Failures of the Cuban Revolution for Di­az Canel: Food Production

Cuban farmers have been hit hard by lack of inputs, fuel shortages and drought. (Flickr / Kuhnmi)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, September 29, 2020 — President Díaz Canel told the Council of Ministers in September that “failure will never be an option for the Revolution.” It’s all well and good for him to think that, even to say it, but when the official communist newspaper says otherwise on a daily basis, it means something is wrong.

Either Díaz Canel is divorced from reality, which is quite likely, or the editors at Granma want to pull the rug out from under him. Or both. That is the way things are at the moment in Cuba, which is incomprehensibly celebrating sixty years of criminal rule by gangsters, who have made life impossible for decent people and forced many of them to flee the country. How the story ends, no one knows, but certainly not well.

That said, an article in Granma undercuts Díaz Canel’s triumphal tone by once again focusing on the failure of country’s agriculture and livestock producers to feed the Cuban people. As usual, Machado Ventura is driving the bandwagon, reminding farm laborers of “the need to work with the sense of urgency demanded by the current situation facing the country.” Slogan after slogan but still no deliveries of food to state-run stores. When a delivery does arrive, a line of customers makes sure it quickly disappears. continue reading

At this point in the story, telling Cuban farm peasants they have to “to work with greater preparedness, tenacity and intelligence to increase production, improve the contracting, marketing and supply systems, and monitor prices and product delivery” seems to me like a tactless insult.

And, as statistics show, the situation is getting worse all the time. Machado Ventura has told farm industry representatives that “going forward, we will only have those foods that we are able to produce.” This is starting to get really ugly. If the only supplies available to people are what is produced domestically, then we are facing an imminent, unstoppable food crisis whose only solution will be aid from United Nations World Food Program.

Communist leaders such as Machado Ventura are incapable of solving the problems that have destroyed Cuba’s once prosperous agricultural sector. They refuse to face reality and cling to what they call “our socialist project,” which has been disastrous for Cuban farming. Díaz Canel should be taking notes.

Machado Ventura’s solution amounts to “producing more with the few resources we have, which means making use of existing reserves, which are widely available and not insubstantial, and getting rid of the inefficiencies that often arise in certain areas.”

Well, let’s see. What resources is he talking about? The agricultural sector accounted for 17% of total employment in 2019 but, because it is burdened with state-owned livestock farms and land rented to tenant farmers who will never own it, productivity is very low. There are certainly resources but what reserves is he talking about when farmers now have to pay for supplies with hard currency?

Can Machado Ventura point to a tenant farmer who earns money from his land while having to submit to the absurdities of the distribution system? We agree that inefficiency has to be rooted out, but that requires transforming the legal system to guarantee property rights so that guajiros can actually own the land they farm and feel motivated to make it grow and prosper. But the communists are oblivious to this reality.

A food crisis is looming and there is only one option. Imports of grain and poultry from the United States must be purchased with cash. Without hard currency to pay for them, talk of food security — what the communists call “food sovereignty” — is just a lot of hot air. And worst of all, no one is making plans to deal with what is coming.

Farms are plagued by low productivity and the dictates of local communist councils. They lack fuel, raw materials, tools, supplies and fertilizer. Farmland is limited, with most of it under the control of the state. Tenant farmers do what they can with the land they lease but they can only do so much. Meanwhile, Machado Ventura continues with his harangues.

The communists are trying to fix the situation by offering guidance to farmers, who know much more than they do about the land, how to make it productive and how to use organic substitutes for hard-to-find fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.

They also know more about rotating crops, making better use of irrigation systems and tapping the entire supply of idle land, including land belonging to shuttered sugar cane refineries, for food production. It is hard to believe that these steps have not have already been taken but land leasing is what it is. It can only do so much.

Cuban farming veers between the impossible and the failure to meet expectations. Idle fields could be made productive if private land ownership was legally possible. Involving local municipalities in this issue is of no use. It is more important to Machado Ventura to “defend the revolution from the furrows” in hopes of providing “the five kilograms of protein a family requires.”

If, of course, that were how things worked. Providing protein without attending to consumer needs — so varied, so different, so complex — along with the collective farm system of the last century, explain the failure of the agricultural and livestock sectors. The latter’s serious failure in particular to meet its targets, both in terms of meat and dairy production, are well-known. Though the problems are by nature quite varied, the problem lies, once again, with the laws governing the sector.

What is Machado Ventura thinking of doing at this point to fix the failures of the agricultural sector? The answer is a slogan to be used by local municipal production and self-sufficiency councils. It involves creating “a broad mass movement of people working in agriculture to sow, clean and cultivate, among other things.” Is this déja vu? Are they once again going to send people out to work in the fields? If so, who, when and how?

A bad idea. It represents a return to the old way of doing things, like the sad days of the 1960s when a Cuban who wanted to leave the country had to first do forced labor in the fields or work as a guard on weekends. Sometimes his children had to do the same as part of the disastrous “school in the countryside” program.

Do Cuba’s officials never get tired of the same old thing? Is it that they have no new ideas? Do they never give any thought to progress or true well-being? Given Machado Ventura’s expressed concern about food shortages in Havana, it is very likely that communist pressure will be brought to bear on the agricultural sector in nearby provinces. But will it be enough?

The failure of the Revolution is all too obvious. Walking around the country like Machado Ventura, counting the acreage to be planted next season and replacing imported raw materials with domestically produced ones are indications of just how totally out of control things have become, and how incapable the Cuban agriculture and livestock sectors are of providing a solution to the nation’s food needs.

“Squeezing juice from the field,” as the veteran communist leader says, will not be achieved under the current communist system. Though the obstacles are great, the problem lies more in ideology and mindset than in reality. The time has come to do something, and the sooner the better.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Biology and Rumors, the Exhausting Cycle of ‘Undeath’

Former President Raúl Castro, in his reappearance on Cuba’s Primetime News. (Screen capture)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Havana, 8 October 2020 – Ever since I can remember I have been aware of cyclical rumors about the health of some figure of power in Cuba. The gossip always starts with a friend or neighbor who claims to have a well-connected relative, someone who is part of the network closest to a senior Party leader, a military man or a government minister whose health has become fragile, very fragile. Then, as the days go by, come the alleged testimonies of those who claim to know that the “great death” has already occurred, while the most daring even claim to have seen the rigid figure inside its coffin.

This cycle of rumors about the death of a public figure reached its paroxysm on this Island during the long period during which the course of the national ship responded to Fidel Castro’s will. The country was so defined by the designs of one man that the act of his breathing could determine everything from international relations to the direction of the economy, from the TV broadcast schedule to the content of school textbooks. This excessive prominence encouraged a thousand and one speculations about his health, and it was a rare year that dozens of whispers were not unleashed about a possible surgical intervention, the deterioration of one of his physical capacities and even his sudden death. continue reading

In the end, after days or weeks of the “rumor” growing to a huge size, he reappeared in his uniform, giving a speech for hours in the rain or crossing the country in a caravan of military jeeps to visit some of his delusional projects. The rumor died down, frustration spread, and the feeling that biology was playing the “joke of eternity” generated despair, annoyance and the desire to escape from so much immobility. Each rumor only brought disappointment and, when the news of his death finally arrived we had to wait to hear it through the official media and from the mouth of his own brother, at the specific moment those “up there” decided to tell us, and without, on that occasion, a single whisper having alerted us ahead of time.

Now, once again we have fallen back into the trap of linking our destiny and our plans to the fact that a one man’s heart keeps beating. In recent days there have been voices that have spoken of the supposed death throes of Raúl Castro and his imminent end. My phone rang several times during the week and on the other side there was always the voice of a friend who was inquiring, who wanted to know if it was true. I responded to all of them with the skepticism of someone who has heard the same story many times and warned them of the possible sudden reappearance of the presumed patient in the official press. “I think this gossip is generated by the powerful themselves, who start the rumor rolling so he can return like a Phoenix,” I remarked.

And I was not wrong.

Undoubtedly, one day the rumor will be true, because the resounding logic of life suggests that there is no other: we are all going to die, even those who have presented themselves to us as immortal and superior. But I refuse to accept that the future life of a nation and the plans of its millions of citizens depend on the continued circulation of blood through the veins of one individual. Betting on biology rather than rebellion or civility seems to me to be an easy and supreme act of social conformity. The question is not whether someone is walking, in bed, or in a coffin; the issue is what are we Cubans going to do to breathe life into a country that is dying in our hands.

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Raul Castro Reappears to Prepare for Cuban Communist Party 8th Congress

The former president wore his olive green suit and a surgical mask in the images on Primetime News. (Screen capture)

14ymedio biggerEFE (via 14ymedio) — The former president and leader of the ruling Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), Raúl Castro, led a meeting of the political organization in which the preparations for its VIII congress, scheduled for April 2021, were addressed, according to a report this Wednesday in the island’s state media.

State television showed images of the meeting — which began on Tuesday and ended yesterday — in which General Raúl Castro, 89, is seen wearing his traditional olive green military uniform and wearing a surgical mask.

The next congress of the PCC is scheduled between April 16 and 19, 2021, as decided last December by the Party’s Central Committee.

The last conclave of Cuban communists was held in April 2016, when Raúl Castro inherited from his brother Fidel (who retired from power 2006 and died in November 2016) the role as first secretary of the party. continue reading

In this VIII Congress, General Castro is expected to pass the leadership of the almighty PCC to the current president, Miguel Díaz-Canel.

This was announced by the youngest of the Castros in April 2018, during his last speech as Cuba’s president before the National Assembly and it will be the first time since its creation that a civilian has led the political organization.

Since leaving the Presidency, Raúl Castro has spaced his public appearances and it is expected that, with the withdrawal from his position at the head of the PCC, he will withdraw from public life, as did his brother, the late Fidel Castro (1926 -2016).

During the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the PCC, a proposal was also presented to update the plan of measures to confront the COVID-19 pandemic on the island, which so far has resulted in 5,898 cases and 123 deaths.

The agenda also included the analysis of several laws pending approval by the National Assembly, among them those relating to the president and vice president of the Republic, and other laws related to the revocation of those elected to the Organs of People’s Power and their organization and operation.

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The Free Hiring of Day Labor Does Not Solve Cuba’s Agricultural Problems

In recent months, Cuban authorities have repeatedly called for increased agricultural production. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana/Miami, 6 October 2020 — Private agricultural producers in Cuba can now legally employ workers who are not licensed as self-employed. This measure formalizes the old practice of hiring day laborers in the fields ‘under the table’ and does not solve the serious problems faced by farmers, according to testimonies collected by 14ymedio.

This type of contracting will be possible “at the peak of harvest, planting, and cultivating work or other activities of a similar nature,” according to a resolution from the Ministry of Labor and Social Security published on September 23 in the Official Gazette.

The measure seeks to “strengthen and improve agricultural production” at a time when the country urgently needs to strengthen agriculture and put more food in the markets. continue reading

“The new measure is correct, but insufficient,” Esteban Ajete, president of the League of Independent Farmers, told 14ymedio. The hiring of temporary labor in times of harvest, he says, has always been a reality and the requirement that day laborers be licensed to work in agriculture as self-employed individuals has almost never been met.

“Now, what was already a reality in the Cuban fields is being accepted as legal.” The activist insists that informal work has been a constant for decades due to the complexity of the previous hiring mechanisms. That, together with the inability of the State to deploy a body of inspectors to review compliance with the above requirements, made the regulations less than useless.

However, the current flexibility has left a bitter taste in the face of the farmers’ impatience to see the solution to other more decisive requirements for agricultural production.

“With this resolution, the contracted workers will no longer be forced to get self-employment licenses or pay personal income taxes and the farmers who hire them will not have to pay these costs either. It is not what we want, but it is something,” says Ajete, who recalls that the abolition of taxes on food producers and processors for ten years is one of the demands of the Without The Countryside There Is No Country campaign, which was initiated this April by the League of Independent Farmers and the Cuban chapter of the Latin American Federation of Rural Women (Flamur).

Among the requests was also that of granting freedom for the production and distribution of products, to set prices according to the market, to import and export directly, and the delivery of permanent property titles to all agricultural producers.

In recent months, Cuba’s national authorities have repeatedly called for increased agricultural production. With the pandemic, the shortage of fruits, vegetables and grains has worsened in a country that imports about 80% of its food needs annually.

The deficient state management of the fields has brought losses of crops that rot without transport to take them to the markets, as well as poor services for the sales of seeds and other inputs to the farmers. From the lack of adequate clothing to work in the fields to the impossibility of buying a tractor, the guajiros lament the neglect of the sector and the few resources they have.

Now, the new resolution indicates that “the employment contract can be concluded verbally for a period that does not exceed ninety days” and establishes that the agricultural producer must guarantee minimum working conditions, including an eight-hour working day, the remuneration cannot be lower than the minimum wage approved in the country in proportion to the actual working time, and the conditions of safety and health at work must be maintained.

But the measure has not been received in the same way by everyone. “Now that agricultural worker, who was already the most fragile link on Cuban farms because he does not have his own land and does the hardest work, will also be more unprotected,” economist Nara Manduley explains to 14ymedio. In her opinion, the farmer who hires a day laborer will be able to evade his salary obligations, as has happened until now.

“What is being done legalizes the job insecurity of a group of people who are vital for food production,” Manduley says. “That is not the way to increase production or to unlock the productive forces,” she adds.

Alfredo Pérez, a tobacco farmer from the La Isleña farm in San Juan y Martínez (Pinar del Río), believes that this measure “legalizes the blind eye they’ve had here going back a long time [because] they never applied the laws they established or imposed fines on those who hired workers without papers, so now everyone can work however they want.”

A farmer from San Antonio de los Baños, who preferred not to be identified, referred to the new regulation saying: “Doing it little by little, this way is not going to lead the the advances they need.  They can’t be so timid. They know they have to open it up so they should do it all at once.”

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

"It wasn’t a cow they killed. It was a girl they raped."

Sexual abuse against minors grew in Cuba by 24% between 2016 and May 2019. (EFE / Archive)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 6 October 2020 — While day after day they carry on about the arrests of re-sellers and “hoarders,” the official media maintain total silence on the rape of a 13-year-old girl by five men in Havana’s El Cotorro municipality.

Not only that, complains the victim’s mother: the Police have released three of the assailants who had been arrested. With the paralysis of many judicial processes due to the coronavirus, the case has not yet reached the courts and the detainees have not been held in pre-trial custody despite the seriousness of the alleged crime.

“It was not a cow that they killed, it was not a robbery from the State or a dealer who is in the street trying to earn for four pesos to eat,” laments the mother of the minor. “It was a girl who was raped, something that is a crime here and everywhere.” continue reading

The events occurred a month ago in that municipality in the province of Havana. According to the mother’s testimony, an adult reached his daughter through the ToDus App and threatened her, forcing her to have sex. “They were many and she was afraid that they would kill her,” the mother says.

It was the grandmother who realized, around midnight, that the girl was missing and went out to look for her. “On the way she saw some guards who were in a sentry box standing guard and she asked them,” she says, full of anger. The agents confirmed that they had seen the girl walking away with a boy. “My mother followed the path that they indicated until she reached a house where she heard music. She looked in and entered, but they hid the girl and pushed my mother out,” she says.

The girl’s grandmother immediately sought help. “I was very scared, because she came home screaming. My husband and my mother left for the scene again.”

There they met a man, whom the daughter indicated as the sixth of those who held her. “He pretended to be the person who rescued my daughter, but he is a shameless man who stared at what they did to her,” says the woman.

That same night, Legal Medicine examined the minor and the family filed a complaint. “They immediately caught three of them, but the other two, who are doing their military service and who were on the run from the unit that day, have not been touched.”

The indignation of the family was on the rise when they learned that a few days later, the three detainees were free. “I went to the Alamar Registry, where these cases are dealt with, to ask why these men are loose, and the instructor told me that they are now under a precautionary measure and that because of the Covid problem everything is paralyzed.”

“I just want justice to be done, because what they did to my daughter was a crime,” she angrily tells 14ymedio.

The mother also complains that her daughter was infected with bacteria during the attack and had to undergo a treatment with antibiotics. In addition, she has also needed psychological help. “To be calm and to be able to sleep, she has to be based on chlordiazepoxide for everything those criminals did to her.”

“I took her to the psychologist with my own resources and I took her to the doctor with my own resources as well, they have not concerned themselves about anything and those criminals are still on the street,” she insists, unable to contain her anger at the lack of interest of the authorities.

The official Cuban media seldom publish these type of crimes against women, but every day reports of this type of violence are denounced by civil society organizations and the independent press of the Island.

Just a few days ago, the Defense Network for Women’s Affairs (Redamu) denounced before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) the lack of specific legislation and reliable data on femicides in Cuba.

Sexual abuse against minors grew in Cuba by 24% between 2016 and May 2019, as confirmed by a government report on the prevention and confrontation of human trafficking and the protection of victims, which indicates that every four hours a minor in Cuba suffers a sex crime. In the last of the years analyzed, from June 2018 to May 2019, sexual crimes against children were 2,350.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Cuban Authorities Blame the 17 People Injured for Crossing a Bridge That Collapsed

The bridge, which was in poor condition, fell when a group discharged from the isolation center was saying goodbye to the staff. (Provincial Government of People’s Power in Matanzas)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 7 October 2020 — The collapse of a pedestrian bridge in Matanzas left 17 injured on Tuesday, when they fell from a height of over 11 feet. The footbridge was located at the Las Cabañas recreational center (Paso del Medio), which was in use as a quarantine center for those potentially exposed to Covid-19.

The group was leaving to board a bus, after being discharged with negative PCR tests, and when the bridge collapsed they had to be transferred to the Comandante Faustino Pérez provincial hospital.

At least two patients were seriously injured according to the official press. Andrés Lamas, director of the hospital, indicated that one patient underwent emergency surgery for a thorax-abdominal trauma and another, who was hit by a beam, was admitted with trauma to the lower abdomen and lower limbs. continue reading

The rest of the injured were not seriously hurt, although a nurse from the isolation center was treated for a fractured elbow.

“The bridge split up with a great noise and we all fell into the river. We have received careful and prompt attention from firefighters, ambulances and the hospital,” a professor from the University of Matanzas told the State newspaper Juventud Rebelde.

Another of the witnesses told the official newspaper that “the bridge was bad, but nobody thought it might fall. We fell from a height of more than two meters, unexpectedly.”

The Provincial Government of the Popular Power of Matanzas published the news on its Facebook page. Among the comments, many of them wishing a speedy recovery to the injured, some highlighted the poor condition of the bridge, although the criticisms were not appreciated by the authorities.

“That bridge lasted long enough, ever since I can remember it was about to fall. But it is easier for them to let it fall and let there be injuries instead of fixing it, of course you cannot invest money in that, it is better to use it for shops and hotels,” commented one user.

Refusing to take any responsibility for the poor condition of the infrastructure, the Government responded: “There is also individual responsibility, if the pedestrian crossing shows obvious signs of deterioration, as you say, don’t use it. Seventeen people is a considerable burden for a flimsy structure, luckily we do not have to regret lives lost. Good evening.”

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

The End of Quarantine, With Diplomas and the National Anthem

From the balconies and looking out through their window shutters, many residents did not want to miss the exact moment when a police officer cut the yellow tape. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 6 October 2020 – From the early hours of the morning, the entire building was focused on the yellow tape that has surrounded us since the 23rd. Last night they knocked on each neighbor’s door to announce that at nine in the morning the municipal health authorities would come to lift the confinement imposed by the appearance of a positive case of Covid-19, which occurred in a relative of some of the neighbors, a person who didn’t even live in the building.

The clock struck 9:00 and then 10:00 and nothing, then just before 11:00 the  authorities from the Ministry of Public Health, our delegate to the People’s Power, police officers and neighbors who served as volunteers during the confinement began to gather in the park. They chatted animatedly until suddenly they distanced themselves from each other, stood to attention and the national anthem began to play.

In a martial position, the officials in charge of carrying out the opening ceremony read words of gratitude to all those who offered their help to achieve order and coordinate the sales of food and supplies to people in the building, continue the surveillance on the property’s entrance, and ensure discipline in all areas, as well as maintain cleanliness during the 14-day quarantine. continue reading

The solemn act lasted half an hour and each of the volunteers was given a diploma while they received a sporting applause from those present. From the balconies and looking out through their window shutters, many residents did not want to miss the exact moment when a police officer cut the yellow tape and rolled it around his hands to remove it.

After being locked up for two weeks, the anxiety was great. Backlogged plans and dozens of sentences in mind that start with the words “when I get out of this, I’m going to …”

“We are free,” a neighbor shouted to another from balcony to balcony. A few minutes later, a grandfather was bringing his granddaughter down to ride her bicycle in the park and a young woman was taking her dog for a walk.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Kenya Spends 11 Million Dollars a Year for 100 Cuban Doctors

The hiring of Cuban doctors is highly controversial in Kenya, given the unemployment rate for local doctors. (Capture)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 3 October 2020 — Of the 11 million dollars that Kenya spends each year to hire 100 Cuban doctors, a little more than 10% goes into the pockets of the healthcare workers, according to a report published this Thursday by the local newspaper Nation.

The newspaper, which has had access to hundreds of emails and confidential information, emphasizes the fact that each Cuban doctor costs the Kenyan state the equivalent of five local doctors.

A hundred Cuban doctors, hired in 2018, work in Kenya amid a strike by health workers who demanded better working conditions. As a result, the controversial bilateral agreement faced resistance from Kenyan medical associations. continue reading

Each doctor in the mission receives 1,000 dollars, the Cuban government pockets 4,000 for each of them and, in addition, Kenya pays 4,220 dollars in expenses (transportation, accommodation, insurance, etc.). It also pays for their airline tickets when they return to Cuba from vacation and insurance for malpractice. All this would complete the figure of $9,220 per month per physician.

The Kenyan newspaper reveals details not only about the amount of the salaries, but about the conditions of the contract with Cuba and the legal implications for Kenya of the presence of the island’s personnel.

Kenya also guaranteed Cuba the safety of its doctors, but in April 2019, two of them, Landy Rodríguez Hernández and Assel Herrera Correa, were allegedly kidnapped by the jihadist organization Al Shahab. Despite talks between the two governments, little is known about them after almost 20 months of captivity.

The United States included the Cuban medical missions in its annual report on human trafficking last July, calling them “forced labor,” and several human rights organizations have also denounced that they are a form of exploitation.

Prisoners Defenders expanded their complaint to the International Criminal Court on behalf of 622 doctors this past September and defined the brigades as the “great capitalist slave business” of the Cuban government.

The export of doctors constitutes the number one source of income for the Cuban economy, according to official data. The island usually keeps 75% of the doctors’ salaries, withholds their passports and punishes those who try to escape from missions.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

King Dollar Rules Cuba More Every Day

With the arrival of new dollar stores — stores that accept only US dollars — Santa Clara residents have seen the reappearance of consumer products that had been in short supply for months. (Laura Rodríguez)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Laura Rodríguez Fuentes, Santa Clara, 5 October 2020 — The seller of dollars suggests moving from his place on the sidewalk so that the park surveillance cameras do not record him red-handed. He walks to a nearby passageway of a family building and from his wallet he extracts a considerable bundle of bills: Cuban national currency (CUP), Cuban convertible pesos (CUC), and US dollars.

The clandestine operation is carried out in a few minutes with a good margin for the money changer, who returns to the park where the transaction began.

“Buddy, are you going to exchange?” he murmurs with dissimulation and fear of the authorities, marketing his itinerant currency trading business to those who are on their way to one of the state exchange houses near the place.

Since the elimination of the 10% tax on the dollar was announced last July, among other economic measures, this 50-year-old money trader has bought and sold more currencies than during the first seven months of 2020. continue reading

He did not know that the Government was going to repeal the tax but he was aware of the rumor that stores in freely convertible currency in Cuba were going to reopen with a huge supply of essential products in the midst of the pandemic.

“Rumors in Cuba run fast,” says the money changer, who prefers that his name remain anonymous. “Many people who traveled or whose relatives brought them dollars before the pandemic, began to sell them to us because it was better than exchanging them (at the official exchange houses (Cadecas).”

“However, since the end of last year there has been an unusual increase in the demand for foreign exchange,” explains economist Ricardo Torres in his study The foreign exchange market in Cuba, “due to the creation and expansion of the domestic supply of goods in Cuba in freely convertible currency.”

The expert also believes that, added to the limitations of the financial system in offering foreign currency, the worsening of the shortage in the network of stores in CUP/CUC and the decrease in tourist income due to the pandemic, the appetite for the dollar has increased.

“Having dollars, until now, did not make you richer than others, because a CUC, on the street, was worth more than a dollar,” says the money changer. “Now everything has changed. The State does not want us to be the ones who handle the dollars.”

Apart from the deepening of the black market for dollars, the measures have created a new social class, made up of people who can better survive the pandemic by having relatives abroad. With the restrictions, remittances have become a lifeline.

According to the calculations of several economists, a third of the population residing in Cuba receives remittances regularly. It is a market that moves, in cash, more than 3.7 billion dollars annually through formal and informal channels.

Most Cubans who receive money through Western Union or through the cards issued by the Cuban financial company Fincimex must withdraw the money in CUC and then change it to national currency (CUP).

But on September 28, the US State Department further restricted access to dollars for Cubans by adding the American International Service to the list of companies under sanction.

This company is in charge of processing dollar shipments to Cuba through Fincimex, which belongs to Gaesa, the military consortium that controls the Cuban economy. Due to all these obstacles and sanctions and because there is not always currency in the state exchange houses, the population resorts to illegal resellers.

At the beginning of September in the streets of Santa Clara, if someone wanted to buy dollars, they would have received 1.50 CUC for each one.

But if the person wanted to sell, they only got 1.25 to 1.30 CUC for every dollar. Up to now, the price can vary according to supply and demand, just as it happens in any capitalist country.

“For a long time, the informal exchange rate remained relatively stable, but this changed around the summer of 2019 when, for the first time since the replacement of the dollar by the CUC, the value of the US currency exceeded that of the convertible peso,” says Torres.

This reality is known first-hand by the money changer: “For every one hundred dollars we were giving 110 (CUC),” he says. “In recent weeks things have been tough, [the authorities] have their eyes set on us, because of the dollars,” says the currency seller.

Since before 6:00 in the morning, in the surroundings of the Praga store, in Santa Clara, there are about 50 people who have already taken their turn (held for them by  intermediaries — called coleros — in line) to enter and buy basic products that have been in short supply in their homes for months.

This two-storey market, located on the city’s central boulevard, was chosen by the authorities from among the nearly 5,000 existing in the country for the sale of food in US dollars.

In Cuba there are 72 establishments like this one.

The line in the narrow street is guarded by police officers whose duties reflect the state of scarcity that Cuba is experiencing: in addition to ensuring social distancing, they must prevent the sale of places in the line, prevent crowding, and ensure no one waits in line overnight.

There are also people who want to buy basic products in these stores but do not have dollars, such as Lisandra Alemán, a Santa Clara mother of two children with no relatives abroad, who considers the government measure an abuse.

“Why some yes and others no?” she asks. “They tell me that inside the store that sells cleaning and personal hygiene products there is everything. Right now in my house there is not a drop of detergent to wash with and I see so many people pass by with crates full of things that I need. I cannot and will not be able to shop there.”

The opening of both supermarkets in Santa Clara and the elimination of the tax on the sale of dollars has contributed to exacerbating the fragmentation of Cuban society.

Those who do not have a relative abroad usually approach the establishments and look through the windows of the stores. They are mostly elderly and low-income people. The guards at the doors prohibit entry only “to look.” In addition, an electronic card is required in hand together with the identity card that supports it, in order to shop in those stores.

In this same circuit there are other stores that sell products in CUC or its equivalent in Cuban pesos and that have been completely out of supplies for months.

Dunia Machado, a girl living in Corralillo, a coastal town in Villa Clara, who claims to have come to the provincial capital on vacation, was impressed with the store’s merchandise in freely convertible currency.

She and her mother approached the windows with another group of curious people in a kind of self-flagellation.

“I came with the hope of buying a shampoo in the normal stores, but of course I did not find anything. They say that inside [the store] Soap and Water there are all kinds, but that’s in dollars and we don’t have them.”

Of the foreign currency stores in the central Santa Clara boulevard, one sells only clothing and footwear, another is intended for products for newborns, and there are only two where they sporadically put out merchandise available in CUC.

The so-called Ten Cent, one of the largest markets that existed in the city, currently operates for State online purchases of the State e-commerce platform TuEnvío, which collapsed the first day it was put into operation.

Both supermarkets are supplied, one can observe with the naked eye, a large number of products that have not been available in the stores in CUC for a year or more, such as condiments, canned goods, preserves, soft drinks, detergents of various brands, and meat, which are sold in smaller quantities in common stores that do not accept payment in foreign currency or whose supply does not cover the needs of the majority of the population that is subjected to the lines.

The same goes for the appliance store that sells fans, refrigerators, and washing machines that are not available at other stores. Although the Government has tried to supply the markets in CUC, demand exceeds supply.

Yamila Conyedo has had a freely convertible currency card in her possession since the appliance stores opened in October last year.

While waiting for her turn to enter the Prague store, she believes that “it is a valid exit for those who have this possibility,” whom she considers a high percentage of Cubans. “If it were not like that, these long lines would not be formed every day. I think that Cubans who do not have families abroad are looking for alternatives to get dollars.”

After the stores opened in July, several photos of products for sale in these establishments circulated on social media. Many Cubans living abroad compared the high prices of meat and canned goods offered in Cuba with those of the country where they reside, generally the United States, where these items cost half or even less.

Several independent media published photos of the products with exorbitant prices: sunscreen for children at almost $29, a smoked leg of pork at $224.35 or a kilogram of beef fillet at $23.80. The cost of gouda cheese at $8.10 per kilo and the high prices of packets of powdered detergent were also criticized.

One midday in August, Luis Pérez, a resident of Placetas, Santa Clara, was able to fill his supermarket cart in the provincial capital with detergent, cereals and some jams. He spent about $40 on his card.

“I came late and I think they had taken everything,” he said. “I did not find chicken or other meat that was cheap. I also saw some that was there before, when the store was in CUC. They are not cheap, but it is what it is.”

In the same line, customers comment that many of the products of these establishments went to the black market – especially those related to personal hygiene such as bath gel, toothpaste and soaps – when they were acquired by resellers who have dollars in their pockets and buy places in line from the coleros to access the stores.

As with the black market for dollars, the market for resold products also strengthened during the pandemic. With the opening of these stores, another clandestine company of merchants has been created who can buy with Fincimex cards and profit, in a certain way, with this privilege created by the measures of the Government itself.

Recently, the authorities decreed a war against the coleros and the hoarders, which however does not seem to affect the stores that sell in freely convertible currency.

A packet of detergent, which costs six dollars in convertible stores, costs twice as much on the black market.

Another form of resale is entering the establishment with the owner of the card, who charges the buyer a commission above what he spent, but charges it in national currency.

Yaíma, for example, is a woman from Santa Clara who has dedicated half her life to reselling “anything” at her doorstep.

Recently, she deleted her profile from the La Candonga de Santa Clara group so that they could not track her, as they have done with other sellers who promoted themselves on social networks.

With her card she can access the Agua y Jabón store, where she usually buys toothpaste to resell at home, but in the same area where she lives.

“It is no secret to anyone that this was going to happen,” she says without revealing her identity. “If there is nothing in the other stores, then you buy what you can and sell it to the neighbors to earn a little. At whatever price, you are solving the problem for those who do not have greens (dollars) to put on the cards That is solidarity. You have to be in solidarity, always in solidarity.”

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Why I Don’t Like Donald Trump

US President Donald Trump (Reuters)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner, 4 October 2020

To my friend, the writer Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

I don’t like Trump, first of all, because I don’t like his character as an arrogant and oppressive person (a bully) who lies or exaggerates. “Trumpologists” estimate that he has said more than twenty thousand lies, deformations of reality or “post-truths.”

I don’t like Trump because in a civilized debate you don’t constantly interrupt or shout at your adversary but contribute ideas. The first debate with Biden was an embarrassing circus. Those are not proper gestures or messages of a president of the United States who is, inevitably, a modeler of behavior, especially for young people.

I don’t like Trump because one does not badly mistreat NATO allies, starting with Angela Merkel, the leader of Germany and perhaps Europe, and following with Dusko Markovic, Prime Minister of Montenegro, whom he treacherously and blatantly pushed and then he did not apologize; or Mette Frederiksen, the Prime Minister of Denmark, who refused to consider selling Greenland to the US and Trump replied by cancelling a scheduled trip to Copenhagen. continue reading

I do not like Trump, because he is undoing the good relations of the United States with its best allies, such as France and Australia, probably because of his rude New York customs of a developer without “class.” With Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, he had an unnecessary run-in when the Frenchman questioned the current course of NATO under the erratic leadership of the American. With Malcolm Turnbull, Prime Minister of Australia, he was worse: he hung up the phone when Turnbull demanded that he fulfill the commitment established by the previous president, Barack Obama, to accept a group of Syrian refugees. It was a commitment from the USA, not from the person who temporarily occupied the White House. Australia sent troops to the two world wars, to Korea to Vietnam and even to Afghanistan and Iraq.

I don’t like Trump because as despotic as he is with his allies, he is the opposite when it comes to Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Kim Jong-un’s North Korea. I firmly believe, as the FBI suspects, that the Russians can blackmail him, not only with the mediation authorized by Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections (perhaps negotiated by Paul Manafort), but because of the lewd “golden shower” that he allegedly requested of two prostitutes on the bed in which Barack Obama had slept during an official visit to Moscow.

I don’t like Trump because he does not respect science and scientists, as shown in the management of the Covid-19 crisis by not wearing a mask, making fun of Biden for wearing one, and publicly recommending absurd remedies, which I hope he does not consider, because I wish him well, now that he and his wife have been diagnosed with the coronavirus. Likewise, this anti-scientific attitude is manifested in the treatment given to climate change and in believing that the result of all actions is measured in dollars and cents. This, simply, is not true.

I don’t like Trump because I am a Hispanic immigrant in the USA and he rejects us. It is not true that a good part of the Mexicans who cross the border are drug traffickers or rapists. They are usually Mexican and Central American peasants who cannot earn a living in their countries, or who are threatened with death by criminal gangs, attracted by the labor structures that they observe on the American side. They do the jobs that almost no one wants to do in the United States, and they contribute their work to keeping the country at the top of the planet.

I don’t like Trump, because the President doesn’t even feel empathy for the “Dreamers” and doesn’t want to grant them residency. This is about 800,000 sociological Americans who were brought to the United States by their parents and who are in immigration limbo. These young people have no other identity than an American one. In many cases they don’t even speak Spanish. (If Trump had been in the White House in the 1960s, Cuban refugees would not have been welcomed in the United States).

It is true that there are immigration laws, and that ever country must control its border, but these children were brought without their consent. There is a thing called “amnesty” which, previously, had been used by other presidents, like Ronald Reagan, and that have resolved the lives of these undocumented immigrants. Especially when we know that 63% of Americans (much better than their president) agree to open their arms to these “dreamers.”

I don’t like Trump because he does not grant a residence permit to Venezuelans or Nicaraguans knowing that the dictatorships of Maduro and Ortega are unforgiving towards Venezuelans and Nicaraguans.

I don’t like Trump because he did not annul Obama’s presidential decrees regarding Cuban family reunification, or the special program that admitted into the US “slaves in white coats,” the medical personnel “hired” by governments insensitive to the pain of others; or the measure of “wet foot-dry foot” measure that gave access to the persecuted who presented themselves to the US authorities.

I don’t like Trump because an American president must be absolutely spotless in his obligations to the Treasury, and the New York Times investigation showed that Trump was not. It also proved what the NY businessmen said sotto voce: he had failed as a businessman. He failed as a casino owner. He failed as a university entrepreneur. He failed as a otel owner. Instead, he was successful marketing himself on an NBC TV show that ran for years and earned more than 400 million dollars.

Last, I don’t like Trump, because I think nationalism is the origin of wars and the limitations of international commerce. Because I believe that the primary function of a Head of State is to unite society and it seems to me that we are facing a racist and white supremacist of the worst kind, as opined by Mary L. Trump, the President’s niece and a notable clinical psychologist in her book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.

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Nota bene. Many years ago, I joined the ranks of the “independents” in the United States. Sometimes I have voted for Democrats and sometimes for Republicans. I would have loved it if the Republican candidate had been Jeb Bush, but he did not survive the primaries.

Fortunately for the record, I said it clearly in an article published in the NYT on October 13, 2014 ( Cuba Doesn’t Deserve Normal Diplomatic Relations). I did not like Obama’s break with the tradition of 10 presidents before him, Republicans and Democrats, of not making excessive concessions to the Cuban dictatorship as long as the Castros did not show a clear sign of amendment and did not embark on the road to democracy.

I didn’t like it at all because I don’t like being lied to, and Obama assured a thousand times that there would be no normal diplomatic relations until the island respected human rights, while his political operators secretly managed otherwise. Outcome? More repression within Cuba, a greater presence of Cuban intelligence in Venezuela and even the clandestine shipment of weapons and a plane to North Korea, violating all the agreements of the United Nations.

As a good liberal (in the European sense of the term), I usually endorse a combination between the conservative in fiscal matters (a limited state, a market and not a planned economy,  the least amount of taxes and public debt), and the American “liberal” in social matters (pro-choice, pro-immigration, and a state sufficiently secular to  comfortably accommodate agnostics).

On the other hand, I have lived 40 years in Europe and, previously, 18 years in Cuba, so I know first-hand the difference between a “Welfare State,” with its defects and its virtues, and a disgusting Communist dictatorship. No one is going to convince me that asking for health and education to be paid for through general budgets, as is the case in Scandinavian countries, and, to some extent, in Germany and Switzerland, is a symptom of totalitarianism. Perhaps it is a mistake, but that has nothing to do with the dictatorship of the proletariat advocated by Marx to set up his maddened and impoverishing scheme.

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A Debate for Democracy in Cuba: The End Does Not Justify the Means

Celaya believes that A debate that does not imitate the pathetic Trump vs Biden media show. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Miriam Celaya, Havana | 2 October 2020 — Fresh off the networks, saturated today by the echoes of the unfortunate show (supposedly a debate) between United States presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and with their clothes still torn by the attacks of the always furious Trumpist pack – those worthy imitators of the purest Castro style who accept no other position other than unconditional support for their idol – I have made note of an article by colleague Reinaldo Escobar Casas that brings me back to what is really important on this side of the Florida Strait: a reality so overwhelming that it far exceeds the convenience of the triumph of one or another candidate in the US presidential elections on November 3rd.

In agreement with my colleague Escobar Casas, and as a Cuban residing in Cuba, I have no preference for any of the American candidates. It’s clear to me that neither one nor the other has a commitment to achieve democracy in Cuba beyond speeches and intentions for electoral purposes. It is not their responsibility to solve the pressing problems that suffocate Cubans from all areas of national life, of which successive US administrations are not the cause.

I am clear that neither one nor the other is committed to achieving democracy in Cuba, beyond speeches and intentions for electoral purposes

After 61 years of dictatorship and in the midst of the most serious crisis of the socioeconomic and political system established by force of voluntarism and repression, it would be naive to attribute the eventual collapse of the Castro regime to the good or bad will of an American president, without denying that the policies of that country, as the great power that it is, have some influence, not only on this limited and close geography and on the lives of its inhabitants, but also — for better and for worse — have a relevant impact throughout the world. continue reading

I absolutely agree with Escobar Casas when he declares the need for a debate that matters to us as Cubans, when he focuses his aspirations for matters to change in Cuba, for political disagreement to be decriminalized and for all of us to have the right to an opinion for or against those who govern us, and that, in the economic realm, those who are capable of producing the things we need in order to live are given the freedom to do it. This should be an inalienable direction for all of us who, through thick and thin, continue to push the wall of the Castro regime from inside and outside of Cuba, although we well know that, in light of the current reality of the Island, our aspirations for the moment are chimerical.

However, I cannot agree with Escobar in what seems to be the justification of the means to an end. In fact, the scenarios for exiting the Cuban crisis in the face of one or another U.S. policy are as opposite as the human and social costs that would arise from them.

In his article, Escobar welcomes equally the “strangulation” caused by a resurgence of sanctions as well as a “rapprochement” that forces the regime to change, since his priority — and I know he is sincere — is the prosperity and welfare of this country “where my children and my grandchildren will live for many years.” Personally, I will always opt for the least possible traumatic exit for Cubans, against the grain of being aware that in Cuba this variable seems less and less likely.

What moral authority aids us in subjecting others to the deficiencies that those of us who have some financial support to cope with the crisis don’t experience?

Let us take, then, two situations, A and B, where A would be the eventual triumph of Trump and, consequently, a fierce claw capable of suffocating the Castro regime’s tentacles and, incidentally, all Cubans who in some way depend on economic support, remittances, food packages, etc., which ultimately will always benefit, to some extent, the elite who receive the dividends. The question, then, would be: to what extent are we willing to sacrifice economic survival or to bear the cost of deprivation for ordinary Cubans in order to force change? Is it legal to assume chaos and human losses as the “collateral damage” necessary for these changes? What moral authority aids us in subjecting others to the deficiencies that those of us who have some financial support to cope with the crisis don’t experience?

And, taking it to a more extreme level, is there any guarantee that the dissident sectors, the opposition, the press and the independent civil society are safe from the worst repression in the extreme case of social chaos?

Furthermore, in a scenario of chaos and anarchy caused by famine and in the absence of guarantees and social tension, who would assume control and ensure a minimum social order? That possibility, which may now seem like a dramatic exaggeration, is still an almost tangible threat.

The other extreme, option B, would be the gradual, political and orderly transition that, despite everything, remains the most reasonable because it does not make use of Cubans as hostages on the road to democratization, but rather facilitates their insertion as economic actors and politicians of the changes, provided that this policy is implemented in a complete, intelligent and duly conditioned way, toward effective steps in the matter of human rights by the Castro leadership. This was the step that was omitted during the thaw of the Obama era and that contributed to the withdrawal of the regime.

The weak point, in the case of either A or B, is the absence of effective proposals and strengths in the opposition sectors, generally attentive — it is fair to admit — to the policies of the White House. There is no plan C or “Cuban proposal.” In this sense, it is worth reviewing recent statements by some of the so-called opposition leaders, where a common denominator is striking: they all seem to agree on what a US administration should do with regard to Cuba, but not one of them has their own plan to implement in any scenario that we may encounter, whether in the face of a policy of rapprochement or confrontation from the powerful northern neighbor.

Waiting continues to be the watchword in a scenario that, beyond our wills, keeps us tied down, as passive hostages of foreign policies

In short, everything leans towards eternal passivity or contemplation, waiting for two eventualities, neither of which will depend on the opposition’s effective actions: 1) Wait to see what the United States powers decide to do and 2) Wait to see how much the hierarchs of dictatorial power in Cuba are weakened from these policies. Waiting continues to be the watchword in a scenario that, beyond our wills, keeps us dependent, as passive hostages of foreign policies, to such an extent that a policy of suffocation may seem equally valuable as one of rapprochement, as long as it promotes changes that are not within our power to control. I couldn’t disagree more.

In the end, and as far as the subject is concerned, we urgently need a broad and inclusive national debate in Cuba in which the entire society participates and all interests are present, regardless of political or ideological constraints. A debate that does not imitate the pathetic Trump vs Biden media show, which we witnessed on September 30th. Because the best and worst we Cubans have is that much remains to be said here, and everything remains to be done, especially the transition to democracy. And it has been a dream held for so long and so pregnant with sacrifices that different means to achieve it cannot deliver the same result.

Translated by Norma Whiting

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

The Debate We Care About

The first debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden has reactivated the controversy among Cubans about which candidate winning the November election would be better for us. (Collage)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 30 September 2020 — As a result of the first debate held between President Donald Trump and the Democratic candidate Joe Biden, the controversy among Cubans has been reactivated the debate about which candidate winning the November election would be better for us: whether it is the current tenant of the White House or the candidate who was vice president during Obama’s term.

As an ordinary Cuban (I don’t even own a bicycle), I believe that we do not have the slightest opportunity to influence the results and that, at most, from now until the Americans decide who will occupy the position in dispute, there is no choice but to carry two bags; in one (Trump’s), what we will have to do in a situation of extreme belligerence; and in the other (Biden’s), how to take advantage of four years of thaw.

As Trump does not pay taxes to the Cuban tax authority, I do not care about his alleged errors in paying taxes, and since Ukraine is so far away, I do not think that the ties of Biden’s son with that country may be related to our problems. continue reading

What matters to me is that things change in Cuba. This means that political disagreement is decriminalized and that we can all speak for or against those who govern us and that, economically, those who are capable of producing the things we need to live are given the freedom to do so.

And this is where I get opportunistic.

Cuba and its future are my priority. If the total strangulation of the country through the intensification of sanctions brings that change, welcome. If rapprochement is the Trojan horse that forces the regime to change what really needs to be changed, then welcome.

This is my “strictly personal” position, to which I have the right because I was born on this island where my ancestors lost in the days when Bartolomé de las Casas baptized the Indians with my second surname, in this territory where I remain despite of everything.

If the debate that matters to us is how to react to what will happen in relation to the election of a president in another country, whatever it may be, know that this ordinary Cuban has only one priority: this country, where my children and my grandchildren will live for many years.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Private Businesses in Cuba Want to Export Without Working Through State Companies

Readers of the official website complain about measures that do not allow the private sector to avoid the usual obstacles.

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 25 September 2020 — The official newspaper Cubadebate convened its debate forum this Thursday to answer the questions of individuals interested in exporting through state companies. As it happened, the forum had a lot of forum but little debate.

Many of the 37 Cuban companies authorized as intermediaries participated to answer the specific questions of some self-employed workers, but no one accepted the proposals and criticisms made in more than 550 comments, among which one idea was constantly emerging. Why not allow direct exports if the US penalizes those made through the State?

“What they want is for any goods, production, service, etc. to be imported/exported through the State. Of course, this is how they make us victims of the commercial and financial blockade of the United States against the Cuban government. Understand that the blockade is against the Government, not against natural persons who exercise self-employment,” argued an annoyed commentator. continue reading

“I have had the opportunity to visit Panama and Mexico. In those countries I visited several stores belonging to compatriots who live there. (…) There the Cubans import merchandise from China or Europe, they have warehouses that are supplied by private suppliers, where in a little 16×16 nook I have seen more services and products than in the Carlos III [shopping mall in Havana].

“So I ask myself, why do Cubans have to leave in order to have those freedoms? That is what bothers us, when the time comes when the State offers those opportunities without making our lives hell, then the light will be seen at the end of the tunnel.

“We know that the blockade is real, but we are not so bothered by what is imposed by people who do not interest us. The [blockade] that bothers us the one imposed by our compatriots themselves,” clamored another reader.

The forum was conceived to address doubts about the links between State companies engaged in foreign trade and non-state forms of management, which the authorities now call FGNE, an acronym that did not go unnoticed by another reader.

“What a mania to complicate everything. Now they even invented a new acronym: FGNE to designate Non-State Forms of Management. Listen to that, isn’t it better to call it the private or cooperative sector? The bombast and euphemisms are killing us,” he observed sarcastically.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Trade, the chosen state companies have more than 1,056 requests from individuals to carry out some type of operation and almost 732 self-employed workers and some 119 cooperatives are in negotiations.

In order to find out about experiences, resolve doubts and document complaints, companies and state agencies answered many questions in the forum, but users who lamented how it is working did not receive satisfactory solutions.

“It’s really boring. It’s 2020 and we are trying to do something that the world has been doing for centuries,” began a reader who signed off with a revolutionary greeting. “Why don’t they stock a large wholesale market in CUC for these workers, instead of just advising us? No, it is easier for them to charge fees for management. Oh, and in USD. I am not one to criticize and we know that criticism is annoying, but they complicate everything, they want to seek the profitability of these companies with individuals,” he concludes.

Some users also regretted that Customs does not allow individuals to import some products without commercial purposes, complicating and making the processes more expensive.

“Why don’t we Cubans allow ourselves to get things done without the mediation of these companies, to import what we need?”

“Totally agree. People do not need State companies as intermediaries to export or import,” two users added.

The tax nature of the measures was something that other readers reproached because, although many agreed that in all the countries of the world there are intermediaries who charge for facilitating procedures, it is not mandatory to go through them.

“In any part of the world you can import and export with your own means and procedures. That the Government and the entities educate people about it is one thing, that they impose their mechanisms is another,” says a reader.

“It seems to me that it is contradictory to say that authorized State companies are helping the self-employed. those who want to import are forced [to work through the state],” insists another commentator.

Although some readers are in favor of the government’s measures and ask those who are upset for patience, the latter reproach them for their attitude.

“I am struck that we have people in this debate defending all kinds of obstacles and others who see the reality that importing alters the seller’s price, sometimes up to more than 10 times. These defenders [of the status quo] surely have motorcycles or cars. While those of us who work will have to save our whole lives to import a motorcycle. We are wrong. With each measure, years pass demonstrating it’s bad. And those who suffer are the workers.”

The queries about the collection of the money earned are also numerous. Individuals receive 80% in freely convertible currency and the remaining 20% in Cuban pesos, but many users wonder why they cannot use the money as they wish. The amount in foreign currency, being in an account associated with imports and exports, should be transferred to a personal account, but it is not very clear how the process would be organized and the answers did not clarify anything for the readers.

“There is currently no prohibition for natural persons to withdraw freely convertible currency from their account, only the availability of these currencies at bank branches at the time of withdrawals has to be taken into account,” the Bank responded to a commentator who asked whether he could take his cash.

But the answer meets reality. “With all due respect: there are never liquid currencies to withdraw in cash, I have tried to do it many times and nothing, I have always had to go to the informal market.”

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Medical Missions Are "The Great Capitalist Slave Business" of the Cuban Government

Doctors and nurses of the “Henry Reeve” Doctors Contingent in a ceremony in Havana before traveling to Italy to help in the COVID-19 epidemic. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Rosa Pascual / Yaiza Santos, Madrid, September 22, 2020 — Cuban Prisoners Defenders (CPD) made public this Tuesday its complaint in front of the United Nations and the International Criminal Court (ICC), which it presented on August 24 in the names of 622 doctors from the Island who have been on missions abroad.

In May of 2019, CPD, headquartered in Madrid, announced the presentation of the first complaint, against six Cuban politicians including President Miguel Díaz-Canel and his predecessor, Raúl Castro. The document contained the testimonies of 110 doctors who denounced the conditions in which they were forced to work on international missions.

“We are denouncing situations of authentic slavery for hundreds of thousands of people. We believe that the prosecutor of the ICC could perfectly investigate those acts as crimes against humanity,” affirmed CPD member Spanish lawyer Blas Jesús Imbroda, at that time. continue reading

This Tuesday, in an online press conference, the president of CPD Javier Larrondo gave a hard recounting of the figures and data from the testimony of several hundred professionals included in the complaint, which he says has been very well received in international bodies.

According to the organization’s data, the missions usually last three years and between 50,000 and 100,000 professionals participate in them annually, 70% of them doctors, but also engineers, teachers, and athletes. Larrondo noted that the work of these professionals entails a profit for Cuba of $8.5 billion net ($6.4 billion in 2018, according to the most recent available official data). This is three times the profit that tourism reports, he detailed, while calling the missions “the great capitalist slave business of that country.”

The reports agree that the professionals are forced to participate in “conditions of slavery” with long workdays and restrictions on their freedom, such as, for example, being forbidden to drive a car or having to ask a supervisor’s permission to marry. The law, moreover, penalizes with from three to eight years in prison those who leave the missions, as written in article 135 of the Penal Code.

In most cases, the Cuban Governments takes away the professionals’ passports to retain them and pays them between 10% and 25% of the salary that it charges the receiving countries, under the argument that Havana needs money to finance the Health System.

Larrondo emphasized that these professionals are subject to Cuban law, and specifically Decree 306 of 2012, “On the treatment of the professionals and athletes who require authorization to travel abroad,” and Resolution 168 which, among other restrictions, includes returning to Cuba when the mission ends, informing the immediate superior “of romantic relationships with nationals or foreigners,” asking permission to travel to distant provinces or places, observing curfew from six in the evening, and asking permission to “arrange invitations to family members.”

“They have a special passport and it doesn’t work for customs. They can’t travel without authorization and never without the entire family.”

Nor are they allowed to take a copy of their university degree. “Without passport or degree, you aren’t a person,” said the president of CPD. “What does this sound like if not human trafficking and prostitution?” he stated.

Among the conditions that the healthcare workers suffer in these missions, the NGO included political work and obligatory proselytizing by the bosses, under the threat of being repudiated by their own colleagues.

Two of the doctors who are part of the complaint joined Larrondo. One of them, Manoreys Rojas, who now lives in the US and hasn’t seen his children in six years, told how when he left for the mission to Ecuador in July of 2014, he did it “to fulfill a program that he was not prepared for.”

He did it “because it was a way out economically, the only way to escape the country.” Rojas claims that the Cuban Government places its doctors in the worst parts of the cities, where they frequently suffer robberies, and that it forces them to do proselytizing work and to produce falsely inflated statistics. As for the objective of the missions, he is forceful: “pocketing money [by the government] at any cost and by any means possible.”

For example, medicines were sold by Cuba to Ecuador for $13.8 million, “medicines that they weren’t even able to use.”

Another doctor, Leonel Rodríguez Álvarez, had a similar experience. An internal medicine specialist, he was first in Guatemala and then in Ecuador, where he is now a university professor. Rodríguez related that Cuba sent Island nurses to Guatamala with a course of barely a few months in anesthesia and that they passed them off as specialized anesthetists, which caused conflicts with local doctors, who refused to work with them.

Also, he confirmed that State Security agents were sent to the missions passed off as healthcare workers. “Those of us who already had some experience, we realize when we are having an exchange with people who aren’t of our profession.” These people, specified Rodríguez, are also easily identified because they have a vigilant attitude, denouncing, for example, conflicting opinions. That the Cuba’s G2 security services intervenes in the missions, he asserts, “is an open secret.”

On that subject Larrondo gives as proof the case of Bolivia, where it was demonstrated that of the 702 members of the mission, only 205 were doctors.

The plaintiff organization argues that the ICC can hold accountable the 58 nations that have signed conventions against slavery.

This June, CPD directly accused Norway and Luxembourg of contributing to the financing of the system of slavery of Cuban doctors in Haiti and Cape Verde, and asked them to revise their triangular collaboration agreements to continue being an example in human rights for the entire world and to avoid facing a complaint before the Human Rights Court of the European Union.

The brigade in Haiti was established in 1999 and remains today, with almost 350 healthcare workers of whom the total number of qualified doctors is unknown. Norway, a country that doesn’t belong to the European Union (EU), although it does to the European Economic Area, has contributed a total of $2.5 million via three agreements of this triangular type since 2012 in the support of that mission.

The money provided by Oslo was mostly destined for the construction of permanent medical infrastructure, but a consignment of around $800,000 was planned for the Cubans who, in that country earn $250 per month, an amount lower than the already very poor salary of local doctors, who pocket some $400.

In the case of Luxembourg, which is a member of the EU, the cooperation dates back to this March, when it signed an agreement equipped for almost half a million Euros for the establishment of a contingent of Cuban doctors in Cape Verde.

According to CPD, the group established in that African archipelago is made up of 79 workers who provide support in different areas of health, as well as 33 members of the Henry Reeve brigade to combat COVID-19 financed by a tripartite accord with the European country.

In the specific case of the workers in Cape Verde, CPD cited an example of the vigilance to which they are subjected. According to a report, on August 7, 2017 a communication was sent between the office of then-Minister of Public Health, Roberto Morales, to the embassy in Madrid with a copy to the ambassador in Cape Verde in which was requested, by order of Colonel Jesús López-Gavilán, head of the Health department of the Ministry of the Interior, that an official from the diplomatic headquarters in Spain come to Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport to supervise the layover that five doctors would have to make from Cape Verde.

The instruction was for them “to be investigated and check their communication with family members abroad” since, according to the sender, one of them had demonstrated “strong indications and intentions to ’desert.’”

Taking part in the press conference this Tuesday was Gilles Campedel, from the organization Prodie Santé, which has launched what it has called the International Brigade of Free Doctors. It is a project which, he said, is already present in 17 countries, and under whose protection Cuban doctors can work with just compensation – not less than 2,500 Euros per month, according to Campedel – and without intermediaries. “We have fantastic doctors and countries with the desire to receive them,” emphasized Campedel, who stressed that the pandemic is a good opportunity to get it off the ground.

The judge Edel González, ex-president of the Provincial Judicial Power of Villa Clara, seemed to agree that the brigades must “provide a service, but of quality, with transparency.” The objective of any analysis of the missions, he asserts, “is not to eliminate them but to humanize them.” After legally analyzing the complaint, he concludes that the punishments of the doctors who violate the law, like prohibiting them from reuniting with their families, is unconstitutional.

José Daniel Ferrer, president of the human rights organization Unpacu, expressed gratitude for the work of Prisoners Defenders in his case – the organization asked for his release on numerous occasions – and praised the creation of the brigade set up by Prodie Santé.

Ferrer, who noted that he has suffered a police cordon around his home for 74 days, addressed the politicians of other countries who participated in the press conference, including the Spaniard Javier Nart and the Argentinian representative Lucila Lehman, to ask them: “To what extent are the politicians and public opinion of your respective countries aware of the situation? What more can be done to show that the regime is neither in solidarity nor progressive?”

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

For a Basic Market Basket of Technology and Freedom

But the greatest difficulty will arise before all those national laws that seek to muzzle the citizens of the virtual village. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, 30 September 2020 — The walls are made of pure brick and sunlight trickles through the gaps in the ceiling, but the young woman sitting near the window is holding a state-of-the-art smartphone in her hands, with which she follows social networks minute by minute. The scene can be in any city or town in Latin America, where access to new technologies is, right now, marking the social contrasts that will become even greater in the coming years.

Last August, the executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Alicia Bárcena, released a report on the effects of Covid-19 in the region. In an urgent plea, the Mexican called on governments to universalize access to digital technologies to confront the profound damages the pandemic has caused to the continent’s economy. She then spoke of guaranteeing a basic market basket of information and communication technologies.

According to Bárcena, this indispensable module must be made up of a laptop, a smartphone, a tablet and a connection plan for households that still do not have access to the web. It would be something like “a technological survival kit” that would allow citizens to stay informed, opt for distance education, work from home, refocus themselves with regards to work, access electronic commerce and exercise a good part of their civic rights and duties through a keyboard, a click or a video conference. continue reading

But ECLAC only touched on one of the many sides of connectivity in that report. It is not enough to have a modern device and access to the great world wide web if the person using these tools is constrained by censorship, monitored by digital police and threatened with ending up in court or in prison for criticizing officials and politicians on social media. The basic infrastructure basket is little or nothing if it is not accompanied by a set of guaranteed rights, the rights to exercise freedom of information and expression.

Unfortunately, we live in a region where both “market baskets” are quite incomplete. The high prices of technology, the little training given in schools for the use of these devices as a way to acquire new knowledge, and the difficulties of access from remote areas or areas not favored by the infrastructure, all complicate a scenario that would enable Latin America to reverse the confinement and social distance imposed by the  coronavirus, and also to emerge from the economic quagmire through screens and circuits.

But the greatest difficulty will arise before all those national laws that seek to muzzle the citizens of the virtual village. A basic technology module can include the market’s latest mobile phone, but if its user has to deal with censored sites, institutions that attack citizens on the networks and an army of trolls, often financed and trained by governments to silence criticism, little will be achieved.

In a continent where some of the regimes remaining in power are the world’s most predatory  with regards to information and the press, a cell phone is a springboard that could launch us into the restless and refreshing waves of cyberspace, but also directly and without protection towards the open mouth of the censors.

A basic technology basket yes; but may it not lack the bread of freedom.

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This text was originally published  in Deutsche Welle for Latin America.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.