Hygiene rules require workers to protect food from human hair and not to take money with the same hand that served the food. (EFE)
14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havana, 8 January 2015 – More than 10,000 services in Villa Clara have been paralyzed for health infractions, according to a report from the Department of Health Inspection Control published in the official press on Wednesday.
In addition, the repeated failure of 11 establishments to comply with the health regulations has led to their being brought to court. These businesses many not open again until the health violations are resolved.
Food exposed for hours, undercooked meat, and inadequate cleaning are some of the most common health infractions detected in2015 in state and private food services in the province. The inspections led to the closure of 19 food establishments in Villa Clara, the withdrawal of 1,200 licenses for self-employment, and the imposition of 13,000 fines. continue reading
As revealed to the press by Manuel Santos, a department official in Villa Clara, centers for the processing and sale of food, including snack bars, restaurants, coffee shoos and workers dining rooms, have been affected by the preventive measures.
Another of the most common infractions is committed by employees who serve food with their hands, without correctly using protective clothing designed for kitchens and food service. To this is added the placing of raw meat near sausages and smoked meats, increasing the risk of salmonella, a disease caused by a bacterium that causes severe diarrhea, vomiting and headache.
The drought affecting the country has aggravated the problems in hygiene in many places serving food, as their water supply has diminished in recent months. Other difficulties, including acquiring detergent, transport, and appropriate refrigeration equipment affect both government and private businesses.
Health standard violations storing, handling and preparation of food put consumers’ health at risk. First Deputy Health Minister Jose Angel Portal Miranda confirmed in the National Assembly, last December, that acute diarrheal diseases had decreased by 13.5% in 2015 over the previous year, but not as much as in 2014 when they were down 25.6% compared to 2013.
In recent weeks television has reinforced messages urging consumers to avoid eating foods that have not been properly protected, or that have some into contact with dust or flies. The adds alert staff not to handle food with the same hand that touches money.
People wait for the Cristal delivery trucks outside the markets. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Havana, 4 January 2016 — This year end, the traditional dinner of December 31 was marked not only by high food prices, but also by a shortage of beer. The lack of “a cold one” of domestic production forced the government to increase imports of foreign brands, including Heineken, Bavaria, Sol and Mahou. However, most consumers still prefer the Cuban varieties, especially Cristal.
The lack this pale ale was again a subject of discussion at the last session of the National Assembly, where the problem was attributed to an increase in consumption due to an increase in the number of private restaurants and cafes, along with the growth of foreign tourism.
The fluctuations in the supply of raw materials, especially the so-called “Czech malt,” have also negatively impacted the Bucanero SA brewery, the largest in the country, located in the province of Holguin. The plant produces more than half the beer consumed nationally, both in Cuban convertible pesos and Cuban pesos.
Now, people wait for the Cristal delivery trucks outside the markets, even when – as is the case in the image above – it comes “disguised” as a delivery of Becks.
14ymedio, Havana, 6 January 2016 – The news widely broadcast in Cuba’s official press regarding the disqualification, in their own country, of Argentinian doctors trained in Cuba, has turned out to be false, according to a clarification by Prensa Latina regarding a communication from Project Tatu, which brings together young doctors who have graduated from Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM).
Project Tatu, which has posted a statement on the internet, explained that the news was a lie, adding, “There is no legal way to nullify credentials once the qualification has been awarded.”
In the statement sent to Prensa Latina, the organization said, “We regret that many sympathetic press agencies have reproduced this unfounded information, creating great confusion.”
Patricio Ancarola, spokesperson for the Argentina Ministry of Health, also denied that the holder of that portfolio, Doctor Jorge Lemus, made a decision of this nature. In addition, Project Tatu said, “It is the Ministry of Education and not the Ministry of Health or the nation’s Health Minister, Dr. Jorge Lemus, as press reports have stated, which has the authority to recognize qualifications.”
ELAM, located in Havana, has trained over 25,000 doctors from 84 countries since its founding in 1999.
Propaganda poster to highlight the importance of values. “Excuse me.” It is so easy! (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Havana, 6 January 2016 – The loss of values has been at the center of the Cuban government’s official discourse for several years. The lack of formal education and urban and neighborhood social indisciplines, have been addressed with concern by officials and in the national media. Countless television ads call for not shouting when talking, avoiding loud music, and recovering the formulas of courtesy such as “please” and “thank you.” However, the deterioration has not been reversed nor has the situation shown any improvement.
Last October an article published in the Catholic magazine Palabra Nueva (New Word) addressed the ethical and moral deficiencies that run through Cuban society. The author, Orlando Marquez, recalled some declarations by Raul Castro in 2013 in which he affirmed that it was time for religious entities to help in recovering these values. However, the writer claimed that, from his point of view, religious institutions should be allowed “to develop their work freely.”
Opposition lawmaker Henry Ramos Allup is the new president of the Venezuelan National Assembly. (MUD)
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 6 January 2016 – If Hugo Chavez were alive and Fidel Castro active, the Venezuelan opposition would not have taken over the National Assembly. The comandantes knew that if they accepted an opposition majority in this body of power it would spell their political end. The Cuban leader eradicated the multi-party system in order to prevent something like this, while Chavez, leader of a military coup, shielded the electoral system and bought loyalty with oil.
However, the worst nightmare of both just took shape in Caracas. This Tuesday the deputies from the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) became aware of their overwhelming minority given their small number of legislative seats. In a place where they can no longer even see the image of the “eternal president,” Chavez’s followers received a democratic slap in the face. continue reading
Accustomed to legislating with a marked numerical superiority, the ruling party found their disadvantage a bitter pill to swallow and stomped out of the room. For them, the coming months will be a martyrdom because they will hear a flood on contrary opinions, they will be held accountable for their decisions, and they will see laws approved that will affect their own bloc.
In the Castro regime’s manual, one can read in great big red letters the maxim to avoid at all costs allowing political opponents to take the microphones. One lesson that the Plaza of the Revolution taught Chavez, but that his clumsy disciple Nicolas Maduro did not assimilate well. Maduro’s arrogance made him believe that he would win the elections of last December 6, and today he is looking hard for ways to tie the hands of the National Assembly.
While the Venezuelan Supreme Court was hearing the ruling party’s challenges to three deputies-elect from the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), Cuban parliamentarians were meeting at the Palace of Conventions. In Caracas, everything was speculation and political tension, but in Havana the script was already well known: vote unanimously and, at best, listen to long hours of speeches about the supply of yogurt, the poor quality of the induction cookers recently hawked to the population, or the complications involved in obtaining a birth certificate.
Cuba’s National Assembly of People’s Power, led by Esteban Lazo, was once again the image of docility, but its Venezuelan counterpart was transformed, this Tuesday, into pure effervescence. The South American nation has become, as of this moment, a country difficult to govern. But what democracy is easy?
Now there is only one parliament in this hemisphere that functions as a ventriloquist for power. One country where the legislators applaud a ruler who attends the National Assembly dressed in an army uniform, and spits at the minister of the economy to stop blushing about the failure of his programs. In this nation, where for nearly six decades we have not heard a real debate among legislators, this Tuesday we were proud and envious of Venezuela.
Television remains under a strict monopoly of the Communist Party to sustain a biased editorial line does not represent the national complexity.
14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, 6 January 2015 – Sometimes I wish I lived in the country they show on television. This hopeful nation of rose-colored dreams presented by the official press. A place of props and slogans, where factory production exceeds goals and employees are declared “workplace heroes.” In this Cuba, bouncing off the antennas to reach our small screens, there is no room for sickness, pain, frustration or impatience.
The official Cuban press has tried to approach the country’s reality in recent years. Several young faces appear on TV programs to report on administrative negligence, poor services, or consumer complaints about bureaucratic paperwork. But even still, state journalism continues to be a long way from objectivity and respect for the truth. continue reading
Television, radio and newspapers are maintained under strict monopoly of the Communist Party, and not only because they are ideologically subordinated, but also because they are financed from the state coffers – money that belongs to all Cubans – money that they use to sustain a biased editorial line that does not reflect the national complexity.
The topics covered by the journalists of this partisan press represent the interests of an ideology and a group in power, not of the entire country. They never dare, for example, in their reporting, to question the authorities, nor the current political system, nor the organs of State Security nor the activities of the police, among other taboo subjects.
However, where the official press most betrays the precepts of balance and impartial information is in the testimonies they broadcast, in the voices they give space to and the opinions they express. By the grace of journalistic censorship, access to the microphone is granted only to those who agree with the government and applaud the actions of its leaders.
They never interview someone with a difference of opinion, or someone who believes the country should take other political or economic paths. Unanimity continues to fill the front pages and the news broadcasts, although for a long time now loud dissent has been heard on buses, in stores, in the hallways of institutions and even in classrooms.
At the beginning of this year an avalanche of reports filled the television broadcasts. The protagonists were young people who claimed to live “in the best of all possible worlds,” smiling with confidence in their future and not even dreaming of emigration. Not included among the opinions were those from anyone in the process of leaving Cuba, or feeling frustrated by their professional prospects, or submerging themselves in illegalities to survive.
In the almost 70,000 hours of annual television broadcasts not a single self-employed person complains about their high taxes. Parents who fear the growing violence in Cuban streets are never encountered in the Cuban media, and women beaten by their husbands don’t appear demanding legal measures to protect them from the abuse.
The teachers whose pay doesn’t allow them to live a decent life find no echo of their demands in the media, nor do dissidents appear to demand respect for their opinions. An inmate denouncing bad prison conditions has no chance to appear before the cameras, nor do the patients who have been victims of medical ethics violations or bad treatment in the Public Health System.
This entire area of Cuba, the widest area, remains outside the authorized media. Because the official Cuban press doesn’t exercise journalism, rather it proselytizes. Although it is made up of many professionals with university and post-graduate degrees, they do not have the freedom to engage in the work of reporting. Instead of looking for the truth, they try to impose an opinion. What they do cannot even call itself “the press.”
Cuban ration booklet. “Control of sales for FOOD PRODUCTS. This booklet does not constitute a document of identification.” (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Havana, 5 January 2016 — During the last week of the year and the first days of the 2016, Cuban families have received their ration booklets to access the rationed food system in place since 1962.
Despite strong rumors predicting the end of the rationed market, the fact is that it still stands, albeit with a considerable decrease in the numbers of products and increases in the prices of many of them.
Mural painted on a café in Little Havana, Miami. (Flickr)
14ymedio, Jose Hernandez Fonseca, 5 January 2016 – When the current and voluminous world news talks about Cuba it is understood that it is talking about the Castro brothers’ Cuba. This, of course, for the quarter of the island’s population that lives abroad, is an inaccuracy. The real Cuba is the sum of the two separate worlds: the island governed by the Castro regime and the Cubans who live scattered around the rest of the world.
In reality, the Cuban nation is a dichotomy. There is the Cuba that survives on the island, whose basic aspiration is to leave and go abroad to free itself from an impoverished dictatorship; and the Cuba that has been reborn far from home, in other latitudes, that longs for and venerates the island. In reality they are two Cubas: one subjugated and poor and the other burgeoning and rich, as the island was in the past and will be in the future. In any event, Miami is what Havana would have been without Fidel Castro. continue reading
It is important to say that Cuba, prior to the Castro dictatorship, had the highest indicators of economic and social development in all of Latin America: the second highest per capita income, the highest per capita consumption of electricity, the lowest rate of illiteracy, the greatest number of daily newspapers, the highest number of cars per capita, the highest consumption of protein and one of the highest numbers of cattle per inhabitant, the highest average wage, more movie theaters than Paris and a long list of other attributes that included being the center of the world’s music.
It is true that before the current Castro dictatorship there was another dictatorship, but that one limited itself to circumscribing political liberties, allowing economic, social and human development typical of the first world. The people of Cuba fought against the previous dictatorship, but never with the intention to create an impoverished totalitarianism like the absurdity imposed by the Castros.
It must be said, moreover, that “the best” of Cuban society is outside the island. The best athletes, artists, writers, engineers, architects, intellectuals, journalists, comedians, musicians, teachers, politicians, among other professionals – or simply workers – live outside the island, forced by the mandate of obedience and emasculation that has been militarily imposed within Cuba by the Castro regime.
Faced with this reality, it is inappropriate to try to solve “the Cuban problem” without recourse to the effort, capital, entrepreneurship and leadership of the quarter of the Cuban population abroad. The effort of the United States to inject the entrepreneurial and/or democratic virus within the island means nothing, if the most dynamic part of the Cuban population is prevented from participating, investing, leading and even governing, the Cuban nation of the future.
Let’s not fool ourselves, no nation has emerged from the status of Haitianization that Cuba is currently subjected to without the participation of its best children, those who have triumphed in the conditions of exile, not only in the United States but everywhere in the world. Cuban intellectuals will insist on their patriotic values, whether they love or hate the dictatorship and its allies. The recognition of every Cuban is the only formula to shape the Cuban nation of the future.
A member of the Ladies in White is arrested by police on Thursday, 10 December 10, in Havana. (Photo EFE)
14ymedio, Havana, 4 January 2015 — The number of political arrests in the month of December in Cuba was almost twice that of December 2014, from 489 increasing to 930, according to the monthly report issued by the Cuban the National Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN).
The number represents a significant decrease from November, when there were at least 1,447 arrests. However, that figure was the highest in years, according to information from the CCDHRN, which reported December was the third worst month of the year, after the two months preceding it (there were 1,093 political arrests in October).
The CCDHRN is particularly concerned because five former political prisoners – released as a part of the negotiations between the Cuban and United States governments that led to the reestablishment of relations – were newly arrested and being held in high security prisons. These prisoners are
Wilfredo Parada Milian, Jorge Ramirez Calderon, Carlos Manuel Figueroa, Aracelio Ribeaux Noa and Vladimir Morera Bacallao, who was on a hunger strike between 9 October and the end of the year. The five have been imprisoned in “rigged processes without due process,” according to the organization led by Elizardo Sanchez.
Once again, the groups most affected by repression, the report denounced, are the Ladies in White and the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), who “apart from physical violence and all kinds of humiliations” suffered “acts of vandalism and the extrajudicial confiscation of toys intended to be distributed to poor children, computers, cellphones and other work tools acquired legally, as well as cash taken from many of the opponents who were arrested.”
The CCDHRN expressed despair because despite the expectations created by the restoration of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the US, “political repression increased steadily throughout 2015.” In addition, the report denounced that poverty has continued to grow, which has motivated, in the opinion of the organization, the migratory crisis of those “trying to escape Cuba by any means, including illegal emigration at the price of human suffering.”
Union activist Vladimir Morera Bacallao. (Source: Twitter)
14ymedio, Havana, 4 January 2016 – Government opponent Vladimir Bacallao Morera has ended his hunger strike, having begun to eat on 30 December, according to information received by 14ymedio from Librado Linares. The prisoner spent more than 80 days without eating to demand his release, after being condemned to four years imprisonment for the alleged crime of “injuries.”
“Last Wednesday they began to give him a serum, and this altered his consciousness and made him lose his will, and they began supplying food,” said Linares. Linares, the leader of the Cuban Reflection Movement (MCR), has not been able to visit the patient in the intermediate care unit at the Arnaldo Milian Provincial Hospital in Santa Clara, where he continues to be confined, be he spoke on repeated occasions with his family. continue reading
Morera Bacallao weighed less than 95 pounds as a result of the hunger strike demanding the annulment of his sentence. At present, according to reports from his family is in a state of physical recovery, and is “digesting well what he eats,” said Linares.
The opponent has put a sign on the facade of his house during the April 1915 People’s Power elections where he proclaimed, “I vote for my freedom and not in some elections where I cannot elect my president.”
The text unleashed the fury among the government rulers of the town of Manicaragua. In the midst of an act of repudiation against him the second secretary of the Communist Party in the municipality, Ivis Herrera, he fell after slipping on melted asphalt that had been thrown at the Bacallao Morera’s home. In the fall Herrera suffered a blow to the head that is the center of the allegations against Bacallao Morera.
This was the second time that the dissident declared a hunger strike after entering prison. During the first 40 days he remained without food, until officials promised to review his case. On 9 October he resumed fasting, and continued until the end of the year. To date, it is not known whether the decision to stops the hunger strike has been accompanied by a new commitment on the part of prison authorities to ease or overturn his conviction.
On Tuesday, the United States asked Havana to release the dissident given the deterioration of his health. US State Department spokesman Mark Toner told journalists that Washington was “deeply concerned” about Morera Bacallao deteriorating health, and called “urgently” for him to be freed from prison.
The official press blames private producers for the high prices of many foods. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 4 January 2016 — I was ten years old when Fidel Castro launched the economic battle he called the “Rectification of errors and negative tendencies.” The Maximum Leader’s rage fell, at that time, on private farmers and on the intermediaries who marketed their products. Cuatro Caminos Plaza in Havana, then known as the Single Market, was assaulted by officials and after that raid several foods disappeared from our lives: onions, garbanzo beans, chili peppers and even taro.
Almost a decade later, when the country had reached bottom with food shortages and scarcities, the government again authorized non-state food markets. The first time I approached a stand and bought a string of garlic, without having to practice stealth, I recovered a part of my life that had been snatched from me. For years we had to appeal to the illegal market, to a precarious clandestinity, to get things ranging from a pound of beans to the cumin seeds needed to season them. continue reading
However, the return of “farmers markets” has not been free of attacks and government animosity. The official press blames private producers for the high prices of many foods, and the figure of the intermediary has been demonized in the extreme. In the last 2015 session of the National Assembly, the idea was floated of imposing price regulation on certain food products, to force merchants to reduce the amounts.
At first glance, this would appear to favor consumers. Who wouldn’t consider it good news that a pound of pork without bones would not exceed 30 Cuban pesos, or never reach the astronomical 50 peso asking price in Havana’s Egido market at the end of 2015. The initial reaction of customers would be to welcome it, because a single lemon would no longer cost one Cuban peso, nor would papaya sell for 5 Cuban pesos a pound. However, behind the regulated prices come greater evils.
What could happen is that the products subjected to price controls would disappear from the agricultural markets and once again go into hiding. We would not be able to go to the corner to buy a pound of onions, like we have done over the last two decades, but would return to the times when we’d end up at the side of some road or in the middle of nowhere illegally dealing directly with the producers or the persecuted intermediaries.
Consumers would end up paying the piper for a measure that does not solve the problem of the lack of productivity on our farms or of the extremely low wages.
An economy is not planned on a whim, nor is it managed by force of restrictions, rather it is a fragile framework where lack of confidence and excessive state control are like a deadly embrace, leaving us without the ability to breathe on our own. In this grip, controlled prices come to be feared as the kiss of death that strangles commerce and leaves it lifeless.
Lack of medical care is one of the most frequent abuses reported in Cuba’s Valle Grande prison.
14ymedio, Manuel Alberto Morejón, Havana, 30 December 2015 – From Havana, the supervisor of the Christian Alliance sent 14ymedio several prisoners’ testimonies collected in the Valle Grande prison, which make up a small sample of the abuse they are subjected to by the guards.
On 17 November 2014, at 10:00 am, First Lieutenant Maceo, known as “The Lasher,” took the hoses to Roberto Hernandez without caring that he was under psychiatric treatment. Hernandez, known as “El Loco,” is 32 and lived in Havana’s Plaza district, before entering Valle Grande prison where he received the beating. continue reading
Valle Grande belongs to the Department of Penitentiary Establishments of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT), and is located in Arroya Arenas on the outskirts of Havana. Like all MININT departments, the penitentiary has multiple and sophisticated control systems to silence complaints coming from the prisoners, or to filter those that suit them. But, at times, the voices of the prisoners leak out through the bars to describe the realities that are hidden in Cuban jails. Many of them relate to the lack of attention to inmates’ health.
Raul Garcia Ramos, age 55 and a resident of Regla, is another example. Despite being ill with cirrhosis of the liver and cancer of the esophagus, he was refused medical care. In addition, Garcia has been in prison since 2 June 2015, awaiting trail for the alleged crime of “threat.”
As of 16 December, Hugo Damian Prieto Blanco, age 50, a resident of Marianao and an organizer for the Orlando Zapata Tamayo Civic Resistance Movement, demanded political prisoner status via a hunger strike. Two days after the beginning of his protest, Prieto was transferred to Valle Grande and his whereabouts are unknown. The activist, who is diabetic and has pancreatic disease, has not been well cared for and also demanded better health care for the inmates.
Far from solving anything, the prisoners’ complaints and demands seem to only aggravate their situation. Lamberto Hernandez Planas, 46, a resident of the San Miguel del Padron neighborhood in Havana, complained about the lack of hygiene to El Niño, the officer guarding the dining room, because the food trays were caked with grime. El Niño threatened to give him a beating and said that, if he didn’t like the food, don’t eat it.
That day Hernandez went without eating, but his problems go deeper. His clinical history, issued by the Combinado del Este National Hospital for Inmates, indicates he suffers from peripheral neuropathy, gout, high cholesterol, a herniated disc, gastritis, esophagitis, malnutrition and low back pain. In this situation, recognized by the prison authorities, he requires a special diet that he is not being provided.
While the beatings of opponents, including the Ladies in White, who protest in the streets of Havana find some echo in the international press and human rights organizations, little information comes from the prisons where the inmates are totally defenseless.
“Revolution is not lying. Ever.” Revolutionary propaganda in Havana. (Wikicommons)
14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Miami, 2 January 2016 — The Castros have been in power for 57 years. At this point, general curiosity is limited to formulating three disturbing questions. Why have they lasted so long? Is it a failure, as their opponents say, or a success, as their supporters claim? What will happen after this extremely long-lasting government, the longest in the history of the Americas?
The Castros’ government has been so enduring because it is a dictatorship that does not seek the consent of society, nor does it dedicate itself to obeying it. On the contrary, its efforts are permanently dedicated to directing and controlling it.
The secret of this permanence is to convert people into sheep and to conveniently keep them penned up. To these ends a formidable apparatus of counterintelligence is organized, with some 60,000 people and a proven repressive script. That amounts to 0.5% of the population, consistent with the infallible formula learned from the German Stasi which, along with the KGB, was the mother and teacher of the Cuban services. continue reading
The other similar regime in the world, North Korea, is also a military dynasty and has continued for 68 years. The father of that orchestrated anthill of rhythmic gymnasts was Kim Il-Sung. He started in 1948 and died, in power, in 1994, but not before bequeathing to museums the chairs where he had placed his egregious buttocks. He was then followed by his son Kim Jong-il, and his grandson Kim Jong-un.
North Korean security troops exceed 106,000 members, to control 24 million survivors. More than twice the Cuban population. That police apparatus, which doesn’t do things by halves, has created a system of political castes called Songbun, dividing people into three groups: loyals, waverers, and hostiles. The loyals serve as auxiliaries to counterintelligence in the harassment and surveillance of the other two sectors. It is no wonder that when Fidel Castro visited North Korea, according to those who accompanied him, he was fascinated with the experiment. It seemed like a model country.
Has the Castro regime triumphed or failed? If measured by the ability to cling to power, it has undoubtedly triumphed. Raul Castro was the Minister of Defense at age 28, he is now 85 and has never ridden in anything but good official cars and never ceased to live lavishly with the royal family. For him and for his group of minions, it has been a success.
If measured by the influence achieved by the regime, the conclusion is the same. Venezuela has become a generous colony, meticulously exploited, and political operatives trained by Cuban intelligence services control or influence a dozen unfortunate Latin American countries, to the extent that the Colombian peace process is being irresponsibly negotiated in Havana.
But if what we take into account is the overall prosperity of the country and the degree of genuine happiness shared by the whole population, it has been a resounding failure. Across three generations Cubans have suffered thousands of executions, tens of thousand of political prisoners incarcerated, millions of people exiled, and the government has erected the most unproductive model of wealth creation in history, while meticulously demolishing the material structure it inherited. It is “the art of making ruins” at its finest.
In 57 years of absolute control of power, the Castros have aggravated to the point of martyrdom key elements of daily life: food and access to drinking water, housing, transportation, communications, electricity, shoes and clothing. From this grim landscape escape, as always, the thousands of Cubans currently stranded in Costa Rica, compassionately cared for by the government and people of that exemplary country.
These dire results are not, in reality, products of evil, but of ignorance, the ambition of power and the revolutionary arrogance emanating from Marxist certainties. They were willing to kill and do harm to remain in power and forced Cubans to live according to the utopia they lodged in their feverish brains. And so they have devastated the country.
What will happen in the future? Nothing substantial. As long as the Castros and their clique do not retire from public life, and as long as their system – today transformed into military state capitalism – remains standing, the country will continue to be condemned to the massive emigration of desperate Cubans and the most radical lack of productivity.
The basic problem lies in perceptions and in the confidence that emanates from them. It does not matter if the United States ends the embargo or substantially increases the number of tourists. It doesn’t matter if President Obama visits Cuba, like the last three popes, and gives a speech in favor of freedom.
Cubans, as a general rule, do not believe in the system. They do not believe in their compatriots. They do not believe in the destiny of their country. They do not believe in those who lead them, and much less in the capabilities of that sleepy and grim bureaucracy that imperturbably continues to practice centralized planning. All this will begin to change after the Castro regime is buried. Never before.
14ymedio, Havana, 24 December 2015 — The protagonists of 2015 Cuba have made their mark sometime in the past twelve months. These people from the areas of culture, sports, religion, politics, science or social activism made this year different and unique. They did it from celebrity or from ridicule; from victory or failure; from discretion or scandal.
All those included on this list barely a representation of the thousands of those who have been at the center of the commentaries, the headlines in the press, and in public opinion. These faces of 2015, according to 14ymedio, are the physiognomy of our country: a diverse and contradictory nation.
Antonio Castro, the Cuban ex-president’s youngest son. (EFE)
14ymedio, Havana, 30 December 2015 — Although his father based his political speech in a call for austerity and denigration of the powerful, Antonio Castro – the ex-president’s youngest son – leapt into the headlines in 2015 for doing the exact opposite. In July he was surprised while vacationing in Bodrum, Turkey. The Turkish press uncovered his stay at the most expensive hotel in the area, where along with his companion he reserved five suites.
Castro arrived in Bodrum from the Greek island of Mykonos on a 160-foot yacht and the images of his stay filtered into Cuba through alternative distribution networks. Fidel Castro’s son, who works as a doctor, dined in a luxury restaurant while just outside several Turkish photographers tried to capture the moment, but his bodyguards attacked the journalists and tried to grab their cameras.
Weeks later, Castro was captured by reporters during a stay in New York, dressed in brand name athletic clothes and holding a teddy bear.
14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havana, 8 January 2015 – More than 10,000 services in Villa Clara have been paralyzed for health infractions, according to a report from the Department of Health Inspection Control published in the official press on Wednesday.
