Category: Mario Penton Martinez

Muñoz Toca said that 29 agencies based in the United States have been identified that operate “in an unauthorized manner” to send goods to Cuba “through travelers who agree to bring them in exchange for payment or compensation.”

For his part, the Deputy Chief of Customs, Wiliam Pérez González, justified the proscription against shipments because such agencies “have no official contract with the Cuban companies authorized to carry out these operations.”

Pérez González acknowledged the existence of corruption on the island with regards to packages carried by travelers. He also emphasized the warnings the agency gives to the travelers who carry the goods; even when they do not know the contents of the shipments, they take them to the island. “They may be engaged in drug trafficking or bringing other illicit materials,” he said.

Among the South Florida agencies that General Customs mentioned as a priority for their punitive actions are XAEL Habana, Va Cuba, Cubamax Travel, Viajes Coppelia, Habana Air, Blue Cuba Travels and Central America Cargo. Recently Customs updated the list of agencies it allows to send parcels to the Island.

When dealing with items sent to third parties through agencies, “their import becomes commercial,” the authorities explained, so the contents of the suitcases may be “subject to the administrative sanction of confiscation, if there is no more serious crime.”

The Cuban Diaspora uses the service of parcel delivery agencies to the Island to alleviate the shortages their relatives in Cuba experience.

According to Emilio Morales, director of the The Havana Consulting Group, based in Miami, about 90% of the shipments that arrive on the island come from the United States. The value of the goods sent to Cuba last year was in the order of three billion dollars, Morales told 14ymedio.

The measure is seen as a turn of the screw to regulate the growing black market. In Cuba, where most of the stores belong to the State and the economy is still regulated by the powers-that-be, shortages are endemic. Basic items such as toothpaste, sanitary pads or multivitamins disappear from the markets for weeks, forcing many people to buy them on the black market.

The incipient private sector on the Island also demands supplies that can not be purchased in wholesale stores and resorts to shipments as a way to ensure provisions to maintain paladares (private restaurants), tourist accommodations and small coffee shops scattered throughout the country.

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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.

“Today we are celebrating Mother’s Day in Nicaragua, but today is a day of mourning,” he said, adding that “right now, for the Government and the Nicaraguan State being young is a sin.”

According to this representative of the NGO founded during the Somoza dictatorship in 1977, the government of Daniel Ortega promotes hatred through institutions and uses state resources to transport vigilante gangs to repress protesters.

Since April 18 when the country erupted in protests against the president and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, numerous international organizations such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) have reported allegations of torture, murder and disappearances.

“We are overwhelmed by the situation,” acknowledged Darce, who revealed that his organization is trying to coordinate a tour for a group of mothers through the main hospitals and morgues in the country where “there are bodies that are about to be incinerated without having allowed a process for family members to identify them.”

Darce said that his NGO is preparing a presentation before the Truth Commission set up by the ruling party, although he acknowledged that “the families, the victims and the majority of the Nicaraguan people do not trust that institution created by the State.” According to him, the solution would be to create another Truth Commission with international participation through the IACHR and the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations.

“We have reports of communication professionals, state workers who have been fired for “liking” a post on Facebook, contrary to government policy,” explained Darce, who called on the Nicaraguan population to report to the competent bodies violations of human rights in the country.

His voice breaking from emotion, Darce reported some of the testimonies received by his organization. “The body of the son of a lady from Ciudad Sandino was found cut into pieces. We have the case of a boy from the Cuesta del Plomo who was found dead recently: his friends testify that he was arrested by the police forces and was found with signs of torture.”

Inventing the supposed burning of institutions and falsifying the identity of the mothers of the deceased so that they give statements to the media, together with death certificates that are not consistent with the reasons for the deaths, are some of the government’s procedures denounced by Darce.

“Although there is an open dialogue, the actions of the Government have not ceased either in repression or in violence. Quite the opposite. It has developed a whole plan of terror and anxiety toward the Nicaraguan population,” he added and reported several attempts to poison the protesters.

Darce demanded that the State of Nicaragua sign The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as a guarantee that events such as those reported by the CPDH do not continue. “The dictatorship of Nicaragua is not 10 years old, it is a dictatorship of almost 40 years, which began in 1979 and continued in the 90s and is now consolidated,” he said.

The CPDH plans to present the Nicaraguan situation to the General Assembly of the Organization of American States in Washington from June 3 to 5. They also intend to visit US Congressional Representatives to pressure the Government of Managua and bring representatives of the victims to appear before the OAS.

Cuban-American congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen spoke via Twitter about the situation in Nicaragua. “One more death at Ortega’s hands is added simply because he refuses to leave power. The US must punish those responsible for the bloodshed,” Ros-Lehtinen tweeted. She is known for her critical positions toward leftist governments in the region aligned with Havana.

For his part, José Colina, president of the association of Persecuted Political Venezuelans in Exile called for sanctions and pressure on the Nicaraguan government, which in his opinion, is following the same script as Maduro followed during the student protests of 2015.

Representatives of Nicaraguan civil society in Miami summoned all their compatriots and supporters of the cause of the insurgents to demonstrate in front of the Nicaraguan consulate in Miami (1332 W Flagler St, Miami, FL 33135). “We want justice and democracy for our country,” said María Belén Ruiz, of the Nicas Unidos Movement in Miami.

“Nicaragua had its throat tied. They [the students] had value and have paid with their lives to tell the world about the atrocities that we have been experiencing for a long time,” said Raquel Pineda, a young Nicaraguan resident in Miami.

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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.

“In these last weeks of repression I saw so many injustices inside the health center and had to remain silent for weeks, until I came to a safe place where I could scream everything that was happening,” he says.

Bismarck was originally from Estelí, a city three and a half hours from the place where he performed his social service.

“He witnessed how the boys [the students] were allowed to die because the government did not allow them to be attended to just because they thought differently: the police, the doctors and the Sandinista youth were behind causing the greatest possible harm to the wounded,” explains the relative.

Was it suicide or murder? We will probably never know. Some close friends said that he was killed and that peretrators tried to hide it by faking a suicide. It would not be the first. Since April 18 when the country erupted in protests against President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo, his wife, more than 80 people have been killed, most of them young and civilians.

Allegations of torture, assassinations and disappearances have been documented by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, but the Ortega government remains deaf to the popular clamor and clings to power like its ideological allies in Caracas and Havana.

Bismarck’s close friends say he died because he helped “those he shouldn’t help,” that is, the protesters. Other people claim that he was present at a demonstration. How could such a generous heart deny help to those who needed it? It was serve or die. He chose the first.

I can not believe that Bismarck, El Gordo, as we affectionately called him, committed suicide. I met him in 2015 in Guatemala. At that time I had not exchanged the habits of a Marist brother for career in journalism and he was an aspirant in the community of brothers in Chinautla, Zone 6, in the Guatemalan capital.

Bismarck was a cheerful boy, very tall (over six feet), very intelligent and sensitive. We studied theology it Landívar University and, like all young people, we believed that we could change the world and make it more humane and fraternal.

I remember the endless conversations about politics, about the difficult situation of democracy in our countries. At that time, we were part of the community of brothers from Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Spain, Nicaragua and Cuba.

Both for Bismarck and for me the support that the populist movements had among the most underprivileged social strata in Guatemala was a surprise. In a country so marked by inequality, the messianic discourse — in those years backed by Chavez petrodollars — triumphed.

Bismarck was always a boy critical of the Ortega government. He was not deceived by the Christian veneer of a disguised dictatorship that sought to permeate all the institutions of the nation to turn them into an arm of Sandinismo. That hodgepodge of Party-Nation-State, so typical of the totalitarianisms inspired by Cuba’s Plaza of the Revolution, was repulsive to him.

Like every young person he liked to enjoy life. If anything characterized him is was his loud laughter, which could be felt throughout the house. “You are a rogue,” he would tell me when we joked, taking selfies while we prayed the rosary in the hall or when we ate the olives that the good brother Jesús Balmaseda bought for us in secret.

He was also a person very sensitive to the pain of others. I remember how he was moved — to tears — on a mission we did with the Mactzules indigenous communities in the Guatemalan Quiché. In the midst of shocking poverty I had never seen him so happy. He found his raison d’être in the service of his neighbor, especially the most neglected children.

The Gospel says that if the seed does not fall to the ground and dies, it will not bear fruit, that to live fully, you must first pass through the cross and die. Bismarck knew how to die, as do dozens of his compatriots, in search of a better country, democratic, free of tyranny and oligarchies of any kind.

The blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians, said the ancient fathers of the Church. Today perhaps we can say that the blood of the heroes who give their lives in the streets of Managua and other Nicaraguan cities is the seed of freedom.

Unlike me, who took the path of exile, my brother returned to his homeland to work for his people. He could have stayed in Guatemala, where a doctor has a better salary and living conditions, or emigrated to the United States, but he did not want it that way. He went to serve and died with his boots on.

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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.

In the legendary Versailles restaurant, recognized as the heart of anti-Castroism, the bakery continued serving customers as it does every day. At the rhythm of piña coladas, croquettes and cakes, the topics of conversation ranged from a shooting at a Texas school to the situation in Venezuela. The death of Posada Carriles is not a priority issue and among some customers it is even a matter of indifference.

His friends and “companions in the struggle,” however, remembered him with genuine fervor. “I knew Posada Carriles for many years, he was a great fighter against Castro’s tyranny, men like him do not come along very often, and when a person like that dies, you have to pay tribute to them,” said the politician Enrique Ruano in the popular Miami café.

Gonzalo Lopez, a 77-year-old Cuban exile who has lived in the United States for 55 years, called Posada Carriles “a tremendous patriot.”

“Unfortunately, good people are dying while the bad guys continue on in Cuba.” An opponent of the Cuban government, Lopez believes that the situation in Cuba will not change as long as citizens fail to rise up “against the dictatorship” and affirms that “Luis Posada Carriles’ methods of struggle have been tarred with many accusations that are not true. He was charged with the crash of the Cubana de Aviación airplane [in 1976] and that’s not true, behind those accusations are the communists and their allies in this country. “

Antonio Tony Calatayud, a partner with the deceased in the brigade that launched the invasion of the Bay of Pigs and a former news director for WQBA La Cubanísima, remembered Posada Carriles as a man who was “very good, very affectionate, helpful, a brother and a patriot.”

“He is an icon of the struggle for the freedom of Cuba.When the true history of the struggle for the independence of Cuba and what happened in relation to our struggles is written, it will be seen how much is defamation and how much is true, but history will recognize that Luis Posada Carriles, for us, his brothers, was a tireless patriot in the struggle for Cuba’s freedom from communist tyranny,” said Calatayud.

At the moment it is unknown what the funeral arrangements will be, although his friends and “compañeros de lucha” believe that it will be a massive and heavily attended event.

A survivor of throat cancer, of attacks attributed to the Cuban State Security and of a stroke, the health of the anti-Castro militant had deteriorated significantly after he suffered several broken bones in a traffic accident in 2015.

Posada Carriles was undoubtedly one of the worst and longest nightmares of the Cuban regime and dedicated his life, for decades, to a constant attempt to assassinate the president of the island, Fidel Castro. In the year 2000, Castro denounced an assassination plan against him in Panama, where he was attending an Ibero-American Summit.

“Luis Posada Carriles has been turned into a controversial personality for Cuban indoctrination and communist propaganda, he is a patriot and a freedom fighter, not only for Cuba but also for Venezuela,” his fellow prisoner in Panama, Pedro Remón Rodríguez, told 14ymedio.

Remón, who was detained along with Posada and spent four years in prison in Panama, remembers the late anti-Castro fighter as a sensitive, affectionate and family person. “Luis Posada Carriles had nothing to do with the blowing up of the Cubana de Aviación airplane in Barbados, absolutely not, I shared with him and he told me that was a kind of struggle that he did not believe in. We even wrote a book that was titled Fidel Castro, the Real Terrorist where we deal with this.

Mireya Moscoso, then president of Panama, pardoned him before leaving office, after which he traveled to El Salvador and from there entered the United States illegally in 2005, for which he had to face justice there.

He was acquitted in 2011 of 11 counts of perjury, fraud and obstruction in proceedings in a Texas immigration court and since then he has been living in retirement in Miami.

Another terrorist episode allegedly linked to Posada Carriles  points to him as a participant in the explosion of a bomb at the Copacabana hotel in Havana in 1997, which killed an Italian tourist.

According to declassified documents from the State Department, Posada Carriles was a paid informant of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), for which he traveled to different Latin American countries where he worked against communist and leftist movements.

In fact, he worked in the 1960s and 1970s for the espionage services of Venezuela, Guatemala and El Salvador in the anti-guerrilla struggle.

Cuba and Venezuela consider Posada Carriles the intellectual author of the blowing up of a commercial Cubana de Aviación airplane in Barbados in 1976 and they attempted to capture him in order to try him for terrorism.

Born in Cienfuegos, in 1928, Posada Carriles was imprisoned in Venezuela for blowing up the plane, but in 1985 he escaped from prison, disguised and with a false document.

The former CIA agent belonged, in addition, to the United States Army between 1962 and 1963, reaching the rank of second lieutenant, and participated in the failed Bay of Pigs landing.

On the death of Fidel Castro in November 2016, Posada Carriles said he considered it “unjust” for his sworn enemy to die in the “best hospital” on the island and “so late,” although he still considered his death a “triumph.”

He acknowledged then that he tried to kill the Cuban leader several times, but “fate” did not help him.

“Castro was looking for the opportunity to kill me and I to kill him,” Posada Carriles said in the interview.

“Posada is a brother in the struggle who is leaving us,” remarked Tony Calatayud in Miami. “If we count how many of the freedom fighters for Cuba have already gone through such a long process, I would say it’s 95%, we are a kind of dinosaurs, an extinct race, where some of us are still alive. The next generations must take the step forward, the future of Cuba belongs to the young and it is only left to us to document the history to avoid. “

Cuban official propaganda labeled Posada Carriles as a “black beast” of anti-Castroism. His face often appeared on public billboards and in partisan media which tried to link him to the peaceful opposition on the island.

His death was announced in the first newscast on Wednesday, on the Buenos Días show, clarifying that the he had died “without paying for his crimes” against Cuba.

While Fidel Castro was alive, especially in the last years of his mandate, the campaign against Posada Carriles became especially intense, to the point that the population of the Island came to see the exile as an alter ego  of the Commander in Chief.

In some state workplaces the information was included in the morning assembly attended by employees, and throughout the morning the news spread through the streets of Havana.

“He never came before a court for what he did, but he had to face the tribunal of history and the conscience of the Cuban people,” says Amaury Rosales, a worker at a hard currency store in Havana’s El Cerro neighborhood.

In the same store a teenager avoids answering the question about the death of Posada Carriles because “it is better not to talk about politics,” she says.

Others say that they prefer to know a little more before taking a position. “One day I would like to read something more impartial about his life in order to understand the motivations of what he did, because television here paints him as if he were a devil and nobody is like that,” explains a retired economist who prefers to remain anonymous.

The official machinery, however, did not appear to be particularly effective this Wednesday. After noon, the Granma newspaper still did not carry the news on the front page of its digital site.

In keeping with his own request, the remains of Posada Carriles will be cremated and the ashes thrown in the vicinity of the coasts of Cuba, as reported to this newspaper Humberto Lopez, member of the board of directors of the Brigade 2506, the former Bay of Pigs fighters. “His brothers in the struggle will be your honor guard at his funeral,” he added.

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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 MCC defines itself as a Church with a positive and inclusive message towards the LGBTI community. It also favors ecumenism (the unity of Christians) and is liberal in nature.

Since it was established on the Island in 2016, the MCC has been linked to Cenesex and it is common to see Mariela Castro participate in its ceremonies, impart blessings and encourage LGBTI couples.

A representative of the MCC board of directors in Cuba, who agreed to speak with this newspaper on condition of anonymity, denied that his congregation is trying to mix politics and religion.

“We understand our mission in Cuba and for Cuba, we work alongside those institutions that share our same vision, Cenesex is one of them, and is the one that has most supported us in our work, especially in the person of Mariela Castro, who is a faithful sympathizer of our church,” he said.

The pastor recognizes that they are sending a political message when they participate in governmental activities, but emphasizes that his main intention is to signal that a church “whose voice is dissident to the rest of the churches” is present in the country.

“There is a church in Cuba where the LGBTI community is accepted completely without limitations or conditions, because God loves us radically. Mariela is a deputy [in parliament], Raul’s daughter, our friend and obviously revolutionary but that does not make our church communist,” he added.

The pastor justified Castro’s use of liturgical ornament: “Many see her as a pastor for the LGBTI community, she uses that symbol not from a religious point of view, but as a symbol of a pastor, a companion, a protector,” he said.

The MCC, founded in 1968 in the United States, has more than 400 communities around the world. In Cuba it has around 100 faithful, but in just two years it already has three communities, in Matanzas, Santa Clara and Havana.

In 2016, the Institute of Global Justice of the Metropolitan Community Church awarded Mariela Castro the Be Justice award and the following year Castro responded by giving MCC founder Troy Perry the highest award granted by Cenesex.

Both Perry and the Rev. Héctor Gutiérrez, a Mexican bishop responsible for MCC in Cuba, have been in Havana. Mariela Castro and her husband, the Italian Paolo Titolo, witnessed the renewal of Gutiérrez’s marriage vows.

For Yadiel Hernández, a member of the First Baptist Church of Matanzas, relations between the Cenesex and the Metropolitan Community Church are “a business.”

“The MCC needs Cenesex and Mariela Castro because under the auspices of that institution they have grown in the country and at the same time Mariela Castro and Cenesex use the Church to promote their agenda,” he says and believes that if the MCC were to criticize the Government it would lose “its official favor.”

The MCC is not recognized by the Council of Churches of Cuba or by the office of the Communist Party charged with regulating the presence of religious organizations on the island. However, unlike other religious organizations born in recent years, it has not been persecuted, something that Hernandez attributes to its relationship with the daughter of the former president.

According to the World Christian Solidarity organization, the violations of religious and worship rights in Cuba increased in 2017 and there are churches that have been asking for official recognition for more than two decades, which forces them to meet clandestinely and be subject to searches by the authorities.

“The Church [i.e. the Christian churches] in Cuba is in a moment of expansion, many congregations from different parts of the world are arriving and some of them have a lot of money and seek support from institutions in the country,” says Hernandez.

Victor M. Dueñas, one of the activists who launched the We Also Love campaign in 2015 in favor of gay marriage in Cuba, does not believe in Mariela Castro’s “good intentions” in support of the LGBTI community nor in her adherence to the MCC.

“It is a betrayal of the Christian communities,” says the Presbyterian, who supports “an inclusive Church” but is outraged to see “the political agendas that can eclipse the Christian message.”

Dueñas, who along with a hundred Cubans asked for asylum at a Dutch airport last January, says Mariela Castro could do much more for the LGBTI community.

“We have been waiting ten years for the constitutional reform in which Mariela Castro has promised to try to include homosexual marriage, and in 2015, when other activists launched a campaign to promote it, she refused to support us,” he says.

The former president’s daughter has rejected that the objective of the Cuban Government should be the enactment of equal marriage and has indicated that socialism can not seek the “the simplest solution that appears nor repeat what others do.”

“In Cuba, laws are needed to protect LGBTI people so that they are not discriminated against, it is necessary to recognize police violence and take measures to prevent it, and projects that are independent of the State that defend LGBT rights, that they don’t hijack their discourse.”

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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.

Cuba continues to deploy its medical personnel in 62 countries and does not provide data on the number of health professionals outside its borders, although in 2015 the number exceeded 50,000, according to the official press.

The most recent statistics, published on the Cubadebate site, reported that the export of services is the largest contributor to the national economy, bringing in “an estimated 11.5 billion dollars as an annual average between 2011 and 2015,” according to the former minister of Cuban Economy José Luis Rodríguez, although the figure has fallen approximately 20% in the last two years, due to the crisis in Venezuela.

Several human rights organizations have denounced the working conditions of Cuban professionals as “modern slavery.” The Cuban government keeps more than half of the salaries paid by the countries around the world where Cuban medical providers work. The Cuban government pays for shared accommodations, some food, and airline tickets in most cases, along with a small stipend.

If the doctors leave their positions under the control of the Cuban state, it classifies them as “deserters” and they are forbidden to return to Cuba for eight years. The same conditions are applied to athletes, teachers and musicians.

“We are an Independent Organization of Free Cubans residing in Brazil, fighting for our rights,” said Yuleidis Legrá, a Cuban doctor who left the official mission.

“I prefer to be a foreigner in other countries to being one in mine, I will never debase my soul by asking permission to leave, much less to enter my country,” he adds, paraphrasing José Martí.

The group #NoSomosDesertores #SomosCubanosLibres has been carrying out a Campaign for Family Unity for months, asking Havana for the chance to return.

In 2015, the Cuban government called for the return of health professionals who had taken part in United States’ Cuban Professional Parole program which was created to assist doctors who were escaping from missions. While the Parole program was in force, at least 8,000 professionals traveled to the United States between 2006 and 2017.

The Ministry of Public Health allows professionals to return to the island on the condition that they work in the national health system, with salaries between 60 and 80 dollars per month. The punishment for those who want to visit their relatives continues in force for those who refuse to return to live on the Island.

The lawyer André De Santana Correa, who represents 80 doctors on the island who left the Mais Medicos program in Brazil, says that the objective of the demonstration is to achieve “equal treatment for all doctors who participate in that program.”

The Mais Medico program was established in 2013 by President Dilma Rousseff with more than 11,000 professionals from the island; under the program the Cuban government keeps 70% of the salaries assigned to doctors.

“We want them to permit the possibility of re-contracting until 2019, which is only withheld from Cuban doctors,” says De Santana, who compares Cuban physicians with those of other countries participating in the healthcare program.

“How is it possible that a doctor who tried to visit his daughter hospitalized on the island is deported to Miami?” he says, outraged. “We are fighting to bring down the Berlin wall that exists in Cuba.”

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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.

Díaz-Canel took office without generating large public demonstrations in southern Florida, though there has been a wave of criticism from politicians, activists and non-governmental organizations.

One such organization is Raíces de Esperanza (Roots of Hope), which sponsors programs to support young people on the island. It issued a statement saying it is “hopeful” about the change of leadership in Cuba.

“We believe that today’s transfer of power represents an opportunity for a new generation of Cuban leaders to take concrete measures to promote significant economic prosperity and political reforms on the island,” it says, asking the country’s new chief executive to listen to “Cuba’s youth, from its businesspeople and civil society leaders to artists and students.”

For Ramón Saúl Sánchez, president of Movimiento Democracia, what happened last week in Havana “is an undemocratic handover that should not be recognized by the international community.”

Sánchez told 14ymedio that he called upon Cuban exiles to demonstrate in front of the legendary Versailles restaurant in the heart of Miami’s Little Havana to “condemn the illegitimate transfer of power.”

“I listened to Díaz-Canel’s speach. I would have liked hear a reformist but that was not the case. It was a speech by yet another establishment figure who will not help Cubans obtain their freedom,” he said. He does, however, hold out hope that the situation could change after “the inevitable biological event.”

Activist Rosa María Payá — leader of Cuba Decides, a campaign to hold a binding referendum on a democratic transition in Cuba — accused the government of “disguising its despotism by designating heirs.”

“An heir acting as a front-man for the Castros is not change. Change comes when Cubans can participate and change the system through referendum,” tweeted Payá, who has been the target of a smear campaign by the official press for her recent participation in the Summit of the Americas in Peru.

“The percentages are a sign of totalitarian conformity and the complete absence of democratic engagement in the National Assembly. With a ridiculous 99.83% of the votes going to Raúl Castro’s man, he is now the designated president,” she added.

Cuban-American congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen also used the social network to say that it does not matter who governs the island because “Cubans continue to suffer and their basic human rights are denied under a totalitarian communist system.”

“The sham transition of power in Cuba does not change the reality of the island’s people or bring them any closer to freedom. Power remains in the hands of Castro’s murderous communist regime,” she said in another Spanish-language tweet.

The prominent anti-Castro congresswoman will retire from the US House of Representatives after a political career spanning thirty-eight years. Ros-Lehtinen has historically been one of the most vocal critics of the Castro government.

Archivo Cuba, an NGO which compiles personal accounts and statistics related to violations of human rights on the island, issued a statement saying that the new government “is a transfer of power in name only, a nominal change within a totalitarian system that continues to carry out serious abuses against Cuban citizens and to ignore their fundamental rights.”

Senator Marco Rubio said in an interview with El Nuevo Herald that he hopes that the community  of Latin American countries does not recognize the “fraudulent” succession which has taken place on the island.

“We will see if an organization that was created to defend democracy is ready or not to criticize something that is not democratic. I hope there is a vote on this as soon as possible,” said Rubio in a reference to the Organization of American States.

For his part, the Cuban-American congressman Mario Díaz-Balart recalled Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, president from 1959 until 1976, the year current socialist constitution was adopted and the office of president was eliminated. During his tenure as head of the government, he had to deal with the constant presence of Fidel Castro as prime minister. Dorticós committed suicide in 1983.

“Just as Fidel Castro made Osvaldo Dorticós president until 1976, Raúl Castro has made Miguel Díaz-Canel president of the Council of Ministers and Council of State. Another Castro puppet,” says Díaz-Balart.

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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.

2. Leasing of idle lands to farmers

In 2008, the Government authorized the delivery of idle state lands to farmers and cooperatives under a form of limited term leases known as usufruct. More than 50% of the country’s arable land was not in productive use and, even today, Cuba spends more than one billion dollars a year on imported food for the “basic market basket.” A decade later the results have been mediocre due to the lack of equipment and necessary inputs, such as seeds and fertilizer, and excessive controls on the marketing of crops.

3. Expansion of the private sector

In 2010, Castro gave a boost to self-employment and expanded the list of occupations that could be practiced outside the state sector. However, large sectors of the economy, including the exercise of professions, remain reserved to the State. The flexibilizations promoted, in particular, renting rooms to tourists, food services and passenger transportation. At present, the number of private workers exceeds half a million, but the absence of a wholesale market, high taxes and the prohibition of importing products hampers the development of this type of work.

 4. Cubans embark on the internet

Until 2009, only a small fraction of the population, in addition to tourists, had the privilege of surfing the internet on the island. In 2013, the Telecommunications Company of Cuba (ETECSA) installed the first wifi browsing areas, with prohibitive prices and with dozens of censored sites. Today there are 635 of these wireless areas on the island and the cost of one hour of access is 1 CUC (the equivalent of about a day’s wages). A year ago the state monopoly took web browsing to some homes, but Cubans still wait for internet access from cellphones and the unblocking of censored sites, which include this newspaper.

5. So long to the “gratuities”

Raúl Castro undertook a campaign against “gratuities,” or perks, which he blamed on the legacy of Soviet paternalism. Under his mandate he reformed the Social Security Law and raised the age of retirement by five years, to 60 years for women and 65 years for men. In addition, he cut the number of pensioners and eliminated a good part of the additional perks, such as beach house vacations and the routinely handed out bags of food and toiletries that thousands of state employees received.

The First chart below compares the proportion of the population that is age 60 and older projected out to 2050 among a group of Latin American countries; only Barbados is projected to have a population older than Cuba’s. The second chart reports past data and future projections for the total population of Cuba between 1950 and 2050.

6. Cuts in health and education

The number of hospitals has fallen by 32% in the last decade and the medical staff in family clinics barely fill 40% of the positions. These cuts are more alarming given that 20% of the population exceeds 60 years of age and the population is one of the oldest in the Americas.

The chart below shows the total number of schools in Cuba under Raul Castro’s government, between 2009 and 2016.

Raúl Castro eliminated the program of boarding schools in the countryside for high school students, one of the “jewels of the crown” under Fidelismo. During his term he has had to deal with the deficit of teachers that at the beginning of the school year 2017-2018 amounted to 16,000 vacancies. Enrollment decreased by 32% in high schools and even more in university education, which registered a fall of 78%. Many young people do not want to continue studying for careers that offer them miserable salaries. Furthermore, certain professions, such as the medical field, have come with restrictions on the ability to freely leave the country.

The first chart below shows the number of schools in Cuba and the second the number of classroom teachers in Cuba between 2006 and 2016, based on statistics collected by the Cuban government.

7. The ration book survives

Since 1961 Cubans have a ration card that gives each citizen a minimum quota of products subsidized by the State. Every year the Government allocates some two billion dollars to a bureaucratic structure that distributes products ranging from a piece of daily bread to rice, beans, sugar, salt and coffee.

One of the most emblematic promises of Raulism was to eliminate the ration book, but it never came to fruition. Although the rationed distribution system has fewer and fewer products, a good part of the population depends on this support to survive due to low wages, with salaries averaging about $29 per month. Today, the real purchasing power of Cubans is just 51.1% of what it was at the end of the 1980s, before the end of the so-called Special Period in a Time of Peace — the devastating aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of its economic support for Cuba.

8. The lifting of the prohibition on the sale of houses and cars 

For decades in Cuba, the sale of houses was forbidden, private construction was limited and the ability to rent out one’s dwelling was suppressed. In 2011 Raúl Castro surprised the nation with one of his most important social measures: opening the real estate market, an important step in a country with 3,824,000 houses, of which 39% are in a regular or bad state, according to the 2012 census.

Three years later, the authorization to sell vehicles to private individuals was achieved, a privilege reserved up until then to government leaders and Party members. Although the second-hand private vehicle market has behaved with great dynamism, sales by state dealerships has not been successful due to the high prices. A Cuban living only from their official salary needs to work 189 years to buy a 2006 Audi from an official dealership, which would be priced at 70,000 dollars.

9. The end of the exit permit

In January 2013, Castro eliminated the so-called “white card,” the permit required to leave the country, and allowed nationals to travel freely. Since then more than 779,000 Cubans have gone on a trip, 79% of them for the first time, according to official figures. The elimination of obstacles to leaving the Island led to a new migration crisis and in seven years, until the end of the wet foot/dry foot policy in 2017, the United States welcomed more than 235,000 Cubans.

The authorities, nevertheless, continue to refuse to allow Cubans residing abroad who have been publicly critical of the government to visit the island. In addition, hundreds of activists and leaders of the opposition have been blocked from abroad; the government advises them that they are “regulated,” as a reason to deny them the right to leave.

The chart below shows Cuban emigration to the United States between 2010 and 2016. The orange line is the figure of Cubans admitted to the United States according to the US Department of Homeland Security, and the grey line is the number of Cuban emigrants according to the Cuban government.

10. Institutionality

Raúl Castro’s two terms as president have been characterized by a greater institutionality. After almost half a century of Fidelista voluntarism — the idea that willpower alone can overcome social and economic challenges — the youngest of the brothers tried to strengthen the Council of Ministers, which now meets more frequently.

After a gap, under Fidel Castro, of 14 years without a Congress of the Communist Party, the only legal party in Cuba, under Raul the 6th and 7th Congresses were held. In these meetings the so-called Guidelines were approved, a road map to dismantle the structure of the Soviet system and open the economy to foreign capital, tourism and the replacement of imported products for those of national origin.

11. Restoration of relations with the United States

After more than five decades of enmity, the Cuban and American governments astonished the world on 17 December 2014 by announcing the restoration of diplomatic relations. The US president, Barack Obama, returned three spies imprisoned in his country to Havana and Castro did the same with two American prisoners. The Catholic Church, at the initiative of Pope Francis, played a central role in the secret conversations between the nations that led to the thaw.

Obama relaxed the embargo against the island, which allowed a notable increase in the number of Americans and Cuban Americans visiting Cuba. Flights between both countries and direct postal service were also resumed. Remittances from Cubans abroad to families on the island, one of the fundamental pillars of the Cuban economy, have grown to 3.444 billion dollars in 2017.

12. Renegotiation and forgiveness of external debt 

Between 2013 and 2016, Cuba renegotiated its old external debt, which had been unpaid since Fidel Castro urged developing countries to put aside their credit obligations in the 1980s. Raúl Castro managed to cancel 90% of the debt that Cuba had taken on during time of the Soviet Union and still owed to Russia.

After one negotiation, the debt of 8.5 billion dollars owed to the Paris Club was reduced to 2.6 billion payable in 18 years. Mexico forgave 70% of the 487 million dollars it had lent to the Island and in 2014 Japan forgave almost one billion dollars of an old debt. Vietnam and China also part of the debt owed to them, but some amounts have not been set aside.

13. Monetary unification, a pending issue

With the opening to tourism and the Soviet collapse Cuba created a new, second, currency that within the Island has parity with the dollar: the convertible peso (CUC), which coexists with the Cuban peso (CUP). One CUC is worth 25 CUP. Since his arrival to power, Raul Castro has tried to unify the currencies because of the economic distortions that they cause, especially in the state business sector, which benefits from an unrealistic exchange rate.

The government announced that the currency that will survive is the Cuban peso (CUP), but until now the exact date for monetary unification is not known nor what the exchange rate will be relative to the dollar once there is only one currency.

14. The country does not attract enough foreign investment or grow at an adequate pace

Cuba needs an injection of capital of at least 2.5 billion dollars every year, and growth at a sustained rate of more than 4% of GDP, according to some economists. Ten years after assuming the presidency, Raúl Castro leaves the country without achieving these minimums. The mega-project at the Port of Mariel, in which Brazil invested more than 600 million dollars, has been slow to develop. The country has also developed various catalogs of opportunities to encourage foreign investment but without much success.

Under Raúl Castro’s presidency, Cuba grew 2.4% as an annual average, according to official figures. The average monthly salary has also been raised from 414 (16.5 dollars) to 740 pesos (29.6 dollars), although the purchasing power of Cubans is still lower than it was in 1989. The Government announced a growth of 1.5% of GDP in 2018, but most scholars of the Cuban economy without links to the government do not believe that figure.

15. Raúl Castro before the death of his brother and the Venezuelan setback

On the night of 25 November 2016, on a national television broadcast, Raúl Castro announced the death of his brother, who had ruled Cuba’s destiny for almost 50 years. Although Fidel Castro had been away from power for a decade, he continued to actively comment on national and international politics in articles called ’Reflections’ that were published the few pages of the official newspapers.

The death of Fidel Castro coincided with the end of leftist movements and governments in the region that proliferated under the umbrella of the so-called Bolivarian Revolution of Hugo Chávez (1954-2003), often at the expense of Venezuela’s oil bill. The political turns in Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay have left only Nicolás Maduro, Havana’s main ally, and the crisis that Venezuela is going through has destroyed commercial relations between both countries. Shipments of oil from Venezuela to Cuba, one of the island’s largest sources of aid, have fallen from 100,000 barrels a day to less than 40,000 according to Reuters, forcing the island to look for other fuel suppliers.

The chart below shows Cuban trade with Venezuela between 2010 and 2015. The blue bars are commercial trade with Venezuela. The green line is Cuban exports to Venezuela. The red line is Cuban imports from Venezuela.

16. Critical changes, pending

At the beginning of 2015, Raúl Castro promised a new Electoral Law (the current one dates from 1992), but this reform did not materialize during his term. Something similar happened with the constitutional reform that has been expected for more than five years. The new constitution being prepared will maintain the role of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) as “leader in Cuban society” and socialism will continue to be “irrevocable,” according to a recent plenary session of the party.

17. Repression against dissidents and opposition leaders continues

Arbitrary arrests, confiscation of the means of work, and permanent destruction of the reputation of activists and opponents continued in the Raulist era. Since 2010, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation has recorded at least 52,829 people temporarily detained or prosecuted for political reasons. The number of political prisoners in the country exceeds one hundred.

State Security has also used technologies as a repressive weapon to monitor the whereabouts of dissidents, block their mobile phone lines or create digital sites to defame independent projects.

18. No progress in civil rights

Since the enactment of the 1976 Socialist Constitution until today, most of the civil rights of Cubans remain violated. Freedom of expression, press, assembly, demonstration and association are all subordinated to “the aims of the Socialist State,” which in practice limits them. In Cuba, political parties are forbidden and candidates for the Assemblies of Peoples Power are not allowed to campaign or to propose their programs for the country.

Thanks to new technologies, independent digital spaces have emerged from the Island, such as Periodismo de Barrio, El Toque, El Estornudo and 14ymedio, but the government does not recognize press freedom and repressive forces often arrest and threaten journalists. Many websites critical of the system remain blocked on national servers.

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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.

“Miguel Diaz-Canel’s biggest challenge is to direct the economy along the path of economic growth,” says Emilio Morales, president of Havana Consulting Group, based in Miami.

Díaz-Canel, who will turn 58 this Friday, received power from Raúl Castro after a decade of slow reforms and must “rekindle the thaw with the United States,” he adds. Morales sees as the main obstacle to this “the shadow of the octogenarian generation” that, in his opinion, will continue to hold power from its control the Cuban Communist Party (PCC). If he reaches the end of his term, Raúl Castro will continue at the head of the PCC until 2021.

In order to “rekindle the thaw” with the United States (the process initiated by President Barack Obama in 2014), Morales says the new Cuban leader would have to solve the problem of the confiscations of American companies in the early 1960s, free Cuba’s productive forces through a law that allows free enterprise, and authorize the private investments of Cubans of the Island and the diaspora. These measures have been a historical demand from the opposition, but Havana has always responded with more economic centralization.

“The decade of Raúl Castro’s presidency has been a lost decade,” he says, although he points out that opening up to small private companies was a step forward. More than half a million Cubans have moved to employment outside the state since 2010, when Raúl Castro promoted self-employment as a way to alleviate the burden on public finances.

Morales adds that the government should let the laws of supply and demand operate in a free market, allow the direct hiring of Cuban personnel by foreign companies without requiring that they can only do so through contracts with the state, revitalize transport and deepen structural reforms in agriculture.

“It is necessary to eliminate the monopoly in agriculture of Acopio — the state procurement and distribution agency — and let the farmers who are leasing unproductive land decide what to produce, whom to sell it to, and set their own prices, without state intervention, in addition to extending the lease contracts indefinitely,” he says.

Cuba spends around two billion dollars every year to import products for the domestic market that could be produced on the island. The inefficiency of the state, owner of all the large and medium-size companies in the Island, has been recognized by the authorities themselves, but they continue to rely on “socialist state enterprise” as the backbone of the economy.

Elías Amor, a Cuban economist and human rights activist based in Spain, believes that it is “nonsense” to maintain the current economic system. He recently published a list of 50 urgent actions that the country’s executive must take to reactivate the economy.

“Cuba must move towards a market economy socialism, where the axis of the economy is private enterprise and the state recovers its role as a distributor of income, allocator of resources and promoter of economic development,” explains Amor, who urges the Government of the Island to abandon its regent role.

“The so-called Guidelines have to be reviewed in depth because they are unattainable within the current economic system. I think it is vital that public accounts are balanced and the (system of two) currenc(ies) is unified,” the expert added.

The system proposed by Amor includes a privatization policy that allows farmers to own the land and reduces the weight of the state sector in the economy by substantially reducing the number of personnel in the Army and State Security apparatus. “In Cuba, 85% of employees are work for the State, which should be reduced to no more than 15% to make the country prosper,” he explained in a telephone conversation.

For the Cuban professor Carmelo Mesa-Lago, the election of Diaz-Canel rests on his loyalty to the Communist Party. “The party chose him because they see him as a loyal person, who will not change anything,” the economist told Bloomberg Businessweek.

Mesa-Lago stressed that on the island “there is a stagnant bureaucracy that clearly sees the private sector as a threat,” in reference to the glacial winds blowing over Cuban entrepreneurs after the government backtracked and decided to freeze the issuing of licenses for the most profitable private sector businesses.

Last year Mesa-Lago and other experts presented Voces of change in the Cuban non-state sector, a study on the incipient private sector in the Cuban economy. At that time, the self-employed were asking for more opportunities to invest in their businesses and fewer bureaucratic obstacles. They also demanded the opening of wholesale markets and the free importation of merchandise, but so far the Plaza of the Revolution has remained deaf to their needs.

With regards to the challenges facing the new president, Mesa-Lago is not optimistic. The crisis, he says, is not as severe as when the Soviet Union disappeared, but the challenges are greater since 1990.

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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.

“Silvano is authentic, austere, close to the people, consistent, accurate, and a simple man. Perhaps, using the words of Pope Francis, he is a ‘stray’ who can be a ‘game changer’ for the community of believers in Cuba,” says a priest who is an expert in the history of the Cuban Church and who prefers to remain anonymous.

Father Silvano, as the parishioners know him, has worked as a spiritual advisor to young men who want to be priests. He has also been a parish priest in rural areas. It is common to see him walking through the streets of Jesús María and El Cerro, as well as helping organizations such as Caritas in solidarity with the needy.

According to an expert consulted by 14ymedio, the Pope is trying to renew the face, style and language of the Cuban Church “with pastors such as the Bishop of Havana Juan de la Caridad, Father Silvano and Manolo de Céspedes, among others.”

Having accepted the resignation of Havana’s Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the Cuban Bishops’ Conference is in a process of transition that some experts believe involves distancing the Church from power and bringing it closer to the people.

“This appointment seeks to emphasize that the Catholic Church on the island is not only white, although most of the faithful are,” he adds.

Pedroso was born in Cárdenas, Matanzas, on 25 April 1953 and was baptized in 1961, during a time when there was a rupture between the Cuban Church, which initially supported Fidel Castro, and the Revolution, after it turned to the Soviet Union. He graduated in Geography from the University of Havana and practiced his profession from 1979 to 1982 at the Physical Planning Institute of Las Tunas.

Dagoberto Valdés, a lay Catholic from Pinar del Río, believes that Pedroso’s work experience can help him better understand the contemporary Cuban Church. On the island it is estimated that 60% of Cubans are baptized as Catholics, but no more than 10% attend Sunday Mass.

“The incorporation into the episcopate of men who grew up, were educated, worked and became priests at the time of the institutionalization of the socialist process is a wonderful experience for the pastors of the Church,” says Valdés. “Silvano is a man close to the people, a missionary in solidarity with them,” he added.

For Lenier González, former editor of one of the most important Catholic publications on the island, Espacio Laical (Lay Space), and current coordinator of Cuba Posible magazine, the appointment of Silvano is good news because “he addresses many challenges at once, almost all of them related to the links and historical actions of Catholicism with the Cuban black population.”

There is as yet no date for his episcopal consecration, which will be in Havana, but Silvano Pedroso is already very familiar with the work that is done in the diocese that has been assigned to him. “In Guantanamo, the Church has done a very nice job in terms of helping the most needy, especially after the hurricane,” he says.

After Hurricane Matthew, young Catholics organized weeks of help to rebuild the homes of the victims. Caritas distributed more than 60,000 pounds of aid from churches from neighboring countries, such as the United States.

The diocese of Guantánamo-Baracoa was created by John Paul II in 1998. Although the city of Guantánamo is home to the cathedral of Santa Catalina de Ricci, Baracoa (the first town founded in Cuba after the arrival of the Spaniards) is home to the co-cathedral church where the Cruz de la Parra (Cross of the Vine), brought by Columbus to the New World, is preserved.

The seat of the diocese has been vacant since 6 December 2016, when the previous bishop, Wilfredo Pino Estévez, was appointed to head the diocese of Camagüey.

Pedroso’s pastoral plan will be to follow the line of solidarity and human advancement that was underway in the diocese. “I try to accompany people in their reality, which is sometimes very hard,” he says.

Pedroso remembers that he was shocked the day a humble family in a Guantánamo town welcomed him into their home, giving him the best they had to eat and offering him rest. “Many times simple people are the ones who open themselves most to God and his message,” he explains.

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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 Union of Physicians, Pharmacists and Dentists of Kenya (KMPDU), which brings together public employees in these sectors, made clear its disagreement with the measure. “Kenya has trained doctors who are now unemployed and have been waiting for their deployment since May 2017,” the organization tweeted, in response to the official announcement about the hiring of Cuban healthcare workers.

Since then, the KMPDU has promoted a campaign to give jobs to Kenyan doctors and posted a survey on Twitter what garnered 2,364 votes, with 78% supporting the solution of recruiting Kenyan doctors before turning to Cubans.

Samuel Oroko, president of the KMPDU, told local media that his country has more than 1,200 unemployed doctors and that there are only 4,300 doctors working in the public health system serving a population of more than 49 million Kenyans. According to statistics from the World Health Organization there is one doctor for every 5,000 inhabitants, considered  very inadequate despite being Kenya’s being one of the best-equipped countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Oroko, however, believes that Cuban doctors are not the solution to the crisis in the healthcare system.

“There are no medicines and the laboratories do not work, so if they (Cubans) come, they will not be able to work,” said Oroko, who also asks where the money will come from to pay foreign doctors. According to official data, almost a quarter of Kenya’s healthcare expenses are paid by international organizations and private donors.

“Our advice is, and always has been, that Kenya improve its infrastructure and working conditions. Only then will we be able to attract and retain enough local specialists,” the head of the KMPDU told 14ymedio.

14ymedio was able to verify that the first doctors Cuba plans to send to Kenya are already receiving training in Havana. “The doctors who will provide their collaboration in Kenya are being trained at the Central Medical Cooperation Unit,” said a Cuban official on condition of anonymity. The doctors receive classes in English, local culture and the Kenyan public health system. The Cuban doctors still do not know what their salaries will be.

The first time that the Kenyan Government negotiated with Havana to send a group of doctors, it faced a one-hundred-day strike in its national health sector. Some 5,000 doctors stopped working because the Government failed to follow through on salary increases ranging from 150% to 200%, as it had previously agreed to do.

The strike ended with doctors receiving between 560 and 700 dollars a month in premiums, retroactive to January 2017. Cuban doctors were scheduled to travel to Kenya in October but at the last minute Nairobi suspended the contract due to pressure from the national healthcare sector, which opposed the bringing in of professionals from Cuba.

The monthly salary of a doctor in Kenya is at least a thousand dollars and can reach up to $5,000 in the private sector. In contrast, the average salary of Cuban doctors is about $60 US per month.

The president of Kenya made an official trip to Cuba last March where he was received by President Raúl Castro. The State visit focused on relaunching bilateral relations and negotiating the sending of doctors, sports technicians and biotechnological products.

“I think I could summarize [the visit to Cuba] this way: I have seen the future and it works,” Kangumu County Governor Anyang ’Nyong’o, who accompanied the Kenyan president on his trip to the island, told African media.

“They have very good primary health care, they have excellent referral facilities, and I think that for us, who want to implement universal health care coverage, this is the place we should go and learn from,” he added.

The governor explained that the agreement seeks to bring two Cuban specialists to each of the counties of the African nation. The Kenyan Health Minister, Sicily Kariuki, said the agreement would last two years and asked that the discussion about bringing in Cuban doctors “not be politicized.”

14ymedio tried to communicate with Kenya’s Ministry of Health to learn the details of the contract for Cuban doctors (as of now unpublished) but did not get a response from the authorities.

Cuba promised the Kenyans vaccines against cattle ticks and technical support in the training of that nation’s boxing team. The cooperation planned with the Island is a part of the Big Four initiative with which President Kenyatta seeks “food security, affordable housing, industry and healthcare accessible to all.”

Havana bases a large part of its economy on the export of services, mainly health services, which provide the country an annual income of 11.5 billion dollars, according to official data not confirmed by independent means. The Cuban Government keeps more than half of the payment made for each doctor hired by foreign States or institutions.

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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 father of the child publicly accused Pacheco of denying him information about the baby. The cousin of Cuba Rodríguez, on the other hand, showed this newspaper the chats she had with the girl’s father, through the Messenger app, since the young mother died. “I always sent photos of the little girl and kept him up to date, but he preferred to put on a media show when all he had to do was wait for the process to run its course according to the law,” she says.

Gattorno and several South Florida media outlets claimed that Pacheco’s family had filed a lawsuit for malpractice against Jackson Memorial Hospital and hinted that this was the reason they wanted to maintain temporary custody.

“We have not made any demands. We are only asking for my cousin’s medical file at the hospital because we believe there were irregularities in her operation,” Pacheco says, defending herself. She says that the last weeks have seemed like an ordeal. “My face has been all over the news, I think I have become the most wanted person. Even my children have been harassed by the press,” she says.

Cuba Rodríguez’s delivery was was complicated because the pregnant woman had placenta accreta, a medical condition that occurs when the placenta is too deeply attached to the inside of the uterus. Doctors prefer to deliver by cesarean in these cases to avoid tears and bleeding. However, Cuba Rodriguez did not do well in the operation and died in the operating room, leaving only the designation of her cousin as the contact person responsible for her.

“Yari and I grew up together as if we were sisters. She won the visa lottery and I helped her come to the United States in October of last year,” explains Pacheco. Both Cuba and her eldest daughter, Flavia Paz, 15, lived at their cousin’s. After the death of the woman, 34, the teenager went to live with her father, who also lives in the United States.

“My biggest concern is that the girl’s father wants to take her to Cuba, my cousin always wanted to live in the United States, that’s why she emigrated, she was looking for the best for her daughters, I don’t think it’s best for the girl to live in that country [Cuba],” adds Pacheco.

For Pacheco, the mother of three children and a manicurist by trade, the family controversy surrounding the custody of the girl took her by surprise. “One day my friends called me and told me to turn on the news because they were talking about me,” she explains. “It was then that I found out that the baby’s father said that I wasn’t giving him any information about her and that I wanted to separate him from the child.”

“I just want the best for the girl and for her not to be separated from her sister, who has already gone through a lot,” she says.

Pacheco accuses Gattorno of not being in a position to support the baby on the island, having no work, and having belonged to the Technical Investigation Department of the National Revolutionary Police.

14ymedio communicated by phone with Yoelvis Gattorno who confirmed his intention to travel to the United States to get custody of his daughter and to bring her back to the island.

“The only thing that interests me now is to travel to Miami to meet my daughter. I’m going to return with her to Cuba,” said Gattorno, who lives in Santa Clara. The man did not deny having belonged to the police, which his lawyer Claudia Cañizares, who leads the pro bono case, had done. Currently, there is a gofoundme campaign to help Gattorno reunite with his daughter.

“In the next two weeks we could have my client traveling to Miami,” Cañizares told this newspaper. The lawyer added that several members of Congress from South Florida have shown their solidarity towards the father and interceded for him to be granted a humanitarian visa at the US embassy in Havana.

According to Cañizares, only a judge can grant the father custody of the baby and will do so looking for the greater good of the child, so the judge would make the final decision about the possible travel of a minor who is an American citizen to the Island.

Various media outlets in South Florida have compared the case of little Valeria with that of Elián González, a Cuban boy who was rescued after being shipwrecked on the raft on which he was traveling with his mother from Cuba in 2000. González’s father claimed custody of him, and  received the support of Fidel Castro, who turned the legal fight for the custody of the child into a political struggle between the Cuban exile in Miami and the Government of the Island. Finally the boy was returned to Cuba and today is a leader in the Communist Youth organization.

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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.