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Marco Aurelio, one of those testifying in the case, told the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo, referring to the Cubans, that the lack of doctors in Brazil can not serve as a justification to avoid the commitment “to the fundamental rights of the human being.”

Some 200 professionals from Cuba are involved in lawsuits to be allowed to escape from the control of the Pan American Health Organization and to stop the Cuban government frm keeping two-thirds of their salaries. More than 2,000 doctors from the island have emigrated to the United States from Brazil and several hundred more have married Brazilian citizens since the program began in 2013.

Among Cuban doctors who await a favorable decision on their judicial processes to participate in the Mais Médicos program, the ruling has been seen as a defeat.

“Behind all efforts to prevent the Mais Médicos program from disappearing, we must always look to the Cuban Government. They will do everything possible to maintain that source of hard currency and deter doctors from escaping from the program,” says Ernesto, a clinician on the island who left the medical mission last year.

The export of medical services is Cuba’s main source of hard currency. According to official figures, the country receives between eight and ten billion dollars from this source. After Venezuela, Brazil has the second highest number of “Cuban health workers.”

The legal coordinator of the Federal Council of Medicine of Brazil, José Alejandro Bullón, told Folha de Sao Paulo that the hiring of foreign doctors without the proper revalidation of their diplomas violates national rules.

“We are creating two types of medicine: one for those who can pay for a doctor with a revalidated diploma and one for those who can not,” he said.

The Mais Médicos program allows doctors to work in the country for only three years. If the contract is extended for another three years, the doctor must revalidate his or her title.

The magistrates emphasized that some municipalities that did not have doctors managed to ensure minimum health care and, in the case of Cuban doctors, said that those who signed up for the program knew the conditions imposed by Cuba.

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Later he would settle in Havana and become a student of Marxism. His closest friends considered him more “Marxologist than Marxist” and he made a great contribution to the study of that ideology in Cuba by translating from Russian important theorists of Soviet Perestroika.

The researcher led a bitter controversy against the essayist and poet Guillermo Rodríguez Rivera, whom he accused of committing plagiarism, while the latter ended up denouncing him before the courts for the alleged crime of defamation. That confrontation is considered one of the most talked about disputes between Cuban intellectuals of the last decades.

Navarro founded and directed for 45 years the Criterios magazine and the eponymous theoretical-cultural center, which disseminated among the readers of the Island numerous theoretical texts, especially from Eastern Europe, due to his extensive knowledge of the languages ​​of that region.

The intellectual is also recognized for his meticulous analysis of the poetry of José Martí, Nicolás Guillén and Luis Rogelio Nogueras. Professor and critic Margarita Mateo says that he approached each analysis with “the rigor, dedication, intellectual honesty and ethical values” demanded by a researcher.

In 1986, he published an article in the Casa de las Américas journal that summarized a part of his semiotic work: “What I have written sometimes has the worn look of something already written by others, but also, much of what others have written bears my signature.”

At the beginning of 2007, the well-known Intellectual Debate or Little Email War broke out as a result of the appearance in the official media of several censors from the ‘Five Grey Years’. Navarro actively participated in the organization of the discussion sessions that followed the email exchanges and prepared one of the most complete compilations of those texts.

Prominent among his books of essays are Culture And Marxism: Problems And Controversies, Exercises Of Opinion, The Causes Of Things and Thinking About Everything: To Read In Context, as well as several theoretical and literary anthologies.

He won the Literary Criticism Award several times and the Ministry of Culture, along with the Cuban Book Institute recognized him with the National Editing Prize. At his death he was part of the National Council of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba and recently the University of the Arts awarded him the title of Doctor Honoris Causa.

His wake will be held this Friday, between 10:00 am and 3:00 pm at the Funeral Home of Calzada and K, in El Vedado.

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On this day, the Plaza of the Revolution extols the right to education and public health, while avoiding reference to the rest of the conditions that must surround human existence such as freedom of expression or conscience, the possibility of choosing a religion without restrictions, or freedom of association.

While controlling activists and opponents so that they do not demonstrate on this day, the government of Raul Castro monopolizes the headlines of the national media with orchestrated demonstrations to show a strong adherence to its policy. Thus, they hijack the date.

However, the apparent dichotomy that places citizens in the dilemma of having to renounce a good part of their individual rights to enjoy the collective ones is a result of the blackmail to which the rulers subject the ruled for the purpose of perpetuating themselves in the power.

Nothing guarantees that the human being can enjoy adequate public health services, a quality education or a satisfactory and sustainable social security, if the authorities can not be questioned about the fulfillment of their obligations, and if each individual does not have the right to protest.

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The strong smell of the chemical substance reached the Casino Campestre, about a mile from the place where the plant is located, according to witness statements collected by 14ymedio. “We began to fear that something had happened when we sensed an unpleasant and very strong smell,” says Dinora, a nurse and neighbor of the Coppelia plant.

Close to the historic center, the factory was built before 1959 and its owner located it on the outskirts of the city, but over the years the neighborhoods grew and surrounded the facility. Along one of its sides the railway line runs and the streets surrounding it are very busy.

Residents in the vicinity regret that on the day of the accident they did not evacuate the closest families, nor was there a broad dissemination of information about the incident to warn people of what had happened and avoid damaging their health.

Although firefighters and police arrived at the scene quickly, many thought it was a fire or other type of emergency inside the factory. Only when they sensed the strong smell did they realize that a chemical leak had happened.

“In high concentrations the gas irritates the throat, inflames the lungs, damages the respiratory tract and the eyes,” Dr. Alejandro Torres explained to this newspaper. “As the concentration increases, it can produce pulmonary edema.”

The doctor believes that the biggest risk in the escape of ammonia from Coppelia was to the “factory workers because they are exposed to higher concentrations of the chemical.” However, the authorities insist that the leak was insignificant and that there is no risk to the lives of the workers.

“It is not the first time that there has been an ammonia leak in the Coppelia factory,” Ivis Regueiro, a local resident told 14ymedio. “What did surprise me was the deployment of the police and firefighters, that had never happened before.”

Many families in the area have wells in the backyards of their homes, as a way to guarantee a water supply in a city that has been seriously affected by the problems created by the deteriorated hydraulic infrastructure and a long drought.

“No one has told us if we can continue taking water from our well or not,” laments a neighbor a few yards from where the leak occurred. “No one explains the harm to our health and if the spilled ammonia has contaminated the waters of the area,” she complains.”The news they have given us is that everything is controlled, but people do not believe it.”

Jesús Tejeda Jorge, production manager of the Dairy Products Company, assured the local press that the liquid ammonia used in the refrigeration process, once spilled, “instead of going to the atmosphere, is siphoned away through the drains.”

Tejeda acknowledged that the factory does not have every method of protection, despite having requested them from the Dairy Products Company. In the engine room where the ammonia leak occurred, “there is only one isothermal suit for the shift operator,” he explains.

The pipes with sewage from the factory are also joined to those that carry the sewage waters of the area and end up in the Hatibonico River, which is very polluted at present.

The environmental activist Inalkis Rodríguez has repeatedly denounced the government’s indolence in the face of the Hatibonico situation. In her Twitter account, three years ago she published an image accompanied by the following sentence: “All the rivers in the city of Camagüey are in these terrible states of contamination.” Since then the situation has worsened.

A study carried out by specialists of the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Camagüey warned of the effects that wastewater discharges, without an effective treatment, were causing in the river. The Hatibonico is severely contaminated with organic matter, nutrients and heavy metals, the researchers say.

One of the academics who carried out the study spoke with this newspaper under anonymity to report that “contamination by ammonia will have a very negative impact on the Hatibonico River, […] which already had experienced deterioration in its basin, where part of the natural life has lost the battle against industries and sewage waters.”

“The accident was foreseeable because the factory is greatly deteriorated and workers must deal with many problems every day to keep the industry producing,” the engineer adds. “It’s a miracle that this does not happen more often and in more dangerous volumes.”

The academic points out that every day thousands of pollutant residues end up in the river and that the responsible industries do not apply the waste treatment protocols called for in the reports of the University of Camagüey.

Camagüeyans not only have a polluted river converted into a narrow greywater stream for decades, but they have also had to learn to cope with frequent industrial discharges. What happened in the Coppelia factory is nothing new for them, although they see the publication by the official press of a type of incident that normally does not appear in the media as unprecedented.

The Tínima Beer Factory, on the northern beltway of the city, is a frequent scene of this type of accident. The incidence is so high that the students of the nearby Máximo Gómez Báez High School Vocational Institute of Exact Sciences have an emergency protocol that they must practice several times a year, as 14ymedio confirmed with numerous students.

In the nearby city of Nuevitas, the Ammonia Receptor Base is located, the only one of its kind in Cuba, whose frequent breaks sometimes result in gas spills. The inhabitants of the surroundings are protected only with cloths over their nose and mouth, or take refuge in the homes of relatives.

In September of this year, another ammonia spill occurred when the driver of a tank car for the Trucks Union of Cuba in Guantanamo did not correctly calculate the height when entering the warehouse of a meat company and the discharge pipe was broken when it hit a roof beam. For about 15 minutes there was a leak of ammonia in the form of gas.

In 2008, about 50 people received medical attention for respiratory and skin disorders of a mild nature, and between 4,000 and 5,000 were evacuated after a leak of ammonia in a refrigerator in the free zone of Berroa, in the outskirts of Havana.

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Along with the number of arbitrary arrests of dissidents for political reasons, the CCDHRN also verified that in November there were 7 cases of physical aggression and another 25 cases of harassment against dissenters. “Actions carried out, in all cases, by the secret political police,” said the note.

In its report, the Commission pays special attention to the case of Daniel Llorente Miranda, the man who, during the last May Day parade, raised the American flag in the Plaza of the Revolution and who, after being detained by State Security, was interned in Havana’s Mazorra psychiatric hospital where he has apparently been the object of “psychiatric abuses.”

“Some detained opponents are sentenced to maximum security prison on charges that seek to cover up the obvious political motivations,” the report also warns.

The CCDHRN also notes that the Government continues to repress the movement of any citizen within the country and prevents the exit of civil society activists abroad, citing the cases of Human Rights defender Wendis Castillo and journalist Augusto César Manrique Martín.

Meanwhile, on Monday the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH) warned in a statement of the “broad scope” of the repressive strategy of the Cuban government, which according to the organization based in Madrid is able to monitor “the cracks of the incipient Cuban civil society and interfere in citizen privacy.”

In its monthly assessment, the organization claims that last November there were a total of 306 arbitrary arrests, and draws attention to the high number of arrests of women, which stood at 221 as opposed to 85 executed against men. Of the total arrests 11 of them were violent and in the case of another 35, the detentions lasted more than 24 hours.

The OCDH report denounces that there have been 4,665 arbitrary detentions in Cuba since the beginning of the year and that the Government persists in its “repressive dynamic” characterized by arbitrary detentions of short or long duration, the confiscation of personal property or means of work, the siege of activists in their own homes and the charging of government opponents with manufactured common criminal offenses, among other techniques.

According to the report, among the victims of these repressive practices exercised by the Government are the journalist Osmel Ramírez Álvarez, contributor to Diario de Cuba and Havana Times; the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara; the director of the Center for Local Development Studies, César Mendoza Regal; and Karina Gálvez, economist and member of the Coexistence Studies Center, whose sentence for tax evasion was ratified at the beginning of last month. Gálvez has also been prohibited from practicing her profession.

The violation of human rights not only persists on the island according to the OCDH, but the organization also warns that it is “gaining ground in Venezuela thanks to the apathy and lack of commitment of more than a few democrats and institutions,” in direct reference to the United Nations Human Rights Council, of which Cuba and Venezuela are members.
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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.

The opponent has suffered from a respiratory infection since his imprisonment, caused by his condition as a chronic asthmatic, and does not receive adequate medication despite the fact that prison officials assured his wife that treatment was guaranteed.

“My husband told me that this is not true because it is difficult for prisoners to access medications,” Vecino tells 14ymedio.

A neighbor says she saw her husband in a good mood, but uneasy about being away from home while his family has recently gone through difficult times. “He regrets not being able to help us and take care of us.”

“When I ask about his transfer [to another prison] they tell me that I will only know when it is carried out,” explains his wife.

Several international human rights organizations have denounced the Cardet case. At the end of last January, Amnesty International called for his “immediate and unconditional” release, saying that the national coordinator of the MLC was “imprisoned solely for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression.”

It also considers him a prisoner of conscience and states that he was violently arrested a few days after the death of Fidel Castro.

Cardet was a key figure in the Varela Project, promoted by opposition leader Oswaldo Payá. After the death of Payá, Cardet continued his work and in 2014 he was appointed national coordinator of the MLC.

Last Thursday, the movement announced a manifesto signed by international personalities to ask the Government of Cuba for the freedom of prisoners of conscience and in particular that of Eduardo Cardet.

“His arrest a year ago was very wicked, because he was arrested and beaten in front of his children,” said the document, which also claims that it has been a long process “controlled at all times by State Security” and originated “for political reasons.”

The announcement criticizes that Cardet is being subjected to “a severe regime in open violation of the penitentiary laws themselves” in force on the island.

Among the signatories are a former mayor of Madrid, José María Álvarez del Manzano, the President of the Peace and Cooperation Foundation, Joaquín Antuña, and the former president of the European Parliament, Enrique Barón Crespo, among others.

The manifesto asks that the Spanish authorities, “in keeping with the principles of defense of human rights and democracy, do whatever steps are in your power for the quickest release of Eduardo Cardet and other prisoners of conscience in Cuba.” ___________________

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With the end of the Soviet subsidies, estimated at more than 60 billion dollars in three decades, and the loss of the market of the socialist countries, the island opted for other sources of foreign currency, including tourism, nickel and biotechnology.

The reduction in sugar production not only affects the country’s income, but also contributes to reductions in the standard of living in many municipalities and towns of the island, whose residents made a living from the vats if the sugar mill.

These so-called “ghost towns,” where the sugar mills used to employ the majority of the population and defined the local economy, are now trying to recharge their economies with other agricultural or industrial products.

After the passage of Hurricane Irma in September, the national press reported that more than 40% of the cane plantations were lost. Almost a third of the sugar mills were also harmed by Irma, which left 13 of them in “very serious” conditions.

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Manuel Cuesta Morúa, spokesperson for #Otro18 (Another 2018), confirmed that the opposition had not succeeded in getting any of the independent candidates on the ballots, due to pressures, threats and arrests that prevented them from even reaching their area assemblies where the candidates were selected.

For the rest of the citizens, the day passed without great expectations of change and in the midst of an intense campaign in the official media that described the Cuban process as a demonstration of “democracy” and “popular participation.”

“I’d just barely woken up when I had a pionerita (little Pioneer) shouting my name down there,” Claudia, who is 41 and lives in Havana’s Cerro neighborhood, told 14ymedio. The practice of going around looking for voters in their homes has been falling away in recent years in Havana, but this time the government didn’t want to leave time for the latecomers.

“We want all the voting done before three o’clock, but if we have to leave the polls open longer we will do it,” the head of a polling station in the Guanabo neighborhood in the east of Havana told this newspaper. “Everyone who knows a voter who hasn’t come to fill out their ballot has a civic duty to call them,” she added.

Alina Balseiro Gutiérrez, president of the National Electoral Commission (CEN), informed the press that 82.05% of the electorate voted. Balseiro said that CEN will release the preliminary results of this round of elections for delegates to the municipal assemblies of People’s Power on Monday afternoon.

Among the elected delegates will be potential deputies to make up at least half of the candidates for the National Assembly in the general elections that are scheduled for the coming months. The rest of the parliamentarians will be “handpicked” by the almighty candidacy commission.

It will be the job of the new parliament – the National Assembly of People’s Power – on 24 February 2018 to choose, based on the proposal from the Council of State, the successor to Raul Castro for the presidency of the country, and to give way to a new generation, possibly embodied in the figure of the Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermúdez, who is currently 57.

Raul Castro voted at seven o’clock in the morning at a polling station whose location was not specified. The elections coincided this year with the commemoration of the first anniversary of the death of Fidel Castro.

The official press took advantage of the coincidence of dates to present the elections as a way to honor “the memory of the Commander in Chief” and “continue his legacy.” In most of the polling stations, next to the coat of arms of the Republic and the national flag, an image with the face of the former president was on display.

An independent entity, under the name of Citizen Observers of Electoral Processes (COPE), mobilized about 40 people in 7 provinces of the country to roam between polling stations to “monitor the process of electoral administration, promoting democracy through citizen empowerment.”

From the province of Santiago de Cuba, activists of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) denounced irregularities in the voter registers and obstacles to participating as observers in the counting of votes. The opposition organization had joined the call of the Cuba Decides initiative for voters to write the word “plebiscite” on the ballot.

Manuel Cuesta Morúa affirmed, for his part, to EFE that another COPE, composed of 275 members in 13 of the 15 provinces, undertook “without great difficulties” the tasks of independent observation.

The Cuba Decides campaign, led by Rosa Maria Payá, presented on Sunday a formal request in several polling stations that blank ballots or ballots marked with messages in favor of a plebiscite be counted as valid votes.

UNPACU activist Carlos Amel Oliva reported that several members of the organization received evasive responses from those responsible for polling stations to their request to exercise their right to observe the vote count. Other opponents complained that their names were not even on the voter registers.

“As of midday we have a report of six activists arrested during election day, among them Víctor Campa Almenares, Carlos Oliva Riverí, Alexis Rodríguez Chacón, Vladimir Martín Castellanos, Juan Salgado Jurado and José Antonio Valdés Piña,” he details.

“All these opponents were arbitrarily arrested when they went to the polling station closest to their area of ​​residence to participate as observers in the counting of votes,” he added.

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He participated in the uprising of 30 November 1956 in Santiago de Cuba to support the landing of the yacht Granma, which brought 82 members of the 26^th of July Movement from Mexico to Cuba, including Fidel and Raul Castro and Che Guevara. In 1957 he met Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra and guided him to the place where journalist Herbert Matthews from The  New York Times was waiting to interview the guerrilla leader; Matthews’ article catapulted Castro’s profile to great prominence in international public opinion.

A short time later Hart Dávalos was arrested and sentenced to several years in prison, but while being taken to court he managed to escape and rejoined the clandestine struggle. After that incident he was appointed National Coordinator of the 26^th of July Movement.

In January of 1958 Hart Dávalos was again arrested and sent to prison, where he remained until the triumph of the rebels. During the next decades of his life he would be one of the most loyal followers of Fidel Castro and a tireless apologist for the decisions made by the Maximum Leader.

The young man from Havana was part of the national leadership of the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (ORI) and the United Party of the Socialist Revolution of Cuba (PURSC). In 1965 he was elected a member of the Central Committee and the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba.

Hart Dávalos was appointed Minister of Culture at the creation of the ministry in 1976 and remained in that post until 1997. His term followed the infamous Quinquenio Gris (The Five Grey Years) and was not exempt from purges, editorial censorship and punishments against critical voices.

Subsequently he went on to direct the Office of the Martiano Program, attached to the Council of State, the role of which is to study and promote the legacy of José Martí.

He married Haydée Santamaría Cuadrado, a fellow revolutionary and director of Casa de las Américas, who committed suicide in July 1980. The couple had two children, Celia Hart Santamaría and Abel Hart Santamaría, who both died in a car crash in Havana in 2008.

Among the books by Hart Dávalos are titles such as Aldabonazo (Wake-up Call, 1997) and Con la honda martiana  (With José Martí’s Slingshot, 2009). He received the Order José Martí on his 80th birthday and the José Martí National Prize for Journalism in February of this year, in addition to many other official decorations.

His remains will lie in state at the Center for José Martí Studies, at Calzada and 4th, in Vedado, until 10 am on Monday and then, by family decision, will be cremated.

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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.