14ymedio – Page 94 – Translating Cuba

Cuban Coachman Dies After Being Robbed in Santa Clara Tourist Area

Díaz was not engaged in transporting people but rather loads, such as bagasse from the Guaraperas, and would take it to the garbage dump. (Courtesy)

14ymedio, Havana, May 24, 2023 — Antonio Silvino Díaz Yera, 57 years old, who worked as a Santa Clara cart driver, died on Monday after being assaulted and stabbed outside the Los Caneyes Hotel. The Police have arrested two suspects, yet the investigation remains open, as the horse and cart — whose theft is the alleged motive for the murder — have not been found.

“He’d gone out on a ride and never returned,” said Laurien López — niece of the deceased and resident of Camajuaní — who reported the crime. Díaz’s still-living body was found the next morning by a male resident of the Los Caneyes neighborhood, a hotel located on the outskirts of the city and very close to the Che Guevara Mausoleum.

The man, immediately called for a patrol car and Díaz was taken to the Arnaldo Milián Provincial Clinical Surgery Hospital. “He arrived with a stab wound to the chest, a slit throat and with many bruises. He hardly had any vital signs and was almost dead,” López recounts. “He died in the foyer, while they were trying to save him.”

“The police arrested two people with blood-stained clothes, but they haven’t wanted to talk,” revealed Díaz’s niece. However, there was no sign of the cart or the horse.

Despite the fact that the place where López was assaulted is frequently visited by tourists, it is a remote area in whose vicinity shanty neighborhoods have accumulated. The most notable of them and where crime is frequent, is located right next to the pharaonic Guevara mausoleum. continue reading

“The family is extremely upset about what happened. My uncle had a slight learning disability. He had no children and lived with a cousin of ours,” says López. “He was not engaged in transporting people but rather some loads, such as bagasse from the guaraperas, and he would take it to the dump. He lived between the streets of Roble and Síndico. Occasionally, someone would see him and place an order.”

In December 2022, another cart driver from Villa Clara, identified as Osvaldo, was also murdered in order to steal his horse in the municipality of Encrucijada. The crime was reported on social networks, but the Police did not offer any official version. Like López, he also went out to carry out an errand and did not return to his house. He was found in a cane field, with his throat cut and a mutilated hand.

Last April, another cart driver from Jinaguayabo, a rural town near Remedios and the luxurious Cayería Norte de Villa Clara, explained to this newspaper that his route had become a highly dangerous area.

In the middle of a journey, he picked up three people who were waiting on the road and shortly after he was robbed. “When they were reaching the bridge, the one behind me tied a strap around my neck and forced me to park in the ditch.” They took the phone, some bluetooth headphones, his watch and the collection of the day, 2,500 pesos. “At least they left me the horse and cart,” he recounted with some relief. “Now we have to see if I can buy back what I lost, because the Police are not going to find the thieves.”

The violent theft of animals in Cuban fields has also been on the rise for the past two years, with Villa Clara topping the list of unsafe provinces.

A report published in this newspaper last July exposed the methods of thieves to steal large and small livestock from private farms. The criminals study the place and the owners of the animals well, and use different painkillers to sedate oxen, cows and pigs, which they then transport in carts or dismember on the spot.

Violence and murder are increasingly accompanying assaults on the island. This Tuesday, a priest from Santiago de Cuba, Eliosbel Pereira, was attacked to take his motorbike away. The priest also received a machete blow to the left hand that required surgery.

Laurien López, who lamented the murder of his uncle on Facebook this Tuesday, is clear about the urgency of resolving the situation of insecurity in the country: “Stop those speeches about the country advancing. It does advance, but in delinquency and crimes “, he rebuked. “The Cuba that once was calm is very dangerous.”

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Shouts of ‘Freedom’ Shake Havana’s Martí Theater in an Echo of July 11th 2021 Protests

Presentation this Sunday of Les Miserables at the Martí Theater in Havana. (Marti Theatre)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, June 26, 20230 — Chanting the cry of “Freedom” — as thousands of voices throughout Cuba did on July 11, 2021 — became grounds for repression and imprisonment. So when actors in a concert performance of Les Miserables at Havana’s Martí Theater joined their wondrous voices to repeat the forbidden word, an authentic revolutionary fervor swept over the those present.

Victor Hugo published his novel Les Miserables thirty years after the anti-monarchist insurrection of June 1832, an uprising that saw the streets of Paris filled with barricades. The basest passions and highest ideals mixed with frustration and hope in this chaotic epic.

When the young, idealistic Marius sings, “Here they dreamed of revolution. Here is where they lit the flame. Here they sang about tomorrow, but tomorrow never came,” no one in the audience could have missed the similarity between these lyrics and events from recent Cuban history. Nor was it possible to miss the analogy of the shared hope — the day Cubans have been waiting for – when everyone proclaims in unison, “One more hour, one day more, one day more.”

I ask myself if, during these times of censorship, it might occur to some official at the Ministry of Culture to chastise the cast for the conviction with which they gave voice to the word freedom, or for the seditious call to a revolution for freedom.

The orchestra’s performance was as spirited as those of the singers. The only thing to which this would-be critic might object was the incessant projection of clips from the 2012 film of the same name (itself inspired by a 1985 stage version), which distracted from what was happening on stage.

Unfortunately, there were neither printed programs — at least not on Sunday, June 25 — that recorded the names of the cast members, nor even a poster at the theater’s entrance.

Thanks to widespread disregard for rules about not taking photos or recording videos during live performances, it was possible to post a clip of the production below. Though it was poorly shot, it is beautifully sung and worth a look.

I hope there is an encore.

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The Regime Persecutes Religious Cubans for Their ‘Civic Position’, According to Human Rights Group / 14yMedio

Some 63% of interviewees said they knew that religious processions were denied or conditioned. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 22 June 2023 — The most recent report of the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH) on religious freedom alleges that the Island’s religious are more vulnerable to the harassment of the regime because of their “civic position.” Sixty-eight percent of the 1,394 people surveyed by the organization said they knew of cases in which a religious group has been repressed or threatened for its criticism of the Government.

The publication of the study, which coincides with the visit of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel to Pope Francis in the Vatican, does not define, however, whether the persecution has to do with the beliefs themselves or whether, on the contrary, it can be attributed to the critical role the religious have played in the Cuban public sphere.

Those interviewed by OCDH reside in 83 municipalities in the 15 provinces of the Island and were surveyed during February of this year. The general conclusion is that the country remains an inhospitable territory in terms of religious freedom. All participants – 45% of them women – are over 18 years old, and the figures have a margin of error of +/- 2.62 points.

Sustaining a critical political stance based on faith is, for 58% of the interviewees, the first cause of harassment by the regime, while 45% believe that “talking publicly about their faith” – including on social networks – can motivate discriminatory treatment. continue reading

The report also denounces “concrete actions” against religious institutions and leaders. Sixty-four percent of respondents know of cases in which they have been denied “permits for events in public spaces,” while 63% mentioned the denial or conditioning of permits “to build or repair temples,” and the same percentage, claimed to know of episodes in which the departure of processions was denied or conditioned.

In this sense, the Catholic priest José Luis Pueyo, of the Diocese of Santa Clara, affirms that a distinction must be made between “freedom of worship” and “religious freedom.” In the first case, it is one of the dimensions of religious life, but it does not exhaust it: “There are dimensions such as educational activity, presence in school and university, care for the elderly, sick and needy, communicative activity – press, radio and television – as well as a multitude of civil and associative activities (what is called ’civil society’) that are totally restricted and are monopolized, no longer by the State, but by the Communist Party,” he explains to 14ymedio.

According to Pueyo, it is “curious” that the religious must negotiate with the Party and not with the Government itself. In fact, 68% of those surveyed by the OCDH point to the Office of Religious Affairs, led by Caridad Diego – who was part of the government delegation that visited the Vatican this week – as the agency that promotes the violation of religious freedom. More than half of those consulted know a leader “who has been prevented or hindered from performing his work.”

A section of the study analyzes the “confidence” of Cubans in “national institutions,” concluding that 42% trust religious associations more than official ones. Human rights groups (19%) and independent media (13%) have the same reliability, while the Government enjoys only 13%.

Official institutions such as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), the Police, the Armed Forces and the courts comprise a devastating 2%. In general, 73% of respondents report that the country “is going in the wrong direction.” The CDRs are, according to 65% of the Cubans consulted, the body through which the Government exercises supervision over the religious.

The OCDH also states that the regime promotes “surveillance and control” over the religious for sustaining a “civic commitment in accordance with the values of their faith.” In addition, the Government limits the “action and social influence of religious entities and congregations, especially those that demand a greater presence in public space and in the communities.”

The United States included Cuba in 2022 on the blacklist of countries that violate religious freedom, along with Nicaragua, China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Burma, Eritrea, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. The Government of the Island responded with a campaign that involved like-minded religious leaders, such as members of the ruling Council of Churches, the Yoruba Cultural Association, the Islamic League of Cuba and the Cabildo Quisicuaba cultural project. Enrique Alemán, director of Quisicuaba, defended the Cuban State, saying that it “recognizes, respects and guarantees” all religions, but he avoided alluding to the critical stance of many of its leaders.

During the summer of that same year, a report by Prisoners Defenders, based in Madrid, showed that since 1959 the regime has organized an espionage network to infiltrate numerous agents in churches and also in fraternities such as Freemasonry.

In the case of the latter association, its national Grand Master, Francisco Alonso Vidal, had to escape from the Island after the sustained harassment of State Security. The Freemason then denounced the systematic infiltration of Cuban counterintelligence, with the aim of monitoring and influencing the decisions of all fraternal and religious institutions on the Island.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuba Is Without Water for the Poor of Mayari and the Rich of Miramar, Including the Embassies

The residents in the Cuban town of Guatemala, municipality of Mayarí (Holguín), took to the streets to demand the restoration of water service. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 27 June 2023 — The lack of water drives Cubans mad, from one side of the Island to the other. In the Guatemala neighborhood, in Mayarí, Holguín, dozens of residents took to the streets early morning on Tuesday after being without service for three months, and in Havana, even diplomats and foreigners residing in the exclusive neighborhood of Miramar suffer from the problem.

Illuminated only by the light of their cell phones, the Mayarí protesters repeated a single cry: “Water!” and demanded the attention of the authorities. Shortly after the rally began, some provincial leaders arrived to “converse,” and they promised solutions for the same week.

In the videos published on Facebook, Geovanis Martín Gutiérrez, president of the Municipal Assembly of People’s Power in Mayarí, is seen trying to reassure the crowd, who listened with disbelief to the official’s promise to install three pumps.

Martín Gutiérrez said that he had already spoken to Havana, where a hydraulic pump was being “prepared” and was “on its way.”

They said the equipment would be ready between Wednesday and Thursday, he said, and he asked that they “speed it up so that it would arrive sooner.” In the face of citizen protests, the official admitted that the motor cables are being rewound in Matanzas and then will go to the Cuban capital.

The families in the town had run out of water after the pumping engines broke. On his Facebook profile, official journalist Emilio Rodríguez Pupo said last Saturday that “the search continues” for solutions to the installation of a motor. continue reading

On Saturday, a pump was installed, but the official channels recognize that it is not enough to meet the demand, given the small flow of 7 gallons per second. The water deficit has been alleviated with watertrucks, which also do not manage to meet the needs of families.

However, Martín Gutiérrez clarified that getting the equipment wasn’t a problem, but the motors had collapsed due to a power outage during “the May rains.” Even so, he promised that the pump sent from Havana will be installed, one that the provincial government is managing and another that will be on “reserve.”

The official Realidades desde Holguín reported that after the conversation with the authorities, the “inhabitants went home to go about their daily business.” According to this source, families “already have the precious liquid at their fingertips. We told them that harmony would return, and so it did,” said the article, accompanied by photographs of the empty streets after the gathering.

Meanwhile, the capital itself also has a significant deficit in water service that affects more than 200,000 families, the equivalent of 10% of the population.

According to the official newspaper Tribuna de La Habana, the western region benefited “very little or not at all” from the torrential rains of recent weeks. Both Havana and Cienfuegos suffer a decline in their reservoirs and are in critical condition.

Engineer Rosaura Socarraz Ordaz, director of Operations of the Aguas de La Habana Company, explained that the most affected municipalities are Playa, Marianao and La Lisa. Families in these places receive the service on alternate days for eight hours on average, but due to system breakdowns caused by electric shocks, the schedule has been reduced.

In a meeting chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Inés María Chapman, it was reported that in July a batch of 12 pumping machines will arrive on the Island that will stabilize the supply system. At the moment, community water tanks and the use of wells have been enabled.

User reactions were not long in coming, and it shows that the problem does not discriminate between residents with resources. The user Mario Hernández, who identified himself as a worker of a real estate agency that serves embassies and commercial offices, said in a comment to the Tribune article that in the Council of Miramar, in the municipality of Playa, there are not even watertrucks to supply the water in diplomatic headquarters.

In addition to reducing the hours of service, the pressure level has been lowered, so the cisterns don’t even fill up to half. “The complaints have already begun,” said Hernández, and he added that embassy officials plan to send an official complaint to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Due to Lack of Money for Maintenance, Only 50 Percent of Transport in Cuba Works

The minister put the cost of keeping the fleet ready at 40 to 50 million dollars a year, and since there is no money, the availability of transport is only 50%. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Madrid, 27 June 2023 — With the holidays just around the corner, the overall situation in passenger transport is bleak on the Island. The most serious thing, due to its repercussions on mortality, is the insecurity of the roads. According to the Minister of Transport, Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila, 40% have an unfavorable technical condition.

The bad news from the sector did not take anyone by surprise, despite the fact that the minister made an effort to show some achievements last year. Among them, the increase in the bus fleet in Havana, something that would not have been possible without the donation of 104 additional vehicles. Ten minibuses were also added, in this case thanks to the fall in tourism, which they served before. Other advances in 2022 were the increase in routes in the capital with 75 electric tricycles, the reestablishment of rail services and the MóvilWeb Urbanos application for transport, among other things.

But the assessment doesn’t leave a good taste in the mouth, since Rodríguez Dávila began by admitting that there is a “decrease in passenger and cargo transport capacities” and attributed the situation to objective and subjective factors.

The minister put the cost of keeping the fleet ready at 40 or 50 million dollars a year and, since there is no money, the availability of transport is only 50%, “aggravated by the fuel situation on the island.” Although the traffic in the ports indicates that oil is arriving, the needs are many, and public transport does not exactly seem to be the priority. According to the minister, in some provinces only “opening and closing” trips are made due to a shortage that he attributed, among other reasons, to the “persecution” of the ships that transport it, alluding to the US embargo. continue reading

Rodríguez Dávila insisted that the sector needs to have access to “freely convertible currency to guarantee fuel, spare parts and other logistical elements,” raising the shadow of the possibility of charging for transport in freely convertible currency (MLC).

At the moment, at least, it doesn’t seem to be the solution. The minister complained that the measure to ban cruises from the United States, taken by the Donald Trump Administration and not reversed by the Biden Administration, prevents a lot of foreign exchange from being captured in ports. Despite this, he explained that at the beginning of this year an MLC fund was created exclusively for the sector, which is formed “with income from abroad in the aviation and maritime-port systems.” With that money, he said, more than a thousand means of transport were recovered, since it was invested in buses.

The minister indicated that transport has “acceptable prices for the population,” although the data of the consumer price index (CPI) indicate that it is one of the sectors that has risen the most in the last year, more than 18% since last April. However, although for Cubans the cost is high, companies are in deficit or, in the words of Rodríguez Dávila, “they are below the threshold of the profitability of companies” and many of them “report losses.”

“The main transport bases throughout the country have been working practically without spare parts for the last three years,” he added.

The official also spoke about the railway, which is very deficient in terms of passenger transport, although it has been possible to move “prioritized” cargo as long as conditions have allowed it. With this, he refers to the almost 600,000 tons of fuel, sugar and products corresponding to the basic basket that move along the railways.

On the other hand, the transport of port cargo was reduced by 44% since 2018, but new means for its improvement have been incorporated, including small ships with 2,800 tons of capacity.

Among the positive points, valued by the minister, is the theoretical improvement of parcel shipping services, the legalization of new means of transport, such as electric tricycles that provide service on short routes between cities, and the creation of a public bicycle service.

“We are going to continue with that program,” he said, while threatening “more energetic measures with drivers and bosses who fail to comply with the support that state vehicles must give to passenger transport.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Goya and Fabelo, Worlds in Collision

La exposición ’Goya y Fabelo: Mundos’, que reúne piezas de ambos pintores, estará abierta hasta el 30 de julio en la galería Condeduque, en Madrid. (14ymedio) — The exhibition ‘Goya and Fabelo: Mundos’, which brings together pieces by both painters, will be open until July 30 at the Condeduque gallery in Madrid. (14ymedio)

Xavier Carbonell, Madrid, 25 June 2023 – In the land of Roberto Fabelo all the statues have been decapitated and the cities are in ruins. Junk, coffee pots, washbasins, cookpots, drowsy and rugged faces, letters that have forgotten what words they belong to, men who are half asleep or who sleep the sleep of reason – all these define the artist’s work.

The tide has carried Fabelo’s works to Madrid and those who turn up to see them in the little red brick salon in the Condeduque arts centre, surrounded by geometry and order, don’t imagine they’re looking at something collapsed. The return of the master to Europe – he looks cold and black and older – does not come without some reflection and sadness. He comes in search of a father, a lineage that has always been his but one that he now wants to announce: Goya.

The affinity between the painter from Aragón and the Cuban one was marked from the day in which Fabelo painted his first animal with a human face. There’s a certain look that’s essential to both: the depth of the dark layers of the human, in the parts where the light upsets everything and the creatures are saturated with meaning, words and forms. Like Goya, Fabelo fills his pictures with phrases and codes. One of them promises: “if the sun comes up, we’re out of here…”; the other one paints “…on the wings of a fly”.

In 'Leadership', drawn in 2022 on an immense cardboard, Fabelo figures without admitting it the drama of the island in the last two years. (14 and a half) — In ‘Liderazgo’ [‘Leadership’], painted in 2022 on an immense sheet of cardboard, Fabelo encodes, without admitting it, the drama of the island in the last two years. (14ymedio)

Anyone who has followed Fabelo’s works on his native island, where they form part of domestic life and imagination, will note the transgression imparted by Mundos [Worlds]. From having a certain affinity with the regime – at some points he has attributed his success, with timidity, to Castro’s revolution – he has moved more towards criticism, through the use of symbolism. The fraudulence of power, the manipulation, the possibility of dissent and of withdrawing from the scene, the predominance of the worst always happening – these all impose themselves on top of any other themes. continue reading

Upon entering the Condeduque centre, various Kafkaesque-style cockroaches tell the visitor that they’ve arrived in the dominion of monsters. Lined up like a battalion, they are Los Caprichos [The Caprices] and Los desastres de la guerra [Disasters of War], which make up some of Goya’s twilight works. They’ve already engaged in battle with Fabelo’s rhinoceroses and satyrs. What we witness – in the darkness of the salon held back by time – is the dialogue between two gentlemen who have shared a duel.

From this planetary confrontation, in which Fabelo spars also against other models of his – Durero, Dalí, El Bosco – emerge, unharmed, certain domestic objects, which the Cuban has always treated with kindness, like talismans. In a cauldron there is the Virgin of Kindness, patron of Cuba; the coffee pots have faces, and weep for all the shortages; bullets fired by soviet rifles on the island have become magnetised into a sphere.

Fabela, like Goya, is an elemental narrator. He’s interested in the weight of a story, the accumulation of gestures and signs with a synthetic capacity which connects him with Monterroso or Borges. In Liderazgo, created in 2022, on an immense sheet of cardboard, Fabelo encodes, without admitting it, the drama of the island of the last two years. The stampede of animals away from a fire or a deluge; the decapitated general, sabre in hand, leaning on an octopus, still insisting on giving orders; the incredible large ugly bird; the ogre; the satyr boxer; a creepy crawly that pleasurably rubs its back against the mud; the whisper of flies – all encapsulate the drama of fleeing or of remaining in an oppressive place. A self portrait of Fabelo as a monster abandoning with fear the margins of his own picture gives us a hint as to the conflict in the life and work of the painter.

Of course, Fabelo’s calibre is encyclopaedic. His drama belongs to everyone and isn’t confined to the cartography of Cuba or of Cubans. Neither are Goya’s uniforms, swords, canon fire and vermin limited only to the Napoleonic era, all of which ask whether there isn’t anyone that can let them loose. Between both painters gravitate two centuries, annulled by the same sensibility. It’s probable that exile, memory and death, which have always pursued Fabelo, will catch up with him finally in Europe. It’s the price of immortality.

One of the triptych: ‘Discurso de las tres moscas’ [Speech of the Three Flies], oil on canvas, from 2013. (14ymedio)

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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Thanks to Cuban Ingenuity, the Regime Is Losing Control of Dollar Transactions

Some companies are setting up payment systems to facilitate money transfers that circumvent Cuban banks. (EFE/Lenin Nolly/File)

14ymedio, Havana, 23 June 2023 — Javier operates a food service business in Central Havana serving both tourists and locals. His customers have the option of paying for his services in pesos, dollars or euros, currencies this businessman has no intention of leaving on the table. Because he has a Spanish passport, he was able to open an account at one of that country’s banks. This serves a double purpose: it allows him to move his earnings offshore and to act as an informal money transfer agency.

Any number of Cuban emigrés living in Spain are familiar with the services Javier (a fictitious name) offers. The operation is simple. They deposit remittances they want to send to Cuban family members into his account along with a twelve-euro “commission.” On the other side of the Atlantic he meets the recipients at their home at a pre-arranged time. Once he receives confirmation on his cell phone that the transfer has been gone through, he turns the cash over to the emigrés’ Cuban relatives.

It’s a win for everyone involved in the transaction. Javier makes a small profit from the hard currency in his foreign bank; the relatives on the island get much-sought-after euros (or their equivalent in pesos) which are unavailable to them in Cuba; and the emigrés circumvent the Cuban banking system, a widespread desire among many in the exile community. The only loser in all this is the regime, which has no clue that money is being moved around.

Cuban creativity continues to satisfy the needs of the moment. This business is similar in part to one El Nuevo Herald described in an article on Friday, which describes how people like Javier are bypassing the island’s official financial channels. The Miami-based newspaper spoke with several of that city’s money transfer companies, which help finance the island’s private sector with remittances from Cubans living in the United States. continue reading

The setup works like this: a private business owner in Cuba submits a request through a money transfer company, which handles buying and shipping products from an account funded by deposits from family members. Once the item is delivered, the owner reimburses the company in pesos or foreign currency at its branch office in Cuba and pays it a fee for acting as intermediary

The company benefits because the process ensures it has cash on hand in Cuba to pay remittances since it is impossible to execute bank transfers from the United States due to the embargo. “From a banking compliance perspective, it is completely inappropriate,” said one Cuban customer who benefits from the practice. “But from another perspective, we are talking about the first time in recent history that the Cuban government does not have access to these dollars or to any of the monies from these operations.”

Businesspeople interviewed for this article said ideally there would be a bank specifically for the private sector but they believe that this alternative, though inadequate, is currently the best option.

Other interviewees say that moving money across the globe is very complicated because banks are very interconnected through the U.S. banking system. Unless one has foreign nationality like Javier, or is married to a foreign national, it is almost impossible to have an overseas bank account.

The Herald claims these alternative solutions are an unintended consequence of measures taken by the Trump administration. Because the U.S. does not allow remittances to be transferred through banks run by the Cuban military — the only available option on the island — many companies were forced out of the business. Other options, however, began to proliferate. The first solution relied on so-called “mules,” which had all the risks and limitations of carrying cash around. But the pandemic, along with the subsquent closure of international borders, encouraged more imaginative solutions.

Sources in the Biden administration told the Herald that it was looking very closely at what it can do to facilitate private businesses’ access to the financial system. “This is one of the main things, if not the main thing, that small Cuban businesses who want to do things well and be respected have asked us,” said an official.

The Herald published an article on Thursday that addresses the issue of new privately owned companies that are “scaling up businesses to a degree that was unimaginable just a couple of years ago.” Oniel Diaz Castellanos, founder of the Cuban consulting firm Auge, told the newspaper that the proliferation of these businesses is a paradigm shift on the island.

Though there are many in society who perceive small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) as little more than extensions of the regime and drivers of inflation, the article is more in line with the positive view offered by Cuban economist Pavel Vidal, who just a few weeks ago pointed out what he feels are many unfounded prejudices. “A segment within the ruling party does not want reform and are very happy with the seemingly widespread pessimistic view of SMEs,” he argued.

Those interviewed for the article share that point of view and believe that their prosperity is evidence that less money is flowing into the state coffers. However, the article also describes suspicions many people, including many in the opposition, still have about these new entrepreneurs because they operate outside the political arena and are limited in what they can do in regards to imports and exports, areas in which the regime still maintains a monopoly.

However, some merchants interviewed by 14ymedio are happy to discuss their ability to overcome the difficulties faced by ordinary Cubans.

“We’ve been learning which importers do everything more quickly and efficiently,” says the accountant at a small business that purchases food from overseas. “A good incentive for employees who work directly with SMEs helps a lot. Almost all the work of contacting the supplier and managing the shipping, freight and everything else is done by us. By the time [our clients] sign and stamp the import certificate, we’ve already taken care of things. All they need to do is validate it”.

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Victims of Crimes Prefer Not To Call the Police, Three Officers Lament on Cuban Television

Raúl Cano, head of the General Directorate of Criminal Investigation, Manuel Valdés, head of the “confrontation body” of the Department of Investigations and Hugo Morales, national head of Patrols. (Captura)

14ymedio, Havana, 27 June 2023 — The Police appeared this Monday on Cuban Television to lick their wounds from the wave of violence, robberies and murders suffered by the country and to denounce its coverage by the independent press. It is, insisted the agents in the Hacemos Cuba TV program, incidents of “isolated criminal behavior” that “the usual enemies” magnify to make the Ministry of the Interior look bad and argue that Cuba is a “failed State.”

The program, moderated by the presenter and spokesman of the regime, Humberto López, is the extension of a recent editorial on crime published in Granma, where it was admitted that the Police solve only 60% of the crimes on the Island that do not involve firearms.

Hugo Morales, national head of Patrols, and Raúl Cano, head of the General Directorate of Criminal Investigation, provided another fact: 2% of the total crimes in which a person has lost his life remain unresolved, despite the fact that they are given “superior attention.”

The unclosed files “remain on the table,” apologized Cano, who assured that the “continuity of investigation is permanent” in each of the cases – he did not specify how many – “until it is possible to give an answer to the relatives of the victims.” In addition, they added the data that Granma had provided days before: 10% of crimes involving a firearm also remain unsolved.

None of these numbers worries the officials too much, whose real concern, they said, is that Cuba’s reputation in terms of citizen security is maintained. According to the State media, the independent press intends to “sow panic” in the population and establish a “parallel world.” To exemplify the “manipulation” of reality, they cited three alleged crimes disseminated on social networks: the assault “at gunpoint” of a bus on route 436 in Havana, the theft of cell phones and clothes in the pediatric ward of Güines (Mayabeque) and the kidnapping of a child in Havana.

“None of these facts are true,” said Morales, who did not allude, however, to the dozens of crimes reported by the independent media with abundant documentation and testimonies. continue reading

The Police are “the first to arrive on the scene” where a crime is committed, the agent guaranteed, and after “verifying the real existence of the facts, they guide the victims on how to preserve the site.” Then, he says, the “rest of the systems” are contacted, such as forensics, Public Health and State Security.

Morales explained that the Ministry of the Interior is working on the “neutralization of the criminal potential” of the Island and that it intends to strengthen surveillance on the roads. In addition, it will not fail to promote “alliance” with the informers assigned by the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution to ensure “the control of people who are prone to commit criminal acts.”

For his part, Cano regretted the reluctance of the population to contact the Police. “If someone is robbed and doesn’t report it because he thinks that there will be no response, he is depriving law enforcement agencies of knowing the perpetrators of those crimes better.”

He stated that if what prevents the making of complaints is fear, the Police have “ways” to maintain the protection of “collaborators” who help dismantle “criminal chains.” “It is an ethical principle to preserve the identity of people and protect them, even with guarantees before the law, when they provide information that is useful in the investigative processes,” Manuel Valdés, head of the “Confrontation Body” of the Technical Department of Investigations, said in his speech.

Valdés was alarmed by the “new ways of operating of criminals” and the increase in judicial processes – almost twice as much now as in past years, he said without specifying the data – to which Cano replied by noting that the Police had “scientific knowledge, preparation, dedication and the incentive of creativity in the investigation.” The key, he said, is to develop criminology and “avoid concentrations of criminal acts.”

Even so, he warned, “it is possible that results are not always achieved.” For the rest of the program, the officers spoke about citizen security on the Island, where there is no need to wear, they celebrated, “bulletproof vests or protective backpacks.” “You can’t talk about insecurity in a country where a boy can play in a park without fear of being kidnapped or where you don’t have to hide a child to protect him from a shooting in the middle of a residential area,” they said, in a veiled allusion to the United States.

We must not forget the vocation of the Cuban Police, the agents emphasized, to which Fidel Castro attributed the condition of being “the best in the world, the most organized, the most prepared and also the most human.”

According to the official press, the agents have carried out 11,500 actions to prevent and confront crime so far this year, and their work has resulted in the arrest of more than 12,000 people. Although Hacemos Cuba dodged the obvious conclusion throughout the program and none of the agents dared to rattle the cage, the data – even incomplete – do not lie: as long as the crisis lasts, the escalation of violence is unstoppable.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuba: In Search of the Lost Tourist

Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, June 27, 2023 — Nobody understands how it is still possible that some leaders of the Ministry of Tourism of Cuba, at this point in history, continue to believe that the recovery of the sector on the Island will happen “through their efforts.” It is a way, like any other, of denying reality and imposing political ideology on rationality and economic efficiency. Tourism will only come out of the hole it is in if a solid and powerful private sector directs it at the national level.
If this is not understood and the arguments are not convincing, the necessary recovery of tourism will not occur in the short or medium term, no matter how much the communist leaders believe what the “experts” say.

Specifically, 70 journalists from 10 countries specialized in tourism, spent a week in Havana “with all expenses paid by the government.” What are these guests going to say, entertained in luxury by those who want to hear their opinion? Their assessment leaves much to be desired. Maybe we should ask the tourists who come to the Island and don’t return. That information is, without a doubt, much more useful for making decisions.

The data is eloquent. So far in 2023, Cuban tourism is still 40% below the level reached in 2019, the last normal year before the COVID-19 pandemic. Other destinations in the Caribbean have already far exceeded the records of that year, but tourism in Cuba has slowed down and does not stand out. There is something that prevents the sector from prospering. The claw of the communist state has a lot to do with it, but attention must also be paid to other issues.

For example, the Regime’s plan for tourism, which has been reported ad nauseam, hopes to close this year with 3.5 million foreign visitors, which could bring the figure closer to the level of 2019 but without reaching it. In reality, no one believes at this point in the year that the plan will be fulfilled, so all the establishments that depend on it are cutting back to avoid major losses.

And what about the state’s tourism promotion policy? It’s not enough to stop in Varadero, as the island’s main vacation hub, and in Havana, for the international tourist demand that arrives on the Island. This model worked in the 1950s. It’s true that it was interrupted between 1959 and 1990, when international tourism was reopened, but there is now a repetition of tourist destinations and centers of interest. Shouldn’t we start thinking about other kinds of attractions? continue reading

And what about hotel construction by the communist state? According to official data, Cuba already has more than 300 hotels, some with four and five stars, and 70,000 rooms distributed throughout the archipelago. But the leaders think that this is insufficient to make a real impact on the entry of travelers, so the state continues to build hotels and then transfers their management to foreign tourism companies. As all the money comes from the same place, what is invested in tourism has to be deducted from other social and infrastructure needs, and then hotel occupancy doesn’t increase beyond 16%. The disaster is total and absolute.

And what about the communist state’s reaction to technological challenges? This is even better. The leaders have discovered that “information technologies and their relationship with tourism must be strengthened.” This conclusion was reached during the XVI international seminar on journalism and tourism by the “experts” of the José Martí International Institute of Journalism in Havana. They proposed some “tourist recipes” that should give results in a relatively short period.

The conclusion was that electronic communication networks have to be extended to all hotels in the nation and other establishments that require it. The seminar talked about “tourism 4.0” in the fourth industrial revolution and about digitization. This is an academic topic, undoubtedly interesting for those countries that have experienced the previous stages of tourism 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, which in Cuba have neither been transited nor expected.

So wanting to skip those phases and go directly to tourism 4.0, where there is supposed to be “a digital traveler who uses these tools before, during and after his vacation (…) who is always connected, informed and requires fast services, along with personalized treatment,” is an absolute nonsense that can end up giving a much worse result than the current one. It can’t be rushed. When the state directs and controls an economic sector – in this case tourism – these things happen that no one can understand.

It is the same as speculating about the future of Caribbean tourism as a global tourism product, which must be prepared for a new era. The Caribbean has been successfully functioning since the 1950s and has been earned prestige on its own merit, but if you want to make a realistic diagnosis you have to forget about the Caribbean as a homogeneous space and verify that there are many Caribbeans, and in that variety is the success of the destination that other areas of the world do not have. The problem, in particular, is how to place Cuba in the context of the successful tourism of the Caribbean, and the conclusion is that it’s not easy.

For example, the real estate sector, which is absent in Cuba, has been one of the strengths of the Caribbean destination that attracts loyal tourists and stable residents, who generate a very solid and effective demand. In fact, the sun and beach as a basic element of the offer is more than surpassed, and no country in the area bets only on that combination. Those who come late, as happens in Cuba, should think of other more sustainable and lasting proposals. But this is what happens when the state directs and controls a sector. Its priority is not profitability and business continuity but to fill the coffers with foreign currency and then allocate it later to unproductive and inefficient activities. And that vicious circle has to be broken so that tourism means something real for Cuba.

State leaders of tourism policy always have the possibility to evade their responsibilities, which are many, and they use the easy argument that the problems of the sector on the Island are due to eternal difficulties: inflation, international trade situations and of course, naturally, the pressures of the United States against Cuba, precisely in economic matters. But in reality, all that affects other countries that have had great success in the recovery of the tourism sector. By the way, in all these countries, the state has no participation, nor does it direct or control tourism.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Tragic Week in Cuba, With the Third Feminist Murder in Five Days Confirmed

Nelbys Leyva, 37 years old, had a daughter. (Facebook)

14ymedio/EFE, Havana, 23 June 2023 — This Thursday, the Cuban independent feminist platforms Alas Tensas and Yo Sí Te Creo raised to 45 the total number of femicides verified so far this year in the country, with the confirmation of a new sexist murder.

The victim was Nelbys Leyva, 37, with a daughter, who allegedly died at the hands of her ex-partner on June 16 in Guanabacoa (west).

The formal complaint comes just one day after both groups confirmed two other victims of sexist violence in Cuba and four days after they registered two other femicides, in one of the most tragic weeks of the year.

So far in 2023, the total number of femicides verified in 2022 (34) has already been exceeded in Cuba, according to the records of the activists and collated by 14ymedio and EFE (in the absence of official public statistics).

In addition, the collectives have counted 163 sexist murders in Cuba since mid-2019, when they began to register them.

The activists called on the Cuban government to declare a “state of emergency” for “gender violence.”

The work of independent feminist collectives and its dissemination in the unofficial media has contributed to putting the focus on the cases of sexist murders and the disappearances of Cubans in recent years. continue reading

These groups also advocate a comprehensive law against gender violence and the implementation of protocols to prevent these events, as well as the creation of shelters and rescue systems for women and their children who are in danger.

Last April, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel assured that there would be “zero tolerance” of sexist violence.

The official Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) gave a presentation at the beginning of June to the Cuban Observatory on Gender Equality, which includes statistics of “women who have been victims of intentional homicide as a result of gender violence in the last 12 months.” However, the data are not clear, based on convictions corresponding to the year.

The Supreme People’s Court reported in mid-May that in 2022 there were 18 convictions for sexist murders, all with penalties above 25 years in prison. However, it did not indicate when they occurred or detail the number of cases investigated that year.

The announcement was published after the court itself confirmed the sentence of life imprisonment for two men previously convicted of sexist violence.

These are the first sentences against perpetrators of femicides for the crime of murder, given that the crime of gender violence does not exist on the Island. They were made public in 2023 and correspond to cases filed in 2022.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Cuban Government’s Pace To Rebuild the Houses Destroyed by Hurricane Ian: 13 Percent in Six Months

The Cuban Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero, on the left, during this Thursday’s meeting at the Palace of the Revolution in Havana. (Cubadebate)

14ymedio, Madrid, 23 June 2023 — Nine months after the passage of Hurricane Ian through Cuba, 70% of the homes destroyed in Pinar del Río are still not built. That was the central theme of this Thursday’s meeting at the Palace of the Revolution led by the Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz. They also discussed the effects on the houses in Camagüey, Las Tunas, Granma, Holguín and Santiago de Cuba after the intense rains of two weeks ago.

If you take into account that in December of last year, 83% of families were affected in Pinar del Río, it means that in six months only 13% of the cases have been solved.

“It is inconceivable that we have a material resource and it is not in place,” said the official press, referring to the “constant dissatisfaction of the people with the limited advance of the pace of the recovery of the housing fund.”

Although the article published jointly by Granma and Cubadebate describe a “deep analysis” that “left no gaps for self-indulgent expressions” at the government meeting, the title accounts for the impotence of the State to solve the problem: “We have to find the solutions together.”

Marrero expressed himself again in voluntarist terms, saying that it is necessary to “trace a different strategy to accelerate the recovery, which isn’t going at the pace demanded by the population.” continue reading

Without detailing what that different strategy would be, the prime minister continued in the same tone: “We cannot leave it to spontaneity; we have to control; we have to conduct this process and the search for solutions until we finish.”

Marrero did not specify whether or not the theft of material had occurred but declared: “In all these affected provinces, we must apply the established laws to whoever is caught diverting resources.”

He also acknowledged that “there is a lack of attention, of visiting people, getting inside their homes,” because “it is demonstrated on the ground that things can be done, despite this cruel blockade we are experiencing,” referring, as usual, to the United States embargo.

Among so much vagueness, he gave some discouraging data on the “compliance” of the housing plan for the month of May: only 13% of the subsidy program has been completed and 9% of the eradication of dirt floors.

What is affecting the completion of the homes, says the prime minister, is “the lack of electric cable and carpentry.”

Hurricane Ian, which passed through western Cuba at the end of last September, left the province of Pinar del Río as a “disaster zone.” The tobacco industry, the main one in the province, suffered, in the words of the Government itself, “the biggest blow in its history,” and more than one hundred thousand homes suffered significant damage.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuban Filmmakers Meet To Express Their Disagreements With the Cultural Authorities

The meeting took place at the Chaplin cinema in the Cuban capital. (Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers)

14ymedio, Havana, 24 June 2023 — More than a hundred Cuban filmmakers expressed their disagreement with the authorities about the decisions made with a documentary about the Argentine singer Fito Páez and his relationship with the Island. The creators, grouped in the Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers — which includes the prestigious director Fernando Pérez and the actor Jorge Perugorría — held a meeting this Friday with leaders of the Ministry of Culture and the Communist Party to face the controversy unleashed in mid-June.

The controversy gained strength when a state television program broadcast the documentary Fito’s Havana, directed by Juan Pin Vilar, without his permission. Faced with that fact, an initial group of 58 creators criticized the cultural authorities for violating “ethical principles again and again.” The list has been increased to 600 signatories of the manifesto.

“This meeting was not as extensive as the one that took place on November 27, 2020, where there were exponents of all artistic disciplines. It was something more like a guild of filmmakers,” director Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez Yong, one of the participants in the discussion, explained to 14ymedio. “I think that even so, the possibility of working together with many of the problems that affect us was raised.”

The meeting was moderated by Ramón Samada, president of the official Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC). Present, on behalf of the Government, were Deputy Prime Minister Inés María Chapman; the head of the Ideological Department of the Party, Rogelio Polanco; the Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso; the president of the Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC), Luis Morlote, and the leader of the Hermanos Saíz Association, Yasel Toledo.

According to Rodríguez, logistical problems that depend on the administration of the State were discussed, but also ideological and political issues. “Everything will depend, too, on us (the filmmakers) managing to organize ourselves,” he said. continue reading

“The meeting was first supposed to take place on the ninth floor of the ICAIC, but then the Assembly of Filmmakers asked that it be held in a more open place. That’s why the Chaplin was chosen.”

According to Rodríguez, several creators didn’t attend because they didn’t find out and others because they “don’t trust that type of meeting.” Exiled filmmakers such as Carlos Lechuga and Pavel Giroud were asked to “find a way to attend through digital channels,” says the filmmaker.

“Among the names mentioned was that of Lechuga. What happened to the movie Vicenta B, more than a censorship of the work, was a punishment to the director. There was also talk of other filmmakers who are making movies outside of Cuba, but who are part of Cuban cinema. They have to be part of the discussions,” he said.

According to the EFE agency, Chapman said during the conversation that “there is a willingness to dialogue and work as a team to achieve concrete results in the face of all the demands expressed.”

For its part, a statement from the Ministry of Culture pointed out that “the approaches of the artists deserved the greatest attention of the leaders of the institutions. The artists listened carefully to the arguments of the representatives of the institutions and expressed their opinions in total freedom,” according to the text.

It is not the first time that there has been a confrontation between the artistic sector and the Cuban government in recent years. On November 27, 2020, hundreds of people staged a sit-in before the Ministry of Culture to protest the arrest of the members of the San Isidro Movement, including the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who remains in prison.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Roundtable TV Program Gives Cubans an Accelerated Course on Basic Capitalism

Archive image of a worker at the Empresa Azucarera de Ciego de Ávila. (Invasor)

14ymedio, Madrid, 22 June 2023 — The Cubans who tuned in to state television last night to watch the Roundtable program were able to listen to a revision of all the socialist economic policies that Cuba has followed in the last 65 years. The discussion was not so surprising, since citizens are seeing for themselves the reconversion of the Island’s system towards a capitalism of oligarchies, as well as the public recognition that what has been done for decades does not work.

Professor Ileana Díaz Fernández, invited this Wednesday to the program to talk about state companies, put on the table concepts until recently almost entirely prohibited: the generation of wealth, layoffs, free wages, bankruptcy, debureaucratization and even the harmful effects of capped prices.

“The mechanism that exists in the country is that when there’s a problem you have to handle it. And when you have to be handling every problem until it’s resolved, another one comes along,” she began. She went on to explain that the economy is distorted, especially the micro enterprises, and she blamed their problems on price controls.

“When you begin administratively to say you can’t raise salaries here and you have to lower them there, and you begin to establish a set of elements, salary scales or whatever, you begin to interrupt the logical and normal process that must be maintained to have a virtuous circle for the company,” she argued. The specialist, who believes that it is the businessman who should make the decisions, enunciated what until now was anathema.

“We don’t have to be afraid of the market (…) You have to access the market, and the market begins to see signs: if you have the money to access the market, you will be able to buy into the market; if you don’t have the money, you will not be able to enter. If a company is more efficient, it will have better conditions for that access,” she added. continue reading

Without departing from the path she had taken, she continued to talk about the relative freedom of wages. “What if I want to increase the salary of my workers? If we’re afraid of that, what will happen?” she said, acknowledging, however, that this situation has limits, due to the resulting increase in prices. Díaz Fernández then continued with another topic that has been such a taboo in Cuba that there are special concepts for workers who are dismissed, calling them “interrupted,” or in the “process of availabiliy.”

“The businessman also has to make decisions about whether he has enough staff, and of course he has to protect that staff, no one can deny that,” she argued. “He has to get the company to create wealth, with a higher percentage of profitability. Why? Because to the extent that he creates wealth, he not only meets the needs of the population but also those of the State, since he will pay more taxes and make greater contributions to the State budget,” she said.

According to this same logic, she considered that it is perfectly admissible for a company to disappear. “Can you go bankrupt? Yes, because some companies are born and others die. In human life it happens and in companies the same,” she concluded.

In the midst of all this ideological introduction to capitalism, the professor finally explained a practical measure that the future Law of Businesses — the reason for the issue to be addressed in the program — will introduce, which is the classification of them into three types.

The regulation will provide for a first group, composed of about a thousand companies with autonomy. “The Constitution of the Republic says that the State company is autonomous and in reality it is not completely autonomous, because many times it has to wait for countless authorizations for the management and search for markets, although it will have to yield results,” she added.

Another type will be the subsidized businesses, fundamentally those that are linked to the ’basic consumer basket’ [rationed goods]. Finally there are the monopolies, strategic sectors that are especially dedicated to supplies such as water, electricity, gas and fuels, among others.

Díaz Fernández wanted to make it clear that the changes will be gradual and that necessary markets will first have to be created, including inputs, labor, and especially foreign exchange. This lowered the expectations of the viewers, but the discursive change was noteworthy. “Changing the rules of the game is imminent, because a macroeconomic stabilization program won’t work if we don’t have a program of structural transformation of the economy,” she emphasized.

Her speech was preceded by that of Johana Odriozola Guitart, Deputy Minister of Economy and Planning, who spoke of the steps that preceded the future law, such as the creation of the SMEs and the transition to a less administrative and more financial economy, and she presented some data about the State sector, the protagonist of the night.

Currently, there are 2,417 State enterprises, of which 1,872 are “traditional” and the rest are newly created: State SMEs (116) and subsidiary companies (159). The deputy minister said that State companies contribute 92% of sales, 75% of exports and 87% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), in addition to employing 1,431,000 workers (compared to the 200,000 of private ones).

The disproportion, generated by decades of exclusivity, does not make them more important, defended Odriozola Guitart, but it does explain that it is urgent to make decisions, because of the weight they pose in the national economy.

Surprisingly, the situation in terms of losses has improved in the last two years, since there are 278 companies with losses, compared to 500 in 2021. In any case, she indicated that in 309 entities the profitability on net sales is less than 2 cents. “They are not at a loss but they really exist in a miraculous static state and are very susceptible to any increase in costs.”

The Round Table was also attended by the director of Aica Laboratories, belonging to BioCubaFarma, Antonio Vallín García, who spoke at length about the difficulties of working at the international level. He praised some of the measures taken to date and called for more progress, including the creation of professional regulatory entities, instead of ministerial ones. “I think the first thing we have to do is deregulate,” he said.

In this context, the ministry plans to launch the new law this year, and although the deputy minister pointed out that it will not be enough, yesterday’s session made it clear that the language, at least, is moving ahead.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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‘Soon, Polyclinics in Cuba Will Have To Be Closed Due to Lack of Personnel’

“The surgical residents have not received the necessary training and are already are already working in the operating room Having graduated these young people is a very risky fraud.” (Arnaldo Milián Clinical-Surgical Provincial Hospital)

14ymedio, Havana, 23 June 2023 — Abuse, mass exodus and a slave salary. These three elements encrypt the drama that, every day, decreases the number of medical specialists in Cuba. The loss of high-level professionals in all spheres is one of the dimensions of the labor crisis in Cuba, a sector also affected by aging.

Added to this is the little disposition that young people seem to have for the toughest specialties, according to a doctor from the William Soler hospital, in the Havana municipality of Boyeros, speaking to 14ymedio, who prefers not to be identified. “Nobody wants to be a clinician, a pediatrician, and even less a gynecologist. It’s as if they were ’anemic’ professions today,” he laments.

Two months ago, the doctor continues, 12 young pediatric residents began working at Soler. After several weeks, eight of them deserted in one fell swoop. “They couldn’t stand the pressure,” he said. “In another hospital in Havana, they have just closed the intensive care service because, simply, there are no staff.”

Massive abandonment – especially by young graduates – is even more frequent in polyclinics, where many specialists have also had to assume the tasks inherent to general practitioners.

“Soon, as the crisis continues to worsen, gynecological and pediatric hospitals will have to be closed. Pediatricians, dentists and gynecologists are not being trained in the necessary proportions,” he says. However, what is most alarming is the increasingly frequent tendency to place residents who do not have sufficient preparation to assist the surgeon during a procedure in operating rooms – which also function badly. continue reading

“It also happens that surgical residents have not received the necessary training and are already working in the operating room. And this is a fraud: how are you going to graduate a clinical surgeon who does not know how to operate!” the doctor says, scandalized.

This newspaper has also known of the case of a young man recently graduated who is in the first year of an obstetrics specialty in Camagüey. He has just requested a license that, he admits, will soon become a leave of absence: he has already bought the tickets to emigrate to Spain with his wife, a Cuban with Spanish nationality whose parents have already left to “prepare the ground.”

“Both obstetrics and gynecology are in crisis,” he says. “Specialists used to be sent in ’normal’ times to oversight duty every three days. Now the conditions are unbearable: the lack of staff means that a specialist sometimes spend 48 to 72 hours without being able to leave the hospital. There is no one to replace you.”

Last February, the AFP agency published a report in which it attributed the labor debacle on the Island to the unstoppable exodus of professionals. The “route of the volcanoes,” which allowed Cubans leaving through Nicaragua to cross Central America to the US border, was a black hole that absorbed a large part of Cuban working people. Despite the restrictive measures taken in 2022 by Washington, the stampede towards the United States has not stopped.

The conclusion of the report was devastating: theoretically, in Cuba there are plenty of jobs, but nobody wants to work in the deplorable conditions established by the regime’s economy. According to the data provided to the international press, the majority of Cuban emigrants are between 19 and 49 years old, in addition to being highly educated.

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Man Dies After a Building Wall Collapses in Havana

The place where the building collapsed in the Luyanó neighborhood, in the Diez de Octubre municipality. (Facebook/Lilly Fonseca)

14ymedio, Havana, 25 June 2023 — One man died and another was injured on Friday by the partial collapse of a building in a construction zone in the Luyanó neighborhood, in the Diez de Octubre municipality. Although there is no official version of the accident, the details published on social networks indicate that both workers were left under the rubble with serious injuries and ultimately one of them died.

In the Facebook group “Solo gente de Luyanó”, Internet user Lilly Fonseca shared photographs of the collapse where the rubble of the old buildings can be seen, which are being demolished to build new homes. According to her version, when the wall collapsed, the slab where the two workers were, whose identities have not been provided, also collapsed.

A nurse who went to the construction zone explained that they tried to revive the worker, but it was impossible due to the severity of his injuries. The medic pointed out that the two men did not have personal protective equipment, so they were more prone to fractures.

“Great care must be taken in the streets of Havana and also in old buildings, like this one. Also, first, an architect or engineer has to go so they can asses the conditions of the architecture,” Fonseca wrote in your post.

The Luyanó neighborhood is one of those with the most deteriorated housing stock in Havana, due to the age of its buildings, the little maintenance they have received and the effects of the tornado that affected the area in January 2019. Its location, outside the tourist perimeter of the Cuban capital, has aggravated the lack of investment in streets and homes.

Building collapses are constant in Cuba due to the lack of maintenance of the oldest infrastructures, which are more vulnerable during the winter due to the accumulation of humidity. Just a month ago on San Miguel street, between Campanario and Manrique streets, in Centro Habana, a residential building collapsed and left a mother and her one-year-old son with injuries. continue reading

Last March, the residents of Zapata street, between Infanta and Basarrate, in Havana, denounced that a facade of an old building threatened passers-by who passed through the area. The infrastructure was barely supported by makeshift sticks, a mockery for the inhabitants of the area who have asked the authorities to demolish it.

The risk of buildings is not only in Havana; in recent months deaths have also been reported in the collapse in other provinces. In February, a man died when a piece of the facade of a building in Camagüey fell on him. Only a month earlier, three high school students were hospitalized in an emergency in Sancti Spíritus because a pieces of a wall mural fell on them while they were walking.

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