Luz Escobar – Page 6 – Translating Cuba

Major Deployment of Cuban Police to Prevent a ‘Secret’ Demonstration

Surveillance on the street where María Matienzo resides, who was detained for a few hours by State Security. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 12 March 2021 — A dozen activists and journalists woke up to find their homes under surveillance and themselves prevented from going out. The reason: an alleged protest action while, they say, they have not called. In Old Havana, around the Capitol, there is a large presence of police and patrol cars, as there is in the vicinity of the Plaza of the Revolution.

The Government thus intends to repress an alleged demonstration denounced on Cuban television news this Thursday by the newscaster Humberto López. The alleged demonstration was reported to have the objective of demanding the release of Luis Robles, a young man who was arrested for holding a sign with the messages “freedom”, “no more repression” and “free Denis,” alluding to rapper Denis Solís.

The activity, according to López, was organized “secretly” from the United States to be carried out by “counterrevolutionaries” in what he described as a “provocation” scheduled for this Friday in the Plaza of the Revolution. continue reading

The presenter recalled, in his usual threatening tone, that resistance, the established crimes of disobedience to authority and contempt, as well as public disorder and enemy propaganda can be charged against citizens who come out to demonstrate. The penalties associated with each of these crimes in the Penal Code — ranging from three months to eight years in prison, in addition to fines — were also shown on screen.

López noted that these crimes are “dormant”, although, as several international NGOs have pointed out, the Cuban authorities resort to them to convict opponents or activists, as happened recently with Luis Robles.

The presenter called out those responsible for this “secret action,” naming pointed to Omara Ruiz Urquiola, Yasser Castellanos, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, Abu Duyanah Tamayo, Esteban Rodríguez, Héctor Luis Valdés and Maykel Osorbo. Among this group are those who staged a hunger strike at the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement and are the constant target of defamations in the official media.

Ruiz Urquiola, who is currently in the United States, wrote on his Facebook profile: “I am not planning anything that I cannot take part in. I would have liked to have thought about taking the street for Luis Robles.” In the same vein, Otero Alcántara expressed himself, insisting to 14ymedio that none of the members of the San Isidro Movement or those who had been at the headquarters had plans to go to the Plaza of the Revolution today.

The artist also took the opportunity to denounce that both he and his companions have been under surveillance by the political police from the early hours of the morning.

In addition, Carolina Barrero, Luz Escobar and Yamilka Lafita woke up besieged in their homes. When trying to go out into the street, Héctor Luis Valdés, Maykel Osorbo and María Matienzo, whose homes were also under surveillance, were arrested.

“María Matienzo, a journalist from CubaNet, has just been arrested as she left her home. She does not answer the phone. I consider her missing,” denounced the activist Kirenia Yalit, who also published a photograph in which a patrol care is seen standing guard in the block where the reporter lives.

Upon being released, Matienzo declared: “I am an independent journalist and I will cover the news as I understand it. My house is not a prison. Every time they put surveillance on me, I will go to jail.”
____________

COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 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.

Locked Up in My House by the Cuban Political Police on March 8

State Security agent who, this March 8, prevented Luz Escobar from leaving her house. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 8 March 2021 — As soon as the sun came up I got into my usual routine: making coffee, checking the news and starting my work as an independent journalist in a country that does not tolerate freedom of the press.

Sometimes there are days of long hours glued to the keyboard, other days are hours in the field, in “the heat of it” as a colleague says. Today was one of those days to review pending notes and organize the agenda for the week. But in Cuba there is a routine that nobody stops: going out to buy daily bread. Well, hardly anyone.

At the stroke of nine in the morning I grabbed my wallet, ration book, a bag, and headed out to the bakery. When I went down, a State Security officer was again at the entrance of the building to prevent me from going out into the street. He was the same one as on other occasions but, this time, he was accompanied by two women in the uniform of the Ministry of the Interior, tight shirts and olive green miniskirts. continue reading

“Luzbely, you can’t go out today,” the man told me, blocking my way when he saw me ready to cross the door. This time I didn’t answer him or ask him anything, I turned around and waited for the elevator.

“Oh, by the way, congratulations,” said the officer. Since he was wearing the mask, I didn’t detect if he said it sarcastically, but judging by the tone of his voice, he was more nervous than anything else.

In Cuba it is routine on a day like today to hear a congratulation for Women’s Day from every man who passes you by, even if he does not know you.

State Security officials have been harassing me for years, even long before 2014, when I decided to be part of the 14ymedio team. However, the open and direct fire against me began when I began to sign aticles, interviews and reports that bring to light the reality that power wants to hide.

In addition to locking them in their homes whenever they want, the political police use a repressive arsenal against women who work in independent media: arbitrary arrests, bans on leaving the country, threats to family and friends, and jail. They have threatened me about my daughters through the State Security Office for minors, using collaborating neighbors who have given false testimonies. They have harassed people close to me to try to scare them away.

All this happens before the eyes of my daughters, who today are already 11 and 13, and I find it impossible to hide what is happening to me. It hurts me tremendously that creatures who don’t understand half the adult world are subjected to states of siege under threat, so I try to explain as best I can. “Your mother writes about things that bother the government a lot and that’s why these things happen,” I tell them.

Also on the horizon is the violence of an act of repudiation like the one against Anyell Valdés recently; State Security has shown that it has no limits when it comes to exercising violence against women and their children.

We are running out of time and our children grow up and soon they will have to experience the repression in the first person. I experienced it as a daughter, now as a mother and a journalist, but I do not want, under any circumstances, for my daughters to also have to suffer this same thing in their own flesh.

That my daughters have found the strength to face it does not lessen the pain. They are the fuel to continue doing what I do, my motivation to fight for the better country that we all deserve.

____________

San Isidro Movement Calls for a National Dialogue Without Excluding the Cuban Authorities

Activists of the San Isidro Movement at the organization’s headquarters, in Old Havana, last November. (MSI)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 5 March 2021 — The San Isidro Movement (MSI) has launched the Patria y Vida [Homeland and Life] platform to convene a “national dialogue” with all actors in society, including the Government, and build a Cuba that represents “a safe home for all,” and to overcome the serious crisis that the nation is suffering through “peaceful and civic solutions.”

“The measures of the so-called Tarea Ordenamiento* [Ordering Task] have only exacerbated economic and social inequalities,” asserts the MSI in a statement published this Friday. “The role of the Government has been reduced to managing shortages, hunger, repression and violence in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic,” the text continues. “The Government continues to be incapable of guaranteeing respect for the human rights of its citizens.”

The artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, the most visible face of the movement, tells 14ymedio that the platform arises because of the “disrespect” that there is “on the part of the regime.” Despite this, he declares that “there cannot be a dialogue in Cuba without the systemic part, without the regime part.” Now, he asserts, “it has to be with character,” hence the motto Patria y Vida, which coincides with the viral song of that name and in whose video clip Alcántara himself appears wrapped in a Cuban flag: “Right now we are dead and we want life. It is very encouraging, we want life in the future of Cuba, a living Cuba, with its mistakes but alive.” continue reading

Alcántara referred to the reaction of the Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso, on January 27, when he attacked a group of artists who were demonstrating in front of the official building, “ignoring the voice of the citizenry.” However, he recalls that the attempts to approach the cultural authorities are not new: “Since Decree 349 and #00Biennial [in July 2018] we wanted a face-to-face a dialogue with the minister,” he says. “The authorities always managed to stir things up, but today we believe that it is no longer possible to speak from the cultural space, it is necessary to speak at the level of citizens, of civic responsibility.” And he asserts: “I cannot make my art if there is a dictatorship in Cuba.”

The MSI statement defends plurality in order to integrate the majority of citizens and overcome the crisis affecting the country. “The only thing we want to abound in Cuba is prosperity, progress and respect for our dignity as free human beings. We do not bet on conflict, we proclaim peace,” the text indicates.

The dialogue would have several phases, the first, which should last 21 days, begins this Friday. At this stage, the proposals of those who wish to participate will be collected through the email dialogonacional@movimientosanisidro.com or in the “Patria y Vida” tab of the San Isidro Movement website.

Alcántara pointed out that, based on initiatives prior to this one, the new thing that the MSI can do is to propose dialogue from the point of view of art “with a lot of inclusion and respect for the work of many people.”

*Translator’s note: Tarea ordenamiento = the [so-called] ‘Ordering Task’ which is a collection of measures that includes 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 others.

____________

The Only Thing That’s Gotten Better in Havana Since the Pandemic is Transportation

Some Havana residents smile at the site of so many taxis on the streets during the pandemic, joking that they make the Cuban capital look like New York. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, February 26, 2021 — The pandemic has left an odd imprint on Havana. Bus stops, scenes of real chaos in pre-Covid times, now look deserted most of the day. While the situation is very different during peak hours, from 7:00 to 9:00 A.M. and 4:00 to 6:00 P.M., the stops are never as crowded as they were before 2020. An inspector at each stop is now there to make sure the number of passengers boarding the bus does not exceed the allowable limit and, as much as possible, that riders maintain a safe distance from each other to avoid contagion.

“The only thing that’s gotten better in this town in the past pandemic year is public transportation. I work at a bank and every day I go from Cerro to Vedado. Before, I would spend more than an hour waiting for a bus or a taxi. Now I don’t have to wait more than fifteen minutes here,” says 51-year-old Alicia Medina.

Indeed, in less than twenty minutes on Wednesday afternoon, the stop at the busy intersection of 27th and G streets was cleared of passengers. Three metro buses came by during that time. On two occasions, buses with routes that covered long stretches of the city — the P11, P16 and P2 — arrived, along with taxis. A lot of taxis, especially those popularly known as gazelles. continue reading

On Wednesday afternoon the bus stop at the busy intersection at the intersection of 27th and G streets had been cleared out within twenty minutes.

“I’d rather take a taxi. It’s more comfortable and… in my case it only costs three pesos more. The bus I take costs five so I’m happy to pay the extra. Lately I haven’t had to wait more than five minutes and the flow is constant. It looks like New York at rush hour, with all the streets full of yellow taxis like in the movies,” says a young woman who, according to her account leaves home every day because she works at a privately owned Italian restaurant on 23rd Street in Vedado which makes home deliveries.

The young woman has a point. The gazelles, which belong to Metrotaxi, are the stars of Havana’s urban landscape, plying the city’s busiest thoroughfares, especially during peak hours.

“The ones that never stop are the ones with Cubataxi, the yellow and black ones. I don’t know why but they never stop,” she says. The reason they are never available is simple: they now serve only hospitals and cab stations.

“They are the only routes we have now. The rates are for hospital patients and visitors. We charge 1.25 pesos per kilometer,” explains a Cubataxi employee.

Another company with a fleet of yellow cars is Agencia de Taxi, which used to charge in convertible pesos and whose customers are now mainly tourists. Their prices are much higher, which has made them less popular, but they help alleviate demand during peak hours.

“Our fares are the same as they were when we were charging in CUC based on an exchange rate of 25 pesos,” claims an employee, though he mentions that there are changes coming because the company has “decided to fix the taximeters” in every one of its drivers’ cars.

Another of the lines of yellow cars that circulate through the city are those of the Agencia de Taxi, which previously charged in CUC and were mainly focused on tourism. (14ymedio)

“Once the contract is up at the end of this month, we’ll be able to get the taximeters fixed and refurbished,” he says, though he points out that the company doing the repairs will only be servicing them at the Agencia de Taxis’ cab stands.

“If a customer files a complaint because a taxi driver is charging a higher fare than is allowed or is falsifying prices, he’ll be fined 5,000 pesos if it is a first offense. If he is caught doing it again, he’ll lose his commercial license for good,” he adds. Drivers can also be fined 2,000 pesos if they do not turn on the taximeter.

That won’t last long,” says one taxi driver. “Pretty soon people will figure out tricks to get around the rules. I’ve spent twenty-five years in this business and taximeters have never solved anything. The last time they tried it, it didn’t work. What never changes is supply and demand. And negotiating a price with the customer.”

____________

Architects Working ‘Under the Table’ are Called Party Decorators in Cuba

“Havana survives because it was very well built under capitalism, with excellent professionals who have been banned since 1959”, defends an architect, while the city increasingly displays its makeshift construction practices. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 24 February 2021 — Since the Cuban Government released the news that Architecture is among the 124 activities that individuals are prohibited from engaging in privately, the profession has not stopped looking for spaces to express its discontent, sometimes from pessimism and disenchantment, other times from searching for solutions.

After two weeks of public debates among professionals, 14ymedio sought the opinion of some of those Cubans who have built their homes “by their own effort” without ever having seen an architect. 14ymedio has also consulted experts about the consequences that this practice can bring for the urban environment of the city.

“But who said that an architect is needed to build a house?” Iván Calvo, 52, of El Cerro, counterattacks, when asked if he had hired the services of a professional to build his home.

In 2018, after nearly a decade laying one brick over another, Calvo finally finished building his house. Every afternoon he goes up with his friends to the terrace to play dominoes and feed the pigeons that he raises with his 17-year-old son. continue reading

In 2021, the prohibition of the private practice of architecture and engineering was expressly established. (14ymedio)

“My life is my home, along with my family and my birds. I raised it by myself, with only the help of some cousins of mine who came over some weekends. I never needed an architect, beyond the bureaucratic paperwork with the house, the bricklayer I hired and I did all the work”, he concludes.

Rafael Fornés, a Cuban architect residing in Miami, declares that building without the guidance of a professional leads to “structural dangers” in the property that can later “cause collapses”.

“Havana survives because it was very well built under capitalism, with excellent professionals, who have been banned since ‘59. The legacy, the heritage and the wonder city are the result of the experience of Cuban architects and builders.”

Silvia lives in the house right next to Calvo’s, a young woman barely 26-years-old who, together with her husband, built a house on the roof of the property of her in-laws, but she sees it differently.

“The community’s architect is supposed to be there to develop the project but I wanted to do something decent so I looked for another way. I went to a friend with an Architectural degree who drew up the plans for me under the table, and then he just bribed the Housing official to get his signature, which is the only one approach the authorities recognize”, he explains.

Silvia’s friend makes a living in a professional studio that she founded three years ago with two colleagues. “Everything is very absurd, he has an Architecture degree, but in order to legalize his business and pay taxes he had to get a party decorator license,” said the young woman.

“Everything is very absurd, he has an Architecture degree, but in order to legalize his business and pay taxes he had to get a party decorator license”

The event has given rise to anecdotes such as the inauguration of the Monument to the Cuban Decorator, created in 2019 by the independent Arquitectura Infraestudio project as a “tribute” to that legal figure that allows them to exist and earn a living from their studies.

For architect Rafael Muñoz, the country needs construction professionals to “take charge” of the cities again. “We are submerged in an urban chaos that is annihilating the nation’s immense construction heritage”, stated the professional from Berlin, the city where he now resides.

“There is no insurance and no insurance companies in the country for professionals (to practice without them is suicide), there are no laws that specialize in real estate issues, there are no bids for public works, but contracts get awarded in a murky way or, worse still, they are ordered from overseas. There is also no transparent and binding pricing policy, there are no bank loans that allow the purchase of equipment or software licenses. No professional should practice with pirated software. If we want to be respected, we must respect the work of the others”, he specified.

Architects believe that they can contribute little to their colleagues’ statement from the Group of Cuban Architecture Studies (GECA) in which they demand of the Government, from an architectural and city point of view, to conduct this activity independently.

However, he claims “to address the issue from another point of view no less important, the human side and the ethical side” because he considers that recent laws “reinforce the deformation of the inverted pyramid” of Cuban society.

“The more you know, the more you study, the more you learn, the less chance of a decent life the country offers you. This discourages study and efforts to improve. Any young Cuban who chooses to enter university studies knows in advance that he will be choosing to be placed at the lowest level of that pyramid voluntarily. They are less and less willing to do so”, he explained.

The architect provides specific information about his generation but that illustrates the phenomenon in a general way: “In July 1989, 101 young architects graduated from the Cujae School of Architecture (José Antonio Echeverría Technological University of Havana). Today, more than 80 have left the country. This phenomenon, which nobody talks about, is repeated in every graduation and in every university degree in Cuba. Cuban universities are a machine for creating emigrants”.

“We are submerged in an urban chaos that is annihilating the immense built legacy of the nation.” (14 and a half)

Muñoz calls on those who “are at the helm of national ship” to give young people the opportunity “to assume their own future” or they “will continue to leave the Island en masse.” For him, the long-awaited legalization of Architecture and Engineering studies in the country faces “challenges that colleagues should not underestimate either.”

Architect Ruslan Muñoz, professor at La Cujae, published on his Facebook profile on the 11th a list of government measures that, in his opinion, have damaged the profession since 1960.

Among them, he highlighted the intervention and nationalization of construction companies and all their related industries in 1960, the closing of the planning companies and the gradual emigration of professionals between 1960-1963, the closure of the National College of Architects in 1967 and the Revolutionary Offensive in 1968 that nationalized all the remaining private business in the country, right down to the shoe shiners. He culminates his list in 2021 with the prohibition of the private practice of architecture and engineering, although he urges his colleagues to provide more data.

____________

“The Fierce Political Indoctrination of Children in Cuba is Extreme Violence”

Erik Ravelo’s work ‘Doctrine’, in which he contrasts the image of a child in uniform on a cross formed by the arms of Fidel Castro. (Erik Ravelo / Facebook)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 24 February 2021 — Erik Ravelo cannot forget the day when, in the fifth or sixth grade, his teacher took the children out of class to take them to an act of savage repudiation in El Vedado. “An elderly lady, the mother of an opponent, was attacked, beaten and practically lynched in front of me. They slashed her face with a hardhat. They smashed her glasses. Bleeding, she was grabbed from the enraged mass and put in a police car. They took her away.”

This is how the artist himself told it on his social networks this Tuesday, when he presented his work Doctrine, in which he superimposes an image of a child in his school uniform on a cross formed by the arms of Fidel Castro.

Ravelo tells 14ymedio that the piece was finished just this Tuesday and it is his way of showing solidarity with what many of those who dare to express themselves freely “unfortunately are having to experience in Cuba.” continue reading

“As I explain in the text about my own experience, it is a serious offense against childhood to expose children to direct violence such as what they are exposed to when they are taken to a repudiation rally,” he says.

As he himself denounces in his post: “There are many people who have told me ‘but in Cuba there are no barefoot children smelling glue at traffic lights, cleaning cars and shoes on the street, sleeping on the sidewalks.’ And yes, this may be true, but this work wants to show that there are many forms of violence against children. It is not only the abandonment and extreme poverty, because the fierce political indoctrination to which a child is exposed in Cuba in my opinion is also violence. And extreme.”

I even remember, from that childhood, the song that everyone sang in chorus: “We don’t want them anymore, we don’t want them anymore, we don’t want them anymore, let them fuck off and go to hell.”

Why? he asks. “Was it to instill in us a love for our country? No. Was it to teach us to defend our country by beating an old woman? No, was it to make us better men? No. It was simply to instill fear in us.”

Ravelo says he was impressed by the comments his work has elicited. “One wrote: ‘I was that child too.’ I replied: ‘Yes, tiger, unfortunately we were all that child.’

As for using such “sacred” figures in his work, something that is not new in his career, Ravelo says that nowhere else in the world has he suffered “serious consequences” from any of his previous campaigns. In fact, his work Unhate for Benetton, showing a number of world leaders , including Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez, kissing on the mouth, won the Grand Prix at Cannes. “With this I want to show that art and graphic communication cannot be criminalized, and if it is, then it is only in Cuba.”

“It can’t be that I do Trump with a crucified immigrant child, and being in the United States absolutely nothing happens to me, or that I do Salvini in Italy and Merkel in Europe, or the Pope while living more than 18 years in Italy, but with Cuba it’s different,” he continues.

“I make art, and if art is criminalized or an artist is censored, it really touches us all,” he asserts, claiming the use of the image of Fidel Castro “to represent an idea is necessary,” in his opinion because the acts of repudiation “are one of the saddest, lowest and most inhumane pages” in the history of Cuba.

____________

“Independent Filmmakers Will Continue Filming Without Permits”

The filmmaker José Luis Aparicio believes with the new provisions, artists such as Jorge Molina or Miguel Coyula “are left in a punishable illegal situation”. (Facebook / Miguel Coyula)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 14 February 2021– The Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) tried to reassure the film industry this week, stating that the new bans on self-employment do not affect them. The artists had expressed their complaints and doubts on the social networks, but the ICAIC insisted on a “clarifying note” that “independent audiovisual and cinematographic creators are not self-employed, but rather carry out their activity from their status as artists, recognized as a way of non-state management in the aforementioned Decree Law 373″.

However, three filmmakers who spoke with 14ymedio this Friday, consider that it is the combination of that decree with the new restrictions that puts their work in check.

One of them is José Luis Aparicio, who recalls that Decree Law 373 meant the creation of the Registry of the Audiovisual and Cinematographic Creator (Recac), the result of “a request that filmmakers have been making for years, especially those grouped in the G-20”, to gain access to possibilities that they did not have before.

Aparicio acknowledges that this came to grant “a legality to filmmakers so that they can carry out operations that were previously impossible or very complicated” and that they could, consequently, “produce in a more industrial, more conventional way” and “access funds, permits, export and import possibilities, all kinds of procedures”. continue reading

However, he sees as a problem that there are filmmakers who, for different reasons are not interested in being in that register, “because above all they believe in a more radical and underground type of independent cinema”, not because of the themes and the way in which that they count them, but in principle, because “they believe that belonging to a state norm that regulates independent creators already goes against the independent concept.”

He cites filmmakers Jorge Molina and Miguel Coyula as examples, who, by their own decision, do not belong to RECAC but “have an occupation that supports them”.

With the new provisions, says Aparicio, artists like Molina or Coyula “are now left in a punishable situation, of lawlessness”

With the new provisions, Aparicio thinks, artists like Molina or Coyula “are now in a punishable illegal situation”. Before, he explains, their situation was “in a certain way, allegorical and ambiguous” because, without having a link to the institution, “they continued to work as independent filmmakers, like they have done all their lives, in a non-specific way, filming without permits, the guerrilla way”.

“This is a very worrying situation for them and all the colleagues who have an interest for them to continue to make films and not receive any type of punishment for making their films”, says Aparicio, director of such films as Sueños al Pairo.

In addition, he continues, the new scenario also leaves “very badly off” those who are not traditionally filmmakers and do not have curriculum works to meet the requirements dictated by the institution or have not studied in film schools.

In any case, Aparicio reflects, “in all parts of the world” and at all times”, independent cinema has been created beyond legal provisions, decrees, license, political pressure, filming permits or specific conditions. “It has always been done at the snap of a finger, at the stroke of passion. To not identify that, in the case of cinema and art in general, is blindness on the part of the government when it comes to dealing with culture and art”.

Director Víctor Alfonso, an architect by profession, calls attention to another aspect of the problem, a question that has to do with logic: “How do you register if you don’t have work? At least three works are needed to be able to belong to the audiovisual creator’s registry. This is a paradox. How do you manage to have three quality works if you cannot film legally? That is the big question, but I honestly think that there will not be many changes, people will continue filming and nothing will happen “.

Director Víctor Alfonso, an architect by profession, points to another aspect of the problem, a question that has to do with logic: “How do you register if you don’t have any work lined up?

“They’re going to use that to hit the names they already have marked,” he asserts.” For example, Iliana Hernández, who goes out to film in the street tomorrow, falls under this pretext. The issue of independent journalists comes into play there too”.

Mijail Rodríguez, scriptwriter and organizer of the ICAIC Youth Show for several years, is of the opinion that Decree Law 373 “was a half-achievement” of the filmmakers after much battle with the institution. “The result does not include all the demands of that struggle that the G20 and the Assembly of Filmmakers led. Hence, many do not feel identified with [Decree] 373.”

“The problem is that now, by prohibiting audiovisual and cinematographic activity as self-employed workers, in some way it declares illegal any activity that is not endorsed by the institution, which is aggravated by Decree 349 (which regulates artistic diffusion in Cuba) that is still active, “says Rodríguez. The Ministry of Culture intends to “save” the artists through Decree Law 373 or the RECAC, but all this, Rodríguez concludes, “is used very conveniently… In the end, everything works as a control mechanism.”

____________

Translated by Norma Whiting

Leidy Laura Hernandez Denounces that Cuban State Security Poisoned Her Dogs

Leidy Laura Hernández, with one of her animals. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 4 February 2021 — Leidy Laura Hernández, Santa Clara animal protector, and her husband, the rebellious rapper Omar Mena El Analista, denounced this Wednesday that Cuban State Security poisoned their dogs.

“On Sunday morning, when I got up and went to give the dogs breakfast, I found María, one of my dogs, was dead,” Hernández tells 14ymedio, sure of what happened: “They poisoned her, it seems like it was at night. “

The other dog in the pair, Sonrisa, was also found convulsing, but they managed to save her.

Her hypothesis is based on the increasing harassment that the couple has suffered from State Security. Since the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara called a demonstration before the Capitol last week, Mena has been detained on several occasions and the surveillance of their home has been constant.

“In recent days they have become much more raw and threatened me from various sides,” says Hernández. “On Facebook I received many threats from fake profiles, which I never thought would happen.” continue reading

As soon as they noticed María’s condition, they went looking for a veterinarian to do an autopsy, although Hernández is convinced of the cause of the animal’s death. “She was a super healthy dog that had never been sick and had nothing, there was no other cause for her to wake up dead.”

The veterinarian later determined that the cause of death had been “intoxication,” at the same time he ventured that they could have used insecticide “the one they use for the mosquito campaign,” the activist told this newspaper.

The young woman says that in the neighborhood she is lucky that all the neighbors, in addition to getting along very well with her and her husband, always help them. “They all like animals and they support us in what we do in the shelter, they come and deworm their dogs here, they sterilize them, we help them with that part and they help us with food, they have always been there for us,” she says.

In addition, she insists that her neighbors, who have been “witnesses to the entire siege of the State Security against us,” when this happened, believed that it could only be the political police who were acting like this “to pressure us.”

“I do think it was them,” she insists. “Everything has been a chain of events, one after another, of threats that have increased in tone, first against us, then against veterinarians, then against our friends, our neighbors… That has had no effect and they have accomplished nothing, then they come with this baseness. “

She believes that “now the political issue is very complex and they are very afraid,” referring to the Government. The agents, she says, know that hhers “weak point” is that, her dogs: “They know that this is a way of making me feel bad.”

Also, remember that this is not the first time that State Security has done “something like this” against activists and people who express themselves differently: “They did it to David D Omni, whose dog was poisoned, and to Omara Ruiz Urquiola. Now it was our turn.”

____________

“In Cuba, Our Parents’ Generation is Collapsing”

The artists Solveig Font (left), and Celia González (right). (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 30 January 2021 — Celia González (Havana, 1985) has arrived from Mexico to link Nicaragua and Cuba in an exhibition that reflects the political similarities of both nations. She is an artist who likes provocation, research and data who graduated from the Higher Institute of Art in 2009, but long before her works were being talked about.

The young woman coordinates the exhibition No Somos Memoria [We’re not Memory], recently exhibited at the Avecez Art Space gallery by curator Solveig Font, by a group of Nicaraguan artists who developed their work based on the events that occurred in 2018, when the protests against Daniel Ortega’s government ended with hundreds of deaths in the streets. Finding common ground with Cuba, some of the pieces are inspired by the repression experienced by the San Isidro Movement (MSI) or the protest on November 27^th (27N) before the headquarters of the Ministry of Culture.

About this project and her return to Cuba, Celia González spoke with 14ymedio.

14ymedio: Why Nicaragua?

Celia González: I’m starting to get interested in Nicaragua because I’m in the midst of an investigation on how political context determines contemporary art, thinking about the Cuban scene, but I want to put it in a regional context. First, I thought of covering all of Central America, but I finally decided to focus on Nicaragua because of the similarities I found, because of having a mythical, authoritarian revolution in the government. continue reading

First, I thought of covering all of Central America, but I finally decided to focus on Nicaragua because of the similarities I found, because of having a mythical, authoritarian revolution in the government.

14ymedio: How did you start this meeting between Cuba and Nicaragua from Mexico?

Celia González:I began to come into contact virtually with Nicaraguan artists who explained their work to me and what is happening in their country, which has a very similar context to that of Cuba. Thus, I understood that the art they are producing has radically changed since 2018 due to the April events, which split the country, especially because it radicalized the people’s positions in favor of and against it.

As a consequence, they have stopped exhibiting publicly. What they have done has been outside the country. Many of the works that are being shown here have not been shown in Nicaragua.

14ymedio: What do you perceive in these works in particular?

Celia González:The works should be explained one by one because they respond to affective relationships with the Nicaraguan context. I find it very interesting that the 2018 demonstrations involved rethinking the symbol. They used the Sandinismo slogans against Sandinismo, such as the cobblestone, the flag, the trees of life or the propaganda with Hugo Chávez in neon lights.

14ymedio: And how does that connect with Cuba?

Celia González:What seems interesting to me is that in Cuba, with the MSI and the 27N, there is a symbolic dispute being forged with power from art. The important thing about bringing in this exhibition is that the people who have been mobilizing and fighting for their political and citizen rights here, see that the same thing is happening right next door and they can know what kind of response the artists are giving.

What seems interesting to me is that in Cuba, with the MSI and 27N, a symbolic dispute is being forged with power from art

I think it is something new, because, up to now, the relationship that Cuba and Nicaragua have is at the State level, there is no citizen or civic relationship between the two countries. I’m excited that they dedicated two editions of the Panic fan magazine with MSI and 27N in mind. That connection allows them to learn what is happening here and, for us, what they are living through. Emotionally, it has been a point of support for me, a joy.

14ymedio: Personally, how did you live this experience?

Celia González:I think one of the things that dictatorship and totalitarianism regimes feed on is isolation. In this sense, connecting two realities can be very rewarding and productive all at once to break with that supposed singularity of ours that the State has made us believe in. It has made us think that we are different, better and unique, when in reality we also have femicide, poverty, repression, shortages, hunger, inflation and neoliberalism. The loss of contact has been a strategic move, it has been something thought out.

I believe that a union can be a very powerful thing, and right now we have an opportunity that did not exist before, which is to be present in the networks, and we can create things together without being physically present.

14ymedio: What do you think of what happened the night of 27N in front of the Ministry of Culture, do you think that the presence of people demonstrating in the streets can bring a change in the country?

Celia González:I was in Mexico then, but wanted to be there, in front of the Ministry of Culture. That same November 27^th, some students from my university [the Ibero-American, also known as Ibero, of Mexico City] went to make the first demonstration in front of the Cuban Embassy. There were people from State Security filming from inside, although they never came out. Many went despite having been threatened by using their relatives and fearing for the family and the consequences, such as not being allowed to return to Cuba.

Many went despite having been threatened by using their relatives and fearing for the family and the consequences, such as not being allowed to return to Cuba

We played the music of Willy Chirino, Celia Cruz and Maykel Castillo. We went out with our posters; we sang the National Anthem and we were there for a long time. Many of us did not sleep that night, since we were very attentive. For about 15 days before then, I was also very active, very dedicated to collecting signatures of support, doing everything I could.

14ymedio: From Mexico, how were you able to collaborate with your Cuban colleagues?

Celia González: I have an emotional relationship with what went on, beyond what it means, because the people involved were my friends. Anamely is in my postgraduate degree in Anthropology and we managed to get the Ibero to speak out, something that was very difficult.

Ibero is a left-wing Jesuit private university, but at some point, they believed it was fair to support Anamely and they did. The complex thing is that the government has pro-government Cubans there and it was tense, because they were bent on questioning what we were doing. I say tense because many are afraid, we all know what can happen in a case like this, but it had to be done. When you have a friend in trouble, you have to do whatever it takes.

14ymedio: If you had been among the 30 who entered the Ministry of Culture, what would have been your claim at that meeting?

Celia González: My main claim would have been a stoppage of the repression, that they take charge publicly and that they apologize for repressing the citizenry, not only in the art scene, which is, in the end, the mildest, but also the neighborhood black people, such as Silverio or Denis Solís, who do get arrested and beaten up.

It is a request that implies the end of the Government: that there should be a multiparty system, free expression and a structural change to which they do not agree in any way, because it implies giving in. If people acted in unison, everything would be easier.

14ymedio: Have you taken a turn living through censorship in Cuba?

Celia González: I felt censorship twice. The first was in 2008 at Sandra Ceballo’s house, in the Aglutinador space. They prohibited her from doing the exhibition and publicly called all of us counterrevolutionaries, even before it opened, because they assumed that people from the US Interests Section had been invited. Actually, the group Porno Para Ricardo was going to play there, and it was banned. There are certain people who are banned, and when they come into contact with you, you too become banned, regardless of your work.

People are standing on lines, basically. The neoliberal of the conditions is every man for himself; he who can pay for it, fine, he who can’t, won’t eat

I suffered the other incident of censorship in 2018, when Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara invited us to the #00Bienal. They threatened my mother and it was very dramatic, because it was done by my half-brother, who is a lieutenant colonel of the Minint [Ministry of the Interior], already deactivated. My whole family on my father’s side is in the military, and my half-brother worked at Villa Marista repressing political prisoners. The Ministry of Culture gave him the order to repress me through my mother, which is one of their strategies.

My mother was told that I was going to end up in jail and she ended up with a nervous tic. Now she is in another position, she feels more secure because she sees that other things are happening, that people have more courage and that parents are more supporting.

14ymedio: What caught your attention the most about Cuba after almost two years abroad?

Celia González: Sadness, the lack of a life project, living in the immediacy. This was already there but it has worsened. People are standing on lines, basically. The neoliberal of the conditions is every man for himself; he who can pay for it, fine, he who can’t, won’t eat.

There is a government that places you in an economic and emotional stress situation, and that each time is left with fewer and fewer arguments. It has always wanted to give meaning to sacrifice in the name of a political project, but people of the generation such as father’s who is 80 years old, realized that the credibility of everything was lost, and that produces a lot of sadness. Our parent’s generation is collapsing.

Translated by Norma Whiting

____________

“For Me, it Was a ‘Shock’ to See a Minister and Vice-Ministers Dealing Blows”

The Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso, together with the Vice Minister Fernando Rojas and other officials, left the Ministry of Culture in a group and advanced towards the group of artists. (Screen Capture)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 28 January 2021 — Mauricio Mendoza still does not understand what he did to make the Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso, slap him and, with it, unleash the fury of a mob that came out of their offices and attacked artists who had arrived at their doors after performing a tribute to José Martí this Wednesday. “I was doing my job, reporting live, without offending anyone, asking Fernando Rojas questions,” he tells 14ymedio.

Vice Minister Rojas, a character at the meeting on November 27^th with some thirty of the more than 300 artists gathered before the Ministry of Culture, had already gone out several times to speak with the group, made up of twenty artists, including Julio Llopiz-Casal, Solveig Font, Maykel Osorbo, Carolina Barrera and Reynier Leyva Novo.

In some of the released videos, Rojas can even be seen stating that they could enter the ministry but without cell phones. The young people refused and demanded, at the same time, the withdrawal of the police officers who surrounded them, so Rojas turned around and went back into the building. continue reading

Suddenly, Mendoza remembers, “everyone comes out”: not only Rojas, but Minister Alonso himself and other officials. “One by one, I began to introduce who they were for the live broadcast, and I didn’t finish the first sentence when he slapped me and that triggered everything. A mob came out of the ministry and came at us”.

The 22-year-old independent journalist, who was also present at the Ministry on November 27^th, asserts that “it was a low blow”. The minister even called him “a girl” because of his long hair. “The campaign has been brutal, they said that the minister approached me to shake my hand. A crude excuse they are using, they think we are little children,” criticizes the young man, who thinks that Alpidio Alonso “is nothing more than a joke.”

For Novo, it was incredible to see “that group which included a Minister, Vice-Ministers and officials acting like they were the police, beating, pushing, overwhelming a group of peaceful young people”

Reynier Leyva Novo, another of those attacked, simply cannot believe it. “The reaction of that group that included a Minister, Vice-Ministers and officials, acting as if they were the police, beating, pushing, overwhelming a group of peaceful young people in front of their institution …”, he explains. “That was a shock to me”.

Solveig Font is of the same opinion. Initially, she was speaking on her phone, on the side, and only felt a growing noise. “I see a horde, the fury of the Minister and the Vice-Minister coming up on us, pushing Mauricio”. Font recalls that she and Julio Llopiz-Casal tried to separate the Minister and the Vice-Minister and another official, whom everyone calls Chicho, and said to Alpidio Alonso: “Minister, calm down, calm down”, at the same time she joined in separating them.

Novo hardly managed to press his camera’s shutter, but he did take two photographs, the graphic testimony of a Cuban Minister of Culture throwing himself on top of a peaceful citizen. Immediately, he received “strong shoves against the crowd” to get on a bus, arrested. Font describes them as “Old people, their gray hair nicely done, new glasses, new shirts, pushing us…”

In front of Novo were other officers pushing Oscar Casanella, but the door was blocked. “He was reluctant to get on the bus, and while the State Security agent beat him, Oscar looked him in the eye and told him that he was not going to get on.” Up until that moment Novo had not resisted because they had not hit him yet, but as soon as he got up, he received a blow from behind in the lower part of the head.

“It was a very strong blow that knocked my hat off. When I looked back, several people were screaming and what I remember the most, which keeps coming back to me, were Camila Lobón and Celia González screaming while they were being strangled”.

The screams and blows inside the vehicle were recorded in audios and videos recorded by the artists themselves.

The situation was so violent that Font thought they were going to break a bone. They threw her against the step of the bus and put pressure on her body. “The first thing I saw when I looked up was an older person from State Security who gave Chino Novo a tremendous blow on his head from behind. Then I fainted, I couldn’t take any more”, she recounts.

The situation was so violent that Font thought they were going to break a bone. They threw her against the step of the bus and put pressure on her body

Before the bus started, the artists saw through the window the faces of Fernando Rojas and Alpidio Alonso who, together with the Ministry workers, shouting slogans while they held a Cuban flag.

Julio Llopiz-Casal’s feelings are contradictory, because he believes in dialogue, but at the same time he’s filled with “deep disappointment… I am getting closer and closer to thinking that dialogue is not going to happen”, he confesses, “especially because they don’t want it to happen, because they are looking for all the excuses in the world to obstruct it”.

Llopiz sees it as a shame that Cubans and the entire international community have seen the Minister of Culture behaving “like a common criminal… It seems to me that it is essential that Alpidio Alonso be separated from his duties”, he believes. “He should resign if he had a little dignity”.

For the art historian Carolina Barrera, what happened this Wednesday is “so extremely severe that it calls into question not only the legitimacy of the Government, but its power to exercise its functions, its sanity… The Ministers and Vice-Ministers are public officials, and as such, they are indebted to the citizens. How is it possible that a Minister of Culture and his entourage of Vice-Ministers lash out with violence against young people who read poetry, against citizens whom they should serve?” he wonders, in puzzlement.

What happened, she says, “is unacceptable” but, above all, “illegal”: “A punishable act that in any part of the world would be sufficient reason not just for immediate dismissal or resignation, but for criminal prosecution”.

Translated by Norma Whiting

____________

Cuban State Security: ‘You Can’t Leave Your Home’

Luz Escobar, Havana, 27 January 2020 — Today, January 27, State Security told me: You cannot leave your home. In the photo there is only one of them but there are three, two men and a woman.

Cuban Government Eases Quarantine Announced Hours Earlier in Havana

Havana returned to a more restricted phase of controls to limit local transmission of Covid-19, but still the streets are crowded with people lining up to buy basic necessities. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 13 January 2021 — The figure of 550 daily cases of Covid-19 in Cuba reported this Wednesday, the highest since the pandemic began, has forced the authorities to take more severe measures. With three more deaths registered, the death toll has reached 12 this week and the week is not over. [Cuba’s total Covid deaths as of 14 January 2021 is 300.]

As a result of the bad numbers, Havana has been pushed back to the phase designed to limit local transmission, which, among other measures, provides for the closure of schools, the paralysis of urban transport from 9 pm to 5 am and the prohibition on being in public spaces from 7 pm to 5 am.

On Wednesday night, the official Cubadebate website published the new provisions that included, among other measures, the prohibition of driving between 7 pm and 5 am, but that measure was eliminated after a few hours and in the most recent announcements they have qualified some of the new restrictions. continue reading

In addition, travelers who arrive in Cuba and who do not respect the established “hygienic-sanitary rules” could face fines of up to 2,000 Cuban pesos and a criminal process that would prevent them from leaving the country until they appear in court, according to a senior government official from Havana.

“To the traveler who violates the established rules, in addition to the fine, the charges against them could result in their travel being restricted,” said Reynier Palacios, secretary of the capital’s Government, on local television.

Palacios said that the authorities are also thinking of prohibiting all future entry into the country of those travelers who are fined for spreading the coronavirus epidemic.

Orestes Llanes Mestre, coordinator of Inspection and Control of the Government of Havana, said that fines are being considered for travelers who violate the rules. “We are proposing, it has not been approved yet but we are proposing it, that for the traveler who violates it is not 2,000 pesos but 2,000 dollars,” he explained, “because for a traveler coming up with 80 dollars is a simple thing.”

The provisions will take effect from this Thursday, according to official media, but this afternoon many schools were already sending students home. “They called me at work to pick up my son and to take home all his books. They told me it would be for four weeks but they explained the same thing the other time and we spent seven months with the children at home,” laments a mother as she stood in a long line for rationed bread. “Now to get ready: it’s the whole day with the boys at home asking for food and me having to figure something out.”

The news also makes Beatriz Torres’s hair stand on end. “Of all those cases, 121 were here in Havana, I am 72 years old, an at-risk age, I avoid going out on the street but I have to do it because otherwise I will starve,” she tells this newspaper.

On the one hand she is calm, she explains, because her grandchildren will not have to go to school, but on the other, she is scared of what is coming her way. She has been going through a “tremendous effort” for months to get food, so as soon as she woke up, she went out to the street. “I took the ration book and went to the bodega (ration store) to get everything I’m allotted,” she says. “It cost more than 300 pesos for a trip just for my and my sister’s quotas.”

As in September, when the curfew was announced, the streets of the capital are full of people in search of basic necessities, especially food.

“Wherever you go there is a tremendous crowd of people. I’m in this line to buy chicken but I’ll take anything they have,” a young woman in a long line at the Cuatro Caminos market comments to 14ymedio. “The [fixed-route] taxes are already 15 pesos and not 10, so I walked from my house over in El Cerro. In my neighborhood the only things in the stores are water and rum.”

The Cuatro Caminos market, re-opened on November 16 after years of a total refurbishment, has been one of the busiest markets in recent months because it is one of the few that remains minimally supplied.

On the corner of San Lázaro and Marina, in Centro Habana, dozens of people crowd at the counter of Store #1005. They announced ice cream for sale but customer complaints fall like rain on employees because they ran out in less than five minutes. “It cannot be that they open and immediately tell me that it is over, that is impossible, it is a lot of impudence,” a customer is outraged. “It’s always the same, they sell three tubs and close, the only thing that matters to them is themselves and their business.”

In the specialized fishmonger on Monte Street, the scene is the same: outrage and protests over the new prices, complaints about poor service and anguish at the shortage of supplies.

“The only thing I have found is this chicken mortadella but it kills me. Before it cost 40 pesos and now they are selling it for 132, it is an abuse,” protests a woman. The employee’s response: “As long as people continue to buy it, they will continue to mark it at that price. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s that the price is abusive.”

____________

In Havana, Face-to-Face Classes Will Be Held Only in the Afternoon in Secondary Schools

In pandemic times, according to the official press, teachers will also join students to receive virtual classes. (ACN)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 8 January 2021 — Secondary schools in Havana will have a reduction in hours due to the rebound in COVID-9 cases throughout the country, especially in the capital.

Starting next week, as detailed by some of the schools that convened a meeting for parents this Thursday, students will only have classes from Tuesday to Friday, from 12 pm to 4 pm (except on Tuesdays, when the schedule is extended to 5 pm).

Given some parents’ concerns about the decrease in school hours, taking into account the setbacks due to months long school closings brought about by the pandemic, the teacher explained that students will have morning “virtual classes” to compensate, which should be followed as a complement to the classes.

The virtual classes, they reported, begin next week and will be broadcast Monday through Friday on the Havana Channel from 8 am to 12 pm. The subjects will be Physics, Biology, Civic Education, History, Geography, Mathematics, Chemistry and Spanish. Saturday will be used for “vocational training” classes, dedicated to guiding students in their studies after finishing high school. continue reading

Parents were not told specifically what content will be provided in this remote mode

However, parents were not told specifically what content will be provided in this remote mode. The last course was only used to guide the evaluative work and consolidate the content that had already previously been given.

Therefore, parents’ skepticism is logical. “I am very concerned about this measure, I see a drastic reduction in the hours/classes and, honestly, we all know that a virtual class is not the same as having a teacher in front of the classroom, especially when teaching new content,” complained one of the parents at the meeting.

A teacher responded: “We have to make sure that the children do not miss the virtual classes and that they take notes, it is very important. I am going to review the notebooks to make sure that everyone is up to date, if any child has problems with the television and the box, you can come to the library, we will be showing it here.”

Parents are also concerned about other issues, such as the price of school lunch in day care centers as a result of the so-called “Ordering Task.”

This Friday, The Ministry of Education published on its official site that the monthly rates will remain as they have been until now: a maximum of 40 pesos for the child care center service and 7 pesos for students who stay for lunch at the school study centers.

The difficult health situation affects the entire country, which this Friday reached 344 new cases Covid-19 new cases, surpassing the record set last Monday of 316 daily infections. The accumulated total in Cuba is 13,823 positives and 148 deaths from Covid-19.

Of the total cases on this day, 238 were contacts of confirmed cases, 69 with a source of infection abroad and 37 without a specified source of infection.

Of the total cases today, 238 were contacts of confirmed cases, 69 with a source of infection abroad and 37 without a specified source of infection. Of the 275 local-transmission cases of the day, 168 (61%) are linked to international travelers, totaling 2,160, which represents 61.9% of the total local-transmission cases since November 15^th.

This Thursday, the Provincial Defense Council approved a group of new measures to “counteract the spread of the coronavirus” in Havana. Carlos Alberto Martínez Blanco, provincial director of Health, considered that in this way it could “increase the perception of risk among the population, and limit the possible transmission of the disease.”

Specifically, it was proposed to “de-concentrate points of sale of products to avoid conglomeration of people, reduce public activities, in addition to maintaining restrictions in bars and restaurants and in holding private parties.”

Regular visits to hospital institutions are also prohibited and the idea of being the same companion throughout the patient’s stay should be maintained. Martínez Blanco also pointed out that clinical-epidemiological, as well as laboratory surveillance, is being reinforced. It is also expected that investigations by medical students will resume to search for suspects.

Translated by Norma Whiting

____________

“The Rice from the Bodega is So Bad I Don’t Even Want It for Free and It’s Six Pesos”

The elderly suffer the most from the price increase in Cuba since January 1st. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, Luz Escobar, 7 January 2021 — “It’s 130 pesos,” Lucinda Torres, a resident of Havana’s La Timba neighborhood, heard the clerk say, as she finished her shopping at the rationed market for the month of January on Wednesday. “Before I came with 20 or 30 pesos and my rationbook and it was enough for almost all my purchases. The prices have multiplied by about 10 times and my retirement has barely increased four,” Torres calculates on the fly.

“I don’t understand what they are doing to us, they want to implant capitalism in us, but in communism,” she says.

This first week of the year has been a headache for many Cubans, but especially for the elderly, who now have to shell out hundreds of pesos to take home the basic basket that the Government sells in the ration stores. Rice is between 6 and 10 pesos a pound, beans are between 14 and 16, minced meat at twenty, one bread roll for a peso, it all adds up to an account that does not make ends meet.

An employee with more than 20 years of experience working in front of the public in a ration store in the municipality of Plaza de la Revolución explains to 14ymedio that what causes the most concern are the high prices compared to the quality of service and products.

“Since I hung up the sign with the new prices, people have not stopped complaining, most of all the elderly,” he says. “They are partly right. For example, the rice that came this month is so bad that I don’t even want it for free; it’s broken, dirty and wet. If you’re going to pay a few pennies for it, that’s fine, but not six or seven pesos.” continue reading

Similar complaints also came to the ‘normed’ bread sold in bakeries, an 80-gram roll was 5 centavos before, now it’s one peso. Due to its poor quality, this staple food has been the main target of criticism from the population for decades, since it went from the ‘liberated’ (unrationed) market to the rationed market in the 1990s.

In some localities the bread sits on the counters unsold, thus illustrating the displeasure of many. In Ciego de Ávila in recent days, state trade officials reported that they had to “redefine the destination of some 8,000 rolls” of bread because the customers would not buy them.

Prices established by the Ministry of Internal Commerce for the ‘regulated’ family basket in the ration system. (14ymedio)

In that same province, the director of the Business Group of Commerce, Reinaldo Frómeta Romero, explained to the local media that the new food prices in the Family Attention System (SAF) have resulted in many of those registered in that system have not been helped in recent days. In these facilities, many elderly people who survive on low incomes eat their daily meals there without having to spend large sums of money.

In Havana, at the SAF establishment located on 39th Street, in the municipality of Plaza de la Revolución, an employee told this newspaper that almost no one has visited the premises since January 1. According to official data, this project serves 1,445 establishments throughout the country with a total of 77,661 registered users, including 36,298 retirees, 6,251 people with disabilities and 12,773 on social assistance.

“I know almost all of them, they come here every day in search of their lunch and their food. Nothing we sold was more than one peso and now it costs several pesos.” The man shows the price list and the ration of rice that used to cost 20 centavos is now two pesos and the bean ration is three, “a figure that most of those who come here cannot pay daily,” he says.

“Pensions went up, it is true but it happens that many of my clients do not even have a government salary, they survive doing work under the table or collecting raw materials that they later sell,” he adds.

According to official data from the Ministry of Internal Trade, the new menu costs between 8 and 13 pesos, that is, between 496 and 806 pesos per month.

The head of that ministry, Betsy Díaz Velázquez, speaking the Roundtable TV program, said that five provinces reported a reduction in visits to these facilities, due to the increase in prices, among them Santiago de Cuba, Las Tunas, Cienfuegos and the Isle of Youth. In the case three of them, more than 50% of those surveyed did not come to buy food, and in the last two the number was 49%.

The minimum pension that the Government has set starting January is 1,528 pesos but the prices for electricity, gas, transportation, fixed-line telephones, water and other basic services also increased.

____________

“This Year the Three Kings Cannot Satisfy the Requests of the Children” in Cuba

Given the shortage in the stores, many parents have chosen this year to give their children sweets. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 6 January 2021 — After a week of lining up for oil, chicken, detergent and shampoo, Idania Herrera has very little desire to stand in another line. But Three Kings Day is more important than any fatigue and the little ones await their gift.

“I am tormented, I can’t find anything for the children,” the young mother told this newspaper when there were barely hours left until January 6^th, the day Cuban children receive their “Christmas” presents.

The woman explains that in recent years she solved the gift problem through a friend who brought items from Panama, but with the almost complete disappearance of the ‘mules’ due to the Covid restrictions, there are no alternatives. “Yesterday I went to several stores in Centro Habana and I didn’t find anything, it’s a disgrace. Fortunately, my son was saved, because a Telegram group sold some discs of his favorite games for xBox at 250 pesos each.”

She still had her daughter. To find her a gift, she first did a search on digital classifieds sites. Informal trade networks, in principle, offer varied options, with prices ranging from 70 pesos for a counterfeit Barbie to a some skates at 5,000. continue reading

However, Herrera says that on the on-line site Revolico “there were some little things” for children but they did not convince her: “ugly dolls” at 200 pesos or “huge stuffed animals” at exorbitant prices. Her last hope was in the shops of the Playa municipality and she went there in the late morning of this Tuesday to try her luck.

Another mother who made the same journey, however, remembers that in the Playa municipality the panorama was not very different than in Centro Habana. She says she arrived at the store at 3^rd and 70^th at 10:00 in the morning and by the time she managed to enter it was 8:00 at night and that was hard-won because they wanted to close earlier with the justification that the connection was very slow.

“When I entered there were only shreds left and the cheese, apples, cookies were gone,” she laments. “How sad, I stood there firmly until the end to buy some sweets for my child to give them for Three Kings Day since there is nothing else and the only thing I got was a package of assorted candies at $4.95.”

“He is small, but I hope he understands that this year the Three Kings cannot accommodate requests,” the woman continues. “It saddens me to think how many children will not have that long-awaited visit because their moms simply cannot buy them something and also run their errands. How sad and disappointed I am about everything we are experiencing,” she says.

Along the same lines, another Cuban declared: “This year if the Kings do not go to a foreign exchange store beforehand, they will come with empty camels, because the only place where there are sweet cookies, chocolates and somewhat varied candies is in the MLC,” referring to the stores that only take hard currency, and even that must be presented in the form of a bank card.

“I have been working as a mule for more than eight years and normally the months of December and January are very good for sales, but this year has been precisely the worst season to sell. We can hardly travel, few people can come, a disaster for the business” says a merchant who refuses to give his name. She explains that she has her network “with reliable people” because she does not want to fall from grace. “I am very careful with myself, I have seen the great fall for going crazy, and here the last thing that can happen to you is to fall into a hospital or in jail,” she says.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the government had special sales on subsidized toys at this time through the rationed market for industrial products, an option that collapsed with the fall of the Soviet Union.

Limara Ramírez, who was allowed to choose when she was little one “basic” toy and one “non-basic” toy, today is the mother of a seven-year-old girl: “Now everything is very different than when my parents had me, everything is so expensive that the money goes to basic needs and in putting a plate of food on the table.”

A father defeated by tradition and shortages confesses: “This year I had to tell him that the Kings were mom and dad. At first he didn’t believe us, like how did they get Nutella if there isn’t any here, I had to tell him that it cost me an arm and a leg.”

____________

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: