The Official Press Denounces the Situation of a Neighborhood That Has Been Without Water for Three Years

Municipal authorities acknowledge that the problem has no solution at the moment and express their concern about the coming months of drought

Two neighbors from the Jesús María neighborhood, in Sancti Spíritus, attach a hose to capture water from a leak. / Capture/Escambray

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Olea Gallardo, Havana, 31 January 2025 – Several streets in the Jesús María neighborhood of Sancti Spíritus have been without water for three years. This time the complaint is not being made, as is usual in Cuba, by anonymous users on social networks or independent media, but by the official newspaper Escambray. Last Friday on its video newscast, VisionEs, it showed one of its reporters, Elsa Ramos, visiting the place she had gone six months earlier, and found that the situation was the same: still no water service.

One of the neighbors interviewed explained to the journalist the strategies they use to get water. “We’re going to put the pump in now, we put in the cables and the hose and a man there lends us a little tube, and we connect the pump there and get the water,” he said. “Because here on this block, from this corner to La Gloria, nobody has gotten even a drop of water for three or four years.”

Another resident confirmed: “It’s been more than three years since the water came in here, without any explanation offered. It’s impossible that this pipe here has water, that one over there has water, all the pipes in the block have water, and that this little section here does not have water. I don’t know how that is, it doesn’t make sense.”

A third resident hedged: “Since the construction of Reparto 26, the area around this neighborhood has been greatly affected.” There is water at her doorstep – “It’s a small stream, with little force, but with luck, there is no shortage,” the reporter noted. But this caused other neighbors to point out that it took from “early morning until all hours” to fill containers.

In her report, Elsa Ramos confronted “the government’s representation,” Ariel Muñoz Hidalgo, deputy mayor of Transportation and Energy for Sancti Spíritus, and Yusmeiky Mendoza Muro, director of the state Aquaduct and Sewage Company for the same city.

Asked about the reason why some parts of the neighborhood have water and others do not, Muñoz Hidalgo pointed to the “continuous increase in illegal connections to the hydraulic networks.” The reporter pointed out: “There are illegal connections because they don’t have water.” The official agreed and added, “because they don’t have water or because they have made new constructions.” continue reading

Thus, she attributed a good part of the problem to the increase in the population “without a projection, without an increase in the hydraulic systems as well.” The deputy mayor assured that they have a pumping system “with new pumps, with good water distribution capacities,” but that it could not be used “one hundred percent” because, he explained again, about the leaks, which prevent good pressure in all places.

Tank leaking water on the roof next to a house in Jesús María that does not have the service. / Capture/Escambray

The reporter persisted in asking why one segment in the heart of Jesús María does not have water while the surrounding streets do. The official replied that the street she referred to, Guillermón Moncada, is “very old.” But he didn’t go into detail about the reasons, and in fact, blamed the residents who get water by their own means: “We say it is illegal because it is not approved to do so, but people do it in search of the benefit of the resource.”

When the journalist asked Yusmeiky Mendoza Muro if Aquaduct has a solution and within what time frame, the company manager admitted: “No.” He and the deputy mayor enumerated numerous problems: a shortage of hoses, materials, fuel, and personnel. “We have almost no plumbers,” Mendoza Muro added.

Sealing the leaks and repairing the tanks on the houses are the next solutions that Muñoz Hidalgo promised, but at the same time, he warned that the situation will worsen in the coming months. “At this stage we do have to say that it is much more complex for us because we are already entering the dry season,” the official said, explaining that there are areas that are supplied by the Yayabo River, “which is losing all its capacity.”

“From early February,” he continued, “they will activate the groups to confront the drought and will draw up a calendar for the distribution of water in tanker trucks.” Then Elsa Ramos scolded him that, according to the residents, the tanker trucks don’t comply with the delivery schedules.

“That will always depend on the amount of fuel we have, the availability of tanker trucks we have, the neighborhoods that are growing,” answered Muñoz Hidalgo.

“In order not to create false expectations, will this segment of Jesús Mar continue to be thirsty?” the journalist pressed. Despite all the disasters previously enumerated, the director of the Aqueduct responded emphatically: “No, no, no.” Ramos asked again: “When will we be able to quench this thirst? Are we talking about months, years, centuries?” “No, no, months,” the official answered. The reporter replied that she would return in a while to check on the progress.

Just then, from the roof of a house, a woman didn’t miss the opportunity to point out “the contradiction” that the water tank on a neighboring roof was leaking drinking water. The official responded in a lowered voice: “That’s because of indiscipline.”

Translated by Tomás A.

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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 Mysterious A&M Bazaar Opens its Third Shop in a Ruined Building in Havana

The supermarket is located where the state cafeteria Las Avenidas used to be, on Infanta and Carlos III

Since the supermarket was opened on 11 November there have been crowds thronging through its doors hoping to buy. / 14ymedio

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez/Olea Gallardo, 8 January 2024 — Number 909 Calle Infanta / Carlos III, central Havana, appears to be bipolar. The upper storeys, where the majority of apartments continue to be inhabited, are falling apart, whilst the ground floor, which used to house the state operated cafeteria Las Avenidas – which gave its name to the building among the locals – with its prosperous, recently opened private store, is all bright and shiny new.

Since the supermarket was opened on 11 November there have been crowds thronging through its doors hoping to buy. Beneath its newly painted arches there are ornamental plants and powerful air conditioning units, and there’s no sign of the ruined state of the rest of the building, which has been denounced by its residents on numerous occasions. On the contrary, it feels like another place entirely.

Number 909 Calle Infanta / Carlos III, central Havana, appears to be bipolar. / 14ymedio

Items of ironmongery, decor, articles for the home and white goods, along with other objects such as oriental smoking pipes, all mingle with foodstuffs, themselves also wide ranging, such as tinned foods, sauces and jams and even fresh produce, including dairy and meat. Everything is priced in pesos, and, as is usually the case with private shops, it’s all well stocked but at prices beyond the reach of most people’s pockets, and of poor quality.

A ’kitchen’-based toy, 1,000 pesos; a plastic container with two scouring pads, 450; two packets of incense, 900; a small pack of nuggets, more than 1,000; a tin of beans, 900; a small carton of juice, 700, and straws for 200 pesos – these are some of the products that you can find from day to day. The activity of loading and unloading is feverish. continue reading

Everything is priced in pesos, and, as is usually the case with private shops, it’s all well stocked but at prices beyond the reach of most people’s pockets, and of poor quality. / 14ymedio

The business doesn’t display any name plate outside, but pink letters on the employees’ black sweaters reveal that it belongs to Bazar A&M. The company, which already has two other stores in the same Havana district – on Neptuno/Lealdad and on Neptuno/Gervasio – has made the most of this third branch’s launch by opening a WhatsApp group where it announces new products and prices.

The products advertised on Sunday, the eve of the Epiphany / Three Kings day, are all toys, made in China. A toy truck fitted with beach-rakes at 2,500 pesos, a Jenga puzzle at 1,100 and a game with hoops for babies at 1,950. The company doesn’t allow public comments to be made, and someone who goes by the name of Valentina Vale is in charge; she is also the person who promotes the shops on Facebook.

The business doesn’t display any name plate outside, but pink letters on the employees’ black sweaters reveal its name: it belongs to Bazar A&M. / 14ymedio

Its owners are, beyond this detail, mysterious. In contrast to other micro, small or medium sized businesses (’mipymes’ or ’MSMEs’ in English), they don’t have a website, and, although they sell just about anything, they are registered with the Ministry of Economy and Planning as “producers of paper and cardboard goods” as their principal activity.

“I don’t know who they are, but not just anyone gets to use this logo”, one customer told this journal as she was waiting to get into the store, pointing to the message printed on the door: “Havana lives in me” – a logo created by the authorities for the 505th anniversary of the capital and distributed to government institutions. “What you can see, is that they’ve spent quite a lot of money here…”, the woman observed.

“I don’t know who they are, but not just anyone gets to use this logo”, one customer told this journal. / 14ymedio

Vigilance inside the store is also very noticeable. The staff don’t just visually monitor those who have made purchases, but they check the goods at the exit. “Carefully check your purchase before you leave, as we don’t do refunds”, says a notice.

Elsewhere, the buildings in which the company has established its other branches all used to be state owned, and, as has been repeated in recent years, they have been reopened without public tender and without advanced notice. The “mixed” bazaar Neptune was established in 2023 in a former clothing shop which had fallen into disrepair.

“Me and my sister used to love it, because you’d enter through a door at one side, go round the interior in a ’U’ direction and come out through another door, where there was also the stairway up to the residents’ flats on the upper floors”, María, a resident of the Cayo Hueso quarter, remembers of the old building.

Bazar A&M is, in any case, one of those establishments which have proliferated in Cuba in recent times, and, joining the list of these new “dollarized” businesses, it all in effect goes to demonstrate the end of the old convertible currency shops.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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

Cuban Government Opens a High-End Supermarket that Only Accepts Dollars in Cash or Card

The move is a sign that “dollarization” of the economy — something Prime Minister Manuel Marrero has spoken about— is going ahead along with the end of the MLC

The new Supermercado 3ra y 70 (3rd and 70th Supermarket) is owned by Tiendas Caribe, a branch of the Cimex corporation. / 14ymedio

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez/Olea Gallardo, Havana, 3 January 2024 — The new 3rd and 70th Supermarket, which opened on Tuesday on the ground floor of the luxurious Gran Muthu Habana hotel in Miramar, does not accept MLC (a form of digital convertible currency) much less Cuban pesos. The store is owned by Tiendas Caribe, one of the numerous offshoots of the Cuban Armed Forces all-powerful Business Administration Group (GAESA). The store accepts three forms of payment: dollars in the form of cash, foreign cards and the so-called Clásica (Classic) debit card, which is denominated dollars.

The supermarket was bustling on Thursday, two days after opening, overwhelming its visitors. The store is part of a newly built shopping center that includes numerous privately owned shops — among them a branch of the Chocolatera confectionery —most of which have yet to open.

Outside the entrance to the complex was a line of cars, similar to lines outside the city’s gas stations, whose owners were eager to park and shop. Unlike at other state-owned stores, the shelves inside the huge, clean, well-lit space were fully stocked with a variety of products.

“Inside it’s all shiny and new, with automatic checkouts, with carts, with baskets, with all the products the MLC stores used to have but no longer do,” said Lucía, a first-time customer. / 14ymedio

“Inside it’s all shiny and new, with automatic checkout counters, with carts, with baskets, with all the products the MLC stores used to have but no longer do,” said Lucía, a first-time customer. “All the beans here are canned and natural. The meats, the cheeses, the olive oil, the regular oils, tomato sauces, pickles, canned fruit, nougat, rice, coffee, yogurt, milk, ice cream, and even whole wheat bread! It’s got everything, everything,” said Lucía, who spent 6,000-pesos taxi on a taxi ride from Old Havana to get here. And she was amazed. “The checkout counters move. I have never seen that in Cuba before, not even in the Cuatro Caminos market!”

The supermarket carries Cuban-made products which are no longer available at state-owned stores. Until now, they could only be found at privately owned small and medium sized stores (MSMEs). These include items such as Cubita coffee and Estancia fruit juices; private label brands such as Clamanta and Gustó. They new store also carries “foreign” brands routinely found at Cimex stores. They include Spain’s Vima, Mexico’s Richmeat and Chile’s Sur Continente, companies that have long been established on the island. Vima, which imports apples, has been operating in Cuba since the 1990s . Small appliances such as fans (for $45) and Italian coffee makers were also among the most popular items at the store.

“I imagine that, since this is in dollars, it will last but, with this kind of operation, you never know,” said an elderly woman who was accompanied by her daughter. “The MLC stores started out like this but but now they’re empty.”

A total of twelve cash registers served a diverse clientele with one thing in common: money to spend. / 14ymedio

A total of twelve cash registers served a diverse clientele with one thing in common: money to spend. Customers include high-ranking officials, foreigners and embassy personnel as well as a picturesque group of nuns. Two of them were in the checkout line, waiting to buy fans. Two others scurried back and forth to their car, carrying a wide variety of products and foodstuffs.

“You have to take advantage of this because, before too long, it will all be gone. Just look at the MLC stores. They haven’t been stocked in a very long time,” observes a retiree carrying a basketful of chicken.

A sign at the cash register explains how customers can pay for their items. “Payment here is made using USD cards,” it reads, with logos of which cards the store accepts. At the top — above even the Mastercard and Visa logos — is Russia’s Mir card, which a woman in the checkout line was waiting to use. “It belongs to my husband,” she said, surprised to learn the store will also accept cash. Most customers, however, were paying in dollars.

The new 3rd and 70th Supermarket also carries Vima-brand apples. / 14ymedio

The cash registers did not, however, provide change. Instead, employees hand out small sweets, though they were not given to customers if the amount was less than five cents.

Another novel form of payment is the Classic card, which has been available to customers at this shopping center since December 7. Though senior government officials have said nothing about it, requiring consumers to pay in dollars and incentivizing them to use this card can be seen as another step towards dollarization of Cuba’s retail economy, which Prime Minister Manuel Marrero spoke about last month in the National Assembly. Effectively, it also means the end of the MLC. continue reading

In a post on social media, Cimex describes Classic as “a financial product denominated in U.S. dollars, designed to facilitate your transactions within the country.” It can be used at the network of gas stations that take payment in dollars and at retail outlets with point-of-sale (POS) terminals. It can also be used to buy goods and services, and to import products from overseas. The card costs $5.00, or its equivalent at the “current exchange rate” in “accepted foreign currencies,” the corporation states. One dollar of the purchase price is automatically added to the buyer’s account balance. There is no “pre-set amount” or required minimum balance. Customers receive a 5% discount on each purchase but are charged a $1.00 service fee each time money is added to their accounts.

The supermarket is part of a new shopping center that includes numerous privately owned businesses. / 14ymedio

Cimex also announced that it will soon be available at CADECA foreign exchange offices and other retail outlets, including those in the Gran Muthu Hotel complex. One of the few shops now open there is a perfumery.

The supermarket is still accepting MLC for the time being , an employee tells a customer who asked about some cologne. “You can go to the perfumery if you have MLC but you’d better hurry because that’s about to change,” says the employee.

“When will that be?” asked the customer.

“I don’t think it will be long but they haven’t told us yet,” he replied.

The new 3rd and 70th stands in contrast to an old supermarket of the same name, which opened prior to 1990. Its merchandise was priced in dollars at a time when it was illegal for Cubans to have them. Initially, only diplomats and resident foreigners were allowed to shop there but, by 1993, it was open to all. Like many state-owned stores, it went into a steep decline after it became an MLC store in 202o.

Attracted by the crowed and dressed in their uniforms, some of the employees of the old store came over to check out the new one. Their irritation was all too obvious. “This is a disgrace. Everything they used to sell in the old store when it first opened is now here. There’s nothing over there and this place has everything,” one employee complained loudly.

The new 3rd and 70th Supermarket stands in contrast to the old pre-1990 market of the same name. / 14ymedio

“There are no empty shelves here,” said one of the employees. “All the empty shelves are over at the other store, which is falling to pieces,” responded one of her co-workers. Ironically, in late December, Cimex announced on social media that it was celebrating the anniversary of the old “diplomat’s store”

A visit on Thursday to the old store confirmed everything its employees described: poor lighting, visibly dirty shelves, scant merchandise, and the stench of rotting meat throughout. The site now mainly serves as a parking lot for customers of the new 3rd and 70th Supermarket,

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

Cuban Military from Gaesa Partner with the Spanish Vima in Another Dollarized Store

Customers can pay with MLC, but employees suggest that they are going to remove this option

Faced with the delay in the line to check out and the subsequent protests from customers, this Sunday, the employee argued: “And what do you want me to do, if I’m the only one?” / 14ymedio

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodriguez/Olea Gallardo, Havana, 6 January 2025  –Although it has not attracted as much attention as the Supermarket on 3rd and 70th, which opened a day later, the store on Infanta and Santa Marta in Havana is another of the new “dollarized” Caribe stores that the military conglomerate Gaesa (Business Administration Group) opened in recent days through its Cimex corporation. In this case, the establishment is presented as “a collaboration project with the supplier Vima.”

In fact, its shelves, which are impeccable and full, carry a few Chinese products but are mainly dominated the Vima brand, founded by the Spaniard Víctor Moro Suárez and much reviled by the inhabitants of the Island for its low quality.

Unlike 3rd and 70th, cash dollars are not accepted at Infanta and Santa Marta, but, as at the brand new Miramar establishment, you can pay with the Classic card, which is recharged with US currency.

“It is nice and has many things, but as always, not everyone can afford this.” / 14ymedio

Another difference is that you can still pay with freely convertible currency (MLC), although employees suggested that this will not be the case for long. “You can pay with MLC, but I recommend that you get the Clásica card, because the lines to get it afterwards are going to be violent,” said a cashier at Infanta and Santa Marta to a customer who was entering for the first time. “Are they going to remove the MLC?” he asked, to which the woman replied: “That’s what they say.”

Posters distributed by the store and other employees, as well as Cimex’s own posts on its social networks, also encourage users to buy the Clásica card, which costs 5 dollars (one of which remains as a balance). Operative in hotels, state stores and gas stations in dollars, its use applies a 5% discount in stores and 10% in hotels, but with each refill one dollar is “discounted.” continue reading

Although the country’s top authorities have not said anything about it, the obligation to pay in dollars and the incentive to use the Classic card – created at the beginning of last year – can be considered as another step towards the dollarization of transactions in Cuba, which Prime Minister Manuel Marrero spoke about last month before the National Assembly and, with it, the effective end of the use of MLC.

Facade of the Cimex and Vima store on Infanta and Santa Marta, Centro Habana. / 14ymedio

The first thing that catches your attention at Infanta and Santa Marta, however, is the number of security guards multiplying in the corridors. Above all, in contrast to the only worker who performs the function of checking the bags on the way out. This Sunday, faced with the delay in the line to leave and the consequent protests from the customers, the employee argued: “And what do you want me to do, if I am the only one?” To which a man snapped: “But look how there are people here doing nothing, they should put someone there to help you.”

“It’s nice and has a lot of things, but as always, not everyone can afford this,” lamented a pensioner outside the shop who only bought a 3-kilogram package of powdered detergent (for $8.95). “And well, a lot of green,” she said, highlighting the color of Vima. “I didn’t buy any food, because I can’t even look at that brand, which isn’t exactly cheap.”

Highly criticized by Cubans for its poor quality, Vima has been present on the island, with privileges that most companies do not have, since 1994, although it was registered in the National Registry of Foreign Commercial Representations only in October of last year.

Some of Vima’s prices at the new Infanta and Santa Marta stores. / 14ymedio

The partnership with Gaesa is not new for Vima, which has its headquarters in Havana in the Berroa area, owned by the Armed Forces business consortium. Its founder, Víctor Moro Suárez, has lived in Cuba for more than 25 years and was president of the Association of Spanish Businessmen in Cuba.

Before this rebirth, the store on Infanta and Santa Marta had gone through different stages. With the dollarization of the economy in the 1990s, it became one of the best-stocked markets in the Cuban capital – like the old “diplotienda” on 3rd and 70th, opposite the new Supermarket – where one could pay directly with the US currency and later with convertible pesos.

Posters distributed by the store and other workers, as well as Cimex’s own posts on its social networks, also encourage users to buy the plastic card, which costs $5.  The lower sign says: “This unit sells products that can be paid for only by magnetic card backed with freely convertible currency.” / 14ymedio

Located in a border area between Centro Habana and Cerro, the store is surrounded by very poor neighborhoods, such as the El Platanito settlement. Its wealthiest neighbors were, until recently, the residents of the nearby Fama y Aplauso building, whose apartments were distributed among Cuban cultural figures, spokespeople for the regime, and journalists prominent in the so-called Battle of Ideas, an ideological turnaround promoted at the beginning of this century. However, the most powerful figures have ended up moving out of the building and into neighborhoods to the west of the city. The new market thus has to deal with the impoverishment of a neighborhood where the dollar does not circulate, and even less so the Clásica card.

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

La Chocolatera, an Oasis of Luxury in Cuba, Alongside Poverty and Scarcity

La Chocolatera shop, at the entrance to the Havana Club, in the municipality of Playa / Facebook/ La Chocolatera

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez/Olea Gallardo, Havana, 14 September 2024 — Entering La Chocolatera is a pleasure for all the senses. The place, situated at the Havana Club in the municipality of Playa, is small but clean, illuminated, stocked and perfectly air-conditioned. The strong odor – a sour vanilla – of chocolates and sweets seeps into the brain. The experience is, in short, delicious, and, therefore, very unusual in an increasingly depressed Cuba.

Not many Cubans can afford it, and one of the things that attracts the most attention to the establishment is precisely the number of employees that work there – half a dozen – for so few customers. Of course, they are very friendly, impeccably uniformed, and they serve the merchandise with fine latex gloves. “Look at all that, wow,” agrees Ana María, who visited La Chocolatera a few days ago to buy bonbons for her daughter, who just became a mother, after seeing the store’s ad on social networks. “This place is very expensive, but the occasion deserves it. It’s not every day that I become a grandmother!” she confides to 14ymedio.

Each piece of chocolate, for example, depending on the flavor and shape, ranges between 150 and 200 pesos and can be solid or filled with cream or liquor. “But there are other specialties that cost more,” reports Ana María. “There are some very nice boxes, one of 35 pieces at 8,000 pesos and others of 50 at 9,000. Too bad I couldn’t spend that much, because they are exquisite!” continue reading

The establishment also offers other items, such as stuffed animals, sweet and savory preserves and Spanish sparkling wine / 14ymedio

According to one of the workers, the bonbons and chocolate, of their own brand, D’Carlie, are made by them, while the sweets – cheesecakes, brownies, cinnamon rolls, cheese snacks, fruit drops, nougats – are made on external premises, and, if at all, only then are they covered with cocoa and decorated. The establishment also offers other items, such as stuffed animals (at 7,000 and 8,000 pesos), sweet and savory preserves and Catalan sparkling wine.

Everything is luxury in La Chocolatera, starting with the location itself, at the very door of the Havana Club, next to the complex’s checkpoint. The exclusive facility, founded in the 1920s with the name of Havana Country Club, has a cafeteria, golf course, tennis courts, swimming pools and even stables for the equestrian trails. It was expropriated after the triumph of the Revolution and, having gone through better and worse times, is now intended for housing and the recreation of senior officials, diplomats and foreign businessmen.

Due to proximity and economic capacity, the neighbors themselves are the natural clientele, although the company offers online sales and home delivery on its Facebook page. Not only is it prohibitive to buy in this shop for the vast majority of Cubans, but it’s also expensive to get there. “Just paying for a taxi, the bill shoots up,” laments Josué, who lives in Central Havana and gives up after a private taxi driver wants to charge him 5,000 pesos. With the shortage of fuel, public transport is not an option.

Image of La Chocolatera on the ground floor of the Hotel Gran Muthu in Havana, opening soon / Facebook/La Chocolatera

For La Chocolatera, however, the word “crisis” does not seem to exist. And that is another peculiarity in a country with increasingly harsh conditions for the ever-incipient private initiative. “The company has been developing and investing for its needs,” said its owner, Carlos Luis Menéndez Jorge, in an interview with Revista Visión, in which he shows the shop in all its splendor to the camera.

The firm can even afford to advertise on official media, such as Radio Rebelde, where it sells itself as the “leading store in chocolate-derived products.” All their ads give the opening hours: every day of the week from ten in the morning to nine at night, including Sunday.

Far, very far from the crisis, La Chocolatera is, on the contrary, expanding. This same week they are offering employment for cashiers and salesclerks. No wonder. As they enthusiastically reveal on their social networks, they are about to open two more stores: one outside the capital, in the tourist enclave of Varadero, and another in the Havana municipality of Playa, as part of the luxury hotel Gran Muthu Habana – which has been announcing its opening for more than a year – at 3rd and 70th.

“We are not alone in this dream. This time we are joining forces and discussing ideas with the Palco Business Group to provide you and visitors with our line of fine Cuban handmade chocolates,” said the owner of La Chocolatera in a Facebook post.

Image of the premises of La Chocolatera in Varadero, opening soon / Facebook / La Chocolatera

Palco is one of the most powerful state conglomerates on the Island, dedicated to “integral services” for the Government and the diplomatic corps through shops, congresses, exhibitions and fairs with juicy benefits, such as the Cigar Festival, at whose last edition, by the way, La Chocolatera was present. Menéndez Jorge puts himself out there all the time, and he has ties with the regime, including as a deputy of the National Assembly, and with sports figures like Mijaín López, the hot new savior of the Island’s debacle at the Paris Olympic Games.

What is less clear, according to his account, is how his company was truly born. In an interview published by Cubalite, he says that “this passion” came from his mother, María Cristina Jorge, director of the Latin American School of Chocolate. “I was practically born in the middle of chocolate,” he says, quickly mentioning that he went through “several courses, schools, techniques, preparation and an appointment as Master Chocolatier by the Chocolate Museum of Belgium until we decided to make our own artisanal fine chocolate.”

He does not say that María Cristina Jorge, in addition to directing that educational center, was a senior state official, as head of the Cereal and Milling Plant of the Research Institute for the Food Industry. There she met the inventor of the Latin American and Caribbean School of Chocolate, Quim Capdevila.

According to a 2001 chronicle by the then correspondent in Havana of the Spanish newspaper El País, Mauricio Vicent, Capdevila, an old chocolate master and communist militant, had ended up in Havana a year earlier, after retiring and transferring the family business from the town of Vic, at the behest of his friend Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. The famous writer, who had recently published “And God Entered Havana,” Vicent writes in his piece, “sent him to see Eusebio Leal, the Havana City Historian, who guided him to where he should go.”

This is how he arrived at the Research Institute for the Food Industry, built in the late 1980s with funding from FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), with the aim of being a “regional training center in the field of food.” And there he met María Cristina Jorge, with whom he created the school.

Carlos Luis Menéndez Jorge with his mother, María Cristina Jorge, at the opening of the shop at the Havana Club, in October 2022 / Facebook / La Chocolatera

“The school’s goal is to achieve self-financing; it is not for profit,” Capdevila explained to El País, saying that the project was subsidized by the Barcelona Provincial Council and the University of Vic. The School offered conferences and training courses, not only on the Island but also in other countries, such as Mexico, and it was even supported by UNESCO.

Neither Quim Capdevila nor María Cristina Jorge has mentioned what happened to the School, but the Facebook page stopped updating in May 2020, just when the covid-19 pandemic broke out in Cuba. This newspaper has tried to communicate on the phone that appears on its social networks, but no one answers, and the number does not appear in the phone book. The institution, according to that same page, had its address in the Havana municipality of La Lisa, a short distance from where Carlos Luis Menéndez Jorge opened the first store of La Chocolatera in August 2019. With that address and with the number 2,054, it appears in the register of micro, small and medium-size enterprises, dedicated to the “production of cocoa, chocolate and other confectionery products.”

He was there until October 2022, when he moved the headquarters to the Havana Club. The rest is a dazzling success story, shamelessly celebrated on September 13, the day of the birth of Milton S. Hershey, founder of the brand of the same name. Roald Dahl, the creator of the Willy Wonka character, commemorates International Chocolate Day, although very few Cubans will have learned of the existence of La Chocolatera, a private company created by the State to satisfy the whims of a privileged few in a sea of poverty and scarcity.

Everything is luxury in La Chocolatera, starting with the location itself, at the door of the Havana Club / 14ymedio

Translated by Regina Anavy

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

The ‘Chinese Costco’ Arrives in Cuba and Everything Has Ridiculous Prices

The gigantic China Import warehouse opens in Havana, for minimum purchases of 50 dollars and in national currency

Inside the gigantic warehouse, the shelves with all kinds of products multiply / 14ymedio

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez/Olea Gallardo, Havana, 22 August 2024 — The new China Import store that opened just over a month ago at Manglar and Oquendo, very close to the Cuatro Caminos market in Havana, does not yet have many customers, but it soon will. Unlike the state shops, it offers everything, and in abundance; unlike the MSMEs or on the informal market, its prices are ridiculous.

Although the entrance sign says “wholesale selling” and offers its merchandise to retailers, it is open to the public. On one condition, however: you have to spend more than 50 dollars.

Inside the gigantic warehouse, which until a few years ago was part of the Sabatés soap factory – founded by two Spanish brothers, later sold to the multinational Procter & Gamble, nationalized after the triumph of the Revolution and, today, in ruins – the shelves are multiplying with all kinds of products, from clothing, footwear and perfumes to electronics and household items. In contrast to other large state spaces, such as those selling in freely convertible currency (MLC), let alone the dilapidated warehouses, there are few empty corners. Everything is clean and well lit.

The warehouse occupies part of the old Sabatés soap factory, very close to the Cuatro Caminos market in Centro Habana / 14ymedio

The store, the clerk told 14ymedio on Wednesday, has its prices in foreign currency and accepts national currency, “at the exchange rate of the day,” as the signs under the products say, referring to the informal rate, currently continue reading

around 320 pesos per dollar, and in no way in bills of less than 200 pesos .

They also accept electronic transfers in MLC, the employee explains, “but not today because we have connection problems.” It is not a “national private business,” she pointed out, but rather “a foreign investment business.” There were people with oriental faces around the place, presumably the owners.

"Those colognes cost me two thousand and something pesos and here they cost three dollars" / 14ymedio
“Those colognes cost me two thousand and something pesos and here they cost three dollars” / 14ymedio

Headphones, $2.00; progressive glasses, $1.00; sun glasses, $1.50; LED lights, $4.50; mobile chargers, $4; cell phone holders for vehicles, $1.80; rechargeable light bulbs for times of blackout, from $11.50; imitation perfumes, $3.00; bras and panties – on sale for having some stains – $1.00; socks, 50 cents. The buyer’s eyes are lost in the abundance of items, but not only is the minimum purchase dissuasive – the equivalent of 16,000 pesos, five times the average monthly salary – but buying wholesale is also mandatory.

Items are not sold separately but in batches that, as a rule, contain a dozen pieces. “This is for those who have a store or receive remittances,” complained a customer who visited the store for the first time, alerted by a cousin who saw the information “on the networks,” and who had to leave empty-handed. “I don’t even have 50 dollars, and I wouldn’t know where to put all that if I bought it.”

Rechargeable light bulbs, highly valued in times of blackout, were sold from 11.50 dollars / 14ymedio

However, she was amazed at the prices: “Just Imagine, these same things on the street cost three and up to five times the prices here. These colognes cost me 2,500 pesos, and here they are at three dollars [960 pesos at the informal exchange rate]. I have seen the headphones at fairs at 5,000 pesos and the sneakers that here cost 16 dollars [just over 5,000 pesos] – you can’t find them for less than 17,000 pesos out there.”

The sneakers to which this Havana resident of the El Vedado district refers have brand labels, but they are clearly Chinese imitations, like all the merchandise. “They seem to be good quality, but you buy them and after two months have to throw them away because they fall apart.”

Bras and panties sell for one dollar at China Import /14ymedio

So far, no official media has mentioned the inauguration of the store, nor are there details about its owners. Chinese wholesale businesses had already been established on the Island but only online, such as Ninhao53 and Dofimall, a digital stationery store.

“You’ll see when all the resellers of Galiano or the El Curita park find out, then it will get bad, and this will have three-block lines like when there’s chicken for sale in the bodega [ration store],” said another buyer, a thirty-year-old from Central Havana. He did take a batch of magazines, some fly swatters, light bulbs and underwear of various colors and sizes – “to distribute to the family,” he said.

“The sneakers that cost 16 dollars here can’t be found for less than 17,000 pesos out there” / 14ymedio

The young man, who has family in the US, commented mockingly: “This is a ’Chinese Costco’ but with worse quality.”

Another store that received the nickname “Costco” but “Cuban,” the Diplomarket, closed at the end of last June. Its owner, the Cuban-American Frank Cuspinera Medina, was arrested along with his wife, and their whereabouts are unknown to date. In that store, however, only payment in dollars was allowed, and there was no minimum purchase or wholesale, although they did sell Kirkland products, the “real” Costco brand.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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

Private Businesses in Cuba Hide the Chicken and Other Products To Avoid the Capped Prices

State foreign exchange shops sell the same items at more expensive prices

The EJT agro market at 17 and K in El Vedado, Havana, usually with very well stocked shelves, was almost empty / 14ymedio

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez/Olea Gallardo, Havana, 3 July 2024 — A day after the new measures announced by the Government on June 27, which establish a maximum profit margin of 30% on private sales to the State, it is not yet known with certainty whether or not the prices are capped for six products in private retail stores. There is only one thing certain: these basic necessities included on the list of capped prices by some municipal governments this weekend disappeared from the shelves on Tuesday.

On Saturday, the authorities of Plaza de la Revolución (Havana), Jobabo (Las Tunas) and Pinar del Río published lists of products with maximum prices for cooking oil (900 pesos per liter), chopped chicken (680 per kilogram), powdered milk (1,675 per kilo), sausages (1,045 per kilogram), pasta (835 pesos per kilo) and powdered detergent (630 pesos per kilo). But yesterday, Monday, when the regulation was supposed to come into force, in municipalities like Boyeros they said that they didn’t know anything, and among the businessmen it was all rumors and confusion.

“Does anyone know anything about the official prices? We’re confused.” The comment of Yulieta Hernández Díaz, president of Grupo de Construcciones Pilares, summed up the state of the matter well. continue reading

This Tuesday, the bewilderment of Cubans is even greater. The agro market operated by the Youth Labor Army (EJT) of the Armed Forces, at 17 and K in El Vedado, Havana, usually very well stocked, had almost all its shelves empty. The few products for sale were piled up together on the top shelves on the K Street side.

Prices of meat products in the state foreign exchange store La Época / 14ymedio

The sellers, however, responded to the surprised customers with a simple shrug of the shoulders. “They say they don’t know, but it’s clear that they must know something,” said an old woman. It was the same in the Arango market in Luyanó. “There’s nothing on the shelves; it’s dead, empty, a very strange thing,” a neighbor told this newspaper.

In the butcher shop at 17 and K, which operates as a private business, there was only chicken breast and picadillo [chopped meat]. The clerk said that he didn’t know why there were no chicken quarters or thighs, but customers could hear him talking on the phone with someone who told him that he that he had to change the blackboard: “Now I have to put the prices in kilograms.” He didn’t mention the amounts.

In the private business (MSME) Zona K’liente they weren’t selling the bird either. “There is no chicken or milk anywhere.” “There is no chicken and there won’t be,” was the forceful response of the butcher of the 19 and B market, also in El Vedado. The reason? “Because they capped the prices.” And he cried out: “Better to raise chickens at home!”

Something happened, of course, in the last three days, and the authorities were reluctant to report it. A butcher from Sancti Spíritus gave the explanation to this newspaper: yesterday he was introduced to some “comrades” of the Party along with two inspectors, who warned him of the entry into force of the regulations and “they read the prices.” They didn’t give him any citation: “It was just a verbal warning, and they told me that there could be consequences if I increased the price of those products.”

“They say they don’t know, but it’s clear that they do”

It was just what an anonymous official source had warned in an audio that spread like wildfire since Saturday, in which the “established” prices were specified. The voice, with an accent from the west of the Island, assured that “groups of confrontation” were going to go to private businesses to give them “a wake-up call.” Subsequently, it warned, there might be “a forced sale of these products or confiscations of them for the social institutions that also need these products.”

As a result of the uncertainty and the threats, private individuals have simply hidden the merchandise. Also in Sancti Spíritus, a neighbor said that he had managed to buy chicken in a nearby MSME, “just for being trustworthy”: 10 pounds at 4,000 pesos.

“Chicken cannot have disappeared from the face of the earth; it’s here in Cuba, but they hide it because they don’t want to sell it at the prices dictated by the State,” explained another Cuban, a resident of Central Havana. “It’s always the same: they capped the price of taxis, the taxis disappeared; they capped the price of malanga and the malanga disappeared. Well, now chicken has disappeared.”

In four years, as seen in an official graph, private sector sales have gone from 4.1% of the total to 44.4% / Onei

Meanwhile, in the State stores selling in freely convertible currency (MLC), there were not only the lost products in that had been sold in pesos, but they were much more expensive. In La Época, in Central Havana, detergent of 1.5 kilos was at 5.45 dollars (1,908 pesos at the informal exchange rate), and 1.25 kilos of Argentine chicken was at 6.55 dollars (2,293 pesos).

“They’re never going to cap themselves, as you can imagine,” said a client at the doors of the MLC store.

The effort to attack the MSMEs (micro, small and medium-sized enterprise) by imposing a profit cap on them has been criticized by specialists such as Pedro Monreal, who insists that the way to contain inflation, which has not stopped growing exponentially since the entry into force of the so-called Ordering Task* (2021), is none other than the reduction of expenses.

The economist has again published a revealing post on Tuesday, based on figures published yesterday by the National Bureau of Statistics and Information (Onei) that indicate the spectacular increase in the weight of the “non-state sector” in retail sales. In four years, as observed in an official graph, private sector sales have gone from 4.1% of the total to 44.4%, while state sales went from 95.9% to 55.6%.

It remains to be seen whether prices will be discussed on State TV’s Round Table program scheduled for this Tuesday, to which “leaders of the Communist Party” are invited to “analyze partisan actions based on boosting food production in the country.” Cubans know what the end of the film is: a shortage of products and more difficulties to obtain them.

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

Translated by Regina Anavy

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

Spanish Agency Announces a Competition to Rehabilitate Havana’s Galiano Street

View of buildings along Havana’s Galiano Street, whose facades would be restored as part of an urban renewal project / 14ymedio

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez/Olea Gallardo, Havana, 22 March 2024 — Plans to restore iconic Galiano Street in Central Havana seem serious this time around, at least for the impoverished block between Virtudes and Conde Cañongo. On Thursday, the local government publicly solicited proposals for the “recovery, maintenance and restoration of the facades” of the buildings in this area.

It is a highly unusual but understandable move given that the area is part of the so-called Galiano Street Comprehensive International Revitalization Cooperation Project, financed by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID).

The buildings whose facades would be restored are numbers 201 to 211 on the east side of the street and 202 to 212 on the west. Not included is number 210, which the official press release describes as being in very bad condition. continue reading

In a visit to the site on Friday, 14ymedio learned that the building, whose address should be 210 since it is on the even side of the street but which is mistakenly numbered 211, is in ruins though it is still inhabited on the ground floor.

The building, whose address should be 210 since it is on the even side of the street but which is mistakenly numbered 211, is in ruins though it is still inhabited on the ground floor

The area is known for its nightlife — bars such as Cumbaking, 212 and V&S are located there — and as a hotbed of fistfights, drug dealing and prostitution.

The stretch includes precarious apartment buildings such as those at numbers 201, 204 and 205, which has a state-owned store, La Cancha, on the ground floor, that has been rented out to small private vendors, popularly known as merolicos.

Another building, number 208, retains its original Sevillian tiles, remnants of a more glorious past. Built in the 1930s, it once belonged to José Alvarez Ruiz, a businessman whose initials can still be seen on the facade of the building. Housing took up the upper floor; a loan and jewelry business occupied the lower floor. In the 1940s, the building housed the Cuban branch of Remington Rand, an American company that manufactured sewing machines and typewriters, and imported a wide range of office supplies.

Nationalized by the state after the Cuban revolution, the striking building had had several uses — these included the headquarters of the Comittees for the Defense of the Revolution and a library — until the roof collapsed in 1999.

The area is known for its nightlife — bars such as Cumbaking, 212 and V&S are located here — and as a hotbed of fistfights, drug dealing and prostitution / 14ymedio

The announcement posted jointly by the municipal government and AECID on the official website indicates that proposals must include a separate budget, in Cuban pesos, for each of the building facades on both sides of the street.

Similarly, they point out that restoration of facades must include “all required actions such as carpentry, lighting, ironwork and any others needed to restore the facades to their original state.”

The construction period for each facade may not excede four months “from the delivery of the client’s letter of authorization letter to the bidder.”

According to a AECID document signed on June 30, 2021, the agency foresees a total of seven such projects on the Island at a cost of of 3.5 million euros

The Galiano Street restoration project, sponsored by AECID, is nothing new. State media announced it with great fanfare back in late 2022, even reviving the thoroughfare’s old name: Avenida de Italia. The goal, as reported at the time, was to convert the area into “an innovative urban district and a reference for the principles of the circular economy, digital culture and creativity and the enhancement of products from supply chains.”

On Thursday, the same day the competition was announced, the street was also referred to by its old name on the website of the Information Technology Fair, which is taking place in Havana. State media reported a plan to install “broadband telecommunications infrastructure using fiber optic cables along three kilometers of Galiano Street — from Reina Street to the Malecón — for the benefit of 109 properties, with an average of twelve customers per property.”

According to a AECID document signed on June 30, 2021, the agency foresees a total of seven such projects on the Island at a cost of of 3.5 million euros.

AECID’s budget for what was billed as a “comprehensive revitalization of Galiano Street, preserving its urban and architectural values and enhancing its commercial, recreational and cultural character” was originally 312,000 euros, with a May 2023 completion date. Neither the Spanish agency nor its Cuban partner has provided an explanation for the delay in plans.

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

Cuban Women Live at the Margins of a Regime Led by Men

It is women who mostly stand in Cuba’s endless lines to get food / 14ymedio

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez and Olea Gallardo, Havana, 8 March 2024 — The eleventh congress of theFederation of Cuban Women (FMC) was formally closed this Friday by the six men who govern the destiny of the country. The female quota in the presidium made up of Raúl Castro, Miguel Díaz-Canel, Esteban Lazo, Manuel Marrero, Roberto Morales de Ojeda and José Ramón Machado Ventura is covered by one woman: Teté Puebla, member of Las Marianas in the Sierra Maestra and first (and only) Brigadier general woman on the Island.

“The Feminist Path is Not Exclusive to Women,” the State newspaper Granma headlines its note on the occasion of March 8, in case things were not clear.

At the same time, the ruling FMC assures that “the development of scientific research is urgently needed to study the implementation of public policies with a gender perspective to move towards full equality.” And we must “overcome the meeting schedule.” And “update communication codes.”

Far from so many words, the streets show that the face of Cuba, increasingly empty, increasingly poor, is that of a woman / 14ymedio

Far from so many words, the streets show that the face of Cuba, increasingly empty, increasingly poor, is that of a woman. It is women who continue reading

mostly stand in endless lines to get food. The oldest ones have to bring their own stool to endure the hours and the heat.

If you have to put a color on those faces, it is fundamentally dark. The color of those who cannot emigrate due to lack of resources / 14ymedio

If you have to put a color on those faces, it is fundamentally dark. The color of those who cannot emigrate due to lack of resources.

The oldest ones have to bring their own stool to endure the hours and the heat / 14ymedio

State workers, informal saleswomen or retirees – the luckiest ones, with emigrated families – all have poverty and boredom in common. Neither the FMC nor the men who protect it have solved their problems one bit in 65 years.

State workers, informal saleswomen or retirees – the luckiest ones, with emigrated families – all have poverty and boredom in common / 14ymedio

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

Three Hours Stranded on the Highway, Cubans and Tourists Suffer the Negligence of Viazul

After half an hour, the driver gave his diagnosis: the transmission belt broke and, worst of all, he didn’t have a spare. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Olea Gallardo, Havana, 4 January 2024 — The trip from Ciego de Ávila to Havana by bus is neither short nor cheap, but Maidelys is already used to it. This habanera has been traveling that road by public transport for ten years every time she has a vacation, to visit a sister in the central province. Although the distance is about 400 kilometers, or 250 miles, the trip between the two cities by road takes almost eight hours. That is, if there are no unforeseen events like those that happened this Wednesday, which caused her to arrive three hours later.

As has been customary for a long time, another brother, an emigrant, had given her the ticket, which cost 28 euros, buying it on the Viazul website, where payment is only accepted with foreign cards. Very few can afford these prices, so the vehicle, coming from Santiago de Cuba, was full of foreign tourists, many of them Cuban-Americans, with very few domestic travelers.

The bus left at six in the morning from Ciego de Ávila, and Maidelys fell asleep right away, until they reached the next stop, Sancti Spíritus. “Fortunately it was one of the comfortable buses, because in some Astros [National Bus Company] I can’t get a wink of sleep,” she says. “Once I traveled in one that had no floor in front of my seat, and I spent the whole trip thinking that if I fell asleep I would fall through the hole.”

“There’s a goldmine here,” is how Maidelys described the atmosphere of Las Palmas restaurant. (14ymedio)

Another advantage of going in a “tourist” vehicle is that they have hot food at the stops. “With the bus of the proletariat, there’s only sugar and more sugar,” Maidelys jokes, referring to the soft drinks and cookies sold at the government stops.

At kilometer 139 of the National Highway, after passing Santa Clara, the bus stopped for breakfast. “There’s a goldmine here,” is how Maidelys described the atmosphere of the Las Palmas restaurant, a “grill” where the meat dishes cost 2,000 pesos, the sandwiches go from 600 to 1,200, and a continue reading

malted milkshake costs 500. They also sold boxes of cigars for 120 dollars, although some foreigners haggled until they got them down to 110.

Everything seemed to be in order – they had already passed through the provinces of Cienfuegos and Matanzas – when with just under an hour and a half left to reach the capital, at kilometer 72 on the highway, at the height of Nueva Paz in Mayabeque, the vehicle stopped.

“At first you only heard the driver and someone else, like a baggage handler, and no one worried,” says Maidelys. “But then the air conditioning turned off, and people began to protest, saying it was a lack of respect, what with the cost of the ticket.”

An almendrón — a classic American car operating as a shared taxi — stopped to help, but they didn’t have the right part, and then a Transgaviota bus, which didn’t have any spare parts either.” (14ymedio)

After half an hour, the driver gave his diagnosis: the transmission belt broke and, worst of all, he did not have a spare. He did not say  if they would have to wait for another vehicle or if the company would send help. “There is a review department that is supposed to handle all breakdowns,” Maidelys says. “It shouldn’t happen because they’re charging you up the nose, and none of these buses have the comfort they’re supposed to have.”

The driver himself, she says, acknowledged his impotence before the travelers who complained about the breakdown: “He told us that the rule said that after five years the buses should be renewed, but that Viazul has not had new buses for at least 15 years.” The laughter of those present testified to the lack of credibility of the driver’s excuse for such precariousness: “the blockade.”

Soon, as the minutes passed and there was no solution, the good mood gave way to restlessness. “There were people with flights at two in the afternoon, another with a ticket for 1:00 pm, but he already knew it was lost,” says Maidalys. The most dramatic case was that of a young mother who was traveling with her daughter to get to Nicaragua — from where she would probably make the journey to the United States:  she cried when she saw her money for the bus tickets wasted.

Those who did not have a plane to catch were the most resigned, and they spread out on the ground. (14ymedio)

Those who did not have to catch a plane were the most resigned, and they spread out on the ground, like Maidalys. From a mound she saw how the bus driver desperately stopped other vehicles to ask for help. “An almendrón [a 1950s American car operating as a shared taxi] stopped, but they didn’t have the right part, and then a Transgaviota bus, which didn’t have spare parts either,” she says.

And she continues with the surreal parade that soon populated the place: “A pastry seller appeared and then someone who sold preserves, to get us to buy a kilo, but the worst thing was that an old woman who got on in Santa Clara began to hyperventilate. I don’t know if it was from anxiety or fatigue, but they said that there was no ambulance to pick her up.”

It was more than an hour after being stranded that they began to call the passengers whose final destination was terminal 3 of the José Martí International Airport, to get them into another vehicle. “But they were warned that they had to stand up,” Maidelys says. With that bus, a fan belt also arrived, but it didn’t solve the problem either.

“We had to wait almost three hours for another bus to come and pick us all up.” (14ymedio)

“We had to wait almost three hours for another bus to come and pick us all up,” says Maidelys, who finally arrived at her destination, the bus terminal near the Plaza de la Revolución, at the end of the evening. “I had a piece of meat in my suitcase. It was frozen but I was already afraid that when I arrived in Havana it would be cooked. Rather than Viazul, they should call it Viacrucis [the Way of the Cross].”

The only happy person during the trip, she indicates, was a passenger who, in the middle of the journey, learned that she had received Spanish citizenship: “She started screaming like crazy, and it’s no wonder. She’s not going to have to put up with the things of this country anymore.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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

Vima Foods, Spanish Emporium which Sells Low-Quality Items for High-Quality Prices

Vima’s products are prominently displayed on all the retail websites where customers overseas can make purchases for delivery in Cuba. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Olea Gallardo, Havana, December 14, 2023 — The wedding last weekend in Havana of Víctor Moro Morros-Sarda and Alexandra Lacorne made the news in Spain’s gossip columns for having brought together several figures who frequently make appearances on their pages. Among the 400 guests were Tamara Falcó, Marchioness of Griñón, daughter of Isabel Preysler and sister of Enrique Iglesias; and her cousin, Álvaro Falcó, Marquis of Cubas. They were accompanied by their respective spouses, Íñigo Onieva and Isabelle Junot, the daughter of Philippe Junot, former husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco.

Only readers of Hola! and similar magazines would be interested in such an event were it not for two things: the luxurious wedding, which lasted several days, took place at a time when Cuba is going through one of its worst crises of the last quarter of a century, and the groom is the son of Víctor Moro Suárez, founder of Vima Foods, a brand of imported products which have been omnipresent in Cuban hard-currency stores for decades.

The company is described by Vanitatis as “an international food group” and by El Debate as “a multi-national distributor of food products with offices in Havana, New York, Coruña and other locations.” For the island’s residents Vima Foods is synonymous with low-quality at high prices.

I can only imagine that Vilma’s ham croquettes must be the worst in Spain because there’s nothing in them. They’re just flavored flour

“They seem like a scam to me,” says Mariam, a Havana native who has not bought any of the company’s products for two years after falling ill from eating a can of Vima tuna which she bought at a hard-currency store. “They are third or fourth-class products sold for high-class prices.” continue reading

Mayonnaise, mustard, tomato paste and other sauces, a wide variety of canned goods, cured meats, frozen foods (vegetables, fruits, meat, fish and shellfish, and even bread) pre-cooked foods, cheeses of various sizes, jams, syrups, powdered milk, yogurts, olives, cooking oils, legumes and grains are just some of the many Vima items for sale on the Island, all of them imported.

These products are prominently displayed on all the retail websites where overseas customers can make purchases for delivery in Cuba.

One of their most popular items is their croquettes. But Mariam has nothing good to say about them either: “I can only imagine they must be the worst in Spain because their ham croquettes have nothing in them. They’re just flavored flour.”

When people in other countries were asked how they perceived the brand, Carlos — who emigrated from Cuba two years ago — said, “I don’t know anyone in Spain who buys it. Fortunately, I myself have never seen it in a supermarket because I remember it was the worst.”

Vima World describes itself as a “family-run company founded in 1994” and a group “whose origens began in Galicia’s fishery sector.” On the same website it claims it operates not only in Spain but in forty other countries as well, and that it also has offices in Panama, the Domincan Republic, Mexico, the United States, China and Cuba.

Its founder has never hidden his ties to the island. Victor Moro Suarez (son of Victor Moro Rodriguez, who died in 2021) was a politician during Spain’s transition to democracy. He also headed a frozen food conglomerate. He spent more than twenty-five years in this country, where he served as president of the Association of Spanish Businessmen in Cuba.

What is murkier are the origins and expansion of his multimillion-dollar business. The so-called Panama Papers, a series of leaked documents obtained from the database of the Mossack Fonseca law firm by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in 2016, revealed that Vima World was on the list of companies which had been registered in tax havens.

“I found a work niche in the Caribbean, starting in Cuba, and that circumstance led me to form this group of companies.” The ICIJ search engine indicates it was founded in January 1994 in the British Virgin Islands. However, Moro Suarez himself acknowledged in an interview with the local Galician press almost two decades ago that his empire started in Cuba. When asked by the journalist how he ended up with one hundred and sixty employees serving twenty million meals around the world, the businessman responds, “I found a work niche in the Caribbean, starting from Cuba, and that circumstance led me to form this group of companies.”

An article in La Voz de Galicia (The Voice of Galicia) four years earlier confirmed, “Vima was created in Havana in 1994 to take advantage of the opening of the Cuban market to tourist investment and became the main supplier to hotels and restaurants.” It reporthed that, in 2002, Vima World, “a distributor based in Vigo and 100% owned by Galicia’s Moro family” was the sector leader in Cuba, with control of 15% of food distribution and 25% of supplies to hotels. It is said to have earned 25 million euros in 2001.

How was a foreigner able to launch and then head a business in Cuba in the mid-1990s and achieve these results in just seven years? It is one of Vima’s unknowns. It is especially striking given that its appearance on the island happened to coincide with the Special Period — after the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of its subsidies to Cuba — a time of  dollarization and despair.

Also puzzling is how a firm like Vima World S.L., which has been around for almost thirty years, did not show up on the National Registry of Foreign Commercial Ventures until this past October.

The fact that official news outlets such as Cubadebate have reported that its Havana office is in the  Berroa neighborhood — also home to the mysterious Diplomarket — traditionally under the control of Gaesa, the all-powerful business consortium run by the Cuban armed forces, only reinforces the the idea that it is well connected with officials in the highest echelons of power. The author of that article noted that, according to his sources, Moro Suarez has been seen seated alongside figures such as Fidel Castro and Cuban singer/songwriter Pablo Milanés.

The media outlets that reported on the Moro-Lacorne wedding mentioned none of this. They focused instead on other details such as the most recent photo of Moro-Suarez next to his wife, Mariquita Morros-Sarda, in the traditional Spanish mantilla worn by maids of honor.

The usual syrupy, superfluous prose was all about dresses and extravagant waste. Staying at the Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski, one of the most expensive in the city, the guests enjoyed a “pre-wedding” party at the Tropicana cabaret, reserved solely for them for the occasion. They moved around in glittering vintage cars and attended a ceremony held in the Havana cathedral itself. Many of the guests, like the influencer Belén Barnechea, shared relaxed images of the streets of the capital, day and night, with shots that in no way illustrated the true and calamitous state of the city. A lavish Havana of glossy paper under the canopy of Vima Foods.

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

Patients Go Through an Ordeal To Be Treated in the Calamitous Cuban Hospitals

A doctor working without light, in a polyclinic in Centro Habana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Olea Gallardo, Havana, November 30, 2023 — The bursting into tears last Monday of Dr. Yoandra Quesada de Bayamo (Granma), who is being tried along with five other colleagues for the death of a 23-year-old patient, is nothing but the vivid image of what remains of healthcare in Cuba, the eternal jewel in the crown for revolutionary propaganda.

What the surgeon said to the journalist Ernesto Morales – “all your colleagues leave, you are working alone and without materials, exposed to being killed one day by a desperate relative” – is verified daily by any Cuban who steps into a healthcare center. The situation of primary services is especially dramatic.

“There are no syringes, there are no reagents for the tests, there are no nozzles to give aerosol, there are no esfigmos [sphygmomanometers] to take blood pressure.” Aleida, who unravels this litany, is still young, but she is beginning to have problems with hypertension, a condition that leads to the number one cause of death on the Island. continue reading

“One day when I arrived at the hospital with high blood pressure, they wanted to give me oxygen, but there were no mouthpieces, so the doctor gave me the hose and said: ’don’t put it in your mouth, put it close, so that you feel the oxygen.’” Aleida couldn’t do it, because of the stench that the instrument gave off and out of shame. “I took it and told him: look, this doesn’t smell good. But in addition, I felt ridiculous, with that oxygen escaping everywhere.”

That day, she was lucky, because she usually has to walk miles and make a pilgrimage through several centers before finding one where a device to measure blood pressure is available. “The first time I went to the polyclinic near my house, where there were no esfigmos anywhere, the doctor told me: I can’t take your pressure, little girl, but come and sit here, the only thing I can give you is a long talk.’”

There are no syringes, there are no reagents for the analyses, there are no nozzles to give aerosol, there are no sphygmomanometers to take blood pressure

Who does have sphygmomanometers? “Foreign residents often have them and are always given a more pleasant treatment than Cubans by the way,” says Aleida. Faced with the exodus of specialists, outside the Island or to other jobs that provide them with better salaries, the Government tries to solve the lack of labor with exchange students, who cover the emergency rooms.

Luis, who is only 40, is frightened. He has been urinating blood for a few weeks and still doesn’t have the results of the tests he was finally encouraged to do. He was unsuccessful the first time he went to the hospital because “they didn’t have reagents,” but they did the second time. “But then I had to bring the syringe myself because they didn’t have them either.” Now he waits anxiously for an appointment with a specialist: in eight months.

Mild diseases and once-luxurious centers are not spared from the debacle. The 19 de Abril polyclinic, in Nuevo Vedado, for example, the favorite place to take foreign visitors on an official trip to the Island, has serious infrastructure problems.

“There are cracks at a 45-degree angle on several important walls, even cracks that can be seen on both sides of a window,” observes Juan, who for many years dedicated himself to construction and recently had to go to that health center for rehabilitation due to a dislocation. “The building was built during the Revolution, so it is no more than 65 years old.”

The wave of indignation over the trial of the six doctors of the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes hospital accused of negligence not only made the Ministry of Public Health react, which had to clarify that the process is carried out “with adherence to the guarantees established in the laws,” but continues to have echoes.

In the face of the exodus of specialists, the Government tries to solve the lack of manpower with exchange students, who cover the emergency rooms

Thus, in the midst of the controversy, the Communist Party of Cuba in Granma province decided this Wednesday to dismiss its first secretary, Yanaisi Capó Nápoles, and to put in Yudelkis Ortiz Barceló instead. The official press did not detail the reasons and highlighted Ortiz Barceló, who comes from being a member of the Executive Bureau to “attend to ideological political activity” in the Provincial Committee of the PCC in Santiago de Cuba.

This Wednesday, four doctors residing abroad signed a harsh letter addressed to José Ángel Portal Miranda, Minister of Health, in which they sympathize with the doctors “unjustly accused.” The letter, signed by Alexander Jesús Figueredo Izaguirre, Arnoldo de la Cruz Bañoble, Sergio Barbolla Verdecia and Jorge David Yaugel, describes what happened in Bayamo as a “national shame.”

“The accusers should point out those really responsible for that death. These doctors are also victims of the conflict between their professional commitment and the impossibility of succeeding in the conditions in which they are forced to treat their patients,” the doctors said in the text. “The ones responsible for diverting the resources provided by the medical brigades” are the ones who should appear before the courts.

The regime has received “billions of dollars” in the last decade, money that “has not been invested in the Cuban health system as was argued at the time to justify the arbitrary deduction of between 70% and 90% of the salaries* of the brigade members during all these years.” With this, they continue, “there would have been more to keep the health system in optimal conditions and pay decent wages to professionals in the sector.”

These doctors are also victims of the conflict between their professional commitment and the impossibility of succeeding in the conditions in which they are forced to treat their patients

Among their demands is that from now on they pay health workers “the full salary when we go out to provide services to other countries and not just give us a minimum stipend from it,” as well as an “immediate” salary increase for all those who work in the health system.

They also commented on the case of Amelia Calzadilla, who from Spain, where she managed to escape a little more than two weeks ago, asks doctors to refuse to work in such terrible conditions.

She is not the only one who thinks like that on the Island. “The situation requires a general strike, but if you say this in public they’ll put me in prison.” The woman, who doesn’t want to be more precise, predicts: “One day everything will stop working; the doctors will not go to the hospital to work; the teachers will not go to school; the ration-store shopkeepers will not take care of the ration stores; and then the system will collapse. Because if there’s nothing anywhere, what’s the point of all this?”

*Translator’s note: Cuban medical personnel serving on ’brigades’ or ’missions’ in foreign countries are paid a very small percentage of what those countries pay Cuba for their services.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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

Two Buildings Renovated with Saudi Money Now Occupied by Friends of the Cuban Regime

Armed with walkie-talkies, security agents control access to both properties. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Nelson García and Olea Gallardo, Havana, 22 November 2023 — Judging from the buildings at 202 Obispo Street and 653 Cuba Street in Old Havana, one would never guess it has been sixty-five years since the Cuban revolution. Neat and tidy, with smooth walls and new paint, the buildings — recently renovated with Saudi money — contrast with the surrounding buildings, which remain on the brink of collapse.

Local officials were present at the inauguration ceremony on Saturday, which marked the the 504th anniversary of the city’s founding. The state-run press covered the event with its usual fanfare.

Tribuna de la Habana reported that the reconstruction was carried out by the Office of the Historian of the City of Havana with help from the Saudi Fund for Development (SFD). The eleven renovated homes at 653 Cuba Street – the former Palace of the Marquis of the Royal Proclamation – and another thirteen at 202 Obispo Street are to be occupied by “families who were facing difficult housing situations.”

It seems, however, that the apartments, described by the newspaper as “renovated and very comfortable,” are not being occupied by people of modest means. “No way,” said a local resident on Wednesday who has been observing the comings and goings. “What few families like that there are were very carefully chosen.” Security agents armed with walkie-talkies control access to both buildings.

Neat and tidy, with smooth walls and new paint, the buidings — recently renovated with Saudi money — contrast with the surrounding buildings, which remain on the brink of collapse.

Inside, all is luxurious, pristine and quiet. “You think they’re going to give these homes to someone who isn’t shouting ’Viva Fidel’?” the woman asks rhetorically. “These are not for average people.”

As Tribuna de La Habana reported, the FSD also financed the Havana Aquarium, located in the city’s historic center. That project was also managed the Office of the Historian, which had become its own power center under the command of the late Eusebio Leal until the Cuban armed forces took it over after his death and depleted its resources.

What the newspaper did not say is that this same fund also financed the grandiose Fidel Castro Ruz Center, which opened in Havana’s Vedado district in late 2021. At the time, a source from the Office of the Historian confessed, “The money was supposed to be for housing but some of it was used for the center and for the Capitol restoration as well.”

Inside, all is luxurious, pristine and quiet. “You think they’re going to give these homes to someone who isn’t shouting ’Viva Fidel’?” (14ymedio)

In 2017 the SFD loaned Cuba 26.6 million dollars for the Office of the Historian’s building restoration and social welfare program which, officially, was supposed to help alleviate Havana’s ongoing housing crisis.

14ymedio has learned through unofficial sources that another the project made possible by the SFD is the Práctico del Puerto building, which has views of the Plaza de Armas, the Royal Military Fortress and Havana Bay.

Of Práctico del Puerto’s former residents, who were evicted at the start of construction, only one — Francisco Muñoz — has returned. Neighborhood residents claim that the apartments, which enjoy a spectacular view of Havana Bay, went to employees of the Ministry of Health.

Thirteen units have been “allocated” at 202 Obispo Street. (14ymedio)

Muñoz told 14ymedio in late 2021 that he was able to return to his former home in late 2021 because he spent “eight years living in front of the building, inside a container, without moving.” He also had help from Eusebio Leal, with whom he worked for twelve years as construction manager at the the Office of the Historian. “At one point a military officer even came to evict me and [Leal] came to my defense with a copy of the law in his hand,” he said at the time. As for his former neighbors, “there were people here who went to the shelter and weren’t able to return. I hear there’s a married couple still living at the shelter.”

The SFD began operations in 1975 and has as its principal objective the financing of projects in developing countries. It has approved loans to Cuba for projects related to rehabilitating hydraulic networks (122 million dollars in 2016), improving the Camagüey sewage system (40 million dollars in 2014), overhauling Havana’s water system (30 million in 2013) and acquiring medical equipment for maternity care centers (in 2010).

Of Práctico del Puerto’s former residents, who were evicted at the start of construction, only one has returned.

In 2013 the island signed an agreement to send Cuban doctors to Saudia Arabia in exchange for 10,000 dollars a month per doctor, of which each individual physician receives only 1,000 dollars in compensation.

The Prensa Latina news agency reported that Ricardo Cabrisas, the minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, paid a visit to Saudi Arabia in October to “review” the state of bilateral relations. It appears they are as strong as ever.

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

The Cuban Regime Seeks Its Salvation in the Investments of Emigrants

La Carreta restaurant, located on 21st Street on the corner of K, in the heart of El Vedado, in Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Olea Gallardo, Havana, 19 November 2023 — Those who for decades were called “worms,” “traitors” and “counterrevolutionaries” have become the great hope of the Cuban regime to save the disastrous economy. A main objective seems to guide the Government of Cuba at the conference it is holding with emigrants this weekend in Havana: to attract them to invest in the Island and legalize a process that has already begun stealthily with small entrepreneurs from the diaspora.

Despite Cuban law and the U.S. “embargo” that prohibit it for the time being, several exiles have opened businesses in Cuba using the names of residents on the Island and, in some cases, in association with local authorities. Among them are the private restaurants La Carreta, Antojos and some others in Havana, in addition to the Diplomarket shopping center, all controlled by U.S. residents, with the approval or participation of the regime.

Although he did not allude to the current situation, the director general of Consular Affairs and Cuban Residents Abroad of the Ministry of Foreign Relations, Ernesto Soberón, spoke openly in an interview with Juventud Rebelde last Sunday.

Similarly, Reuters confirmed it by quoting a “senior official” of the Foreign Relations Ministry: “Cuba wants to take advantage of its growing population abroad in search of new investments that boost the economy.” continue reading

Despite Cuban law and the U.S. “embargo” that prohibit it for the moment, several exiles have opened businesses in Cuba using the names of residents on the Island and, in some cases, in association with local authorities

In the Nation and Emigration Conference, the first in 19 years, more than 400 people are participating, many of whom — no less than 40%, according to Soberón — have double residence, in Cuba and abroad. (According to the EFE agency, most of the participants whose identities transcend national boundaries are people linked to solidarity with Cuba groups abroad). “This did not happen before, which is the result of the modification of the Constitution that now recognizes effective citizenship, and there can be several,” the official insisted, talking about the 2013 constitutional reform.

Soberón added to this the measures taken last July – the extension of the validity of ordinary passports from six to ten years, the elimination of the mandatory extension every two years and the reduction of the price to apply for it – as part of the same strategy of approaching Cubans abroad. He did not name another one, which many consider as an extension of the penalty applied to most nationals who left the country: the requirement to show the Cuban passport for exiles before 1971, who were exempted from the perpetual control exercised by the political police over the emigrants).

Most have set up hotels, restaurants and other shops, many of them with remarkable success

The authorities now publicly insist that Cubans abroad must invest in their country of origin, but the truth is that it has been happening stealthily for years.

Most have set up hotels, restaurants and other shops, many of them with remarkable success. One of them is Frank Cuspinera Medina, vice president of Las Américas TCC Corporation, based in Miami, a group to which Diplomarket belongs, called, sarcastically, the “Cuban Costco.”

Cuspinera Medina is domiciled in Florida but also in El Vedado. His name appears in a letter that several Cuban entrepreneurs sent in 2021 to U.S. President Joe Biden, asking him to lift the sanctions against the Government of the Island, which harmed their businesses. In the letter he did not appear as a member of Las Américas, but of Iderod Servicios Constructivos, based in Cuba.

This last firm is not on the list of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) of the regime, but it is a company with his name, Cuspinera SURL LVI, dedicated to “providing e-commerce platform services,” the same as a branch of Las Américas TCC.

Al cubano Obel Martínez, dueño de La Carreta, le fue concedida la nacionalidad estadounidense. (Facebook)
Cuban Obel Martínez, owner of La Carreta, was granted US nationality. (Facebook)

Reinaldo Rivero is another Cuban resident in the U.S. with a tentacle in Havana: although his business is registered in the name of his mother, he is the real owner, with a foreign partner, of the busy Antojos restaurant and bar and a security agency that serves the establishments of the Espada Alley, on Peña Pobre Street in Old Havana.

A third name, with a dazzling triumph, is Obel Martínez, owner of La Carreta. Remodeled and with a rich gastronomic offer, the emblematic restaurant of El Vedado reopened in private hands last June and immediately became a place among the habananeros for the emerging middle class.

By then, Martínez had opened another business, Mojito-Mojito, in the heart of Old Havana, praised on travel pages for the owner’s enthusiasm and kindness.

His signature is in place 5,639 of the registration of MSMEs with the name Mojito Martínez and was approved in the last quarter of 2022. Precisely in December of that same year, Cuban Obel Martínez was granted U.S. nationality. In fact, according to a close source who requests anonymity, he continues to retain his residence in Miami, Florida.

“Obel fled from Castroism and now lives from it, enjoying at the same time all the benefits and opportunities of the American dream: he plays at capitalism from Havana, with the support of the local authorities,” says the same source, who echoes the discomfort created by this situation in some sectors of the regime itself, particularly within the Communist Party of Cuba, where there is a debate about the privileges granted to this new class of businessmen.

As a local development project, the source adds, Obel received a loan of 10 million pesos from the municipal government, specifically at the 250 branch of the Metropolitan Bank, located on Línea Street in El Vedado. As confirmed by official television in a report last September, La Carreta “was restored thanks to the collaboration with the government of the municipality of Plaza de la Revolución.”

Obel fled from Castroism and now lives from it, enjoying at the same time all the benefits and opportunities of the American dream: he plays at capitalism from Havana, with the support of the local authorities

The governor of the municipality, Rolando López Jiménez, explains that “he assumed the responsibility for rescuing the facility to provide a better service,” in addition to facilitating the hiring of employees and rehabilitating the apartments located above the establishment.

Obel Martínez does not appear in the report, but 14ymedio has verified that he is the one who receives the clientele of both La Carreta and Mojito-Mojito, presenting himself as the owner.

Cuban law does not allow a U.S. citizen to own a company on the Island, although the words of Ernesto Soberón in Juventud Rebelde suggest that this is about to change. However, there is another greater inconvenience, if possible: according to the embargo laws, as a U.S. resident a person is also banned from doing business in Cuba, unless they have a license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

So far, the only American who has OFAC’s permission to establish a company in Cuba is John Kavulich, and he keeps his business secret, in addition to Hugo Cancio, from the online shopping site Katapulk, who has obtained a license to export vehicles from the United States.

As U.S. Treasury officials explained, following a meeting of Cuban businessmen in Miami last September, several conditions must be met in order not to break the law. Entrepreneurs residing in Cuba cannot create companies in the U.S. to sell their products or buy goods directly from U.S. companies. Similarly, Cuban-Americans cannot establish businesses on the Island unless they achieve permanent residence in the country through repatriation.

Cuba has been hoping for months that the U.S. will approve measures to help the MSMEs on the Island that, far from materializing, do not cease to provoke controversy.

Cuba has been interested for months in the U.S. approving measures to help the MSMEs on the Island that, far from materializing, do not cease to arouse controversy

Without going any further, on November 8, Senator Marco Rubio questioned the Secretary of National Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, about the fact that Cubans who arrive in the U.S. and seek refuge end up living between the two countries.

“You’re supposed to be fleeing political persecution, so you are automatically a candidate to receive money for being a refugee, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid,” said Rubio, who compared the privilege of Cubans who can obtain these benefits after one year to the situation of refugees from other countries who have to wait five years.

“Some return to Cuba for three months at a time, and they have only been here for a year. How, if you are fleeing persecution, can it be that a year later you spend the summers in Cuba? How can it be that you travel between six and eight times a year to Cuba? I have never heard that people who flee persecution return to that place repeatedly. There’s a problem here, isn’t there?” said the Republican senator.

Perhaps Cuba will take immediate measures to regularize the situation of its businessmen with dual nationality. It is less clear that the U.S. will do so with respect to the embargo restrictions. What is a fact is that the owners of these companies continue to operate without problems.

Translated by Regina Anavy 

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

Diplomarket, the ‘Cuban Costco’, in the Hands of a Front Man for the Regime

Diplomarket is heavily guarded: “Yes, that looks like a military unit.” (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez/Olea Gallardo, Havana, 11 October 2023 — The opening of a wholesale supermarket in Havana under the name Diplomarket in December last year went unnoticed. Only an ad on Instagram for the company, dedicated until then only to online purchases and shipping, gave an account of the opening of the establishment, located at kilometer 8 ½ of the Carretera Monumental, in the neighborhood of Berroa, more than 6 miles east of the center of the capital.

A tweet last week from Patrick Oppmann, a CNN correspondent, put the focus of current affairs on commerce. “After years of having to look for the most basic products, it’s a bit surreal to see how a private entrepreneur has set up what is basically the first Costco in Cuba,” said the journalist on the network now called X, without specifying the name of the supermarket and assuring that Cubans can pay in pesos, dollars and euros, even with U.S. credit cards.

And yes, the images that accompanied his text verified the resemblance to the American wholesale firm: huge corridors with wholesale products placed as in a warehouse, the distinctive red color and, more revealing, the sale of Kirkland brand products, marketed exclusively by Costco.

In a visit to the store this Wednesday, 14ymedio verified that, in fact, the place is similar to the Costco franchise, which is in more than a dozen countries. It is also true that the Kirkland brand populates its shelves, but no more so than Goya, the largest food company of Hispanic origin in the United States, which just three years ago was involved in a controversy for defending the then-president, Donald Trump. continue reading

It’s designed for cars, and you always see luxurious cars and the rich people who fill those huge cars

For the rest, the differences between Diplomarket and Costco are obvious. In Costco, when buying wholesale, the products are cheaper. In Diplomarket, very few customers were seen with the large packages. Most preferred to buy the items separately, at stratospheric prices: a small bottle of Goya oil for 7 dollars, a small can of grated Goya coconut for 4 dollars, a bar of soap for 2 dollars (the complete package, 16 bars, $32), toothpaste for a little more. As for cheeses and sausages, prices exceeded 20 dollars, as for a large jar of mayonnaise. Tools and household items are also offered at an unattainable price given the country’s average salary.

Diplomarket does not require a membership card, as Costco does, and is supposed to be open to any customer, but the stratospheric prices and the remoteness of the location deter any ordinary Cuban. “It’s designed for cars, and you always see luxurious cars and the rich people who fill those huge cars,” says Mayca, a young woman from Central Havana who went once with a friend who has a private food business.

The establishment is also heavily guarded. At the first checkpoint, they take the data of the vehicles at the time of entry, and then there is another booth with guards before you enter the store. At the door, two individuals look everyone up and down. A large screen shows the movement of the security cameras, placed everywhere with warnings. “Yes, that looks like a military unit,” Mayca concedes.

Inside, a kind of “persecution” by the employees begins. You are not allowed to take photos or record videos, and the workers walk behind the customers watching every movement, disguising their zeal with kindness: “Can I help you with something?”

You are not allowed to take photos or record videos, and the workers walk behind the customers watching every movement, disguising their zeal with kindness: “Can I help you with something?

Mayca says that whenever she has gone she has felt very uncomfortable: “Not only because of the vigilance but because of the humiliation with which they treat you. “A lady almost had to return the merchandise because she didn’t bring dollars and thought that everything could be paid in Cuban pesos. At the last minute she was saved by her friend, who loaned her some American bills.”

Didn’t the U.S. correspondent say that you could pay in all currencies? Doesn’t it say that in the firm’s own ad on Instagram? The cashier laughed at our reporter’s question: “That’s over, people pay in cash in dollars.”

As for the ownership of the supermarket, neither does it have the same transparency as the capitalist brand that it intends to emulate. They do not indicate on the web or on the premises any clear information about what causes the most mistrust: who actually owns Diplomarket, a gigantic, well-stocked and clean store, guarded like a government enclave?

The firm is not on the list of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) approved by the Ministry of Economy and Planning. Moreover, according to its corporate website, Diplomarket belongs to an American company called Las Américas TCC Corporation, founded in 2011 and based in Florida.

The vice president of Las Americas is the Cuban, Frank Cuspinera Medina, who is domiciled in the United States. Two years ago, his name appeared as a “specialist” in a meeting between self-employed workers (TCP) and the National Association of Economists and Accountants of Cuba.

On that occasion, he told the Cuban News Agency that “this type of exchange allows the institutions to know first-hand the interests and needs of the TCPs” and that the official association was “an efficient way to raise the approaches presented at the meeting to the authorities in charge.”

This last firm is also not on the regime’s list of MSMEs, but a company with its name is: Cuspinera SURL LVI, dedicated to “providing e-commerce platform services

Cuspinera Medina, whose current address is in El Vedado, Havana, also appears in a letter that several Cuban entrepreneurs sent in 2021 to U.S. President Joe Biden, asking him to lift sanctions against the Government of the Island,  which were harming their businesses. In the letter he does not appear as a member of Las Américas, but as part of Iderod Servicios Constructivos.

This last firm is also not on the regime’s MSME list, but a company of the same name is: Cuspinera SURL LVI, dedicated to “providing e-commerce platform services.” It is also a branch of Las Américas TCC.

The issue is not a minor one, given the U.S. embargo against Cuba. As U.S. Treasury officials said, following a meeting of Cuban businessmen in Miami a few weeks ago, several conditions must be met in order not to break the law. Entrepreneurs residing in Cuba, for example, cannot create companies in the U.S. to sell their products or buy goods directly from U.S. companies. Similarly, Cuban-Americans cannot establish businesses on the Island unless they achieve permanent residence in the country through repatriation.

It is not clear in which category Cuspinera Medina, which maintains a low profile on social networks, belongs. About Diplomarket, Mayca is blunt: “It is not private.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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