The doctors who have stayed in Brazil aspire to find better opportunities there, even though, for the moment, they are separated from their families.
14ymedio, Gaby Hidalgo, Santa Clara, 14 December 2018 — “My mom told me that at school the teachers won’t call on my son, as if he had a contagious disease, they mark him as the son of the ‘doctor who stayed’,” says a doctor who left her son in her hometown of Sagua la Grande (Villa Clara) when she went to work in Brazil as a member of the Mais Médicos (More Doctors) program.
After Cuba left the program, she decided to stay in the state of Sao Paulo and, although she fears that some consider her a bad mother, she insists that she has made the decision to “defect” for her child, who has now become the son of a “traitor.” continue reading
“My decision was not taken lightly, it was something I had already discussed with my family,” she says. “Everyone should be free to decide what they want to do with their life. In Cuba the simplest thing becomes a conflict as it has now happened with the boy, not that they mistreat him but they talk about it in his presence, as if it were something terrible,” says the young doctor, saddened, who prefers to remain anonymous so as not to harm her family.
The families of the Cuban doctors who left the Mais Médicos mission to stay in Brazil are beginning to experience the repercussions of the decision on their loved ones. Contacted via the Internet and through social networks, the healthcare workers are not oblivious to what happens to their parents or their children, but they say they are sure that they have made the best decision.
M.B., also from Villa Clara, believes that “opportunities are presented once in a lifetime” and that in Cuba what she earned was not enough to cover her basic needs. “Everybody knows what you have to do to eat or dress there and I got tired of living on the mercy of my patients. My brother is in his fifth year of Medicine and, as soon as he finishes his studies, I will bring him with me, although I know that the government can put obstacles in the way of the paperwork to travel,” he says.
The Mais Médicos program was created in 2013 during the mandate of then Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016) with the aim of guaranteeing assistance in the most remote and humble regions of Brazil. However, last November, the Government of Cuba announced its decision to withdraw its more than 8,300 health workers from the Mais Médicos program in response to the intentions of the new Brazilian Executive to modify the terms of the agreement.
Cuban doctors began to return to the island almost immediately and on Wednesday the last plane carrying workers from the mission landed in Havana and was received by the Communist Party leadership with former President Castro at the head. However, many of the professionals have chosen to stay in Brazil. Although there are no official figures, the latest data provided by the Government indicates that 5,853 doctors had returned. After that number was reported only one more plane arrived, which indicates that almost a quarter of the contingent may have decided to settle permanently in Brazil, despite the consequences.
Medical deserters, as the government calls them, can not return to the island for eight years, but there are other, lesser-known consequences. General practitioner Leugim Espinosa knows this very well, having not been paid for the last month he worked, and having in Cuba his mother, already retired, and his grandmother who is 89.
“With their pensions they can not live, barely two hundred and fifty Cuban pesos (roughly $10 US) are not enough for food. As soon as my flight departed and they found out that I had not left, they withheld the money from the last month of my work here in Brazil, time that I had already worked and they also appropriated the savings [they had deposited for me] in banks in Cuba,” he laments.
C.A., a native of the coastal town of Isabela de Sagua, is one of those who have decided to return, although only for the moment. The doctor, who arrived in Brazil at the beginning of the program, is married to a Brazilian woman.
“When, on November 14, they announced that Cuba was leaving Mais Médicos, I assumed that I would not have any difficulty.” The state coordinator told me that I should travel on the plane with my wife, so that we would not overload the first trip home of my colleagues,” he said.
However, his idea is to return to Brazil as soon as possible. C.A. acknowledges that in Brazil Cuban doctors care for extremely disadvantaged sectors of the population, but points out that in Cuba poverty is general and there are no options for improvement. “When we were there our families suffered from distance but enjoyed economic privileges that they would not otherwise have known, now they take it out on the relatives of those who stayed behind.”
Recently the Brazilian press leaked a call from a Cuban official to Dr. Dayaimy González Valón, from the Máis Médicos program in Brazil, who had decided not to return to Cuba. In the conversation, the official resorts to intimidation by insistently pointing out to the professional that she risks facing eight years without being able to enter the country.
“If, unfortunately, something happens to someone in your family, you will not be able to enter Cuba,” says Leoncio Fuentes Correa, the state coordinator for the brigade in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. The official assures the doctor that with her decision not to return to Cuba she is “distancing [herself] from [her] family, which is the greatest thing that a human being has.”
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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.
Police siege this Sunday in front of the headquarters of the Ladies in White in Lawton, Havana. (Twitter / Berta Soler)
14ymedio, Havana, 10 December 2018 — Every December 10, International Human Rights Day, demands an annual review of the situation in Cuba. It is a day to audit, take stock and see where the inhabitants of this island are with regards to recovering their spaces and civic capacities.
The obligatory question on this date is whether the respect for these rights has improved, worsened or remains in a situation of stagnation. It is of particular interest to measure certain indicators since the engineer Miguel Diaz-Canel was named president, the first president in almost 60 years who does not carry the surname Castro.
Any quantitative analysis based on statistics could yield a slight positive result. The death penalty continues to not be applied and the number of political prisoners has been reduced, while arbitrary arrests, beatings or repudiation rallies remain, but have not suffered an alarming upturn, such as the Black Spring of 2003 or in the days after the death of activist Orlando Zapata Tamayo in 2010. continue reading
Some international observers conclude that the application of repressive methods of less intensity is an index of improvement. They are the same ones that point out that, although many activists are prevented from leaving the country, opposition meetings are prohibited, arbitrary arrests continue and independent journalists have their work tools confiscated, there are no disappeared or human beings found with traces of torture thrown in the ditches.
This is, perhaps, the most distorted reasoning possible on the subject of Human Rights in Cuba and one that has allowed various international actors to complacently evaluate the situation of the country in this regard. It is the same perverse logic that leads us to congratulate Saudi Arabia because its authorities allow women to drive cars and congratulate the North Korean regime because it authorizes men to cut their hair in new styles.
The tamer no longer lashes the lion in front of the public to force him to jump through the hoop, because the terror has been inoculated into the beast in a long and meticulous process of successive punishments.
At least two generations of Cubans have been born hearing in school and in the media that it is right for there to be only one political party, accepting without question that there is an institution called State Security that acts outside the law, and that it is normal to live with the whistleblowers who write reports and with the intolerant who have the ability to close the path to a good job or a university career.
The vast majority of citizens, at least as of December 2018, see in the official media sponsored by the Communist Party the only source for finding out what is happening in the world and the country.
The idea of organizing a political party, a professional guild, a student association, an independent union or a club of friends is something that has been left out of the healthy intentions that a “normal Cuban” can have.
The criminalization for decades of these and any other options common in any democracy has instilled in the population the prejudice that these are practices alien to our traditions that can only respond to the evil interests of US imperialism that seeks, by these means, to seize our national riches and subjugate our people.
The situation of human rights has not improved in Cuba, it does not even remain stable. It has worsened and is getting worse every day as the harmful effects of prolonged repression accumulate.
There is even the risk that the almighty tamer called The State dares to leave open some door of the cage to show to the world his prowess of having tamed an entire people. How many will dare to cross that threshold?
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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.
Salvador Redonet dedicated a good part of his research to the narrative of Cuban youth. (Margarita Mateo)
14ymedio, Ernesto Santana, Havana, 30 December 2018 — When he died 20 years ago, barely over 50, Salvador Redonet was younger than many of his protégés at that time and many beginning writers that he made known. Almost all those “newest ones” that he promoted so tirelessly are as old or older than he was when he died. But for all of them the teacher is still second to none.
Salvador Redonet Cook was anything but a typical academic. His friend and colleague Margarita Mateo has spoken about his rejoicing when someone was surprised because he had quoted the lyrics of a popular song in an analysis of a Cuban short story and accused him of “mixing semiotics with chatter.” The humble Dr. Redonet was not ashamed to live in Buena Vista.
As a critic and literary researcher, he did not leave an extensive work, unfortunately, although he published several anthologies and wrote countless prologues and essays on the work of narrators whom nobody knew, to which he gave the wide — and later much discussed — denomination of the “novísimos (newest),” after years of traveling workshops and literary events throughout the island’s provinces. continue reading
Although he claimed very seriously that he “lived from the story,” and Vivir del cuento was a title of his, El Redo, as everyone called him, actually lived for the story, to study, x-ray, criticize, systematize and reveal the life of that multiform and little studied creature, the Cuban story. He delved so deeply in his investigation that he brought to light a whole generation of storytellers who changed the face of the controversial literature of the Revolution.
The “novísimos” brought, more than a breath of fresh air, a great slap in the face: the tremendous revelation that, under the triumphalist and hypocritical disguise of all that epic narrative that glorified the heroes who had drowned in the heat of History with a capital H, there was a vast raw reality, cruel and even dark, where people struggled desperately to survive far removed from the mythical “New Man” and the obedient android produced in series.
Already in life, El Redo had become a kind of legend in the School of Letters. The most rigorous and entertaining of teachers. The ‘marginal’ PhD. Alejandro Álvarez Bernal describes his astonishment when he saw a skinny black man with soft manners come into the classroom with a gold tooth. One only has to remember that his kindness, his wisdom and his honesty were able to survive, and even to infect others, in the intellectual and academic environment of those dreary years.
It is impossible to say too little of the chaotic, black, poor, gay and stubborn grandmaster, who made everyone feel special and appreciated from his enormous heart, which grew so much, literally, that it killed him in the end.
His library was a small platform at the bottom of the humble house where he lived and, according Angel Santiesteban, as it was behind a tenement, the neighbors, when they were playing dominoes and discovered the light on in his ‘library’, tried to speak softly because “the teacher is studying.”
A researcher of stories, he had an aura of a thousand stories, anecdotes and funny sayings behind him. There were those who claimed that, although he could ordinarily could appear drunk — he spoke brokenly and moved erratically — when he drank he became more and more sober, until he reached the supreme lucidity that characterized him.
Some of us remember how, after one of the strokes that he suffered, going through therapy in which he had to relearn many things, such as the domain of speech, El Redo tried to convince the doctors that, if he could not pinpoint what things were, north and south or right and left, it was not because he had not yet recovered his cognitive capacity, but because he had never been trained in such complicated data.
Ronaldo Menéndez remembers him as “negrito humibrí.” Álvarez Bernal as a kind of Juan de Mairena, that teacher created by Antonio Machado who was his favorite character. To everyone, he was the best of friends and the owner of the judgment that could not be appealed, but he also avoided a focus on himself because there was always something else more important.
One of the many merits of Salvador Redonet was to have been one of the scholars who most brought to light Virgilio Piñera when he was still kept in the shade. And the importance that this writer had for what happened in Cuban literature from those early ’90s will never be overestimated, while the country plunged into the abyss of socialist failure.
Ena Lucía Portela, José Miguel Sánchez (Yoss), Daniel Díaz Mantilla, Raúl Aguiar, Karla Suárez, Rolando Sánchez Mejías, Rogelio Saunders, Ernesto Pérez Chang, Jorge Alberto Aguiar, Ricardo Arrieta, Amir Valle, Alberto Garrido… It is impossible to remember every one of the writers who began publishing in that dark decade and who were somehow discovered or promoted by him.
But that noble work was not his only obsession, the fever that made everything turn pale for him. Ronaldo Menéndez tells how he surprised him once when he confessed: “Look, mine are Miguel Hernández, Antonio Machado, Dostoyevsky … The newest ones are to entertain me.”
Today there is a literary workshop, a university chair, a library with his name. But, as Luis Marimón wrote, “I regret it viscerally for the students who will not have the opportunity to know the lean body and the feverish agitation of Salvador Redonet.”
In spite of his narrative passion and, like academia, his narrative structure, El Redo got to perpetrate poems and even received mentions in poetry contests. When Dennys Matos reminded him, surprised, the teacher shrugged his shoulders: “Nobody is perfect,” he replied.
As someone has already noted with regret, he, who wrote the verse I always arrived late everywhere, was the first to leave. But, speaking one day about “transcendence,” El Redo insisted that some friends will “remember me while they live.”
And we do, Redo.
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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.
Group of artists who promote the campaign against Decree 349. (Courtesy)
14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 5 December 2018 — On Wednesday, around eight-thirty in the evening, Yanelys Núñez and Luis Manuel Otero were released, according to what they told 14ymedio when they left the Vivac de Calabazar Detention Center after protesting Decree 349.
“First we were in the eleventh unit of the San Miguel de Padrón police station, there we spent Monday night and on Tuesday they took us to Vivac (the State Security detention center), and when we arrived they did not want to accept us because Luis was on-strike and they returned us to the unit but in the night they accepted us (at Vivac) and we stayed there until they let us go. During the interrogations they told us that if we protested again in front of the Ministry of Culture they would accuse us of illegal association and demonstrating without permission.”
Núñez explained that Luis Manuel Otero, after leaving prison after more than 48 hours on hunger and thirst strike, had taken a soda. continue reading
On the other hand, on the night of Tuesday, the artists Amaury Pacheco and the producer Michel Matos were released, according to Pacheco himself, speaking to14ymedio after being released
Both were detained in the midst of a repressive wave by State Security against a peaceful sit-in in front of the Ministry of Culture (Mincuult) headquarters as a part of the campaign against Decree 349. Pacheco explained that his hunger strike will be maintained “as long as any artist is in prison” and he will return this morning to the Ministry of Culture if Yanelys Núñez and Luis Manuel Otero are not released during the night.
Pacheco said that when he arrived at the Ministry of Culture on November 3, both he and Matos were detained and that they spent most of their time in the police unit of the municipality of Regla. “Michel was taken first to Guanabacoa but then they brought him to the same jail where I was in Regla, there they interrogated us and told me that if I went back to Mincult I would be imprisoned for one to three years,” he said.
This newspaper was also able to speak with artist Tania Bruguera after she was released on Tuesday night after her third arrest, including her first arrest at the beginning of the protest. “They held me from nine in the morning until nine at night but they did not take me to a unit, they left me inside the car until three thirty in the afternoon at La Puntilla and then they took me to a house that is beyond Lenin Park, by way of Calvario,” explained the artist.
She says that at every moment the agents told her they would take her home but when she expressed her desire to return to the Ministry of Culture, that proposal was postponed until finally at nine o’clock in the evening they left her at the door of her house. During the detention in the house where the artist was taken, they offered her water and food, even though she had told her captors that she was on a hunger and thirst strike.
“They took me to a room with a table covered with food, I told them I was not going to eat, then they gave me a cold water bottle but I told him to keep it and later they also offered me ice cream but I also refused,” says the renowned artist.
“You know how I react when someone is imprisoned because it happened in 2014, I will talk with no problems when no one is being held prisoner,” Bruguera told the agent.
The musician Sandor Pérez Pita, from the reggae group Estudiantes sin Semilla (Students without Seed), was also released in the afternoon.
The artist Amaury Pacheco had affirmed that he maintained his hunger and thirst strike until they released the rest of the artists and that “the fight against Decree 349 continues.” In a video posted on his social networks he said this entire battle is being fought “for art, for freedom of expression.”
In conversation with 14ymedio, Tania Bruguera said that the intention was to return on Thursday to the Ministry of Culture to demand again the release of Yanelys Núñez Leyva and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara to establish a dialogue with the institution and to ask for a response.
Artists from several countries have mobilized since Tuesday in favor of the release of the group of artists who oppose Decree 349. The director of the Tate Modern gallery in London, Frances Morris, expressed on Twitter that these arrests clearly illustrate the threats many artists around the world are facing.
Also this Wednesday afternoon a public session was held in the Turbine Hall to say “No to Decree 349” and provide support to detainees through an open microphone to those who wish to participate.
The Bureau of Human Rights, Democracy and Labor of the US State Department wrote on its Twitter account that “the Government of Cuba continues to criminalize freedom of expression while besieging artists and journalists to discourage protests against Decree 349.”
Meanwhile, Silvio Rodríguez wrote a comment on the blog Segunda Cita that “Decree 349 may have very good intentions but I’m sure it would be better if it were discussed with the artists.” He added that “it was something cooked up among the few” and that in his opinion “a disposition of this scopes must have a more democratic origin, and a purpose.”
“Perhaps there should be a moratorium on the decree, until an acceptable modification is discussed and resolved, and I do not know whether I will be able to work abroad as I have been doing, starting next year. I began to work on my own in the face of the very inefficient state contracting and coordination mechanisms,” the troubadour wrote.
Deborah Bruguera, Tania’s sister, wrote: “While on the phone with Tania Bruguera, Lt. Col. Kenia took her in a car, right at the corner of the MINCULT.” The artist sent a public statement “of the artists who have called for the sit-in at the Ministry of Culture of Cuba,” that her sister shared on social networks.
We reproduce the text in its entirety:
We have decided to make a call to sit peacefully and respectfully to camp, meditate, read poetry, dance, paint or perform any artistic activity in front of the Ministry of Culture because:
1: The artists of all the demonstrations, have carried them out in an organized way and through institutional channels to request the repeal of Decree 349 and its subsequent drafting with the assistance of the artists.
2: Even though these groups have met with leaders of the Ministry of Culture, the promises that they have made to respond have not been met and, failing that, a technical article was published in the Granma newspaper on November 30, justifying the validity of the current Decree 349, along with a bombardment on national television of programs with explanations in favor of 349 in its current format. This seems indicative to us that Decree 349 will not be repealed because this seems to be an action with the purpose of setting the population against our demands.
3: [The government] has commented that regulations and corrective rules will be made for the implementation of Decree 349. This seems insufficient because, given that the Decree has serious errors of representation and puts artists in a state of vulnerability, by criminalizing them and their works, we do not believe that it is appropriate to proceed with how to implement the Decree, if not the Decree itself.
4: December 7th is approaching, the date on which Decree Law 349 will become effective. We are asking for a meeting open to all with the Minister of Culture to inform us what has been the result of the meetings held with the artists and what will happen with Decree 349.
We want to receive from the Ministry of Culture the same respect towards us that we have had towards them. We will continue presenting ourselves to the Ministry of Culture to ask for our right to a response and open meeting with all the artists.
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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 suspicion of a possible fraud has a demobilizing effect among the promoters of “No” in the Constitution referendum. (EFE)
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, January 2, 2018 — The possibility that some type of fraud could be committed to distort the results of the constitutional referendum, which will take place on February 24 in Cuba, is one of the most frequent worries in conversations among activists.
The suspicion of a possible fraud has a demobilizing effect among the promoters of “No.” The most effective antidotes to cancel out this paralyzing pessimism are: assume that possibility as a reasonable risk or trust that fraud will not be committed.
The most effective vaccine to keep this threat from dissuading voters from visiting the ballot box to vote “No” is arriving to the understanding that little is risked and much can be gained. continue reading
After all, what is being risked (in addition to wasting a few minutes in vain at the ballot box) is that the Government is able to show the massive participation of citizens as a great success and that the “No” vote remains defeated in face of the crushing majority of the “Yes.” But those who propose abstaining, in order to not play into the hands of the feared fraud, should reason that it is much simpler to doctor the figure of participation than the number of negative votes.
Articles 116 and 117 of the current Electoral Law introduce an element that favors the lack of transparency in information of voting results. In both paragraphs the law obligates the members of the electoral tables, after finalizing the count, to place in the public view “a sample ballot” with the result of the vote count that exhibits how many votes each candidate received. The ballot does not have space for other information.
It is at least as striking that in a country where models and plans proliferate for any procedure, it has never occurred to anyone produce a document to dump all the information resulting from the suffrage. As a consequence of this “paper saving,” the data about how many voters attended each polling place and how many abstained did not remain in public view, nor did the number of canceled or blank ballots.
Only those voters who are present at the moment of the vote count in each polling place will be able to know those numbers. But after that process it is no longer possible to visit all of a municipality’s polling places with the intention of collecting data and being able to contrast it with the official information that is usually offered at the end of the process, broken down by municipalities and provinces. Those who do it will only find a ballot put up, probably on the door of the place, with the numbers obtained for either “Yes” or “No.”
The possibility of manipulating these data at the provincial or national level thus remains in the hands of a reduced group of people of the utmost trustworthiness to the Government.
In the electoral processes carried out for district representatives and members of the National Assembly, it’s unlikely that the result of the vote count will be the product of a fraud committed in the polling place.
The image of members of an electoral table shamelessly marking blank ballots, or changing what the will of voters reflects in the presence of witnesses, is difficult to believe. The massive complicity necessary to carry out an act of this nature in the almost 25,000 voting sites that could be authorized on February 24 requires a number of discreet and absolutely trustworthy persons that the Government does not currently have in its ranks.
The citizens who carry out the work at the election sites at a basic level can be docile, obedient, and absolutely convinced that socialism is what is best for the country; they can be “Fidelistas” and vehement admirers of the current president, but that doesn’t automatically make them into a multitude of inveterate cynics lacking ethics and decency.
That type of fraud does not seem to have occurred to date in the elections for representatives and assembly members, among other reasons, because it has not been necessary. For this something more sinister was invented: pre-fraud consisting of the intimidating nomination process which is carried out by a public show of hands for candidates for district representatives and the existence of the Candidacy Commissions that make up the list of names that will appear on the ballot for members of Parliament, with one name appearing for each open position.
When those tricks were not sufficient, then the activists of the neighborhood met to discredit “uncomfortable” candidates and, if persuasion was not enough, then the agents of State Security came out from their quarters to arrest the most dangerous.
The Government’s propagandists contrast these elections, guarded by young pioneers — that is elementary school children — with those from before 1959 which, they say, had to be guarded by armed men to prevent a party from assaulting a polling place with its supporters and stealing the ballot boxes.
If in the next referendum the results of the count are put up outside each polling place using one of the remaining ballots, the real number of absentees will never be able to be collected, nor will the blank or nullified sheets — it will only say how many votes for “Yes” and for “No.”
With a little perseverance and a minimum of organization, if the activists cover on foot or by bicycle the polling places of each municipality and leave graphic proof of public information, it will be very complicated for the Government to doctor the sum of votes obtained in each municipality. They would only be left with the ability to change the mathematics if they intended to distort the provincial and national data.
Is it perhaps impossible that fraud be committed? No, it is not impossible, but the risk that it would be discovered is enormous and it is unlikely that they dare to carry it out, even in the absence of independent observers.
It was they who created a mechanism of voting and counting practically armored, based on the popular belief that every civic act is useless and that they have it entirely under their control.
It’s enough for each nonconformist voter to have the minimum courage required to mark a vote for “No” in the intimacy of the voting cubicle. Obligating them to commit a shameless fraud would also be a victory.
Translated by: Sheilagh Carey
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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, 30 December 2018 — The songs of Yosvanis Sierra Hernández, better known as Chocolate MC, leave no one indifferent: either they hate him or they adore him. Among the Cuban people, the author of songs like Guachineo and Palón Divino has been this year’s most listened to performer, whether at family parties or playing in the shared taxis or urban buses as they travel the streets.
Born in the neighborhood of Los Sitios, in Centro Habana, from the age of 13 he had to “put his body in the street,” as he said in an interview, to support his mother and sister. Also known as the king of the barrio, the singer of the urban genre has managed to climb to number one in alternative music despite not being broadcast on national radio or television.
One of Chocolate’s most recent songs of is called Bajanda and has become a hymn among the youngest Cubans. The lyrics speak of cats, rats, mice and, with its catchy rhythm, it has sneaked into the slang of the street.
His latest song, released on November 30, is called El Corral and, like most of his releases, was produced through an audio with a fixed image on his YouTube channel.
In the transcript of a meeting of a group of artists with authorities of the Ministry of Culture in which they expressed their rejection of Decree 349, the name of Chocolate appeared 16 times as an example of a very successful singer despite not having a musical company to support him.
His figure has also been touched with scandals. In 2017, in Miami, he spent several days in prison after an indictment by his partner for domestic violence and was released on bail after paying bond of 170,000 dollars.
He took up residence in Miami last year and has offered several concerts in the United States. Since then he has not returned to the Island.
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.
Brazil made million-dollar investments through BNDES to modernize the port of Mariel and to build the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM). (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Havana, 28 December 2018 — The Brazilian government froze providing credit insurance to new exports to Cuba due to default, after taking the same steps in connection with Mozambique and Venezuela, as published by the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo.
The National Bank of Social and Economic Development (BNDES, by its Spanish acronym) has financed nearly $880 million worth of exports from 33 Brazilian companies to Cuba since 1998. The balance due by Havana is $597 million.
The current dispute concerns the arrears incurred by the Island on a $17.4 million payment of its debt in installments past due in June, July and August. continue reading
Out of the $10 million which Cuba should have paid by the June deadline, it barely paid $4 million. To cover the remaining balance, the Treasury must spend an amount equal to $6 million within the next few days to repay BNDES, which is insured by the Export Guarantee Fund (FGE, by its Spanish acronym).
According to Folha de São Paulo, Brazil will spend nearly 387 million in 2019 to cover the defaults by Cuba, Venezuela and Mozambique, and there will still remain a shortage of funds to provide insurance to new export credit operations.
Therefore, Cofig (Committee on Financing and Export Guarantees) decided not to provide insurance for new operations until budgetary coverage is assured by the forecasts to cover an eventual default.
“Historically, the dynamics of budget forecasting does not contemplate a budget for new insurance operations,” stated the Treasury.
“When the budget available for the financial year is lower than the expenditures forecast for the period, new operations are not approved for safety reasons.”
The cancellation will affect medium and small-sized companies, as large-sized companies have a larger negotiating margin and contracts with more extended periods of time.
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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 activist Hugo Damián Prieto Blanco was tried for the crime of “precriminal dangerousness.” (Courtesy)
14ymedio, Havana, January 2, 2018 — In 2018 there were 2,873 arbitrary arrests counted in Cuba, some 240 each month, according to the report published this Wednesday by the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN). The independent entity condemns the harassment of activists who only “tried to exercise elemental civil and political rights.”
The report also includes data from December and confirms “at least 176 cases of arbitrary arrests, generally of a short duration” during the last month. The majority of the arrested were peaceful members of the opposition.
CCDHRN additionally documents “49 cases of police harassment against an equal number of opposition members and two cases of physical aggression against anti-totalitarian activists, ordered or executed by agents of the secret political police.” continue reading
The entity publishes a partial list of political prisoners, between “130 and 140 people” interned “under cruel, inhumane, and degrading conditions” in some of the 150 prisons and internment camps on the Island, specifies the text.
“Every month they release a small number of political prisoners and intern a somewhat higher number of opposition figures,” reveals CCDHRN. For example, it details that in the last month of December the activists Hugo Damián Prieto Blanco, Carlos Rafael Aguirre Lay, Omar Portieles Camejo, Glenda Lovaina Pérez, and Edilberto Arzuaga Alcalá were imprisoned.
Amnesty International and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have indicated that Cuban law punishes, with sentences of one to four years in prison, citizens for a supposed crime that they have not yet committed, according to articles 73 to 84 of the Penal Code.
According to the independent lawyer Laritza Diversent, the persons sanctioned under this legal concept “are not proven to have committed a crime [since] authorities, protected by subjective criteria and ideological parameters, judge that their conduct must be reformed.”
Translated by: Sheilagh Carey
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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.
Thousands of doctors returned to the island after the cancellation of the Cuban participation of the Mais Medicos (More Doctors) program in Brazil. (EFE)
14ymedio, Havana, January 1, 2019
1. Return of the Mais Médicos doctors
The victory of Jair Bolsonaro in the Brazilian presidential elections will have economic consequences that are as yet unforeseeable for the Government’s coffers because of Cuba’s withdrawal from the program Mais Médicos (More Doctors), which has meant so much revenue for the Island since its beginning in 2013 under the mandate of former president Dilma Rousseff.
The export of Cuban doctors came to an end when the future Government of Brazil declared its will to change the current conditions of the agreement with Havana, among them stopping the paying of salaries to the Cuban State and paying the professionals directly.
Cuban authorities believed that the announcement harmed their interests and questioned the professionalism of their doctors and decided to break with the agreement by which more than 8,300 health workers provided medical assistance in the most remote areas of the country. The repercussions, additionally, affected migratory and legal aspects that will be defined in the new year.
2. Investiture of Miguel Díaz-Canel as president
The first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and former president Raúl Castro raises the arm of Miguel Díaz-Canel after his appointment. (EFE / Alexandre Meneghini)
On April 19, 2018 the naming of Miguel Díaz-Canel as president of the Republic of Cuba, the first without the surname of Castro in 50 years, was formalized. His predecessor, Raúl Castro, who saved for himself the general secretaryship of the Communist Party, declared that the election of the new president had not been “a product of pressuring nor of chance.” Previously first vice president, Díaz-Canel headed the nomination list put forward by the Commission of National Candidacy, which was submitted to a vote in Parliament. The new president received 99.83% of votes, 603 of the 604 representatives. Díaz-Canel has slightly modified the style of the Government (he travels more, uses social media, and lets himself be seen frequently with his wife in official acts). Ethics, on the other hand, seem to remain unchanged in regard to the Castro dynasty. continue reading
3. Constitutional Reform and the campaign for “No”
The bill to reform the Cuban Constitution has been debated for months and will be voted on in a referendum in 2019. (EFE / Ernesto Mastrascusa)
In 2018, after a long wait, the process of constitutional reform began. The principal changes of the draft presented to the citizenry were the elimination of the term “communism” and the acceptance of private property and incorporation of certain economic reforms of “Raulism.” After the citizen debates, the text has passed to the Communist Party and must be approved and submitted to a vote in 2019. Various organizations of the opposition promote the campaign to vote “No” to not legitimize a system that continues to lack multiple parties and public liberties for its citizens.
4. Controversy over the inclusion of Article 68 in the constitutional reform
The LGBTI community will have to wait to see if the Family Code defines whether people of the same sex can marry. (14ymedio)
The draft of the Constitutional reform opens the door to marriage equality by modifying the definition of this type of unions, which would be between two persons rather than between man and woman. This change set off an important controversy between gay rights organizations and Christian churches. The Catholic church has positioned itself against it, but the evangelicals are the ones who have decided to mobilize more and start various campaigns and signature gathering to try to block this change. In the end, the draft will not include the planned change in the constitution, which establishes that marriage is a “social and legal institution.” The Family Code will be what establishes, in the future, who can engage in it.
5. The arrival of Alberto and Michael
Hurricane Michael caused visible damage in the province of Pinar del Río. (Radio Sandino)
In May, the subtropical storm Albert flooded the central area of the Island, causing four deaths and grave damages to infrastructure, homes, and crops. The provinces of Cienfuegos, Sancti Spíritus, and Villa Clara received the worst of the flooding that left cuts in communication and the evacuation of thousands of residents.
Months later, at the beginning of October, Michael grazed one end of Cuba as a category 1 hurricane on the Saffir Simpson scale. The Island didn’t have to lament a single death, although numerous material damages were recorded, particularly in Pinar del Río, where 87% of the population was left without electricity and tobacco harvests were severely damaged. The floods delayed the sowing of the plant in the province with the greatest tobacco production.
Isla de la Juventud also suffered the battering of the cyclone, whose rains flooded homes, infrastructure, and crops and caused electricity cuts. On its route toward the United States the impact was greater and Michael left 18 deaths in Florida and Georgia.
6. Cubana de Aviación flight crash with 112 deaths
The plane operated by Cubana de Aviación crashed when taking off from Havana airport when it was heading to Holguin. (EFE)
Fifteen minutes after taking off from José Martí International Airport in Havana en route to Holguín, Cubana de Aviación flight 972, operated by the Mexican airline Global Air, crashed with 113 occupants on board. Of the three initial survivors only one remains, young Maylén Díaz. The vast majority of the deceased were from Holguín, although also lost were the lives of two Argentineans, one Mexican, and two Sahara natives, one with Spanish nationality. The entire crew was Mexican. The company had been accused of various irregularities by some of its workers and the pilots’ union of that country. The causes of the accident are still to be determined and the investigation continues coordinated by Cuban, American, and Mexican authorities.
7. The controversial Decree 349
T-shirts against Decree 349 seized by Cuban Customs at the José Martí International Airport in Havana. (14ymedio)
Independent artists saw how their creative possibilities outside of State organizations were limited with the approval of Decree 349, which went into effect December 7 although pressures have obligated the government to not implement all the controls over the culture they were planning. Some of the artists decided to go to battle with protests that resulted in multiple arrests, but they had a small triumph when the minister of culture, Alpidio Alonso, announced a few days ago that the decree will be applied in an “agreed” and “gradual” manner.
8. Failure of the sugar harvest
The sugar distributed this September as a part of the basic market basket in the rationed market comes from France. (14ymedio)
The last sugar harvest produced a little more than a million tons of raw sugar, far from the 1.6 million that the sector’s authorities had suggested. The repercussions have not been small. Cuba, previously the sugar-producing country par excellence, has seen itself obligated to import this product from France for the basic market basket. The sector, whose weight was essential in the Cuban economy, has for years seen spectacular falls, remaining far behind revenues received from the export of medical services, remittances, and tourism.
9. Increase of shortages in food and medicine
Customers at the pharmacies shout and shove each other in the face of the lack of medicines. (14ymedio)
Since the beginning of the past year the shortage of food and medicine has been worsening on the island. The lack of cash flow to buy raw material had a bearing on the lack of medicines in the network of state-owned pharmacies, especially those meant for chronic patients. Food products were also scarce and in the second half of 2018 flour, oil, and eggs were missing from the shelves of stores. Authorities blamed the problem on delays in imports and difficulties with infrastructure.
10. Stagnation of GDP
An old woman shows the ration card that every year has fewer products subsidized by the Government. (EFE)
The economy of Cuba, according to data released by the minister of economy and planning, Alejandro Gil, shows that the gross domestic product (GDP) has registered a growth of 1% in 2018, well below the 2% that was officially predicted. The Government attributes this poor result to the failure in export revenue, the high level of debt, the international context, and the weather, but independent experts think that the problems are deeper.
According to the Cuban economist Pavel Vidal, who lives in Colombia, “the shortage of basic products and the dynamic of prices of consumer goods match up less and less with the official statistics of GDP and of the Index of Consumer Prices.”
11. Arrival of internet to mobile phones
The Government fulfilled the promise to connect mobile phones to the internet in 2018, with barely 25 days left in the year. (EFE)
After years of waiting, on December 6 Cuba’s state communications company, Etecsa, fulfilled, almost at the last moment, its commitment to bring internet to mobile phones in 2018. During the summer various tests were done to check the functioning of the system, but it ended up being a fiasco that made people fear that the announcement wouldn’t meet the deadline. Although the price of navigation packages is rather high, 4 gigabytes of connection costs around 30 CUC, the equivalent of a monthly salary, the new functionality opens up a new path for activism and entrepreneurship.
12. Continuation of the “sonic attack” controversy
Lines have become common around the United States Embassy in Havana, due to the reduction in personnel staffing because of the alleged sonic attacks. (EFE)
The United States and Cuba remain entangled over the matter of the supposed “sonic attacks.” Throughout the year and after several investigations in both countries, the cause of the harm (which in fact was proven) suffered by various diplomats stationed in Havana between 2016 and 2017 has still not been able to be determined. Also this year complaints of affected Canadians have come to light, and the Canadians have lamented that their Government has not given them a treatment equal to that of Washington to its officials. The last episode of this crisis has been the closure of consular services in the US embassy on the Island, which have now come to be processed mainly in Guyana.
13. Visit of Pedro Sánchez
Pedro Sánchez and Miguel Díaz-Canel shake hands after the signing the memorandum for holding meetings that will address, among other things, human rights. (EFE / Juanjo Martín)
On December 22 and 23, Pedro Sánchez, president of the Spanish Government traveled to Cuba on an official visit, the first of this level from a leader of his country in 32 years. Although economic relations between both countries have been the best — under the mandates of José María Aznar, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and Mariano Rajoy — political ties have been limited. In Cuba Sánchez had meetings with the president and authorities as well as with Spanish businessmen and part of civil society, but he did not meet with anyone from the opposition. Both parties agreed to meet annually to go over cultural cooperation agreements and bilateral reviews. Among the principal deals reached, the installation of farms to provide chicken to Cubans was one of the most discussed.
14. Historic agreement of the Cuban Baseball Federation with the Major Leagues of the United States
The U15 team fell unexpectedly and in a very bad performance against Panama, the United States and Taiwan. (Newspaper 26)
In the middle of December it was announced that the Cuban Baseball Federation (FCB) and Major League Baseball (MLB) signed a historic agreement so that the Island’s ballplayers could be signed in the United States. The agreement opens the doors so that athletes who play in the National Series and other local circuits can join the 30 teams of the MLB, and arrives during a year of disastrous results for Cuban baseball.
In 2018 Cubans won only a bronze in the Panamerican U-12 and a silver in the Games in Barranquilla. In U-15, Cuba came in fifth place. In the Caribbean Series, the Alazanes fell in the semifinals. In U-18 they didn’t manage to pass the super round of six in the Panamerican series and Cuba will not be in the next World Cup.
All the same, the public has attended with astonishing interest the National Series, filling the stadiums despite the apathy. On a more human level, sanctions and conflicts because of the bad conduct of some players and managers have not at all helped the image of the game.
Translated by: Sheilagh Carey
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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.
This 2019, the process that delighted millions of Cubans reaches six decades of existence, without resembling the dreams generated in its early days. (Archive)
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Havana, 2 January 2018 – Ramón, an old man now, was a smooth-cheeked teenager when Fidel Castro entered Havana on January 1959. Soon after, he decided to become a militiaman to defend what many Cubans then proudly called “the Revolution.” Today, with a pension that does not exceed the equivalent of 23 dollars a month, the retiree lives on the money sent to him by his grandchildren, emigrated to the other side of the Straits of Florida, to that country to which Ramón pointed his rifle while standing guard in a military unit in the midst of the Cold War.
This 2019, the process that delighted millions of Cubans reaches six decades of existence, without resembling the dreams imagined by young people like Ramón and without having managed to provide a dignified and free life to those who stayed on the island. Now there are few who call the political model established after the arrival of the “bearded ones” to power “Revolution”; instead they prefer to say “the system” or simply “this” or “this thing.” Of the leaders dressed in olive green who came down from the Sierra Maestra, there are only a few octogenarians left and they fail to arouse admiration or respect in the vast majority of people. continue reading
Of the initial promises, among which there was talk of opportunities for all and of civil liberties, almost nothing has survived. In place of these spaces of individual and collective realization, Castroism has maintained a strict framework of vigilance and control, the most complete of its “achievements” and the most permanent of its “results.” As for social justice, there is not much to celebrate. Evident in the streets is the economic abyss that separates government leaders from pensioners, the black population and residents in rural areas. The new rich mark a distance from those who are becoming poorer.
On the other hand, in recent years the Havana regime has had to give ground to the laws of the market so strongly criticized in its slogans. A private sector of half a million workers has made clear the inefficiency of the state apparatus and is pushing the limits of the restrictions that still remain on entrepreneurship and creativity. After having confiscated even the most humble food stalls in that distant year of 1968, the Plaza of the Revolution is now selling off the Island piece by piece to foreign investors.
Nor is there much to show of the “jewels in the crown” of the process: public education and healthcare. The extension of both systems continues to reach every corner of the country, but the deterioration of the infrastructure, the low salaries of teachers and doctors, together with the excesses of ideology and ethical gaps have meant that the classrooms and hospitals do not resemble the dream of an educated people, well-cared for with regards to health, that once drew the applause of thousands of Cubans who gathered to listen to the marathon speeches of the Commander in Chief.
Now, when the official celebrations speak of the 60th birthday of this political and social process that few dare to describe as “revolutionary,” people like Ramón and his grandchildren are appraising what they did not achieve, the dreams they had to park along the way, and the dysfunctional and authoritarian system that derived from all that utopia.
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, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 31 December 2018 — The last referendum held in Cuba occurred on 15 February 1976. On that occasion, the electoral census registered 5,717,266 citizens with the right to vote. The results of the vote showed the following data:
Exercising the vote: 5,602,973 (98% of the list of voters). Leaving the ballot blank: 44,221 (0.8% of those who exercised the vote). Annulling the ballot: 31,148 (0.5% of those who exercised the vote). Marked ’NO’ on the ballot: 54,070 (1% of valid votes). Marked ’YES’ on the ballot: 5,473,534, 97.7% of the valid votes.
Adding abstentions, blank ballots, cancellations and negative votes, 243,732 citizens, that is, just over 4%, did not express their approval of that Constitution. Undoubtedly, an overwhelming triumph for the ruling party. continue reading
Almost every one of those participants, today, is over 60 years of age, which means that a good number of them have died and others (including many of those who voted Yes) may have made the decision in these 42 years to not continue living in Cuba.
Among the voters who will participate the next constitutional referendum, scheduled for February 24, 2019, those who are first-time voters in this type of popular consultation will be the majority. Among them is the current president Miguel Diaz-Canel, who turned the statutory 16 years to vote on April 20, 1976, two months after the previous referendum, so he was not able to vote in it.
Unlike the mass of voters who subscribed to the 1976 Constitution, in the consultation next year, the number of those who had some participation in the fight against the previous dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista will be very small, there will be very few who fought at Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs), or in the fight against the rebels, and there are also very few who had some experience in the internationalist missions of Angola or Ethiopia.
Of course, most of the more than eight and a half million Cubans who will have the right to vote in the next referendum have relatives outside the island and a relationship to them. Almost no salary is enough to support a family, and in both absolute and relative terms we can say that today there are more people who have traveled abroad, and who publicly express their religious beliefs or their sexual preferences, both inadmissible in 1976.
The Cubans of the 1970s depended exclusively on the salary provided by the State and on what was distributed by the rationed market in an equal manner. Any domestic appliance, from a washing machine, a refrigerator, or a Soviet television, could only be acquired through a bonus, granted by virtue of the social and labor merits accumulated during the year.
Those Cubans of the 1970s only knew what was happening in their country and in the world through what the state newspaper Granma told them, or from state radio and television, while they found some glimpses of criticism in the Noticiero del ICAICby the curator Santiago Álvarez. At that time they were not able to listen, even with interference, to the US-based Radio Martí transmissions, and foreign publications were limited to those from the socialist countries, which were sold in the news kiosks in an authorized manner.
To put it briefly, today’s is another electorate, with greater economic independence arising from remittances from family abroad and self-employment; notably influenced by social networks, the weeklypacket, independent journalism and with a greater amount of frustrations in the face of the accumulation of government promises unmet. An electorate happily freed from the hypnotic influences of its former charismatic leaders, increasingly critical of its rulers, with ever more appetite for freedoms.
It must be recognized that the Government assumes an enormous risk in submitting a referendum on a Constitution that does not satisfy the majority of Cubans, although they have been forced to do so for multiple reasons, some obvious, others not confessed. The truth is that the 1976 text, today, is incompatible with the reality of the country and with the timid reformist intentions.
The dirt already thrown on the 1976 Constitution, to justify the writing of a new text, makes it impossible to resuscitate it or stay with it in the event that the electors decide to say a massive and forceful ’NO’ to the new proposal.
The Constitution approved by Parliament on 22 December 2018 is a perfect fit for the Government’s plans, but it is far from satisfying the demands of citizens. It is true that the text has changed. What happens is that the electorate has changed more than the government.
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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.
Raúl Castro took advantage of the occasion also to support the management of Miguel Díaz-Canel. (EFE)
14ymedio/Ernesto Marín, Santiago de Cuba, 1 January 2018 — On Tuesday afternoon, Raúl Castro delivered the main speech at the event for the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution in Santa Ifigenia cemetery in Santiago de Cuba. The secretary of the Communist Party reviewed the history of the last six decades, criticized the policy of the United States and addressed the economic crisis the island is going through.
The ceremony, which was not attended by any foreign president, was held in front of the mausoleum with the remains of José Martí and a few yards from where the ashes of former president Fidel Castro are located. The current Cuban president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, was also present at the event, although he did not speak.
Castro, his voice breaking, reviewed the most important anniversaries and events of Revolution and alluded to the current moment of confrontation between Washington and Havana. “We are not intimidated by the threatening language of the United States,” adding that “Cubans are prepared to resist a scenario of confrontation that we do not want.” continue reading
The 87-year-old leader called on Cubans to prepare “meticulously for all scenarios, including the worst” and “not leave room for confusion and improvisation.” He harshly criticized Luis Almagro, secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), who hours earlier had said that “the dictatorship in Cuba is probably the most perfect example of mythology, misery and human rights violations.”
With regards to the economic crisis that the island is going through, stagnated with a poor growth of 1.1% in GDP and with a worsening of shortages, Castro called for “reducing all non-essential expenses,” “diversifying exports” and deepening the foreign investment policy.
“A challenge that we will face in the year that begins today is the situation of the economy,” a crisis that he blamed on the fall of exports and the strengthening of the US embargo. He also disapproved of “the foreign analysts who often criticize the performance of the economy” of the island and deny the effects of the US embargo.
The former president also took the opportunity to support the management of Miguel Diaz-Canel and said that the new Constitution that will be submitted to a referendum in February, will be approved with a “majority for the Revolution and socialism.”
“I can affirm that the process of transferring to the new generations (…) is going well, I can say more, very well, without any setbacks or shocks, and we are sure that we will continue that way,” said the Army General. “The Revolution has not aged, it is still young,” he emphasized at another point in the speech.
Castro expressed the support of the Communist Party for the management of the 48-year-old engineer who is now president and praised his working style, which includes “visits to the communities and direct exchanges with the people, the accountability of the leaders by means of press and social networks and the systematic control of development programs.”
With regards to the political setbacks suffered by several allied governments in Latin America, Castro attributed them to the “empire’s” siege. “The region resembles a large meadow where a spark could generate an uncontrollable fire that would harm the interests of everything.”
As of the previous day, Santiago de Cuba has been under a strong police operation that became more intense around the homes of opponents and activists. The activist Carlos Amel Oliva confirmed to this newspaper that the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Cuba was under surveillance by the police and State Security.
Patria Avenue, which connects the city with the cemetery, also remained guarded and access to the cemetery during the time the ceremony lasted was exclusively by invitation. The act was broadcast live on a large screen at the Heredia theater before more than 2,000 people who also required invitations.
The local authorities placed kiosks selling food and drinks in Cespedes park, in the center of the city, while large speakers broadcast music from the City Hall building.
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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, Ariel Hidalgo, Miami, 1 January 2019 — A group of men — not a generation, but the so-called “historical leadership” along with their hand-picked successors — is celebrating 60 years in power this week, without ever giving the Cuban people the right to choose another option.
They celebrate it without any modesty, when they should rather be ashamed. In their own official ’History’ program they insulted a president of the 1930s because he tried to extend his term for three or four more years, a president who industrialized the country, embellished the cities with beautiful buildings and roads, and who, when he left, he left behind — in what had been a country in foreign hands with sugar factories worked by semi-slaves — a modern and prosperous country that excited the admiration of all the foreigners who visited it, and that in many respects was at the head of all Latin America. continue reading
That president had been democratically elected, while those who today celebrate six decades of uninterrupted power came to it by violence, executing, without guarantees of due process, hundreds of soldiers, and perpetrating a vile betrayal of the ideals of many of their own comrades who had given their blood to restore the Constitution abolished after the 1952 military coup, in addition to celebrating the free elections that that coup had prevented. The caudillo himself had slammed the door on all those martyrs when he asked, during a public rally: “Elections, what for?”
This group has done the opposite of what that president from the 1930s did. It has turned its people into one of the poorest of the continent, as if we had just emerged from a devastating war, with ruins everywhere, including those of most of the sugar mills, after having been the first country in the world in that industry. Today the Cuban people must stand in long lines for a piece of bread and crowd the streets struggling to access any vehicle that moves, because public transport has almost disappeared.
The money obtained from the high prices of sugar in the 1970s and that paid by the inflated prices paid by the Soviet Union — tens of millions, hundreds, thousands of millions — were squandered in wars on other continents to the satisfaction of that leader’s narcissism, while his people suffered precariousness of all kinds.
Was it all the fault of the enemy of the North and its blockade? What kind of blockade is this that, despite itself, Cuba has maintained trade relations with almost every country in the world, and today, even with the farmers of the United States itself? The US embargo only served as an alibi to justify all the disasters provoked by the whims of an omnipotent ruler.
What war is that? What enemy confronts this people? Because he spent his life in an indefinite state of siege, in perpetual suspension of constitutional guarantees, and in a call to ’action stations’, one after the other, waiting for a foreign invasion that supposedly would arrive to ravage the country and seize our homeland. He warned that, if it happened, that enemy would only collect “the dust of our soil drowned in blood.”
Did that invasion ever happen? For almost the whole world it never came to pass. But I say yes, this invasion has been ongoing since the first of these 720 months, and still, to this day, continues to devastate the country.
Because the enemy of this nation is that group in power. The real blockade against this people is imposed by that group with all its bureaucratic obstacles, its prohibitions, its censorship, its persecutions and expropriations of hundreds of thousands of independent workers, and even the semi-slave exploitation of tens of thousands of employees and professionals from whom it takes more than 80% of their salaries.
Everything has been done in the name of “the Revolution.” During these 60 years there has been constant talk of “defending the Revolution,” the Revolution is alive, the Revolution first of all, “within the Revolution, everything, outside the Revolution, nothing,” and so on.
According to the most in vogue definition of that word — “violent change in the political institutions of a nation” — that revolution occurred in Cuba in the first nine years.
That is to say, more than 50 years ago it was over, despite the fact that it is still spoken of in the present, something that no longer exists — or never existed if we consider that it was the result of a betrayal — a ghost that presents itself everywhere like an embalmed corpse that is intended to be believed to still alive, as when Juana La Loca dragged the remains of her beloved Felipe el Hermoso throughout the kingdom of Spain.
It’s time to lay bare the lie once and for all. Here there is nothing revolutionary and much less an elite in power, only a group of reactionaries in a dictatorial cupula trying to perpetuate an unsustainable model that even the caudillo himself, shortly before dying, recognized was unviable: “This model doesn’t even work for Cubans,” he said.
The real war that has ravaged this nation is the one that this group has maintained against its own people for six decades with its insane decrees. And if it continues in power, the aforementioned warning will probably come true and our country will have nothing left but that: the dust of our soil drowned in blood.
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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 self-employed sector of the Cuban economy continues to grow. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Havana, 27 December 2018 — Unemployment grew in 2018 in Cuba and stands at 1.7% of the country’s workforce, according to official data that takes into account only those people actively looking for work.
The Minister of Labor and Social Security, Margarita González Fernández, explained on Cuban TV’s Roundtable program that there are a total of 76,400 people on the island who do not work, 1,112 more than in 2017, when the number was 75,288.
According to the official, the figure includes people who can not find work, which are not the same as those who do not want to look for it. continue reading
“These figures should not be confused with people who are of working age but neither study nor work; those who are in this situation are about 567,000,” detailed the minister.
This figure is equivalent to 11% of the island’s workforce, well below the figure collected by other means. According to the National Occupation Survey, 18% of those interviewed said they did not have an interest in working. “[This] is very criticized by the population (…). The method is not to use force, you have to find ways to make these people feel the need to work,” said the minister.
González Fernández gave a review of some other figures related to her branch.
As of the end of this year, there are 4.5 million workers in Cuba, of which 3.1 million work in the state sector, compared to 1.4 million in the private sector, through cooperatives or on their own. By sectors, Education and Health comprise the majority of non-business public jobs, with 800,000 jobs out of a total of 1.5 million (48%).
In state enterprises, which account for 52% of employment in the public sector, those dedicated to the food industry, sugar, agriculture, livestock and construction have the highest numbers.
The minister said she is concerned about access to employment for young people who complete their higher education. “This is an area to which we must pay special attention because it can lead to fluctuation in the workforce and discouragement of young people with assigned employment in compliance with their social service.”
In addition, she detailed the priority groups for the authorities. “The attention of state agencies to the recent graduates is insufficient, priority is given to access to employment for graduates of the trade and speciality schools, graduates of Active Military Service and the Female Voluntary Service, people serving sentences on release, people with disabilities able to work and people without a job seeking employment, with special emphasis on young people and women,” said González.
With regards to the private sector, of the 1.4 million workers that make it up, 42% work on their own and the rest work in the cooperative sector.
New additions included 125,216 people who started working in 2018, 34% of them are women and 71% are young. “In the state sector, 93% found employment, with greater incidence in agricultural activities, construction and commercial and services,” said the minister.
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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.
Tomás Núñez Magdariaga was hospitalized in Santiago de Cuba and was not allowed to receive family visits as long as he refused to end his hunger strike. (Courtesy)
14ymedio, Havana, 26 December 2018 — Cuban Patriotic Union activist Tomás Núñez Magdariaga was released in mid-October after spending 62 days on a hunger strike to protest a one-year prison sentence.
Núñez Magdariaga had been convicted of threatening an informant from State Security who later retracted the accusation, alleging that he had not been provided with a job and housing in exchange, as been promised. At that time, the activist had been on a hunger strike for one month to protest his situation.
According to what the dissident later reported, the worst moment of his fast was when he was taken out of the hospital after 42 days without eating. “They took me to the prison of Boniatico, where they have the prisoners with life sentences, and they put me alone in a punishment cell and in underpants, with nothing else and nothing to put on the floor, with the cold and without a mattress.” continue reading
The archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, Dionisio García Ibáñez, visited the activist, which gave substantial support to the cause of his release. At the same time, the US government also expressed its “serious” concern for the health of the opposition figure and called for his immediate release.
In his last week of the strike, after 19 days handcuffed to a bed in the Juan Bruno Zayas Hospital, Núñez Magdariaga firmly rejected the serums that were keeping him alive.
It was then when Major Granja, deputy head of of Aguadores Prison where they had transferred the activist, went to the hospital and told him of his immediate release, which took place within a few minutes, with a list of medical recommendations for recovery and re-feeding.
On November 28 a group of judges of the Supreme Court went to Palma Soriano, where the activist lives, to hear the appeal that his family had made during the days he was in prison. At the hearing, his repentant accuser was presented as a witness who confirmed the withdrawal of his complaint. In this way his freedom was formalized.
Tomás Núñez Magdariaga continues today as an activist of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU).
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14ymedio, Gaby Hidalgo, Santa Clara, 14 December 2018 — “My mom told me that at school the teachers won’t call on my son, as if he had a contagious disease, they mark him as the son of the ‘doctor who stayed’,” says a doctor who left her son in her hometown of Sagua la Grande (Villa Clara) when she went to work in Brazil as a member of the Mais Médicos (More Doctors) program.
