14ymedio – Page 421 – Translating Cuba

"The Work of the Century" is Now a Ghost Town in Cienfuegos

14ymedio, Justo Mora, Cienfuegos, August 30, 2018 — Pedro Albaladejo arrived in Juraguá 31 years ago. At that time he didn’t have as much gray hair as he does now, nor did he let his beard grow more than five days. He was a strong young man, with a tanned complexion, who at 35 made his living as a builder.

One day he received an offer to be part of the group that was going to build “the work of the century” in Cuba: the nuclear power plant that would provide electricity to the industrial center of Cienfuegos. He exchanged his ranch in Las Tunas for a temporary hostel and ever since has lived in the vicinity of what the locals call the CEN, the ruins of the mammoth project of the National Electronuclear Plant.

“Before, this place was full of people who came to work. Trucks never stopped arriving. It was another time. The Soviet Union supported us and here there was hope that life would get better,” he says as he pastures a herd of goats among abandoned blocks of concrete. continue reading

“So many people without houses in this country, and here they have left a ton of apartments unfinished. That’s a crime, boy,” a neighbor laments. (14ymedio)

$1.1 billion was invested in the construction of the reactor, and more than 10,000 workers, engineers, and architects worked on the project. Dozens of Russian specialists worked together with the Cubans on the projects of the Nuclear City.

Fidel Castro made an agreement with the Soviets in 1976 to build two nuclear reactors of the VVER-400 V316 type, but the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 slowed down the Russian nuclear program, and the end of Soviet subsidies to Cuba ended up paralyzing the project in 1992.

The first houses in the Nuclear City, developed in the Soviet style, were turned over in 1981. “We built these buildings ourselves,” says Albaladejo, pointing out a block of five-story apartments. Empty. “So many people without houses in this country, and here they have left a ton of apartments unfinished. That’s a crime, boy,” he laments.

Around him are the ruins of what in the past were hostels, warehouses, offices, dozens of buildings abandoned and cannibalized by the “stonepickers,” as the locals call the people who devote themselves to pulling out blocks, rods, and slabs from the ruins.

“Homeland or death! We will win! Socialism or death! Resist and win!” The old slogans painted on the buildings and the portraits of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara resist the passage of time. A completely abandoned 18-story building and various apartment blocks without doors or windows remind one of Pripyat, the nuclear city that the Soviets built nearby Chernobyl which was evacuated and abandoned after the explosion of a reactor on April 26, 1986.

“No one wants to live here. Young people leave for Cienfuegos or abroad because there’s only work here as a guard, in the private hospital, or as a teacher. There’s almost never water and in the buildings it rains more inside than out because of all the leaks,” he laments.

In the Nuclear City and its vicinity around 9,000 people live, according to the most recent official figures. After the disaster of the atomic plant, the Government created a tobacco factory and promoted agriculture as a source of jobs.

“A while ago the Government built a hydroponic facility here. They figured that we would be able to eat vegetables from there at low prices. The only thing remaining from the venture is the name because there’s not even a plot, no way,” says Albaladejo.

Yasniel was born in the Nuclear City and has never left the province. He’s 13 and has the look of someone who has already lived a lot, despite his young age. In the afternoons he goes out to fish with two friends on the pier. He dreams of having his own boat when he’s an adult, but the prices are through the roof, he says.

“I sell the fish to other fishermen, and they resell it in Cienfuegos. The truth is that there’s not much to do here. Sometimes at night I go to the Circle (a recreation center) to listen to music.”

His school is destroyed. After Irma, the last hurricane that affected Cienfuegos, pieces of windows and part of the structure are on the ground. “It [the school] is a disaster. There aren’t even teachers,” he says. Where there used to be laboratories and classrooms, there are now only piles of debris.

Yasniel says that he would like to be like the Olympic boxing champion Robeisy Ramírez, native of the Nuclear City. “That kid was a great boxer, but here they don’t give life to anyone. He did well to stay in Mexico.”

When he gets together enough money, Yasniel takes the opportunity to connect to the internet in one of the City parks.

“There’s nothing else to do around here,” he says resignedly. “Whenever I can, I chat with friends on Facebook. A bunch of people from the CEN live in the US and some were friends of mine before they left.”

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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More Than 20 People Tried for Alleged Falsification of Internal Migration Documents

The trial against the alleged network began this Tuesday at the Provincial Court of Havana. (tsp.gob.cu)

14ymedio, Havana, August 29, 2018 — This Tuesday at the Provincial Court of Havana, the trial began against more than 20 people accused of participating in an alleged network of migration document falsification so that provincial residents would be able to reside in the capital of the island, Diario de Cuba announced today.

The network, which allegedly operated between 2013 and 2016, “was centered around the Housing Office of the municipality of Cerro, according to the official record of the case,” said the independent medium in the statement.

According to authorities, this group’s procedure consisted of identifying individuals who needed to go through the process urgently and who were exhausted by the bureaucracy necessary to complete it. “Many people arrived at the workplace of the accused officials and agreed on an amount that, in general, would be paid in two halves: the first at the beginning and the second once the required Resolution was delivered,” explains DDC. continue reading

The main defendents, Sonia Milagro Barban, a lawyer at Cerro’s Municipal Housing Department since 2012, and her friend, Iluminada Machada, ex-employee of the Havana Provincial Administration Council, allegedly charged between 40 and 150 dollars, mostly to young people seeking to reside permanently in the capital or who needed an address change to be hired for a State job, as is required by law.

Both women face sentences of between 8 and 15 years in prison for the crimes of falsification of public documents and bribery. Another five accused, “among them office workers and citizens who allegedly benefitted economically from the group engaged in corrupting documents,” may also be sentenced to 3 years in prison, in addition to being disqualified from future employment in public administration.

According to the Attorney General of the Republic’s report, Machado and Barban joined together “with the purpose of making an illegitimate profit, with Barban taking advantage of the power of the position which she held.” In this way, the applicants, some of whom are also accused in the trial, arrived at the workplace of the officials facing trial in order to settle the process.

A third member of the alleged plot, a technician withTerritorial Planning Marily García, could not be tried, as she committed suicide in Havana in November of 2016, a few days after being notified that she would be subject to an inestigation regarding the internal migration records that she managed.

The fall of this group was preceded by complaints of irregularities by officials of the Offices of Housing Processes and supervisors of the Offices of Identity Cards in the municipalities of Regla, El Cotorro, San Miguel del Padrón, La Lisa, and East Havana.

Additionally, according to the case file, the quality of the falsifications was poor, due to having been made on household printers, without the reliefs or special inks required for the official emblems. Finally, the criminal expert’s report was able to confirm that the network had made at least more than twenty false change of addresses, but according to a lawyer consulted by DDC there could have been more, given the high demand for this process.

According to the Population and Housing Census conducted in 2012, 11.2% of the Cuban population is made up of interprovincial emigrants and almost half of those are settled in Havana. 24.8% of the Cuban capital’s population is made up of immigrants from other parts of the country.

Since 1997 a Legal Decree has established internal migratory regulations for Havana that prohibits Cubans who come from other areas of the country from establishing residence or living permanently in the capital without authorization. The strict legislation has created a framework of marriages of convenience, false work permits, and bribes to get identity cards with Havana addresses.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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The Cuban Economy is Not Taking Off, According to Cepal

Vendors at the Vedado Farmers’ Market in Havana (El Nuevo Herald)

14ymedio, Havana, August 29, 2018 — Cuban experts consulted by 14ymedio agree that the predictions of Cepal (the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) confirm the stagnation of the national economy. Some even doubt that the growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reaches the 1.5% announced last week by this body of the United Nations.

According to Cepal’s report, GDP will grow an average of 1.5% on the whole continent, far from the 2.2% that it predicted in April.

“Instead of surpassing 2017 figures, Cuba is stagnating,” says the economist Elías Amor Bravo, who also points out that the Cuban government itself has set 3% as the necessary growth to overcome its external and internal structural problems. continue reading

For Amor Bravo, president of the Cuban Center for Human Rights (OCDH), based in Madrid, there are two causes that have led the Island to have one of the lowest prospects of growth in the region: on one hand, there is deficient investment in infrastructure, communications, energy, or housing, and on the other, there is a high public deficit, more than 11.5% of the GDP in 2017.

The Cuban researcher Pavel Vidal, professor at the Universidad Javeriana de Cali (Colombia), warned during a conference in Miami that the decapitalization of the Island’s economy and the fall in productivity have opened a “breach” with Latin America that can only be closed with a raise in the investment rate to around 10-15% of the GDP. This figure is far out of reach according to Amor Bravo, who maintains that the prominence of investments in the Island’s GDP has been only around 9% between 1995 and 2017.

2018 has been a difficult year for the Cuban economy, especially due to a 6.5% fall in tourism in the first half of the year, attributed by the Government to the fall in trips from the United States because of the restrictive measures of Donald Trump’s Administration, especially the restrictions on American nationals staying in hotels managed by the Armed Forces.

In contrast, the number of visitors arriving on cruise ships has grown, but this is a tourism that generates little income in the country. If, in 2016, a foreign tourist spent on average $765, a cruise passenger would spend only around $50, according to a report from The Havana Consulting Group.

“This year is going to be very negative for Cuba, especially when you start to notice the fall in oil shipments from Venezuela, in remittances, and especially a very bad tourist season. Combining all these factors, the Cuban economy is going to experience a growth that is practically nothing, or maybe even negative,” predicts Amor Bravo, president of OCDH and also a university professor in Valencia (Spain) and author of the blog Cubaeconomía.

Nor will the sugar harvest be able to help improve the battered national economy, now that it can’t manage to overcome the downhill slope it has been traveling for years. In the sugar harvest of 2017-2018 the Island produced a little more than a million tons of raw sugar instead of the expected 1.6 million, a steep drop from the all-time high reached in the last century of 8 million tons (plus or minus).

For the economist Jorge Sanguinetty, who directs the Latin American Program in Applied Economics at American University and currently resides in Miami, the prospect of 1.5% growth for the Island is a realistic figure even though Cepal uses data provided by Cuban institutions to make their predictions.

“In any place where there are economic statistics, you know where your data is coming from and how it is calculated. In Cuba that is not the case. They only have large-scale estimates,” says Sanguinetty. This statement is shared by Amor Bravo, who points out that the Island does not have data to predict the behavior of the economy in the short term, which makes it difficult to make accurate predictions.

“Whatever the growth of the economy may be doesn’t mean that it is a growth in consumption. The economy can grow by 10% and the spending of the Government can absorb all the growth so that it is not reflected in people’s lives,” says Sanguinetty.

From Pinar del Río, where one must face the difficulties of real life every day, the independent economist Karina Gálvez confirms this perception: “The GDP is not just a number, it’s basically an indicator that should be reflected in the economy of families and should mean something in everyday life in people’s pockets.”

And, “with nominal salaries that leave people practically destitute,” adds Amor Bravo, private consumption, which is key to economic growth, cannot be stimulated.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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Dissident Group Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White) Denounces 23 Arrests this Sunday in Cuba

Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, is arrested during a demonstration in Havana. (Damas de Blanco)

EFE via 14ymedio, Havana, 27 August 2018 – The Cuban dissident movement Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White) denounced on Monday the “harassment” by authorities and the temporary detention of 23 of its members in Havana and the western province of Matanzas, after attending Sunday Mass in different churches or upon leaving their homes.

In Matanzas 17 women were arrested as were six others in Havana, including the leader of the opposition group, Berta Soler.

Soler explained that for more than two years the authorities have not allowed the women to reach the Santa Rita Church in Havana, where the group attended mass weekly since its formation in 2003, and at the conclusion of services demonstrated for the release of political prisoners on the island. continue reading

Given these circumstances, she explained that they decided to attend different churches separately, but often cannot do so because they are unable to evade police operations such as the one routinely held Thursday through Sunday around the headquarters of the Ladies in White in the Lawton neighborhood, in the capital city.

Soler described as “terrible” the current situation of the Ladies in White because they are not allowed to exercise their “rights of expression” and said that the “harassment” against its members is on-going.

In addition, she denounced that four women from the group are imprisoned, among them Martha Sánchez, sentenced to five years in prison August 21 for “public disorder, resistance and attack” after having protested in front of a polling place in the general elections held in March.

She remarked that, in the cases of Nieves Matamoros and Yolanda Santana, they were sentenced to one year in prison for non-payment of fines and a fourth detainee is awaiting trial.

Berta Soler (b. 1963, Matanzas, Cuba) is one of the founders of the Ladies in White movement that emerged to advocate the release of the 75 dissidents imprisoned in the “Black Spring” of 2003, including her husband, Ángel Moya, all of whom were released and, as of today, remain out of prison.

After the death of Laura Pollán in 2011, Soler has headed the group, one of the most active of the internal dissidence of the island.

The Cuban government considers the dissidents “counterrevolutionaries” and “mercenaries.”

Translated by Wilfredo Díaz Echevarria

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Cuban Poet Carilda Oliver Labra Dies, One of the Principal Lyrical Voices of the Island in the 20th Century

Carilda Oliver Labra won the National Literature Prize in 1997. (escritores.org)

14ymedio, Havana, 29 August 2018 – The poet and writer Carilda Oliver Labra died in the early morning hours this Wednesday at 96 years of age, according to the official press. This matancera (i.e. woman from Matanzas) was one of the most important voices of the Cuban lyric of the twentieth century, with a notable individual style and a great passion for the promotion of culture.

Born in Matanzas in 1922, Oliver Labra graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences degree from the Institute of Secondary Education of that city and her first book, Lyrical Prelude, was published in 1943. Later she became part of the Peña Literaria Matancera, where she held various positions, including President of the group.

The Cuban writer garnered second place in the International Poetry Competition, organized by the National Broadcasting Co. of New York, and in 1949 published Al sur de mi garganta (South of My Throat). In 1952 her texts appeared in the anthology Fifty Years of Cuban Poetry, compiled by Cintio Vitier, and she married the lawyer and poet Hugo Ania Mercier, whom she divorced in 1955. continue reading

In those years Oliver Labra worked in the First Festival of the Décima organization in the Sauto Theater, published in her city the Canto a Matanzas (Song to Matanzas), worked in the newspaper El Imparcial on the feature Saturday’s Poem and also served as Director of Culture in the municipality of Matanzas. At that time she wrote one of her most controversial poems: Canto a Fidel (Song to Fidel).

After January 1959, she worked as an English teacher in Matanzas, participated in the literacy campaign and married in second nuptials tenor Felix Pons Cuesta, of whom she would be widowed in 1980.

In the decade of the 80s she received the Distinction for National Culture, the National Literature Prize and the “José Vasconcelos” Hispano-American Prize. The 13th International Book Fair of Havana was dedicated to her, most of her volumes have been published and reissued and an international colloquium about her work was held at the “Camilo Cienfuegos” University of Matanzas.

At the end of that decade the poet experienced an incident little mentioned in her official biography. She was injured in the abdomen during a presentation at the Pensamiento de Matanzas bookstore, to which she was invited, and which was busted by the combined action of extremists and agents of State Security. The gathering was dedicated to the theme of perestroika in the Soviet Union.

Translated by Wilfredo Díaz Echevarria

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Extrajudicial Executions Are Still Happening on the Island, According to Cuba Archive

Alejandro Pupo Echemendía, presumed killed by Cuban police officials (courtesy)

14ymedio, Mario J. Pentón, Miami, August 27, 2018 — The NGO Cuba Archive claimed this Monday that extrajudicial executions are still happening on the island, and they cited as an example the case of Alejandro Pupo Echemendía, 46, “killed by officers at a police station” in the city of Placetas (Villa Clara).

Pupo Echemendía died on August 9, two days after being detained for an offense of illegal horse racing. According to Archive Cuba, citing Abel Santiago Tamayo, another detainee, as a source, Pupo Echemendía “was demonstrating a strong attack of nerves when a police officer handcuffed him and others proceeded to beat him with sticks, canes, kicks, and crashes against the floor.” continue reading

The human rights activist Jorge Luis García Pérez, known as Antúnez, was the one who denounced the alleged murder of Pupo Echemendía via social media. Various photos published on the activist’s account show signs of violence on the corpse. Pupo Echemendía’s wife as well as other family members testified to the state in which they received the body in the morgue.

Cuba Archive claims that this case is barely the “tip of the iceberg.”

“It’s only a window into the systematic killing in Cuba’s dungeons for nearly six decades,” adds the report published on their website. Cuba Archive asserts that it has documented some 509 extrajudicial executions, 22 deaths from hunger strikes, 312 deaths from lack of medical treatment or health reasons, and 107 suicides or supposed suicides, some of which may hide other executions.

“The vast majority of prisoners’ deaths are not reported, but it is thought that the victims add up to hundreds every year. The conditions in Cuban prisons are horrifying and they don’t permit monitoring or access for independent human rights organizations, they silence witnesses and victims’ family members, and they persecute human rights defenders,” adds Cuba Archive, which says that among the cases that it has documented are those of women and children.

Cuba keeps secret the number of prisons in the country and the number of people locked up. Cuba Archive estimates that there are more than 500 prisons, not including work camps, reformatories, and facilities for minors.

The NGO, based in Miami, claims that State Security is currently developing a campaign “of threats and intimidation to cover up the murder of Alejandro Pupo.”

On August 21 Abel Santiago was threatened by the authorities and forced to record a video where he declared that “he had been manipulated.” On August 22, Pupo’s niece and her husband were detained, threatened by State Security, and forced to sign a declaration denying the events. Various human rights defenders from Placetas, including Antúnez, Arianna López Roque, and Loreto Hernández García, are being harassed and threatened by the authorities, says Cuba Archive.

The report also accounts for the death of Daniela Ramón Rodríguez, 4 years old, who died on March 26, 2013 in Juan Manuel Márquez Hospital in Havana “after a health crisis caused by police mistreatment.”

According to Cuba Archive, the girl was forced to remain with her parents who had been detained by police, accused of the crime of burglary.

“The police threatened them and insulted them in front of their daughter. Two days after the traumatic incident, the health of Daniela [who had had an open heart surgery and suffered from congenital heart disease, an enlarged heart, and aggressive pericarditis] suddenly worsened; she was in intensive care until she died two months later,” adds Cuba Archive.

“This is the Cuba hidden from the world that we must continue to make known,” concludes the document.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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From State Homophobia to Marriage Equality in Cuba

The acceptance of unions between two people of the same sex owes more to “State transvestism” than to pressure from the LGBT community (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Abel Sierra Madero, New York | August 28, 2018 — For the past few years the Cuban regime has been producing some sudden changes meant to guarantee the continuity of the system and to erase the past. I called this process of “gatopardism” (a political strategy of changing things so that everything remains the same) “State transvestism.”

It is a readjustment of the revolutionary rhetoric of the Cold War that uses the notion of diversity as a method to offer to the outside world an image of change, but with hardly any tweaks. State transvestism is also a policy that uses new means of managing political control and (self) transition being brought about by the old Cuban political elite.

This strategy started to be tested a decade ago by the National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX), directed by Mariela Castro Espín, daughter of General Raúl Castro. From 2007, Mariela dominated the headlines when, to the party rhythm of the conga, she started to parade through the streets of Havana surrounded by gay people, insisting that sexual diversity formed part of the Revolution and “in a revolutionary manner.” continue reading

In 2008, CENESEX got the Ministry of Public Health to approve a resolution that authorized sex change operations, which regenerated great affection on the international level as well as on the island. At that time, the institution proposed a new family code and a law of gender identity.

The issue remained silenced for years, until a few days ago, when the Cuban National Assembly — totally controlled by the regime — approved, unanimously and true to the old Soviet style, a new Constitutional text prepared in secret which even Raúl Castro himself helped to edit. They say that it will be submitted very soon to popular consultation, although the general clarified that the consultation would consist of a debate supervised by the Communist Party.

Cosmetic and semantic politics

The project of the “new” constitution is getting tangled up at the same time with cosmetic and semantic politics. It says that private property will be recognized and that the construction of Communism will be renounced, although the Communist Party will continue togovern the destinies of the nation. It assures that socialism is irreversible, but behind the curtain the socialist model is being supplanted little by little by a neoliberal capitalism of the State, which concentrates power in a military elite and more and more cuts the budgets of state services like public health and education — areas on which the Cuban government has rested its legitimacy.

However, the paragraph that most stirred up the media and caused an explosion on social media was Article 68, which considers the “officially approved voluntary union between two persons with the legal capacity for it.” No longer is it limited to a man and a woman, as it was up until now. This simple change can open a pathway to the recognition of gay marriage in Cuba.

Marriage equality has its supporters and its detractors. In the United States and Europe, for example, it has been criticized by queer theorists and activists for the demobilization and the depoliticization it has generated inside these communities, which have seen marriage as the end of a historic agenda to fight for. But that is another discussion.

In Cuba, supporters will say that the approval of equal marriage signifies a step toward the recognition of individual rights, historically diluted in the impersonal and collective mass. To a certain extent they are right. I am in favor of all laws that favor groups that are vulnerable, whether for reasons of race, sexuality, gender, or politics. However, I cannot help pointing out the logic on which the recognition of marriage equality on the island is set up, and the consequences that it could have, thinking about the future and the history of the Revolution itself.

Marriage equality responds to assimilating policies that are being tried out by the State to create politically docile identities. Finally passed, marriage equality would create a protective framework basically circumscribed by the patrimonial one. For years we have seen many people stripped of the goods and properties of their partners, because they did not have the legal protection to inherit. But at the same time, it turns into a device, an instrument aimed at assimilating and canceling out a more comprehensive democratic discussion, not circumscribed to the specific issue of sexuality.

With the way things stand, marriage equality seems to be turning into another space of controlled diversity created for public post-revolution relationships. “With this proposed constitutional regulation, Cuba places itself among the countries at the vanguard of the recognition and guarantee of human rights,” pointed out Mariela Castro. In this way, marriage equality turns into an instrument of propaganda over human rights, an area in which the government has come under harsh criticism.

So, can a country which every year registers high numbers of arbitrary arrests for political motives be considered “at the vanguard” of human rights? A country that considers dissidents or opponents as mercenaries at the service of foreign powers or as traitors to the homeland? A country where freedom of expression, of association, among others, is practically prohibited?

Yesterday’s False Hope

Some activists from the LGBTI community in Cuba have claimed this change as a result of the pressure they have exerted on the institutions. However, this conjecture doesn’t have much support if we take into account the strong pressure that opponents, the Cuban diaspora, the exiles, and international organizations have exerted for decades for the government to recognize other liberties and rights, while those who pull the strings of power haven’t moved a muscle.

Without discounting the agency or the importance of the work of activism, I must say that marriage equality is anchored to this “State transvestism” of which I spoke at the beginning. This policy, in addition to trying out new means of political control, promotes an amnesiac transition, the washing of national memory and the rewriting of history. It is a matter of reaccomodating or rewriting certain historical processes that connect the Revolution to discrimination and homophobia.

For decades homophobia in Cuba was a policy of the State that legimitized purges of gay people from institutions and their internment forced labor camps, like the infamous Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP), aimed at the construction of the Communist “New Man.” The washing of memory and the rewriting of history began in August of 2010, when Fidel Castro told La Jornada that he recognized his historical responsibility in the implementation of these forced labor camps.

A few months later, Mariela Castro, in an interview with the Swiss Institute for Cooperation (COSUDE), embarked on a damage control campaign where she ended up saying that “Fidel didn’t even know about UMAP. He was concentrating on the survival of the Revolution and on the changes that they were making in politics, the laws in favor of the rights of the people, amidst complex and tense international relations.”

Mariela Castro has tried to minimize the scope and scale of UMAP in the history of the Cuban Revolution. She even promised an investigation into the matter; we are still waiting for it. Since then, the director of CENESEX has said, in every forum she has appeared in or every interview that she gives, that UMAP was an isolated error and that they were by no means forced labor camps.

Mariela is not the only one engaged in this effort, other cultural commissioners are also trying to reproduce and export this version. If these speeches manage to take root, it’s possible that in a not too distant future, we will see UMAP represented in textbooks and in the public sphere as mere summer camps.

In Cuba I see many of the elements that Isaac Rosa pointed out in his novel Yesterday’s False Hope (2004). Rosa called attention to the existence in Spain of narrative forms that tend to tame and anesthetize the past, while offering a placid image of the Franco dictatorship.

One of the passages reads: “Consciously or unconsciously, many novelists, journalists, and essayists (and filmmakers, let’s not forget) have transmitted a deformed image of Francoism… By doing so they construct a digestible impression of the banana republic in front of the reality of a dictatorship that applied, in detail and until its last day, refined techniques of torture, censorship, mental repression, cultural manipulation, and the creation of psychological ways of thinking that even today we have not managed to completely get rid of.”

On the island, this type of representation goes back to the 90s. Let’s not forget conciliatory exercises like the film Strawberry and Chocolate (1993). “Fidel, with this film, assumed, and with nothing to say, we close internationally that horrible moment that some call a Chapter and that I prefer to call a “digression” that was the UMAP,” wrote the then-director of the Cuban Institute of Art and Film, Alfredo Guevara, to the comandante.

Finally, with the passing of marriage equality, Cuba would take an important step toward becoming a gay-friendly State, which can create large businesses in areas like tourism and sex change operations. Until now, the principal market for these surgeries is in Thailand, but the scene could change because Cuban doctors are now carrying out these procedures, after having received the know-how of European specialists for several years, as part of the CENESEX program.

In recent days, Grupo Gaviota, a corporation belonging to the Cuban military — yes, the military — signed an agreement with the European chain Muthu Hotels & Resorts to manage a hotel in Cuba aimed at the LGTBI community. The company made the announcement with great ceremony on its Twitter account.

The police raids and underground spaces, the forced labor camps and the state-sanctioned homophobia, will remain in obscurity. Celebrities of the gay world can marry in Cuba without fear of being arrested. Now more than ever we need a policy of memory that is not aimed at the clinical space of healing, but rather at justice and compensation for the victims of this harmful policy. It is the only way to ensure that the past not be that “yesterday’s false hope” of which Isaac Rosa spoke.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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Editors’ Note: Abel Sierra Madero (Matanzas, Cuba, 1976) is an essayist, researcher, professor, and critic. With the author’s permission we are reproducing this text which was previously published in the Mexican magazine Letras Libres.

In Cienfuegos The Water is Everywhere, Except in the Tap

Cienfuegos residentsy have to store rainwater in buckets given the deficiency of the supply. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Justo Mora, Cienfuegos, 22 August 2018 — It’s four in the afternoon in Cienfuegos and the downpour begins. While the thunder rumbles on her old house near the José Martí park, in the heart of the city, the teacher Liuzmila Chacón hurriedly places some old containers to store as much rainwater as she can.

“As of two days ago the water doesn’t make it to the faucett, sometimes it comes with more force and with this small pump I manage to increase the water pressure, but most of the time I have to bend down into the tanks and fill bucket after bucket,” she explains.

The problem in the historic center of the city of Cienfuegos is nothing new, but contrasts with the current situation, where after the heavy rains the reservoirs of the island are at 83% capacity. For decades, Cienfuegueros have had to use all their ingenuity to get a few more drops from the old pipes that were installed during the Republican era. continue reading

“The provincial hospital runs out of water at 10 o’clock every night, including the emergency room, and doctors and nurses have to wash their hands with bags of saline because of the critical situation we have,” a nurse says on condition of anonymity. The situation is so dramatic that the water for cleaning the operating rooms is stored in a small tank to guarantee the supply.

Pablo Fuentes Chaviano, delegate of Hydraulic Resources in the province, explained to the weekly September 5 that the problem lies in the fact that the water pipeline in Paso Bonito is 50 years old and considerably deteriorated. Added to this are two more stations that have collapsed: one because a turbine burned out three months ago and another because an inadequate pump was installed.

“In the case of Paso Bonito there are four pumps, one of them is a reinforcement and when there is a deficit, as is the case, we put that into the system to strengthen the El Tunel route and the city. This one also burned up during [subtropical storm] Alberto, and it could not be fixed,” according to the official.

“In this block there are about ten people who have pumps to raise water to their tanks, so it does not reach others,” says Caridad (Caruca), a retired elderly woman who presides over one of the Defense Committees of Calle Casales.

In the last week the local press published reports about the difficult situation the city is facing. Some areas of Cienfuegos haven’t received water for as long as 30 days, so the neighbors have to rent water trucks or stock up from the few the Government sends.

Days without water. For some areas of the city it is 30 days. (September 5)

“With the water trucks there is always a tremendous line and social indiscipline is the order of the day,” says Caruca, who says he knows neighbors who buy water “from trucks, under the table” at 20 CUC.

Orlando López Torres, director of engineering for the Aqueduct and Sewer agency, says that “of the 860 liters per second that was available as an average to distribute in the city, there are only 760 today.”

He attributed that loss of 100 liters per second to the numerous leaks in the hydraulic network, which, in addition, has 26 broken valves belonging to Aqueduct and Sewers’ own facilities.

“The problem is not so much the water that is pumped as that which is lost. In the country 3.400 million liters are lost every year through leaks,” a retired hydraulic engineer tells 14ymedio.

“What is the solution they offer for that?” It is not to fix the pipes, because that would be easy. “They prefer to pump more, and in the meantime promote the president of Hydraulic Resources, Inés María Chapman Waugh, to vice president of the State Council” he adds, annoyed.

The shortage has consequences for the local economy. Idolidia León, owner of a room to rent for tourists, complains that she barely has water to clean once a week.

“I pay my contributions punctually, it’s incredible that the historic center of the city, which has been declared a World Heritage Site, has been without water for 10 days. I was not able to rent the room,” says this former literature professor.

“It must be the damn circumstance of water everywhere, as Virgilio Piñera said, everywhere, except in the taps.”

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Cuban Regime Opponent Rosa Maria Paya Nominated for Vaclav Havel Prize

Payá gave continuity to the work of her late father Oswaldo Payá in the promotion of democracy and human rights in Cuba. (14ymedio)

EFE via 14ymedio, Paris, 28 August 2018 — Cuban dissident Rosa María Payá was nominated this Tuesday as a candidate for the Council of Europe’s Václav Havel Human Rights Prize for her work for a democratic transition in Cuba.

Payá gave continuity to the work of her late father Oswaldo Payá (1952-2012) in the promotion of democracy and human rights as president of the Latin American network Youth for Democracy and launching the citizen initiative Cuba Decide.

The young activist, 29, has been nominated along with two other candidates, the Bahraini Nabeel Rajab and the Russian Oyub Titiev. continue reading

The winner will be announced on October 8 in Strasbourg, where the award will be presented, granted by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Václav Havel Library and the Charter 77 Foundation.

Since 2013, the award has rewarded the “exceptional actions of civil society in the defense of human rights inside and outside Europe.”

In 2016 the award went to the young Iraqi woman, Nadia Murad, who with other women from her Yazidi community, was kidnapped and enslaved for three months by the Islamic State in northern Iraq.

The president of the jury, Liliane Maury Pasquier, stressed that in this edition of 2018 the inheritance of Václav Havel “resonates in a particular way.” Havel was president of the Czech Republic after having been one of the leaders of the dissidence during the Prague Spring in 1968, when his country was invaded by the Soviet Union.

The prize consists of a diploma, a trophy and a cash prize of 60,000 euros, a figure higher than that of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize, which was awarded 16 years ago to Oswaldo Payá.

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Currency Duality Splits Havana Carnivals in Two

The division by currencies is a reminder of the first years of the Dollarization of the Cuban economy in the 90s. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havana | August 27, 2018 — The long lines this Sunday announced where beer was being sold at Havana’s carnivals, the most sought-after product for clients of few resources. On its last weekend, Cuba’s dual currency system made itself strongly felt at the most important festival for the people in the Cuban capital.

“National money is not accepted,” read a sign at a kiosk with canned beverages, some imported and others local. The authorities have preferred to keep sales divided based on the currency used (Cuban pesos, also called national money and abbreviated CUP, or Cuban convertible pesos, abbreviated CUC), a decision that created multiple inconveniences.

“It was a decision of the Management of the Carnival and the Provincial Cultural Administration of Havana,” explained an employee of a kiosk named after the neighborhood of Mantilla. “We only do what they tell us and here we can only sell in Cuban pesos.” continue reading

“I had to buy fried chicken in one kiosk and beer in another because one was in national money and the other in convertible pesos,” lamented Sandra, a 37-year-old Havana resident who spent years “without stepping foot in the carnival because it isn’t worth it.” This Sunday she decided to venture out even though the event ended up being dangerous.

Brawls are frequent at Havana celebrations, which have gained a reputation for being troubled and risky, despite the strict security and the rules prohibiting the carrying of knives. In recent years the presence of families with children has notably lessened as a consquence of the violence.

Unlike canned, beer on tap, the cheapest beverage for sale, was sold in Cuban pesos at a price of 9 CUP for a glass. (14ymedio)

The division by currencies is a reminder of the first years of the Dollarization of the Cuban economy in the 90s, when popular celebrations were split between the poor offerings available in CUP and the more varied in dollars or convertible pesos. Over time, however, sales were united and at recent carnivals one could pay without distinction at the exchange of 1 CUC for 24 CUP.

The measure of separate sales between CUC and CUP contrasts with the progressive advance of the acceptance of both currencies in the network of retail stores. “In almost every store you can pay in one currency or the other, but when you come to the carnival it works another way, here no one understands it,” lamented a frustrated customer.

Unlike canned, beer on tap, the cheapest beverage for sale, was sold in Cuban pesos for the price of 9 CUP for a glass. “It’s the only chance to have a beer at this price because the rest of the year they don’t sell it on tap in CUP anywhere,” Sandra points out.

The security forces cut access to the Malecon in many places for a good part of the journey. (14ymedio)

Criticisms were also directed at the little variety in the food for sale. “In all the kiosks it’s the same, roast pork, fried chicken, or roast pork sandwiches,” explains Randy. “If you’re lucky you can find corn on the cob but nothing else, this carnival doesn’t evolve in terms of food, it’s always the same.”

Near Randy, a few foreigners tried to explain to a vendor that they wanted a little hot sauce to put on some skewers of pork cooked over charcoal and stuck on a thin piece of pine wood. “No, we don’t have any sauce, hot sauce or otherwise,” the employee responded sharply.

The lack of places to sit and enjoy the celebrations was also one of the most-criticized points. Only the area of the stands and the boxes had seats. Unlike other years, where cafeterias or food areas with tables were also installed, this time all consumption of drinks and food happened at kiosks and bars.

In the Maceo Park area families had benches, but in other areas participants had to remain standing the whole time. “For a good part of the way there is no access to the Malecón wall because they have put kiosks there or put up bars so that people can’t pass,” a retiree explained to 14ymedio.

In some places they did not accept the CUP as currency, in others they did not accept CUC

Security guards justified the measure as a way of “better controlling the situation in one area,” specified an agent. “It’s not the same to have people on both sides of the street where floats and carnival troupes are parading, than to be able to keep them on one side.”

The unusual scene of a Malecón wall completely empty repeated itself in the area around Calle 23, a very crowded area with various food and drink kiosks.

A few private vendors ventured there with their tidbits especially for children. “There are many controls to stop us from selling in these areas because they say that we are creating competition for the state kiosks,” explained Michel, a vendor of popcorn and toasted peanuts.

A few meters from his sales cart, in an alcove of Avenida Malecón, dozens of police officers prepared to enter the festivities. Around 7:00 PM each received a carboard box with some rice, a piece of pork, and French fries. “Eat quickly because the sun is already setting,” yelled an official.

The uniformed officers rapidly devoured the food and went in groups to the zone of the festivities, where in large lines in front of the kiosks people kept asking if this was a line to pay in CUP or in CUC.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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UNPACU Activist Pressured by Police to Accuse Jose Daniel Ferrer

Ebert Hidalgo Cruz (right) says he was interrogated four times and threatened by the agents with keeping him in jail. (Video Capture)

14ymedio, Havana, 13 August 2018 – Activist Ebert Hidalgo Cruz has been released without any charges, according to a video released Sunday by the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) shortly after the dissident was released from prison. Hidalgo was imprisoned on August 3 together with the leader of the organization, José Daniel Ferrer, who is still in prison accused of the attempted murder of a State Security agent.

“They were forcing me to say that José Daniel was guilty, that he had run over the officer with the car,” the activist explained before the camera. He says that he was interrogated four times and that he was threatened by the agents with keeping him prisoner. “I told them not to pressure me anymore, that I was not going to say anything else,” he said about the agents’ insistence that he confirm that José Daniel’s aggression against the agent was deliberate. continue reading

Hidalgo and Ferrer were arrested after an incident involving the Interior Ministry official, Dainier Suárez Pagán, who was allegedly run over by Ferrer while driving without a driver’s license.

Agent Suárez Pagán is known by the dissidents of Palmarito de Cauto, in the province of Santiago de Cuba, for being violent and attacking the activists. According to the judicial version, Ferrer intended to run over the agent while he was crossing the street, a statement that was denied by the two dissidents shortly before they were arrested.

In the video, Hidalgo explained that he spent six days in the Penal Instruction and Criminal Operations Unit, in the Versalles district (Santiago de Cuba), unable to change clothes and in a cell in terrible conditions, which according to the activist, had hardly any light but had plenty of mosquitoes, rats and cockroaches. He received only a brief visit from his daughter during his prison stay.

Before Hidalgo was released from Micro 9, as the prison where he was held is also known, he was warned that he could not talk at all about the case with relatives.

Translated by Wilfredo Díaz Echevarria

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The Time Has Come To Defend Freedom

The Venezuelan Supreme Court in Exile condemned Nicolás Maduro to 18 years in prison. (EFE)

14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Miami, 19 August 2018 — The Venezuelan Supreme Court in exile condemned Nicolás Maduro to 18 years in prison. Great. He would have to serve his sentence in Ramo Verde.** Excellent. That’s where he detained Leopoldo López and other political enemies. In addition, he must pay a fine of 25 million dollars and compensate the State for 35 billion dollars in bribes and surcharges received or paid to Odebrecht.

Odebrecht is a malignant and efficient Brazilian bandit. Tired of the inability to commit crimes like the dishonest Latin American politicians, it organized robbery on a grand scale in a dozen countries (that were not maimed, of course) and, perhaps, in the south of Florida, which has among the largest number of Latin Americans in the U.S.

That’s all well and good. The Supreme Tribunal of Justice (STJ)*** of Venezuela is entitled to act the way it did it. The Organization of American States (OAS) and the European Parliament recognize the failures. It accused the Attorney General, Luisa Ortega, a convert to democracy with a cloudy past of persecutions to which the opposition, intelligently, has given a welcome, perhaps because there are not many Venezuelans free of the original chavista sin. continue reading

The 33 magistrates of the STJ were named by the National Assembly, as mandated by the current Constitution. The problem is that they all have gone into exile. The Constitution, which Chávez called la Bicha (the “Bitch”), and insisted was the best Constitution on the planet, did not specify where the STJ should be located.

Logically, if there had been an earthquake in Caracas, the STJ would have to hold its session somewhere else. In Venezuela, a political earthquake has occurred that swept away everything. Understandably, the STJ left for other sites (Colombia, Chile, USA and Panama). Fortunately, the Internet exists, and the magistrates can hold a session periodically by showing their faces on Skype.

Maduro, obviously, will laugh at the sentence and say something stupid about it, although in his heart he feels chills. As we do when we discuss with an undertaker whether our relatives will see us in our present bodies, with makeup and glasses, or if they will cremate us and return us to the family in a box with a kilo and a half of ashes from our bones, after explaining that the meat, viscera and soft parts, including the eyes, went up in smoke. Of course, the 14 countries that constitute the Lima Group will look very favorably on the STJ sentence, but that isn’t sufficient. They will have to take action if they want to free themselves from the dictatorships of the Socialism of the 21^st Century: Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia.

They must do it, given that these nations try to metastasize and conspire with their local comrades in order to destroy the fundamentals of democracy.

The Lima Group should base their actions on the Democratic Letter signed, precisely, in Lima in 2001, in a solemn convocation organized by the OAS. They have a lot of work to do. Those three regimes, all signatories of the agreement, want to appear as if they are democratic. They twist the laws so the caudillos can remain in power indefinitely. They kill, imprison and send their opponents into exile, accusing them of being terrorists.

Cuba directs the group from behind the scenes, but the Island of the Castro Brothers is a tyranny that is consolidated and (vilely) accepted by everyone. It didn’t sign the Democratic Letter and has refused to be reincorporated into the OAS, an invitation that, incomprehensively, Mr. Insulza sent them.

Cuba doesn’t pretend to present itself as a democracy, but rather proudly exhibits its condition as a one-party satrap in which individual rights are subject to the ultimate goals of the State, and these are defined by the Communist Party. Thus, there is neither hypocrisy nor fundamental contradiction between law and practice. It’s Stalinist crap and has been for almost 60 years. It’s 20^th century socialism, which has cost 100 million lives, and it comes directly from Leninism.

What can the Lima Group do, excepting Mexico, which finds refuge in the paralysis of the Estrada Doctrine?**** It can break or dilute the hierarchy of diplomatic relations. It can explain that laws and tradition justify the use of force when democratic avenues have been closed. It can arm opponents, so they can defend their freedoms. What would be suicide is to remain complacent.

*Translator’s Note: The Lima Group was established by the Lima Declaration, August 8, 2017, when 14 countries met in Lima to discuss the crisis in Venezuela. The group demanded the release of political prisoners, called for free elections, offered humanitarian aid and criticized the breakdown of democracy in Venezuela. Member countries are Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Santa Lucia.
**Prison in Los Teques, Venezuela.
***The highest court of law in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
****Mexico’s foreign policy from 1930 to the early 2000s, which claims that foreign governments should not pass judgment on other countries’ governments. It was based on principles of non-intervention, peaceful resolution of disputes and self-determination.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Artists Denounce Decree 349 for "Criminalizing Independent Art"

Addressed to President Miguel Díaz-Canel and Minister of Culture Alpidio Alonso, the letter insists that the decree “not present a vision of the future of culture in Cuba.” (Facebook)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana | 27 August 2018 — A group of artists who have been promoting an intense campaign against Decree 349 since July are continuing to pressure the country’s authorities not to implement this law that demands that “commercial spaces for plastic arts” have prior authorization and be registered in the Creators’ Registry.

Last Thursday a representative of the group presented a letter with their demands to the office of the Attorney General and the National Assembly of People’s Power, as reported to 14ymedio by Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, one of the visible faces of this initiative. The text, which details several demands and the reasons they are against this regulation, was sent as well to the Council of State and the Ministry of Culture.

Addressed to President Miguel Díaz-Canel and Minister of Culture Alpidio Alonso, the letter insists that the decree “not present a vision of the future for culture in Cuba.” It also denounces the law for “criminalizing independent art” and limiting “the ability of defining who can be an artist to a State institution.” continue reading

Another criticism made by the group of artists to this new law, which will enter into full force in December, is that creators weren’t consulted during its development and that they won’t have the ability to access “resources” or “independent arbitrators” in the case of a legal dispute.

The conceptual vagueness of the text is another point addressed in the letter, a matter that has worried the artists since they learned the content of the law after its publication in the Gazette Special Edition on July 10. One of the examples cited is the expression “contents harmful to ethical and cultural values,” a point that can take different interpretations that are not made explicit in the law. In response to this, the letter insists that art history demonstrates that “questioning the established systems of thought is the driving force of aesthetic development.”

They also mention that the government has dedicated itself to demonizing different mechanisms of independent art financing like crowdfunding. “The fact that a Cuban artist can finance his creations by his own means does not make him an opponent,” and they urge that the state to stop “confusing these platforms with the direct financing of a hostile organization or government.”

The document also announces that Decree 349 “authorizes the Ministry of Culture to designate inspectors” with the ability to “censor and suspend artistic performances, as well as impose fines and confiscate instruments, equipment, self-employment authorization, and goods like property from the house.”

According to the artists, the aim of Decree 349 “is the impoverishment of Cuban culture” and they warn that culture and art “can exist without a ministry, but the Ministry of Culture and the nation cannot exist without the creativity of its citizens.”

The letter that the group has delivered to these institutions is the same one attached to a petition that they are promoting on the platform avaaz.org, which already has 777 signatures. Among the artists who presented the letter are Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, Yanelys Nuñéz, Iris Ruiz, Nonardo Perea, Amaury Pacheco, Soandry del Río, Yasser Castellanos, and Michel Matos.

Otero Alcántara makes clear that they were “well looked after” and that they received an acknowledgment of receipt but he emphasized the scarce information they received after the delivery of the letter and that only the Council of State communicated to them that the term to receive a response in this case is 60 days. “In the Capitol they told us that there were only three people working and that they didn’t know when they would have a response to give us because there were many cases pending,” he said.

The organizers of the campaign against the decree have claimed that this law is directed toward eliminating the work of independent artists who in recent decades have gained their space working at the margins of institutions.

The campaign #NoAlDecreto349, which has carried out various public actions to make the situation visible, has had the solidarity of numerous Cuban artists on social media, both on and off the island, who practice different artistic disciplines such as cinema and music. Writers, actors, and well-known plastics artists have also shown their support.

On at least two occasions the artists of this group were suppressed by force by State Security agents and the police during public protest acts. The most recent took place when they tried to hold a concert at the venue of the Museum of Politically Uncomfortable Art. Previously they tried to hold a performance on the steps of the Capitol.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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Court in Cienfuegos Sentences Two of Leidy Pacheco’s Murderers to Life in Prison

Leidy Maura Pacheco Mur. (5 de Septiembre newspaper)

14ymedio, Justo Mora/Mario J. Pentón, Cienfuegos | 23 August 2018 — Justice came to Cienfuegos but in the deepest silence from the Provincial Court, which has kept secret the sentence of life imprisonment for two of the three men accused of raping and murdering Leidy Pacheco Mur, 18 years old and mother of a 10-month-old baby.

The information came to the public light this Thursday because the victim’s family told the local weekly 5 de Septiembre that Enrique Campos, 32, and Darián Gómez Chaviano, 25, had been sentenced to life imprisonment. The third man involved in the crime, Henry Hanoi Tamayo Hernández, 19, was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The trial lasted two days, August 7-8, during which the population gathered in front of the court, which was protected by the police. The crowd rebuked the men with cries of “To the firing-wall” and “murderers.” continue reading

The sentence of the court can be appealed to the People’s Supreme Court.

“The truth is that those men got off easy. They should be shot after causing so much pain,” Margarita Fuentes, resident of the Junco Sur suburb on the outskirts of the city, told 14ymedio.

Yesenia Oliva, who planted herself outside the court during the trial, says that it’s an “exemplary sentence.”

“People don’t realize that there is a moratorium on the death penalty. The most that they can do is give them life imprisonment. The prisoners in Ariza will take care of those bastards,” she added.

Leidy Pacheco Mur was murdered September 26 of last year. At 2:56 PM, when she was a block from her home, she called her husband so that he wouldn’t worry about her, but she never arrived.

Enrique Campos, Henry Hanoi Tamayo, and Darián Gómez covered her mouth, took her to Plan Mango, a grove on the outskirts of Cienfuegos, raped her, killed her, and buried her at the bank of a small dam, according to the testimony of her father, Pedro Valentín Pacheco Alonso.

The three murderers lived in the same neighborhood as the victim. The next day the family notified the authorities of the young woman’s disappearance.

Family members, neighbors, and even one of the rapists participated in the search for the young woman, which lasted six days.

The death of Leidy Pacheco moved Cienfuegos, a city that in barely a year has suffered various murders. On February 14 Luis Santacruz Labrada was murdered with a knife and in May a double murder of women shocked the city, which in the past counted safety as one of its biggest appeals.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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Journalist Reinaldo Escobar Wins the 2018 Verbum Novel Prize

Reinaldo Escobar worked on the creation of ‘La Grieta’ for a quarter of a century. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 27 August 2018 — Journalist Reinaldo Escobar’s work, La Grieta*, won the 2018 Iberianamerican Verbum Novel Prize. The results of the contest were announced this Monday and its organizers reported that 507 authors participated and there were five finalist.

Escobar, editor-in-chief of 14ymedio, was awarded the prize for “the narrative maturity with which he tackles the chronicle of disenchantment for an entire generation of Cubans,” and “the subtle irony that manages to raise a smile and the delicate game of mirrors that fuses reality and fiction.”

“I’ve been working for a quarter of a century on this novel, writing and rewriting its pages,” Escobar said, on hearing of the award. “It is a testimony that I hope will transcend me as an individual and represent thousands of Cubans who lived similar experiences.” continue reading

La Grieta tells the story of Antonio Martínez, a young man who entered the School of Journalism at the end of the ’60s with the illusion of entering the profession during a time of new airs of freedom. Two decades later he ends up expelled from the newspaper where he works and stigmatized as an enemy who will not be allowed to exercise his profession in any other media.

The novel’s first typed version, without copies, was completed in 1994 but was confiscated by State Security at the Havana airport when Escobar tried to take it out of the country. A quarter of a century later, the novel is seeing the light reconstructed by memory and enriched by the author’s experience.

The jury of the Verbum Prize has emphasized that it is “an entertaining and intense work, which a whole generation can identify which and in which younger readers will discover the chronicle of an epoch of fallacious epics.”

The steps through which the plot takes shape begin with the ins and outs of the ideological struggle between fundamentalists and liberals in the university environment, the sanction the lead character was subjected to in a process of political cleansing, his later involvement in a prestigious magazine that worked to sugarcoat the image of the country for external consumption, and the enthusiasm for glasnost and perestroika that leads him to try to push journalism along more open paths from a newspaper of national circulation, to a point of direct confrontation where he finally stumbles against the insurmountable wall of intolerance.

Parallel to the events of the protagonist’s professional life, where at each step he discovers the enormous distance between reality and official discourse, Martínez maintains his own romantic utopia that leads him to seek, over and over again, a personal chimera.

The author portrays a part of that generation that jumped from adolescence to adulthood in the midst of the maelstrom brought by the Revolution. The illusion, the doubt, the skepticism, the frustration, follow one another in a sequence where it is difficult to determine the exact point of rupture, that insurmountable crack (grieta) where the deepest convictions are recomposed.

The jury that selected the winner comprised Fernando Rodríguez Lafuente (Spain, president), Pedro Juan Gutiérrez (Cuba), Sara Mañero Rodicio (Spain), José Antonio Martínez Climent (Spain, winner of the 2017 Iberoamerican Verbum Novel Award) and Luis Rafael (Cuba-Spain).

Among the finalists, along with La Grieta, was La Dantesca vida de Philip Orsbridge, by Alfredo Nicolás Lorenzo (Cuba), La hora del silencio, by Cristina Feijóo (Argentina), Los paraguas y el sol, by Enrique Pérez Díaz (Cuba) and Fóllale, Manco, by Juan Sebastián Rojas (Colombia).

Translator’s note: “Grieta” is a word that can be translated as crack, fracture, rift, chasm, fissure, breach and many synonyms of these words. Not having read the book, this translator hesitates to pick one to represent the title in English.

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