Scarcity and Crime, Today’s ‘Moncada to Attack’ in Cuba, According to President Diaz-Canel

Díaz-Canel resorted to an old political trick and took advantage of the dawn light to begin his speech. (Cuba debate)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 26 July 2023 — Miguel Díaz-Canel’s speech at the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba, delivered this Wednesday morning, focused on two points: lamenting the “physical disappearance of the historic generation” that stormed the barracks – although he had Raúl Castro and Ramiro Valdés in front of him – and the anguish of the Cuban rulers, who suffer firsthand from “another Moncada”: inflation and crime on the Island.

The event, which commemorates the 70th anniversary of the rebel attack on two important military enclaves in the former province of Oriente during the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship, began at five in the morning on July 26th. The Government spared no resources for the tribute, which began with a play of lights on the façade of the barracks recreating – with notable historical inaccuracy – the frontal shooting of the assailants until the building was symbolically collapsed.

Starting from the “ruins” of Moncada, the voice of Fidel Castro and various signs alluded to the “problems” of the Republic. When the show ended, which included congas and declamations, the first secretary of the Communist Party in Santiago de Cuba, José Ramón Monteagudo, noted that the city had complied with the request of Raúl Castro, who in one of his speeches had called for “beautification days” to make Santiago a “beautiful and hygienic” city.

Díaz-Canel resorted to an old political trick and took advantage of the dawn light to begin his speech. He mentioned the Christian apostle Santiago, patron saint of the city, who came to “dress as a mambí” during the independence wars, and the Virgin of Charity, in whose El Cobre sanctuary Antonio Maceo was baptized. continue reading

The Cuban Television cameras tried to offer a solemn profile of the president, who expressed himself with diction errors and voice breaks, as is usual in his public interventions.

“As long as we do not reach a decent degree of prosperity for Cubans, we will have a Moncada to assault,” he summarized, after alluding to the vicious circle that produced the increase in the price of basic necessities and the wave of crime that is sweeping the island.

As expected, Díaz-Canel blamed the problems in Cuba on the United States, which, in addition to the blockade, is determined to organize campaigns “to prevent foreign investment and foreign trade.” In addition, he accused Washington of leading “a pursuit of fuel supplies” to the island, through whose ports numerous oil tankers move, about which Havana does not offer the slightest information.

He spoke little about Fidel Castro, of whom he limited himself to saying that, while his brother was fighting in the Audiencia building, he “ordered the withdrawal.”

Raúl Castro did not go up to the rostrum or receive ovations. Together with a nonagenarian Ramiro Valdés, the soldier did not leave his seat until the end of the event. (ACN)

The rest of his speech was dedicated to Díaz-Canel allowing himself to be applauded by various groups of foreign visitors such as the Pastors for Peace – whose leader, Gail Walker, was present at the even t- the Puerto Rican independence group Juan Rius Rivera, the Caravan of Brazil and several “brigades” of young Belgians and Germans who traveled to the Island for the commemoration.

This time, Raúl Castro did not go up to the rostrum or receive ovations. Together with a nonagenarian Ramiro Valdés, the soldier did not leave his seat until the end of the act and the cameras captured an expressionless face, which in no way resembles that of the 22-year-old who was captured seven decades ago, after the failure of the assault .

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Giving Hotels and National Resources to Foreigners Will Not Pay Cuba’s Huge Debt

Ricardo Cabrisas, Deputy Prime Minister of Cuba, during the renegotiation of the debt with the Paris Club in 2020. (Cubadebate)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 15 July 2023 — The option of resolving Cuba’s external debt with the transfer of domestic resources to foreign companies, defended this Wednesday by the pro-government professor Juan Triana Cordoví, has been refuted by economist Pedro Monreal. Triana considers this option a way to refinance and “revitalize” socialism on the Island; for Monreal, it poses the risk of “being insufficient and undermining sovereignty.”

Triana, who teaches Economics at the University of Havana and writes a column in OnCuba, raises the need to renegotiate the Island’s debt and clean up the image of the country, which has become “one of the highest risks in the region” in terms of investment.

To do this, he suggests that, in a hypothetical negotiation, one could make use of the “assets” that in theory belong to the “people of Cuba,” although they are specifically managed by their “administrator”: the State. Triana refers, first of all, to hotels, which he prefers not to deliver completely to foreign companies but to turn them into owners of “part of the shares.”

He also alludes to the 2,417 state companies, of which – he calculates – only 12 (0.4% of the total) are really “strategic” and carry the weight of the national economy. Triana recommends that these companies that “decide the game” do not touch each other, partly because some of them are already shared with foreign entities: this is the case of the Canadian Sherritt International,  whose debt to the Island is paid by the overexploitation of Cuban nickel and cobalt mines; Havana Club, managed together with the French Pernod Ricard; and Habanos, which is partly owned by Spain. continue reading

The negotiation would be done with the rest of the state companies, which could be saved from their financial mediocrity if they are shared with foreign investors, who would work, without intending to, to “save” socialism on the Island.

To these two elements, Triana adds idle lands and idle plots in cities, where there are already “several buildings built by capitalist real estate companies,” such as the Miramar Business Center. The formula of the exchange of assets, the professor acknowledges, could be questioned, but after all, he concludes, “it’s something that began more than thirty years ago when that first contract was signed with a foreign capitalist and in just a few months the first five-star hotel in Varadero was born.”

However, Triana does not place the key to taking the step in the will of the State, which conveniently blocks the economic movements of the country, but in “consensus” with the people, to whom he recommends “explaining” what is intended to be done.

Precisely from this erroneous argument – to assume that the Cuban people have some control over the management of the national economy – Monreal starts to refute Triana’s suggestion. In a series of Twitter threads, the economist explains not only why the massive exchange of assets to pay off the debt is impracticable, but also the serious political risk it entails for Cuba.

Affirming that the people own the state assets is, at the very least, a “controversial” budget when it comes to reasoning the possibility of an economic opening. “Power,” says Monreal, means the ability to “decide a difference” and have a specific “property.”

“It could be difficult to validate the exercise of the power of the people, specifically of the wage earners, within the framework of an economic package such as the ’arrangement’ that has ’compressed’ wages and that disproportionately puts the cost of the adjustment on the workers,” Monreal summarizes. “Explanations to the people are problematic when they are politically treated as a ’clay’ to mold and not as an active subject (citizens) with effective capacity to promote or stop public policy proposals.”

In addition, the Cuban people do not have “effective citizen spaces for criticism of the Government,” which makes it impossible for them to participate in decision-making.

The economic aspect of the problem is even more serious, and to analyze it, Monreal refers to the data that reflect the great “scale” of the Cuban foreign debt, whose “recent worsening” leaves very little room for action, even for the State.

The economist starts from a central and unquestionable argument: “Cuba’s accumulated external debt is today greater than the Gross Domestic Product,” and the hyper-devaluation of the Cuban peso in 2021, after the Ordering Task*, was the final blow to the country’s ability to assume reimbursement in the current situation.

The country had to disburse 1.606 billion dollars to pay for debt service in 2022, at the same time that it recorded a deficit of 1.629 billion in its current account, which reflects a total income (exports of goods and services) lower than expenses. These alarming data point to a “severe contraction of the resources” to confront the debt.

The increasing deterioration of the current account has an impact on the foreign exchange reserves that Cuba has, says Monreal. In addition – and although the official data offered by Havana are outdated – the current crisis precedes the coronavirus pandemic, one of the usual pretexts the regime uses to justify the impoverishment of the country, and it is related to a “sudden increase in short-term debt,” which complicated the conditions of payment to creditors.

That stagnation put Cuba between a rock and a hard place in front of international banks and their suppliers, including the Paris Club. The information published by this last body exposed the different renegotiations that the Havana regime has been forced to undertake with its creditors since 2020.

Looking for a payment solution based on the exchange of assets is dangerous economically, says Monreal, especially because, considering the scale of the problem, what Cuba can offer is “relatively small.” Therefore, he insists, the real balance of such a measure would be paid politically and would not free Cuba from its status as an “international pariah” for its economic discredit.

What is left for Cuba – which has already delivered, as Triana observes, its “crown jewels”: minerals, tobacco and rum – are health services, communications, the domestic market in dollars and its dominance over remittances from abroad. The Cuban State is limited, Monreal maintains, in negotiating these remaining assets, in part because it has always kept them under strict control.

The market remains in pesos, which would have to be “sweetened” to have some attraction for the foreign investor, through tax privileges. However, this process would be an obstacle, the economist considers, if you want to “privatize” state enterprises progressively, a process, Monreal says, that is characteristic of all the reform processes initiated by the communist parties in power, “with disparate results.”

The alternative could be, proposes Monreal, the agricultural sector: to promote private agricultural production to guarantee the supply of food in national currency and allow producers to carry out operations, even with large companies outside the Island.

This transfer of state agricultural assets to the national private sector – a system that Monreal calls “officially approved” – could be beneficial, if accompanied by other measures, to reduce the external debt. The result? A double benefit: to guarantee the food sovereignty that Cubans crave so much and, in short, to protect national sovereignty.

*The Ordering Task is a collection of measures that include eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency, which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and a broad range of other measures targeted to different elements of the Cuban economy. 

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Authorizing the Controlled Slaughter of Livestock Was a ‘Mistake’ Cuban Officials Say

The aging Cuban farmers no longer know what to do with the thieves, who robbed 82,445 cattle and horses in 2022. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 3 May 2023 — The livestock scenario in Cuba, marked by brutal robberies and police inaction, could not be more chaotic. Resolution 88 of the Ministry of Agriculture, which approved in 2022 a “procedure for the slaughter and consumption of beef for self-consumption” for authorized entities and producers, is now seen by officials as “erroneous” and somethng they regret, because instead of alleviating the situation, the level of crime has skyrocketed, according to Cubadebate.

The aging Cuban farmers no longer know what to do to face the thieves, who in 2022 robbed the huge figure of 82,445 cows and horses throughout the country, according to the official press. Few  now go to the police, whose terrible investigative mechanisms are well known by the victims of this “common” problem.

“In the end nothing happens,” is the conclusion of the second part of a report on the theft and slaughter of cattle published this Wednesday by Cubadebate, with a third installment announced. Producers, officials and agents have offered the official media their thoughts on the subject, and no one dares to foresee a less bloodthirsty panorama: thieves are increasingly effective and violent, and in the countryside the early morning is filled with tension.

“Producers are very disappointed with this whole situation. It is very painful for them that a cow they have for milk is stolen to produce meat or to work,” says the director of livestock of the Ministry of Agriculture, Adrián Gutiérrez. Many no longer even know “where to [safely] put their animals to sleep.”

“They kill the cow, take it and nothing happens. There is also a safe market, which is not only fresh meat but the production of sausages,” says Gutiérrez. The farmers, for their part, know the score: what matters to criminals is to make easy money: “Did anyone think that with livestock it was going to be any different?” continue reading

In San Cristóbal, Artemisa province, the police managed to arrest a criminal who was up at dawn with two sacks full of meat. With complete peace of mind, he told the officers where the product had come from, on which farm he had killed the animal and what he intended to do with it.

However, when he arrived at the station, the man changed his entire statement. He said that had had found the sacks and that, naturally, with the hunger on the Island he did not hesitate to pick them up to feed his family. He spent three days in detention and left after paying bail. “It didn’t take long for them to find him again one morning, killing another cow,” Cubadebate says.

Releasing known criminals is an increasingly common practice in the rural areas of the Island. The “excessive request for evidence,” criticized by the official press, goes above common sense and the fact that thieves, in general, are repeat offenders. It is enough for a person to declare that “the bag of meat was found lying around” so that, sooner or later, the crime goes unpunished.

Osbel Benítez, a farmer from Manatí (Las Tunas) interviewed by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, reported that he had also suffered the consequences of police inaction. “They slaughtered three cows on January 12. I made the accusation and they haven’t done anything. The police do whatever they want,” he lamented, despite having provided all the evidence.

“It seems that it was a matter of patronage,” Benítez explained, alluding to the fact that several criminals are under the protection of the police.

Meanwhile, local meetings with the Ministry of Agriculture are increasingly frustrating. The authorities attribute the ease of committing crimes to the lack of control of the livestock herds. “It is the absolute responsibility of the owner,” say the managers, who wash their hands of the problem when the animal is not registered, despite the fines of 10,000 pesos and the confiscation that is imposed on those who violate the accounting of their livestock.

“If the livestock is counted, the person must report to the police when an event occurs,” they point out. But if the cow or horse is not listed in the state registry, it is not even worth the complaint. According to the newspaper, the animal does not exist, and neither does the crime.

For Yudith Almeida, the head of the National Livestock Registry, if a producer doesn’t have the “marker” — with which the animal’s skin is identified — or the ear tag, he is committing a serious “indiscipline,” and this exonerates the authorities from the damage.

The official lists the sanctions that can be applied to violators: 500 pesos and confiscation if there are no documents that prove the accounting of the animal in the registry; 10,000 pesos if the declaration of birth of major livestock is violated; 10,000 if a death is not declared; 10,000 for each missing cow or horse; 5,000 for each unauthorized process of sale or transfer; and 20,000 if the update of data for each animal is not already registered.

Given the legal complexity of explaining that he was the victim of a theft, “the farmer often prefers not to testify,” Almeida acknowledges.

Not even the official numbers can hide the situation: 82,445 cases of theft and slaughter of animals in 2022 — almost 2.5 times more than in 2021, when 33,690 were registered — of which 45,315 correspond to cattle and 37,130 to horses. The most affected provinces are Villa Clara (12,243 cases), then Holguín (9,825) and finally Matanzas (2,926).

Meanwhile, the government is promoting alternatives to relieve the deficit of meat and milk in the country, such as raising water buffalo. In Las Tunas, since 2013, a herd of 765 head has been supplied, but the farmers don’t accept these animals,” according to the president of the company in charge of breeding, Leonel Ávila.

Optimistic, Ávila says that buffalo ’have more advantages than cattle,” and he gives their reproductive capacity as an example. In addition, he points out that their milk production is progressing well, and “everything they eat is quickly converted into live weight.” But he acknowledges that these animals “require greater volumes of food.” However, the breeding of large-scale buffalo on the Island is, according to the farmer himself, on the plane of mere possibility.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

World Press Baffled by Cuban-Style Democracy

Cuba does not hold real elections but all the trappings — campaigns, rallies and propaganda — are there.

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 24 March 2023 — Two days before elections for Cuba’s National Assembly, the world press is watching the lead-up to the vote with bafflement. The conclusion: no one really votes in Cuba but all the trappings — campaigns, rallies, and propaganda — are there to serve as staging for Cuban-style democracy.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) describes President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s appearances during the run-up as an “unusual political campaign,” especially in Santa Clara, the city that nominated him for national office and from which he has been re-elected “more than a dozen times.”

The French news agency describes Cuba as a “communist country unaccustomed to electoral campaigning” as exhibited by its current president, who is trying to contain growing voter apathy in a “dissatisfied society.” It also cites Cuban electoral law, which prohibits “all forms of individual electoral propaganda,” something none of the candidates – praised to a fever pitch by their local media outlets – have complied with.

The Associated Press (AP), an agency which generally takes a complacent attitude towards the regime, has adopted a more critical tone in its analysis of the electoral process. “The day’s result seems inevitable, though one closely-watched indicator will be how many voters abstain,” it says.

AP notes ironically that Cubans will elect 470 representatives from a list with the same number of candidates. “There are no indications that the current president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, will leave office and, for this reason, is expected to be re-elected,” it adds bluntly, underscoring the predictability of the result. continue reading

The Spanish news agency EFE describes the situation as “relevant and controversial,” indicating that what is really at stake is not the parliamentary election itself but the legitimacy of the system, which widespread absenteeism will call into question. “The fact that Cuba does not allow international observers to monitor these elections is, to say the least, troubling,” it finds.

“In the absence of public opinion polls, one group to follow is young voters, among whom disenchantment and political disaffection are widespread after years of severe economic crisis,” it says, noting that 13,000 Cubans over the age of sixteen will be going to the polls for the first time.

In a lengthy article, Al Jazeera recounts the history of the last six decades from the official point of view, highlighting the embargo against Cuba and extolling achievements in education and health. It avoids criticizing the system but it does address the potential issue of low turnout. “Voter absenteeism has become a feature of recent elections in Cuba. Participation in the November 2022 municipal elections, for example, fell below 70% for the first time, indicating a disconnect in a political system that depends on public support,” it explains.

Argentina’s digital newspaper Infobae refers to to a “decline in credibility” of both the regime and the electoral process. It believes social discontent, which has worsened since the protests of 2021 and 2022, will take its toll on the Cuban government’s international image. “The living conditions that underlie both the defiance and the mass exodus, probably along with low voter turnout as well, remain unchanged,” it says.

The Mexican digital news site Sin Embargo [Nevertheless] accuses the regime of perpetrating an “electoral simulation.” It notes that, at a minimum, a democracy should ensure certain conditions: “multiparty participation, competitive elections, freedom, accountability, rule of law.” It argues the absence of these reveals the iliberal and autocratic nature of the island’s system.

Meanwhile, government-controlled news outlets such as Prensa Latina and allied organizations such as Venezuela’s Telesur continually present this Sunday’s elections as “a show of support for the socialist social and political model.” Despite describing the technical aspects of the voting  process, none of these outlets, nor Cuban officials themselves, explain the inconsistencies international analysts have pointed out, or the intense campaigns candidates have waged in recent weeks.

Parties, extended periods without blackouts, somewhat better stocked store shelves and an overwhelming call for a “united vote” — the pro-government slogan intended to discourage low turnout and encourage people to vote for the pre-selected candidates — are failing to alleviate the tension, felt both inside and outside the island, that already characterizes the run-up to these elections.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

‘In the Hospital, in Las Tunas Cuba, the Light Bulbs and Even the Window Panes Have Been Stolen”

Almost all the benches in Plaza Calé have lost their slats. (Newspaper 26)

14ymedio bigger 14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 7 March 2023 — Based on the robberies and vandalism, the inhabitants of Las Tunas are “dismantling” the city’s public spaces. The list of “reprehensible” acts, as the official press called them this Monday, is extensive: garbage dumps, destruction of buildings, theft of furniture and corruption in state establishments.

The most alarming situation is going on at the provincial hospital, which, according to its directors, treats more than 7,000 patients daily. “The light bulbs, the screws for the window panes and the panes themselves have been stolen,” denounced Carlos Pérez Santiesteban, deputy clinical-surgical director of the center.

The people who accompany the patients take advantage of their stay in the hospital, according to the doctor, to get hold of what they find, from a piece of metal to the chair braces. To make matters worse, the doctor complains, “stretchers and wheelchairs are abused, mattresses are unprotected, food is eaten on the beds and liquids are spilled.”

Pérez, who describes the ability to control the situation as “difficult,” also regrets that people steal or destroy the installation’s switches, and that they intentionally dump waste in the corridors, bathrooms and gutters of the building. In addition, they habitually scratch the walls, smearing them with grease and damaging the paint. continue reading

According to the press, the “fury” of the people from Las Tunas has an explanation: they behave “as if they were bothered” by the good condition of public spaces. It is no longer a question of neglect, but of vandalizing what cannot be transported to homes, such as park benches or the walls of a building.

“In a bakery, for example, flour and oil are stolen and sold in the same neighborhood.” Nobody has scruples when it comes to “taking advantage” of public goods

Las Tunas, the report states, “has large bills” related to “collective property,” and attributes it to a “a training problem” to young people that later in life affects their adult behavior. However, it does not mention at any time the deficiencies and shortages – common throughout the country but exacerbated in the eastern provinces – that have triggered crime rates in Cuba, although they]se do not justify other behaviors such as dirtying and vandalizing hospital facilities.

There are people who even steal marble pieces “to make a grinder for spices and meat,” an astonished citizen of Las Tunas said.  He was recently interviewed by the official press, which also publishes photographs of the “ragged sites” of the city. Almost all the benches at the Plaza Calé are missing their slats, while the metal railings of the Colón Street bridge –whose potholes are a danger to traffic– have been sawn off and stolen.

The fence of the Hermanos Ameijeiras Airport is in the same sorry state, whose wires and poles, already damaged by rust, have been cut and “recycled” in homes.

“Everyone here ‘struggles’, cautiously states one of the interviewees in the official report. “In a bakery, for example, flour and oil are stolen and sold in the same neighborhood.” No one has scruples when it comes to “taking advantage of” public goods, it doesn’t matter if they are food or construction materials –rebar, stones, bricks– that are already part of some structure. That notion, he admits, is even “accepted.”

Another problem is the city’s state of hygiene, to which the local newspaper has referred on other occasions. The amount of garbage in the streets, the puddles of urine in squares and parks, and the fact that almost all the garbage transportation of the waste depends on horse-drawn carts – for which Community Services pays little and late – increase the population’s discomfort.

The “latest fashion,” the newspaper claims, is breaking bottles and leaving the glass shards on the streets, which are already littered with excrement, paper and potholes. At the height of the problem, the text devotes several paragraphs to giving lessons in “socialist morality” and civility to the people of Las Tunas, whose attitude cannot be explained and who will end up, he insists, by leaving only “bits and pieces” of the city.

Translated by Norma Whiting
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

The Building Next to Hotel Saratoga, Abandoned to its Fate

The residential building next door to the Saratoga continues to look like an empty dolls’ house. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez/Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 23 February 2023 — The members of the Cuban Parliament who are elected on 26 March will not be able to avoid the sight of the ruin of the Hotel Saratoga, right opposite the Capitolio Nacional building. Habaneros, however, are already well accustomed to seeing the state of the building, which exploded on 6 May 2022, killing 47 people, and which today evokes a sickly-looking house of cards.

The top floor is the only one which remains intact, like a grotesque reminder of what the Saratoga used to be, surrounded as it is today by sheets of red zinc. But the hotel is barely the centre of gravity of the collapse: its neighbouring residential building, which features in some of the most dramatic photos of the disaster, continues to look like an empty dolls’ house.

A comparison between the first photographs of the building, taken just after the explosion, and the scene which is presented to any pedestrian today, shows that the building has been systematically ransacked, not only by its former residents but by criminals and random passers-by. Where there used to be a mounted picture frame, a piece of furniture or a kitchen appliance, now there is only a stark bare wall. continue reading

Various parts of the structure which survived the explosion have been removed by the construction workers, or have collapsed under their own weight. Nevertheless, the aura is not one of a reconstruction site, rather one of just another building which has been abandoned to its own fate.

A comparison between the first photographs of the building, taken just after the explosion, and the scene which is presented to any pedestrian today, shows that the building has been systematically ransacked. (14ymedio)

The people who lived at Prado 609, an annex of the hotel, were rehoused in the precarious Havana street of Vives, between Carmen and Figuras. It’s been a double tragedy for them: not only have they lost their homes but the new ones given to them by the government not only lack any charm but were constructed from cast concrete in one of the most “troubled” areas of the capital.

“They have no plans yet about what they’re going to do with the Saratoga. They’re not going to demolish it completely, only what’s necessary to stabilise the structure. The timetable is for 8 to 10 months”, a resident of the area told 14ymedio in December.

The company that the government commissioned for the work is Almest, a property developer linked to the Armed Forces, and a hitherto unknown French company, although evidence suggests that it’s the construction company Bouygues, which has worked on the construction of 22 luxury hotels on the island.

If one thing is clear it is that the fate of the Saratoga is bound up with that of the neighbouring buildings, among which there is also a baptist church. It would seem that the Cuban government has not yet decided on the move that will resolve the problem of one of the most central blocks of Havana.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

The Official Cuban Press Once Again Uses the 1898 Explosion of the US Battleship ‘Maine’ to Justify the Regime

Cuban schools still teach that “the majority of the crew were black” and that the ship’s staff had abandoned them in the bay to die. (US Naval Institute)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 15 February 2023 — As every February 15, official propaganda dusts off its theories about the explosion of the US battleship Maine, sunk in Havana Bay in 1898. After 125 years, the version of the “self-sabotage” of the ship by the US as a pretext for Intervening in Cuba’s war against Spain continues to be taught in Cuban schools and reported in the press as an irrefutable truth.

Although the “blasting” of the Maine is the cornerstone of the regime’s historiography against the US, none of the investigations carried out in the past have been conclusive about the cause of the explosion. Why does Havana continue to manipulate the facts with such insistence? The response of the official site Cubadebate response is clear: this version is defended because “it sustains the irrational blockade policy,” another ideological symbolic catch-all of the regime.

This Wednesday, in the Communist Party newspaper Granma, officials assert that the battleship was sent as a “steel Trojan horse” to the Island. Knowing “the truth,” however remote it may seem, means winning the “battle of ideas in which this is enshrined to the Cuban people.” continue reading

The ship that exploded in the Havana port in February 1898 was a second class military vessel, 324 feet long and 54 feet wide, able to open fire from both sides and with a ram on the bow. Its launching took place on November 18, 1889, but it did not enter service until six years later. The officer who took it to Havana as part of a “friendly visit” in January 1898 was Captain Charles Dwight Sigsbee.

Granma selected and reproduced several telegrams from Captain Sigsbee, the US consul on the island and the US Secretary of State, whose placement suggests that the Maine was not in Havana to protect the citizens of that country present in Cuba, but rather “there was an ulterior purpose”: to produce an “agitation” against the island’s autonomous government – constituted only a few weeks earlier – and to achieve “in all probability” a protest.

From this correspondence, which refers only to the climate of political tension that prevailed at the time, the official State newspaper draws a conclusion: the explosion was caused “by the Yankees themselves” to interfere in “another people’s war,” which was already “virtually won” against Spain by the Cuban Liberation Army.

In the explosion, 254 sailors and six officers died, of the 328 member crew. It was a crew made up of American citizens of German, Swedish, Irish, Norwegian, Danish, and even Russian and Finnish origin. In Cuban schools, however, it is still taught that “the majority of the crew were black” and that the ship’s staff had abandoned them in the bay to die. Cubadebate itself admits that this information is a flagrant lie, although it only acknowledges that it has been disclosed in Cuban education “sometimes.”

The only truth in the version of events repeated by the regime was the media hysteria that followed the event, the responsibility, to a large extent, of two famous American press magnates at the time: Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst.

The only truth in the version of events repeated by the regime was the media hysteria that followed the event, the responsibility, to a large extent, of Pulitzer and Hearst. (Cuba debate)
The only truth in the version of events repeated by the regime was the media hysteria that followed the event, the responsibility, to a large extent, of Pulitzer and Hearst. (Cuba debate)

With the slogan Remember the Maine – recycled in 1961 by the pro-government singer Carlos Puebla as Remember Girón [referring to (what is called in the US) the Bay of Pigs] – the US newspapers created an unfavorable opinion of Spain among readers, which undoubtedly facilitated the recruitment of young people to participate in the war.

“With the Maine, the independence of Cuba collapsed,” conclude Granma and Cubadebate, also manipulating a few quotes from the book How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed, by US Admiral HG Ricover, without mentioning that this author does not find the “self-sabotage” hypothesis viable either.

The Cuban historian Manuel Moreno Fraginals, in his book Cuba/España, España/Cuba (1995) – one of the most reviled by the regime – affirms that the government of Fidel Castro gave the explosion “the easiest and most convenient interpretation,” in the purest propaganda style of the Cold War, when “in reality there is not a single piece of evidence that leads to such an interpretation.”

“The Americans had plenty of political reasons and internal public opinion to take part in the conflict without resorting to the dangerous extreme of blowing up one of their navy cruisers, killing [more than] 250 marines. The Spanish had even less reason to carry out sabotage of this category. For the Cubans it was almost impossible,” continues Moreno Fraginals.

An updated study on the subject, by the Spanish historian Tomás Pérez Vejo (3 de julio de 1898, el fin del Imperio españolJuly 3, 1898 / The End of the Spanish Empire, 2020), agrees that the US intervention was going to take place anyway, “regardless of of the causes of the sinking of the Maine .” The problems, he says, were “deeper.”

In addition to all this, the official Cuban press is especially offended by a theory that involves neither the “self-attack” by the US nor an aggression by Spain. It is about the possibility that Cuban insurgents caused the explosion, indignant with the passivity of the United States in the face of the cause of independence, to force the US to intervene.

This hypothesis, collected among others by the classic Cuba: the Struggle for Freedom (1973) by the English historian Hugh Thomas, describes that by 1898, the desire for annexation to the United States was not unheard of among a faction of the rebels. Those who most fervently opposed union with the north were José Martí and Antonio Maceo. Both had died. “Cubans were capable of such an act, as anyone would be after three years of all-out war,” Thomas suggests.

Even a serious naval historian like the Cuban Gustavo Placer Cervera continues to tear his hair out at this possibility. His arguments, however, are not very objective and border on the naive: “Terrorism was not the method of struggle of the Cuban independence fighters,” he affirms. The Cubans did not want to “change ownership” and the US was an “allied country” for the insurgents.

Regardless of the propaganda, Cuban, Spanish and American historians agree that the most likely explanation is an accident. “The Maine blew up because she was carrying a large quantity of the new gunpowder she needed for the heavier guns and which, in its early years, often set off explosions,” Thomas concludes.

The ship remained in the bay until 1911, when the US pulled the wreck and the corpses of the crew out of the water. On March 16 of that year, the Maine was towed several miles from the Havana port and, after several salvo shots to honor the dead Marines, she was sunk again at a depth of more than 1,000 meters.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Fidel Castro’s Eldest Grandson Continues to ‘Square the Box’ to Rescue His Father’s Memory

Tombstone of Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart, in the Colón Cemetery, in Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger

Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 1 February 2023 — On February 1, 2018, excluded from the leadership of Cuban power and victim of frequent depressive episodes, Fidel Ángel Castro Díaz-Balart committed suicide. He was the only child from the first marriage of Fidel Castro, who had died a year earlier, and both the official press and the authorities avoided giving prominence to the event.

Five years later, the same silence is repeated. The only person who has taken care to remember Castro Díaz-Balart is his son, Fidel Antonio Castro Smirnov –professor of Nuclear Physics in Havana – who for months has been determined to claim the role of his family branch through tweets and media parachute jumps that he dedicates to his grandfather and father.

“Five years ago I lost my best friend, my paradigm of a man and an intellectual. His example was enough, but he was also an extraordinary father,” Castro Smirnov wrote this Wednesday , without referring to the “attack on life” after months of medical care for a “deep depressive state” as indicated by Cuban Television. “With us today, Professor Dr. Cs. Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart breathes, thinks, walks, does and feels,” said the young man, who always refers to his father with his title.

Castro’s “cursed heir” was buried in a dark, wine-red granite tomb, in a pantheon belonging to the Cuban Academy of Sciences, as this newspaper recently verified.

It is the same place where French scientist André Voisin was buried in 1964; Fidel Castro was obsessed with this ideas on cattle raising. The pantheon is discreet and was decorated with a small tombstone containing the full name of Castro Díaz-Balart and his birth and death dates, as well as his titles of Professor and Doctor of Science. It is also far from the memorials dedicated to the heroes of the country, which gives an idea of ​​the place the Revolution reserves for suicides. continue reading

Through Twitter, at scientific conferences in Cuba and abroad, and even in the official press, Castro Smirnov frequently refers to his family’s relationship with Fidel and Raúl Castro and defends his father’s scientific legacy.

The “rescue” began on the first anniversary of his grandfather’s death, in 2017, a few months before his father’s suicide. In a tearjerking article published in Cubadebate, he wrote: “I am Fidel. My father is Fidel. My grandfather is and will always be the eternal and undefeated Fidel. My name is Fidel, and my life is called Fidel. My thoughts, my dreams, my desires, are also called Fidel.”

In the same article, he affirmed his need to speak “often” with the deceased, defended Castro’s “physical” survival, his “strength (stronger than nuclear forces),” as well as “Fidel’s dynamics, the wave of Fidel, Fidel’s light (the most beautiful and intense), Fidel’s movement, Fidel’s magnetism.” All of this, according to the young scientist, “endures” beyond death, since “everything is Physics.”

Since 2016, Castro Smirnov has been “jumping for Fidel,” expensive skydiving maneuvers in different parts of the Island, which, together with the private photos of his family that he publishes regularly, have made him one of the most media-prominent members of Castro descendants.

Along with the commemorative tweet of his father’s death, Castro Smirnov today revealed several photographs where his great-uncle Raúl Castro poses with his mother, Mirta Díaz-Balart, who was divorced from Fidel Castro in 1955, as well as several images of his father smiling with Fidel Castro, in uniform.

In none of his frequent messages does the grandson allude to the distance between Fidel’s eldest son and the children of Dalia Soto del Valle, Fidel Castro’s second wife. The widow and her children were the ones who went first during the caudillo’s funeral, while Castro Smirnov and his father had to present their tribute in second place.

Various media outlets and observers around the Castros have pointed out that, despite appearances, Castro Smirnov was not excluded from the family’s life of luxury and comfort. In addition to the parachute “jumps,” photographs of him at parties and receptions have been revealed where he is accompanied by Professor Marxlenin Pérez, host of the official program Cuadrando la caja [Squaring the Box], who uses the last name Castro when she accompanies the young scientist.

Discreetly, Castro Smirnov has been rehabilitating his father’s image. Five years after the death of Castro Díaz-Balart, he is the only one of Castro’s grandchildren who can boast of a notable academic background and media talent that, without a doubt, he knows how to take advantage of.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

The United States Infiltrates ‘Foreign Groups’ to Divide Believers in Cuba, Says the Official Press

Alemán says it’s an “accomplishment” that the Communist Party has admitted believers to its ranks since 1991, a membership that was prohibited before the Special Period. (Twitter/Cuba Presidency)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 22 December 2022 — The inclusion of Cuba on the blacklist of countries that violate religious freedom according to the United States has motivated a campaign, by the official press, to prove otherwise. This, despite the fact that several priests, nuns, pastors, Santeria believers and practitioners of different beliefs have been systematically harassed by the Government.

Enrique Alemán Gutiérrez, director of the Cabildo Quisicuaba cultural project in Centro Habana, is one of the regular interlocutors of the regime to discuss the issue. Hence, interviewed by the State newspaper Granma on Wednesday, he once again defended that the State “recognizes, respects and guarantees” all religions, although at no time did he admit the political role, as critical voices, that several religious leaders have assumed.

The director of Quisicuaba — a project that also has a social and religious focus — alleges that the Government has registered “innumerable institutions” in the Register of Associations and attributes that “recognition” to the Cuban Revolution.

Alemán says it’s an “accomplishment” that the Communist Party has admitted believers to its ranks since 1991, a membership that was strictly prohibited before the Special Period. In addition, he also mentions a deputy to the People’s Assembly, and that in 1992 the State was defined as secular instead of atheist. The visit of religious leaders such as Patriarch Kirill, the permission to spiritually care for inmates and the granting of religious visas are, in his opinion, signs of the Government’s support for religion. continue reading

Therefore, says Alemán, the inclusion of Cuba among the countries disrespectful of religious freedom is a strategy of “imperial politics,” to “divide the people and Balkanize faith.” We must look with distrust, he alleges, at the “religious groups induced from the outside” — sects, Protestant denominations, brotherhoods — that “are neither so religious nor so newly formed.”

For Alemán, these groups are foreign to the “very wide religious range” of Cuba, whose components have already resolved their “common points” and their coexistence within what the founder of Quisicuaba understands as “religious syncretism.” The real problem, he points out, is the blockade, which prevents money and donations from Quisicuaba’s allies and other organizations related to the regime from going to the Island.

During the summer of this year, a report by the Prisoners Defenders organization, based in Madrid, showed how the Cuban government had founded a network of its own religious associations, while infiltrating numerous agents into churches and brotherhoods.

“In the case of Christian Churches, it has created the Council of Churches; in the Yoruba religion, the Yoruba Cultural Association; and in the Islamic religion, it has created the Islamic League of Cuba. The three organizations are controlled by State Security,” the document said. Quisicuaba, a spiritualist sect with social projection, is part of the “strong core” of these organizations, and has received visits from the country’s senior leadership.

At the beginning of December, the U.S. State Department included Cuba and Nicaragua — where the Catholic Church and civil society have been persecuted by Daniel Ortega — on the list of countries of “special concern”, along with China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Burma, Eritrea, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan; as well as organizations such as the terrorist groups Al Shabab, Boko Haram, the Islamic State, the Taliban, the Houthis of Yemen and the Russian paramilitaries of the Wagner Group.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Traditional Christmas Pig in Cuba, Badly Frozen and Only with a Ration Book

The meat is, according to Havana housewives’ diagnosis, “at room temperature” and the bad smell is impossible to remove, even by frying it in very hot butter. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez/Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 16 December 2022 — The stench comes from the back of the butcher shop, from the bundle of pork that the clerks handle with sweaty hands. As he approaches the counter, having survived being shoved and yelled at while in line, Carlos discovers that the unpleasant smell comes from the reddish suet that mucks up the floor.

The transaction is short-lived. The butcher sets his hooks and knives on the mass of smelly meat, weighs it –always cheating, but even Cubans get used to dishonesty — and throws it inside the shopping bag. The manipulation of the scale does not seem to matter to the policeman who watches over the buyers and who, at the end of the day, will be paid in kind for his “indifference.”

The smell is just the beginning of the odyssey to have a bit to eat to put on the family table during the New Year holidays.

The smell is just the beginning of the odyssey to have a bit of energy to put on the family table during the New Year holidays

The meat just bought is old, gray, and almost greenish. Fat, cartilage and bone predominate. Its texture is perhaps the most unpleasant, typical of pork that has not been well refrigerated and that, when it begins to thaw, becomes slimy to the touch.

Unfortunately, Carlos thinks, he listened to the clerks who were shouting on the outskirts of the butcher shop. “Make the effort and buy now,” they said this Thursday, “this is what’s left and tomorrow is going to be worse.” There were people who were more discerning, who preferred to not buy anything.

The meat that the government puts up for sale for the end-of-year celebrations is, according to the diagnosis of Havana housewives, “lukewarm” and it is impossible to remove the stench, even when frying it in very hot butter. continue reading

The conspiracy theorists in the neighborhood have already launched their explanation: in the absence of a recent product, the government makes available for sale its mysterious “war reserve,” the secret food arsenal that has always been attributed to the regime. It is not pork that has been kept in a refrigerator, hanging on a hook, but in little refrigerated warehouses, one piece on top of another. For this reason, they say, the meat is “crushed” and has an “ugly” color.

Crackling pork rind, fried pork chunks or some roasted ribs have always been part of the Cuban New Year’s festivities, even more than holiday trees and cider. The latter, the official hatred for the Christmas festivities has made them disappear and reappear from homes, but pork meat had remained a constant despite the fact that every December of the last decade its price has risen significantly.

In private markets, a pound of steak or leg is close to 500 Cuban pesos but, as the month progresses and Christmas Eve approaches, the product’s presence decreases

In private markets, a pound of steak or leg is close to 500 Cuban pesos, but as the month progresses and Christmas Eve approaches, the product’s presence decreases. Hence, the official announcement was received with relief that the product would begin to be sold in the city of Havana in a “limited, controlled-release” manner, upon presentation of the ration book.

Silvia, Xiomara and María Eugenia have come to an understanding. Between the three of them they will buy a piece of pork that costs about 7,500 pesos. It is a leg that will be divided for Christmas Eve dinner for their corresponding families. “We’re just going to buy just one because no one has the money for the piece that is allocated to her nuclear family,” María Eugenia clarifies.

Since last Sunday, having been alerted that the sales would begin this Wednesday, the three retirees began to stand in line at the butcher shop on Ermita and Conill streets, in the municipality of Plaza de la Revolución. Since then, they have alternated the hours they spend in line, hoping that the time to go into the establishment will arrive this Friday afternoon. “We have about 80 people ahead of us, and sales are going very slowly.”

The long wait is not because the piece of meat has to be cut, since the customer must purchase the complete piece, a requirement that has made many needy people give up, since they do not have the thousands of pesos that a leg costs at a price of 250 pesos per pound. “They weighed a medium one for me and it came out at 6,800 pesos so I had to share buying it with a neighbor,” warns a nearby resident who went in “among the first” because she started standing in line last Saturday. The delay is attributed to “all the paperwork that must be reviewed before buying.”

According to the woman, it is pork meat “with a lot of fat,” it comes unpackaged, which makes her assume it’s from Cuban pigs, but the employees could not tell her if it was imported or from national farms. “The store has refrigeration problems and when I bought the leg, I ran home to put it in the freezer because otherwise it wouldn’t make it to the end of the year.”

In other municipalities, such as Arroyo Naranjo, the residents have improvised real encampments outside the butcher shops to be able to get a portion of meat

In other municipalities, such as Arroyo Naranjo, the residents have improvised real encampments outside butcher shops to be able to get a portion of meat, since it is known that what is available is not enough for all the households registered in the city’s rationed market. On social networks, some of them have shared photos of people wrapped in blankets or drinking rum to warm up in the cool early morning this December.

“I hope that the piece that I get is tenderloin, which is worth 235 pesos a pound and comes with some ribs for frying that my children love,” commented a resident of El Vedado this Thursday, who has to buy at the local store at 17th and K streets. “You can always convince someone else in line to take your piece if you don’t like it and he prefers it that way.”

However, the man fears that the meat that signals the holidays could also become a matter of contention. “Those who are buying legs for three households are not going to be able to separate it until everything is cut in their presence, because otherwise there will be a dispute due to a little extra lard that goes to one or a few chunks above what the other gets.”

Translated by Norma Whiting

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Diaz-Canel Talks About His ‘Dissatisfactions’ Without Offering a Way Out of the Cuban Crisis

Díaz-Canel stated that he felt guilty “for not having been able to achieve, as the country’s leader, the results that the Cuban people need.” (Cubadebate)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 12 December 2022 — With a tearful speech about his “personal dissatisfactions” as the head of the Government and in the presence of Raúl Castro, Miguel Díaz-Canel was accountable this Wednesday, at the Havana Convention Center, for his management of the country during 2022.

To the usual justifications to explain the economic drift of the Island — the US ’blockade’, the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and the disasters caused by Hurricane Ian and the explosion of the Supertanker Base — he added, with care not to offend Russia, “the new problems generated by the conflict in Europe” and international inflation.

Faced with the economic crisis, he said he felt like the “main person responsible,” but nuanced this by stating that he had limited himself to assuming “continuity from a dialectical perspective.” He did not miss an opportunity to rebuke local and provincial bureaucrats and clarified that, although he knows what the problems are, he hopes that “no one will use them as justification.”

The National Assembly of People’s Power, he warned, will continue in 2023 its “important legislative work” to enact other laws that “develop the Constitution” and address the “difficult Cuban daily life.”

The president was slow to enter into economic matters, and when he did it was to repeat the opinion of the Minister of Economy, Alejandro Gil, during the plenary of the Communist Party: the situation is “difficult”; the Government no longer knows where to extract the necessary currency, and the measures of the Ordering Task* were not enough to alleviate the financial disaster. continue reading

He spoke cryptically about the “increase in the income of natural people without productive support” and was alarmed by the “partial dollarization of the economy,” which has had a significant impact on the rise in product prices.

After vaguely criticizing Washington for keeping the ’blockade’ as a “weapon of coercion, cruel, illegitimate and immoral,” Díaz-Canel praised the Biden Administration. He said he was interested in the “two million people of Cuban origin and their descendants” who live in Florida and stated that he wanted to “promote broader ties” with the US.

He mentioned the technical advice offered by US authorities during the explosion of the Supertanker Base, despite the fact that the official press initially denied the existence of such aid and then considered it “insufficient.”

Díaz-Canel also recalled that the US donated 100 fire suits, in addition to fire and protection equipment, which arrived in Cuba a week ago. It was a “welcome and accepted” initiative, he said with modesty.

In addition, he spoke of the two million dollars sent by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) — one of the US institutions that the regime has criticized with the most emphasis — after the passage of Hurricane Ian through Western Cuba. “A help without conditions,” he said, attributing it not to USAID but to the Biden Government, “for which we also are thankful and accept it.”

However, he did not miss the opportunity to regret the “open policy of subsidies and attempts to destabilize the country,” paid with “tens of millions of dollars from the federal budget.” The US “trained individuals to commit violent acts against Cuba,” he said, referring to the accusations launched by Cuban Television against alleged criminals against the State captured by the police.

Finally, he recognized that despite everything, Cuba and the US are experiencing a kind of thaw, although with “very discreet steps, aimed at directing bilateral cooperation for compliance with immigration agreements and also in other priority areas between both countries.”

About Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, he limited himself to also blaming the US and its “harmful imperialist determination to try to divide the world,” although he admitted that the war complicated the global economic situation.

Regarding his political influence in Latin America and the possibility of alliance with the governments of the Latin American “new left,” he welcomed the rapprochement of Cuba by several presidents, such as Gustavo Petro and Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The “greetings” also reached Daniel Ortega, Luis Arce and Nicolás Maduro, and discreetly pointed out the “mutual benefit” of relations with Argentina, but there was no reference to Chile, with whose president, Gabriel Boric, Havana doesn’t sympathize.

The president avoided mentioning, of course, the former president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, whose self-coup did not merit a comment from the Cuban leadership until two days later.

At the end of the speech– and without finally deciding on triumphalism or self-criticism — Díaz-Canel stated that he felt guilty “for not having been able to achieve, as the country’s leader, the results that the Cuban people need for the desired and hoped-for prosperity.”

 *Translator’s note: The “Ordering Task” is a collection of measures that include eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and a broad range of other measures targeted to different elements of the Cuban economy.   

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Cuba’s Unusual Procession of Little Pioneers With the Silver Maces of the Old Cabildo of Havana

Children dressed as Pioneers with the maces of the old Cabildo of Havana, from the 17th century. (Tribuna de La Habana)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, November 16, 2022 — A strange mixture of rites, which have become commonplace in recent years, came together on Tuesday night at the ceremony held at the founding site of Havana, the Ceiba de El Templete, on the eve of its 503rd anniversary.

It was attended by the highest authorities of civil power, Luis Antonio Torres Iríbar, first Secretary of the Party in the capital, and Reinaldo García Zapata, governor of the city, but also those of the church. Specifically, Juan de la Caridad García Rodríguez, archbishop of Havana, from whom “the people received a blessing” and who accompanied a procession through the streets surrounding the Plaza de Armas.

However, the most surprising image of the evening — in addition to being extremely worrying if it’s confirmed that the maces are the original pieces — was that of two children, dressed in white shirts and red scarves, the uniform of the Pioneers, holding the maces of the old Havana Cabildo. Made of silver in 1631, they are, according to Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring in his book Havana. Historical Notes, “the oldest works of art in Cuba.”

Both valuables objects are in the custody of the Office of the Historian, founded by Roig and administered until 2020 by the late Eusebio Leal, and they are stored in the former Palace of the Captains General, today the City Museum. It’s not the first time they have been taken out of safekeeping for the same ceremony. continue reading

The official press echos “an emotional letter calling for the conservation of historical heritage,” “warm and simple words” that, says Tribuna de La Habana, “sixth-grade pioneer Laura Hernández García, from Camilo Cienfuegos Primary School, read” at the ceremony.

The ceremony ended, the official press reports, with the song Razo a la Ceiba by Leo Vera, and a concert on the esplanade of El Templete.

Beyond the unease caused by seeing the little Pioneers, ignorant of the historic value of what they carried in their hands, no one is surprised that the celebration of the foundation of the capital mixes ideology and religion.

In 2019, the Cuban regime paid tribute to the priest Guillermo Isaías Sardiñas Menéndez, known as Father Sardiñas, on the 55th anniversary of his death.

Nicknamed the “father of the olive green cassock,” the official press has frequently praised “the coherence between his religious faith and his conviction as a patriot and revolutionary,” although in the historiography of the Catholic Church the mentions of his actions have been more discreet.

But the intersections have not only been between Cuban communist ideology and Catholicism. In 2008, fifty santeros officiated a ritual with drums and animal sacrifices to wish “long life” to Fidel Castro on the day of his 82nd birthday, then convalescing from an intestinal disease.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Barefoot and Dirty, Cuba’s Beggar Children of Central Havana Do Not Officially Exist

At the corner where the child beggars operate, an infirm lady arrives and scolds them for begging. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo/Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 9 November 9, 2022 –Ragged, with hollow eyes and a slightly hoarse voice, two children ask for money in Central Havana. The older may be fourteen or fifteen years old, the younger not more than eight. One is barefoot, with curly hair and a face stained by dirt. The other wears a pair of tattered flip-flops.

They ring a bell and extend a wicker basket, taking advantage of the activity at Belascoaín and Carlos III. At the corner where the child beggars operate, an infirm lady, not very presentable, arrives, and she scolds them for begging. “Where’s your family?” she asks them, without the children being able to respond.

The rate of begging on the Island has skyrocketed tragically, and if before you saw only older men begging in the streets, usually alcoholics, now women, the disabled, psychiatric patients, adolescents and children also do so.

The “homeless’ euphemism which the Government has applied to beggars has proven to be a crude simplification. Although many of them, in fact, live on the streets and sleep in the doorways or corners of a dilapidated building, others beg “as a job.” They are located on central avenues and question not only tourists, but also Cubans.

In many cases they are “stationary” beggars; they choose a neighborhood or a specific corner, and learn to take the pulse of their space: the best hours, the faces of passers-by, the precise words to earn a coin or a loaf of bread. continue reading

“Most of the adults are very deteriorated from alcohol and age,” Julia, a neighbor of Central Havana, tells 14ymedio. They are the typical drunks, who always carry their plastic bottle to store the chispa, the alcohol of any category they consume. Most are adult men.”

In many cases they are “stationary” beggars: they choose a neighborhood or a specific corner, and learn to take the pulse of their space. (14ymedio)

The reason that begging has proliferated so much, says Julia, is due both to the resounding crisis that is going through the Island and the closure of several old-age homes in Havana. “These are things that have a lot to do with it: the collapse of the economy, the emergence of poverty and the forced parental responsibility in the new Family Code. Everything is designed so that the State can wash their hands,” she says.

“On the ground floor of my building,” the woman says, “several beggars ’alternate’. There was an old and very sick one, with a tube from his urine collector, always stained with a bloody liquid. He slept between cartons and right there he urinated and defecated, right in front of the front door.”

Like other neighbors, Julia avoids leaving the building when the beggars are “on guard.” A recent episode of violence confirms this forecast. “Recently, a neighbor came down at ten at night to throw out the garbage and one of them took advantage, pushed the door and tried to enter the building. I don’t know what he intended, whether to lie inside, urinate or settle on the roof.”

“The neighbor tried to bar the way and the man became aggressive. Since then, we never take out the garbage at night,” explains Julia.

One of the variants of poverty in Havana is the “beggar sellers.” (14ymedio)

Faced with government rhetoric, which closes its eyes to extreme poverty on the Island, the woman insists that there have always been beggars, but now they are increasingly aggressive, and it’s common for them to become “fixed tenants” of doorways and buildings. Even so, they still frequent the “boulevards for beggars” of Havana: Infanta, Carlos III, Belascoaín streets and other central avenues.

“Cubans don’t have a culture of giving money to beggars,” Julia adds. Children are always warned that beggars want someone else to “pay for their vices,” and they use that capital to buy rum or cigars. That’s why it’s uncommon for passers-by who walk through Havana’s long covered sidewalks to place a banknote in the baskets that the homeless extend.

One of the variants that poverty adopts in Havana is that of the “beggar-sellers,” sitting on the ground outside the buildings. “The most notorious thing about their ’goods’,” says Julia, “is that they’re things that are old, used, sometimes dirty, in a variety that goes from pots, casseroles and other kitchen utensils, to equipment, plugs and, of course, broken shoes and old books.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Victor, the Puppeteer who Raises a Smile on the Faces of Cubans in the Midst of Poverty

In Calle Obispo, Old Havana, you can find Víctor, with a puppet that moves to the rhythm of his paintbrushes. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo/Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, 6 November 2022 – Street Artists, fortune tellers, beggars, Tarot readers, palm readers, wizards, promise-keepers, pickpockets. Old Havana is constantly in turmoil and those who live there have to earn a crust by any means possible. Skill, cunning and a ’creole’ type of flair are, in the midst of the general poverty of the country, the only tools available for being able to go home with a bit of money in the pocket.

On Calle Obispo, people push and shove, trying frenetically to make their way about, going in and out of shops, pharmacies, kiosks and snack bars. Then it catches the attention that there’s a group of people who are there to block the way and detain you — under an overhanging roof. And there… you find Víctor, a silent young man, hidden behind the miniature canvas curtains of his Galería Morionet. 

Víctor operates the strings of his little puppet theatre — whose name combines that of the painter Claude Monet with the word ’marionette’ — and he makes his puppet, a Cuban skilled like himself, draw a portrait of a man on a piece of cardboard.

It’s a refined skill, and not the kind of skill that can be learnt in a mere couple of weeks. The puppet master pulls on his strings and the puppet shakes his paintbrush, fills it with watercolour and moves towards the easel. Sometimes a dog approaches and the puppet artist looks up at him cautiously, without stopping his work, and then he strokes its nose.

People watch the scene, fascinated. The puppet paints in a messy kind of dump that might be any habanero’s place, splattered with paint stains and continue reading

above which hang two unstable-looking balconies. Louis Armstrong’s blues plays in the little room, and, when the music stops, some coins drop into the Galería Morionet’s tray.

Unless they are tourists the passers-by aren’t able to offer much, and, after distracting themselves from their worries for a little while with the show, they have to continue walking on through a city that gets more and more inhospitable. Two police officers eye the youth with suspicion; he carries on with his work without paying them too much attention.

On the sidewalks the waiters of the paladares [private restaurants] spring on the passers-by, interrupting them and unfurling their menus without anyone being able to stop them. None of the habaneros can afford the luxury of dining out in Old Havana, but the waiters have to be seen to be active and charming, in order for the owner, who also must defend his business, to justify their salaries.

Sitting on the sidewalk, a mixed-race boy, dressed spotlessly in white, offers a card reading. Next to him, water and a cloth on which sits his deck of cards, ready for the next fortune-telling. But nobody stops, and, bored, he stands up to smooth out his clothes, and then resumes sitting.

On another corner a cartoonist draws the portraits of celebrities like Chucho Valdés and Alicia Alonso. Children beg their parents to let him draw them and the man gets to work: back bent over, he holds a board in one hand and with the other he manipulates his ballpoint pen.

Stilt-walkers have also become part of the scenery in the city, especially in groups which roam those streets with more tourists. Noisy and colourfully dressed, these urban artistes hardly manage to get, these days, more than a couple of notes stuffed into their hats — made from remnants and bells — as the fewer number of travellers arriving in the city has left them practically without customers.

Mounted on their wooden stilts they wait on some corner or other for a Transtur coach to discharge its small group of passengers around the Plaza de Armas or the Castillo de la Fuerza. Their show is brief, to avoid the tourists returning to the coach before having left a bit of money, which, amongst all the laughter and song the performers make sure to tell them that “euros or dollars” would be better received “by these particular street artistes”.

Beyond the tourist area the situation takes on sadder tones. It’s not unusual to meet an old lady in a dirty dressing gown begging for money to buy a few pounds of sweet potatoes, or a ’promise-keeper’ dragging a stone tied to his ankle with a chain. As he approaches, as if he were a soul in purgatory, he holds out a bowl for someone to throw in some ’kilos’. The people who watch him, shocked by the marks on his leg, have little to give him.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Crowds in Havana’s Streets Shout ‘Freedom’ During a Second Day of Protests

People join hands in the middle of a street in Havana’s Cerro district to block traffic. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, September 30, 2022 — Shouting “Freedom,” a crowd took to the streets of Havana on Friday night for a second day of protests, which spread to several neighborhoods in the city. In response to the demonstrations, the regime again cut off internet access at roughly 7:00 PM.

Throughout the day demonstrators blocked traffic in many areas. In some streets they formed human chains to close off major avenues, like those in the Cerro district.

“Besides joining hands, people have roped off several blocks of Cerro Avenue between Tejas and Patria streets,” reports one source at the scene.

Protests began in the morning on Palma Street and Calzada de Bejucal in the Arroyo Naranjo district. They later spread to Puentes Grandes in the Havana suburb of Playa, which has been without power for 72 hours.


Protests increase, people shout “Freedom” in the streets.

Several videos posted on social media show a crowd in Arroyo Naranjo banging pots and calling for the government to resolve the country’s energy crisis. “They blocked the street so no one could get through,” says a woman filming the protest. “Down with the dictatorship! Enough is enough!” she shouts as she joins the demonstrators. Several police officers stand nearby, leary of confronting the protestors. continue reading

Several women with children joined another afternoon protest, blocking traffic along a stretch of the National Highway, known as the First Ring of Havana. Videos and photos posted online show uniformed officers trying to convince demonstrators, who had placed stones and wooden poles in the roadway, to allow vehicles to pass.


Protest along a stretch of the National Highway.

The collapse of the National Electrical System in the wake of Hurricane Ian, along with worsening shortages, have led to a new wave of demonstrations. Residents of several areas, including Cerro, San Miguel del Padron and Arroyo Naranjo, demonstrated into the night on Thursday.

Those who managed to charge their mobile phones and videotape the protests try to avoid focusing on people’s faces, aware that police later use videos like these to identify and arrest demonstrators, as happened in the aftermath of the July 11 protests in 2021.

14ymedio contacted the state telecommunications company Etecsa to ask about the disruption of internet service that began around 8:00 PM on Thursday. The operator said the disruption was “nationwide” and that the company was working to resolve the problem. Asked about its cause, she curtly replied, “I cannot give out that information.”


Tweet: “Cubans, tired of all the hardship and crisis, confront government leaders and officials. More information on 14ymedio.com” [Click on blue bird to see tweet.]

On Thursday officials from the Provincial Defense Council (CDP) tried to placate crowds with the usual government rhetoric. During one encounter in a Havana neighborhood, a woman interrupted a female official dressed in military uniform to say “I don’t believe you people.” Next to her, an older woman snapped at the officer: “I am a materialist; I am not an idealist. I believe what I see. If after 72 hours they haven’t done anything, I have to say that nothing’s been done.” Her words were greeted with applause by those standing nearby.

Another officer trying to “explain the situation” was also taken to task by the crowd. “Why don’t you take the gas from the patrol cars and use it for the electric company’s cars?” someone asked

On Friday the CDP president himself, Luis Antonio Torres Iribar, acknowledged, “[Last night] we had to deal with isolated events in the province which involved mass demonstrations over the water situation, over the electrical situation, over the loss of food due to the power outage,” before conceding, “I consider these demands to be just.”


Crowd along Bejucal Avenue in Arroyo Naranjo on Thursday.

“I believe people have a right to protest, but only when government leaders are not doing what they are supposed to do,” claimed the official, adding, “But in the situation we’re talking about, yesterday’s protests, instead of helping, they prevented us from carrying out our mission and bringing about a full recovery in the shortest possible time, as we desire.”

Three days after the hurricane, the power outage is affecting whatever small amounts of food people might being storing in refrigerators. Some were able to freeze large plastic bottles of water to keep temperatures in their refrigerators low, but the ice has since melted and the food is threatening to rot.

This has led to a pressing need to consume whatever reserves of meat, milk and other products families might have before they go bad. Even if power is restored in the next few hours, finding food will be the biggest challenge people face in a country that, before the hurricane, already suffered from alarming shortages.

Meanwhile, the government has mobilized its military and police forces, leaving bodegas* and other locations authorities consider essential “unprotected.” In other establishments that sell food, such as some department stores, the police have stationed none-too-subtle “co-workers,” often young men of military age, to keep watch.

According to the state-run newspaper Tribuna de la Habana, the Ministry of Domestic Commerce reported that 700 “economic targets” in the western part of the country were damaged by Hurricane Ian. These include bodegas, department stores and building supply stores. Lost food supplies, flattened buildings, collapsed roofs and structures rendered unusable are some of the most serious types of damage.

The government has said it will prioritize “maintaining food supplies intended for people who have been evacuated,” which are limited to “items to be cooked.” It has forgotten that the rest of the country is facing the same challenges of preserving  and cooking food without electricity.

*Translator’s note: small state-run neighborhood or corner grocery stores that sell rationed goods.

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORKThe 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.