14ymedio – Page 430 – Translating Cuba

We, The Guilty

Fidel Castro spent a week in Nicaragua for the celebration of the first anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution. In the image, a celebration on July 19, 1980 marking the first anniversary of the fall of Somoza. (La Prensa / Archive)

It was the 80s and, from Cuba, Nicaragua seemed to offer hope that the leftist revolutions would take power across the continent. The fall of the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza fit into the pieces of my children’s puzzle, where the walls of the Kremlin, Fidel Castro’s beard and Nicaragua’s volcanoes shared space.

A classmate in my third grade class bragged that her father was in Managua as a military advisor. These trips, in addition to guaranteeing the importing of exotic gifts in the midst of the boring distributions from the rationed market, increased social prestige because they immediately conveyed the status of “proletarian internationalist.”

Years later, when that fog of slogans and chimeras cleared, I understood that this official euphemism hid a much more heinous reality: military intervention in another nation. The chess of geopolitics had turned Nicaragua into a board where Moscow moved its pieces through Cuban hands and the United States did the same through the “Contras.” continue reading

Along with that physical presence and the ascendancy that the Plaza of the Revolution maintained over the Sandinista commanders, the main offensive was developed in the media and in whatever cultural display served to convey the idea that the sickle with its implacable hammer had destroyed the old Latin American regimes.

This is how documentaries, posters, hymns and poetic riffs were created, which were mandatory in Cuban schools and, above all, a mold was created from which it was impossible to escape. Being a Sandinista and supporting Daniel Ortega, who led this revolution then occupying the most space in the Island’s official discourse, was a necessary catechism to be able to be “ordained” as a full-fledged revolutionary and communist.

Castro supported the Sandinistas with strategists and arms, as he did so many other guerrilla movements in the region. Testimonies and documents that have come to light confirm that the Cuban leader maintained a fluid communication during the insurrection directed from its Palo Alto headquarters in Costa Rica, because he always liked to play war from a distance, with the bullets wounding other bodies.

After reaching power, the Sandinista commanders visited Havana and the president talked with them during a more than 70 hour marathon from which at least two counsels have come to light. He recommended that they call elections as soon as possible and not introduce compulsory military service. The stubborn comrades paid no attention, perhaps because they realized that the “counselor-in-chief” had not followed any of these premises and, nevertheless, continued to control the Island.

After that alliance, Cuban children had other commanders to worship, another revolution to shout Viva! for, and a new geography to explore on the maps, as we thought about the day we would disembark there with our boots, compass and rifles, to kill or die in the name of utopia. Our own island was narrow and when that time came we would be able to project a continental Cuba, making the leap from our caiman to that cinched waist offering the promise of continued advances towards the voluptuousness of the two Americas.

While that moment of physical sacrifice was still over the horizon, we applauded. We sang praises to Ortega and his companions even when the confiscations they imposed spoke more of voracity than justice, when the nationalizations ruined the country, and when their hands did not tremble as they pointed their rifles against their own people. An ideological friendship at that time involved this kind of selective myopia.

The official Cuban media also continued to present the Sandinistas as rebellious youngsters, even in moments of absolute international disrepute, such as the one provoked by the so-called Sandinista “piñata” in which they scandalously distributed property and goods among themselves and lined their own pockets. Although some of the Sandinista commanders turned away from the insatiable Ortega, Cuban propaganda continued to present them as “the Nicaraguan guerrillas,” a tight group, a closed bloc.

Cuba’s official newspaper Granma never dedicated a critical phrase to them and Silvio Rodríguez continued to sing that “another hot iron” had been broken in Nicaragua. A theme that served to spread, from passion, a lie. The Sandinista revolution, like the Cuban one, erected from its emergence an insatiable source of rights for its followers, even above the law, shielding itself from its critics and forgetting that foundational impulse of change that had made it possible. It aged badly and fast.

After almost 40 years, the young man who initially conquered power by the force of arms is now trying to keep it through them, amid the popular protests that broke out in Nicaraguan streets in April. Ortega has ordered his forces to kill and will continue to do so to keep the presidential chair. Lacking the revolutionary mysticism that once surrounded him, he is now left with only repression or claudication.

Aggravating his international loneliness, his former ally and mentor has been dead almost two years and Havana no longer enjoys those fat subsidies of yesteryear that allowed it to deploy troops in other countries. But the official media is a redoubt of support for the Ortega regime and occasionally, on some old radio station, you will hear about the “rope with bait” that was cut in Nicaragua.

Today most Cubans, partly guilty for that mirage turned into satrapy, are silent, look the other way or dream of reaching other geographies, this time not to extend a utopia, but to escape it.

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Another 100 Tons of Mango are Lost in Bahia Honda

The mango harvest lost in Artemisa. (The Artemiseño)

14ymedio, Havana, 25 June 2018 — Another 100 tons of mango have been spoiled, this time in the municipality of Bahia Honda, Artemisa, due to lack of transportation to haul the product from the fields. Los Mingolitos Farm enjoyed the splendor of a bountiful harvest until the fruit “began to rot” because the authorities responsible for collecting it didn’t come, according to the local newspaper El Artemisa.

The journalist Joel Mayor Lorán describes the scene of some 600 boxes loaded with mangoes in mid-June, waiting for the vehicles to come to transport them to the distribution centers. With the passing of days, the fruits were rotting without any attempt to sell them to the highest bidders in the nearest markets. continue reading

The reporter talked about the campaign promoted by Raúl Castro to encourage the planting of fruits in Cuba, “a really essential dream, because a tropical country can’t abandon the flavor and color of the fruit trees of yesteryear,” he detailed.

At the end of last year, a project was announced with the cooperation of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Canadian Embassy in Cuba to achieve increases of between 10% and 30% in the production of guava, mango and papaya. The initiative benefits 80 companies in five municipalities in the provinces of Artemisa and Santiago de Cuba.

In the midst of that push “each municipality would have to have at least one farm dedicated to that objective,” Liván González, a local farmer told El Artemiseño. “We cultivated cane; nevertheless, they selected us and told us which varieties [of mangoes]: Tommy Atkins, Super Haden and the so-called Pumpkin and Peace.”

The farmer says that last year the Batabanó state canning industry made a contract with the producers in the area to buy the whole harvest, but “they did not use a tenth of it” and in the fields “some 900 boxes of mangoes” were lost.

This year, farmers once again invested in the purchase of “some 5,000 plants (at 20 Cuban pesos each),” explains González. In addition there was the work to till the land and pay the farmworkers.

Acopio, the state intermediary in charge of managing the transport for most products from the farms to industries and markets, is the target of Gonzalez’s criticisms. “When Acopio tells you to harvest them because they are coming to collect them, then if they don’t come, they rot.”

Recently, the official press revealed that some 1,445 tons of mango and guava pulp produced between 2015 and 2016 in the state-owned La Conchita factory were sold in neighboring Pinar del Río. The deterioration of the product, due to poor storage, resulted in loses of more than 2.2 million pesos, according to the newspaper Granma .

The newspaper added that the amount of rotted fruit pulp was “enough to fill a swimming pool or to give 1.2 liters to each inhabitant of Pinar del Río.” After the incident, the factory management had to sell 1,475 tons of pulp from the 2017 harvest to other entities to reduce the quantities stored in their warehouses.

In mid-2017, more than 2,600 tons of mango were lost in the Guantánamo fields due to lack of boxes and breakdowns in the processing plants. The amount represented more than a third of the 6,794 tons of mango that the State had contracted from producers in the area.

In contrast to these losses, families with young children from Pinar del Río and Artemisa have experienced months of high prices for babyfood, a much-requested product. Distributed through the rationed market under the brand Osito with a price of 0.25 CUP for a 200 ml container, the product “is missing,” say the locals.

Through the rationing system, three monthly containers of fruit compote for infants between zero and three years are distributed in rural municipalities, while in Havana it can be as many as 12. The official argument justifying this difference is that residents in the rural provinces can acquire the fruits directly from the producers.

Many parents of children affected by the shortage have opted to prepare the babyfood themselves, as confirmed to this newspaper by residents in the Artemiseño municipalities of Candelaria, Caimito and Guanajay. However, the heavy rains of recent weeks have complicated the supplying of fruits to the markets of the area, as well limited access to the fields.

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Keys to Survival in Cuba: The Ration Book, Remittances and Theft

Man leaving a ration system bodega in Cuba. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana/Santa Clara | 26 June 2018 — Gloria Peralta has been sitting at the door of an old house with a gabled roof for at least two hours waiting for an onion seller to pass by to “give some flavor to the beans,” but the floods caused by the rains of tropical storm Alberto have complicated the task of buying food in her native Santa Clara, in central Cuba.

Peralta and her husband, José Antonio Rodríguez, hardly remember a time without hardships. “Our generation had to tighten our belts in the 70s, when we thought that everything would be better afterwards,” recalls this retired nurse who, together with her husband, receives about 30 CUC (Cuban convertible pesos, worth less than 30 dollars) from their monthly pensions. continue reading

“In those years it seemed that the ration book was something that would end soon,” recalls Peralta. Established in 1962, the rationed market has been one of the tools of what is officially called “the Cuban Revolution,” but which others prefer to call “Castroism” or, more popularly, “this thing.”

For 56 years, through this little booklet, food has been distributed at subsidized prices and in limited quantities. The State spends more than one billion Cuban pesos (CUP) per year in subsidies for these products, which it distributes every month and which are barely enough for ten days.

This distribution system has modified the Cuban diet, traditional recipes and even ways of speaking. In rationed bakeries “the bread” is sold, but when it is offered in unrationed stores, it loses the definite article and remains only “bread.”

For decades, the libreta, or ration book — from which, over the years, products have been subtracted — has been the favorite target of comedians, caused many family fights and caused numerous heart attacks or fainting outside the ration system’s bodegas. Three generations of Cubans do not know life without this little booklet with its gridded pages where, every month, a few pounds of sugar, salt, grains and some chicken are duly noted.

Several economic studies in recent years suggest that a salary of at least 1,200 CUP is needed to cover the basic needs of an individual in Cuba. With less than a quarter of that idyllic sum, Peralta and her husband gave up lunch years ago and at breakfast they just drink a tisane made from leaves collected in the backyard, along with a piece of bread.

No one can survive in good health if they eat only what is sold in the ration market. “If it weren’t for my daughter, who lives in Nevada, sending me a package with food and some money every month, we would be nothing but bones,” says the retireee. During the years of the Special Period, in the 90s, her husband was sick of polyneuritis, an illness caused by a lack of nutrients.

“It was at that moment that we touched bottom and since then we have been left with many manias around saving,” adds the husband. In the house, they reuse the cooking oil over and over again. “We even put it in through a strainer to remove the breadcrumbs and keep using it.” The eggs in the refrigerator have an initial, “G” or “J” written them depending on who their destined for.

“Each month they sell us ten eggs on the ration book, half at a subsidized price and the other at one peso each,” Peralta calculates. “But in recent years the supply has been very unstable and the only source of protein we have left is the chicken in the shopping (hard currency stores) or the pork that we can buy from time to time in the agricultural market,” he clarifies.

The hard currency stores are much better stocked but the relationship between their prices and wages is disproportionate. Their opening, more than two decades ago, was a concession made by Fidel Castro after the social explosion of August 1994, known as the Maleconazo.

“We had to be on the verge of starvation before they would allow these stores and also non-state agricultural markets,” Peralta recalls. At that time the Government also authorized foreign investment and, for the first time in decades, allowed the people to engage in private work, which was renamed with the euphemism cuentapropismo (’on one’s own account’, commonly translated as ’self-employment’).

For two years now, as Venezuela’s economic support to the island has languished, the shelves of the shopping — hard currency stores called by this English word — have had large empty spaces. “Before, the problem was that we had to get the money to pay for a bag of milk powder, but now you can have the convertible pesos and the milk does not appear,” laments Rosario, 34, the mother of two children ages nine and ten.

The rationed market establishes a quota of milk or yoghurt for infants but it is only provided until they are seven. “My children are forming their teeth and they need to consume dairy products,” explains Rosario. “My full monthly salary, about 590 Cuban pesos (about $23 USD), goes to buy milk at the shopping.”

The rest of the food is paid by the mother with the money she ’resolves’, a euphemism used to describe the process of acquiring informal additions, so common in the family economy. Jobs in the state sector are not measured by the salaries they pay but by access to products or raw materials that can be ’diverted’ and sold in informal networks.

“I work in the detergent and soap industry,” she says. “I have to take risks and take out a certain amount each week to support my family because otherwise it would be impossible.” Rosario considers herself one of those “few Cubans who do not have a family abroad” who has to “fight hard for every convertible peso.” Most of these profits are spent in the network of hard currency stores, the shopping.

In the Plaza de Carlos III in Havana, the largest shopping mall in the capital, a dozen people were wating this week for the supply of chicken to arrive at the butcher shop. Most of the frozen products that are marketed in the network of state premises come from abroad.

This year, the authorities calculate that they will import food worth 1.738 billion dollars, 66 billion more than in 2017. The low productivity in agriculture and livestock on the Island require bringing in everything from beef to fruit for the hotels.

Raúl Castro’s government took measures to support production on island farms, such as leasing idle state lands to farmers, but excessive state controls, restrictions against intermediaries and the imposition of prices caps continue to hold the sector back.

At the end of 2017, the average salary reached 740 CUP per month, a little more than 29 CUC (less than 30 dollars). However, the gradual increase in the average salary has not translated into a real improvement in living conditions.

For a professional, the goods bought in the rationed market and subsidized services such as electricity, water and gas consume a third of their monthly salary. However, at the prices in the unrationed markets, the other two-thirds is just enough to purchase five pounds of pork, a bottle of oil, a bag of milk powder, two soaps, a can of tomato sauce and a packet of flour — a month.

The general secretary of the only union allowed, the official Workers’ Confederation of Cuba (CTC), Ulises Guilarte de Nacimiento, had to acknowledge recently that wages on the island are “insufficient” to cover the needs of the worker, which causes “apathy,” “disinterest” and an a “significant migration of labor.”

Rosario, the illegal seller of soap and detergent, caters to several clients whose salaries are not enough to buy the product at the shopping and so they turn to the black market.

Among them is Pedro Luis, who was a promising editor at the Cuban Book Institute in the 80s. Back then, when his recommendations influenced the publication of stories and novels, his salary of 350 CUP allowed him to eat with variety, dress elegantly and decorate the house that he had inherited from his grandparents in good taste. They were the so-called “golden years” of the Revolution, in which the gigantic subsidies of the Soviet Union (some 5 billion dollars a year) artificially propped up the Cuban economy.

“We lived in an unreal world and with the fall of the Berlin Wall we had to come down to the true situation of the country,” says the pensioner. “Most of my friends who were living quite well back then are now selling newspapers so they can buy food or they have gone with their children to other countries.”

Nearly 80 years old, Pedro Luis is now a retiree who tries to survive with the 200 CUP (less than $8 USD) he receives as a pension. He had to sell two-thirds of his extensive library to eat and for the past five years he has rented half of his house to a family that treats him as an intruder.

Thanks to the good relations he maintained with the Catholic Church, the retiree has managed to be accepted, during the day, in a care home under the joint custody of the clergy and the State. During the hours that he spends there, he wanders through the corridors waiting for lunch and dinner.

“On Tuesday there was only rice and a boiled egg” he laments, but his face lights up when he remembers that “sometimes they give us a couple of sausages and on the best days we get soy ’ground meat’, although the quantities are very small.”

Pedro Luis is one of those Cubans who needs the little bread that is his daily due from the rationed market because he can not aspire to something of higher quality from the unrationed market. The last days of each month he gets up at dawn to stand in line at the bodega to buy the groceries in the ration book, a line he shares with those most dependent on that small basic market basket.

For years he has forgotten the taste of real beef or fish, products that are well above his financial means. A friend more solvent, with two emigrated children, invited him recently to eat shrimp and he was licking his lips for several hours.

Now the former editor plans to sell the last books he has left, just the most appreciated, then he will put a price on a pair of shirts and his last coat and will also offer some shoes. “With the money I make, I’ll be able to continue for a few months but after that I do not know what’s going to happen.”

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The alliance of Venecuba with 14ymedio and the Venezuelan newspaper Tal Cual has supported this reporting.

Iraida Malberti, Director of Children’s Programs Dies at 82

Iraida Malberti with her son Juan Carlos Cremata, a film and theater director. (Courtesy)

14ymedio, Havana, 17 June 2018 — The outstanding artist Iraida Malberti Cabrera, born in 1936, died in the early hours of Saturday morning, 17 June, according to the Buenos Días program on Cuban Television.

During her long career she worked in many children’s projects and especially in La Colmenita (The Little Beehive), which her son, Carlos Alberto Cremata, directed. With the help of Juan Carlos Cremata, another of her sons, she co-directed the movie Viva Cuba in 2015. She was also director of the Cuban Television Children’s Ballet, and a screenwriter and director for radio, film and television. continue reading

Among the television series she has directed, among the memorable are Aunt Tata Tells Short Stories, And a Butterfly Says… and When I Grow Up. She began working in television in 1960 as choreographer for the program The World of Children, together with Carmen Solar and Edwin Fernández. She earned a doctorate in Pedagogy in 1962.

She was widowed by the explosion in mid-flight of a Cubana de Aviación flight in Barbados, on which her husband Carlos Cremata Trujillo, who worked for the state airline, was traveling.

Malberti was a discreet figure who avoided talking about her work, but in a recent interview she said that she hopes that the projects she participated would be “fun and educational” for the children, especially those who wanted to develop an artistic career. This “is a very attractive job, so dangerously attractive that children find it difficult to start and not continue,” she said.

Her remains will be cremated after a wake at the Calzada and K Street Funeral Home.

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Cuba Will Limit Sugar Exports to Maintain Domestic Supply

Cuban cane workers looking at the deteriorated equipment used in a sugar cane field. (EFE/File)

14ymedio, Miami, 15 June 2018 — The Cuban government has decided to cut sugar exports in the face of this year’s poor harvest, sources at the state conglomerate Azcuba told Reuters.

“The next harvest will be advanced as much as possible to satisfy local consumption,” said Lourdes María Castellanos, director of international relations at Azcuba, who also indicated that state reserves will be used, along with a “small cut in exports,” to maintain supplies.

Cuba consumes between 600,000 and 700,000 tons of sugar per year, a good part of which is distributed at very low cost to the consumer through the ration book at a rate of 4 pounds per person per month. The distribution of sugar, however, has been affected because the industry has not been able to fulfill its contracts abroad. continue reading

Along with the quota received from the rationed market, for years Cubans have been able to easily buy sugar in the non-rationed markets and also in informal trade networks.

In recent weeks, however, it has become a headache trying to find sugar in the face of fears of an impending shortage in the wake of this year’s bad harvest. Those most affected by the shortages are the private sellers of sweets and candies, as well as the cafes that offer milkshakes or sugary juices.

Knowledgeable sources in the sector estimate this year’s harvest as only 1.1 million tons, a figure not seen in Cuba for a century.

Production of Sugar Cane in Cuba in Million Metric Tons. Sources: National Office of Statistics and Information and Granma newspaper.

The spokesman for Azcuba, Liobel Pérez, did not deny or confirm the estimate. Cuba does not provide figures on its industrial production in real time. Researchers are referred to the National Office of Statistics and Information, which generally publishes the data one year late.

For decades, sugar production was the driving force of the national economy, rising to more than 8 million tons of sugar by the end of the 1980s. However, the end of the Soviet subsidies, the lack of investments and bad management by the State sank the industry.

The government attributes this terrible harvest to Hurricane Irma, the heavy rains and the US embargo. In 2017, the country produced 1.8 million tons of sugar, of which 1.1 million were exported, according to the International Sugar Organization.

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Independent Journalist Osmel Ramirez Arrested in Holguin

Independent journalist Osmel Ramírez Álvarez. (HavanaTimes)

14ymedio, Havana, 20 June 2018 — Reporter Osmel Ramírez Álvarez, a resident of Mayarí, Holguín, was arrested Tuesday at his home by police and State Security forces, his wife Idalia Torres reported to 14ymedio.

“The officers came at two o’clock in the afternoon. It was raining hard and thundering, when my husband opened the door it was the State Security agent assigned to him,” Torres said.

According to the wife, the officers explained that her husband would be detained for 72 hours for each article he publishes in the independent press from now on. continue reading

Torres condemns the fact that the reporter is “incommunicado” in the Mayarí police station. “They only allowed us to take some personal hygiene items they haven’t let family members anywhere near the station,” she adds.

The State Security official told the family that Ramírez Álvarez will be transferred tomorrow to the Penal Instruction Center of Pedernales, in the city of Holguín, known as “everyone sings.”

Last November Ramírez was arrested and during a search of his home, much of his office equipment and supplies were confiscated. At that time he was held incommunicado for three days.

Ramírez, in addition to his work as a reporter, is a tobacco grower and member of a Credit and Services Cooperative. Since the beginning of the year he has denounced the “threats” of State Security against him and his family and the “defamatory campaign” by some Mayarí officials who have accused him of promoting the complaints and demands of the farmers in that area.

Last March, immigration officials informed him that he was “regulated” and could not leave the country.

Osmel Ramírez is a contributor to Diario de Cuba, The Havana Times digital site and the Boletín SPD, of the Participatory and Democratic Socialism group.

Last April the organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) placed Cuba 172nd out of 180 nations in terms of press freedom. The country was the rated the worst on the continent.

The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) also denounced, in its most recent report, presented in Colombia last April, that the Cuban government seeks to have “a mute, deaf, and blind country” in terms of communication, journalism, and the Internet.

It is “an increasingly difficult goal,” the IAPA said, for “journalists and independent media to perservere and not stop their work in the face of the restrictions.”

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State Security Cites Inalkis Rodriguez for "Damage to Public Property"

Inalkis Rodríguez, environmental activist and contributor to ‘La Hora de Cuba’. (CC)

14ymedio, Havana, 21 June 2018 — Inalkis Rodriguez, member of the independent magazine Cuba’s Hour, was summoned Thursday by State Security in Camaguey to inform her that she has been accused by the Office of the Historian for, supposedly, having painted “posters on the facade” of the house of Iris Marino, as reported by the publication’s editor, Henry Constantin, to 14ymedio.

In the interrogation, almost an hour in length, they prohibited Rodriguez from leaving the province or country without prior authorization. “She must present herself next Tuesday to the same police unit,” complains the independent journalist.

Iris Marino, actress and team member for Cuba’s Hour, decided at the end of May with her husband and well-known theater actor, Mario Junquera, to convert the facade of their home into a public platform for graphic expression. continue reading

The front of Iris Mariño’s house has been painted with all kinds of offensive phrases, slogans and quotes.

“Some posters degrading my husband and my family showed up on the facade of the house. The expressions mocked his politics, so he decided to denounce the fact to the prosecutor and the police,” says Marino.

After inaction by the justice agencies, the actress and her husband called for “everyone” who might want to leave a thought on the facade to do it.

“They can come to this space of freedom here at 77 Padre Valencia and leave opinions in favor or against,” explained Marino to this daily. So far there is graffiti that recalls expressions by Jose Marti and others that support or criticize the government. The couple’s home is just across from Camaguey’s principal theatre, in an area that is managed by the city’s Office of the Historian because that site was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2008.

A quote from José Martí written on the wall is the reason why Inalkis Rodríguez was cited by the authorities. The quote says: “A man who does not dare to say what he thinks is not an HONORABLE man.” (CC)

The journalists of Cuba’s Hour have been frequently accosted by police authorities who impede their work. Henry Constantin, Iris Marino Garcia and Sol Garcia Basulto were threatened with being charged with the crime of “usurpation of legal capacity” — i.e. working in a profession without a legal license to do so — for their journalistic work, which could result in them spending a year in jail.

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

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Haydee Milanes Dedicated ‘A Night of Boleros’ to the City of Havana on the Verge of its 500th Birthday

Haydée Milanés dedicated her two concerts to the city of Havana last Wednesday.

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, La Habana | Junio 22, 2018 — The singer Haydée Milanés shone on Wednesday night in one of the first days of the 30th edition of the Boleros de Oro International Festival, in which she paid homage to great composers of this genre.

The National Museum of Fine Arts of Cuba was the scene of two concerts by the artist, one at seven in the evening and another at nine.

The singer performed with great skill classic songs from Cuba and Mexico that challenge the oblivion in which the bolero has fallen in spite of its numerous interpreters in Cuban music. Haydée Milanés does not stand on a pedestal to interpret these beautiful songs, she does it from the simplicity of her scenic projection and her excellent fluency in a genre she has cultivated intensely throughout her career. continue reading

La gloria eres tú by the Cuban composer José Antonio Méndez, and Contigo en la distancia by César Portillo de la Luz were some of the songs performed. The singer also did justice to some Mexican boleros including Se te olvida by Álvaro Carrillo or Esta tarde vi llover from Armando Manzanero.

Special tribute was offered to Marta Valdés, a woman whom she already considers of her family and who “life and the universe” put in her way to change her destiny. “I will not say anything about her songs because they speak for themselves,” said Milanés, who asked for applause that the audience offered with gusto and intensity.

From her father, Pablo Milanés, she played two compositions that were not widely disseminated in the media, Todos los ojos te miran and Requiem por un amor, with the piano accompaniement of Cucurucho Valdés, a friend from her time as a student at the conservatory.

Milanés is usually accompanied by three musicians in her concerts, but that night the orchestra grew as some of the best musicians of the national scene paraded on stage. Enrique Plá on the drums, Raúl Verdecia and Dayron Ortiz on the guitars, Roberto García on the trumpet and Edgar Martínez on the percussion, while the young Samuel Burgos alternated on the bass with the renowned Fabián García Caturla.

The artist dedicated the concert to La Habana, “a woman I love with all the strength of my soul, a very special woman who will be celebrating 500 years next year.” At the beginning of the concert, the public received a postcard with an ecological message on the back: “I invite you to take care of your Havana.”

The vocalist, invited to the event by maestro Guido López Gavilán, said she felt honored and confessed that for her it was always an dream to participate.

Before she closed, she performed a song by Cuban singer-songwriter Frank Domínguez, Tú me acostumbraste, and after a long ovation she closed with Palabras, by Marta Valdés.

The Boleros de Oro International Festival began with a concert by Beatriz Márquez accompanied by Alejandro Falcón and his Grupo Cubadentro, among other guests, and ends on June 24.

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Ariel Ruiz Urquiola Marks Six Days on a Hunger and Thirst Strike

The scientist Ariel Ruiz Urquiola, on his farm in Viñales. (Martinoticias)

14ymedio, Havana, 22 June 2018 – Cuban scientist and doctor of science Ariel Ruiz Urquiola, considered a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, is on the sixth day of a hunger and thirst strike to demand his freedom.

At first Ruiz Urquiola demanded his right to work in prison but now “it is for his release,” his sister Omara Ruiz Urquiola told the program ‘Cuba Today’ on Radio Martí Day.

Ariel Ruiz Urquiola was sentenced last month to one year in jail for “contempt” in the Municipal Court of Viñales (Pinar del Río) after a trial that the family considered manipulated by State Security. Urquiola was arrested on the farm he leases in usufruct from the government in that locality after calling officials of the area the “rural guard,” a term that earned him an arrest and accusation of expressing contempt. continue reading

Ruiz Urquiola started the strike at the Cayo Largo work camp in Consolación del Sur, and was transferred earlier this week to the jail located at Km 5 and 1/2 of Luis Lazo, in Pinar de Río.

“My mother went to see him in prison, he is greatly weakened, and my brother said that he will not abandon the hunger and thirst strike” until his freedom is achieved, said Omara Ruiz.

Sources close to the family told this newspaper that the prison doctor “wants to give him an IV” but Ruiz Urquiola refuses. The scientist has been transferred from the jail to a health center inside the prison itself.

Letter sent by the family of Ruiz Urquiola to the authorities. (CC)

His sister and a group of friends delivered a letter last Tuesday to the Attorney General’s Office in which they express their “disagreement” with “the denial of the right to work” and appeal to that institution to “investigate and reverse” the current situation of the biologist.

Ruiz Urquiola has participated in several research projects on Cuban biodiversity. He also directed international research conducted between the University of Havana, the Natural History Museum of Berlin and the Humboldt University on the origin and settlement of the Sierra de los Órganos, in Pinar del Río.

In 2016, the scientist was expelled from the University of Havana Marine Research Center under the official argument of unjustified absences, but, in his opinion, it was a plot against him because he is no longer considered “reliable” by the authorities, because of his political opinions.

At the end of that same year, the biologist was arrested three times, for demanding the medicines his seriously ill sister needed. After a hunger strike and a vigil outside the Hospital Oncológico de La Habana, Ruiz Urquiola managed to obtain the drug for his sister.

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The Iconography of ‘Che’ Guevara Continues to Arouse Passions

Spenser Rapone at his graduation in 2017. (@punkproletarian)

14ymedio, Havana, 22 June 2018 — Ninety years after his birth, Ernesto Che Guevara remains one of the most controversial historical figures. This week, a few days after the celebration of the anniversary of his birth, his image has once again aroused anger among his biggest detractors.

This Thursday night, a bust of Guevara was destroyed by a strong explosion in Caracas. The sculpture, located on Avenida Bolívar next to the Nuevo Circo passenger terminal, was completely destroyed, presumably because of an improvised explosive device.

The local press has published images that show the empty space previously occupied by the sculpture, which served as a meeting place for pro-government rallies and tributes to the memory of the heroes of the revolution and communism. continue reading

The agents of the intelligence service, Sebin, and the Corps of Scientific, Penal and Criminal Investigations (Cicpc) are investigating what happened.

The bust of Guevara in Caracas appeared last night in a thousand pieces. (@DanielBlancoPz)

The event coincides with the expulsion of a cadet from the US Army after he displayed a communist symbol on his Twitter account.

Spenser Rapone published on social networks photographs of his graduation in West Point where he is wearing a red T-shirt with the face of Guevara, and another in which he raised his fist and rotated his hat, adding: “Communism will win.”

The events occurred last year, but it is now that he has been expelled.

Rapone resigned on Monday after receiving a previous reprimand for “improper conduct of an officer.” The Army carried out an investigation in which allegedly, the cadet said, it was discovered that he had posted online to defend a socialist revolution and belittle high ranking officers.

The young man said goodbye with the tweet of an image in which he said goodbye offensively, raising his middle finger, at the entrance of Fort Drum, with the text: “One last greeting.”

Rapone, 26, who claims to have embraced communism in Afghanistan, has encouraged soldiers to lay down their arms if they “are willing to stop serving the agents of imperialism in a revolutionary movement.”

West Point said, through a statement, that the actions of the former officer “in no way reflect the values of the United States Military Academy or the United States Army.” Marco Rubio personally called the secretary of the Army to eliminate Rapone from the officer ranks.

Greg Rinckey, a lawyer specializing in military law, told the Associated Press that the military academy may request reimbursement of Rapone’s education cost because he failed to meet the five-year total service obligation required upon graduation.

Rapone, who plans to speak at a conference on socialism in Chicago next month, has said he is aware of the consequences of his actions. “Of course my military career is dead, on the other hand, many people came and showed their support.”

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"Here, The Same People Put The Squeeze on You, and Back Off"

The absence of a wholesale market for the self-employed, as well as high prices and shortages, have encouraged the importation of household appliances and raw materials. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez, Havana, 15 June 2018 — “You have to be calm until the wave passes,” says Rubén, 28, an informal vendor of vitamins and ointments from Miami. “Right now there are fewer products coming into the country and it is better not to risk it because in the airports they are more strict.”

Last week the General Customs of the Republic (AGR) threatened to confiscate packages sent from the United States through people who travel specifically to the island to bring goods and who are hired by shipping agencies based in the US.

To all his customers interested in products such as Omega 3, creams to relieve back pain or popular nutritional supplements, the merchant promises that he will have supplies “in two weeks.” And he says, “Here, the same people put the squeeze on you, and back off.” continue reading

After the declarations from Customs “we must take extreme precautions and avoid bringing a lot of the same product,” explains Rubén. “The ‘mulas’ (mules) are warned that they should not transport sealed packages, because that sets off the alarms that these are things are going to be delivered to different customers,” he says.

Parcel shipments through southern Florida agencies that the Island’s Government considers illegal have skyrocketed in recent years. The recipients on the Island are the relatives of Cubans who have emigrated, and also small businesses that have been opened due to the economic flexibilizations pushed by Raul Castro.

The economist Emilio Morales, director of the Miami-based consulting firm The Havana Consulting Group, estimates that 90% of shipments arriving in the country come from the United States. The value of the goods that were sent last year amounted to 3 billion dollars, Morales told 14ymedio.

The practice of carrying the packages has grown among some emigrants who see working as mule a chance to visit their relatives on the Island with the costs of the plane ticket covered. After the diplomatic thaw between Washington and Havana, direct commercial flights were restored, one of the things that triggered these shipments.

The most common products sent through the mules are medicines, appliances, clothes, footwear and also dehydrated or canned foods. “A good part of the country ends up with something from these shipments because those who don’t get a package directly end up benefiting from the contents of packages received by others,” says Raima Gutiérrez, a hairdresser in a private business.

“Here the products we use, such as dyes and peroxide, come in with the mules because in the national stores they are very expensive, of poor quality and often are not the most wanted colors,” Gutiérrez says. “In this last week we’ve had to tell several clients that they’ll have to wait for the packages to arrive because they are paralyzed on the other side”.

Raima’s mother is anxiously awaiting a blood pressure monitor that a niece sent her from West Palm Beach. A neighbor of the family says that her “package” is stranded in Miami without daring to send it, while one of the hairdresser’s customer tells the story of his brother who had a dozen suitcase locks he brought from Madrid in his luggage confiscated.

The mules have reason to worry because the director of Technical Customs himself, José Luis Muñoz Toca, said in a press conference that more than three tons of products people tried to bring into the country through the shipping networks were confiscated. So far in 2018 the authorities have detected 113 cases of trafficking in merchandise.

In the eyes of the authorities, there are 29 agencies based in the United States operating in an unauthorized manner to send goods to the island “through travelers who bring them in exchange for payment or compensation.” In South Florida, companies like XAEL Habana, Va Cuba, Cubamax Travel, Viajes Coppelia, Habana Air, Blue Cuba Travels and Central America Cargo have been banned.

The authorities blame the intensification of the controls on the fact that these agencies “do not have official contracts with Cuban companies authorized to carry out these operations,” while promoting the use of the officially approved companies to send parcels to the Island.

The importing of these goods is “a commercial transaction,” the authorities complain, and the contents of personal baggage, when it is used to transport commercial packages, are “subject to the administrative sanction of confiscation, if there is no more serious crime.”

“If they would let us bring in merchandise to maintain these businesses, in a legal and transparent manner, we would not have to engage in all these illegalities,” says Hilario, 47, an interior designer. This has been one of the great demands of the self-employed sector that aspires to obtain the right to import and export freely, along with the possibility of having a wholesale market.

“All the stores are state-owned and staples are very expensive,” the man says. “Without the monthly package, with toothpaste, soap and bouillon cubes that my sister sends me, everything would be more difficult.” The designer also receives materials that he needs for his work. “I was expecting good caladors and a laser to measure rooms, but now everything is stopped,” says Hilario.

The sharing of a video filmed at the José Martí International Airport in Havana, in which two Venezuelan women are seen being beaten and arrested for allegedly transporting merchandise to the island, has added fuel to the fire of fears.

The images have circulated widely via wifi or Bluetooth on mobile phones. “If this is what happens to foreigners what is in store for Cubans,” says Hilario.

Venezuelan journalist Elyangelica González recorded the images of the arrest of Yussely and Amanda López, who say they were beaten by immigration personnel after they were not admitted after an attempt to confiscate their luggage.

The Venezuelans claimed the contents of their luggage were gifts for the doctors who operated on their father and other friends on the island. Both deny that the products were going to be marketed.

Cuban Customs has also intensified in recent months the controls against the so-called Venezuelan “bachaqueros” (black-marketeers), who use the island to sell some products and buy food and dollars to take back to their country.

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Rafael Alcides: The Great Poet Of The Cuban ‘Insilio’

The ashes of Alcides will be scattered in the river of his native Barrancas, in Bayamo, where everything started. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Ernesto Santana, Havana, 21 June 2018 — His voice amazed me the first time I heard it, when he had just turned 80. A voice grave and smooth at the same time, a voice I no longer remembered from his years on the radio. A mariner’s voice perhaps, someone who has traveled other worlds and has a lot to tell, but does not want to amaze anyone, much less overwhelm them with his stories. A voice from someone much younger and, at the same time, an old voice, coming from a mythical and remote era of certainties.

Although I had read his poetry and shared it with several friends, I never spoke with him. I admired him from afar and knew him to be a good man, what is called a man of integrity. What’s more, we lived relatively close for many decades. But it never happened, although I always had the vague certainty that one day I would meet him. That’s why, when I read the fatal words of the news, I could not help but feel that with his death, in some way, I had lost a friend. continue reading

I suppose that it is easy for those who have read him to feel that they have talked with him. Not because of his “colloquial” poetry, but because ultimately all poetry is conversation, although almost always with oneself or with the intimate demon. In Alcides’ poems one feels, in reality, a colloquium with the reader, as if each verse were written to be replicated in a long exchange of intuitions, fears and memories.

For nothing is further from him than the pose of an old teacher who knows some clues, who has learned to deal with short life and endless art. “Life has taught me that suddenly the wave of the days changes your program,” he said ten years ago in an interview for Consenso magazine. “I limit myself to being ready for what may come,” he said, demonstrating that, in spite of himself, he was that: an old teacher who could give us, more than a poetic art, an art of living.

An art of living as poetry. The voice of his poems flows directly from the common man who hurts and dreams, from the untamed citizen who does not use words as a spell or as a subjective construction, but as a lever to move a truth, as a magnetic guide, as a bridge to reach what is farthest from here and now. And all with a breath more transparent than the air of his native Barrancas or a quiet Havana morning.

“From good seeds he made bad harvests, in the name of freedom he surrounded us with wire, and he added guards and bloodhounds. In everything, he was the same. With real words he composed a great lie,” Alcides tells us, alarmed by Fidel Castro’s support for the Soviet tanks in Prague, and who suffered – without being indirectly implicated – the effects of the Padilla case and could not publish anything between 1967 and 1984.

Finally, regardless of whether the commissars wanted to publish him or not, he decided to step away from the literary world, specifying that he would only be published in Cuba when his books could appear before the public along with the authors that the Castro regime has banned for more than half a century. But he kept writing, as if nothing was happening.

In 2013, at Estado de Sats, when he had just turned 80, I heard him read. Alcides had not offered a solo poetry recital for 20 years: “All of us here are exiled, all of us, those who left and those who stayed, and there are no words in the language or movies in the world, to make the accusation: millions of mutilated beings exchanging kisses, memories and sighs over the sea.”

“The future in Cuba is already passed. It is sad, a country where the future has already passed, the future of this Government, which we live under now, because life is now,” he said. But he was not pessimistic or cynical, because he saw that everything, before being real, has been a dream, because always “we let a dream fly and we chase it, that’s why we have to dream and then the realization of the dream comes,” but we can not lose the opportunity, because “there are trains that, if they go by, they are gone.”

Alcides did not have a mysterious creed. For him, the poet’s mission was obvious: “witness today and announce tomorrow.” So he did, assuming insilio* not as a title of nobility, but as a humble daily task, as his own choice and simple destination, but accompanied and loved by those who cared for him, and respected and admired even by those who did not know him.

It is better that the official press did not mention his death. That grave and slow voice did not cry out in the desert: “Where are we, Lord. Where in the world have we lost ourselves? Where do these boiling waters come from? What was made of that pair of incurable children who believed in the prophecies, who still believe, and who went out very proudly on the morning of their day to found the whitest city without knowing that they founded a prison?”

His ashes will be scattered in the river of his native Barrancas, there in Bayamo, where everything started. His voice will continue to sound, smooth and firm, long after the end of the long and dark chapter that tried to silence him, of this seemingly endless exile for all those from over there and those from over here. The empty and turbulent voices of today will be silent one day and we will continue to hear the fluvial and austere voice of Rafael Alcides, like an old sailor who does not want to overwhelm us with his certainties.

*Translator’s note: From ‘exilio’ (exile), Alcides chose to call himself an ‘insilio’, (‘insile’) – exiled from his country without having left it.

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‘The Mechanism’: A Series That Will Not Be Seen On Cuban State Television

The fictional series, based on real events, revolves around the investigation that uncovered the fraudulent network woven around the semi-state oil company Petrobras in Brazil. (The Mechanism)

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 20 June 2018 — When people talk about Brazilian TV shows, some think of the dramatic soap operas that Cuban media broadcasts every year. Those soap operas, full of intrigues, loves and hatreds, have been part of the island’s television network for decades, but The Mechanism, a production that addresses the corruption revealed by Operation Car Wash, will not suffer the same fate.

For a couple of weeks now, the series, directed by the filmmaker José Padilha and produced by Netflix, has landed in Cuba through the informal content distribution networks such as the weekly packet. With a dynamic plot and excellent performances, The Mechanism premiered on Netflix last March and since then has not stopped stirring passions. continue reading

The fictional series, based on real events, revolves around the investigation that uncovered the fraudulent network woven around the semi-state oil company Petrobras in Brazil. These investigations led to the discovery of the tentacles of bribes, money laundering and payments to politicians extended by the construction company Odebrecht for decades throughout the region.

Padilha, who had already made a name for himself with Narcos, structured his series based on a book by journalist Vladimir Netto and managed to build a gradual sense of disgust in his audience. The repulsion grows as the names of those involved appear, and the bribery strategies and the depth of these practices in the political and economic life of Brazil come to light.

Due to the little that has been reported in the national media, Cuban viewers are probably tempted to read the story as a documentary, although it is essential to take into account the warning message that appears at the beginning of each episode: “This program is a work of fiction freely inspired by real events, characters, situations and other elements, adapted for dramatic effect.”

However, along with the creative freedom that has led Padilha to change or recreate real events, The Mechanism maintains the authentic edges of Operation Car Wash, which have not been reported in Cuba, hence its dual character as entertainment and revelation. Unlike other countries where the scandal filled extensive headlines, on the island this will be the first details many people see about the many dimensions of that rot.

The case, which shook the whole continent and reached as far as Angola and Mozambique, is of particular interest in Cuba, where Fidel and Raúl Castro maintained close relations with two of the characters in this truculent story: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, who appear in the series with changed names but easily identifiable.

In the same years that Odebrecht bought contracts, supported election campaigns in Latin America and distributed millions to fend off any investigation against it, the Cuban authorities embraced, smiling and complicit, the two politicians who were up to their eyeballs in such corruption.

No wonder, the construction company Odebrecht was hand-picked for the modernization of Cuba’s Port of Mariel. The megaproject, a kind of white elephant Raul Castro’s regime used to try to attract investors, was inaugurated in January 2014 by Dilma Rousseff and the Cuban president. They posed smiling in front of the cameras of the foreign press just a a few weeks before the scandal would shake the Brazilian president.

Since then, Cuba’s official press has mostly reported the upheavals caused by the revelations of Operation Car Wash to the region’s centrist and rightist governments. That information strategy prioritized the details of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski’s resignation as president of Peru, and the international arrest order against former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo, also accused of receiving bribes from Odebrecht.

In contrast, Cuba’s national media hardly mentions the sentencing of Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas to six years in prison for the same reasons, and has totally ignored all the evidence that points to Nicolás Maduro as part of the machinations of that powerful construction company. The links to current Brazilian president Michel Temer, who assumed office after Rousseff’s impeachment, were reported in the pages of Granma, like those of Lula and Rousseff, except that in the case of these last two, it was reported as a “conspiracy of the right.”

As expected, both Brazilian former presidents are among the staunchest critics of the series since it was launched on Netflix. Lula has insisted that the “piece is one more lie” and Rousseff accused it of “distorting reality” and spreading all kinds of lies.

Beyond the welts that it raises, the arrival in Cuba of The Mechanism helps to break the mantle of silence that the Plaza of the Revolution has thrown over parts of this history, and it will set people talking about the subject and raise desires for a greater investigation of the true details.

The series is also a great opportunity to enjoy solid performances, such as those of Selton Melo who plays investigator Marco Ruffo, a researcher obsessed with the case and whose childhood friend, called Roberto Ibrahim in the series but taken from the real life Alberto Youseff, is one of the money launderers whose arrest uncovers the scandal.

The manager of the construction company, Marcelo Odebrecht (in the series presented as Ricardo Brecht), manages to transmit that calculated coldness of someone who knows that he has presidents and senators from all over the continent in his pocket, while the character of Verena Cardoni, played by Caroline Abras, stands apart from the female stereotypes that abound in Brazilian soap operas.

This, unlike those soap operas of unrequited love and exalted hatred, is not a production to get you to mourn for a couple separated in the past or for an unrecognized son, but for the rottenness of a country. What happens on the screen is not history, but absolute fiction, but one based on the uncovering of a crooked network of corruption that extends its threads to this Island.

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Writer Rafael Alcides Dies in Havana at the Age of 85

Rafael Alcides was born in Barrancas on June 9, 1933 (La mala letra)

14ymedio, Havana, 20 June 2018 — Ten days after his 85th birthday and after a long battle with cancer, the poet Rafael Alcides died at his home in Nuevo Vedado on Tuesday afternoon, his son Rafael confirmed to 14ymedio. Sources close to the family explained that there will be no funeral and that his ashes will be scattered in Barrancas, in the east of the island, where he was born on 9 June 1933.

“He did not like tributes,” says filmmaker Miguel Coyula and author of the documentary Nadie, based on an interview with Alcides that lasted more than two hours. With this work, presented in the independent gallery El Círculo in Havana, Coyula addressed the biography of the poet and novelist, especially his long years as a censored writer. continue reading

Rafael Alcides began his literary career with the magazine Ciclón (Cyclone) and successfully published some 60 books, including Himnos de montaña (Mountain Hymns) (1961) and La pata de palo (The Wooden Leg) (1967).

He began his fall from grace with the regime when, in the 80s, the poet set aside ideology and expanded to less political issues, publishing Agradecido como un perro (Grateful as a Dog) (1983), Y se mueren y vuelven y se mueren (They Die and Come Back and Die Again ) (1988), Noche en el recuerdo (A Night to Remember) (1989), Nadie (Nobody) (1993).

By 1983, when his poetry collection Agradecido como un perro appeared, the author had already suffered, for decades, the institutional silence that greeted his work, because of his openly critical positions on the Cuban Government.

From 1993 on, he abandoned all publishing collaborations on the Island and in 2011 he won the Breton Café & Bodegas Olarra de Prosa Española Award.

In 2014 his books published in Spain were seized from his wife, the blogger Regina Coyula, every time she tried to bring them into Cuba. For this reason he submitted his resignation from the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), which he had been a member of for years, saying that banning from the island his books published abroad was the same thing as banning him as author.

The poet published a letter, which he addressed to Miguel Barnet (president of UNEAC), in which he explained his reasons and returned the Commemorative Medal of the 50th anniversary of the UNEAC, which he had been granted as a founder of that government institution.

The letter to Barnet makes clear the ideological disenchantment of one of the most important poets of the 50s Generation: “Among these memories are those of the good friends I made among the members of the Association back then, treasures of my youth that are all that remain of that great, failed dream, people I love though they do not think the way I do, and who love me also, even if they dare not visit me.”

In speaking of the writer and poet, Cuban writer Virgilio López Lemus says that when Alcides published Agradecido como un perro he became a reference poet for the generations born between 1946 and 1970. López Lemus describes this work as a “long and intense poem in which the lyrical subject appears in a confessional attitude and at the same time as a witness, where he includes social life, family life, love and friendship (or is it one of the two?), and above all the warmth of a man who expresses himself with his skin open to the world, whether he receives wounds or caresses.”

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Here Come The Limes, There Goes The Soap

The price of limes has dropped from two Cuban pesos for one fruit, to five pesos a pound. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Marcelo Hernández, Havana | June 18, 2018 — Finally, the limes have arrived. They returned after an inexplicable absence, the result of a month’s long shortage during which they became coveted items in kitchens and bars. In the terminology of rationing, it is said that the precious citrus fruits “came to” or are now “leaving” the market stalls.

With an abundance that cannot be exaggerated, these days limes can be found on most produce market shelves, all green and glistening. From a high of two pesos for one lime, the cost has been reduced to five pesos for an entire pound. As a result, customers are taking advantage of the low prices by stocking up in anticipation of hard times ahead. continue reading

An essential ingredient in lime-based drinks, mojo criollo marinades and avocado salads is once again available.

There is a catch, however. Just as limes were making a triumphal comeback, soap began disappearing. There is no discernible cause-and-effect relationship between the recovery of the citrus harvest and the disappearance of this essential element of personal hygiene, which cannot be found even in the most expensive shopping malls.

Sometimes it is dry wine and beer, toilet paper or cassavas, matches or dishwashing detergent. It is as though it were all scientific planned. It’s like that old joke about the socialist hell: the sinners cannot be punished because some key component of torture, such as oil for the pot or wood for the fire, is always in short supply.

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