14ymedio – Page 297 – Translating Cuba

In Cuba the Use of Solar Energy Depends on the State and China

The Cuban government sees solar energy as a way to take advantage of a natural resource the country has abundance but investment remains a major hurdle. (Radio Progreso)

14ymedio, Havana, 26 May 2021 — China will donate 5,000 solar panels to Cuba for use in rural parts of the country. The panels have yet to be delivered but a symbolic handover took place on Monday at a ceremony in Guangzhou attended by Denisse Llamos, the Cuban consul general in that city.

Llamos thanked the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment for the donation, praising China’s involvement in the fight against climate change despite the fact that the Asian giant remains the world’s biggest polluter and promised to reduce emissions only a year ago.

China’s sudden environmental awareness began in 2020 when it announced a shift in policy and committed to one of the world’s most radical reductions in air pollutants. The world’s two largest economies, the US and China, account for 43% of the world’s emissions. continue reading

Since Xi Jingpin announced a new commitment to fighting climate change, Cuba has also ramped up its rhetoric on this issue. On accepting the donation in Guangzhou, the consul general described the gesture as “a sign of successful cooperation between the two socialist nations” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Cuban representative attending the event emphasized that multilateralism and global cooperation are the only options for confronting climate change.

China will also supply the island with 25,000 LED bulbs “to address electricity problems of families in remote rural areas.”

The collaborative relationship in solar energy between Cuba and China, however, predates the environmental interest recently expressed by both nations, which three years ago inaugurated the Pinar 220 A2 photovoltaic solar park.

The installation consists of 15,500 solar panels manufactured by the Chinese firm Yingly and operates between 8:00 AM and 7:00 PM. According to a 2019 report issued by the Xinhua agency, the plant was delivering roughly 4.4 gigawatts of power per hour to the Cuban National Electric System.

Trade between the island and the Asian economic giant has declined in recent years due to the Cuban regime’s unpaid debt to Peking. For example, imports of Chinese goods fell 40% in 2020, following a trend of the last five years.

The Cuban government sees solar energy as a way to take advantage of a natural resource the country has abundance but investment remains the major hurdle in building the infrastructure needed to harvest a solar energy.

Before the pandemic, the island had planned to build sixty-five facilities of this type while another fifteen were under development. These would have increased the current power supply by 42 gigawatts, or about 1.15% of national consumption.

Late last year The Cuban Electric Union (UNE) acknowledged that it was unable to guarantee production of photovoltaic for retail sale to the public. Imported devices like these can cost between 200 and 1,000 pesos for panels ranging from 900 watts to fifteen kilowatts.

According to data from the state-owned energy company, five 260-watt devices are required to meet the energy needs of a home with an average monthly consumption of 185 kWh.

In mid-March, executives of the Cuban customs service and UNE announced a prompt lifting of tariffs, which the electric company said was responsible for the current shortage. However, this has not yet happened.

Currently the government is selling photovoltaic systems for hard currency in online stores targeted to Cubans living overseas who make purchases for family on the Island. For example, a 270-watt solar panel is selling on Bazar Virtual, a site belonging to state-owned Copextel, for $2,549.02.

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The Cuban Baseball Federation Suffers From Historical Amnesia

Kiele Alessandra Cabrera during her intrusion on the field of the Palm Beach stadium during the game between Cuba and Venezuela. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Havana, 1 June 2021 — The writer Eliseo Alberto Diego, known as Lichi, used to say that “history is a cat who always falls on her feet.” The Cuban Baseball Federation should be warned about this ability of the past to stand up, a way of avoiding silence and manipulation.

The official entity has protested the events that occurred in this Monday’s pre-Olympic baseball game between the teams from Cuba and Venezuela. In an exalted note, it describes as “unacceptable that characters contrary to the spirit of a sporting event attempt against the team’s concentration.”

The tantrum is in response to the posters with the phrases “Homeland and Life,” “Free Cuba,” and criticisms of Miguel Díaz-Canel, that were displayed in the stands of the West Palm Beach stadium during the live broadcast of the game, displays that Cuban State television was unable to prevent from sneaking into the Tele Rebelde channel. But it turns out that what happened yesterday is part of a civic tradition of baseball field protests that the regime itself praised when they occurred in Republican era Cuba. continue reading

On December 4, 1955, a group of young people threw themselves onto the field of the Cerro stadium while a game was being played between teams from Havana and Almendares. They carried a banner with demands against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, with the moment captured by the television cameras broadcasting the ballgame, allowing the images to reach the screens of thousands of spectators throughout the island.

According to the official Cuban discourse, that action was more than justified, and they constantly recall it as a revolutionary feat. But with regards to what happened this Monday, they reproach the Florida stadium guards for not having acted “as established by the security protocols”…

The story is nothing other than a feline with a penetrating gaze that flips in the air and ends up landing with its nails on the susceptible skin of those who want to hide and distort it.

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Otero Alcantara: ‘The Torture I Suffered Was Psychological’

Otero Alcántara spoke with ’14ymedio’ after being discharged this Monday after four weeks in solitary confinement in a hospital in Havana. (EFE)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 1 June 2021 – Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara does not plan to pause or take a rest in his art or his activism. A few hours after leaving Calixto García Hospital, where he has been for almost a month without hardly any outside communication, he told 14ymedio that he is now ready to demand freedom for the activists in prison as a result of the April 30^th protests on Obispo Street in Havana, and for Maykel ‘Osorbo’ Castillo accused of attack, contempt and resistance, who has been in prison since Monday.

“My grandmother died, I came here to be with my family, also because this was where there was a landline phone, arriving at my house Damas Street without a cell phone I was still incommunicado,” says the artist, who had just left the hospital. He went to his family home, in El Cerro, to spend at least two days in their company. Otero Alcántara is clear and begins by confirming that, when they took him out of his home in the early morning of May 2 to take him to the hospital, they did so “by force” and “handcuffed.”

14ymedio. What was your arrival at the hospital like and how did your hunger and thirst strike end?

Otero Alcántara. When I arrived, I let them give me an IV so I could be aware of what was happening, because I was very weak. The next day I started drinking water, they gave me juice and some milk. A week passed and the following Monday I started the thirst strike again, the hunger strike was continuing. Then a fortnight ago, I started eating. Now I’m upset but okay, they are seeing the end. continue reading

14ymedio. What was your daily routine at Calixto García?

Otero Alcántara. I spent all morning drawing or reading and in the morning they took my vital signs. Right now, talking about this is complex. I could say that I was tortured this way and that, but it would be dishonest. The torture I suffered was psychological. They kept the light on 24 hours a day, there was always a military man next to me, and if I spent more than 5 minutes in the bathroom he was knocking on the door. It was terribly cold the whole day and there was the fear that at any moment they can take you to another place. Plus the isolation. All that was torture.

My family was not allowed in when they wanted, when I saw them it was from a distance, like ten to twelve feet away. Of the four or five times that I saw my sister or my aunt it was at that distance, only once were we able to see each other up close and give each other a kiss and a hug, but only for five minutes, no more than that.

14ymedio. Were you always in the same room or were you transferred from time to time?

Otero Alcántara. I was in the Rubén Batista room the whole time. The three times they took me out was for those famous walks, which were supposedly to catch the sun but were actually for them to film me. The prisoners go out to sunbathe every day, but I was under air conditioning 24 hours a day and they took me out once a week, that was premeditated.

14ymedio. The video in which you go outside with Dr. Ifrán Martínez, how was it arranged? How was your relationship with the doctors?

Otero Alcántara. The video was a conscience act. I understood that I had to send a message to people, I had to say something. The doctors who were there waiting for me were the ones that State Security selected, and valued certain characteristics. They were directed to behave in a certain way, they could not spend much time with me and they recorded on a piece of paper when they arrived and left with their name and position. Those doctors had a certain chance to talk to me. Ifran brought me books, I read 12 books in that month. They also brought me pens and paper and I began to draw pictures. I drew a lot, although with the fear that State Security would take it away from me.

14ymedio. How strict was the operation around you?

Otero Alcántara. Everything was very well controlled by State Security, they were there constantly. Dr. Ifran was concerned because his face had already appeared on television, and here everyone knows that this means he may have 10 days, 20 days or two years left. I feel that they are concerned, because their children do not want their father to be the one who was later found to have tortured Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. I noticed that they wanted to make very clear the difference between them and State Security and to emphasize that they were there because they were given the mission to save me. The hospital was totally taken over by State Security, I think that was the way they found to keep me under control.

14ymedio. How did you come to leave the hospital?

Otero Alcántara. My uncle went to the hospital to get me and a car brought us here. Now I have freedom of movement to go wherever I want. My house on Damas Street still has the police on the corner and I want to cool down (lower the temperature in) the neighborhood. Before leaving, the State Security officials told me that they have my mobile phone, but that they would not give it to me at that time because it had been left in another place and they assured me that they would return it to me, along with the works that they took from my house.

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The Six Cuban Activists Arrested on Obispo Street Have Been Transferred to Prisons

The communicator and activist Esteban Rodríguez, together with the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 28 May 2021 — With last Wednesday’s transfer of the communicator and activist Esteban Rodríguez to the Valle Grande penitentiary, there are now six activists jailed awaiting trial for their participation, on April 30 in Obispo Street in Havana, in an act of solidarity with the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. The information was confirmed this Friday to 14ymedio by Rodríguez’s wife, Zuleidis Cepero.

That same day the independent journalist Mary Karla Ares was also transferred to the Guatao prison, according to her mother, Marisol González, speaking to this newspaper. The authorities accuse the peaceful protesters of the crimes of public disorder and resistance, which, according to the Cubalex Legal Information Center, can mean sentences “from three months to five years of deprivation of liberty.”

In addition to Ares and Rodríguez, the activists transferred to prisons include Thais Mailén Franco, Inti Soto Romero, Yuisán Cancio Vera and Luis Ángel Cuza. Last week Amnesty International called for the immediate release of these protesters and emphasized Ares, who broadcast the protest live on Facebook.

For his part, rapper Maykel Osorbo Castillo, who was arrested at his home on May 18, remains unaccounted for. In response to a habeas corpus petition filed in his favor, it was only known that the artist is in provisional prison accused of “disobedience, resistance and contempt,” but the place where he is being held remains unknown. continue reading

In response to this situation, on Friday the United Nations Committee Against Forced Disappearances asked the Cuban Government for news of Osorbo’s whereabouts. “The Committee requires the urgent action of the State [Cuba] to adopt all the necessary measures to search and locate Mr. Maykel Castillo Pérez and protect his life and personal integrity, in accordance with its conventional obligations,” said the organism of the UN in response to a complaint from the NGO Cuban Prisoners Defenders (CPD).

The UN letter asks Havana to “inform the relatives of Mr. Castillo Pérez about the place of his deprivation of liberty, as well as the charges against him,” and, appealing to the Convention for the Protection of All People Against Forced Disappearances, also asks that “he can communicate with his family, a lawyer or any other person of his choice and receive their visit.”

The demand is addressed to the Cuban ambassador in Geneva and gives the government of the island until June 11 to respond to their “concerns and recommendations.”

In recent weeks, Osorbo has been subjected to an intense police siege and has been detained without reason on several occasions. The 37-year-old artist, together with Yotuel Romero, Gente de Zona, Descemer Bueno and El Funky, composed the song Patria y Vida, which has exceeded five million views on YouTube and has become an anthem for the opposition both within and off the island.

This Thursday, CPD launched a manifesto in support of the artists participating in the song Patria y Vida — who have been besieged by the Cuban Government in recent weeks — in which they ask for an end to the repression.

The demand emphasizes the critical situation in Otero Alcántara, who has been in solitary confinement at the Calixto García hospital in Havana for 26 days.

Several European Parliament Deputies also signed a letter requesting that a Delegation of the European Union (EU) visit Otero Alcántara in the hospital. The letter, written by Dita Charanzová, vice-president of the European Parliament, is addressed to Josep Borrell, high representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

Prisoners Defenders, based in Madrid, also notes the case of the detainees from the Obispo Street protest and of Eliexer Márquez El Funky, who was also detained for a few hours, on May 18, and subjected to “a precautionary measure that prevents him from leaving his home freely.”

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“Signatures are not Patrimony,” Insists the Manager of La Bodeguita del Medio

La Bodeguita del Medio, which is sold to tourists as “the cradle of The Mojito,” is located on Empedrado Street, a privileged place in Cuba’s capital city. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, 26 May 2021 — The image of La Bodeguita del Medio without the thousands of signatures on its walls, which were part of its character, surprised locals and strangers. A few days ago, Robin Pedraja, creative director of the art magazine Vistar, shared photographs of the restoration of the premises on social networks and wondered who had the idea to erase “all that patrimony.” Many customers showed their rejection of a work that, according to various opinions, has resulted in the iconic place losing part of its identity.

“The signatures are not patrimony,” disagrees José Miguel Pumarada Fernández, manager of the premises, in an interview with 14ymedio. The official maintains that the premises have already undergone three renovations and argues that this intervention was necessary, due to the poor condition of the place.

“There were leaks everywhere, customers were eating and water was dripping on the tables, there was a lot of dampness. Paintings were falling off the walls because the plaster was decayed, the dampness was high and this was part of the complaints from customers who visited the establishment,” he says. continue reading

“There were leaks everywhere, customers were eating and water was dripping on the tables, there was a lot of dampness. Paintings were falling from the walls because the plaster was decayed”

Pumarada explains that three years ago the moment to start the repairs was expected, preserving everything that is considered a patrimony asset, including museum objects. “The signature book, all the framed photos – dating from the 40’s and 50’s – the house structure and its architecture, the wood, all of this was respected.”

The manager, who has been in charge of the emblematic place for seven years, adds that the City Historian’s Office door was the first one they knocked on to start the work, and although for no apparent reason he (the Historian) did not oversee the work, they have “all levels of approval” of the Monuments Commission.

However, a specialist of the Master Plan of the Office of the City Historian consulted by this newspaper affirms that he was not aware of the remodeling, but considers the elimination of the signatures “regrettable and a violation” and defends that such interventions should be controlled. “If they erased everything, it’s terrible. It’s an iconic place, it’s not just any tavern.”

Salomé García, a graduate of Plastic Arts from the Higher Institute of Art, considers that this intervention is part of “the iconoclastic offensive of the Cuban State” against patrimony

Salomé García, a graduate of Plastic Arts from the Higher Institute of Art, considers that this intervention is part of “the iconoclastic offensive of the Cuban State” against patrimony.

“This is a location of State/public property, and of high patrimonial value. The contracts for these interventions (and for many others) should be public tenders. In addition, these are interventions that should be covered in the press due to their relevance, that way, misrepresentations would be avoided,” adds the specialist, who is currently completing a Master’s Degree in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Assets at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.

It is not the first time that La Bodeguita del Medio has remodeled its interior. In 1997, there was a physical attack against the facility, along with other tourist places such as the hotels Tritón, Chateau Miramar and the Copacabana, and part of it had to be restored and its walls painted, recalls Pumarada, who stresses that this establishment has been in operation for 78 years.

This year’s repair was necessary, he insists, because the walls had several cracks that needed to be sealed, in addition to adding strength and security. “We used the same color paint as before and everything else remained intact.”

Currently, and complying with the rules to control the pandemic, the La Bodeguita del Medio Bar remains closed, although it keeps open “a little store” on one side of the premises where food is sold.

“Any bite from a seedy inn is better than these. I was hoping they were of higher quality since this place is what it is, but it is a sandwich from a community dining room”

“The only thing they are selling are ham sandwiches at 25 pesos each,” a local resident told 14ymedio. “But they don’t have enough, only 30 loaves. According to what some workers said, whatever is in the inventory is sold,” says the Havana resident who decided to buy four sandwiches and ended up outraged. “Any bite from a seedy inn is better than these. I was hoping they were of higher quality since this place is what it is, but it is a bite from a community dining room.”

La Bodeguita del Medio, which is sold to tourists as “the cradle of The Mojito,” is located on Empedrado Street, a privileged place in the capital, a few steps from the Plaza de la Catedral, in Old Havana. This area belongs to the Historic Center, and in 1982 it was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco.

The property had long since lost the best it had: to become a place for the national bohemian, for the regulars of the patio. Since it was dollarized and became a place with fast food for tourists, it lost its most important asset, and it was not its signatures, but its identity, its hallmark.

Translated by Norma Whiting

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Cuban Authorities Abandon Santiago de Cuba to Its Fate

The disastrous hygienic-sanitary situation that Santiago de Cuba is going through reflects the inability of the authorities to solve basic problems. (Alberto Hernández)

14ymedio, Alberto Hernández, Santiago de Cuba, 30 May 2021 — Santiago de Cuba, known for its carnivals, its suffocating heat and the hospitality of its people, today presents a bleak panorama. The city is depressed by hunger caused by the shortages of all kinds of food, the diseases that are becoming more frequent every day due to the lack of medicines which have been missing for months, and now, as if that were not enough, the accumulation of all kinds of waste in its streets.

The inhabitants of the city wonder what happened to the sound, sometimes annoying, of the bell that announced the arrival of the garbage trucks, after which everyone rushed to put out the waste stored in their houses. The trucks just vanished, as if by magic. Now, the waste is simply stuffed in sacks and dumped in the first corner, or hung from any tree, forming what is known as micro-dumps. The containers that were once, long ago, distributed throughout the city, simply disappeared and are now an endangered species.

Given the worrying situation and the daily criticism of the population, the Government, advised by the directors of the public company Servicios Comunales, which is in charge of cleaning the city, explain that the main problem is the breakdown of the waste collection trucks (together with the lack of fuel, tires, batteries, various spare parts and endless excuses). But, how is it possible that individuals keep their vehicles – dating from the 40s or 50s – in good condition and state companies, with all the tight control of resources, cannot guarantee that a fleet of a few dozen trucks will remain in operation? When it is wanted, it is resolved, and when it is not, a good justification is sought, as the saying goes. continue reading

Comunales, taking the situation into account, has supposedly hired some 325 animal-drawn carts to sanitize the city and thus compensate for the lack of trucks. I say supposedly because, if those 325 wagons were working every day, we would not have that chaotic panorama now presenting in the city.

The inhabitants of the city wonder what happened to the sound, sometimes annoying, of the bell that announced the arrival of the garbage trucks. (Alberto Hernández)

To top it all, there are now record levels of Covid-19 cases in the city, and hundreds of micro-dumps on any corner complicate the situation. The coronavirus has joined other pests that plague the Santiago population and that are closely related to poor hygiene, such as scabies, lice, and dengue fever, the latter transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito that has as a breeding ground the many open air waste dump.

In addition, the sewers are clogged and, instead of evacuating wastewater, they expel it to the public thoroughfare, as is frequently observed in the lowest points of Santiago de Cuba.

Ignoring hygienic risks, more and more people “dive” into landfills looking for any of the sorts of things that will help them survive. Driven by hunger and despair, many inhabitants even take refuge in garbage dumps.

The disastrous hygienic-sanitary situation that Santiago de Cuba is going through reflects the inability of the authorities to solve the basic problems of Cuba’s second city. The capital of the East is today the shadow of what it once was.

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Stubbornness and Inefficiency Go Hand In Hand in the Cuban Leadership

“My generation already has a couple deep material wounds, to its cost.” (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Havana, 29 May 2021 — A few days ago in the middle of the night they removed all the light bulbs that illuminated the corridor on the 14th floor where I live in Havana; a friend’s cat was stolen and shortly afterward she found the remains of what was evidently the sacrifice and feast that some neighbors made with her pet; in a line to buy frozen chicken, the crowd went wild as the door was opened and trampled on two old women who fell in the stampede.

All these scenes and many others have returned to populate the lives of Cubans, as they once did during the crisis of the 1990s that, in an excess of putting makeup on the language, the regime dubbed “The Special Period.” For those who were born in this century, the current social and economic disaster is the most serious of their lives, but my generation already has a couple of these deep material wounds, to its cost, while for my parents’ generation we must add the rigors suffered in the 70s.

The return of these vignettes of misery is part of a stubborn cycle that has touched the existence of everyone on this Island. Faced with so much repetition, some honest statesmen concerned about the country’s well-being would have redirection the national course, abandoned the practices that led to constant scarcities suffered by the population, or ceded their positions to more capable executives. But stubbornness and inefficiency go hand in hand in the Cuban leadership. continue reading

A few years ago, an analyst and writer asked an interesting question during a conference held at a study center in the capital: “How many more times must the implementation of Marxist economic ideas fail to conclude that failure is it inherent in the model?” If we apply that doubt to Castroism, then it is worth asking how many more crises will Cubans have to suffer so that officials understand that the system does not work? How many “special periods” must accumulate for the leaders of the Communist Party to recognize their inability to provide us with prosperity and freedom?

Yesterday I saw a girl break a chocolate cookie in two. “I’m going to eat half today and save the other for tomorrow for breakfast,” she said. My eyes watered. It reminded me of a scrawny and hungry teenager in a very long line to buy some little chicks that we had to raise in our apartment in the San Leopoldo neighborhood. After an hours-long line, plus blows and shoves, that young woman returned home with some tiny yellow animals, none of which survived her inexperience in raising poultry or lack of food.

Of those images from the 90s there are some we have yet to see. I hope they do not arrive: The rafts loaded on shoulders crossing the streets heading towards Havana’s Malecón; the friend who embarked on one and was never heard from again; the kerosene-flavored pizza that was the only food for a couple of days; the Numantine leader asking us for more sacrifices from the dais. How much longer must a people endure to conclude that conformity is inherent in their character?

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Cuban Journalist Mary Karla Ares is Transferred to Guatao Prison in Artemisa

Independent Cuban Reporter Mary Karla Ares, 28, is a contributor to Amanecer Habanero. (Iclep)

14ymedio, Havana, May 26, 2021 — Independent Cuban reporter Mary Karla Ares, arrested at the demonstration on Obispo Street last April 30, was transferred this Wednesday to the Guatao women’s penitentiary, in the municipality of Bauta, Artemisa, according to her mother, Marisol González, speaking to 14ymedio.

González, who was able to visit her daughter yesterday, related details of the visit to this newspaper. “Before going in, the officers lectured me and my husband not to hang around with people opposing the government or counterrevolutionaries paid by the United States,” she explains.

She goes on to say that they tried to intimidate them by telling them that they knew that Mary Karla received recharges from abroad and money from the United States. “At that moment we let it slide, but it would have been good if we would have asked them who benefits from those recharges,” says the mother, ironically referring to the telecommunications monopoly of ETECSA. continue reading

After the talks, González and her husband reproached the police because “they were treating those kids like criminals… She is not a criminal as they say, and it unfair because they are using them as an example for the others,” declared Ares’s mother.

According to González, since the demonstration on April 30 on the centrally located Obispo Street in Havana, her daughter spent all this time detained in the unit of 7th and 62, Playa Municipality, until she was transferred this Tuesday to Villa Marista, the General Headquarters of the State Security, for the visit.

Ares was arrested along with other activists when she was demanding the end of the siege around Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara’s house, who remained on hunger and thirst strike. According to the authorities, the demonstrators are under penal proceedings accused of “public disturbance” and “resistance.”

Relatives of the young lady had requested a change of charges so that Ares could be released on bail awaiting trial; however, it was refused, as was an appeal to Habeas Corpus that had been denied in early May.

The Committee to Protect Journalists told the Cuban authorities that they should immediately release Mary Karla Ares and allow the press to inform freely. The 28-year-old reporter is a contributor to Amanecer Habanero (Havana Dawn), a community communication medium associated with the Cuban Institute for the Freedom of Expression and the Press.

Last week, Amnesty International (AI) also requested the immediate release of the activists detained on April 30. This request emphasized Ares, who broadcast the demonstration live on Facebook.

Thais Mailen Franco Benítez was also arrested and taken to the Gatao penitentiary; Inti Sorto Romero is in Guanajay prison; and Yuisan Cancio Vera was transferred to the provincial penitentiary of Pinar del Rio, according to the Cubalex Legal Information Center*, a non-profit legal aid organization.

*Translator’s note: For an earlier interview with the founder of Cubalex, Laritza Diversent, see here.

Translated by Francy Perez

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The Cuban Regime is Not Afraid of Any Song

The artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, at one point in the video clip of the song ‘Patria y Vida’. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Yaiza Santos, Madrid, 27 May 2021 — The desperate war of songs unleashed by the Cuban Government after the release of the song Patria y Vida, which since February has added more than five million views on YouTube and which immediately became an opposition slogan inside and outside the Island, has gone from pathos to perversity with the theme that celebrates the sixtieth anniversary of the Ministry of the Interior(Minint), released this Tuesday.

The same ministry that, through State Security, the National Revolutionary Police and other undercover agents, besieges activists, independent journalists and any citizen who makes public a minimum dissent against the communist regime, the Orwellian Minint itself, becomes a pop singer and presents Cuba es cierta (Cuba is True).

According to the agency itself in a statement, Lieutenant Colonel Dixan Marrero Jorge, author of the lyrics, won a contest launched at the end of 2020 as an “opportunity for the strong movement of amateur artists” within the agency. The jury was chaired by Israel Rojas, a member of the Buena Fe duo, who also orchestrated the song and who, in March, had already issued an official song on Cuban vaccines, with the immense merit of fitting “bulb,, “container” and “dose” in something like a light song. continue reading

The lyrics of the lieutenant colonel, in fact, have verses borrowed from that song, such as the “call to slaughter” of the chorus (“Cuba is true, as true as the call to slaughter”). The beginning of the song is slow, like the guitar plucking of Patria y Vida before Randy Malcom, from Gente de Zona, starts: “You are my siren song because with your voice my sorrows go away.” And with the insistence on ‘patria o muerte’ (homeland or death) taking a detour (“knee on the ground until the last breath”), the song makes a spurious use of the axes of the theme of Yotuel Romero and company: “life”, “hope” and “freedom.”

Do not strain, good grief, the pageant costume.

The Ministry of the Interior has no need for a song. The Ministry of the Interior forcibly removed from his home the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara — who appears in the video clip for Patria y Vida wrapped in the flag hanging from the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement in November — and has held him for 25 days, without explanations, in a psychiatric ward of the Calixto García Hospital in Havana. The Ministry of the Interior has disappeared Maykel ’El Osorbo’ Castillo after arresting him accused of false crimes. The Ministry of the Interior has threatened Eliexer El Funky Márquez in home confinement.The Ministry of the Interior has five peaceful protesters in prison for shouting “homeland and life” on Obispo Street.

All the technological and weapons display that appears in the clip of Cuba is True, the modern patrols, the immaculate uniforms, the fresh agents, it is not necessary. Cubans know well what works on their island, the only thing greased and fed for 62 years: repression.

And yet the Ministry of the Interior makes a song. It is something evil. But at the same time, it shows a weakness: it cannot compose anything that comes close to Homeland and Life. Nothing that excites the people who lie so much in vain and who, in addition, collect in their melody the rhythm of the times, from La Marseillaise to Yo vengo a ofrecer mi corazón, passing through Va pensiero, Grândola, vila morena and Libertad sin ira. All of them, hymns of a transition, of an imminent change.

Think of the prickling skin when Alexander Delgado bursts in with his ragged voice: “It’s over.” Of Cuba is True, one can only tremble, and of terror, the verse “I am the eyes of the dawn.” The Ministry of the Interior has lost the war of the songs. What was that like?

“A beginning, right from the bottom of a cave, can do more than an army.” [A quote from José Martí]

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Cuba Archive Accuses State of Using Therapies and Drugs to Punish Opponents

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara in one of the latest videos released by the State.

14ymedio, Havana, 26 May 2021 — The organization Archivo Cuba (Cuba Archive) has expressed concern for the mental health of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who has been in the Calixto García hospital for 24 days without communication with his friends, and has published a call for action. The NGO accuses the Cuban regime of a long history of psychiatric abuse and asks the World Association of Psychiatry to expel Cuba, and also calls for the medical and psychiatric associations of democratic countries to investigate and denounce this type of abuse.

The organization, based in Miami, presents information from different sources that maintain that Alcántara is being drugged or subjected to electroconvulsive therapy based on the images that the Government has been publishing of the artist in the hospital with the intention of discrediting him. The images show the physical and mental deterioration of the opponent.

Among the initiatives proposed by Cuba Archive is also the invitation to write to Miguel Díaz-Canel and ask the international press to exert pressure in favor of the opponent. In addition, they demand that democratic countries insist on an independent medical evaluation of the artist and that he be released from the hospital if he is healthy, that communication with his loved ones be reestablished, that bilateral relations be conditioned on respect for human rights. They also demand the release of rapper Denis Solis and those imprisoned after the Obispo street protest. continue reading

The organization cites the aspect of mental health, and in support of this its statement is accompanied by a report in which it accuses the Cuban State of confining healthy people for political reasons and applying substances and therapies to them for the purpose of torture, to obtain information, or simply to punish them.

According to the document, Dr. Eduardo Prida, who was a psychologist for the Ministry of the Interior and the Armed Forces of Cuba, has reported on the links between these torture systems and the Soviet regime, thanks to the training of Cuban officers in Lubyanka building (headquarters of the KGB in Moscow) and in the Academy of the Ministry of the Interior, although mental repression in Russia was already in use in the tsarist era.

Documents in the archives of the German political police give an account, as late as 1981, of the Cuban request for a list of 16 drugs designed to psychologically destabilize prisoners who had committed crimes against state security, including cocaine, LSD, methadone and various barbiturates.

In a letter to the Stasi, Cuban Colonel Lorenzo Hernando Caldeiro asks “to exchange opinions and experiences in psychology” to “use these branches of science in the fight against the enemy” and confirms an agreement to send psychologists from the island to various institutions in Germany as part of the 1988 “Exchange Work Plan.”

The text highlights that, in 1988, Amnesty International was able to visit the Carbó Serviá pavilion of the Psychiatric Hospital of Havana, Mazorra, to investigate complaints that had arisen and one of the officials who received the NGO representatives denied the existence of a second pavilion and denied them entrance to it, although it was suspected that this place was the one with the worst conditions.

Armando Lago, co-founder of Archivo Cuba, is co-author of the book The Politics of Psychiatry in Revolutionary Cuba, which includes numerous testimonies of psychiatric torture added to the unsanitary conditions and physical abuse for people who were detained simply for painting graffiti, trying to leave of the Island, exchanging foreign currency, shouting against the Government or killing a cow, among other acts.

In the early 1990s, a senior executive at a major US pharmaceutical company revealed to the director of Archivo Cuba that his company stopped exporting drugs to Cuba after realizing that some were being used for psychiatric torture.

The report also reviews conditions in Mazorra, where there are around 2,500 patients. In January 2010, at least 26 died of cold in this institution, a fact that was known by human rights defenders who raised the alarm and managed to release images taken in the morgue that showed the terrible condition of the inmates who had died.

Eriberto Mederos, known as “the nurse” of Mazorra, was convicted in 2002 by a federal jury in Miami of lying on his citizenship application by concealing his participation in the torture of political dissidents with electric shocks when he worked as a stretcher-bearer at this hospital.

Lago’s book describes 31 cases of dissidents held in psychiatric institutions for a period of 1 day and up to 5 years. A year later, the number had increased by eight. In addition, cases of minors are also documented, including violations, or or administering drugs that inhibit an individual’s will.

The report also includes the suspicions of some prisoners and relatives who maintain that the food or drink they were given was contaminated with some substance, or that they had become ill for no apparent reason after passing through these medical centers.

The text concludes with the analysis of several prisoners who have gone through experiences of this kind at less distant dates, such as the alleged suicide of Ángel Tomás Quiñones González in 1990 at the Mazorra Psychiatric Hospital or that of Leandro Hidalgo Pupo, 20 years old, a talented math student who was admitted to the same center after shouting “Down with Fidel” during an internationally televised boxing match. Since that date there has been no news of him.

Much more recent is the internment of Daniel Llorente, known as “the man with the flag” after he appeared with the American banner in the May 1 parade in front of Raúl Castro shouting “Freedom for all.” In Mazorra he remained confined for eleven months and in 2018 it was certified that he did not suffer from any mental illness. A year later, he was forcibly deported to Guyana with the threat of being “disappeared” if he returned.

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‘Tribuna de La Habana’ Withdraws an Article in Which it Calls a Group of Cuban Artists ‘Mercenaries’

The article was published this Thursday in the Havana daily and deleted less than 24 hours later. (Tribuna de La Habana)

14ymedio, Havana, 27 May 2021 — On Wednesday, the newspaper Tribuna de La Habana published an article on its website in which it described as a “group of mercenaries paid by Washington” the group of Cuban artists who have signed a letter addressed to the National Museum of Fine Arts to demand that their works be withdraw from exhibition, in solidarity with their colleague Otero Alcántara. Less than 24 hours later the newspaper deleted the article.

The text, signed by the paper’s deputy director, Raúl San Miguel, presented the artists’ initiative as an “attack” against the Museum that aims to “create a media snowball to beatify the criminal Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara.”

“The particularity of the demand is part of a known strategy to try to mobilize international public opinion with the aim of sustaining the image of a criminal whose work can never be considered art and, in the case of the signatories, their works if they are not exhibited will not create a situation of chaos in the middle of the strong square which the artistic exhibition spaces on the internet have become,” the note added. continue reading

The columnist also mentioned each of the initial signatories of the letter: Tania Bruguera, Tomás Sánchez, Marco Castillo (former member of Los Carpinteros), Jorge Luis Marrero, Sandra Ceballos, Celia-Yunior (Celia González and Yunior Aguiar) and Reynier Leyva Novo, describing them as “trained in Cuban art schools after 1959” but now “turned into mercenaries in the service of the United States Government.”

In the text, deleted without explanation, San Miguel said that the attitude of the artists towards the institution is “arrogance” and “a felony that will in no way cause any damage to the patrimony of the nation.”

The author described the EFE agency, accredited on the island as a “sponsor of these subversive attacks” and also called out the correspondent for calling Otero Alcántara a “prisoner of conscience,” without noting that it is Amnesty International which applied the designation to the artist, following the Cuban government’s persecution and harassment of him.

According to Tribuna de La Habana, the Spanish agency is “in tune with the efforts to lie to international public opinion about the true mercenary purposes of this citizen and his optimal state of health which was demonstrated by the results of the medical evaluations that he received at the Calixto García University Hospital.”

Regarding the hunger and thirst strike carried out by Otero Alcántara, the most visible face of the San Isidro Movement, the article claimed that it was “assisted with logistical support from the United States Embassy in Havana” and described it as “supposed.”

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Manifesto Supports the Artists of ‘Patria y Vida’ Repressed by the Cuban Government

The artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, behind ‘El Funky’ and Maykel Castillo ‘El Osorbo’, in a scene from the video clip of ‘Patria y Vida’. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Madrid, 27 May 2021 — On Thursday, Cuban Prisoners Defenders (CPD) launched a manifesto in support of the artists participating in the song Patria y Vida (Homeland and Life) who have been besieged by the Cuban government in recent weeks, and called for an end to the repression.

In the text, they refer mainly to the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who has been incommunicado for 25 days at the Calixto García hospital in Havana, and the rapper Maykel Castillo El Osorbo, who disappeared after his arrest, more than seven days ago, accused of “attack”, “contempt” and “resistance.”

In addition, the Madrid-based organization reports that Eliexer Márquez El Funky was also detained for a few hours, on May 18, and “a precautionary measure that prevents him from leaving his home freely” was imposed, after he was threatened with penalties similar to those applied to Castillo. continue reading

CPD also has words for the seven people arrested in the Obispo street park when they were demonstrating to try to get to the house of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, at that time on a hunger strike, in Old Havana, shouting “Patria y Vida”: Esteban Rodríguez, Mary Karla Ares, Thais Mailén Franco, Inti Soto, Ángel Cuza, Yuisán Cancio and Adrián Curuneaux.

“The video Patria y Vida, created by the desire for national reconciliation and to bring hope to the interior of Cuban society, was received by the dictatorship with a brutal and aggressive deployment towards artists and citizens,” says the manifesto, which says that” all members of the musical event have been defamed in the official media” and the Cubans, “have been repressed for using the phrase in social networks, on posters or on the walls of their homes,” at the same time demanding that the Cuban State “release and immediately exonerate all those convicted of and charged with ’crimes’ of conscience, the recently detained and indicted and the more than 100 current cases.” They also solicit ” solidarity from the international community” to demand that the Island “comply with the commitments acquired in the field of human rights and cease the state of terror that has been established.”

The signers of the document are headed by the co-creators of the song who are “still free.” The organization lists: the producer Anyelo Troya, the director Asiel Babastro and the singers Alexander Delgado, Randy Malcom, Descemer Bueno, El Funky and Yotuel Romero, followed by numerous organizations, activists, artists and intellectuals inside and outside the island. On its page the CPD offers the opportunity to publicly sign on to the manifesto.

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‘All-Included’ Deals at Cuban Hotels Do Not Apply to Domestic Tourism

Dozens of customers wait in long lines at the Cubatur office located on the ground floor of the Habana Libre hotel. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez and Lorey Saman, Havana/Mexico City, 20 May 2021. Since 7 am, dozens of customers have been lining up for more than two hours at the Cubatur office on the ground floor of the Habana Libre hotel to get in on a summer getaway deal advertised by the state-run agencies. Faced with the downturn in international tourism, the government has bet on Cuban nationals to fill its hotels.

“People come here with gigantic bundles of money, like this one young guy who just took out his wallet…it’s tremendous!” exclaims a smiling woman, who on Thursday morning made it over to the central office of Cubatur in Havana’s El Vedado neighborhood.

Indeed, one needs a good sum of cash to pay for these “all-included” hotel packages — among the offers that most attract Cubans’ attention. Prices range from 984 pesos ($40 USD in exchange) per person, per night — not counting transportation, which is paid separately and generally comes out to about 600 pesos. continue reading

“The more economical offers are sold out, leaving the most expensive ones,” asserts another customer who, after checking with the tour operators, decided to get in line. “The minimum reservation one can make is for two days, with a money-back guarantee should the offer be cancelled due to the pandemic.”

The agency announced that the Islazul hotel chain prices were going down, therefore “they removed the signs outside that listed the costs,” according to customers who had arrived quite early.

The tourism packages can only be reserved in pesos, at the state-run offices within the country. No option to purchase from abroad exists should a relative or friend wish to gift a vacation to a resident of the Island.

The package prices run from 984 pesos to more than 3,000 per person, per night. (14ymedio)

“Somebody who goes to these things a lot told me that right now those hotels are like voluntary work camps — I don’t know how true that is, we’ll have to wait and hear what people have to say when they come back,” suggests another customer.

Along with the pool and the beach, the principal attraction of stay at the country’s hotels continues being access to a more varied menu than can be found in private homes, which are very affected by food shortages. Even so, various reports gathered by this newspaper warn of stricter regulations governing these “all-included” packages.

“They’re only allowing one heavy meal at lunch and dinner, while only a part of breakfast is included as a buffet item — the rest has to be ordered à la carte, such as cheese, egg dishes, sausages, and yogurt,” shared a Matanzas resident, speaking with 14ymedio after purchasing two nights at a Gaviota hotel in Varadero.

The woman, who claims to take such a trip annually (“except for 2020, because of the pandemic”), says that the hotel guests “act crazy” in the dining room. “When the servers bring out beer, the people stampede to get in line like they do at stores.” In her view, the food shortages affecting the country are evident “because the menu offerings are more limited and the amounts are smaller.” In any case, she observes, the getaway is still “enjoyable after so many months of being cooped up.”

In other parts of the country, such as Matanzas, since early May only residents of that province have been allowed to purchase packages for various hotels in Varadero*. At that tourist hub, the Island currently welcomes thousands of Russian vacationers, thanks to connections re-established in mid-April between Russia and Cuba, including seven weekly flights.

Meanwhile, some Matanzas businesses have offered discounts to Cuban customers who book before 31 May. Similar offers are available from Havanatur in Holguín, with a 10% discount for the Playa Costa Verde hotel, if the package is purchased by 30 June for stays between 1 July and 15 September.

In Mexico, the Vagamundos agency, which works with the Viva Aerobus airline, as of 7 May began promoting tourism packages to Varadero. A few hotels included in this promotion are also ones in the summer domestic tourism campaigns in Cuba, such as Kawama, Villa Tortuga, and Los Delfines.

Although no specific departure city is identified, tourists could book between four and six nights between 1 June and 31 December, 2021. Rates for four nights run from 784 to 1,186 dollars, with Tuesday and Saturday departures.

The packages include proof of Covid-19 vaccination three days prior to departure from Mexico, a health-check fee, ground transportation to the hotel, and travel insurance. The packages are available to “tourists or Cuban residents of other countries, and they may not depart from the tourist hub,” according to the agency. In addition, “family members will be allowed in the hotel as of the second day” as long as they show proof of a prior negative Covid-19 test and have booked their stay in advance.

In early March, Taíno Tours — a subsidiary of Havanatur — also offered tours departing from Mexico of between 200 and 400 dollars per week at Varadero hotels. These are “therapeutic” packages designed to “prevent diseases and health problems,” with treatments that include Interferon, PrevenHo-Vir, and Biomodulin-T — pharmaceutical products promoted by the Cuban authorities since the start of the pandemic to prevent coronavirus and other infections. However, according to independent analyses, these products have no proven scientific consistency.

*Translator’s Note: Varadero is in Matanzas province.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

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The Most Closely Watched Patient in the World

Members of State Security patrol the hospital where Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is admitted. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 26 May 2021 — It is easy to spot them: they wear their hair short and closely observe everyone who passes near the Calixto García Hospital in Havana. They are the members of the State Security who patrol the hospital where the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, the most closely watched patient in the world, has been admitted since May 2. Since he was taken to the hospital by State Security, he has only been seen through crude, highly edited videos that the political police themselves disseminate.

Otero Alcántara’s friends insist on speaking directly with him but they have not been allowed to visit him, nor does the artist have access to a telephone to communicate without intermediaries. The days are accumulating and the official version is becoming more and more untenable, according to which, after more than a week on a hunger and thirst strike in protest of the repression, this 33-year-old Havanan arrived at the hospital in perfect condition and with some enviable health indicators.

If he is in good physical shape, why has he been held there for more than two weeks? What is really happening in the long days that the artist spends between the four walls of a hospital room? All the answers that come to mind when asking such questions are, to say the least, disturbing. The official medical apparatus’s complicity with the repression has a long history on this Island. The publication of medical records of dissidents in the official media without consulting them, and the confinement in asylums of people who protested peacefully in public places are part of this worrying collusion. continue reading

If, to that, is added the strict surveillance operation that surrounds the Calixto García Hospital since Otero Alcántara’s arrival at one of its pavilions and the arrest of several activists who have tried to get closer, then the concerns grow even more. Among those who could gain access to the place, surrounded by some protection, are the most important figures of the Catholic Church, members of the foreign diplomatic corps and foreign media correspondents whose job it is to report what is happening on the island. But none have done so.

It is unknown so far if there have been efforts by any of them to access the room where the artist spends his days, but it is most likely that most of these bishops, ambassadors and accredited reporters have weighed the cost of making a request of that nature to the Cuban authorities. For the moment, their paralysis suggests that they have measured the price of interceding or reporting on the situation in Otero Alcántara and, after evaluating the pros and cons, they have chosen to keep their distance and not bother Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution.

While the accomplices are silent and the undecided remain in the shadows, the life of a man who until recently was pure energy may be falling over the precipice into a dark abyss. The irreverent artist who organized an independent art biennial, protested the removal of the bust of a communist leader and carried the Cuban flag over his body for several days, now looks quiet and bony in the images filtered by the ruling party: a patient with a dull gaze dull and debilitated body.

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Little by Little, The Dollar is Imposed on Neighborhood Stores in Cuba

Every day, the list of state foreign exchange businesses grows. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 21 May 2021 — One day, they close due to a supposed renovation or the need to take inventory, and weeks later they open in another currency. That is the story of many neighborhood stores that have gone from selling in Cuban pesos to offering their products in freely convertible currency (MLC), a dollarization that spreads throughout Cuba.

The list of these state businesses grows every day. This transformation causes discomfort among the population, who perceive the change with a feeling of economic instability and monetary discrimination, but the process seems unstoppable for the authorities, thirsty to collect foreign currency at any cost.

The El Bimbón ice cream parlor, located at the intersection of Infanta and Manglar streets, in Havana, is an example of this reconversion. Until recently, the place had an attached store that sold basic necessities in pesos, but today, to be able to acquire its poor catalog of merchandise, payment must be made in dollars. continue reading

This transformation causes discomfort among the population, who perceive the change with a feeling of economic instability and monetary discrimination, but the process seems unstoppable for the authorities

“I’m the last in line, but I warn you that this store is in dollars now,” a woman in her 70s clarified this Thursday to a customer who approached the line. Inside the premises, the offer was very limited: tomato sauce, pasta, chopped meat and frozen chicken. A few months ago, more or less the same merchandise was sold in pesos.

Faced with the avalanche of complaints about the social differences that deepen these markets, the Minister of Economy, Alejandro Gil, tried to calm things down last December and assured that the opening of foreign currency stores for the sale of food and hygiene products was “a social justice and socialism decision”.

“An undersupplied market does not attract foreign currency,” the Minister explained then, referring to what many Cubans have classified as “monetary apartheid” that divides society between those who have dollars to buy products in these shops and those who must comply with the network of stores in national currency.

A few weeks ago, the El Bimbón store was closed, allegedly because several workers tested positive for the coronavirus. Days of rumors concluded with the store reopening, but this time with somewhat more assorted shelves and merchandise exclusively for sale in MLC.

After the reopening of several stores, merchandise is sold exclusively at MLC. (14ymedio)

“Now, to buy chicken or chopped meat, I have to walk at least 12 blocks and, on top of that, stand in an endless line, and I’m no longer feeling healthy enough to be doing this,” another customer complained this week. The store is a few meters from a multi-family building known in the neighborhood as “Fame and Applause” because it is home to artists and television presenters.

“All those people who appear in the official media live right here and have not said a word about this injustice,” laments Mateo, a 67-year-old retiree who lives on nearby Amenidad Street. “Since this store switched to foreign currency, the whole neighborhood is hanging on by its fingernails, but these people don’t say anything, they continue parade their faces in the news in order to support and applaud the Government”.

In mid-October, the State-run daily Granma published that the country “will not dollarize its economy” and that the stores in MLC “are necessary, but temporary”. In the article, the official organ of the Communist Party quoted Minister Gil, who assured that the monetary system “is thinking” for Cuba “to work with a single currency: the Cuban peso.”

Raúl Castro himself, in his report to the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party, acknowledged that “the stores in MLC were created to encourage remittances from abroad”. However, it does not seem that their end is near, to the contrary.

A few blocks from Infanta and Manglar Streets, on the corner of Santa Marta, another market has been closed for months. A rumor has reached the residents of the place that, when it reopens, its sales will be in dollars. “There’s a store 20 meters from the entrance to my house, but I still have to travel one kilometer to buy a piece of chicken, it is not easy,” says a neighbor.

Something similar happens in the Panamericana Aranguren store, in El Cerro, the epicenter of lines and hubbub: it has been closed for more than a week, supposedly due to an outbreak of the virus among its workers. Neighbors fear that it will reopen with an assorted stock, but in the new mode of sale in foreign currencies.

Neighbors fear that the Panamericana Aranguren store will reopen with an assorted stock, but in the new mode of sale in foreign currencies. (14ymedio)

“I asked the delegate of the Popular Power and she told me that this issue had not been discussed at last Monday’s meeting, but that, even they did not have that information because those things came from higher up,” complains a neighbor. “Sometimes I think of Cuba as a very tall building and that our leaders live in the clouds.”

“There isn’t one hardware store left that does not sell in dollars in this country. The one on Infanta and Desagüe streets previously had a varied array in convertible pesos, but now, even to buy a valve, an elbow joint or a screw you have to go with the blessed little MLC card”, comments the worker of a private cafeteria across from the store La Especial.

“Today they put up water pressurizers for sale at La Cubana (previously called Feíto y Cabezón) and no one can even enter the store: they allow 50 people a day in to buy and on top, there’s a limit of one pump per card,” warned a frustrated buyer at full volume who ended up returning on foot through Reina Street when he saw the long line in front of one of the most important hardware stores in the capital.

Not a year has passed since their opening, and the stores that sell food and hygiene products in foreign currency are already going through a crisis

Not only do long lines and the inability to pay in national currency mark these stores. Not a year has passed since their opening, and the stores that sell food and cleaning products in foreign currency are already going through a crisis. Supply shortages and very long lines mark the days in the most criticized shops in the country, the only ones, however, that still have more than a dozen products on their shelves.

Given their elitist nature, the markets in MLC provide a new modus vivendi to thousands of Cubans who have magnetic cards in foreign currency. They buy grains, meat and dairy products, hardware, furniture and preserves that they then resell in the informal market. Eager customers pay to not wait in long lines, to avoid COVID-19 contagion.

“Lines after lines are in dollars, but with service as if they were in Cuban pesos”, a man lamented this Thursday upon exiting a market in MLC on Galiano Street. “No matter what currency you pay with, the disaster is the same.” In the lines, under the sun, some customers nodded, while others preferred to look away.

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