen, understand and adopt an attitude of tolerance in order to seek a common path towards a just and appropriate solution.”

“We ask the Virgin of Charity, Queen and Mother of all Cubans and constant source of reconciliation, to make of the Cuban nation a home for brothers and sisters in which truth and the common good shall prevail,” the statement concludes.

Among the hundreds of those arrested since Sunday was a Catholic priest, Fr. José Castor Alvarez, who was beaten by government forces in Camagüey after joining demonstrators at a protest.

“I tried to prevent confrontation. I was trying to protect someone when I was hit with a bat.” he says in a video shared on social media. “We are well, thank God, and hope that we can all live in peace, that there is no violence, and that we have peace and justice.”

Cuban priest Fr. Castor Valdés after being hit in the head with a bat and arrested during the protest #11JCuba. #SOSCuba De: Janisset Rivero-Facebook pic.twitter.com/WPwPIfVZ0z

— Rolando Nápoles (@RNapoles) July 13, 2021

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Cuba Changed on July 11th

Thousands of Cubans went out into the street to protest and numerous citizens shouted “We have no fear.” (Facebook).

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 14 July 2021 — Despite government efforts to make people believe that the popular protests on Sunday, July 11, were organized from the United States and that they were only isolated incidents carried out by antisocial elements, most Cubans have a new perception about the prevailing level of disagreement with the government.

The images showing protesters in numerous cities shouting “we have no fear,” “we want a change” or the simple repetition of the word “freedom” made it clear to each individual that what they pondered and did not dare to say was not an extravagant personal thought but rather a shared feeling.

With the intention of discrediting the testimonies of what actually happened, the official media strive to give examples of the false news that some spread on the networks, but that only raises the suspicion that much of this fake news or hoaxes may have been manufactured precisely with the intention of affecting the credibility of what is disseminated on the networks.

It is enough to recall the time when State Security agent Carlos Serpa Maceira infiltrated the opposition behind the facade of continue reading

an independent journalist who, at the time of his unmasking, appeared before the television cameras, calling Radio Martí by telephone to offer false information and thus “prove” that the independent journalists were lying.

It’s not just about what people have seen and shared on their Facebook accounts. What has more weight is the personal experience of having participated in a spontaneous demonstration, or at least having seen it from behind your window curtains. There are many who have a child, a relative, a friend, at least one acquaintance who shouted or who heard others shout.

This massive exit from the closets of fear will have consequences. The Cuban Foreign Minister may be able to say that on July 11 there was no social uprising, but what he cannot deny is that on that day an explosion in consciences was triggered: the awakening that occurs when it is discovered that it is possible to say aloud in the public square what until now could only be whispered into the ears of the most trusted friends.

Cuba changed and they know it.
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‘There is No Popular Uprising, Only an Aggression by the United States, Says Cuba’s Foreign Minister

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez during the press conference with foreign correspondents, this Tuesday in Havana. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 14 July 2021 — For the island’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, “there was no social outbreak in Cuba” on July 11, but rather an “information war” with the participation of large US companies such as Twitter.

During a nearly two hour appearance before 25 foreign correspondents on Tuesday, the minister accused the US of “taking advantage of the pandemic situation” to attack the revolutionary government. “

The Foreign Minister said he had seen scenes of repression “worse in Europe” than those that have occurred on the island since Sunday, when thousands of people rose up against the regime in numerous cities in the country. For the chancellor, the demonstrations of unarmed citizens are nothing more than “riots,” “disorders” and “vandalism,” the blame for which he placed directly on the northern neighbor.

Rodríguez defended the actions of the regime offering the official arguments: the “increased aggression” of the United States, through the “blockade” and the financing with “hundreds of millions of dollars” to “subversive agents” to “interfere in continue reading

the internal affairs” of the island.

The US saw in the virus, said Rodríguez, “an opportunity” to reinforce “the blockade” with political motives and apply what it called “maximum pressure measures to reinforce the aggression against our country.”

Regarding a possible flotilla with humanitarian aid launched to Cuba from Florida, the minister dropped a veiled threat. “I hope (the United States) does not repeat experiences that had tragic consequences in the past,” while not directly mentioning the shooting down of two American Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996, which left four dead and caused then-President Bill Clinton to sign the Helms-Burton Act.

Far from mentioning these facts, Rodríguez asked the current president, Joe Biden, to suspend the implementation of Title III of that Law, put in place by the previous Administration in 2019, which allows US citizens to sue both Cuban and foreign companies that are benefiting from properties that were expropriated after the triumph of the Revolution in 1959.

At the same time, he continued to warn that “their irresponsible policy may have serious consequences that damage the national interest of both countries.”

“Calling for a humanitarian intervention in Cuba,” he asserted, referring to messages associated with the #SOSCuba hashtag, “is asking for a US military intervention,” which he illustrated with the NATO bombings in Yugoslavia and the 1983 “invasion” of Granada.

“I can say that I have seen really strong scenes of police violence and repression of protesters in European capitals before and during the pandemic, in really different conditions,” the foreign minister replied to the Efe correspondent, who asked him if the suppression of the Internet was will of the Cuban Government.

Three days after the protest the island continues almost incommunicado, something that affects accredited journalists themselves, as they revealed at the press conference.

On Monday, Josep Borrell, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, urged the Cuban authorities to “allow” peaceful protest demonstrations and to “listen” to the participants.

“It is not in Cuba where there has been a repression like the one that has occurred in some European countries,” the minister added, saying that “some police arrest action may have been seen.”

According to the Chancellor, “it is true that (on Sunday) there have been limited violations of order and law, in which the application of the law and the forces of order have been used with absolute moderation.”

Cuba’s diplomatic head also affirmed that during the demonstrations and riots that during in Washington last January, “around 400 journalists were badly treated.”

During the protests on Sunday, photojournalist Ramón Espinosa, from the Associated Press agency, was injured by blows from Cuban police that fractured his nose and caused other injuries.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has also denied that there was police repression in the protests, which contrasts with videos disseminated on the networks in which violent repression is observed on the part of police officers and plainclothes agents, and also with statements by witnesses and facts reported by independent and foreign media that covered the events.

For the first time, this Tuesday, the Government admitted one dead, a man who died on Monday during a confrontation between protesters and security forces in La Güinera — a marginal neighborhood of Havana — which also left several injuries between civilians and agents.

The authorities have not yet released the official number of detainees or investigated, which civic associations put at around 5,000.

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The Colors of the Cuban Flag Will Illuminate the Headquarters of the Regional Government of Madrid

The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. (EFE).

14ymedio, Madrid, 14 July 2021 — This Wednesday night, the Royal Post Office — headquarters of the Madrid regional government chaired by Isabel Díaz Ayuso of the Popular Party — will be illuminated with the colors of the Cuban flag in homage to “freedom fighters” on the Island.

The Community of Madrid president herself tweeted the announcement while issuing a statement in which her government “strongly condemns the criminal dictatorship that has turned Cuba into a giant prison and has condemned its inhabitants to poverty, hunger or exile for the last 62 years.”

Her autonomous government will always be, says the document, “on the side of the Cuban people, who in these times are demonstrating throughout the Island, demanding freedom and democracy.” Similarly, the text continues, “we reject the violent repression that the dictatorship is exercising over its own people, and we call for the immediate release of all those arrested as well as the safe return of the disappeared.”

The statement refers in particular to journalist Camila Acosta, a contributor to the Spanish newspaper ABC — who, according to close sources, remains under arrest, in Havana’s Infanta and Manglar Police Station, and will be prosecuted for continue reading

“contempt” and “public disturbances.”

Madrid — which calls itself “Kilometer Zero of Liberty” — asks the Cuban people for unity “in the face of the regime’s attempts to divide them,” since history “has shown the importance of remaining united at the moment in which totalitarian regimes begin to collapse.”

For this, says the statement, “an exercise of generosity” is needed: “The unity of the democratic opposition is an essential requirement for freedom to triumph.” This eventual triumph, the document predicts, “will undoubtedly have consequences in other countries of Latin America. The fall of communism will bring, sooner rather than later, the liberation of countries that, like Venezuela or Nicaragua, still live under its yoke.”

In its declaration, the regional government is tough on Spain’s national government, chaired by the socialist Pedro Sánchez, demanding that it “abandon ambiguity, dispense with euphemisms and act without equivocation on the side of freedom, democracy, and human rights.”

The declaration thus refers to statements by the head of the Spanish Executive on Tuesday, when he said that “it is evident that Cuba is not a democracy,” without calling it a dictatorship — as did his government’s spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez when she evaded the issue before journalists by declaring that “Spain is a full democracy.”

For opposition leader Pablo Casado, the ambiguity of the head of the Spanish government “is not accidental,” but rather responds to the fact that Pedro Sánchez is president thanks to Unidas Podemos [United We Can], the “partners of Maduro and the Castros.”

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

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The Unforgivable Crime of Confronting Cubans on Two Sides

This Tuesday, in Havana, the National Revolutionary Police was preventing passage in the areas surrounding the Capitol, as a measure against the anti-government protests of recent days. (EFE / Yander Zamora)

The streets of Centro Habana are overrun with policemen and paramilitaries disguised as civilians. I can easily identify them: the experience of years living under the harassment of surveillance leaves in the harassed the sad ability to discover the hyenas, no matter how hard they try to blend into the urban landscape.

Political police officers swarm on their Suzuki motorcycles which, far from concealing their presence, make them known instead. They want to be seen, they show haughty faces, an arrogant attitude and a great desire to be feared. I am not afraid of them. They are the ones who should feel afraid.

Under the summer heat, common people circulate through portals, line up at stores and fill the buses like any other day. But below the surface, nothing is normal anymore. You do not feel the usual vibe, the ease, the eternal street chatter among Cubans, whether they know each other or not. There is a feeling of anxiety in this silence, or better, in this strange non-dialogue, so alien to us. I am struck by so much silence in people who are usually outgoing, loquacious and chatty.

It is a deceptive silence because continue reading

, in poor neighborhoods like this one, with decades of accumulated shortages and frustrations, is just where popular revolts are forged

It is a deceptive silence because, in poor neighborhoods like this one, with decades of accumulated shortages and frustrations, is just where popular revolts are forged, which broke out on Sunday, July 11th and continue to take place, despite all the disproportionate repressive deployment, riot troops included.

Patrols circulate along Avenida Carlos III with their sirens at full throttle, followed by caravans of repudiators that the Government sends to beat and repress the rebels. They carry sticks tied to their wrists to lash out at the unarmed protesters.

It’s a sad spectacle, to see these Cubans, also poor and deprived of rights, so willing to crush their brothers with hatred and violence just to defend the privileges of the members of the power class, the ones that oppress and humiliate everyone equally. Nothing will save them tomorrow from such shame.

Since Sunday I feel that we are inhabiting a different city, a different country. The scab of fear has cracked and fear has been transferred to power, its henchmen and scribes.

Now the puppet on duty, the jockey of continuity, has committed the unforgivable crime of inciting violence, confronting the Cubans on two sides and, what is worse, has stained his hands with blood.

It is a pity that, with all this, the so-called president has ruined the opportunity to dialogue with the people, who have so generously offered him many civil society voices to seek a way out of the crisis and have him lead the essential process of change. One could not imagine greater ineptness.

Translated by Norma Whiting

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The Change to Democracy in Cuba Has Started

14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 12 July 2021 — Cuba’s communists have no remedy. They destroy the economy and peaceful coexistence in the country, and instead of seeking a solution to the devastation they have created, they meet in their exclusive Sanhedrin, the Political Bureau of the party’s central committee, to analyze what they call “provocations orchestrated by counterrevolutionary elements, organized and financed from the United States with destabilizing purposes.”

On the other hand, and it could not be otherwise, they give the highest appraisal to the “call from comrade Díaz Canel” which, in case someone does not remember it, was a plea to promote the civil confrontation. In this are the Cuban communists in their conclave, which according to official media included the participation of Raúl Castro. Ah! But did anyone think that the last of the Castros had left power?

The sudden call, the messages of support for Díaz Canel and the strange presence of Raúl Castro (strange because some information placed him in Venezuela), confirm what is already known. Cuban communism is in its lowest hours. It does not know what to do against popular movements very critical of the model. People don’t just want aid, medicine and food. People scream for freedom and an end to communism.

This time, the protests, broadcast in real time thanks to telephones and social networks, have not been anticipated by the organs of civil espionage and State Security Intelligence, and thus the communist conclave in which, at a minimum, some pegs are going to be tightened. That’s fine. To the extent that there are people who will receive punishment for continue reading

not having been able to foresee what is happening, and even, for not repressing and punishing the mobilized people with the maximum force, the greater the number of people who will break with the official line and leave their communist militant membership card, and later, you already know. From one day to the next, Ceausescu in Romania, ended up executed by the participants of the same demonstration that he had called in his support.

The lessons that the communists should learn from Díaz Canel from what is happening in Cuba are several and some of them have been anticipated in this blog.

First, that the Cuban people are fed up with communism as an official and political doctrine. That the model of the 2019 constitution does not serve to make the country work, and that the experiments rarely go well, such as the Ordering Task (la Tarea Ordenamiento), and the stores that take payment only in freely convertible currency (MLC).

Second, for the same reason, the people want freedoms and a legal framework for coexistence of a democratic and plural nature. The people do not want a single party and neither do they want the dictatorship of the proletariat. People do not agree with Díaz Canel on many things, but perhaps the most important is that everyone believes that Cuba is a dictatorship, no matter how many rights the leaders list.

Third, that Díaz Canel has failed in just two years and so has his political project. And that before it gets worse, his fate would be to remove him from the presidency. The problem is who to propose, and above all, to do what? Because this is the important thing, regardless of the individuals. To know where Cuba is going.

Fourth, the propaganda of the regime is over. Despite the pressure exerted by this, at all levels, the popular demonstrations show that an discourse that is an alternative to the official Roundtable TV program and the state newspaper Granma has taken hold in the population, showing that the institutional communication policy has also failed.

Fifth, and as a second derivative of the previous one, one cannot be blaming the United States for everything bad, the blockade, the embargo, etc., etc. It is still curious that fewer than 15 days ago the regime obtained a political “victory” in the United Nations by obtaining a large majority against the United States for the embargo, and while that was happening and the official media did nothing but talk about this issue, in Cuba the machinery for social explosion was heating up.

Sixth, the economy is important. The social unrest caused by the popular uprising has much to do with the deterioration of the economy as a result of the Ordering Task that began to be applied on January 1. Last year, with the pandemic at its highest levels, people weathered the crisis and there were no protests. But this year, with the uncontrolled peso exchange rate, triple-digit inflation, nominal wages losing purchasing power, subsidies plummeting, and people distressed by the lack of food, all of them effects of Ordering Task, the situation has changed and the responsibility lies with the government and its stubbornness for implementing an unnecessary policy, poorly designed, poorly executed and lacking in rigor and credibility.

Seventh, to believe that this social outbreak can be controlled and eliminated through the repression of the state security apparatus. Big mistake. The protesters have clearly shouted “we are not afraid” and this message is essential to understanding what is taking place in Cuba, which is a breakdown of the framework of coexistence imposed by the communist regime. More repression will make it very difficult to get out of the hole, what they must do is open spaces or disappear. There is no alternative.

Eighth, international attention to Cuba is at a maximum. Unlike previous crises that could go more or less unnoticed, there is also a general understanding, support and adherence to the people who spontaneously participate in the demonstrations that spread throughout the country. The main world leaders have warned Cuba of the consequences of applying harsh repression against protesters. It will be necessary to see what happens to the disappeared and detained, who number in the hundreds.

Ninth, there is the impression that the institutionality of the regime does not serve to solve the underlying problems that hit the country, and that there is no replacement for it. Raúl Castro’s participation in the communist conclave confirms that there is no future, but that one lives in the past, a remote past that was thought to be surpassed, and that returns to the fore from the worst places in memory.

Tenth, Díaz Canel is wrong to believe that those who support him, the “revolutionaries,” are the owners of the street. He is wrong, because there are really many fewer of them. And if democratic elections were held at this time, the offer led by Díaz Canel could be extra-parliamentary. The communists, who feel supported by their leaders, will change their shirts tomorrow and are at the forefront of political change. It has happened in all dictatorships that have evolved to democracy. And it can happen in Cuba. Ending up alone is very sad.

The seed is in the ground and will bear fruit. As much as they want to achieve the opposite, the people have spoken and done so with first-rate clarity. The leaders, if they were responsible, would go to work. They are not, and for that reason, the worst awaits them, a long agony that can bring about the collapse. Recognizing that Cuba has begun a march towards freedom, political pluralism, democracy and respect for human rights, without the communists, is something more than evident. Trying to stop that process, crazy.

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Cuban Government Admits One Death in Protests That Began on Sunday

So far there is no official number of arrests for the protests. (14ymedio)

14ymedio/EFE, Havana, 13 July 2021 — After several complaints from civil society and Cubans on social networks, the Government of the Island acknowledged the first death in the protests of recent days. The deceased is a 36-year-old citizen who participated in a demonstration that took place this Monday at the La Güinera Popular Council, in the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo, in the Cuban capital.

The victim, identified as Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, was killed during a clash between protesters and security forces, the Interior Ministry said in a note. In addition to the deceased, “several citizens were arrested” and others “suffered injuries,” including “law enforcement officials.”

Monday’s protest in La Güinera, one of the most depressed areas of Havana, was broadcast in several videos through social networks, despite the fact continue reading

that the Government has kept the internet connection cut off since Sunday.

The images only show dozens of people advancing through the streets shouting slogans such as “Libertad” [Freedom] and “un pueblo unido jamás será vencido” [a people united will never be defeated].

According to the version of the Ministry of the Interior, the protesters “altered order and tried to head towards the National Revolutionary Police Station in that territory, with the aim of attacking its troops and damaging the facility.”

Other videos shared on social networks detail several dead, injured, detained and missing. It is not known precisely how many or where, because the internet and telephone lines are cut off in Cuba, but little by little, via encrypted channels, messaging and social networks, the toll of the repression against the popular uprising is becoming known.

So far there is no official number of arrests, but activists on the island have released a list that includes, at the moment, about 120 people. Among them are prominent activists, artists and journalists, such as Jose Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), Manuel Cuesta Morua, Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, Amaury Pacheco, Camila Acosta, and Henry Constantin.

Civil society has also warned that apart from these 120 people, some 5,000 have been imprisoned or are being investigated after the days of protest against the Cuban dictatorship.

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Dead, Wounded, and Disappeared, the Imprecise Toll of the Repression after the Protests in Cuba

A badly injured man in an unidentified place on the Island, in one of the videos posted on the internet.

14ymedio, Havana, 12 July 2021 — There are deaths, injuries, arrests, and disappearances. It is unknown precisely how many or where because the internet and telephone lines are cut in Cuba, but little by little, by encrypted channels, messaging, and social networks, the toll of the repression of the popular, massive, and unprecedented uprising, which started Sunday across the country, is becoming known.

“They killed him, they killed him,” screams the crowd that surrounds a badly wounded man in a video shared by user Cubalibre on platforms this Tuesday. The crowd also rebukes the police who attacked him, on an unidentified street.

A woman from Batabano, in Mayabeque, reported in a video the death of her nephew, amid shouts and expletives against Miguel Diaz-Canel and “his disgusting Communists.” “They pulled his teeth, set the dogs on him, seven or eight Black Berets beat him,” she said, desperately, and warned: “While the children of the henchmen that you defend are safe in other countries, yours are in Cuba, and they’re going to pay.”

“Facebook groups are reporting several deaths in Batabano tonight, a result of police repression,” reported Jose Raul Gallego, Cuban journalist residing in Mexico. “Among the names they mention are Aldo and Subyane El Sapo,” he says. “According to the commentary, they were beaten to death for continue reading

filming the repression.”

Another man called Remy and living in the United States told how they assassinated his brother on the Island in a place he did not mention. “They fell on him with clubs, took out his eyes, his teeth,” he said. “Men kill each other head on, they don’t do what they did to him. I wish they had shot him in the chest or the head and killed him straight out instead of torturing him like that,” the Cuban lamented.

A recording published on Facebook showed the arrival of a gunshot victim at the Cardenas hospital in Matanzas, which lately has been featured in dramatic news reports for being the epicenter of COVID in Cuba.

“Just as there has never been a protest like this since the time of Hatuey, likewise the repression is brutal,” denounced a Havana priest who wished to remain anonymous. Because of this, he said, “The Government has cut off the internet, precisely so that the truth will not be known.” In the wee hours from Sunday to Monday, as he himself attested, “There were kidnapping, it was terrible, the Police set the dogs on people.”

Through an audio sent by VPN, apologizing for not being able to send video, the priest assured that he is aware that Monday there were “tremendous protests in Camaguey,” from which news of 2,000 injured reached him.

In the capital, he also said, “It’s impossible to do anything;” “it’s militarized” and “under seige,” something that 14ymedio was able to see in a tour around the Capitol. “There is a real army,” said one passerby on seeing the number of police officers, soldiers, and Black Berets, the elite military troops that the Government uses in special circumstances, guarding the place.

Apart from Camaguey, some accounts disseminated on social networks say that on Monday, contrary to what was reported by the official press, which spoke of a “failed skirmish,” protests continued in several places like Guines, Parraga y Arroyo Naranjo, in Havana, or Jovellanos, Matanzas province.

In Guinera, a marginal neighborhood in the capital, it was striking that a housewife was looking after the protesters. “Look out, look out for the rear!” she warned them.

The peace in which Cuba woke up on Monday, the day after the massive protests against the Government in cities all over the Island, demanding food and medicine and shouting “freedom,” was only a facade. From early on there arrived to this newspaper the accounts of arrestees who had been taken from their homes in Artemisa.

The agency Efe disseminated images of dozens of women gathered at the police station of Zanja in Havana, to find out the whereabouts of their relatives arrested between Sunday and Monday. The place was calm, however, in the afternoon, as this newspaper confirmed.

There is no official arrest figure, but activists on the Island have shared a list that, for now, includes 115 people. Among them are prominent activists, artists, and journalists like Jose Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), Manuel Cuesta Morua, Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, Amaury Pacheco, Camila Acosta, and Henry Constantin.

Many other anonymous Cubans, who did not even participate in the protests, were arrested or beaten for defending protesters from the attacks by the Police and State Security Agents dressed in civilian clothes.

To report their cases, a Facebook group, “DESAPARECIDOS SOSCuba” [SOSCuba DISAPPEARANCES], has started and in a few hours has been filled with posts.

This refutes what President Miguel Diaz-Canel said in his televised appearance Monday morning. “Already they come out with in Cuba that we repress, assassinate,” the appointed president defended himself with visible anger. “Where are the Cuban murders? Where are the disappearances in Cuba?”

Tuesday Havana awoke with little movement on the streets, and the strong police presence is still evident. The Plaza of the Revolution, the heart of power, for example, is shielded by a military operation. The tense calm continues.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera; Mary Lou Keel

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More than 5,000 Detained in Cuba, Including 120 Activists and Journalists

The regime’s cutting off of internet services has prevented reports of arrests from coming to light promptly. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 12 July 2021 — The wave of arrests in Cuba for the protests that began this Sunday continues to come to light. Several complaints from civil society collected by 14ymedio and others, which are trickling in from social networks and instant messaging applications, confirm that there are more than 5,000 people imprisoned or being investigated, among them more than 120 activists and independent journalists.

Olga Xiomara García Rivas, a resident of the municipality of Alquízar, in the province of Artemisa, reported to this newspaper that her husband, the activist Nomar Castellanos Romero, was arrested this Monday at their home. “At seven in the morning they took him away. Two patrols came with about ten policemen and they took him away handcuffed. They have him at the station here in Alquízar.”

García Rivas stated that they want to blame her husband for being the leader of the demonstrations that occurred in the municipality. “As he has many posts on Facebook against the Government denouncing all the things and barbarities that happen here and for his participation in the Emilia Project and in the Union for Free Cuba Party, they want to prosecute him as if he were the leader of the protest.”

Castellanos Romero belongs to these opposition projects, says his wife, but “he was not the one who launched the people into the streets, everyone went because they wanted to. He launched himself into the streets like a great part of the people did.”

Amanda Hernández Celaya is only 18 years old. She is a professional dancer. On July 11 she was heading to rehearsals continue reading

for a video clip. The car she was riding in along with other co-workers stopped on the esplanade of La Punta, in Havana, because the traffic was interrupted by the crowd protesting against the dictatorship.

“When she got out of the vehicle, she began to film what was happening with her cell phone and almost immediately she was detained by the forces of order,” the young woman’s aunt, the independent journalist Miriam Celaya, told this newspaper.

After hours without knowing Amanda’s whereabouts, her family learned that they first took her to the Fourth Station and from there they transferred her to the station at 100th and Aldabó. “The mother asked and the officers told her that the young woman is under investigation,” added Celaya.

The regime’s cutting off of internet services has prevented reports of the arrests from coming to light promptly. This was the case of the playwright Yunior García Aguilera, one of the protagonists in the November 27 meeting with the Vice Minister of Culture, Fernando Rojas. The artist spread through messaging and on his Facebook profile hours, after being released, what the detainees experienced in front of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT), in Havana.

There he says, upon seeing the images of the protest in San Antonio de los Baños, a group of artists to requested “15 minutes in front of the Cuban television cameras to exercise the right to reply, to make a call to resolve our conflicts by democratic means, condemn the repression and find a solution without blood to the total crisis we Cubans are experiencing.”

“We didn’t mind being called naive, again, from any extreme,” he explains. “For us, staying at home with our arms crossed, watching the fratricide from a sofa, was not an option. We know, like few others (because we have lived it before), that rage is deaf, but we had to try.”

After the attempt at dialogue, García says, “a horde of radical conservatives and several Rapid Response groups denied us the minimum space of 15 minutes.” The group was beaten, forcibly dragged and thrown “on a cargo truck, like a sack of rubble.” They were taken to the Vivac Detention Center where they remained under arrest until Monday afternoon. “We saw dozens of young people arrive and we gradually learned about the protests in various areas of the country.”

In the multiple interrogations that the detainees went through, he says, “it was clear that no one from outside directed us to go out into the street, that absolutely no one paid us a penny for doing what we did. But we also made our position and our ideas of CHANGE very clear, in a country that is not stopping its own fall into the abyss.”

The group of artists was released under a precautionary measure and an investigation process is being carried out against them. “Those from Vivac who were at the ICRT, we all left, but there are still brothers imprisoned or disappeared, among them, Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez Yong. No one can silence our right to be honest, to demand that they release all of them and to express what we feel” demanded the playwright.

“Cuba is crying, Martí is crying right now from his grave. Let’s save our land from hatred and barbarism. Let all those guilty of this nightmare resign! Let all worthy Cubans who do not share the fascist discourse rise from their silence!” Garcia concluded.

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Raul Castro Attends Meeting to Defend Repression Against Cuban Protestors

Cubans living in Mexico, for and against the regime, clashed this Monday in demonstrations at the gates of the Cuban consulate in the Mexican capital. (EFE / Sáshenka Gutiérrez)

14ymedio, Madrid, 13 July 2021 — Raúl Castro, who is supposed to be out of power since he resigned as first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) in the last Congress, reappeared this Monday, according to official media, at a meeting of the Political Bureau to address the massive protests that started on Sunday.

Chaired by the current first secretary of the PCC and designated president Miguel Díaz-Canel, it “analyzed the provocations orchestrated by counterrevolutionary elements, organized and financed from the United States with destabilizing purposes,” says the official press, which does not offer any image of the former president.

“The members of the highest party organ also addressed the exemplary response of the people to the call of comrade Díaz-Canel to defend the Revolution in the streets, which allowed the subversive actions to be defeated,” the report added.

Not one iota of self-criticism is perceived at the top of the Cuban power structure. Thus, in his television appearance on Monday, Díaz-Canel once again blamed the United States for destabilizing the country through a “media campaign” on social networks and independent media. continue reading

The number of deaths, wounded, detained and disappeared by the State Security after the demonstrations, which continued to take place this Monday, is uncertain, but the testimonies from ordinary citizens have multiplied these numbers.

The usual allies, notably Venezuela and Nicaragua, but also Argentina, Mexico and Russia, spoke in favor of the regime and against the sanctions of the United States.

The Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, was one of the first to call Díaz-Canel and show his support in the face of the protests.

“From this dialogue table and this presidential palace, I ratify, as I said yesterday by phone, to President Miguel Díaz-Canel all the support of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the people of Cuba, to the revolutionary government of Cuba,” said Maduro this Monday in a ceremony with a minority group of the opposition.

To Cuba, he said, “they have applied the same method of suffocation, of persecution for 60 years,” and asked, following the island’s propaganda: “If the United States and the extremist opponents in Cuba really want to alleviate and help the people of Cuba, let them immediately lift all sanctions and the blockade against the people of Cuba.”

From Nicaragua, the marriage formed by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo also contacted the Cuban president to express their support. Murillo even compared the anti-government demonstrations on the island on Sunday with those experienced by Nicaragua in April 2018, and accused the United States of using in Cuba “that same format that we knew.”

Those protests, classified by the Nicaraguan Executive as an “attempted coup,” left at least 328 dead, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), although local organizations raise the figure to 684 and the Government recognizes 200.

Murillo offered his words just hours after the United States revoked the US visas of 100 legislators, prosecutors, judges and other officials of the Nicaraguan Judicial Power, for facilitating “the regime’s assaults on democracy and human rights.”

For its part, Russia expressed, through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that it is “following the development” of the situation in Cuba while stating that any attempt to “destabilize the country from abroad” is “unacceptable,” referring to a alleged interference by the United States. For the Russian Foreign Ministry, “the Cuban authorities are taking all the necessary measures to restore public order for the benefit of their citizens.”

In similar terms, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, expressed his “solidarity with the Cuban people,” urging them to seek “a solution through dialogue, without the use of force, without confrontation, without violence.” At the same time, he criticized the “unusual information display” of the Cuban protests promoted “by those who do not agree with the policies of the Government of Cuba” and asked the United States “to suspend the blockade.”

The opinion of the president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, was the same. “I do not know exactly the dimension of the Cuban problem,” he declared. “What I am clear about, as Andrés Manuel López Obrador said, is that if we are really concerned with Cuba in a humanitarian sense, let’s end the blockades.”

Asked about the demands expressed in the protests registered this Sunday in Cuba, Fernández said that “all these things are problems that the peoples have to solve.”

On the other hand, the president of the House Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States Congress, Democrat Gregory Meeks, asked President Joe Biden on Monday to lift the economic sanctions against Cuba imposed by his predecessor, Donald Trump.

“Cubans face great difficulties due to the economic and health impacts of COVID-19, the entrenched culture of corruption and mismanagement among Cuban leaders and the strict sanctions cruelly imposed by the Trump Administration,” Meeks said in a statement.

“I call on President Biden to help alleviate the suffering in Cuba by rescinding the sanctions,” added the congressman, who declared that “Cubans are angry and have every right to express their frustrations and participate in peaceful protests” and warned that “basic freedoms must be respected, not punished.”

Biden was asked on Monday when he would be willing to change Trump’s Cuba policy, but he avoided answering. “We will have more to say about Cuba and Haiti as this week progresses. Stay tuned.”

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