Category: Luz Escobar

“We have spent many years of work, a lot of joy and endless efforts for LGBTIQ people to get to where we are, and experience has shown us that there are battles that it is better to lose to achieve a much bigger future,” the text states.

“We want to kiss, hug, celebrate with pride our identities and share with the whole world how happy we are to see that Cuba advances on the path of justice,” stated the announcement of the planned event which, according to the organizers, was received with great success and shared more than a hundred times leading to about 600 confirmed participants. The event was to have been enlivened, they said, with activities such as a session of photographs of the most creative kisses, a touch of body painting, the handing out of educational materials and a flashmob.

“We did not foresee that an initiative motivated by the pride of seeing Cuba advance in the field of human rights, as well as the determination to combat the ideas that religious fundamentalism is spreading against that just and necessary change, could run up against so many closed doors, as it now has,” says the vague cancellation notice.

“When we changed the meeting point to Prado and the Malecón, we declared that we did not want them to use our action as an excuse to unleash the violence which the religious leaders of some denominations have called for in their preaching, since the beginning of the public consultation [over the text of a revised constitution],” the statement said.

Despite the announcement, around the initially agreed upon time a group of people carrying rainbow flags — mostly those with links to Cenesex, which was not the organizer of the event — danced to the song Música Vital, performed by Buena Fe, Yomil and el Dany and Omara Portuondo.

Jimmy Roque, one of the activists who came to Prado and the Malecón this Saturday despite the cancellation, said that what he saw “was fine, it was nice, they had choreography, they shouted ’Viva Cuba’,” but he regretted that “not a word” had been said.

“Let each one do what he can, it’s fine, but for those things you do not ask for permission, you do it and now, we’re going to do it again, to kiss on the Prado you do not have to ask for permission,” he said.

The Kiss-in was posed as a response to the statements of Alida León, president of the Evangelical League of Cuba, and the Reverend Moisés de Prada who intend to collect 500,000 signatures among their faithful against the inclusion in the new constitution of Article 68, which defines marriage as the union “between two persons.” The religious leaders insist that the concept of marriage “between a man and a woman” be maintained in the text, as it is in the current Constitution. Leon threatened to vote No if the suggested new wording of the article is maintained in the bill to reform the Constitution.

Since last June, posters have appeared in defense of the “original design of the family, as God created it” and against equal marriage on the facades of homes in various provinces of the country and public spaces.

The LGBTIQ community and defenders of the island’s sexual rights also disseminate in social networks their proposal to respond to these campaigns. Posters with more inclusive definitions of the concept of family and promotional videos with the message of “an original design of Cuban families” or “all rights for all families,” are some of the initiatives to promote inclusion.

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

The courtyard bar, a space which features blue ceramic tiles and a musical trio playing Cuban trova standards, offers guests Spanish olives, Russian vodka, French fries from Mexico and slices of Gouda cheese wrapped around sausages, which are also imported. With the exception of rum and local beer, everything else seems to have come from a Panama Canal wholesale market.

Towels from Pakistan, yoghurt from Spain and chlorine for the pool imported from a Latin American country are some of the products that allow the Puntarena de Varadero Hotel to function an day-to-day basis. It is the same situation throughout Cuba, where the large amount of imported supplies and food is a major drain on profits in the tourism sector.

From the pat of butter that a guest has at breakfast to the orange juice used in mixed drinks, a large percentage of what is offered at these establishments fools the guests, who are expecting to be served mostly Cuban products.

The Havana Consulting Group conducted a poll which surveyed 347,833 tourists who visited Cuba between March 2016 and February 2017. It found that, along with sanitary conditions, the most common complaint was the lack of variety in food choices and the preponderance of imported products over local ones.

Beatriz, a Mexican woman who stayed for a week this summer with her family in Puntarena, told 14ymedio that the “lack of variety” was “the downside” of her stay. “On the fourth day we had to go to a private restaurant because our hotel didn’t have basics like lemons or fresh oranges,” she says.

In 2013, after decades and decades of prohibiting such activity, the government of Raúl Castro gave permission for independent producers to sell directly to hotels catering to domestic and foreign tourists. Previously, hotels had purchased their supplies exclusively through contracts with state agencies while importing what they could from abroad.

The approval process for such sales, however, is complicated and several state agencies must oversee, approve and control the distribution from the fields to the buffet tables.

Though he prefers to remain anonymous in order to remain in the program, Carlos is one of the more than fifty fruit, vegetable and grain producers in Matanzas province who have been given approval by the Selected Farming Products Company to sell their crops to hotels.

The farmer has a plot of land reserved for the cultivation of mango, melon, guava and papaya, which he has managed to sell to resort hotels.

Carlos sells part of what he grows through a cooperative to which he belongs on the outskirts of Cárdenas, a town whose main source of income is Varadero, the most famous beach resort in Cuba. “They have helped us get some important supplies such as boxes for the collection of fruit and seeds but the truth is it hasn’t worked out well.”

“A lot of good fruit was lost,” he notes. “We delivered it to them but the state-run company did not get it to the hotels in time.” After tropical storm Albert at the end of May the situation worsened. “We lost more in the markets than in the fields,” he laments.

After that fateful day, during which his fields were flooded, Carlos switched from fruits to vegetables. “They are faster to harvest and package, although they can be more fragile to transport. Many hotels in Varadero will choose processed carrots and cabbage before paying for a lettuce from here,” he says.

Though a hotel chain can theoretically contract directly with private or cooperative producers, throughout the entire production chain “the hand of state agencies is always present, certifying the product quality, verifying the contract terms are being fulfilled and making sure the farmer is not making too much money,” says Carlos.

To be part of this distribution chain, farmers must join the Agricultural Business Group but then get the resources for their harvests from the Logistics Business Group of the Ministry of Agriculture, a huge, inefficient mastodon they distrust.

“What is needed are agricultural purchasing centers to facilitate exchanges between producers and tourism administrators,” says Medardo, an agricultural engineer who describes himself as “someone who could free up this process.”

Medardo believes that what is needed are more markets “with greater visibility so that hotel managers know where they are and what they have to offer.” Years after they were closed, some of these points of sale have been reopned in provinces such as Pinar del Río, Villa Clara, Holguin, Las Tunas and Santiago de Cuba. The agricultural expert believes, however, that this is not enough.

“It should be like a wholesale market, where producers bring their fruits, vegetables and produce to be bought directly by hotels, but also a place to sign purchase agreements without government intermediaries, “he says.

Until 1959 Cuba was a net exporter of agricultural products, but times have changed. “There is a culture of looking for everything overseas, from butter to mangoes,” laments Medardo. “Even the shrimp tourists eat are mostly frozen imports, to say nothing of meat, which is brought in almost entirely from other countries.”

In 2015 — just as the island’s tourism boom was beginning in the wake of the thaw in diplomatic relations between the Cuba and the United States — a report published by the Center for the Study of the Economy was already warning of a troubling disconnect between tourism and the nation’s industrial output. This situation has worsened due to the growth in tourism, which experienced more than four million visitors in 2017, and the subsequent increase in the demand for food and cleaning supplies.

The report warned of a growing “trade deficit resulting from substituting domestically produced items with imports” and criticized the “long approval process experienced by domestic producers trying to import supplies and parts,” which has made it easier and faster to simply bring in certain goods from overseas.

The most experienced tourists realize this immediately and ask if there are no “local tapas, with a Cuban flavor.” But employees can offer them little more than some dried produce, such as almonds and raisins, which come already packaged with a foreign label. There are no plantain chips, roasted corn-on-the-cob, pork rinds or even a Cuban tamale.

A few meters away from Hotel Sevilla, however, street vendors hawk their wares — roasted peanuts, corn chips and all manner of fritangas — in what seems like a world completely disconnected from the one inside the hotel. A distant galaxy where domestic products have more presence than imported ones.

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

Yoan Campos Guevara is a dental assistant at the Pablo Agüero Guedes de Caibarién Polyclinic and promoter of the Network of Men who have sex with other men (HSH), associated with the Ministry of Health (Minsap) and in coordination with the Cenesex, which is directed by Raul Castro’s daughter, Mariela Castro.

Although now he admits to feeling “pretty good,” his voice, clear and strong, fades away when he remembers what happened. “I ran out to get help, but it was 4:30 in the morning and no one was going to get involved with a badly injured person, so two security guards at a nearby hotel — because this happened in a relatively public place, it was not in the dark — they put me on a scooter,” he says.

Campos, who did not lose consciousness, relates that on that trip he saw his attackers. “They were walking very happy, like someone who had thrown water on a dog,” he laments. Seeing them walking along the road “as if it was nothing” and “without any remorse” took away his desire to forgive them and he now announces that he will take it to the end to make the guilty ones pay for their crimes.

A few minutes after he was admitted, a policeman came to inform him of the arrest of the alleged perpetrators, who are from Santa Clara, and told him that the weapon used was a knife. “They have been informing me of everything and I have learned that one of the boys was responsible for the stabbing and is awaiting trial, they also say that he confessed, and that the other four are still detained,” he says.

The specialists at the hospital in Caibarién where he was initially admitted managed to stop the bleeding. He was later transferred to Remedios, where his wound was sutured and he had blood tests, but finally he had to be taken to Santa Clara because some of the blood had passed into his lung. According to his testimony, Remedios’ surgeon warned him that “if the wound had been a few millimeters higher” it would have pierced his heart.

His father, the well-known tenor Juan Carlos Campos, explained that at the hospital “they put a drain on his side because the knife cut caused a pneumothorax (collapsed lung) and he had blood and air in his lung.”Also, this Tuesday they did some tests that will be evaluated today by the doctors to decide whether to remove part of the drain and they will evalute later if he can be discharged, at best, at the end of this week.

Juan Carlos Campos believes that there is a set of people who are “homophobic and half criminals who are doing nothing and are a danger. He was on his cell phone, communicating after the holidays when everything happened,” says the father of the young man about that night, as if he wanted to go back in time. “The people in the neighborhood, his friends and all his co-workers” have been calling the hospital to find out about his son because “everyone loves him very much,” he says with satisfaction.

Yoan Campos, who confesses that he never thought something like this could happen to him, feels very grateful for the attention that his co-workers, friends and the LGBTI community have shown for his condition. “The provincial coordinator of the Network of men who have sex with other men visited me here. I did not expect that attention on a human level,” he says.

Pedro Manuel González, an LGBTI activist from the area, told Radio Martí that he is convinced that it is a hate crime because “there is an aversion towards these people.”

In mid-2017, another young homosexual, José Enrique Morales Besada, who lived in Morón, Ciego de Ávila, was beaten in the middle of the street by unknown persons who insulted him for being gay, although his case has not yet reached the courts. In May 2015, this newspaper announced the death by stoning of a 24-year-old transsexual in the city of Pinar del Río, but the official media never published the news.

Thanks to the work of members of the Cuban LGBTI community, more and more information and reports on aggressions and hate crimes can be documented. Although official institutions do not publish statistics on murders or violent acts against transvestites, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders and intersexuals, at present the news filters out through social networks and independent media.

The Cuban Penal Code does not address the concept of “hate crimes” in the case of assaults against people based on ethnic origin, religion, race, gender, orientation and sexual identity. The latter, in particular, are not called out in the current legislation and these crimes are processed by the police and the courts without an aggravating circumstance that takes into account the vulnerability of this group of people.

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

The artist explains that the afternoon was quiet and the protest action had not yet begun when the police appeared and arrested them. Although Otero confesses that he was in shock, he reacted by arguing that a citizen sitting in a public space that could not be arrested without proof of having committed any crime worthy of handcuffing him and putting him in the police car. The officer who arrested him refused to give him explanations about the causes of his arrest, so the artist resisted.

At the police station on Zanja Street, the officer known as Kenia, who has dealt with the cases of other artists such as Tania Bruguera, threatened Otero with imprisoning him for many years to prevent his artistic actions. The young man replied that he was already planning the second edition of the alternative Biennial that he organized last May for his “responsibility with the times.”

The group of artists decided to carry out a protest action after having been ignored by the Minister of Culture, to whom they had directed a letter to claim precisely what the decree prevents. “We wanted to be able to meet with the minister to clarify the independence of Cuban art, from music to dance, everything. We want there to be no need to be a degreed artist in order to have a space of legitimacy, and now it turns out that the space of allegiance is such that tomorrow you can lose your house if you sell a painting,” he denounces.

In addition, Otero Alcántara warns that this decree affects not only independent artists but also those who depend on the institution. “You can be a graduate of a school, but if they want to they can remove you from the Artist Register, as happened with some people in #00Bienal, and thus become part of the list of artists from whom they decide to take everything away.

For the artist, the decree “amounts to a stoning of all contemporary Cuban culture, everything that is not official and does not fall within the canon, it goes away” and it is “a very clear response” to the challenge the cultural authorities of the country perceived in the successful carrying off the independent Biennial event held in May.

The striking protest of Yanelis Núñez is, for Otero Alcántara, symbolic as well as very courageous. “It’s shit as a symbol of how we feel and how they treat us,” he says.

Amaury Pacheco, another of those who participated in the action and one of those who managed to record the moment of the arrest of Otero Alcántara, also celebrates this intervention that references the performance of Ángel Delgado, an artist who defecated on a copy of the state newspaper Granma. “Now the shit is on us in the form of protest and that makes us untouchable, Yanelys, they could not touch her and we carry the shit that has been poured on us all this time to the Capitol, directly to their stairs,” he said.

Pacheco feels “very happy” that “at least five people” have taken this step against a decree that he considers “a shot at the head of Cuban art” and a tool the Government uses to make alternative spaces “disappear completely” and to prevent unauthorized activities in private homes. If this is successful, he insists, events such as Endless Poetry or an upcoming independent Biennial will disappear.

These events coincide with an offensive against cultural activities by the Government.

A few days ago, Alpidio Alonso became Minister of Culture. Pacheco recalled that the new minister became famous in Alamar at the time of the “triumvirate” that he formed with Rojas and Jacomino when, in those years, he was directing the policy of the Hermanos Saíz Association. “If afigure with this background now appears as Minister of Culture he must also take a strong position for Cuban artists.”

In addition, this Monday 14ymedio, was able to confirm with the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) that Ramón Samada is the new president of the organization. The appointment had not been announced in the official media, although it probably occurred in the last month. In a note on the week of German cinema in Havana published in Havana, he was already identified as the highest authority of the ICAIC.

Samada is a hardline officialist known for having starred in several controversial attempts to silence opponents. In 2015, he promoted the attempt to expel Eliécer Ávila from one of the assemblies of the G-20, where a group of filmmakers were calling for a film law on the island.

Years before, in 2010, he banned the entry of several government critics to Chaplin Cinema, where the eighth Young Filmmakers Exhibition was held. On that occasion the documentary Revolution was going to be screened, dedicated to the hip hop group Los Aldeanos. Among the artists who were prevented from entering were Ciro Javier Díaz Penado and Claudio Fuentes.

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