Category: Natalia López Moya

Aníbal’s story contradicts a statement made by MINSAP last August, when it denied the information circulating on social networks about alleged new regulations for the entry and exit from the country of workers in the healthcare sector. Georgina Álvarez, director of communications for MINSAP, warned against believing any rumor like this that was not confirmed through official channels.

But that denial did not calm minds and uncovered a wave of testimonies that indicated just the opposite. “I have not been practicing as a doctor for more than a year, and after that time I asked for ‘permanent deregulation’ for family reunification and was denied,” wrote a commentator who identified herself as Beatriz in the footnote published in the official media.

This newspaper tried, unsuccessfully, to get an answer about regulated doctors through the Facebook page of the Ministry of Public Health in Guantánamo and other provinces. The situation seems to be unequal depending on the territory and “the contacts that the doctor has,” says Hannibal.

The situation seems to be unequal depending on the territory and “the contacts that the doctor has,” says Hannibal

The Guantánamo Human Resources office attends every Thursday to the doctors who are in a situation similar to that of Hannibal. “Every time I go, the lines are immense. Many of them are there for the same reason, so I calculate that there are dozens, if not more than a hundred of us, who are regulated in this province,” he adds. “I was there at six in the morning, and at that time there were already people.”

“It is arbitrary because most of us who are regulated appear on paper as specialists or residents, even if we aren’t,” Aníbal said. “Those in that situation are more limited to travel, but now the ban has been extended to others who do not even meet those requirements.”

The doctor also recognizes that many of his colleagues choose to stop working in the sector for fear of not being able to leave the Island. “Those who stand in line complain because they are prevented from leaving the country or taking a leave from Public Health, which is almost the same, because many ask for leave to be able to emigrate later.”

In his opinion, the version of the head of the Department is false, and the intent is to prevent doctors from continuing to leave. “Not by improving the salary or working conditions, but by force, by obligation.” Aníbal also questions why his colleagues have not joined together to protest to the Health authorities. “Here the way that some of us have found is to denounce the situation in the independent media, but nothing more.”

In his opinion, the version of the head of the Department is false, and the intent is to prevent doctors from continuing to leave. “Not by improving the salary or working conditions, but by force, by obligation

“From my career year there are few in practice, and those of us who are working as doctors are regulated. The others are selling pizza, food,” he explains. “I should have taken a vacation myself, but I don’t think I’m going to because I can’t take it anymore. They are pushing me to ask for leave. At the moment, working in Public Health and wanting to travel is not compatible.”

In his case, the decision was made years ago: “Honestly, I want to travel in order to emigrate. I plan to go through Nicaragua, from there to Mexico, and from that country, my family in the United States will help me obtain the humanitarian parole to get to Miami.”

Anibal does not lose hope, seeing that some of his colleagues have managed to resolve their situation. This is the case of a nephrologist with more than 20 years of experience, who stopped practicing in 2020. “She knew that to get out of here she couldn’t continue in Public Health,” says her daughter Dayana. “She was regulated for a long time, but a few weeks ago they allowed her to get a passport, so it seems that she will be able to emigrate.”

Dayana is a fourth-year medical student, but she has just left the Guantánamo faculty. “I should have started my fifth year now but decided not to do it, because everyone in my family is waiting for the parole to arrive, and I feared that the ban on leaving the country would be extended to students.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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How many employees and professionals are there throughout Cuba in the same situation as Nidia? Difficult to know. As of last July, more than 38,000 Cubans had been approved for parole, and more than 35,000 had entered the United States. The figure of how many are in the process is probably much higher.

Damián is one of the lucky ones who already managed to travel last April through the new mechanism. From Jacksonville, Florida, he tells this newspaper about his last days in Cuba in his job. “I didn’t say anything to anyone,” he explains about the attitude he maintained at an official radio station where he worked in Havana.

“When I was already informed that I was approved and my uncle had bought me the ticket, I went to see the director and told him directly: ’Boss, give me the leave, I’m going to the United States tomorrow with the parole.’ The official was unfazed and immediately replied: ’You are the fifth person who has told me the same thing in less than two months’.”

There are many reasons for keeping your intentions secret. For Yoandra, a resident of the city of Camagüey and an employee of the State telecommunications company Etecsa, revealing that she is about to leave the country could be a problem for the future. “If I’m never approved to emigrate, I’ll have to continue working here, and I don’t want a sign with the stigma of ’gusana’ [worm] hanging around my neck.”

Although the privileges that Yoandra enjoyed a few years ago for working in the telecommunications monopoly have plummeted, “the conditions are still better than in other places,” she says. In her case, her husband’s aunt has requested the parole for the couple and their young daughter.

In hospitals and strategic work centers, such as the Unión Eléctrica and Aguas de La Habana, managers fear that at any time they will hear a knock on their office door and lose another worker who has come to tell them they are emigrating. “There are people who do it decently and give notice a day or two before getting on the plane, but we have had cases of employees that have only told us when they are already boarding,” complains Magdalena, a worker of the Cuba-Petróleo Union (Cupet).

There are also those “who ask for vacation or unpaid leave. They go to the United States and try to get all their residence papers there and then return without telling anyone what they were up to,” says Magdalena. “This happened to us with an employee who left for family reunification, and since she had only a few months left to retire and get her pension, she pulled that trick.”

According to the Cupet employee, “It’s not that she needed that money, which was a little more than 2,000 pesos, but she didn’t want the State to keep her retirement. In the end, she returned to the U.S. and left her magnetic card with a nephew to collect the check every month.”

Without face-to-face procedures, without showing signs that they plan to emigrate, and without the obligation to obtain certifications and get them stamped and presented to the U.S. Embassy, Cubans who are waiting for the parole can decide who to involve in their situation.

Melba has not even told her family who lives in Ciego de Ávila, because “people become vultures, fluttering over you to see what you can leave them,” she tells this newspaper. “If I tell them that I’m leaving, I’ll have them in my apartment tomorrow morning appraising everything I have,” says the 53-year-old woman and resident of La Víbora.

But the discretion granted by the parole is a double-edged sword. “On my block there are soldiers, militants of the Communist Party, and even an extremist who organized the acts of repudiation against the house of an opponent who lives nearby,” Melba emphasizes.

“A young journalist, who was one of the first to harass me on my Facebook account when I shared images of the repression against the demonstrators on July 11, 2021, also left with the parole. No one knows who is in it anymore and who is not, and it’s only confirmed when they are already gone.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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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.

In 2021, the year in which the Ordering Task* began, prices in Cuba suffered a 77.3% increase in the consumer price index (CPI) mainly from transport, which grew by 188%, a fact made public by the National Office of Information and Statistics (Onei). Since then, prices have continued to increase without seeing an end to the rise.

“Neither the State nor the passenger gives anything to the taxi driver,” laments David Pousada in a harsh comment on site of the Provincial Directorate of Transport. “As long as the driver has to buy medicines at 1,000 pesos, a can of oil at 1,500, a package of chicken at 3,000, fuel at 400 per liter and a soft drink in the cafeteria at 150, prices will not go down.”

At the collection points, such as the Parque de la Fraternidad, the news spread on Monday morning among the drivers. “This is the country of the 15 days: nothing is fixed. Now they are capping prices. The inspectors stand on every street corner, they fine us, they take some drivers prisoner to intimidate us, and after two weeks everything goes back to the way it was yesterday,” says Roly, who drives a nine-seater vehicle that makes the route to Playa.

Customers, on the other hand, are torn between hope and doubt. “It relieves me, of course, because if this is true I’m going to spend half of what I’m spending now to go from La Víbora to the Capitolio,” admits a young woman who works in a private restaurant near Central Park. “But other times, when they have announced capped prices, what has happened is that many drivers stay home and won’t go to work for that small amount of money.”

Others, such as Yuniel, 23, ask: “On the route that costs 45, what driver is going to return five pesos to you if you paid with a 50-peso bill?” According to this young man, “it’s not just about prices but also about the lack of paper money, especially small bills, because ATMs can spend days without cash, and the lines to withdraw money are getting longer and longer.”

The authorities warn that “the actions of confrontation and control on the road will be reinforced (…), applying to drivers who are detected in violation of the established prices, Decree 30 of 2021. In the case of those who exercise the activity illegally, it will act with greater rigor by applying Decree 45 of 2021.”

They have also enabled the telephone number 78813110 and the email oap.dg@getrans.cu so that the customers themselves report drivers who violate the new rates to “act on the offender” and ask that the report include “day, time, license plate number of the vehicle and the price charged.”

In addition to Havana, the new prices have reached the center of the Island, where on Monday the local press announced that “the price of 15 pesos per passenger is fixed for combustion tricycles, within the city of Cienfuegos, on the perimeter from any point of the city to the ring road,” and in the case of two-seater motorcycles, “the price is 30 within the mentioned perimeter.

It is expected that in the coming days similar news will be published in the official media of the rest of the country’s cities.

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

Translated by Regina Anavy

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR 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.

Just unloaded from the Orange Spirit, the frozen poultry meat, which has become an object of desire for all Cubans since they stopped hoping for pork, was quickly distributed in Havana and dispatched to other cities in the center of the Island, as 14ymedio correspondents were able to verify.

This Tuesday, the trucks distributed the chicken to the butchers of the capital with such unusual efficiency that by the next day it was  already available in every shop, as this newspaper could see in a tour of different neighborhoods of the center.

The chicken, from the American brand Tyson, is not one of the most appreciated by the population, because of the dark color it acquires with cooking. But the mere fact of finally being able to buy the expected half pound – at 20 pesos [$.80] – was already a cause for joy for the habaneros.

“You can’t complain, now you have chicken,” joked one neighbor to another who came out with his long-awaited package.

Despite the announcement of the arrival of the shipment of chicken, broadcast with great fanfare in Tribuna de La Habana this Tuesday, some neighbors were not expecting the happy news. “It took people by surprise,” said a retiree from Nuevo Vedado who found out, hours later, that they had supplied his butchery with the long-awaited chicken quarters.

The general director of the Copmar Food Marketing Company, Enrique Plaza Maldestein, said in Tuesday’s Noticerio Estelar that 51 containers of chicken were being unloaded in the port of Havana. The average number of tons of chicken needed to supply the capital’s family basket is 5,300, imported in its entirety.

For the third consecutive month, chicken purchases from the United States, which must be paid in cash due to the embargo restrictions, fell in March due to the lack of foreign exchange in the Central Bank. Imports from Brazil also decreased, another of the most stable suppliers on the Island and for whom there are no such limitations.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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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.

All this proves that the problem of malnutrition in Cuba is not only due to the increasingly alarming rates of poverty. When the food and toiletry shops were dollarized almost three years ago, it seemed that, at least those who received remittances from relatives abroad were going to be able to have varied food. This, despite assuming a new social division, very soon turned into a widespread complaint and even one of the reasons for the mass protests of July 11, 2021 (many demonstrations were over the closure of stores in MLC, freely convertible currency).

Just at the beginning of April, the UN World Food Program released a report saying that “the diet of the average Cuban household is poor in micronutrients and not sufficiently healthy or diverse due to the limited and unstable availability of nutritious food, socioeconomic factors and bad eating habits.”

The document, which denounces the responsibility for the Government’s economic decisions such as the so-called Ordering Task* emphasized that the situation was worse for the Cuban who did not receive remittances. However, sales websites for buying from abroad confirm that, as with happiness, money does not guarantee a good diet either.

Roast meat, lobster and shrimp, which have disappeared from the vast majority of Cuban tables, seem to come out of a fantasy novel today, but access to foreign currency does not even make Cubans lean towards the varied foods and fruits that the Island always provides: avocado, sweet potato, yucca, malanga, okra, bananas, mamey, pineapple, mango or any type of citrus: more eloquent evidence of the failure of a system that has lasted for 64 years.

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

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COLLABORATE WITH OUR 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.

Another consequence of the gasoline shortage is being suffered by messaging platforms, such as Mandao. An employee of this company tells 14ymedio that at the moment only those who have a bicycle or an electric motorcycle are working on delivery. The young man, who has a bicycle, explains that his daily services have multiplied: “Before we were the least valued because at the pace of a pedal everything goes a little slower, and many businesses did not want us to take care of their deliveries. But now that there is no gasoline they have realized that our fuel is human, and we don’t have to buy it at gas stations.”

Of course, the law of supply and demand is not forgiving and, thus, the bicitaxis have also raised their costs. “All prices go up,” complained a customer who refused a service on Monday. “In that, the revolution is advancing.”

On Friday, President Miguel Díaz-Canel tried to offer explanations for the lack of fuel but, as on other occasions, he only pointed to scapegoats. “The countries that have certain commitments with us to supply us with gasoline from the agreements we have are also experiencing a complex energy situation,” he said in a meeting in Santa Clara with provincial leaders of the Party.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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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.

The information, more valuable for filling the tank of the vehicle than the money itself, has created networks of solidarity among drivers who, in addition to spreading the word about where the supply has arrived, help each other in the lines in front of the gas station, which can last for days. “We are four taxi drivers and we take turns in line. The station that had fuel last week doesn’t have it anymore. We wouldn’t have a life if we had to be in line all the time,” explains a young man who rents a cab from the Taxi-Cuba Company.

“The tourists who arrive don’t know this, and some rent a car to go to the provinces; then they get stranded on the road because they can’t fill the tank,” the driver tells 14ymedio. “At first, passenger cars had priority, but if there is no gasoline, it doesn’t matter if you have priority. If there isn’t any there isn’t, and they can’t invent it.”

Marta and Manuel managed, after a long wait, to get into a vehicle on the way to a private rental house in the historic center of Havana. “Can we meet tomorrow for an excursion to the Zapata Swamp?” they inquired of the taxi driver. The payment proposal, an interesting amount of euros, would have been absolutely irresistible a few months ago, but the driver declines. “I can’t, this is the last gasoline I have left. Tomorrow I have to take care of getting more, and that will take me all day or all week.”

Rumors are circulating among taxi drivers that fuel problems will be solved on the 18th. In March, the British agency Reuters announced the shipment of oil from Venezuela that was going to be the largest in memory in a long time. The Nolan oil tanker, Panamanian-flagged and sanctioned by the United States, was in the Venezuelan port of San José loading 1.53 million barrels (400,000 barrels of oil and 1.13 of diesel), destined for Cuba.

Although the ship was supposed to arrive at the end of March, the shortage, visible at the Island’s gas stations, suggests that it arrived late or that the unloading has been slow. Radar positioned the Nolan for the last time off the coast of western Africa, but that was 111 days ago, and the sanctioned tankers travel with the transponder turned off to hide their location. The Venezuelan government opponent María Corina Machado said last week that the oil tanker was in the port of Antilla, in Holguín, according to a satellite application.

But the effects of the lack of fuel are not only noticed by tourists and Cubans who want to fill their tank. The blackouts are already back, and national television announced that a “complex” day is expected this Monday. Yesterday, Sunday, the deficit reached 368 megawatts (MW) at around 20:20, coinciding with peak time. Although the Unión Eléctrica de Cuba (UNE) assures that “this weekend it managed to meet the demand,” many Cubans have complained about more than three hours without power in different parts of the Island.

“Last night there was a blackout here from 10:27 pm until a little more than 1 am. I couldn’t rest well, and today we face the day to day to see how to survive,” lamented a woman from Cienfuegos. “I have just seen the list, and during the day there should be no problem, but in Remedios there is a deficit from 9 to 3 in the afternoon,” added another.

For today, UNE predicts a deficit of 200 MW, but 550 MW is expected to be missing at the peak. In its statement, the electricity monopoly speaks of a shortage in the distribution because of “failures and lack of maintenance,” correcting the information provided on television, which said that the lack of availability is due to “problems” in the distribution of fuel, which has not yet arrived.

“They don’t have oil because they don’t buy it, and they don’t pay for what they buy. Period.” says a user when reading the forecast for the day.

Meanwhile, the recovery work of the Antonio Guiteras de Matanzas thermoelectric plant continues after the accident that cost the lives of two people this Friday and injured two more when they were trapped by the collapse of a 23-foot high wall while cleaning the soot in the chimney of the plant. La Guiteras is the largest thermoelectric plant in the country, but last year it was out of service for more days than it produced energy.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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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.

The reason borders more on indifference than on rebellion. “It’s not going to change anything if I go or not,” she tells 14ymedio. “My mother has been attending all those processes for 40 years and what does she have now? Nothing. A half-collapsed house, four old rags to wear and some children who only think about leaving this country as soon as they can.”

While she is speaking, an old woman arrives but doesn’t join the conversation. She makes a gesture of denial when she hears the young woman’s words. It is in the elderly where the official propaganda of the united vote and the attendance at the polls as a sign of support for the system penetrates with greater depth. They are the ones who are most afraid of change or have spent more years of their lives supporting the Government.

Maurín, 21, lives in the Havana neighborhood of San Pedro in the municipality of El Cotorro. In front of the door of his house extends a street that years ago lost some of its asphalt. Garbage accumulates on the nearby corner, while the line for the only kiosk that sells food in the area almost reaches his window.  “How am I going to go to vote if they haven’t even fixed the basics?” the young man asks, indignant.

With an engineer father and a nurse mother, Maurín questions the role of the delegates of the National Assembly of People’s Power in his neighborhood and the ability of parliamentarians to improve the lives of citizens. “In San Pedro we have been demanding [from the delegates] for years and years in the Accountability meetings that they fix our streets, improve the quality of the bread and open new stores to buy food, but none of that has been resolved.”

Disbelief has taken over many of the residents in the area, a phenomenon that is repeated throughout the country. To try to arouse enthusiasm in recent weeks, the Cuban ruling party has launched a campaign that includes meetings with voters, an avalanche of advertising in the national media, the reduction of annoying blackouts, and agricultural fairs to sell food at prices a little cheaper than in private markets.

However, the ideological offensive does not seem to be bearing fruit among a population that is tired of so many daily difficulties. For Maritza, 64, until recently employed by a branch of the Ministry of Culture, it is striking how people in the streets no longer hide that they will not vote on Sunday.

The Government of Miguel Díaz-Canel seems to fear a growth in abstention, which for decades remained below 10% but has experienced a significant increase in recent years. In last November’s municipal elections it reached an all-time high with 30% of voters absent. For the ruling party, attendance is measured as a sign of support for the system and the Communist Party.

“In the line at the bank I heard two employees who were talking and saying that they were not going to vote on Sunday. For me it is unprecedented that in a state work center people talk so openly in frank defiance of the system,” she tells this newspaper. “Before, that was unthinkable, and it shows that between fear and defiance, many are choosing defiance.”

Cuban dissidents have also raised the tone in the calls for abstention as the electoral date approaches and, for the first time in a long time, they have agreed on the “I don’t vote” premise, which has been joined by activists of various political stripes.

In Santa Clara, Ignacio, 47 years old and self-employed, has also decided to abstain. “The deputies will not solve any problem because they are the gears of this machine but not its essence. They are mostly a group of puppets without voice or vote because everything in Cuba has always been planned in that manual of ’continuity’,” he says.

Ignacio recognizes that others will go to the polls but says their attendance is not exactly because of a belief that the National Assembly will help improve life on the Island. “One of the saddest things is the political apathy of these people and the hopelessness that leads them to vote or take any decision dictated by the Government, such as voting for everyone,” he emphasizes.

Others, such as Jorge, a 23-year-old university student and resident of Camajuaní, Villa Clara, recognizes that he will go to vote on March 26 because he feels that attendance is “practically mandatory.” He does not want to stand out publicly and prefers to avoid teacher retaliation that could result from not going.

However, he recognizes that no candidate for parliament represents him “because the politics they defend has nothing to do” with his way of thinking. “The election process will solve absolutely nothing. All leaders follow the same ideology and do not change anything once they are elected,” he concludes with skepticism.

There are also those who seem impervious to the official campaign for the March 26 elections and say they are not even aware that voting will take place. “I don’t care about that; I just want to survive every day and wait for my sister to find me a sponsor to go to the United States,” acknowledges 19-year-old Jean Marcos. “The only place I’m going to go is to the airport when I have my flight.”

Jean Marcos’ friends share his position. Given the choice between the ballot or the ticket, they all seem to opt for something that gets them out of Cuba as soon as possible.

Translated by Regina Anavy 

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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.