Juan Diego Rodríguez – Translating Cuba

El Che Now Has Someone Who Overshadows Him

Vigils for El Taiger overshadow the official tribute to Che Guevara on the 57th anniversary of his death

Whether it was the loose chain or a puncture, it is not known: the fact is that the Heroic Guerrilla brought little luck to the journey / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez and Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 8 October 2024 — The pedicab travels through the streets of Havana with more Castro talismans than a May Day parade. It is of little use. The weight of the passengers, who are putting their backs against a banner of the 26th of July, plus that of the driver – the architect of the revolutionary float – soon causes the vehicle to collapse. To diagnose the damage, the tricycle makes a forced landing next to the curb.

Whether it was the loose chain or a puncture, no one knows: the fact is that the Heroic Guerrilla brought little luck to the journey. Five red flags with the face of Che flutter above the roof while, in a bad mood, the driver lowers his head to the chassis. His two customers do not flinch. They paid for the trip, not to show solidarity with the proletariat.

Guevara’s nickname, written over and over again in dubious handwriting on the bicycle taxi, makes it seem at times like a tribute to the cha-cha-chá. The driver, in fact, moves from one side to the other trying to detect the fault, but the carcass remains motionless. Two colorful handkerchiefs, on the port and starboard sides, complete the message: they represent the guapería [swagger], another “revolutionary” value that Miguel Díaz-Canel himself has praised. “I love Cuba” is the final slogan, an affection that the scene makes it more than difficult to share.

“Let’s go,” the driver finally says, and pedals off. Above his head, another “saint’s picture”: the umpteenth reproduction of Korda’s portrait of Che, which acts as a figurehead on the bicycle taxi.

One of the ’dumpster divers’ who frequent the Key West garbage dumps, wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt / 14ymedio

On October 8, along with the usual, tasteless tributes that the official press pays to the Argentinean who died in 1967, the most unusual characters are wearing Che Guevara T-shirts. This is the case of one of the dumpster divers who frequents the garbage dumps in Key West. One must be a “heroic guerrilla” to, like the old man is doing now, rummage through the garbage in search of food.

In his mind there is no cause-effect relationship between the regime that Guevara helped to establish and his misery. Like many other “faithful” people, he thinks that if Cuba is full of piled up garbage everywhere it is not because of Che or Fidel, but because of more abstract causes: the ‘blockade’, the situation or the circumstances. With Guevara’s face on his chest, the beggar kneels in the trash to earn his lunch: at least on the symbolic level, both faces see the same rot.

A Lada from Prensa Latina, the agency with which Che dreamed of bringing his and Castro’s “truth” to the entire continent / 14ymedio

Not far from there, another vehicle – a Lada, also red from the hood to the windshield – is fighting paralysis and breakdowns. It is a Prensa Latina car, the agency through which Che dreamed of bringing the truth, his and Castro’s, to the entire continent. Leaning in through the front door, in shorts, with a cigarette in his mouth and his belly visible, the driver – together with a mechanic and another passenger – pushes the Lada.

In Havana on October 8, where there is no shortage of scenes like these, Fidel’s words about Guevara in 1987 – which are now being retweeted by dozens of leaders, including Díaz-Canel – sound ironic: “If a paradigm is needed, if a model is needed, if an example to imitate is needed to reach such lofty goals, men like Che are essential.” But reality does not promise anything. The “initiation” of a small group of children, the ‘pioneers’ who received their blue scarves on Tuesday, contrasts with the lively vigils for the health of El Taiger, who is dying after being shot in Miami.

The “initiation” of a a small group of children, the ‘pioneers’ who received their scarves this Tuesday, contrasts with the lively vigils for the health of El Taiger / 14ymedio

Cubans do not aspire to be like Che, but rather like the repartero, the reggaeton singer. Although the official position has been to condemn the attack on El Taiger, the author of Washypupa and Me quemaste, many leaders have regretted that young people do not pay homage with the same fervor to the guerrilla or to the victims of the attack on Cubana flight 455, coming from Barbados, on October 6, 1976.

But these are no longer the days of “Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che.” Now we have the words of El Taiger, whose lyrics – and who would have repeated them to the regime – are not lacking in lucidity: “Your story is badly told / And nobody believes you.”

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One of the Most Emblematic Sections of Havana’s Malecon Forced to Close Due to ‘Structural Damages’

The authorities did not report a date for the reopening of the section that goes from B to C street.

This morning, according to ’14ymedio’, several traffic police were guarding the forbidden area, but no significant damage was noted in the visible structure of the Malecón / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodriguez, Havana, 29 September 2024 — With several barriers to divert traffic, a section of Havana’s iconic Malecón has been closed since Saturday. According to a post on social media from the capital’s government, the sea intrusion caused by Hurricane Helene “caused structural damage to the road,” leaving the section from B to C street in need to repairs.

The area that poses a “danger to vehicle traffic” and where “total closure measures” have been applied is located in El Vedado, in the municipality of Plaza de la Revolución. The authorities did not offer a date for the reopening of the section and declared that it will be closed “until the work is completed.”

This morning, according to 14ymedio, several traffic police were guarding the forbidden area, but no significant damage was visible to the Malecón structure. Aside from a crack in the sidewalk that borders it, the wall seemed to be in the same state as always, eaten away by the sea and salt. continue reading

Beyond a crack in the sidewalk that borders it, the wall seemed to be in the same state as always, eaten away by the sea and saltpeter / 14ymedio

Located opposite the luxurious Grand Aston hotel, the closed section belongs to one of the most tourist-centric areas of the capital, where old and refurbished Chevrolets drive around. The area is, curiously, one of those that suffers the most flooding and sea intrusion every time there is a storm.

Nearby is the Girón building, a grey mass built in 1967 whose stairs are now a real danger for residents. The cement slabs intended to prevent people from falling have gradually come loose and the residents themselves have replaced them with pieces of railings or sheets of zinc.

In recent decades, the Malecón has undergone several repairs. One of a major nature was carried out at the beginning of the century by the government with the help of Spain, in which 14 blocks of the seafront were restored and the project even received an award at the 2nd Havana Architecture Biennial in 1999. Later, other works were carried out in 2016, 2020 and 2021, but humidity and the sea cause the area to deteriorate rapidly without the authorities being able to keep up with the maintenance.

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The passage of Hurricane Helene also caused the closure of the road that goes from La Cabaña to the city, through the tunnel under Havana Bay. According to Minister of Transport Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila, the rains flooded the road and the drainage system, due to a blockage, was not working.

Earlier this year, the tunnel remained closed for several days after authorities announced that maintenance work would be carried out. However, the repairs did not last long and Rodríguez Dávila soon explained that they had finished 48 hours earlier. During a tour of the road, 14ymedio confirmed that the promised repairs had been nothing more than a little cement and paint on the most damaged sections of one side of the tunnel.

The minister then explained that work would soon begin on the opposite lane, but just five months later, drivers in the capital have to detour again due to problems on the road.

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Rosy-cheeked, White and Generated With AI, This Is How the Official Press Presents Elderly Cubans

Every minute, in any Cuban town, an old man who is skin and bones, of indeterminate color because of the dirt, dragging his feet without strength, comes into view / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 1 October 2024 – The official newspaper Victoria, from the Isle of Youth, has joined the commemoration, this October 1, of the International Day of the Elderly; that is, the elderly and older adults. Established by the United Nations in 1990, the date aims, in the words of the organization itself, to “respond to the opportunities and challenges of the aging population in the 21st century and to promote the development of a society for all ages.”

As far as Cuba is concerned, the elderly are, in fact, a fundamental bracket of the population. Not only because there are ever more of them and will be even more – according to official data, in 2023 they totaled almost two and a half million, almost 23% of the census – but also because of their very poor living conditions.

On the frontispiece of its digital cover, it placed the slogan “International Day of the Elderly,” accompanied by two images of older people / Capture / Victoria

Every minute, in any Cuban town, an old man, all skin and bones, of indeterminate color because of the dirt, comes along, dragging his feet without strength, or in a wheelchair: the living dead, man or woman. Some sell fourth-hand trinkets; others simply ask for alms. There are those who don’t even have the strength to raise their hands and pick up the coin. They are the living image of the country today, marked by scarcity and exodus. continue reading

However, this is not the image offered by the Victoria newspaper, which does not even dedicate a written text to the subject. Instead, on the frontispiece of its digital cover, it placed the slogan “International Day of the Elderly,” accompanied by two images of elderly people: one, of a couple, man and woman, hugging each other; another, the same couple, even older, hugging their grandchildren. In both, the figures are white and well-fed, with a non-tropical background, smiling serenely. Both are created by artificial intelligence. Not in vain: only in a virtual world is there a healthy and happy Cuban old person.

Some sell fourth-hand trinkets; others simply beg for alms / 14ymedio

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Cuban Students Spent Three Weeks in a ‘School in the Countryside’ Without Leaving the City and Without Books

“They made them clean and do other jobs where they don’t have people to do them”

The teachers threatened the students whose parents didn’t want them to work despite the fact that they had informed them that it was “voluntary” / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 23 September 2024 — The educational authorities of Cuba had announced that the new “school in the countryside,” with which several grades began the 2024-2025 school year on September 2, would last only 15 days, but a week before the end of September, there are still many students who are obliged to participate in the project, sold by the regime as a “link between study and work.” This is the case of Lucía, who is in eighth grade at a school in Luyanó (Havana) and who, after spending several weeks employed in different tasks, has to prepare a report in writing and present it orally, explaining everything that they did.

One of the questions she has to answer is “what is a school garden and why is it important?” despite the fact that they weren’t sent to any garden at any time. “I don’t know what there is to explain, if all they did was go to a childcare center to entertain the little kids with their cell phones,” explains Marian, Lucía’s mother. At first, she says, they made them go get lunch and snacks for the children, “but an inspector came and told them that they couldn’t do that.”

“What I think is that they rotated them where they don’t have people, to make them work,” Marian says. “That’s a way to exploit young people.” In the end, she says, “what are they going to put in the report? Lies, nothing more.” continue reading

“What are they going to put in the report? Lies, nothing else”

Micaela, a resident of the Havana neighborhood of Ayestarán, also in eighth grade, was not taken out of school “because there was no transportation or position,” says her father, Luis. Instead, she spent last week, along with her classmates, going to school at regular hours to do “cleaning and beautification work.”

Other reports collected by 14ymedio said that some students were sent to wash bottles in a private company.

Although they presented it with fanfare in the official press, the authorities did not really fully explain why they resurrected a project of such infamous memory for the Cubans who grew up in the 70s and 80s, a project whose eradication was one of the most applauded measures when Raúl Castro came to power.

The families’ presumption was the lack of school supplies. Children forced to do these “alternative” tasks have not received the books they need, three weeks after the start of the school year. On the other hand, teachers have threatened students whose parents have refused to subject them to what they consider a “vexation” and something “inappropriate for their age,” despite the fact that they had been informed that it was “voluntary.” “They tell them that it will have an impact on their grades, that they won’t look good in the ranking, and why? They themselves are the ones who have not fulfilled their obligation and have not given the children school materials.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Cafeteria Hamburgo – a State-Run ‘Microwave Oven’ to Torment Havanans

Hamburgo suffers from every possible problem that a state run cafeteria could have / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodriguez, Havana, 20 September 2024 – Going from hell to heaven – or at least to purgatory – is a question of temperature. This is well know by the habaneros who go from the state run cafeteria Hamburgo to its neighbour, Fress. At the former, customers are welcomed by a massive wave of heat; in the independent establishment the air conditioning is working and the atmosphere is pleasant. This is just one of the many differences between the two premises in Plaza de Carlos III in central Havana.

Hamburgo suffers from every possible problem that a state run cafeteria could have, but its central location and its overheated atmosphere make the ordeal of eating there even more noticeable. In the words of the waitresses – whose ill-humour is even more of a fixture than the daily menu – it’s not that the air conditioning is switched off, but that “it’s on so low that it’s more like a gasp, it’s nothing”. Customers leave the place convinced that even a gasp would be more refreshing than the actual steam that the cooling system puts out.

Fress honours its name, which sort of sounds like the English ’fresh’. The place has fallen on its feet after many ups and downs since it started out, and now it puts Hamburgo in the shade. The bright red decor in the latter contributes to the feeling of being inside a “microwave oven”, as one diner put it. continue reading

The menu’s star attraction, the hamburger, couldn’t look more different from how it appears in the marketing / 14ymedio

Up there in the corner of the ceiling, the air conditioning contributes to the noise in the cafeteria. At the tables closest to it you can hear the machine spluttering. It’s using up electricity and the idea of keeping it turned down low is supposedly to save power, but it’s pointless, that doesn’t work.

It’s clear that the air conditioning is “dragging” electricity out of the place: more than a few of the lights are blinking – an effect that gives the whole scene the feeling of a horror movie. Apart from that, there are inattentive and irritated staff, tasteless and sugarless fruit juices – “they’re diet drinks!”, jokes one customer – and the menu’s star attraction, the hamburger, couldn’t look more different from how it appears in the marketing. On the poster, the disc of ground meat is juicy and greasy; in the actual item, a squalid sheet of protein is all you get under the bread.

Hamburgo sells Parranda beer for 180 pesos and an imported one (oddly) for five pesos less. Juices and soft drinks cost between 90 and 100; the Super Hamburger – pork and beef, ham and vegetables – costs 550. Cheaper ones cost between 275 and 300 pesos. Ham is often unavailable.

The bill for two people can reach up to 1,500 pesos, but in Cuba no one is startled any more by inflation, which – unlike the hamburger – is solid and you feel it in your stomach. Sweating and fed up with it all, the customers take their last bites of Hamburgo’s star attraction and leave. Nearby there’s a perfume shop, where it’s the air conditioning, at midday, that attracts more customers than the eau de cologne.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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La Chocolatera, an Oasis of Luxury in Cuba, Alongside Poverty and Scarcity

La Chocolatera shop, at the entrance to the Havana Club, in the municipality of Playa / Facebook/ La Chocolatera

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez/Olea Gallardo, Havana, 14 September 2024 — Entering La Chocolatera is a pleasure for all the senses. The place, situated at the Havana Club in the municipality of Playa, is small but clean, illuminated, stocked and perfectly air-conditioned. The strong odor – a sour vanilla – of chocolates and sweets seeps into the brain. The experience is, in short, delicious, and, therefore, very unusual in an increasingly depressed Cuba.

Not many Cubans can afford it, and one of the things that attracts the most attention to the establishment is precisely the number of employees that work there – half a dozen – for so few customers. Of course, they are very friendly, impeccably uniformed, and they serve the merchandise with fine latex gloves. “Look at all that, wow,” agrees Ana María, who visited La Chocolatera a few days ago to buy bonbons for her daughter, who just became a mother, after seeing the store’s ad on social networks. “This place is very expensive, but the occasion deserves it. It’s not every day that I become a grandmother!” she confides to 14ymedio.

Each piece of chocolate, for example, depending on the flavor and shape, ranges between 150 and 200 pesos and can be solid or filled with cream or liquor. “But there are other specialties that cost more,” reports Ana María. “There are some very nice boxes, one of 35 pieces at 8,000 pesos and others of 50 at 9,000. Too bad I couldn’t spend that much, because they are exquisite!” continue reading

The establishment also offers other items, such as stuffed animals, sweet and savory preserves and Spanish sparkling wine / 14ymedio

According to one of the workers, the bonbons and chocolate, of their own brand, D’Carlie, are made by them, while the sweets – cheesecakes, brownies, cinnamon rolls, cheese snacks, fruit drops, nougats – are made on external premises, and, if at all, only then are they covered with cocoa and decorated. The establishment also offers other items, such as stuffed animals (at 7,000 and 8,000 pesos), sweet and savory preserves and Catalan sparkling wine.

Everything is luxury in La Chocolatera, starting with the location itself, at the very door of the Havana Club, next to the complex’s checkpoint. The exclusive facility, founded in the 1920s with the name of Havana Country Club, has a cafeteria, golf course, tennis courts, swimming pools and even stables for the equestrian trails. It was expropriated after the triumph of the Revolution and, having gone through better and worse times, is now intended for housing and the recreation of senior officials, diplomats and foreign businessmen.

Due to proximity and economic capacity, the neighbors themselves are the natural clientele, although the company offers online sales and home delivery on its Facebook page. Not only is it prohibitive to buy in this shop for the vast majority of Cubans, but it’s also expensive to get there. “Just paying for a taxi, the bill shoots up,” laments Josué, who lives in Central Havana and gives up after a private taxi driver wants to charge him 5,000 pesos. With the shortage of fuel, public transport is not an option.

Image of La Chocolatera on the ground floor of the Hotel Gran Muthu in Havana, opening soon / Facebook/La Chocolatera

For La Chocolatera, however, the word “crisis” does not seem to exist. And that is another peculiarity in a country with increasingly harsh conditions for the ever-incipient private initiative. “The company has been developing and investing for its needs,” said its owner, Carlos Luis Menéndez Jorge, in an interview with Revista Visión, in which he shows the shop in all its splendor to the camera.

The firm can even afford to advertise on official media, such as Radio Rebelde, where it sells itself as the “leading store in chocolate-derived products.” All their ads give the opening hours: every day of the week from ten in the morning to nine at night, including Sunday.

Far, very far from the crisis, La Chocolatera is, on the contrary, expanding. This same week they are offering employment for cashiers and salesclerks. No wonder. As they enthusiastically reveal on their social networks, they are about to open two more stores: one outside the capital, in the tourist enclave of Varadero, and another in the Havana municipality of Playa, as part of the luxury hotel Gran Muthu Habana – which has been announcing its opening for more than a year – at 3rd and 70th.

“We are not alone in this dream. This time we are joining forces and discussing ideas with the Palco Business Group to provide you and visitors with our line of fine Cuban handmade chocolates,” said the owner of La Chocolatera in a Facebook post.

Image of the premises of La Chocolatera in Varadero, opening soon / Facebook / La Chocolatera

Palco is one of the most powerful state conglomerates on the Island, dedicated to “integral services” for the Government and the diplomatic corps through shops, congresses, exhibitions and fairs with juicy benefits, such as the Cigar Festival, at whose last edition, by the way, La Chocolatera was present. Menéndez Jorge puts himself out there all the time, and he has ties with the regime, including as a deputy of the National Assembly, and with sports figures like Mijaín López, the hot new savior of the Island’s debacle at the Paris Olympic Games.

What is less clear, according to his account, is how his company was truly born. In an interview published by Cubalite, he says that “this passion” came from his mother, María Cristina Jorge, director of the Latin American School of Chocolate. “I was practically born in the middle of chocolate,” he says, quickly mentioning that he went through “several courses, schools, techniques, preparation and an appointment as Master Chocolatier by the Chocolate Museum of Belgium until we decided to make our own artisanal fine chocolate.”

He does not say that María Cristina Jorge, in addition to directing that educational center, was a senior state official, as head of the Cereal and Milling Plant of the Research Institute for the Food Industry. There she met the inventor of the Latin American and Caribbean School of Chocolate, Quim Capdevila.

According to a 2001 chronicle by the then correspondent in Havana of the Spanish newspaper El País, Mauricio Vicent, Capdevila, an old chocolate master and communist militant, had ended up in Havana a year earlier, after retiring and transferring the family business from the town of Vic, at the behest of his friend Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. The famous writer, who had recently published “And God Entered Havana,” Vicent writes in his piece, “sent him to see Eusebio Leal, the Havana City Historian, who guided him to where he should go.”

This is how he arrived at the Research Institute for the Food Industry, built in the late 1980s with funding from FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), with the aim of being a “regional training center in the field of food.” And there he met María Cristina Jorge, with whom he created the school.

Carlos Luis Menéndez Jorge with his mother, María Cristina Jorge, at the opening of the shop at the Havana Club, in October 2022 / Facebook / La Chocolatera

“The school’s goal is to achieve self-financing; it is not for profit,” Capdevila explained to El País, saying that the project was subsidized by the Barcelona Provincial Council and the University of Vic. The School offered conferences and training courses, not only on the Island but also in other countries, such as Mexico, and it was even supported by UNESCO.

Neither Quim Capdevila nor María Cristina Jorge has mentioned what happened to the School, but the Facebook page stopped updating in May 2020, just when the covid-19 pandemic broke out in Cuba. This newspaper has tried to communicate on the phone that appears on its social networks, but no one answers, and the number does not appear in the phone book. The institution, according to that same page, had its address in the Havana municipality of La Lisa, a short distance from where Carlos Luis Menéndez Jorge opened the first store of La Chocolatera in August 2019. With that address and with the number 2,054, it appears in the register of micro, small and medium-size enterprises, dedicated to the “production of cocoa, chocolate and other confectionery products.”

He was there until October 2022, when he moved the headquarters to the Havana Club. The rest is a dazzling success story, shamelessly celebrated on September 13, the day of the birth of Milton S. Hershey, founder of the brand of the same name. Roald Dahl, the creator of the Willy Wonka character, commemorates International Chocolate Day, although very few Cubans will have learned of the existence of La Chocolatera, a private company created by the State to satisfy the whims of a privileged few in a sea of poverty and scarcity.

Everything is luxury in La Chocolatera, starting with the location itself, at the door of the Havana Club / 14ymedio

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Ozone Therapy, a ‘Miracle Cure’ in Cuba and a ‘Tremendous Deception’ in Europe

It helps cure diabetes, rehabilitates heart attack patients and increases libido, believers say
There are 16 centers on the island and Díaz-Canel wants to “massify” their therapeutic use

Taking three or four liters is free, although they have now placed a collection dish next to the church, “to contribute a little” / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, August 13, 2024 — The line starts at seven in the morning, next to the Presbyterian temple on Reforma Street, between Santa Ana and Santa Felicia. The habaneros who get up early, however, do not come looking for the Lord – nor for the saints of both streets – but for the water that is dispensed in the church. More than blessed, it is “ozonized and purified,” and healing faculties that border on the miraculous are attributed to it.

Mercedes is one of the believers in the “properties” of ozone. “It’s good for everything, from parasites to bone problems,” she says, quoting her family doctor. For years, Mercedes has become – in her own words – an “ozone container.” She gets up early to go to the temple and guarantee “a few liters.” She drinks the water religiously and is unconditional about ozone therapy, which is available in almost any province of the Island.

“Ozone cures me of everything,” she says with fervor, like someone who invokes a healer or San Rafael, whom she does not deny either. For her, from the very Creole spell – a prayer to San Luis Beltrán for protection against the evil eye – to taping a ribbon around her waist to cure indigestion, “everything is natural medicine,” she explains, before finding her place in the line on Reforma Street.

The Presbyterian Church on Reforma Street, between Santa Ana and Santa Felicia, where water is dispensed / 14ymedio

The morning shadow of the temple does not calm the spirits. A line is a line, and when Mercedes asks* who is last in line there is already an argument in full swing. An old man, who is carrying his wheelbarrow with several gallons, shouts and waves his arms to scare away a line-breaker : “I was there before you and so was he,” he exclaims, pointing to a fellow waiter. “There are some shameless people,” he grumbles, when the intruder is already far away. continue reading

Mercedes is used to this kind of scene. In a precarious environment like Cuba’s, with almost no medicines available, the ozone water is gold. A glance at the line is enough to see the profile of most of the believers: elderly, sick, people in pain from various ailments, poor people.

Genaro, a colleague of Mercedes in the line, tells us about everything that ozone relieves: “back pain, blood pressure and circulatory problems, diabetes, asthma, and it also works on hernias.” The 67-year-old man, who goes to church armed with several so-called cucumbers – one and a half liter bottles – and a gallon, considers himself a “historical figure” when it comes to “Presbyterian water.”

For twelve or thirteen years, since the time he estimates that the service at the temple began, Genaro has been coming to get water. The fact that it is cleaner there and without strange particles, in a country where the water supply leaves much to be desired, is “medicinal” for him and his family.

Usually, two people at a time approach the two plastic faucets that dispense the water / 14ymedio

The project of the Presbyterians – one of the Christian Churches that are on good terms with the Government, which lets it do this in exchange for its loyalty to the official Council of Churches – started thanks to American missionaries. The help “of the Americans” continues: they are the ones who, every year, come to repair and maintain the filters.

“The Americans built a cistern because there was a lot of demand,” Genaro explains. “They come every so often and look it over.”

None of the believers in line – neither Genaro or Mercedes – knows very well how the filtration and ozonization system works. The “apparatus,” as they call it, is safe inside the church facilities. No one is allowed to go in to see the equipment or loiter in the area where they keep it.

When there are too many people in line – the process gets slow sometimes, says Mercedes – they allow a group to fill their bottles from a faucet inside the church, but under strict surveillance. “It’s just that the residence is there, and they recently stole some sheets from the pastor,” Genaro confesses.

Usually, two people at a time approach the two plastic faucets that dispense the liquid, with all the calm in the world. The scene is repeated in many Cuban municipalities, where churches offer this service to help alleviate the hydrological debacle, one of many on the Island.

Taking three or four liters is free, although the Presbyterians now place a collection box next to the church, “to contribute a little.” There is a line until 11 in the morning, and then the “believers” return from three to four-thirty during the week and until six on Sundays.

“At the beginning of the project, people from the polyclinic came,” says Genaro. “They ruled that the water was perfect for consumption.” The old man alludes to the Ministry of Public Health as a global authority on ozone therapy issues, one of the alternative treatments that the Government has “expanded” the most – the term comes from the State newspaper Granma – throughout the globe.

Mercedes, for example, was referred to the Diez de Octubre hospital for a cycle of therapies. “First, a specialist, whether rheumatologist, ophthalmologist, etc., has to prescribe ozone therapy after an interview. You can’t have thyroid problems. Then they determine the frequency and method: there is rectal and paravertebral, that is, injections on both sides of the vertebrae,” the woman explains.

The doses increase. The initial is four weeks, every other day. Antioxidants must be removed during treatment. Suspend or eat less guava, tea, coffee, chocolate and fish. Your libido increases,” she explains mischievously, “your immune system improves, you eliminate parasites. You can immediately notice the improvement, although there are countries that do not accept it and say that it’s useless,” she says, before finishing with a fact: “Ozone is a very old project of the Revolution, and that’s why I have given it to myself all my life.”

Mercedes is not wrong. Not a month passes before the official press publishes one or two articles on the “results and horizons” of ozone therapy in Cuba, a treatment more than discussed by specialists around the world.

At the end of last year, Miguel Díaz-Canel himself was informed about the “positive impact” of the treatment. Its therapeutic use must be “mainstreamed,” the president then decreed, guaranteeing that its results “are proven.”

However, ozone therapy falls under the jurisdiction of the department of Natural and Traditional Medicine of the ministry, whose director – in that same meeting – had little to contribute, except for commonplaces and the fact that it is considered “preventive medicine” on the Island. There are 16 ozone therapy centers in the country, and a diploma is offered to study its effects.

The benefits that Cuban Public Health officially attributes to ozone are much more than Mercedes or Genaro imagine. Díaz-Canel was convinced that, with the treatment, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue and diabetes can be faced; it rehabilitates those who have had aneurysms – no matter if it is heart or brain – and its rectal application “accelerated” the recovery of coronavirus patients in 2020. “We were very advanced,” the specialists congratulated themselves in front of Díaz-Canel.

The truth is that there is no scientific evidence that ozone – either in the “holy water,” by anal route or injected into the spine – has the high healing qualities attributed to it by the Public Health of the Island. Like the venom of blue scorpion, on which a dangerous pseudotherapeutic industry has been built, ozone therapy is one of the standards of regime medicine.

“Ozone therapy is not approved either by the European Medicines Agency or by the US Food and Drug Administration

“Ozone therapy is not approved by either the European Medicines Agency (EMA) or the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA),” Dr. Jerónimo Fernández Torrente, coordinator of the Observatory Against Pseudosciences of the Collegiate Medical Organization of Spain, clarified in 2018. “There is no credible scientific evidence that endorses the use of ozone as a type of medical therapy, much less for serious diseases such as cancer. In fact, medical reports and articles have been published on deaths of patients with this method.”

It is a “tremendous deception that we should denounce,” the doctor then said. “At the end of the day, ozone is a toxic gas; it is not harmless.”

These warnings do not discourage Genaro or Mercedes, who will return tomorrow to line up for the “holy water” of the Presbyterians. They follow the principle of Cuban domestic medicine to the letter: “What does not kill, fattens,” and – with their overflowing buckets and their immovable opinions – they continue to venerate San Ozono.

*Translator’s note: When Cubans join a line they ask “who’s last” and then, after the next person comes and they are now that person’s ’last’, they are free to wander around and can rejoin the line in ’their place’ at any time.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The ‘Chinese Costco’ Arrives in Cuba and Everything Has Ridiculous Prices

The gigantic China Import warehouse opens in Havana, for minimum purchases of 50 dollars and in national currency

Inside the gigantic warehouse, the shelves with all kinds of products multiply / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez/Olea Gallardo, Havana, 22 August 2024 — The new China Import store that opened just over a month ago at Manglar and Oquendo, very close to the Cuatro Caminos market in Havana, does not yet have many customers, but it soon will. Unlike the state shops, it offers everything, and in abundance; unlike the MSMEs or on the informal market, its prices are ridiculous.

Although the entrance sign says “wholesale selling” and offers its merchandise to retailers, it is open to the public. On one condition, however: you have to spend more than 50 dollars.

Inside the gigantic warehouse, which until a few years ago was part of the Sabatés soap factory – founded by two Spanish brothers, later sold to the multinational Procter & Gamble, nationalized after the triumph of the Revolution and, today, in ruins – the shelves are multiplying with all kinds of products, from clothing, footwear and perfumes to electronics and household items. In contrast to other large state spaces, such as those selling in freely convertible currency (MLC), let alone the dilapidated warehouses, there are few empty corners. Everything is clean and well lit.

The warehouse occupies part of the old Sabatés soap factory, very close to the Cuatro Caminos market in Centro Habana / 14ymedio

The store, the clerk told 14ymedio on Wednesday, has its prices in foreign currency and accepts national currency, “at the exchange rate of the day,” as the signs under the products say, referring to the informal rate, currently continue reading

around 320 pesos per dollar, and in no way in bills of less than 200 pesos .

They also accept electronic transfers in MLC, the employee explains, “but not today because we have connection problems.” It is not a “national private business,” she pointed out, but rather “a foreign investment business.” There were people with oriental faces around the place, presumably the owners.

"Those colognes cost me two thousand and something pesos and here they cost three dollars" / 14ymedio — “Those colognes cost me two thousand and something pesos and here they cost three dollars” / 14ymedio

Headphones, $2.00; progressive glasses, $1.00; sun glasses, $1.50; LED lights, $4.50; mobile chargers, $4; cell phone holders for vehicles, $1.80; rechargeable light bulbs for times of blackout, from $11.50; imitation perfumes, $3.00; bras and panties – on sale for having some stains – $1.00; socks, 50 cents. The buyer’s eyes are lost in the abundance of items, but not only is the minimum purchase dissuasive – the equivalent of 16,000 pesos, five times the average monthly salary – but buying wholesale is also mandatory.

Items are not sold separately but in batches that, as a rule, contain a dozen pieces. “This is for those who have a store or receive remittances,” complained a customer who visited the store for the first time, alerted by a cousin who saw the information “on the networks,” and who had to leave empty-handed. “I don’t even have 50 dollars, and I wouldn’t know where to put all that if I bought it.”

Rechargeable light bulbs, highly valued in times of blackout, were sold from 11.50 dollars / 14ymedio

However, she was amazed at the prices: “Just Imagine, these same things on the street cost three and up to five times the prices here. These colognes cost me 2,500 pesos, and here they are at three dollars [960 pesos at the informal exchange rate]. I have seen the headphones at fairs at 5,000 pesos and the sneakers that here cost 16 dollars [just over 5,000 pesos] – you can’t find them for less than 17,000 pesos out there.”

The sneakers to which this Havana resident of the El Vedado district refers have brand labels, but they are clearly Chinese imitations, like all the merchandise. “They seem to be good quality, but you buy them and after two months have to throw them away because they fall apart.”

Bras and panties sell for one dollar at China Import /14ymedio

So far, no official media has mentioned the inauguration of the store, nor are there details about its owners. Chinese wholesale businesses had already been established on the Island but only online, such as Ninhao53 and Dofimall, a digital stationery store.

“You’ll see when all the resellers of Galiano or the El Curita park find out, then it will get bad, and this will have three-block lines like when there’s chicken for sale in the bodega [ration store],” said another buyer, a thirty-year-old from Central Havana. He did take a batch of magazines, some fly swatters, light bulbs and underwear of various colors and sizes – “to distribute to the family,” he said.

“The sneakers that cost 16 dollars here can’t be found for less than 17,000 pesos out there” / 14ymedio

The young man, who has family in the US, commented mockingly: “This is a ’Chinese Costco’ but with worse quality.”

Another store that received the nickname “Costco” but “Cuban,” the Diplomarket, closed at the end of last June. Its owner, the Cuban-American Frank Cuspinera Medina, was arrested along with his wife, and their whereabouts are unknown to date. In that store, however, only payment in dollars was allowed, and there was no minimum purchase or wholesale, although they did sell Kirkland products, the “real” Costco brand.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Washing Bottles Instead of Going to Class, the Beginning of the School Year for Many Students in Havana

Child returning from school this Monday on the first day of the 2024-2025 school year / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 2 September 2024 — Not all Cuban children will start classes this Monday, when the 2024-2025 school year has been inaugurated with great fanfare. In Havana, for the next 15 days, some of them will have to work, either in cleaning, or in gardening, or even in other tasks, in a new kind of “school in the countryside,” one of Fidel Castro’s educational projects abandoned with the arrival to power of his brother Raúl, in 2008.

Tomorrow, for example, in a high school south of the capital, eighth-year students will have to go to a private cleaning-products company “to scrub bottles.” “Why does the school send some children to a private MSME and our children have to go clean for some rich people?” asked Daisy, who lives in Regla.

Daisy’s two children are in high school in the municipality of Regla, and today they began the course “incorporated” in the first destination of the “school in the countryside.” continue reading

“Why is the school sending some children to clean for a private ‘MSME’?”

The general director of Education of Havana, Karenia Marrero Arrechea, had already warned, although without giving details, last week on State TV’s Round Table program, when referring to the “change that we have to achieve in the student” to “link study and work.” “We are starting a school in a different field, where the student feels linked to tasks of impact,” she said, specifying that they would “begin” with three grades: eighth, eleventh and the first of Technical and Professional Education (ETP), in “organoponics” in the corresponding municipality and “on plaques and monuments.”

The phrase evoked by the official still causes chills in the generation of many parents who accompanied their children today on the first day of the school year, and who were sent in the eighties to the fields of tobacco, cabbage, banana, garlic, beans and coffee crops, in Pinar del Río or what are now the provinces of Artemisa and Mayabeque.

“I still have scars from that experience,” recalls María, a 45-year-old from Havana. “I had chronic conjunctivitis; they sent me to the infirmary, and the doctor left us locked up from the outside because he went to a party. They had to pass us food through the windows. I left there apparently recovered, but on the first day back in the field I realized that I couldn’t look at the areas illuminated by the sun.”

When she told the man in charge of the agricultural work what was happening to her, he thought she was lying to evade work. “I had to continue weeding in the furrows for two more weeks. When I returned home my eyes were blurry, and I could no longer look at any white or light-gray objects. I was diagnosed with advanced keratitis, an infection of the cornea. I almost lost vision in both eyes, and it still bothers me to look at any light-colored surface.”

The objective of the so-called “school in the countryside” was none other than to indoctrinate the students

The objective of the so-called “country school,”which was chronologically followed by the “school in the countryside,” was none other than to indoctrinate the students, called to become a “productive force.” Established in the seventies, the first such school was for high school students – seventh, eighth and ninth grade – who had to leave the cities to do agricultural work for a period of 45 days. Later, with the crisis, the “program” was reduced to 30 days and only for teenagers from Havana. The second program was for pre-university scholarship holders, in which a half-day was spent in study and the other half in working in the field.

Why are they now resurrecting these projects, whose eradication was precisely one of the most applauded measures of Raulism? The authorities have not explained it, nor did the teachers in the presentation this Monday, and the parents can only guess. “It seems that it’s due to the problem of school supplies, because coincidentally the children who are being sent to those jobs have not been given the materials,” says Ernesto, with suspicion. He is the father of girls in the same high school as Daisy’s children. “My oldest daughter, who is in eighth grade, doesn’t want to go. She thought it was something voluntary.”

The families are extremely upset, because they have spent a lot of money on uniforms and other school supplies, and now they being asked to supply “adequate clothes” for the work.

Moreover, the state of that school – whose name is reserved for fear of reprisals – is painful, they say. “The teachers themselves warned us that they don’t have the equipment for the computer class, that part of the classes have to be given in another secondary school, and, in addition, they don’t have tables or chairs; everything is broken or dilapidated, even Fidel’s portraits,” says Ernesto. “I myself studied here thirty years ago, and today it looks like another planet.”

Next to the dilapidated building of the Modesto Gómez Rubio school, in San Juan y Martínez, a leaning building serves precariously as a bathroom / 14ymedio

Other educational centers in the capital present the same panorama. In the José Miguel Pérez Pre-University, in the municipality of Plaza de la Revolución, they had not even bothered to give a coat of paint to the facade. The wall looked as unpainted as the gigantic flag that heads the morning assembly, and the hubbub was less than other years. It is clear, at a glance, that there is a reduction in the number of students who intend to study a career, another piece of data that the government ignores. The group of teenagers between 14 and 17 years old deployed in the courtyard had to endure the military voice of the director through the bullhorn.

Outside Havana, the situation is even worse. In San Juan and Martínez, Pinar del Río, little has changed since the passage of Hurricane Ian, which destroyed much of the municipal infrastructure two years ago. “Two years after the cyclone and nothing,” a local resident, whose children go to Modesto Gómez Rubio school, tells this newspaper. This one finally has a roof, “but no bathroom,” and it is still “without electricity, without a floor, without anything worthy of the children,” the same source continues. Next to the dilapidated school building, an outhouse leans precariously serving as a bathroom.

“These are the classrooms in which the children of the tobacco mecca are going to start their school year,” the woman says sarcastically, referring to the municipality, cradle of the most precious tobacco that, however, does not see all the capital that is collected in exports and auctions of Cuban cigars going to better classrooms for their children.

None of this is reflected in the front pages of the official press, which proclaims that “Cuba is celebrating” the return to the classrooms. In those images, there are no schools with cracks in the walls, but well painted ones; there are no malnourished students but ones who are proud and smiling, even posing for selfies taken with their cell phones.

Again, the intention to recover one of the traditional crown jewels of Castro’s propaganda is flagrant. This is clear from the words of the Minister of Education, Naima Ariatne Trujillo, who this Monday was one of the authorities who headed the main act of the beginning of the school year in Santa Clara, and who on national television emphasized the “special fact that our educational system is universal, free.”

A single glipse of realism is observed in the provincial newspapers, specifically in El Artemiseño, which uses an infographic to show the deficit of teachers – 1,845 are missing, 24.3% of the necessary total – and, above all, its main cause: emigration.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Unforgettable Journey of Two Havana Women in Search of a Beach

At almost one thirty in the afternoon, Arlena and Carolina finally get their precious sun loungers in front of the Atlántico hotel, and a menu with meals for 3,000 pesos

The rickety train arrives when there are just a few minutes left before the appointed time / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 4 August 2024 — At 1:20 in the afternoon, Arlena was putting her bag on a lounge chair on the beach at Santa María, west of Guanabo. “I’m already in place”, she exclaimed with relief, not knowing that she would still have to wait for the moment she had been looking forward to since 8:40, since she arrived at the Havana train station. It was a private beach where only hotel guests could stay. They set off again.

The Cuban authorities announced at the beginning of July the restoration of the service of this train that leads, for a modest 35 pesos price, to the beaches of the East of Havana during an unforgettable trip of an hour and a half for the scant 25 kilometers that separate the two locations.

Arlena and Carolina decided to spend their first day of vacation on the sea shore this Wednesday, although to do so they had to take a train that, from around the station between Egido and Arsenal, promised to be what it is: a trip suitable only for the most common classes. About 50 people were hanging around the platform, where the smartest ones were trying to do business, as always.

About 50 people were hanging around the platform, where the smartest people were trying to do business, as always / 14ymedio

When the two women arrived at the platform, after a long walk from Luyanó, without a taxi in sight, there was already a cake seller on a bicycle selling the cakes for 70 pesos a piece, and an inflationary peanut vendor, who had gone from charging one peso for a cone to 10. There was also a coffee stand to bravely face the morning, and cigarettes for 400 pesos, although a worker from the Railway Union was giving a warning before the continue reading

Beast arrived: drinking alcohol or smoking is strictly prohibited, under penalty of a fine of 2,000 to 5,000 pesos.

The rickety train arrived just a few minutes before the appointed time. Families with children heading to the beach and passengers heading to Guanabo, as a less recreational destination, are milling around, leaving behind the kilos of garbage that pile up next to the station.

About 50 people were hanging around the platform, where the most astute were trying to do business, as always / 14ymedio

The interior view is not that more encouraging. Looking down, you see torn seats; looking up, you see torn-off roofs in all the carriages. The hard plastic seats are uncomfortable for Carolina, who has been suffering from pain in one leg for weeks, so the two of them change carriages, and settle on the third, which has more comfortable seats. Soon after, they will no longer be able to choose.

After a stop in Guanabacoa and another in Cambute, the train is more than full and the passengers resign themselves to standing among the incessant clatter and noise that serve as a holiday soundtrack.

The cost of the ticket is 35 pesos to the beaches of eastern Havana on a trip of one and a half hours / 14ymedio

“This is going to end up like the trains in India, with people on the roof,” jokes one passenger. Although there are two policemen in the third carriage, discipline is set aside and several people smoke openly, while out the window all you can see is grass everywhere, fields of sweet potatoes and some isolated wooden huts. As Guanabo approaches, a “rare bird” is spotted: cattle.

It’s after 10:40 and the hardest part of the journey is finally over. Or so Arlene and Carolina think, as they walk through the town of Guanabo towards the west, towards the beaches.

When the beach comes into view, businesses multiply, with their escalating prices in sight / 14ymedio

When the beach comes into view, businesses multiply, with their escalating prices in sight. Mamoncillos (Spanish limes) at 100 pesos, pizzas at 170, beer and malt at 200… but the kilometers take their toll on the couple, who are looking for a beach without trash to settle down on, so they end up renting a horse-drawn carriage to smooth out the distance.

600 pesos later, when everything seemed to be going better, there was still one more problem to overcome when the horse-drawn carriage breaks down. “It’s 12 o’clock and I still haven’t placed my butt on the beach,” she laments. An hour later, they barely reached the promised beach.

The miles are taking their toll on the couple, who are looking to settle down on a beach without trash / 14ymedio

Carolina and Arlena sit on a lounge chair in front of Santa María Beach hours after leaving Havana, but their joy doesn’t last a minute, because they are in the private area and only hotel guests have access to those amenities, just like the water bikes and all the good things they see, so it’s time to pack up again and start walking.

At almost 1:30 in the afternoon, our central characters finally get their precious sun loungers in front of the Hotel Atlántico, and a menu with meals for 3,000 pesos. Two pizzas and a few beers make the long day easier. A line separates the shiny beds of the hotel guests from Carolina and Arlena’s rickety ones, who, at around 2 in the afternoon, finally take their first dip.

A line separates the shiny beds of the hotel guests from Carolina and Arlena’s rickety ones. At around 2 in the afternoon, they finally take their first dip / 14ymedio

Before 3 o’clock, they are already packing their things for the trip back to Havana. “Are you going to take the train back?” asks a neighbor lying on a sun lounger. “No way!” Carolina is indignant. And they walk away until they catch an improvised taxi that takes them to Santos Suárez.

Translated by Norma Whiting

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The Fuel Crisis in Cuba Gets Worse and the Lines Lengthen at the Hard Currency Gas Stations

“When I got to the service center I had 300 cars ahead of me”

Fuel is for sale at the Vista al Mar service center in El Vedado, but only in dollars

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 29 August 2024 — Havana seems to have returned to the worst days of the fuel crisis. Piled up and bored, since the beginning of the week the drivers wait daily for hours in line and often don’t manage to buy. On a tour by 14ymedio through several gas stations in the city, even those that charge in dollars, usually empty, had lines this Thursday.

“It’s not just today. Yesterday I went to all the service centers of El Vedado, Guanabacoa and Miramar and only found gasoline on the Puente de Hierro, near the bay tunnel,” Yoel, driver of a private Moskvitch, tells this newspaper. “Even at Infanta and San Rafael, where I always buy, there wasn’t a drop,” he says. Finding a place with fuel, as expected, is not enough: “When I got to the gas station I had 300 cars in front of me.” He left without buying.

Piled up and bored, since the beginning of the week the drivers wait for hours every day

This Thursday, Yoel took to the streets again in search of gasoline. This time the tour took him through the municipality of Plaza de la Revolución, where “not a single service center had anything.” Finally, at the Tángana, in El Vedado, the driver joined a line no less long than the previous day’s line to refuel. continue reading

“They told me that here and the 25 and G service center are the only places where they are selling gasoline, but I don’t want to risk going there and find the same number of people or more than here. It’s better to wait, and if I don’t make it today either then I’ll have to try again,” he sighs, resigned.

Cars have been in line at the Tángana in El Vedado since early morning / 14ymedio

To top it off, he says, several drivers in the line have told him that the cards to buy fuel are failing, which delays the line and makes the drivers more nervous. “Those who don’t even have Fincimex cards have to look for where to recharge, because that’s the only one that’s working now. With the others the connection fails,” he explains.

The lack of fuel is also noticeable in state transport, says Yoel. “Today I haven’t seen a state bus pass by all day,” he says.

“That station is for the privileged who can pay in dollars,” Yoel complains. “The rest, we have to endure here under rain, sun and clouds.”

A few blocks from Tángana is the Vista al Mar gas station, which has been selling fuel exclusively in dollars since last June. The place was the last in the capital to be transformed into a service center collecting “hard currency,” and, although some cars are clumped together in line – mainly almendrones – the short line is far from those that have formed in front of the neighboring premises – one to refuel and another to fill jerricans – that already go around the block.

The line at the Tángana service center goes around the block / 14ymedio

“This service is for the privileged who can pay in dollars,” complains Yoel. “The rest of us have to endure it here in rain, sun and calm.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The ‘Water Thieves’, an Invention to Supply Havana Homes

In homes where water has not come in for days, residents have started using plastic bags when they need to go to the bathroom.

The pump sucks water from the pipes through a hose / 14ymedio

Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 21 August 2024 — The trick is to insert a hose into the pipes that run through the streets and sidewalks in front of the houses. If the right place is found, in the artery through which the liquid runs, the water thief can begin the robbery. “When I hear the little noise the pumps make in the morning, I immediately know that the water has arrived. The problem is that it comes with so little force that it doesn’t manage to rise to the tanks or fill the cisterns,” says Dinorah, a resident of the Luyanó neighborhood in Diez de Octubre who spoke with 14ymedio.

On Rodríguez Street, near where the Havana woman lives, water comes infrequently and the residents have opted to “get those little gadgets” to make the most of the days when there is water. The problem says Dinorah, is that “the little water that comes in is no longer distributed equally, and while some manage to fill their reserves thanks to the turbine, others do not receive a drop,” she explains.

And to top it off, she adds, “in a country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, so whoever has a pump that pulls the most gets the most water,” she says.

Dinorah is aware that water thieves are not a modern method. “This has always been done, but now everyone steals water, even if others don’t get it,” she explains. Now, she continues, they even sell the pumps in SMSEs. “The other day my husband went to a private hardware store and there was continue reading

a man at the counter asking if the turbine they were selling could be used as a water thief,” she recalls.

’Water thieves’ are not a modern method, but now even SMSEs sell them / 14ymedio

“People mistakenly believe that the water thief produces water. It has nothing to do with it. If there are a lot of people with these pumps in a position in front of your house, your cistern will not fill up. The result is a case of every man for himself,” she reflects.

The water shortage has caused the situation in some parts of the capital to become truly scatological. “I was lucky because I left the house for a few days and I still have water in the cistern, but at my sister’s house they abandoned the toilet bowl for a plastic basket,” says Clara, another resident of Diez de Octubre.

According to the neighbor, both her family in the municipality of Nuevo Vedado and those who live closer, in Luyanó, have begun to use the typical reserve of plastic bags in Cuban homes when “nature calls them.” “What else are they going to do, if they can’t flush the toilets? Well, they put the bag in a bucket, like a toilet, and then they tie it closed and throw it into the garbage dump,” she says with a certain modesty.

Clara invited her sister and nephews to bathe at her house and asked them to bring dirty clothes to wash. “The water they have has to be saved for cooking and drinking for now,” she says, “but when my reserve runs out, we will have to see where we can get water from,” she says.

Since the Havana resident read an article in Tribuna de La Habana that described how the supply to Luyanó and other neighborhoods in the municipality was interrupted, she decided to save every drop of water she could. Some neighbors, however, do not have cisterns or even large tanks that would allow them to store water for several days.

“Two blocks from here, some neighbors caused a scandal yesterday and the director of Aguas de La Habana came and brought a tanker truck. The neighbors carried a little water with their buckets, but everyone knows that this is temporary and that if the service is not restored, we will have a hard time,” Clara analyzes.

At the moment, the lack of hygiene is getting worse and the garbage dumps are getting bigger with the new invasion of “jabitas” [little bags] and their particular smell, while the people of Havana dig in the ditches and alleys looking for a pipe to connect to their thief, in a territory that looks more and more like a Western movie every day.

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The Government’s Raids on the ‘Boteros’ Annoy the Private Taxi Drivers of Havana

Planted in key points of the city, the inspectors seek to identify the drivers who transport passengers without a permit

The shortage of oil and state transport has favored the proliferation of undocumented taxi drivers / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 22 August 2024 — In Havana, a game of hide-and-seek between private taxi drivers and inspectors has been unleashed in recent days. The former, for the most part without permission to transport passengers, flee from the authorities using all kinds of tricks. If they are stopped and don’t have a license or taxi signage, the fine can amount to 12,000 pesos; or even, in the worst case, their plate can be taken away.

Interviewed by 14ymedio, Rolando, the driver of an almendrón that operates as a taxi in the capital, says he is nervous despite the fact that he has his papers in order. “It’s incredible the number of inspectors and police officers there are, planted in any corner, waiting for an unfortunate person to pass without permission,” he says.

According to the 56-year-old Habanero, the routes that the boteros [taxi drivers] take to travel from La Víbora or La Palma to El Vedado have been among the most monitored this week, and the drivers, “who are not fools,” have been more careful. “On the corner of the Habana Libre, at 23 and L, where the taxi stand is located and where cars leave for La Víbora, the drivers are letting off passengers but not picking them up. The inspectors are hidden where they turn, on 23rd Street,” explains Rolando. The same thing happens, he says, at the other end of the route, at the Plaza Roja. continue reading

“The other day I took a car to go to El Vedado that had only one free seat. As soon as I got on, the driver turned off the avenue”

This is just one of the tricks that the boteros use to mock the authorities. “The other day I took a car to go to El Vedado that had only one free seat. As soon as I got on, the driver turned off the avenue and began to go through the back streets where no one was around. At first I thought, as sometimes happens, that the driver was running an errand, but he rejoined the route at Infanta and San Lázaro. Then I realized that he was running away from the police,” says Liudmila, a frequent passenger on this route.

“It seems that they are going after the boteros without papers, because something similar happened to my aunt on Tuesday. She was in a taxi when an officer stopped the car and began to question the driver, who said that everyone there was a relative. My aunt had a good scare, because they didn’t know what to answer, but they did know the name of the driver, who had told them beforehand precisely in case they stopped him,” she says.

Both Rolando and Liudmila agree that in recent years “many private cars have appeared that function as clandestine taxis.” According to Rolando, the poor condition of state transport, in a city as populated as Havana, gives the botero a very profitable business. “Diesel, which is what the buses use, is scarce and very expensive. Gasoline, on the other hand, is easier to get. I myself have gone around looking for it, and I always know what places are open and what time I have to go so I don’t have to wait in line,” he explains.

“As they know they don’t have much competition,” Liudmila reflects, “the drivers have raised prices, and to go from one municipality to another can cost from 2,000 or 2,500 to 3,000 pesos. It’s abusive, but if you don’t have your own car, you have to ride with them,” she complains.

Rolando also doesn’t like the boteros without papers being able to do the same job as him without having to pay taxes. “If they don’t do the paperwork, they earn more, because they don’t have to leave a slice for taxes or licenses. That’s why many prefer to operate like this, for free,” he says. However, he does not think the authorities “should be so hard on the taxi drivers,” because everyone is “trying to make a living in a country without fuel or resources to repair the cars. In the end they should be helping us rather than putting obstacles in our way, because we are the ones who are keeping people moving,” he emphasizes.

This is not the first time that the Havana authorities have begun raids against the boteros

This is not the first time that the Havana authorities have begun raids against the boteros. In the summer of 2023, the provincial government tried to cap the prices of the routes, to which the taxi drivers responded discreetly but effectively: they stopped transporting passengers.

On the other hand, the increase in vigilance is in line with the war waged by the regime against private entrepreneurs, whom it blames for inflation and, consequently, for much of the ongoing economic crisis. This same Tuesday, in Sancti Spíritus, the authorities dismantled – with a huge provincial operation – several private stalls in front of the Camilo Cienfuegos provincial hospital. According to the sellers’ posts on social networks, the premises had been authorized by the government.

This came one day after the Official Gazette published a whole battery of new laws on micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) that increase tax control over them. According to government figures, the tax evasion of private businesses amounts to some 50 billion pesos.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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La Gran Via, Once the Best Confectionary Store in Cuba, now Converted into a Clandestine Refuge

The calamitous state of the building has been pointed out many times by local residents.

Everything would indicate that it’s been empty for a long time, but the neighbours hint at something distinctly different happening / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez / Olea Gallardo, 18 August 2024 – From outside, La Gran Via, the once dazzling confectionary outlet owned by Santos Suárez, in Havana’s Diez de Octubre district, appears to be just as abandoned as it’s been for years. The front of the building with its peeling red columns and the faded blue lettering on its signage, no longer even sports the brightly lit “Sylvain For You” sign which inducated the name of the national chain which was its last owner. On the other side of the glass everything appears dark and still, although you can see a line of chairs facing inwards right next to the large window, and you can just make out a few empty tin cans.

Everything would indicate that it’s been empty for a long time, but the neighbours hint at something distinctly different happening: “They’re using it for accommodation, there’s a whole bunch of people in there”. That there could be a considerable number of people occupying the place wouldn’t be surprising, considering the huge size of all of its rooms.

Some Habaneros can still remember the time when the venue sold its famous cream cakes at 3.50 pesos each. “Oh! And with chocolate and everything! Exquisite!” – one resident recalls, almost licking her lips as she lists all the different types of sweet that were to be found in the place: guava tarts, señoritas, montecristos, capitolios, torrejitas, and, of course freshly baked breads. “My grandma was crazy about their cream cakes – I remember how my mum often used to buy one for her birthday, though we kids didn’t like them much because we found them a bit salty”, explains Luisa, from El Vedado, with nostalgia. continue reading

That there could be a considerable number of people occupying the place wouldn’t be surprising, considering the huge size of all of its rooms.

Those times are not so long ago. “Even during the Special Period we used to buy cream cakes”, recalls María, a woman in her forties from the centre of Havana. In spite of the suffering of the terrible 90’s – after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Soviet subsidies – La Gran Via still conserved some traces of its former splendour.

María also recounts how one of their employees helped her family to survive the food shortages of that time: “An elderly black skinny guy, who’d previously worked for a funeral car company, kept for us the offcuts of the panetelas and cakes that were made at Gran Via. They toasted them in the ovens and gave them to us in distinct little sizes that looked a lot like espondrus (’sponge rusk’). Those irregular shaped little pieces, discarded during the making of cakes and other confectionary, helped us a lot to get by from day to day”.

They baked all kinds of sweets: guava cakes, señoritas, montecristos, capitolios, torrejitas and, of course, fresh bread / 14ymedio

If La Gran Via was the best confectioners in Havana during Cuba’s worst economic crisis, you can imagine what it must have been like in its best years. Defined as “real pride for Cuban industry”, in the illustrated encyclopaedia ’Book of Cuba’ in 1953, it had been founded in Güines by three Spaniards from Toledo (a city celebrated for its almond-based sweets, such as marzipan). These were the three brothers, José, Valentín y Pedro García Moyano.

Their business and their fame prospered and in the nineteen forties they made the leap over to Havana, to where the same Santos Suárez ruin remains today. According to a former employee, Bartolo Roque, speaking to Maite Rico and Bertrand de la Grange in a report published in 2009 in the Mexican magazine Letras Libres, the confectioners eventually employed 120 people.

In the good times the confectioner employed 120 people

Here is how the reporters described the black and white photos that Roque showed them (he was 78 at the time, but only an adolescent when he was originally hired by La Gran Via): “A dazzling new confectioners. The kitchens and the ovens. Five elegant young ladies busy taking telephone orders. A fleet of delivery vehicles with their uniformed drivers. Bartolo making a cake. And in another photo, 37 workers and assistants all wearing long aprons and white caps pose in front of innumerable cream cakes”.

A group of telephone operators took orders which were then dispatched to customers / 14ymedio

A fleet of delivery vehicles with their uniformed drivers.

The old man also spoke of how “they brought milk in pitchers to make the cream” for the cakes that were the house speciality.

All that began to change after the Revolution’s triumph, when the business, like all private businesses on the island, was seized. The García Moyano brothers fled into exile – in their case to Puerto Rico – and with them a number of master cake makers; but those that stayed, like Bartolo Roque, helped the company’s legacy to avoid disappearing entirely. “We can’t do what we want to do because we lack the raw materials”, said the elderly confectioner in 2009, blaming the “embargo” and praising the spirit which guided the company: “Whether a cake cost 1.5 pesos or 500, they were all of the finest quality. The same quality went to the houses of the rich and high society folks as went to the more modest and humble”.

All that began to change after the Revolution’s triumph, when the business, like all private businesses on the island, was seized

It’s unlikely that Roque is still alive today. One could have said the same thing for years about La Gran Via. Its sorry state has been flagged up by locals on many occasions via photos on social media.

On 29 June, Yoel Tamayo Valdés posted on Facebook a denunciation of “the current total abandonment by the authorities and by its owner Sylvain” of what “was once the best and the most technically advanced and equipped confectioners around”. He said that enormous efforts had been made by private individuals to rent out the property and exploit it, but no one took any notice. “I know an excellent cake-maker friend who had lined up an investor with over a million pesos, about two years ago, but after kicking the idea around, and with the director of Sylvain not even showing his face to offer any information or start up any negotiations, it was never given any proper attention so obviously the opportunity ended up being lost”, said Tamayo Valdés.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Soviet subsidies, La Gran Via still conserved some traces of its former splendour

Valdés also expressed his disgust at the fact that the place had become occupied by squatters. “How is it possible that they’ve never bothered to find a solution for La Gran Via, but then along comes a family, breaks down the door and starts living there with total impunity?”. And his diatribe continues: “Why don’t they put an end to this kind of piracy?!”

However, any evidence that there is actually anyone living inside La Gran Via is no more than just words. The glass doors are locked, the air-con unit outside is switched off. “There are also two wooden doors, perhaps for the offices, or the stores”, said one passer-by who was selling small birds. Asked for more details, he didn’t want to talk anymore and continued on his way, with his birdcage on his back.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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African Snails and the Stench of Trash Dumps Extend to the Affluent Neighborhoods of Havana

Garbage dump on the corner of Pedro Pernas and Manuel Pruna, in Luyanó, municipality of Diez de Octubre / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 13 August 2024 — Mayelín moved a week ago to the municipality of Diez de Octubre, and now that she walks daily on the Luyanó road, she says that all the neighbors live in a kind of “olfactory numbness.” According to the 28-year-old habanera, there are more trash dumps along the road than she can count, some even in a “wild” state, with small vermin and their own ecosystems. Living among the waste is already difficult, she says, but with the smell they give off “it’s impossible to breathe.”

On the pavement, says Mayelín, “a river of sewage passes through that comes out of a broken pipe, and, on its way, it collects all the liquid from the food, dirt and rot of the garbage dumps. The smell is unbearable, and it even upsets my stomach, but I have noticed that it only bothers me.” With little time living in Luyanó, the young woman has realized that her neighbors, although they complain about the garbage and other problems, don’t seem to care about the stench of the landfills.

“I think that living constantly among garbage, without a vehicle ever passing by to pick it up or an unobstructed pipe through which the water can leave, has forced them to adapt. I, who moved recently, am still sorry, but I am horrified by the idea that we can so easily normalize this situation because we have to,” she laments. continue reading

In Barrientos, as the area of the neighborhood sports complex is known, a huge garbage dump extends for several meters

In Barrientos, as the area of the neighborhood sports complex is known, a huge garbage dump extends for several meters – horizontally and vertically – on the corner formed by the streets of Pedro Pernas and Manuel Pruna. In the middle of the road where the waste does not reach, stagnant water prevents the passage of passers-by.

“Every morning when I take the dog for a walk I have to go around the pestilent mass to cross the street,” says Yunior, a resident of that area. According to the young man, the trash dump, one of the largest in Luyanó, has begun to attract its own fauna. Cockroaches, flies, mosquitoes and some rats that occasionally can be seen are not the only tenants. “African snails have also begun to appear. Wherever there is a piece of earth and grass, you’ll find one,” he says.

The invasive species, which years ago starred in the Public Health ads on Cuban Television for its danger to human life, has begun to roam freely throughout the Island. “Now that they are everywhere and there are no resources to kill them, the government has stopped talking about them, as if they were suddenly harmless. It’s obvious that they don’t want to create alarm,” Yunior reflects.

“The amount of bugs attracted by the garbage dump is so great that my dog, who likes to hunt flies, goes crazy chasing them. It’s funny, but when you think about where all that filth comes from, you lose the desire to laugh,” he explains.

On any piece of land that grows a little grass there are African snails / 14ymedio

While it is true that the less visible neighborhoods suffer the worst part of the garbage epidemic by being away from the eyes of foreigners and leaders, it is also a fact that, in the current state of the capital, not even the privileged areas are exempt. A video recently published by Martí Noticias showed the fountain of the National Hotel, one of the most emblematic sites in the city, right in front of the Malecón, where diplomats and guests of the regime go. In the images you can see a green crust of moss and garbage in a pool of fetid water.

The same happens with the bay of Havana , which is covered with cans, plastic cups and plastic bags when a storm removes the water.

The direct responsibility for this situation lies with the State’s Communal Services, but the truth is that company also does not know how – without the necessary resources – to deal with the garbage that accumulates throughout the Island. An almost pitiful example is that of Las Tunas, where the authorities have been trying to battle the waste for months, first by hiring private carts and then, when this measure did not work, by promoting voluntary work every Saturday.

This last proposal, as expected, did not go anywhere either, and now the province is trying to get Materias Primas [Raw Materials] to take action in the matter. The Reciclo mi Barrio [neighborhood recycling] plan, published on Tuesday in Periódico 26, suggests that the company collect “door by door” – in fact collection points were set in several neighborhoods – the waste donated or sold by the population. The official press applauded the initiative that, in addition to the main city, will begin in eight other municipalities.

Although the authorities promise that the initiative, which intends to reduce the amount of waste that ends up in the garbage dumps, “has arrived to stay,” we will have to see how long a plan that depends on the Achilles heel of the regime – fuel – lasts.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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