Roberto de Jesús Quiñones plans to deliver his appeal brief on Monday. (Cubanet)
14ymedio, Havana, 8 August 2019 — On Wednesday, the People’s Municipal Court of Guantanamo requested a sanction of “one year of deprivation of liberty” which can be replaced by a year of correctional work with internment, for the independent journalist Roberto de Jesús Quiñones, accused of “resistance and disobedience.”
Quiñones, a collaborator with Cubanet, was summoned last Thursday to a trial that was held on the morning of August 7. In a telephone conversation with 14ymedio, the reporter described the process as “shameful” and explained that he has three days to file the appeal.
“The penalty would be in a forced labor camp, they will have to take me to prison because I am not going to work for them, it is depressing to see the state of Cuban justice,” said Quiñones who is also a lawyer. He also said that he asked to defend himself because, as detailed, this is allowed by Decree Law 81. continue reading
To assume his own defense, he must first obtain a certificate from the registry of jurists of the Provincial Directorate of Justice but said that the lawyer in charge of issuing the document “has missed going to the office for two days with different excuses,” first saying that “he was in a meeting” and then that he had high blood pressure.
Quiñones thought all that was a story. “State Security is here handling everything, the only thing I could do in the trial is to speak as a defendant but nobody could defend me, because they told me yesterday that ultimately I could not get the document, it was almost noon, I could no longer get the services of a lawyer.”
On Monday, the journalist had expressed in court that they were “giving him the run around with the issuance of the document” to prove his status as a lawyer registered in the Register of Jurists. “They told me that without that document I could not assume my self-defense.”
In the end, this Wednesday, half an hour before the trial, Quiñones was able to access his file to assume his defense but he refused to do so in those conditions. “I could not assume the defense. In such a short time it is impossible to look at a file and prepare for a case. I said that if they suspended the trial I accepted it but that if it was in those conditions I could not,” he denounced.
He also says that during the trial, the police officers who served as witnesses were constantly “lying in front of the court with total shamelessness…They accuse me of resistance and disobedience, and they say that I was in court that day haranguing the population and speaking counterrevolutionary slogans; for me it was something that they made the witnesses learn by heart.”
Quiñones insisted that they bring officer Víctor Víctor to testify in his case because, he says, he was in charge of his case, but they told him that it was not necessary “because the State Security has nothing to do” with this trial.
The arrest of the journalist occurred on April 22 while he waited to cover the trial against pastors Ramón Rigal and Ayda Expósito, who refused to send their children to school and insisted on homeschooling. According to his testimony he was beaten by the officers during the arrest.
“I was at the courthouse chatting with the shepherds’ daughter and the officer Victor Victor ordered me to be arrested. At no time did I resist, I did not have time to do anything because they dragged me to the car and started hitting me,” he explained with regards to what happened that day.
Quiñones plans to deliver his “appeal brief on Monday” and says that “afterwards, we must wait for the court to say whether it will hold an appeal hearing or if it will issue a final ruling.”
For the appeal the reporter has the testimonies of the only people he knows who were there on the day of the events. “It’s about the relatives of the evangelical pastors that I’m going to see but you already know the fear that we live with in this country.”
The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) criticized the Government of Cuba and ordered it to suspend the punishment and “not continue to overrun human rights.”
“Nothing surprises us about the Cuban Government, so accustomed to persecuting independent journalists in an effort to censor criticism, opinions and free information,” said IAPA President María Elvira Domínguez, director of the newspaper El País de Cali (Colombia) in her statement.
_______________
The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
Dozens of people met near the Ministry of Communications to protest a new rule that outlaws SNET. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Havana, August 10, 2019 — On Saturday morning more than a hundred people met in a park in front of the Communications Ministry to peacefully protest new legislation on wireless networks that they believe will prevent operations of SNet (Street Network), the largest wifi network in Cuba.
“I’m in the park. We are waiting for more people to gradually join our just cause. #YoSoySnet,” tweeted Ernesto de Armas, one of the users who answered the call, keeping vigil until after SNet administrators had met with representatives from the Ministry of Communications (Mincom).
Plainclothes agents from State Security were also in the park along with officials from the National Revolutionary Police. But as of roughly 10:00 AM they had not made any attempt to engage with or evict demonstrators from the site, located near the Plaza of the Revolution. continue reading
Around 11:00 AM several SNet administrators announced to the demonstrators that the protests were ending and asked that they wait until Monday “to give Mincom an opportunity.” The request was based on the recently discussed possibility that authorities would begin “working together” with the independent network.
Several protesters said they would return to the park on Monday if the promise to keep SNet alive was not fulfilled or if it had only been a distraction to end the demonstration. “We will come back again and again until they listen us and let us exist,” warned a young man with more than eight years’ experience on the network.
This differed from a statement published on Friday morning on the network’s Facebook page after at a meeting between SNet representatives and Mincom executives. Among those present were the deputy director of communications, David Wong, the director of public relations, Noraimis Ramos, and three representatives of the Computer and Electronics Youth Club (JCCE).
The network’s administrators were not allowed to ask questions during the meeting because, according to Wong, it was strictly an information session. The official communicated the official response to the SNet request for a special operating license, saying that “no changes will be made in the regulations and no concessions or extensions of any kind will be made in their application.”
Network administrators are seeking an agreement that would allow them to continue operating. The new legislation limits wireless antennas outside homes to 100 milliwatts (mW) or 20 dbm, a capacity well below what it allows for Mikrotik, Bullet or NanoStation devices that make up the wireless network, which has more than 40,000 users.
“None of the proposals submitted [by members of SNet] that involve a change to the regulations were considered.” Rather than approving their requests, the Ministry of Communications granted these powers to the JCCE, enabling it establish wifi hotspots and extend its network “to the public to the extent the national economy allows,” said Wong.
SNet representatives have offered several proposals, among them a contract with ETECSA that would allow the state-owned telecommunications monopoly to extend wireless internet to all of areas of Havana where SNet operates. This option would have multiplied ETECSA’s current coverage, making it dozens of times larger.
For weeks SNet administrators had been asking for a meeting to request a special license that would have allowed them to operate at a capacity higher than that allowed by the new regulation. The law legalizes previously non-sanctioned internet connections but establishes strict limits on the capacity of antennas and devices that act as wireless stations.
After the meeting on Thursday the nodes that make up SNet “should no longer be operational or warning letters will be sent to the administrators responsible,” reads the note, adding that the network must “disappear and be permanently eliminated without exceptions.”
For its part, the Youth Club may not “enter into any agreement, union, annexation or cooperation with SNet or any other node.” Over the next few days the club will launch a pilot program to set up an internet hotspot for those living near Manila Park. Users may bring their laptops to the park to connect and use the few services provided by the club at an hourly rate that will be announced after the tests have been completed.
Administrators complained that Wong “abruptly left the meeting,” which he attended for only 30 minutes. Before leaving, one of the options he offered was to allow “the Youth Club to lease SNet infrastructure, or at least the main links that require greater capacity, or to somehow allow the club to adopt it as part of the club’s equipment inventory.”
The official did acknowledge that JCCE’s current ability to provide wifi connectivity to the public “is practical nil.” Upon leaving, he put the club’s representatives in charge of coordinating and conducting the preliminary tests at Manila Park.
“The response and the attitude of these representatives were truly disappointing and offensive, and completely at odds with what Wong indicated,” the note adds. The wireless signal that JCCE will provide allows the user to access only their services, which are very limited and have a strong ideological slant similar to the audiovisual content compendium Mi Mochila and the EcuRed encyclopedia.*
“It was obvious what would happen. They were just humoring [SNet administrators] in order to buy time,” tweeted a user identified as Leo. “What we must do now is keep a low profile and evolve… What’s the point of all the rules against talking about politics [which is the main topic on SNet] if those who dictate policy turn their back on them?”
The JCCE platform does not include social media platforms for customers who cannot afford high internet prices, an option offered by SNet. Nor does it have a platform for DOTA, one of the most popular video games in Cuba, nor for other such entertainment options.
Those who favor dialogue with authorities have asked that people refrain from public demonstrations and avoid all confrontation, which has caused a split within a network that has experienced numerous schisms throughout its history, which began more than a decade ago.
*Translator’s note: On its website Mochila (Backpack) is described as an “alternative audiovisual entertainment whose goal is the distribution of national and foreign material, offered free of charge by the Computer and Electronics Youth Club, that … corresponds to the principles and values promoted by the Cuban State.” EcuRed is an online government-sponsored encyclopedia.
_____________________
The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
After long weeks under the intense heat of summer, the days of August generate widespread irritation. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Havana, 11 August 2019 — The poet T.S. Eliot was wrong… or at least his most famous verse does not work in the case of Cuba. “April is the cruelest month,” he wrote almost a hundred years ago, but on this Island that adjective belongs to August, the most difficult time of the year. After long weeks under the intense heat of summer, the days of August generate widespread irritation, a tendency to scream and rage.
To that we must add that the tortuous official bureaucracy becomes even more difficult to circumvent because many state entities work at half strength, many employees in that sector are on vacation and the phones of the institutions can ring for hours without anyone answering. In this eighth month of the year, suffocation and lethargy, despair and anger, are sharpened. Phrases like “better leave it for September” or “you won’t be able to do anything until August passes” are repeated everywhere.
Lovers repel each other with their sweat, buses are rolling saunas and the few air-conditioned offices become a fiefdom that employees defend tooth and nail from “non-authorized persons,” that is, citizens, who try enter to access services and incidentally enjoy temperatures under 77F. Everyone who has a fan in a public place feels themselves lord and owner of the situation, turning it to cool just their face, their desk, their small plot of power.
Oh, T.S. Eliot, how wrong you were with April, how good it seems that you never spent an August in Havana…
__________________________
The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
Cuban doctors Landy Rodriguez Hernandez and Assel Herrera Correa. (Facebook)
14ymedio, Havana, 8 August 2019 — The Kenyan army continues working to free the two doctors kidnapped last April, a task that does not fall to the police whose jurisdiction is limited by borders.
According to local press, Assel Herrera Correa and Landy Rodriguez Hernandez are in the vicinity of Gedo, near El Adde in Somalia, in good condition, and practicing their profession.
Police inspector Hilary Mutyambai updated the situation Tuesday for local media. “Our work as police ends at the border. … I am not in a position to account for the fate of the Cuban doctors, but we have a team working on it,” he said. continue reading
In July a security report indicated that the doctors were transported to the Halaanquo forest, near the city of Barawe, where they allegedly converted to Islam.
Surgeon Landy Rodriguez and general medicine specialist Assel Herrera Correa’s trail was lost April 12 when they were traveling in an official vehicle in order to work in the Mandera Hospital, near the Somali border.
That day Rodriguez and Herrera were escorted “as is customary,” Kenyan police spokesman Charles Owino confirmed at the time.
Nevertheless, the convoy was intercepted by armed men who killed one of the police officers in a gun battle, kidnapped the doctors, and took them to Somali territory.
A group of elder leaders from Kenya and Somalia went to the Somali region of Jubaland, controlled by Al Shabab, to negotiate on behalf of the Cubans.
The tribal leaders said that the kinappers demanded payment of about 1.5 million dollars in exchange for their liberation. “The figure was higher than that reported in the media,” said one of the negotiators, who specified that the parties did not come to an agreement.
The government of Kenya — a country hard hit by terrorism on its northeast border since its army invaded Kenya in 2011 to pursue Al Shabab — has so far been oppposed to any payment that might encourage new kidnappings.
“They [the Somali elders] warned against sustained military attacks in their countryside to search for the Cubans, and we agreed on condition that the doctors not be harmed,” added the aforementioned traditional Kenyan leader.
Translated by Mary Lou Keel
_______________
The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
As of May 2019, 605,908 self-employed people were working Cuba in the 128 authorized activities. (Alfonso B.)
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 9 August 2019 — More than 20 years ago, when I was studying Philology at the University of Havana, a colleague did a study on the headlines of the official press. The young woman compared the verbs that headlined the national news with those used for international issues. The result was that most Cuban events carried positive terms, in the style of “developing,” “building,” “expanding,” or “growing,” while articles about other countries were often titled with words such as “kill,” “destroy” and “repress.”
Over the years, little has changed in this editorial line which has fueled the popular belief that “for the newspaper Granma, inside the Island everything is good and everything outside, bad.” But such contrasts are expressed not only based on where the news is generated, but also when addressing the state sector as opposed to the private sector. While public companies enjoy a good part of the triumphalist phrases, self-employed people are often the targets of criticism, stereotypes and accusations. continue reading
Separated by a few days, we have before our eyes two excellent examples of this difference in treatment. The first of them was the publication, on August 5, of a text by Oni Acosta under the title Music and nightlife: vampires on the prowl? The author complained about the musical choices of a private Havana bar whose name he never mentioned, preferring to define it as “you-know-who’s place,” and accused it of having a “mediocre” repertoire and “puro reparterismo” in the song lyrics.
In addition to failing to note that much of the same music is played from the speakers of State-owned bars and recreational centers, public areas in hotels and even school parties, Acosta (or his editor) chose to title the text with two pejorative words: “nocturnality,” which is mainly used to refer to the aggravating circumstance of a crime perpetrated at night; and “vampires,” which suggests bloodsuckers or people who take advantage of the customer to suck their money to the beat of reggaeton.
Acosta’s criticism raised eyebrows precisely because he approached the phenomenon in a manner partial to and skewed towards officialdom, but also because it prolongs and feeds the prejudice against the self-employed/private sector as a promoter of bad taste while being more interested in collecting cash than in promoting good music. As an insatiable Dracula, the small Cuban business owner looks more like a greedy exploiter willing to do anything for money, than an essential pillar of the national economy, as inferred from the text.
Not even three days passed and the onslaught against individuals has risen. This Thursday, the official organ of the Communist Party published a long article signed by Luis Toledo Sande on the salary increase announced this June. As an illustration, a vignette shows two smiling state employees commenting on the benefits of the new salary with phrases that nobody anywhere, in their right mind, would say. An example: “…in parallel we will have to increase productivity, dedication to work…”
The official newspaper ‘Granma’ published a vignette that shows two smiling state employees commenting on the benefits of the new salary. Panel 1: I still can’t believe it, they raised my salary. / Panel 2: …in parallel we will have to increase productivity, dedication to work… / Panel 3: Only one thing is forbidden to rise. Prices! / Sign on stand: Price caps (Granma)
The two workers are painted in a bluish shade, dressed as officials, and walk together to a stall selling agricultural products with a sign reading “price caps.” Behind the counter, the merchant is drawn in a very different way. With greenish-yellow skin, the face of a criminal recently escaped from prison and attired in a way that tries to ridicule him and make him appear vulgar; in short, the self-employed person looks like the bad guy in the scene.
The text reinforces the attack, as it includes a tirade against economists and academics who have sounded an alert about the dangers of capping the prices of products and services. In response to them, although he mentions no names, the author warms that “it is not accidental that they try to sow doubts and uncertainties against the current increases,” and their advice not to try to regulate the market so drastically is only a “liberal confusion,” according to Sande.
The text leaves a bitter aftertaste because it gives the impression that everyone who is against the imposition of capped prices for private transport, drinks in private cafes and agricultural markets is, at least, an enemy of the homeland. This thesis, together with the Manichean cartoon vignette that heads the article, is a calculated and visceral attack on entrepreneurship.
“We are not going to go back or stop, nor allow stigmas and prejudices towards the non-state sector,” Raúl Castro said two years ago insisting on an idea he had already outlined previously. But it is not enough to say it from time to time to demonstrate a good attitude towards the private sector. The facts, the treatment that is given to the self-employed people in the press and even the way in which they are shown graphically reveal more than the slogans.
If we let ourselves be carried away by what the Cuban newspapers publish, it could be concluded that the government continues to look on private businesses with animosity. For the authorities, they are an evil, although a necessary evil.
________________
The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
None of these Cubans voted in the 1976 constitutional referendum but all of them had the chance to do so in 2019. (Borja Garcia de Sola Fernandez)
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, August 8, 2019 — If we accept the convention that a generation spans a period of thirty years, then the so-called “historic generation” would encompass those born between 1910 and 1940. Similarly, the “generation of heirs” — also known as “the grateful generation” — came into the world between 1940 and 1970. Therefore, those who follow can be placed in the period spanning 1970 to 2000.
By the time they turn sixty in 2030, members of the last group will have reached the maximum age the current constitution allows for someone to be president of the republic. Coincidentally, at age thirty, they also are the minimum age required to hold the office.
It is likely that some of the oldest members of this group took part in the military adventures in Africa that ended in 1991. They became aware, to a greater or lesser degree, that holding religious beliefs was permissible, as proclaimed that same year by the IV Cuban Communist Party Congress. They grew up during the worst days of the Special Period, during the dollarization of the economy, the revival of farmers markets and the advent of self-employment. continue reading
This is the last generation to see, hear and read a living Fidel Castro, and to witness his decline and death. They are the ones for whom moving to another country is not beyond the realm of possibility. None of them voted in the 1976 constitutional referendum but all of them had the chance to do so in 2019. They are our millennials, adept at using new technologies and social media.
Most of them had to spend their pre-university years in schools in the countryside but those born after 1995 escaped this requirement, graduated with college degrees and are now established in their careers. This latter group spent more time with their families and are less affected by indoctrination.
They also have an overriding respect for the environment, a belief in gender equality and acceptance of all manner of sexual preferences.
Can we place our hope in this generation?
Optimists would say they do not feel the “sense of debt to the historic generation” that crippled their predecessors. They argue that this younger generation did not go through collective hypnosis under the influence of a charismatic “maximum leader.” And their exposure to social networks has prevented them from falling victim to the regime’s monopoly on information.
But pessimists would point out that these younger Cubans were born into a world they think is normal, including the state’s dominance of the state over the citizen, the one-party system, and the lack of legal avenues for disagreement and for introducing political change. According to this view, an indifference towards the nation’s problems, disingenuousness as a tool for social advancement, and the belief that “life is elsewhere” renders them incapable of being agents of profound change.
The role that this generation might play depends on the time and manner in which the much anticipated transition to democracy takes place in Cuba.
Ideally, the transformation would be occurring right now, directed without bloodshed from above. The passing of the last surviving members of the historic generation could lead to the unmasking of their successors, who are now promising governmental, partisan and institutional continuity. The long death vigil has kept the reformists in the closet and given a significant advantage to the status quo, making the advent of democracy a more costly proposition.
Confidence that those younger than fifty support such transformations today could provide a very tempting motivation to move ahead. But right now no one wants to make the first move. By 2030, however, they may have to account for the failed promises they used to justify maintaining the current system.
If one reads the pretentious National Economic and Social Development Plan for 2030 — its drafting began in April 2001 and was a ratified by parliament in June 2017 — it becomes clear that the vision of “a sustainable and prosperous socialism” is a utopian fantasy if not an outright scam.
All of those who can look back at the past and say “I wasn’t there” will have the chance to sit down and talk to both insiders and outsiders. Their hands will not have been tainted by firing squads or expropriations. The generation that inherited the problem could do that now, knowing they have the full backing of those born after 1970. Or they could wait until the millennials take the reins of power.
Those who prefer to wait run the risk that the younger generation will become impatient and raise the temperature of the national cauldron. Once they start expressing resistance — on the street, in social networks, in their local assemblies and even at the polls — to anything that slows the pace of change, social pressure will increase.
And we know how dictatorships respond to such threats.
It is not a matter of having to wait until 2030 but you can be sure that the generation of Cubans born after 1970 will witness or have the leading role in the most significant change this country will have ever seen.
_________________
The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
The Cuban road network covers approximately 71,138 km, of which 10,997 are of “national interest” and 2,303 of rural roads (CC)
14ymedio, Miriam Celaya, West Palm Beach, 7 August 2019 — The Ministry of Transportation (Mitrans) has once again announced a traffic program for the maintenance and supervision of roads. Far from being a novelty, this would be the most recent of the many road improvement plans that — like housing construction — have cyclically been announced in different periods after 1959 and that, for unknown reasons, after a spectacular investment program, whose real cost is never revealed, and a flood of press reports covering the development of the works in situ, have not been fulfilled in practice. They have been truncated or simply, silently, disappeared without further explanation.
Years of socialist neglect have caused the deterioration and even the destruction of numerous roads under the onslaught of natural phenomena, added to the inefficiency of the country’s sociopolitical system. The Island’s highways and roads system is experiencing its worst crisis since its construction, and its current deterioration imposes greater urgency and more resources in the midst of a new economic crisis. continue reading
The Island’s highways and road system is experiencing its worst crisis since its construction, and the current deterioration imposes greater urgency and more resources in the midst of a new economic crisis.
Now it’s the hand-picked president’s turn, whose “continuity” strategy does not leave room for optimism. But in Cuba, promoting the development of any subject is not exactly what it’s about, rather it’s about “having a development plan”. The experience of the last 60 years shows that fulfilling plans is not a priority, only the plan is an end in itself.
Therefore, though the aforementioned Roadways Program has not excelled — it does not even appear on the official website of the Mitrans, the entity in charge of its execution, nor will deadlines set for its different stages of development be known until the end of 2030 — at least in the government press, the work moves at full speed.
The data provided by sources of the Ministry of Transportation to the newspaper Granma indicate that the road network in Cuba covers a total of 71,138.5 km (44,204 miles), of which 17,168 km (10,668 miles) are classified as urban roads and about 24,000 km (14,913 miles) correspond to rural roads, with most of them considered “of specific interest” because they are owned by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Azcuba (sugarcane production) group. The same source adds that “in a general way” 24% of these routes are evaluated as “in good condition”, 37% “are in normal condition” and 39% “in poor condition”.
The figures quoted do not clearly reflect the importance rankings of the roads included in this phantom plan; however, the director of the National Road Center did report that for the period 2019-2030 ” priority investments associated with the development of the northern coastal cays areas plus the Special Development Zone of Mariel, as well as works of tourist interest and others in the economic and social field will be maintained.” He also assured that, in addition, “emphasis is placed on the improvement of road signs and activities related to the sealing of cracks, paving, milling and repair of bridges and sewers, and continue mainly on the National Highway and the Central Highway.
It is worth clarifying at this point that the so-called National Highway is a misnomer, since it does not even meet the required basic requirements
It is worth clarifying at this point that the so-called National Highway is a misnomer, since it does not even meet basic requirements, such as the absence of level intersections or crossings, with layouts allowing access to adjacent buildings directly from the road. It also does not meet the required deceleration lanes at entrances and exits, with nonexistent or diffuse and extremely narrow lateral shoulders at best, with scarce and deficient signaling system which is not consistent with high-speed traffic highways. The route lacks fences or railings that guarantee security and prevent the access of pedestrians or cattle (or other animals), among other infinite deficiencies related to the poor quality of the construction and not a few engineering errors of the original project.
The brand new “highway” does not even classify as a motorway, nor could it be compared to the marvel of engineering that was once the Central Highway, built between 1927 and 1931 under the Government of Gerardo Machado, and still considered Cuba’s most important road, extending for 708 miles through 14 of Cuba’s current provinces.
Nor does the ill-named freeway have a “national” rank since, although the project — originally devised by the now deceased Fidel Castro in his useless effort to emulate and overcome all the advances of the Republican Period — intended to build a modern high-speed road which would cross the island lengthwise in its entirety; the truth is that it only covers a total of just 597 km (371 miles) from the capital to the west, to the city of Pinar del Río, and to the east to the city of Sancti Spiritus, in the Central region of Cuba. The demise of the Soviet Union and with it the subsidies received by the Castro Regime marked the fate of a road that, to date, remains truncated.
But, returning to the issue of current maintenance and repair works whose execution is supervised by the same non-elected president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, it goes without saying that, this time, the information about the amount of the budget that will be dedicated to such commendable purpose was conspicuous by its absence. Commendable and urgent, if it were true, especially since each year the high accident rates take the lives of dozens of people and causes temporary or permanent injuries to thousand others.
Not to mention the corruption of bribing the officials responsible for ensuring the safety of all, both in the process of obtaining driver’s licenses and in the evasion of technical controls
Last June, the official radio station Radio Rebelde reported that between January and May 2019, 4,134 traffic accidents had taken place in Cuba, with a balance of 269 deaths and 3,063 injuries, “a discrete decrease” compared to the same period over last year’s numbers. However, the official version continues to consider Road Safety Code violations by vehicle drivers as the main cause of the high accident rate, which is a half-truth, because it masks the responsibility of the Government for the lousy state of roads, the precarious and defective signaling system, plus the poor technical condition of state-owned vehicles, including the ones that operate in passenger transport.
All this, not to mention the corruption through bribes to the officials responsible for ensuring the safety of all, which is present both in the process of obtaining licenses and in the evasion of technical controls — carried out by state inspectors — or fines that the traffic police should impose on offenders.
At the moment, Cuba’s current scenario is more doubtful than certain, and despite everything, the repair of roads — although also necessary — is perhaps the least of the priorities of a population where such essential issues as finding food to place on the table and housing are still pending subjects against useless plans and empty slogans.
Translated by Norma Whiting
_________________
The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
Caption 1: The popular uprising begagn on Avenida del Puerto and many people joined it along the Malecón. (Karel Poort)
14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havana, August 4, 2019 — “This was one of the places where more people joined,” remembers Loipa, a resident of Malecón and Escobar in Central Havana. Twenty-five years after the Maleconazo*, the events of that day have taken the form of an urban legend that older people tell and younger ones don’t know. “That fifth of August in 1994 it seemed that everything was ending,” stresses the woman.
The area has changed a lot since that social explosion that put Fidel Castro on the ropes. Calle San Lázaro near Maceo Park now has a quarter century more of deterioration, in several places entire buildings have collapsed, and “the majority of those who experienced that moment have left or have died,” says Loipa.
“I was a nurse at Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital when everything happened,” she remembers of that Friday. “We started the day with no light and I didn’t have to work that day but I had gone out to look for some food because in the house we’d gone a week with only rice and a sauce that my mom invented with lemongrass and oregano from the ground.” continue reading
The crisis, which the government had baptized with the euphemism of Special Period, had been dragging on the lives of Cubans for several years. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economy of the Island sank from the lack of fuel, the abrupt cutting of imports, and the lost of Soviet support that turned out “brutal,” according to the economist Carmelo Mesa-Lago.
On August 5, 1994, the Cuban seaboard was witness to a popular revolt known as the Maleconazo. (Karel Poort)
That fifth of August, Loipa was unaware of what was brewing near her house. For days tension had been growing after authorities intercepted several boats sailing toward the coast of the United States. A rumor began to gain force on the street: that the Government was going to permit the arrival of boats from Florida to seek family members on the Island, just as had been done in 1980 during the exodus of the Mariel Boatlift.
“That morning my son came in the house and told us he was going,” remembers Fernando Soriano, a retiree who lives in a neighborhood “with a view of the sea,” as he likes to call it. On the avenue of Malecón and near the corner with Campanario, the now retired man is in the business of collecting beer and soda cans from businesses in the area to sell them in raw material centers and augment his pension.
A few months earlier, in an attempt to relieve the social pressure cooker, Castro had promoted self-employed work by permitting some licenses for the private sector. Thus were born the first private restaurants, the first small shops in decades that sold sweets, fried food, and pizzas in a legal manner, but the economic situation remained at rock bottom for the great majority of Cubans, trapped in a suffocating cycle of survival.
“Many people like my son went to the boat launch on the Regla wharf to see if they could go on the boats that were going to arrive,” remembers Soriano. “That filled up but the police already had surrounded the place because the residents of this area kept going down through all the streets to get to the Malecón wall in case the boats came.” In one moment the frustration erupted.
The area has changed a lot since that social explosion that put Fidel Castro on the ropes. (Karel Poort)
“The Malecón turned into a death trap, when the people came to realize that they weren’t going to let them go, the shock troops were already here,” he explains. Soriano points out the intersection of Calle San Lázaro and Belascoaín. “The Blas Roca construction contingent entered through here, with helmets and rebar in their hands, dealing out blows on all sides.”
Soriano believes that the protest didn’t turn into more because “it lacked leadership and they chose the route poorly.” He believes that “had they placed themselves in Central Havana and Old Havana and moved outward, thousands of people would have joined and then everything would have been different because it’s not the same thing to suppress a handful versus a sea of people.”
Castro had the skill of setting civilians against each other to avoid the image of uniformed soldiers hitting the population. “No one knew who was who, although I remember that those who were demonstrating looked skinnier and with more raggedy clothing,” says this Havanan.
Mesa-Lago believes that the worst year of the crisis that led to the Maleconazo was 1993, “but the crisis began in 1991,” he specifies. What was lost was not a small thing, between 1960 and 1990 the USSR injected around $65 billion into the Island’s economy. In the decade of the 80s that bulky subsidy generated a “golden” age of Cuban socialism that some still remember today with nostalgia.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economy of the Island sank. (Karel Poort)
Ernesto was born a year after that popular revolt and now he operates a pedicab in the vicinity of where on that day his father joined a group of those who were yelling and demanding that they be permitted to leave the country. “The old man has told me some things but he doesn’t like to talk about that day because the police arrested him and put him in jail.” Years later and after leaving prison, Ernesto’s father managed to get political asylum in the United States.
“Here almost nobody talks about that, although everyone still has the same desperation to leave,” reflects the bicycle-taxi driver. “People no longer go out in the street [to protest] because it was already seen that nothing is achieved, but the Maleconazo of today is outside of the embassies,” he believes. The event has been erased from official history and every August, the media praises the birthday of Fidel Castro, on the 13th, while they silence that other day that marked so many lives.
Castro had the skill of setting civilians against each other to avoid the image of uniformed soldiers hitting the population. Fidel Castro is in the green army cap center left. (Karel Poort)
The Rafter Crisis [Crisis de los Balseros] that erupted after, in which tens of thousands of Cubans embarked upon the sea, has also been erased from the anniversaries that are studied in schools and broadcast on national media.
On the same corner of Malecón y Belascoaín, one of the epicenters of the protest, now there is an esplanade where children play and at night groups of young people gather to share their dreams and a lot of rum. The adjacent building has some columns that look out on the sea, they have tried to hide the cracks with some paint.
A man rocks in a chair in the doorway while he sells paper cones of peanuts. He says that he doesn’t remember much of that day but that in the stairway of the entrance of the building “some children hid, one of them covered in blood because they had split his head.” The neighborhood of San Leopoldo, in Central Havana, was one of those that took the worst part of the suppression against the demonstrators on that fifth of August.
Cubans launched sticks and stones against Hotels like the Deauville and stores like La Época. (Karel Poort)
Propelled by frustration and rage, some of them began to break the glass windows of state-owned businesses and vandalize trash containers. “Here almost every family had a child beaten that day or who later left on a raft,” believes Soriano.
Official media broadcast the arrival of Fidel Castro to the area, like a sign that the revolt had been pacified and the Government had emerged victorious. “He only arrived when everything was already calm and the truth is that that wasn’t a happy day for anybody in this neighborhood,” says a resident of San Leopoldo who prefers anonymity and who was surprised by “all that” on the street.
But behind the official silence, the wound remains open. “I handed in my Communisty Party card a little after that, I had stopped believing in everything when I saw the builders splitting heads open and dealing out blows,” the woman makes clear.
*Translator’s note: In Spanish “azo” is an ending used to coin words and implies concepts such as “blow and hit, and also big.” In this case, added to “Malecon” it means the explosion/riot on the Malecon.
The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
A photo of the menu of one of the private locales that promote a combo of a domestic beer with fried food. (Facebook)
14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez, Havana, August 6, 2019 — It took less than seventy-two hours after the imposition of price controls on beverages in privately owned Havana cafes for their proprietors to find creative ways around them. They involve menu combos that feature a soft drink with an appetizer or a dessert.
On his Facebook page the economist Oscar Fernandez posted a photo of a menu from one such business featuring a Cuban beer and an order of fried plantains for 50 Cuban pesos (or 2 convertible pesos — roughly $2 US), which makes a mockery of the the 30 peso (1.25 convertible peso) mandated price for the beverage.
A similar combo featuring an Hollandia or Heineken also goes for 50 pesos while another combo with a soft drink and dessert at the same cafe costs 25 pesos, well above the official price of 18 pesos for a canned soft drink or sparkling water. continue reading
“Two covertible pesos for a beer at a bar (and not just a privately owned one) is a reflection of a hard inequity: there is a segment of the population that can afford to pay that price,” writes Fernandez next to the photo. “The market is like a river. No matter how hard you try, you can’t grab the water with your hands. All you can do is channel it.”
The minister of Finance and Pricing, Meisi Bolaños Weiss, does not see it that way and warns in a tweet that cafe owners “should not resort to tricks to evade pricing regulations.” She added that “complaints and reports of violations should include the date and time they were observed to insure immediate and effective action.”
Since the announcement of salary increases at the end of June, authorities have urged customers to report any privately owned establishment that raises its prices.
“It took just a few days before someone figured out how to work around that restriction,” says Evelio, a regular customer at private pizzerias in Havana. He notes that many of them “are selling what they call a completa, which includes a pizza and a beer or soda, so nothing has changed.”
“I fear that soon it will be very hard to buy a cold beer in this city just by itself, without anything else.” Evelio is not surprised by this new combo fad. “Cubans are used to state stores packaging basic necessities with low-end merchandise and selling it at very high prices for Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day.”
__________________________________
The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
Some parents had problems with illegible papers or errors. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, August 6, 2019 — Enormous lines and annoyance among parents marked this Monday the beginning of the sale of uniforms in the majority of municipalities in the capital. After days of waiting, uncertainty, and misinformation, Plaza de la Revolución, Centro Habana, La Habana Vieja, Regla, La Habana del Este, Guanabacoa, Cerro, and Marianao finally joined the communities of San Miguel del Padrón, Diez de Octubre, La Lisa, Boyeros, Arroyo Naranjo, and el Cotorro, which began the operation last Thursday, and Playa, which was added on Friday.
In a store called La Gloria, chosen for students from Plaza de la Revolución to buy their uniforms, the line began to form on Sunday at four in the afternoon.
“This was madness. Here in the front door of the store there was a little group that had the list. They were drinking rum and making a huge uproar. The parents who were arriving put their names down on the list, got their number, and left, but early in the morning there was even a knife fight and we had to call the police,” says a resident who everyone calls Nena and who carries a thermos of coffee in her hand from which she sells cups to others. continue reading
They had to keep the store open until midnight, due to the large number of people who had piled up on this first day in part of the capital. (14ymedio)
At eight in the morning, an hour before the opening of La Gloria, a crowd was gathered around the building. The list that had been made the previous day included the first hundred people in the line who had in their hands a ticket with a number. As the others arrived they asked “who’s last”* in the line for those “without a ticket” as they arrived.
There are hardly any children in the long line. The majority of the parents have chosen to bring a garment of their child to figure out the size and avoid a bad experience for the children. Those who couldn’t avoid bringing them, on the other hand, passed the time running around, sometimes desperate, going from one side to the other, or asking for water and food.
A slim woman comes in high heels, a business skirt, and a pearl necklace. After five minutes of waiting, leaning on a column, she takes some sandals out of her purse, puts away the heels, takes off the skirt, and remains with some shorts that she was wearing underneath. “Now I’m ready for this,” she says, and she takes off to rest against one of the walls surrounding the front door of the store after putting down a little nylon bag that she takes out of her purse. She gets comfortable, and now she is ready for a long wait.
A few minutes before nine in the morning, the manager of the store arrives and explains in detail the necessary requisites to make the purchase and all of its peculiarities. She warns that they are not yet selling high school uniforms for boys and that the voucher cannot having any corrections. She also asks the parents to carefully read the list of schools that shop there to avoid waiting in line in vain, a moment in which all of the parents check their papers to make sure.
One of the mothers is worried because the part of the voucher that indicates the sex of the student wasn’t very legible. “Here you can see that they wanted to turn an M into an F, so nothing is understood. We can’t accept that this way here,” the employee tells her. “Now you have to go to the municipality education office which is on H and 21 and get another,” she adds, to the annoyance of the woman.
The mother leaves after calling her husband, who picks her up on a motorcycle to right the wrong. She had arrived at the store at five in the morning and was among the first hundred in line, so she didn’t want to lose the opportunity. “There I had to make a big fuss for them to pay attention to me, because nobody is doing anything, but in the end I got a promise from an employee that they would send someone here with new vouchers to exchange,” she says upon returning.
An official from the Ministry of Education finally arrived, in a car and with a folder of papers, as a savior of the parents and not only gave a new voucher to that family but also to others in a similar situation. “They didn’t accept my voucher because it’s written in two different inks, imagine. The teacher’s pen ran out when she was filling out the information and I gave her mine to finish it,” explained a grandmother to the woman from the municipality. “Who would think of making a demand like that?” she complained.
Despite the incidents, the sale began punctually, at nine in the morning. At two tables, placed at the entrance to the store, workers took information from parents, who then passed inside to make the purchase. At the counter two very young girls, with white t-shirts with the face of Che, were in charge of sales, while a boy helped to take out and organize pieces from the storeroom.
At a rate of five minutes per person, at midday some 40 people had already made their purchases. However, the feeling was that it wasn’t advancing, and only after two in the afternoon were they able to organize the second part of the line, those who had no ticket. One of the mothers got everyone in a line and handed out a hundred new numbers to guarantee order and prevent cutting.
The list that had been made the previous day included the first hundred people in the line who had in their hands a ticket with an identifying number. (14ymedio)
At four in the afternoon, after eight hours of waiting, a grandmother sadly came out of the store. “I wasn’t able to buy anything because my grandson is starting first grade and she says that it’s only for the first ones,” explained the woman, who had missed the moment in which the manager had warned of that detail.
“You wait there, that is outrageous, why couldn’t they make an exception for you, an older woman? Now you have to come another day and wait in line, that cannot be,” yelled an older man who was accompanying his son. “I can’t sell to her on that voucher, because later when they do the audit, I’ll be the one with the problems,” explained the manager to the man who, despite everything, managed to extract from her the promise that, when sales to the second group begins, the woman will not have to wait in line again.
After an entire day in line, some parents began to sketch out ideas to solve the yearly disaster in sales of school uniforms. “The best thing would be to get rid of them, let each student come in dark pants and a light sweater and the problem is over,” said a mother. “I’m 41, and in my high school they gave out the uniforms in the school’s storeroom, where they gave you your books. And there were never problems, if they were missing a size they asked for it and it’s done, if they did that now they would get rid of a few problems,” says another.
At eight at night the parents who had come at eight in the morning were coming out with their purchases, although some no longer found the size they were looking for. Those who had arrived at nine or ten in the morning still had two hours of waiting ahead of them. The store was selling up until a few minutes before midnight. Today, in front of the store, the view is the same, hundreds of parents waiting to buy school uniforms for their children.
*Translator’s note: In Cuba people join lines by asking “who’s last” and then they know who is the person ahead of them. Once the next person comes and they identify themselves as “last” they can wander off, sit down, visit with friends and so on without losing their place.
Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera
______________________
The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
Cuban police detain the activist Iliana Hernández during the LGBTI independent march on May 11 in Havana. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Havana, August 4, 2019 — The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH) has urged the new legislature of the European Union, which will come into office in the next few weeks, to present “a more demanding posture in face of the human rights violations in Cuba,” according to a statement published this week.
The OCDH also details in its text that during the month of July on the Island arbitrary detentions and repressive actions increased in Cuba. “There were at least 263 arbitrary arrests, within a total of more than 300 repressive actions by the authorities.”
The Observatory, headquartered in Madrid, adds to these repressive acts “cases of home raids, illegal summons, prohibition of trips abroad, and besieged houses, among others.” The provinces with the most worrying rates have been Havana, Matanzas, Santiago de Cuba, and Villa Clara. continue reading
“Some of the cases had special relevance in July, like the explusion of Omara Ruiz Urquiola as a university professor at the Advanced Institute of Design in Havana,” details the report. “The human rights activist suffers from cancer and has claimed on several occasions that the island’s medical authorities are denying her treatment,” it adds.
The arrest of the independent journalist Ricardo Fernández Izaguirre, a contributer to 14ymedio, is also included in the text. The reporter was “detained for nine days, four of them totally isolated. Later he was fined and deported from the capital to Camagüey. His case is typical of the shameless breach of the by now arbitrary Cuban national law,” it claims.
Iliana Hernández, contributer for the portal CiberCuba, also “was detained by the police twice in July,” adds the OCDH.
In the next few weeks a new legislature will begin in the European Union and the matter of human rights “cannot be subordinated to geopolitical calculations, much less when people, now not only in Cuba, but also in Venezuela and Nicaragua, look at Europe as a global benchmark in the defense of democratic values and human dignity,” affirmed Alejandro González Raga, executive director of OCDH.
Recently the organization published a report claiming that in the first half of 2019 there were at least 1,468 arbitrary detentions against opposition figures, independent journalists, and activists on the Island.
Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera
_____________________________
The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
In the 1516 Carta Marina, Waldseemüller called the contour that the United States currently occupies “Terra de Cvba.”
14ymedio, August 5, 2019 — When Columbus arrived in the “New World,” he called it Cuba. He didn’t know then that he was on an island and believed that it was part of Asia. In 1507 the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller made a great map in which the word America appeared for the first time to designate the lands explored by Vespucci, but years later rectified it and ended up changing it to Cuba.
Waldseemüller began to doubt Vespucci’s role in the New World and called the continent “terra incognita,” with a note that indicated: “This land and the adjacent islands were discovered by the Genoese Columbus, by mandate of the king of Castile.” The cartographer thus joined the idea that Columbus had reached the continent, so when he made the Carta Marina in 1516 he decided to label it “Terra de Cvba – Asie partis” (Land of Cuba – part of Asia, in Latin).
The Carta Marina is one of the most important cartographic works in the world, considered the first printed nautical map it has 12 pages. It measures approximately 2×1 meters and its only copy is in the United States Library of Congress. continue reading
“In the Carta Marina, he [Waldseemüller] adopts the idea of Christopher Columbus. Then what we call America is in reality an unknown extension of Asia,” Ricardo Padrón, a specialist in literature and cartography of the Spanish empire, tells BBC Mundo in a report that dives into this mystery.
The professor believes that Columbus explored part of the Cuban coast on his second voyage to America. “He was convinced that the lands he had discovered were part of Asia and when it became evident to him that the coasts he was exploring were those of an island, he denied it and made his crew members swear that the land that he had discovered, Cuba, was continental and not insular,” he added.
This confusion, created deliberately by Columbus, would have consequences like that of Waldseemüeller’s map.
It is unknown, moreover, what is the origin of the name of the island, the BBC text takes the opportunity to remind us. One theory suggests that it comes from ciba, which means “stone, mountain, cave” among the native Tainos. Another, also of indigenous origin, is that it comes from cohiba and that is what natives named it. Cubanacan, which means “central place” in Taino, because of its position in the Caribbean, could be another of the origins.
A last one, which comes from outside, is that it comes from the Arabic word coba (mosque with a dome) and that is the form of the mountains seen from the Bay of Bariay, where it is believed Columbus disembarked.
Although the Genoese called it Juana, for the daughter of the monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, he changed it to Ferdinanda when the queen began to be known by the nickname The Crazy One. However, Cuba is the name that prevailed.
“The indigenous population called it something similar to Cuba. This is recounted by Father (Bartolomé) de las Casas, the Dominican friar who was traveling with Columbus and was in Cuba for the entire colonization. And all this is known from oral tradition,” Ciro Bianchi, collaborator of Juventud Rebelde, tells the BBC.
Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera
______________________
The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
Cafes had to adapt to the new law this Thursday. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Havana, August 1, 2019 — Notice boards of missing products or those corrected in a hurry are part of the scene this Thursday as capped prices of drinks go into effect in private cafes and bakeries in Havana, a governmental measure that intends to contain inflation after the salary increase in the state sector.
“20 pesos,” responds an employee of a private cafe in El Vedado in a low voice, when, the day before the law started to apply, a mother asks him how much an orange soda costs. Private workers have spent days preparing themselves for the price regulation, which also affects industrial juices, bottled water, and beer.
The fear that the law will entail a reinforcement of the presence of undercover inspectors and that customers will denounce those who maintain former prices has led many to modify the prices days before the official date for its entry into force, while others maintained them until the last minute of July 31. continue reading
Some businesses still continue with the former prices. (14ymedio)
In many of the private cafes and bakeries that opened in the early hours of August 1, crossed-out prices could still be seen, now replaced by lower figures, but in the majority of places one had to ask.
The new rates stipulate that domestically produced beer be fixed at 30 CUP (1.25 CUC); imported beer at 35 pesos (1.45 CUC); and soda in 1.5-liter bottles cannot be more than 30 CUP and in cans 18 CUP.
In a brief trip through the Nuevo Vedado neighborhood, the most obvious thing was that late yesterday night, July 31, Hollandia beer was stocked at the Tulipán store. At the price of 1 CUC per can (roughly $1 US) and with a maximum limit of five cases of 24 cans per customer, there had already been a line since the early hours.
“If every day there was this supply, you could understand capped prices,” commented the owner of a bar-cafe. “We’ll see how long it lasts.”
In a pizzeria on Tulipán street, prices remained at 40 and 50 CUP for domestic beer and 60 for imported, but the sales clerk said that as soon as the cashier arrived, they would make a decision about taking down the sign or amending it.
Employees of various private restaurants in the Plaza de la Revolución municipality confirmed to 14ymedio that, although the measure doesn’t apply to private restaurants, they have been summoned to a series of meetings where authorities have asked them not to increase prices. In those meetings, representatives of the Provincial Administration Council of Havana have promised to not raise prices in state-owned retail markets, where self-employed workers buy a good part of their products.
“Personally it doesn’t affect me so much, because in addition to canned soda I sell juices and natural fruit smoothies that we make right here,” Néstor, an entrepreneur with a small kiosk in an arcade in the Calzada del Cerro, tells this newspaper. “But I also sell plenty of cola and lemon sodas, because the pediatric hospital is close by and parents prefer to bring drinks that are sealed and more secure to the children that are patients.”
Despite the fact that his pocket will not be among the most harmed by the new law, Néstor believes that “the self-employed weren’t consulted at all before they applied a measure like this to us. When the time comes to pay taxes and hand over part of our earnings, they announce it with plenty of time beforehand, even on television, but when it’s time to make a decision like this, they say it practically from one day to the next.”
That the capped prices include small private cafes and places that sell breads and baked goods but not private restaurants is, in Néstor’s opinion, discrimination. “They punish the little people but leave out those who make more money with the drink prices that remain as they are,” he claims. “Everyone is saying that it’s because they don’t want to affect their own interests because there are many powerful people in this country who have opened private restaurants.”
Stores were well stocked this Thursday early in the morning. (14ymedio)
Many cafe owners have come throughout the week to the premises of the National Office of Tributary Administration (ONAT) of Central Havana to ask if the measure will entail a change in the tax rate that they must pay each year on their personal incomes. “I had planned more or less how much I was going to earn in these months, but now I have to redo all those calculations,” protested a self-employed worker to an employee of the office.
The ONAT employees insisted that the decision “has been made by the Provincial Administration Council of Havana” and is disassociated from the tax system, dependent on the Ministry of Finances and Prices.
In a small cafe located on Carlos III, near the corner of Infanta, a few customers were looking this morning to see if the rule was being followed. “When I don’t find soda in the store I come through here and buy a can to take it to my son at school for snack time,” explains Dayamí, a nurse and mother of an eight-year-old son who is now on vacation. “The price has risen in the past year and I was no longer able to pay it,” she clarifies.
A day before the law was due to take effect, the incumbent of the Ministry of Finances and Prices, Meisi Bolaños, justified the price freezes on drinks and other products. “If we increase the salary and at the same time they do it with the main products, goods, and services that the population demands, the positive effect on purchasing power wouldn’t be matched or achieved,” she argued.
The official called on citizens to denounce those who don’t comply. “It’s the people themselves who through communication channels inform us and provide evaluations, complaints, and reports; additionally, they explain to us and offer suggestions to review prices and establish regulatory mechanisms, above all in those cases that have to do with food and services.”
This Wednesday the economist Pedro Monreal warned of the dangers of appealing to what he called “frozen prices.” On his blog, the academic judged that the measure indicates “the supremacy of administrative mechanisms and the anchoring of planning in a centralized outline. It’s the economic equivalent of an induced coma and its multiple consequences could be significant.”
A private restaurant in Nuevo Vedado maintains the old prices: “Nobody has told us that we had to change them.” (14ymedio)
Monreal shares the fear spreading through Cuban streets that the new straitjacket imposed on the private sector will not prevent prices from “growing on a black market that could expand. It could also loosen the stitches of the economic system through other places: investment, jobs, and salaries.”
“When they capped the prices of pork in the markets, what happened?” asks Isidro del Valle, a pork producer from the region of Bahía Honda in Pinar del Río who says that the majority of the pork now sold in the region “is done on foot and because the buyer comes directly to the farms or has an intermediary, but it doesn’t arrive in the markets.”
“What’s going to happen with drinks is that we’re going to come to a cafe and the employee will say that they don’t have them, not on the announcement board, but if someone wants a cola they will have to pay the price that it had before all this,” he suspects. “Either you pay the price or you have no drink. Oh, and if an inspector comes they will say that the customer brought the can from another place.”
“Every time the Government makes a law here, the people invent a trick,” says the pork producer with resignation.
Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera
__________________
The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
The average wait to retrieve a suitcase is between 5 and 8 hours during the day. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 6 August 2019 — “Mommy put your feet up, put your feet up,” says a daughter with a worried face to a lady who has been waiting for eight hours in the missing luggage department in terminal 3 of the José Martí International Airport in Havana. The old woman tells me that she has recently had cancer surgery and has a very painful leg.
The dialogue takes place near an official of the General Customs of the Republic (AGR) who, in her red supervisor’s vest, comes out to explain the delay. People just let her talk, especially Rafael Vidal, a 57-year-old, thin and hyperkinetic Cuban who has been trying to recover his lost bag for 24 hours.
Due to the strict customs regulations and the convoluted mechanism that allows Cubans to pay import fees in Cuban pesos – but only once a year – Cubans with lost luggage have to go to the airport to deal with the cumbersome process. continue reading
On the afternoon of August 3, Vidal is desperate and the others there tell him to remain calm, “you’ll give yourself a heart attack,” they say. But he keeps gesticulating and jumping around without getting Customs employees to do their work any faster. It takes them between 30 and 45 minutes with each client, but sometimes up to an hour.
To retrieve luggage, you must first get into the outer line, and then after two or three hours you can access an office where a passenger must locate their luggage. If an airline representative arrives, the customer can advance somewhat in line but still the average wait is between 5 and 8 hours during the day. Soon you will have to weigh the suitcase and fill in the Customs form. Between one thing and another endless minutes pass in which nothing happens.
In some seats – which once had padded bottoms but are now only metal – those of us who wait exchange stories. “I’m here since five in the morning,” says a father with a small girl. “I have not had breakfast or lunch because I can’t go out,” adds a teenager who points out the padlock that closes the access gate, located on the side of the main terminal building.
We are not imprisoned, no judge has dictated that they lock us up, but we all know that going out to try to go to the bathroom or drink some water can mean losing our place in line. We are prisoners of Customs; inmates without prison uniforms or bars, although prisoners in the end.
We remain in a corridor, between two offices, with a light roof full of gaps and a floor that has not been cleaned in months. There is no bathroom, drinking fountain, or a place to buy something to eat. Outside, first under the inclement sun and then soaked by an intense downpour, are the less fortunate, those who have not even been able to enter the area where they can sit.
A lock closes the access gate to the waiting area to recover lost luggage that is already in the national territory. (14ymedio)
“I got in line before noon,” says a talkative lady who is still tired from her long journey from Mozambique where her doctor daughter lives. When she arrived, Customs confiscated an electric oven for not complying with the import requirements and she does not understand why, as of three o’clock this Saturday, she has not been given her suitcase, which has been in Havana for a day.
That ordeal is only experienced by Cubans, including those who reside outside the Island, since most tourists will get their lost luggage delivered to their hotel or the rental house where they are staying. “We are not people, we are animals,” laments a woman who has arrived with her daughter to claim some bundles. She says it almost under a surveillance camera, with a fish eye-shaped lens, at which she stares defiantly.
“Foreigners do not stand in line and if you drop a bill in the right hands you go through very quickly,” complains a young man next to me with dark glasses that hide his eyes, red from not sleeping. “I arrived Thursday on the Aeroflot flight and my suitcase landed yesterday,” he says in a weak voice. He opens a package of cookies and offers them, hands come up fast to get one.
In the almost six hours I spend there, I see everything. A European retrieves his suitcase in minutes and tries to pay the airport employee who slipped it to him, but the man indicates with a gesture that it is better to make the transaction more discreetly. Another, in exchange for two ice cream snacks, wins the favor of a customs official, while a woman passenger breaks into tears of despair under the sign that says “lost luggage.”
Strong ties are woven between the preschool teacher, the reporter for 14ymedio, the young man traveling on an official passport, a woman returning to stay, a reggaetonero, a teenager who grew up in Belgium but whose dual citizenship is not recognized in Cuba, a young man who does not want to protest so as not to stand out, and the retiree who sees “a repudiation rally or a tribute as the same thing,” he says.
No one shows any mercy to Customs: it is the enemy; we, a varied and unarmed platoon. In there they have weights, scanners, forms, arrogance, grim looks; out here helplessness, annoyance, anger… a rage that is taking shape as the hours go by. Vidal is the most troubled because he is the one who has been waiting the longest.
The man shouts that he will complain, that he needs witnesses of so much “abuse”; some laugh softly thinking he is crazy, but most support him, close ranks with him. You can’t be very sane and challenge power in Cuba, much less a Customs that decides what merchandise can make a family happy and relieve their daily hardships.
Everything related to luggage uncovers sensitivities. We packed the gifts for relatives, the medicines for a patient, the order that a friend entrusted us. Behind every suitcase is a drama. “I brought a cream for the bedsores of my grandfather who is prostrate and I have not been able to get it for four days,” says a woman who waits by my side, while the rain sneaks through the gaps in the roof and soaks us.
Another woman takes out a pen to share with those who must fill out the Customs form, although they have already completed one before arriving in Cuba, a blue piece of paper asking if we are bringing live animals or pornography, when the danger is actually something else.
The authorities limit private imports because the State wants to continue selling its lousy products at very high prices in its stores.
For Customs, we are potential criminals who carry a larger number of disposable shavers in our bags, cans of sardines that we do not declare, or shoes that are not our size and that make it clear we are importing them for third parties. We are the enemy and they treat us as such.
Fear shows in every step that the AGR employees take before the tired but attentive eyes of a crowd that after several hours of waiting seems to have lost its own fear. “Either they give me the bags or I denounce them”; “They deal with me right now or this is going to go through the channels [alluding to Miami television]”; “They expedite this or even Raúl Castro will find out,” shout the more daring.
There is a Cuban couple living in the United States who have brought their son. The boy plays on a cell phone but occasionally emits a phrase of despair. Heat and dirt envelop everything. The mother warns him that, although he was born on the other side of the Florida Strait, he has to learn that in Cuba “making anything happen requires work.” Not very satisfied, the little one concentrates on the screen.
A lady notices me. “You are a journalist, right?” she says loudly. A score of eyes look at me. “You are going to have to report this,” voices from several corners demand of me, charging me with the responsibility of writing down the long hours they have been there, the employees’ laziness and their absolute inefficiency. I can’t escape, it’s my turn.
The supervisor explains that “this is complicated every day but today it has been more complicated than ever because the system is down,” in reference to the computer program that collects the data of all travelers who pass Cuban immigration. I like the phrase … and yes, the “system” is on the ground, broken, bankrupt, taking on water everywhere, I add in my mind.
Others do not miss the opportunity and also joke about the double meaning of the phrase. “Look, it fell and we didn’t even have to lay it down,” says a woman with a beautiful rose-shaped tattoo who arrived around three in the afternoon.
“Every time we try to scan a passport, it does not give us the passenger’s record,” the red-vested supervisor justifies herself. “Then we have to ask the security cameras to review the filming of the day the traveler arrived,” she adds. When the “system goes down” they can only know if the person brought more kilograms of luggage than allowed by checking that footage.
In my mind the scene reminds me of the television series where an electronic eye watches everything, whether the passenger was carrying one suitcase, two or none. According to this supervisor, to return lost luggage to its owner, it is necessary to check in the security recordings to see how many packages the traveler took from the airport the day they left.
It is not that the lady thinks us fools, she knows that she is speaking to Cubans, a “domesticated” and controlled group… at least she thinks so. The treatment she gives us is like that of an officer who gives orders to his soldiers. “Don’t disrespect me,” “you have to wait,” “if you don’t like it, leave,” “if you keep bothering us we’ll kick you out of here,” “your problem,” “this is the procedure and we have to collect the money for the State,” the employees say.
After four in the afternoon the rain continues and the water floods the place, some raise their feet in the seats and others are resigned to it. None of the office doors open to summon us to shelter inside them. “Revolution is humanity,” one mocks, repeating a slogan from a billboard. I estimate that every day the place collects thousands of pesos in import fees, but they have not invested much in improving it.
They call me by my name. A Customs officer tells me that I can’t go through with the cart and I appeal to the lady who arrived from Mozambique. We are already friends, there is trust. The hours waiting have united us. They move a metal detector over my body and ask me to go to a dimly lit corridor where I find my suitcase. They also collect my passport and the import form.
The process is just beginning. They tell me to go out again. Outside Vidal looks like a caged lion and the temperature of his protest has risen. We are all soaked, hungry, upset and have that look of those who are already willing to lose everything, including their suitcase. Someone suggests that we go to the State Council and another gives their phone with some recordings to a relative and says “upload them to the internet.”
The screams of the daughter with the newly operated mother increase in volume. We all join. “Let that lady go and just give her her suitcase,” we bellow. An employee comes out and says she was able to scan seven passports to know the “import history of each one.” There are seven chosen ones, seven lucky ones. Vidal is one of them, perhaps to prevent him from continuing to call for a revolt.
The ungainly man puts a makeshift sign on the door: “People outside forbidden to enter the premises.” We are all Vidal, a little crazy, fed up, too mad. Thirty long minutes pass and he comes out with a briefcase and a look that fails to appear relieved. Immediately from inside they say my name and I go back in, and the employee attending me is paying more attention to the ice cream snack she just went to buy than to her work.
At a table with battered corners, another worker fills in a few sheets with a pen stroke where the name of the travelers appears. Obviously “the system has not come back to life and we are in the analog era,” I think. The phrases are rude, abuse is breathed in with the air, nobody says “sorry” for the technical problems that have caused the wait. At times I feel like some abandoned furniture in the middle of the office.
A half broken door gives access to the office where they weigh, inspect and process each baggage to be delivered. (14ymedio)
I look for my suitcase in the dimly lit hallway. Every corner of the room is trashed, all tiles have traces of grime and the place smells like dirt. “Where is your Customs form?” He asks me. “I already delivered it with my passport,” I babble, tired and shivering. “No, it’s not here,” he says.
The worst was yet to come. The inefficiency of Customs reached the point where they had given my passport to Vidal, who had quickly left for Las Tunas. In that chaos of documents scattered on the table, they didn’t even check the name, the photo or the gender. As he confirmed hours later, he was given a document twice, once his and once mine. The man, who was running on overdrive, didn’t even notice.
Anger rises, the employee washes her hands. “You have to find out where Vidal lives to get your passport back,” she tells me in a festive tone. I will have to become Sherlock Holmes for a mistake they made. But of course, Customs is untouchable, sure of itself, it doesn’t have to do anything for us, even when it loses the only document that allows you to cross national borders.
They let me carry my suitcase even though I no longer have identification that certifies to Customs that I am me, that I have entered Cuba on a certain date or that I have not brought any imports that require customs duty to be paid. They abandon me to my fate. I am an uncomfortable discard of their lack of efficiency.
I go out and the faces of frustration are still out there. I still have the strength to say that they are awaiting hours of abuse, inefficiency and the possible loss of their documents in the hands of a Customs office that knows how to control but not to take responsibility, an entity that acts as a watchdog but not as a safeguard; an guardian of imports that does not incur duties, only rights.
I run as fast as my legs will let me. I shout the name of Vidal in the parking lot and along the terminal exits, in the taxi area, to see if I can find him before he leaves with my 32-page booklet and filigree sheets. People think I’m crazy and by now they may be right.
The lady who had surgery with the sore leg passes by me and offers words of encouragement to follow. I can no longer cross the fence with a padlock that separates me from the employees of Customs at the Lost Baggage office. There, in the uncomfortable seats, with the dirty and still flooded floor, dozens of people wait to complete the same process that I know well. They have long faces and continue to complain loudly.
Twenty hours later I will rescue my passport thanks to the help of the employees of the JetBlue and Avianca airlines, together with the persistence of Rafael Vidal, who engaged all his energy to return it to me as soon as he realized the error. And the General Customs of the Republic that should have watched over my document and helped me in the process of recovering it? I’m still waiting for an apology.
_______________________________
The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
Before the store opens there is already a line of people who fear they won’t be able to get the size they need. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, August 2, 2019 — The store opens at 10:00 AM but the line began forming much earlier in front of La Gloria on La Rosa Street in Havana’s Nuevo Vedado neighborhood. It is August 1 and mothers, fathers and grandmothers have been here since before dawn to make sure they get the most desirable sizes of school uniforms “before they run out.” As television reports indicate, the first day of the sale has been delayed several weeks due to a shortage of raw materials, which has led to the scene being repeated in almost every store throughout the city.
Some mothers who arrived with their children fifteen minutes prior to opening are already showing signs of impatience. Others have brought a piece of clothing to match their kid’s size so the child is not subjected to a long wait.
The first employee arrives on time but has bad news. “Everyone please come over here so you can hear,” he says. continue reading
“There is a shortage of uniforms in the district. The staff at [the Ministry of Domestic] Commerce made the decision to announce when uniforms will be for sale through the media, in other words through the press and television. You can come back and buy them once they notify you,” he said at the beginning of a speech that was not well received by those present.
“We told you they would be for sale starting today because that was the information we received but that’s all changed now,” he adds. “Since the uniforms have not yet arrived, we cannot sell them.” That’s when the avalanche of anger and complaints begins.
“It’s all about communication. Why didn’t they put up a sign? There are people like me who have been waiting here since 1:00 AM,” says the first mother to raise her hand.
“It’s the same lie, the same old story we’ve heard for years. They are toying with us. There are a lot of working mothers here who have asked for the day off to take care of this. There are pregnant women. It shows a lack of respect. You said the uniforms would be for sale starting today and that’s why we’re here. The minister herself said there would be uniforms, that it was all guaranteed,” shouted one mother.
“They said so on television, that they would begin selling uniforms starting August 1,” says a tiny grandmother in a thin voice.
“This means I’ll have to become a TV news addict,” says the husband of one the women waiting in line, with a hint of irony.
In an effort to calm things down, the store manager comes to the employee’s rescue.
“We had a meeting with the vice-minister and the Commerce director and the problem is that the Playa district in Havana has less than 50% of its supply,” she says.
“Although we were prepared to begin selling uniforms, we are not authorized to do so if the store has not received at least that amount, as is the case with La Gloria,” she explains.
The manager is sympathetic and provides a new date to appease the parents, which they take it with a grain of salt. “Indications are that it will be on Monday, that the sale of school uniforms will begin on Monday,” she says, adding that if that happens, the store will remain open as long as necessary.
She gives those present the store’s telephone number as well as her personal phone number, promising to provide information or confirm Monday’s sale. She warns, however, that tenth grade boys’ uniforms may be unavailable until further notice “because there aren’t any.”
In a statement to 14ymedio the minister of Domestic Commerce, Betsy Diaz Velazquez, confirmed that uniforms would be for sale starting on Monday at the Plaza of the Revolution.
“I just left in the middle of a meeting to come give you the explanation,” she said, admitting that the previous information had been very incorrect.
The sale of school uniforms usually begins sometime between May and June, but this year the vice-minister of Domestic Commerce, Nancy Valdes, announced that they would not be available until the end of June or beginning of August.
Though they had to work longer shifts, trying to finish on time and make the almost three million uniforms required this year, factory workers were still not able to meet the official deadline.
Official press reports indicated on Sunday that uniforms sales had begun in towns in Artemisa, Mayabeque, Sancti Spíritus, Camagüey, Las Tunas, Holguín, Granma, Guantanamo and Isla de la Juventud provinces, adding that sales in the remaining provinces would begin gradually, “most likely in the second half of August.”
“It’s always the same old thing. The higher-ups make mistakes and underlings like us are the ones who pay the price because I am the one who has to face you,” said the manager of La Rosa yesterday. She confirmed that sale had begun in other towns where supplies surpassed the required 50%.
“But you still have to buy the item from your designated outlet. I take responsibility for making sure you get it, for making calls to other stores to find the right size. I’ll even go there to pick it up, no matter where it is,” she promises.
Before leaving, one of the first mothers in line snapped at the employee. “You have tell the leaders they have to inform us about this on the same day they are reporting on the Pan-American games. They could have easily told us yesterday during the Round Table program. If they had done that, we wouldn’t have had to wait in line.”
__________________
The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.
14ymedio, Havana, 8 August 2019 — On Wednesday, the People’s Municipal Court of Guantanamo requested a sanction of “one year of deprivation of liberty” which can be replaced by a year of correctional work with internment, for the independent journalist Roberto de Jesús Quiñones, accused of “resistance and disobedience.”
