14ymedio – Page 316 – Translating Cuba

14ymedio’s Faces of 2020: Alejandro Gil, Minister of Economy

Alejandro Gil, Minister of Economy, in one of his many appearances on the Roundtable TV program.

14ymedio, Havana, 26 December 2020 — Almost unknown when Miguel Díaz-Canel appointed him Minister of Economy and Planning of Cuba, he has become a key man on the island in a year in which the pandemic has finished sinking an economy that was already in a coma.

Of the same generation as the president, Alejandro Gil has always been a civil servant and held the position of vice minister when the octogenarian Ricardo Cabrisas was in charge of the portfolio.

From his personal life it is known that he is the brother of Cuban television presenter Vicky Gil, now a resident of Spain, who has described the minister in his social networks as “a brilliant, simple, dedicated, studious, intelligent and self-sacrificing man” who “lives with his family in the same dilapidated apartment as always. He does not benefit from his position. He only lives to work and to support a dying economy. He changed his life of privilege in England as manager of the mixed company Seguros Caudal to return to Cuba and work from dawn to dusk without perks or comforts. “

Whether or not this is the case, Cubans have seen him recite the official discourse without any news of the great deal that could be expected for a man at the helm of the economy at a key moment. The most far-reaching reforms carried out this year, with monetary unification at the head, have been reserved for Marino Murillo, while he has been in charge of minimizing criticism of the expansion of foreign currency stores, which since this year sell food and personal hygiene and cleaning products, to the annoyance of citizens.

In May he dared to spill the beans at a meeting of the Council of Ministers in which he admitted the seriousness of the crisis. His words were picked up by the official press, which was forced to withdraw the article, letting the orthodox version of avoiding pessimism prevail.

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14ymedio’s Faces of 2020: Ruhama Fernández, Youtuber

The young ‘youtuber’ Ruhama Fernández knew that she was banned from leaving the country when she went to get her passport. (Facebook/Ruhama Fernández)

Ruhama Fernández became known in March, when she won the contest for influencers organized by the ‘Red Cuban Power’ platform, in the category “future society, dreams for Cuba.”

On her YouTube channel, the 21-year-old former medical student from Santiago de Cuba talks about political and social issues, always from a critical point of view towards the regime.

After winning the award she was a victim of harassment by State Security. Just one month later, she was summoned by the police in her hometown and, in July, the authorities forced the interruption of the internet service she received through an informal network managed by one of her neighbors. The police visited the neighbor and threatened to cancel all her service if she continued to facilitate the connection for Fernández.

When she went to get her passport to travel to the United States, where her parents live, in August, she discovered that she is regulated – the island’s authorities euphemism for being banned from traveling – for reasons of “public interest” and was prohibited from leaving the country.

In recent months, the authorities have continued to summon her frequently. In one of her last interrogations, in early November, she reported that a State Security officer sexually harassed her. “Do you know how beautiful you are to be involved in that?” the agent told her, Fernández said, disgusted.
Her case, reported by the independent media, was put forward by Human Rights Watch (HRW) as an example of the harassment to which the Cuban government is subjecting influencers , who have become a new target of repression on the island.

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14ymedio’s Faces of 2020: Pedro Junco, Writer from Camaguey

Pedro Junco López was expelled from the Cuban Writers and Artists Union in August (Courtesy)

Pedro Armando Junco (b. Camagüey, 1947), was one of the most successful writers and intellectuals in Cuba. But as he became more belligerent in his political demonstrations, his luck changed, to the point of being expelled from the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac), to which he had belonged for dozens of years and which had distinguished him with the National David Prize in 1987 for his book La furia de los vientos (The Fury of the Winds).

As early as 2015, Junco began to commit himself with more of an emphasis on politics. That year, his son, the rocker Pedro Mandy Junco, was murdered in an unfortunate event that led the author to become involved in a campaign in favor of tougher penalties for this type of crime in Cuba.

But the radical change came this year, when he addressed an open letter to Miguel Díaz-Canel in which he lamented the sale of food and hygiene products in stores in freely convertible currency and claimed the right to question political decisions without being branded as enemy, as should happen in a democratic country.

The text annoyed, according to the author, due to its wide repercussions, which led to his expulsion from Uneac. But that was only the first step. Junco then began to sponsor a literary club that was held in August and September, not without problems, since in the second meeting a woman participant backed out, a sign that the intellectual did not know and did not want to see.

The suspension of the third meeting was already accomplished. An official telephoned one of the guests to warn him that it was best not to attend. Although Junco decided to go ahead, he was summoned by the authorities and told that the event was not going to take place. A new demonstration that censorship does not stop even with those who once were the standard bearers of culture.

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14ymedio’s Faces of 2020: Francisco Duran, Director of Epidemiology

Francisco Durán has been the visible face of Covid in Cuba, as well as the strategist of epidemiological decisions.

14ymedio, Havana, 26 December 2020 — Originally from Santiago de Cuba, the person in charge of leading the response to Covid-19 in Cuba seemed predestined to be a doctor by family tradition, since he is the son of a psychiatrist and a stomatologist.

He graduated in Medicine in Havana in 1975 and began his professional work at the Military Hospital of Camagüey, although it was not until 1980 that he began to specialize in the field that he commands today. Then he began his work in the Provincial Budget Unit of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Santiago de Cuba, where he ended up being the deputy director.

In 1991 he took charge of the AIDS Sanatorium, and in 1994 he was appointed rector of the Higher Institute of Medical Sciences of the Province of Santiago de Cuba, of which he was the director of Health until 2014. In 2018 he was elected national director of Epidemiology of the Ministry, which has led him to be the person responsible and the visible face of the fight against the pandemic on the Island.

With Durán at the helm, Cuba has managed to successfully emerge from a disease that has cost the lives of millions of people arund the world, according to some experts due to a combination of factors that especially relate to prevention rather than the treatment of those affected. The widespread primary care, epidemiological surveillance, the early closure of borders and the ease of limiting public liberties have contributed to the good official data.

On the negative side, Durán has had to face criticism from those who have rejected his constant appeals to responsibility and individual fault in a public health problem.

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Pork Available with Ration Book, Stamp and ID Card

A line in Havana on Tuesday to buy pork. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, December 23, 2020 — “Three hours in line for a couple of pounds of pork is crazy. I have never waited in line to buy pork. They used to bring it to my house from Cienfuegos but, since the pandemic started, not anymore,” laments Teresa Crespo on Monday afternoon before she left the line at the market on 17th and K streets in Vedado where, for three days, the state has been selling the product there for forty pesos a pound.

“I waited in line because this year I wanted to have a proper [holiday] meal and there’s no other way to do that. You have to bring your ration book and your ID card. And when you buy it, they stamp your hand so you can’t come back and buy more,” she said.

The coordinator of provincial government programs, Julio Martinez, admitted to official media outlets that, although they are “very far from meeting public demand” they have created various networks to sell fresh and smoked pork, cured sausages, other meats, frozen fish and “a level of beer” in a controlled way. continue reading

He also said the items could be purchased from December 20th to 31st, from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, “in an unrestricted but controlled manner,” Buyers are required to present a ration book and ID card. The goal, he said, is to limit each household to one purchase in order to avoid hoarding.

With Christmas and New Year’s Eve just around the corner and the country facing severe food shortages, many family members leave home early in the morning in search of these commodities, hoping to get them before supplies run out. In some neighborhoods people wait in lines several kilometers long.

“The worst thing about it is I get in line without a guarantee that I’ll even be able to buy anything,” says one customer. “It’s nerve wracking. My neighbor waited in line for four hours and left empty-handed.”

The situation is the same in neighborhoods throughout the city, including Central Havana. “At the moment I’m in a line that’s full of police and they don’t allow photos. But it’s very crowded. They’re also giving out cases of beer but you have to return the empty bottles,” a young man told this reporter.

“Before, if you wanted to buy something at this price, between forty and forty-five pesos, all you had to do was go to the market and, presto, the meat was in your bag, ready to take home. Not anymore. Now you have to wait in a very long line,” says a retiree from the same area.

“What’s bad for me is that they’re not selling it at neighborhood stores. They’ve set up a couple of places in different areas and it’s difficult for older people who live alone to get there to buy it,” the woman said.

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Cuban Police Seize Seven Tons of Meat Products in an Illegal Mini-industry in Matanzas

The supplier of the business was a driver from the Construction Services Company in Varadero. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Havna, 25 December 2020 — A mini-industry that was dedicated to the sale of meat and the production of sausages was dismantled by the police in the municipality of Jovellanos in the province of Matanzas, according to Cuban Television. In the operation, seven tons of meat products were seized.

The supplier of the business was a driver from the Construction Services Company in Varadero who is in provisional prison. The objective of the precautionary measure is to find others involved in the criminal network, the official media reported.

Although no details were given about the owners of the mini-industry or how many people worked there, it was learned that they did not have a license to carry out the activity and they are being prosecuted for the crime of illicit economic activity. continue reading

Those responsible for the business bought some meats at a lower price and then resold them, an official from the Interior Ministry said in the report. They also did this with chicken, a product of which 162 imported boxes were seized.

Among the violations that were detected and that were reported by the criminal investigator in charge of the case, is the theft of electricity for not having a meter installed. The debt with the Electric Company for the electricity they used without paying amounts to more than 700,000 pesos.

The police also seized equipment from the mini-industry and several bags of polyphosphate that were used in the manufacture of the sausages.

For some months now, the official media have been publishing information related to criminal acts in state institutions or that involve the participation of their officials and workers. A new way of reporting robberies to the State itself, which in other times were kept out of the official press.

This Wednesday, the National Television Newscast reported that the Police detained four workers from the Lactea Company in Holguín province for stealing 1,336 kilograms of industrial cheese to sell in the informal market.

At the beginning of the week in the same space it was learned that several Aerovaradero workers were arrested for an alleged crime of theft and misappropriation, in a new episode within the Government’s strategy of showing its “relentless fight against corruption.”

This end of year, meat products are among those with the highest demand, highest prices and the greatest shortage in Cuba. The authorities have tried to alleviate this deficit by selling pork at subsidized prices but the distribution of the limited supply has brought long lines, crowds and fights.

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Cuban Professor Harassed by Political Police Manages to Make His Walk ‘For Freedom’

Physics professor Pedro Albert Sánchez was able to carry out his peaceful walk this Thursday. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 26 December 2020 — Physics professor Pedro Albert Sánchez was able to make his peaceful walk this Thursday “in honor of freedom” from the sculpture dedicated to the Knight of Paris, in Old Havana, to the El Quijote park in El Vedado, after the last Sunday when he was detained for 24 hours after launching the call.

“As I had promised, I made my walk in honor of the freedom of expression of all of us who feel excluded from this regime. Despite not being interrupted while I was walking, I did notice a lot of tension around,” Sánchez commented on his Facebook account.

Internet users responded to Sánchez with words of support and encouragement. “Professor, I hope there will be more walks and that you will do them accompanied by those who identify with your ideas. We have only one life and we deserve to live it with dignity,” said a profile who identified himself as “all Cubans.” continue reading

Other commentators congratulated the professor on the initiative and recommended that he take special care in case of possible reprisals that the Cuban political police may take against him and his family.

“I can even say that someone recorded me, the question would be which side is that person on, whether on the side of freedom or repression,” the professor inquired. “My position before the political police remains the same, I have no accounts to render to injustice and to them as human beings I tell them that the security of the State does not depend on the abuse of power they commit, but on the dignity with which they carry out their work.”

Sánchez also referred to the confiscation of his mobile phone during his arrest: “Those bunglers taking a phone from an old man who wants to tell four truths added to everything they have done for more than 60 years that does not guarantee the security of the State, which guarantees is the absolutization of the power of the elite.”

“My mission is to demonstrate as long as I have the strength that what they are doing is not for the good of the Cuban people, they are guaranteeing the power of an elite that uses the people as hostages. I, like many Cubans, wish to safeguard the true conquests of our people and not the nonsense of the elite.”

The 62-year-old professor was arrested last Sunday for calling for a peaceful walk in Havana demanding freedom of the press and expression. He was not heard from again until the police decided to release him. “They took away his phone, the only thing he has to communicate with and without the chance of having another one. He is already at home, but in solitary confinement,” his former student Ileana Medina said at the time.

Shortly before the arrest, Sánchez, who does not consider himself an opponent, released a video from John Lennon Park in which he called for the unity of people “excluded from socialist society” and asked the president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, “to be responsible for a situation that could turn dangerous.”

In his message, Sánchez demanded the immediate mobilization of “those who understand this, those who want to feel themselves to be civic human beings even though they are apolitical. This is the beginning of a process, but not 40 years from now, when my granddaughter is 15 years old, no, it is for now.”

The teacher had previously released a video from his home in which he said he felt a lot of pressure, but was not afraid; and he demanded the help of the press to spread what he considers “the truth of what is happening,” in addition to calling the State repudiation rallies state terrorism. “If they think they are doing those things for the love of the people, for the love of all society, they are making love to us by force.”

Sánchez, in another video published this Wednesday on this Facebook profile, said that if necessary, on 31 December there would be another walk for freedom on the Island.

The professor’s arrest was one more case among the many arbitrary arrests made by the political police lately. Following the hunger strike organized in November by various artists to demand the release of rapper Denis Solís for the crime of “contempt,” most of these young people are forcibly confined to their homes and immediately detained every time they try to go out.

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Cuban Priest Censures Leaders Who ‘Cling to Outdated Ideas, Already Obsolete’

Father Maikel Gómez said that “the freedom of the children of God”… “can never be coerced, much less conditioned.” (Facebook)

14ymedio, Lorey Saman, Mexico, 26 December 2020 — The voices of Cuban priests have made themselves heard with great force in recent months. This December 24, as Christmas was being celebrated, Deacon Maikel Gómez, from the Parish of San Juan Bosco, in Havana, gave a homily in which he reflected on freedom within the Island.

“Our society today needs the touch of love, a love that unites and not disunites, a love that joins together and not separates,” said the Catholic father.

“We do not have the right to say that our streets are for some or for others, our streets belong to everyone, to all of us who were born here, wherever we are,” said the priest amid a growing official campaign of stigmatization against critics of the system. continue reading

Gomez affirmed that progress could not be made if they continue to “build walls that Christ once demolished for you”… “We need to transform our hearts, we need to transform our thinking, and this will be the only way to transform our society, a society based on Christ, founded on love, understanding and solidarity among all.”

He added that, “Jesus Christ, the eternal Word of the Father,” came to “a Cuba ripped apart, in the midst of sadness and uncertainties, in the midst of poverty and pain, in the midst of a pandemic that has claimed the lives of many,” but also he comes “to guide us with his light in the midst of so much darkness and uncertainty.”

The priest affirmed that the “Word of the Lord” is present “in response to the desperate cry of a people who, like Israel, walk in a desert led by others who do not want to see the light and cling to outdated ideas, now obsolete.”

During the homily, which was shared on social networks by the Center for Coexistence Studies, Gómez said that “the freedom of the children of God” “can never be coerced, much less conditioned.”

In addition, he made reference to the religious censorship that has been experienced on the Island: “His birth [of Jesus] today echoes once again of the need for love that still exists among all, the need for love and love of God, love that at some point they tried to erase from our minds, and that, despite all these years, even when the Church was decimated, threatened and intimidated, that love continued to beat and the fact of our presence here confirms my words.”

Quoting the Cuban philosopher and educator José de la Luz y Caballero, he affirmed that it will be necessary to give up training “purely mechanical and routine men,” and to achieve a legion of thinkers with the necessary capacity for reflection on existential issues, including social problems.

Deacon Maikel Gómez’s reflections come a few days after the Cuban Catholic bishops, in their traditional Christmas message , included a call “for dialogue and negotiation between those who have different opinions and criteria”, amid strong smear campaigns of the Government against its critics.

At the end of November, more than 200 priests, religious and lay people residing in Cuba joined the wave of solidarity with the San Isidro Movement and the activists on hunger strike and signed a letter asking the Government not to let them die. They requested that the event not end in a fatal outcome, “to be consistent with the demands of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which proclaims the dignity of every human being as an absolute value.”

On the other hand, among the religious who have spoken individually about the situation on the island in recent months are Father Alberto Reyes, parish priest of the church of San Jerónimo, in Esmeralda, Camagüey, who posted on his Facebook wall a text in which he lamented the fear and oppression that Cubans suffer; and the priest Jorge Luis Pérez Soto, parish priest of San Francisco de Paula, in the municipality of Diez de Octubre, in Havana, who claimed that “the Church does have to get involved in politics.”

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14ymedio’s Faces of 2020: Reinerio, Repressor

Reinerio appeared before the public for the first time on November 22. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 24 December 2020 — It took several days to identify him and only his first name is known.

When he appeared before the public for the first time, in a video broadcast on social networks on November 22, it was an individual in a red T-shirt with a homemade white cloth mask who was haranguing some twenty people to get them to shout slogans against anyone who dared to approach Havana’s Central Park, where a spontaneous demonstration had been called in solidarity with the members of the San Isidro Movement (MSI) who were, at that time, on hunger strike and locked up in their headquarters on Damas Street 955, in Old Havana.

“Viva Fidel,” “let the scum go [i.e., leave the country],” “let them go,” were the slogans from the jeering crowd, especially against the journalist Maylin Alonso, a correspondent for the Agence France Presse, whom this individual harassed to the point of almost hitting her, as well as her cameraman, Yamil Lage.

The “man in the red shirt,” we later learned, is called Reinerio and is an official of the Communist Party in Old Havana. According to Cuballama, he is in charge of staffing “the public health office.”

As a result of the demonstrations generated by the MSI, including the protest of hundreds of artists in front of the Ministry of Culture on November 27, acts of repudiation have again proliferated. Both the San Isidro headquarters and some of the artists who were at the meeting with Vice Minister Fernando Rojas have not yet recovered from the harassment by State Security.

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14ymedio’s Faces of 2020: The Independent Artists of Cuba’s San Isidro Movement

The regime did not calculate the silent support that the San Isidro Movement has among young people and did not believe in the ability to convene and organize social networks. (MSI)

14ymedio, Havana, 24 December 2020 – The San Isidro Movement, born just two years ago, has shaken the political situation in Cuba in the last weeks of 2020 by crossing borders and putting the regime in a bind of incalculable dimensions.

At the end of 2018, a group of independent artists who rejected Decree 349 – a law through which the Government sought to regulate the arts sector by making cultural work outside the state orbit de facto impossible – formed this movement in the Havana neighborhood that gave the movement its name.

The collective took center stage with a protest held in November to demand the release of one of its members, Denis Solís, sentenced to eight months in prison for the alleged crime of contempt. Several members of the group began a hunger and thirst strike, which some were able to maintain for more than a week until the headquarters of the Movement, where they were gathered, was raided by the political police, who detained them for several hours.

In solidarity with them, in addition to that they have found outside of Cuba, a group of at least 200 people demonstrated in Havana in an unusual protest that managed to begin a failed dialogue with the cultural authorities. The harassment of the Movement continues, with arrests, acts of repudiation and accusations of terrorism, but they have lit the fuse of a dream to open a new horizon for the opposition in 2021.

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Plural and With a Mask: The Face Of Cuba in 2020

The 14 Faces of 2020 according to 14ymedio (Collage)

14ymedio, Havana, 24 December 2020 — This has been a year dominated by the pandemic, but the extreme situations that have caused the coronavirus, the confinement and the economic crisis that Cuba is going through have also been a part of the phenomena and figures that have shaped the face of the 12 months now coming to an end. They are the protagonists of a 2020 that is plural and wearing a mask.

In this list are included those groups or individuals who led, promoted or shaped the most important events that took place in Cuba in the artistic and sports scenes, in social activism, science, the news media and even in the official structure. Without them, the course of this year on the Island would have been different.

This could be a list of dozens or hundreds of individuals, but we had to choose and the 14ymedio Newsroom has selected these 14 names to illustrate the key moments of the most difficult year Cubans have experienced in decades.

1. San Isidro Movement

2. Reinerio, Repressor

3. Francisco Durán García, National Director of Epidemiology

4. Pedro Junco, intellectual from Camaguey

5. Javier Larrea Formoso, animal welfare activist

6. Alberto Reyes and Jorge Luis Pérez Soto, the warrior priests

7. Ruhama Fernández, Youtuber

8. Roberto Pantoja, chess player

9. Camila Acosta, freelance journalist

10. Rojas and Rojas, the two faces of Cuba

11. Cimafunk, singer

12. Alejandro Gil, Minister of Economy

13. Manrique Larduet Bicet, gymnast

14. Silverio Portal, opponent

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Pesos Instead of Dollars: A Bad Deal for Cuban Employees of Foreign Firms

Until now employees of foreign firms had the benefit of receiving a portion of their salaries in dollars. (Accor)

14ymedio, Havana, 22 December 2020 — Beginning in January, Cuban workers employed by foreign companies will no longer receive part of their salary in dollars. After currency unification takes effect, they will be paid only in Cuban pesos. Rodrigo Malmierca, Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, made the announcement on Monday during a broadcast on State TV’s Roundtable program while discussing the impact of the monetary transition.

According to Malmierca, the move will be a win for everyone. Workers, he pointed out, will earn more in Cuban currency and foreign firms will spend less of their hard currency while paying workers higher salaries. The question is: How many workers on the island will prefer a lot of Cuban pesos over a fistful of dollars? Heretofore, a salary in hard currency has been of the biggest incentives to work for a foreign company.

“Let’s suppose the worker in question is being paid 500 dollars, with an exchange rate of two to one. Now, maybe it won’t be 500 dollars anymore. It will be Cuban pesos instead. He will have fewer dollars but maybe the worker will get a much more attractive salary. This means that, in terms of labor costs, foreign investors will benefit since employers will be able to pay workers more while spending less foreign currency,” Malmierca explained. continue reading

Companies currently operating outside the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM) use a special exchange rate. The dollar component of an employee’s salary is paid to a state intermediary, that gives the worker two pesos for each dollar. After currency conversion takes effect, the worker will receive twenty-four pesos for each dollar.

In contrast, the conversion rate for workers in the ZEDM is different. For the last six years the rate has been ten pesos for each dollar of an employee’s pay.

Curiously, Malmierca did not mention the so-called hard currency stimulation fund, which will allows a foreign employer to give monthly bonuses in dollars to every employee, an added benefit that for years has been the most attractive component of employee’s income.

In 2014 the payment system was restructured for private/public partnerships in Cuba. Law 118, which governs such partnerships, allows foreign companies to set up “convertible peso stimulation funds,” a situation that might change judging from Almierca’s comments.

“My salary as a chef is valued at 600 dollars a month,” says an employee at a joint-venture hotel in Havana who prefers to remain anonymous. “Until now I was getting 1,200 Cuban pesos through the Cuban employment agency plus about 350 dollars that the Spanish partner gave me as incentive pay.”

Though his salary will exceed 14,000 Cuban pesos, the chef fears that the loss of hard currency income will leave him worse off. “The price of everything will go up and all l’ll have is Cuban pesos, which I won’t be able to use in hard currency stores or exchange for dollars when prices on the black market rise.”

“What will happen is that an investor will now have to pay more because he’ll have to slip someth extra under the table,” he believes. With increases in the cost of living expected on January 1, “foreign businesspeople will have to motivate their employees better because otherwise they’ll plunder the hotels [where they work].”

According to Elías Amor, a Cuban economist based in Spain, it is unlikely that the changes the government has announced will benefit foreign-owned businesses even though they will be paying higher salaries with less hard currency.

“Malmierca should know that salaries do not increase as a result of government decisions but because of increased productivity. Salary-related decisions such as those he has announced do just the opposite,” he asserts. “And changes adopted during a period of economic instability due to the pandemic will not bring about anything good,” he adds, “The primary advantages of being paid by foreign companies is coming to an end.”

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Young Cuban is Put on Trial for Refusing to Serve on Active Military Service

Oscar Kendri Fial Echavarría, 19, will be tried this Tuesday in Santiago de Cuba. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 21 December 2020 — Oscar Kendri Fial Echavarría, 19, will be tried this Tuesday in Santiago de Cuba, accused of “disobedience” for not enlisting in the Active Military Service (SMA). The young man claims that carrying and using weapons goes against his religious principles as a Christian.

“The sector chief brought a summons to my house. He came in and started talking loudly and saying that if I didn’t show up, he was going to put me in jail. I told him that I couldn’t do military service because of my principles as a Christian,” Fial Echavarría told Youtuber Ruhama Fernández.

The young man, a resident of the Contramaestre municipality in the province of Santiago de Cuba, had his first encounter with the police on December 11 when he was summoned and then detained for almost 24 hours. To be released, his family had to pay a bail of 1,000 Cuban pesos. continue reading

Regarding his arrest, the man from Santiago said that they made him sign a paper without knowing what it said. In addition, he spoke of the harassment and offenses of the head of the sector, whom he denounced to the ombudsman of the Ministry of the Interior. According to his account, the policeman was reprimanded.

“If we must respect all the laws as we do, they must also respect the principles of my son,” said the young man’s father during a video recorded by Youtuber Ruhama Fernández, denouncing that his son has been harassed on several occasions for his decision .

Fial Echavarría was called for the oral hearing of the trial this December 22 at 8:00 am, as recorded in the official summons that the Ministry of the Interior gave him.

Cuba is one of the thirty countries that maintain compulsory military service. Despite being criticized for their harshness, the authorities have not accepted the professionalization of the military on the grounds that there are limited resources to financially stimulate recruitment.

In October, activist Osmel Rubio Santos was detained for several hours by State Security, a few days after he declared himself a conscientious objector and refused to enlist in the Service. Rubió delivered a letter to the Cotorro Military Committee refusing to enlist. In the document, he explained that he was against taking up arms to defend the communist regime, and that he would only use them to “overthrow the Cuban dictatorship.”

To evade the Service, many young people have attempted for years to inflict some damage on themselves as a way to be declared unfit and also avoid sanction by the Military Prosecutor’s Office. However, in December 2019 that mechanism came to an end because the Government ruled that self-harm would be considered a crime of evasion of military service obligations and would be punished by criminal sanctions.

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The Risks of Working With the Wrong Profile

State Security car guarding the home of independent journalist Mónica Baró. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 22 December 2020 — In one of those sporadic arbitrary arrests that I have come to know at the hands of State Security, one of the agents who was driving me began to insult me in an uncontrolled way, emphasizing that everything I did was motivated by the money received from the empire.

As I am in the habit of not discussing politics with the police, I limited myself to thanking them for their insults, because they made it clear to me that they had the wrong profile of me.

I recall that I gave the example of a boxer instructed by his manager that his next opponent is dangerous with jabs, but as soon as he steps into the ring he receives an uppercut to his jaw that knocks him out.

“Did you understand why having the wrong profile of your opponent is dangerous?” I asked, and he stopped insulting me. continue reading

Since the middle of the last century the best police officers in the world began to develop more advanced investigation techniques. Criminal profilers appeared, whose fundamental objective was to understand the behavior and probable characteristics of the unknown perpetrator of a crime and, incidentally, to find the most appropriate way of questioning suspects.

In the omnipresent KGB of the Soviets and the efficient Stasi of the Germans, patterns to control opponents were developed. The Cuban State Security is indebted to those experiences and today the intelligence services of Venezuela learn from the Cubans.

Unlike common criminals, political opponents do not need to be discovered, but the main divergence between an opponent and a common criminal is that political activities that oppose governments only constitute a crime in dictatorial regimes. The case of spies in the service of a foreign power is another thing altogether, and is punished with harsh penalties in most nations.

Here a phenomenon worth studying takes place. To justify the repression of opponents, they try to identify them as, or at least link them to, the activities of an enemy spy, but it happens that the profiles to investigate some are incompatible to work with the others.

Many times, in the middle of an interrogation, opponents wonder if the state security agent they face on the other side of the table is part of the team that makes the lies or if it is only instructed to repeat them, or even trained to believe them. That officer is a professional, or at least he tries to look like one.

If their victim is not a repeat offender, they may say something like “we know you are a patriot, but they are using you and we want to help you.” If he appears on the list of “notorious counterrevolutionaries,” they show him all their contempt, assure him that “we already know everything” and take to launching more or less veiled threats against him and his family, including the presumed possibility that he or one of his relatives has engaged in some common crime.

As they do not want to identify themselves as “the political police,” they mask their repressive work with dissenting ideas under the guise of watching over the independence of the nation. They act as defenders of the attacked homeland occupying the trench that protects sovereignty.

In a good part of the population, born in the last six decades, it is relatively easy to activate the prejudice that anyone who demonstrates against the system only intends to “hand over the nation to the Yankee imperialists,” or “return to the capitalist past so that yesterday’s exploiters can regain their properties.”

As all prejudice needs a minimum base on which to settle, the evidence supports that the United States Government gave support to Brigade 2506 in the landing at the Bay of Pigs and the supply of arms to the rebels in Escambray. It is enough to visit the Museum of the Revolution to see the list of landowners and owners of confiscated companies who returned to Cuba, they or their children, in the invasion of April 1961 “with the sole purpose of recovering their properties.”

The most recurrent obsessions in trying to make the prejudices inculcated by government propaganda coincide with reality are relationships with foreigners and the sources of money.

The most difficult question to answer is whether the state security agent who detains and interrogates a dissatisfied person is unaware that the main objective of his victim is to recover rights, not property. As among the rights to be recovered is that of being able to own property and to be able to proclaim it freely, the agent interprets it as an incriminating evidence of the intentions of the person being interrogated to destroy the conquests of the Revolution.

Perhaps the most important detail that makes the difference between reality and the profile that State Security forms of political opponents, human rights activists and independent journalists seem insignificant, is that when it comes to presenting them to trial accused of terrorism, enemy propaganda, collaborating with the blockade [US embargo] or a fabricated common crime, it is not a requirement to convince the court, because the judges are part of the plot.

It is as if the manager of a knocked out boxer had previously agreed with the referee who, even with the boxer on the canvas and unconscious, raised his hand to signal he is the winner. Yes, the profile is fake. Who cares?

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Several Cuban Airport Workers Arrested for Theft of Goods

Aerovaradero workers who, according to National Television, stole merchandise. (Capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 22 December 2020 — Several Aerovaradero workers were arrested for an alleged crime of theft and misappropriation, according to Cuban Television, in a new episode within the government’s strategy of showing its “relentless fight against corruption.”

The detainees are part of the ground staff that handles cargo for Aerovaradero, a company specializing in national and international air cargo, and that belongs to the Cuban Civil Aviation Corporation. According to investigations, workers stole household appliances and clothing in collusion with Mercedes-Benz employees.

According to the authorities, the incident emerged from the complaints of the passengers and the affected state companies. The prosecutor in the case explained that those involved in the network marked the loads that were in the dispatch area and mixed them with the loads that they were actually going to declare. continue reading

“Then, taking advantage of the same work flow of the Mercedes-Benz company, which periodically loads its imports, they mixed them to be able to extract them from the airport areas,” he added.

The investigations detected the shortage in the loads and allowed them to recover a part. Among the items stolen were eight air conditioners, televisions, computers, minibars, music equipment and sports shoes for high-performance athletes.

Ariel Matos Fonseca, Aerovaradero’s brigade chief, told state television that they should be more vigilant in their jobs and “more combative towards people who are not doing the right thing.”

With the growing economic crisis, exacerbated by the measures taken by the covid pandemic, thefts of this type have multiplied in recent months. One of the most surprising cases was the operation that discovered, last November in Havana, the theft in a state warehouse of more than 200 tons of rice , hiding it with empty structures behind a facade of real sacks.

A few weeks earlier, in Cienfuegos, the authorities surprised three workers of the Provincial Meat Company stealing 380 kilos of “first-rate” pork, with the alleged objective of reselling it in the informal market.

Other cases occurred, for example, in September, with the theft of two tons of coffee beans in Santiago de Cuba, and in June, with the seizure of an “illegal” shipment of more than 180 bags of onions in Ciego de Ávila.

The dismantling, in September, of a network of exchange office employees and illegal sellers who were engaged in the sale of foreign currency for the acquisition of household appliances was also sounded .

The recurring robberies in Correos de Cuba, denounced by numerous users on social networks, caused the state-owned company to be fed up, which issued a statement a few days ago describing the accusations as “unfair and uncertain.”

Post office workers, says the company, “are, as a rule, honest, humble, hardworking people, dedicated to the work of serving the people and with a high sense of belonging to their organization,” and when events have occurred criminal offenses, “are rigorously investigated, the necessary measures are adopted to prevent their recurrence, disciplinary and administrative measures are applied to those responsible and, when appropriate, they are placed at the disposal of the police and judicial authorities.”

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