Reinaldo Escobar – Translating Cuba

Cuba, the Other October Crisis

Cuba’s vulnerable and the millions of workers who depend on a state wage are already living on the edge (14ymedio).

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 28 September 2023 — The topic of the upcoming hardships starting on October 1st no longer qualifies as a rumor, much less as a “counterrevolutionary lie”, now we know, from the word of those who make decisions, that it is true that there will be new problems with transportation, food distribution and electricity generation. New problems that will add to the already existing ones.

During an hour and a half on Wednesday’s Mesa Redonda [Roundtable] program, the Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Economy, Alejandro Gil Fernández, along with the Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, explained why there will be new difficulties, but failed to mention possible solutions other than “the will to move forward”.

According to Vicente de la O Levy, 99% of the causes that affect us come from the “blockade” and only 1% can be related to the bad work of the government. For Alejandro Gil Fernandez, the solutions will be within socialism. continue reading

“If the possibility of changing the system is not addressed, 99% of the causes that prevent the country from functioning normally will prevail”

The present and the future of the country are projected on these two apparently immovable columns. The official propaganda maintains that “the blockade” exists because socialism is being built here in Cuba and the United States does not like that. Therefore, if the possibility of changing the system is not addressed, 99% of the causes that prevent the country from functioning normally will prevail.

It is hard to imagine that everything will get worse after October and it is even harder to detail the consequences that a worsening of the country’s economic situation will bring to the people. For that fantasy called “the ordinary Cuban”.

The parents who rack their brains every day to guarantee a little snack for the children who go to school, those who take care of the elderly or disabled people, those who left their remote municipalities to find something better in the capital, but who do not even have a ration book and every month have to pay the rent; the bricklayer who works on his own and almost always lives far from where he is offered a temporary job; the single mothers, the retired person without family support…. These and the millions of workers who depend on a state salary are already living on the edge and the ministers tell them that they need to be understanding.

To dispel foreboding, Gil assured that this will not be the collapse, and that we will not reach “zero”. He also assured that not one millimeter will be ceded in the commitment to build socialism, but he did not dare to mention any metaphorical unit of measure to indicate how far or how close we are to catastrophe.

Translated by: Dylan Roberts, Isabella Posoli, and Skyler Brotherton-Julien, as part of Spanish 321 (University of Miami)

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My Personal Granada: Fidelito and El Gordo

Granada’s First Minister Maurice Bishop (center) with Fidel Castro (right). Daniel Ortega is on the left. (TVCubana.ICRT.CU)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 25 October 2023 — All the data is on the internet: how many Cuban soldiers died in Granada, how many surrendered, the weapons of the 82nd US division, the fight between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher over the invasion, the importance of the airport… but not everything has been told.

At noon in the last week of October 1983, while we were watching the Cuban National Television News, shortly after having lunch in the dining room of the ICRT (Cuban Institute of Radio and Television) microbrigade that was building the Yugoslav model building where I still live, we heard the terrible news that the last Cubans fighting on that small island had immolated themselves wrapped in the flag with its single star.

The news was particularly terrible for us, because among those soldier-masons were two of our companions, Fidelito and El Gordo, who had “stepped forward” to participate in the mission to build an airport in Granada.

At that hour the work was halted and we divided into two groups to visit the relatives of our fallen colleagues, above all to tell them, to swear to them, that their apartments, once the building was finished, were guaranteed, that we would see to it that they were handed over to them. continue reading

The news was particularly terrible for us, because among those soldier-masons there were two of our companions, Fidelito and El Gordo

A few days later it was learned that the news was not true, that perhaps our companions had not died and that we only had to wait for the contingent to return to count them among the living. And so it was.

My friend Pirole, a photographer for the magazine Cuba Internacional, installed a camera with a tripod in his house in front of the television that broadcast the reception of those who returned. “That, that’s Fidelito,” I told him, and we managed to immortalize him while Fidel Castro shook his hand on the airport tarmac, just below the steps of the plane that returned him safe and sound. The photo was my gift to the surviving hero.

A week later El Gordo (whom I was unable to immortalize) and Fidelito gave a “private press conference” to their supportive colleagues from the microbrigade.

Fidelito, who had not yet fathered that pair of twins whom he named Fidel and Raúl, told us how he and Colonel Tortoló entered the embassy of the Soviet Union in Granada. I quote from memory: “They didn’t want to let us in because we were armed and a tense situation arose in which neither the bolos [Russians] nor Tortoló gave in, until an agreement was reached to enter through the kitchen door where there was a closet where we had to deposit our weapons, with the commitment to recover them when we were able to leave.”

El Gordo, so witty, told us that, when they raised the combat alarm to occupy the positions they had planned ahead of time, the heroic Cuban combatants had the perception that they would never return to that camp. They were absolutely right, because those facilities were razed. And for that reason, before leaving the site they took to their military artillery site whatever ’little thing’ that each one could save and transport.

They didn’t want to let us in because we were armed and a tense situation arose in which neither the ’bolos’ [Russians] nor Tortoló gave in, until an agreement was reached to enter through the kitchen door

They had received the order not to fire unless they were attacked, and again I quote from memory: “From our cannons we observed how the Marines grouped themselves in combat formations, we heard the noise of their weapons and we saw them advance towards us without firing, until we had them in front of us saying in Puerto Rican Spanish ’Hands up.’”

“Then you told him aquí no se rinde nadie [here no one surrenders]*,” the secretary of the Communist Party in the microbrigade told El Gordo. “No, it didn’t occur to me, what happened was that they stopped us and searched us. I had my hands up and a Marine bigger and fatter than me, checking that I wasn’t carrying another weapon, touched my back pocket. With great care and without ceasing to point his rifle at me, he took out of that pocket the only ’little thing’ I’d been able to save: girl’s underwear for my daughter in Cuba. In Puerto Rican English and without pointing at me he said: ’Excuse me, sir.’ I didn’t know whether to feel grateful or humiliated.”

Forty years have passed. Fidelito lives today in Miami with his twins and El Gordo decided to take advantage of his five-year visa to wait with his entire family for parole on the other side. That Granada airport no longer constitutes a threat to anyone and those apartments that we swore to safeguard now have new owners. None of this appears on the internet, until now, but I, who am still in Havana, keep it in my memory.

*Translator’s note: ‘Aqui, no se rinde nadie’ — Here, no one surrenders — is an iconic phrase of the Cuban Revolution commonly attributed to Juan Almeida Bosque.

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‘I Am a Peaceful Disobedient Willing to Pay the Consequences’

Fernando Vázquez honed his skills as a communicator in the days he hosted shows for tourists at the Hemingway Marina, an occupation he took up after working in Argentina. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Miami, 31 July 2023 — Dr. Fernando Vázquez is not recognized in Cuba for his skill as a doctor but for his courage as an activist for the cause in support of political prisoners. In the middle of this hot summer and harassed by the political police, he opens his doors to 14ymedio to talk about his peculiar life path that goes from Public Health to tourism to finally leads to civic action.

Even today it is possible that his neighbors omit the information that Vázquez is a doctor and limit themselves to saying that he works as a gardener in the building where he lives in El Vedado or that he sometimes sells avocados. They will hide his profession because Cubans who have a medical degree are prohibited from working in activities related to tourism and he asked them for discretion on that issue when he aspired to be a tourist entertainer when, in 200 he canceled his employment ties with the Ministry of Public Health.

His experience as a doctor began in 1990 when he was sent on an “internationalist mission” in Livingstone, Zambia.

“When we landed at the Lusaka airport, I was moved to see that officials from the Cuban embassy were waiting for us just at the bottom of the steps of the plane. I thought they were to welcome us, but no. They were only there to take our passports because the regulations prohibited us leaving the city to which we would be assigned.” continue reading

As an activist for the release of political prisoners, Vázquez carried out his first public action on June 14 of this year when, after announcing it on his Facebook wall, he attempted a peaceful march from Lennon Park, on 17th Street, between 6th and 8th, in the Plaza de la Revolución municipality, to the offices of the prisons department of the Ministry of the Interior, in the same neighborhood of El Vedado.

“Although I did not call out to anyone, the State Security agents who detained and interrogated me warned me that I could be prosecuted for the crime of incitement to commit a crime. The document that I wanted to hand over was not only brief but mild, almost sweet, where it implored them, begged them, those who are holding the July 11 protesters in prison to release them as soon as possible.”

In his frequent speeches on Facebook, Vázquez insists that all his activities are motivated by strictly personal motivation. “I don’t belong to any political organization,” he repeats every time. On his broadcasts he conducts himself with ease, he never seems irritated and, unusually, pronounces every letter in every word.

His skills as a communicator were honed in the days when he hosted shows for tourists at the Hemingway Marina, an occupation he took up after working in Argentina.

“I left for Argentina in 1995 as a tourist, after the polyclinic where I worked gave me a permit for a month. There I managed to get hired as a consultant in a clinic, but at that time, according to Cuban immigration laws, I could not be out of the country for more than eleven months. When I returned for the first time, with the intention of not losing my rights as a Cuban, I learned that in order to leave again I needed another permit signed by the minister. That is how I stopped having a working tie with the Ministry of Public Health. Why didn’t I stay to live there? Because I wanted to be with my mother in her last years of life and because my heart is still here, especially in las Minas de Matahambre, where I lived as a child.”

Vázquez doesn’t just talk in front of a camera. Since he defended the freedom of political prisoners, he has visited the relatives of many of them. He has knocked on almost all the doors in the La Güinera neighborhood where a protester was murdered by a police officer, he traveled to Santiago de Cuba to get to know José Daniel Ferrer‘s family up close in the Altamira neighborhood, and he has given a voice to mothers and wives of several political prisoners. On Monday, July 24, he sat on the Malecón in Havana and prayed for freedom. State Security warned him that if he does it again he will be prosecuted for disobedience.

Many of his numerous followers highlight the quixotic nature of his actions, but if Alonso Quijano went mad from an overdose of reading novels of chivalry, Dr. Vázquez sustains his behavior in other readings that have nourished his lucidity. There, all the works of José Martí and the Sermon on Mounts of Jesus of Nazareth have a special place, but also Gandhi, Emerson, John Ruskin, Tolstoy and Henry David Thoreau, who taught him the concept of civil disobedience.

“If I had to define myself in a few words, I would say that I am a peaceful disobedient willing to pay the consequences for fighting against injustice.”

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The Vladimiro Roca I Knew

Vladimiro Roca was a MIG pilot who filled us with admiration with his stunts in the skies of Cuba. (EFE)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 30 July 2023 — I met Vladimiro Roca in mid-1963. At that time I was a student-soldier at the San Julián Base located in the westernmost part of Pinar del Río. Vladimiro was a MIG pilot who filled us with admiration with his stunts in the skies of Cuba. Then he was just “the son of Blas Roca” who shared his status with Carlos Jesús Menéndez, another pilot who was the son of the Jesús Menéndez, a union leader and politician in the sugar sector.

I heard from Vladimiro again in 1996 when they were trying to hold the Cuban Council to bring the opposition ranks to an agreement. A year later, together with Martha Beatriz Roque, René Gómez Manzano and Félix Bonne, he signed a document known as La Patria es de Todos [The Homeland Belongs to Everyone] that cost him five years in a maximum security prison. Until that moment I had never spoken to him.

In 2003, when I was working as Editor-in-Chief of the digital magazine Consenso, I interviewed him at his home. It was only from that moment on that I was able to discover his human quality, his knowledge of the national reality and his genuine willingness to work for the future of this country.

Later we ended up coinciding in different events in Cuba and abroad, where I was able to realize his strong character and his predisposition to defend his beliefs in a courageous and sometimes defiant way.

Vladimiro has been afflicted by the consequences of what he has experienced in 80 years of life. The penultimate news I had of him was his admission to a hospital with a pessimistic prognosis. Since then I kept hoping that he would manage to improve his state of health but I know that since then he was ready to say goodbye.

Neither he nor I believe very much in the legend that people go to heaven, but I see him there, having fun while doing daring pirouettes in the sky.

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Cuba Has Lost Carlos Alberto Montaner

Carlos Alberto Montaner would have been the best president of the Republic of Cuba at any moment when there might have been a transition to democracy. (Photo capture from YouTube)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 30 June 2023–“What qualifier should I use to win the title of top toady?” I asked Carlos Alberto Montaner one day. “Illustrious,” he replied, and we could not stop laughing.

I met him in 1996 during my first trip to Spain. I called the number for the Playor editorial offices and a secretary transferred me to him. “I am a Cuban journalist passing through Madrid, and I would like to speak with you,” I said by way of introduction. Following a brief pause he replied, “I’ll expect you here tomorrow afternoon.”

Being that Montaner was in the top tier of “enemies of the Revolution,” I assumed that before entering his office, located near the Puerta del Sol square, his bodyguards would search me and that certainly there would be cameras monitoring my visit. But such was not the case. Montaner himself opened the door and invited me into his office. “Do you work for Granma?” he asked, and when I told him that I was an outcast from official journalism, he made the first joke that started the bond of humor we shared: “Then I’ll notify the Marines and the CIA that they can call off the operation.”

At the conclusion of that first encounter, he invited me to have a coffee at a nearby kiosk, where he confessed to me that this act — which he would repeat every day — was his therapy against nostalgia for Cuba. continue reading

I have read all of his books and most of the articles he published throughout his long career. Every time we would meet in Miami or Madrid he would ask me specific questions about Cuban issues, of which he was always deeply informed. For many, including myself, he would have been the best president of the Republic at any moment there might have been a transition to democracy. Once, when he was in his seventies, he said that he he was already too old to aspire to such political responsibilities. In May of this year, already having lived to 80, and suffering from a cruel disease, he retired from the mission of writing columns.

Today I have learned that he will never be in Havana celebrating with friends the end of the dictatorship. If I get to witness that outcome, I promise to raise a glass to him — for his ideas, for his courage, and for his brilliant intelligence.

Goodbye, my illustrious friend.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

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In Anguish, the Wife of a July 11th Prisoner on a Hunger Strike in Cuba, ‘He Could Lose His Life’

Yosvany Rosell García Caso was sentenced to 15 years in prison for sedition. (Courtesy)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 31 May 2023 — Before July 11, 2021, Yosvany Rosell García Caso spent his days between working as a welder and rearing his three children. That Sunday his life took a turn when he joined the mass protests in Holguín. Six months later, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for sedition. Wednesday marked his 20th day on a hunger strike, demanding his immediate release.

“My husband has lost a lot of weight and he is very frail; he barely weighs 55 kilograms after so many days without a taste of food,” Mailín Rodríguez Sánchez tells 14ymedio. “On May 29th they transferred him from the Cuba Sí prison in El Yayal to the Lucía Iñiguez Landín Clinical Surgical Hospital.

“He is refusing intravenous hydration,” adds Rodríguez, who spoke with her husband to “try to get him to change his position.” However, 34-year-old Rosell was determined to “continue the hunger strike because he is tired of having his rights, and that of other 11J prisoners, continuously violated.”

“I understand him perfectly, but he is in a situation where he could lose his life and that worries me greatly,” says the anguished woman. Rosell began the hunger strike on May 11, following an incident where prison authorities denied him a visit from his wife and his three children, and as the days passed he expanded his demands to include his release as soon as possible.

“We have three children five, six and 14 years old. The younger ones are aware of what is happening with their father, but the oldest does know everything,” explained Rodríguez to us. “Since yesterday my daughter is asking me to go see her father and we are making arrangements so she can visit him in the hospital. I hope she will talk to him and get him out of the position he is now in.” continue reading

Since he began the hunger strike, the woman, desperately, has gone to the prison on four occasions, but they did not allow her to see him and they did not even allow him religious attention. “After much begging they only let me see him yesterday at midday when he was already in the hospital. Today I am going over there again to see if they will let me in,” she said.

Rodríguez says that the damage is not only emotional or physical, “In addition to violating his human rights, the family has lived through two very difficult years, because he was the breadwinner. We’ve suffered repression and an economic hit for his being in prison. He, working as a welder and blacksmith, provided for the family.”

This is not the first time Rosell is on a hunger strike. In February 2022, he did not eat while demanding that he not be transferred from Holguín to a prison in Cienfuegos and demanding improved conditions in prison. At that time, he had been the victim of suspended telephone calls or being kept in isolation.

Several months later, in July of last year, Rossell once again resorted to a hunger strike after being beaten for dressing in white in remembrance of the mass protests on 11J.

“I do not regret anything in the least bit. How could I regret wanting to see my country free of a communist dictatorship, which for more than 60 years, has subjected us to extreme misery and violated all our human rights? That blessed July 11th not only marked a before and after the beginning of the end of communism in Cuba, it also showed the worst face of the dictatorship,” he wrote in a letter shared on social media weeks earlier.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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The Dictatorship Condemns the Cuban People To Silence So As Not To Have To Hear Them

The press can only be the State press or, failing that, the one that the State can control. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 26 May 2023 — The entry into force of the Social Communication Law and its corresponding regulations will have consequences from which there is no way to defend oneself.

If the deadlines of 120 days for the Law to enter into force are met and the subsequent 120 days for the Council of Ministers to approve the corresponding regulatory provisions, it can be predicted that in January 2024 no one who lives or transits through the national territory, whether Cuban or foreign, will be able to freely generate content that could be considered capable of subverting the constitutional order and destabilizing the socialist State.

It is already known how susceptible those who rule in Cuba are when it comes to processing criticisms when they are not made “in the right place and at the right time.” The main red lines will continue to be the legitimacy of the rulers, the viability of the system and the action of the repressive apparatus, and not only that. Protesting the inefficiency of the Etecsa monopoly, civilly calling for the repeal of a law or the dismissal of a minister will continue to be seen as part of “the communicational aggression that is taking place against the country.”

It would be naive to appeal to some deceptive paragraph of the law where social communication is defined as a sociocultural process that “contributes to social interaction, the production of meaning, the configuration of individual and collective identity, dialogue, debate, popular participation and consensus.”

Those propositions only make up censorship or, to put it in popular language, they are dribble, babble and nonsense, which are combined with ambiguous terminology that requires a translation to understand their meaning. continue reading

For example, Article 29.4 in the chapter referring to social communication in the media field, where it says: “The creation of these means (the non-fundamental ones) is excluded when their management is proposed as the constitutive activity of the social object or work project of a non-state economic actor.” This translates as: “A non-state actor is prohibited from having an independent medium as his main social object.”

We journalists who collaborate with the independent media will have three alternatives: face the consequences and continue publishing from Cuba with name and surname, go underground with the subterfuge of modifying our style and using a pseudonym, or withdraw from the profession. The first is reckless, the second is dangerous, the third is unworthy.

If the Cuban regime manages to get rid of the rebellious presence in the media, if it manages to eliminate video transmissions and uncomfortable comments on social networks, if in its delirious totalitarian ambitions it conquers that redoubt of minimal resistance that is to interact by giving a “like”; if this law reaches its purposes, the people would be mute, and although the dictatorship has never wanted to listen, now it would not even be able to hear. It would end up deaf.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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‘El Enjambre’ and the ‘Podcast’ Challenges in Cuba

From left: Camilo Condis, Maykel González Vivero, Lucía Marcha and Yadira AlBet. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 2 April 2023 — On this first Saturday of April, colleagues of El Enjambre [The Swarm] podcast celebrated the end of its sixth season and the announcement that, no later than in a couple of weeks, the seventh season will begin.

This weekly space was inaugurated in October 2019 as part of El Toque project and became independent in October, 2022. Under the constant threat of censorship, the program discusses political, economic and social issues seriously, and at times lightheartedly.

Seated in front of a group of followers in the main hall of La Marca, in Old Havana, filmmakers of this podcast recreated anecdotes, answered questions and offered statistical data on the composition of their audience, which is mostly young and based in Cuba. Resembling themselves, there were debates, live music and a nice amusing moment about what the elections in Cuba would be like in 2077.

Under the constant threat of censorship, the program discusses political, economic and social issues seriously, and at times lightheartedly

Asked about the future of El Enjambre, Camilo Condis told 14ymedio : “We know that it will be hard to continue because the difficulties that are coming are those that creators in Cuba, not working under an official institution, have to face. They are the same limitations that all of us face, but we’ll carry on.”

Maykel González Vivero, who joined the team in its fourth season, is a promoter of balance. He says that “it’s very boring when everyone is discussing something they agree on”. On the other hand, in contrast to Camilo Condis, “so pragmatic and clinging to the facts, to the numbers”, Maykel chooses to present himself as “more qualitative”.

El Enjambre is seen in official circles as too critical and, at the opposite end, as too trivial. The truth is that behind each installment there is painstaking professional work and the intention of opening a gap to expose and debate the main events of each week and the long-term problems that the country is suffering.

Translated by Norma Whiting

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Continuity in Cuba Will Continue

The first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and former president Raúl Castro raises the arm of Miguel Díaz-Canel after his appointment in 2018. (EFE/Alexandre Meneghini)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 14 April 2023 – “If they remove the one who is there, who are they going to put in?”

In these terms of interchangeability, as if talking about a spare machine part, many people consulted by 14ymedio venture to discuss whether Miguel Díaz-Canel — will be re-elected on April 19 – or, more accurately, re-appointed — to occupy the position of President of the Republic.

When asked if this is what is most likely to happen, most of those consulted agree that it is, that repetition seems inevitable. But nuances arise when the question is raised regarding whether it is convenient for the interests of the dictatorship.

On the one hand, it is argued that “up there” they must be aware of the degree of discontent that the population has with the management results of the current occupant of the job, even though the majority of the dissatisfied have the perception that he is not the one who decides the measures but rather the one who meekly executes them. continue reading

To put in another person could open the hope of substantial changes, but for that the new figure would have to refrain from pronouncing the word ’continuity’, which has been due north in the compass of the job’s current occupant. In any case, the designation of a new character would not be to make changes, but to buy time.

On the other hand, there is a perception that removing Díaz-Canel would be an acknowledgment of the resounding failure of his administration and, therefore, of the decision of Raúl Castro, who was ultimately the one who put him in office. Díaz-Canel’s success is summed up in having opted for continuity. He has gotten on well with Raúl, although he has gotten on badly with the population. And if Raúl Castro continues to be the voice that calls the shots in Cuba at this level of decision-making, Miguel Díaz-Canel will begin his second presidential term, despite everything.

If Díaz-Canel falls, it is said, it could be a sign that Raúl Castro is no longer the one who decides or that, despite his 91 years, he has the capacity to realize that the ’baby of the family’ has not managed to achieve the prosperous and sustainable socialism that he promised when he was left in charge of the ship.

But the most disturbing question remains: if they remove the one who is there, who are they going to put in his place? According to the constitution, the person must be a deputy and under 60 years of age. The list is short and putting in an unknown person would show even more that we live in a country where citizens find out who is going to be their president without first having known who the candidates were.

In these so-called elections there will be no winners. We will all be defeated.

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Cuban Election Results are the Fruit of Repression

The lack of enthusiasm marked the March 26th elections, the preliminary results of which point to the lowest participation since 1959. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 27 March 2023 — It is not possible to scientifically or judicially prove that the official results of the voting to approve the delegates to Parliament were fraudulent, but it is difficult to believe them. Even believing it to the letter, the conclusion is that they are the fruit of neither revolutionary enthusiasm nor of the conviction that those candidates will represent the interests of the population.

There will be plenty of time to analyze the numbers in detail and to calculate how much the abstention results were influence by the prior “scrubbing” of the voter registries to reduce them by almost four percentage points relative to the voters registered during the referendum on the Family Code.

In the municipal polls, where the results of the district votes are reconciled, a report is drafted which goes “up to the province.” These proceedings are not public, but the provinces cannot alter their data to achieve a deceitful total without counting on the complicit silence of the members of the electoral polls. The same thing occurs when the provinces submit their reports to the National Electoral Commission. Alina Balseiro, the president of the National Electoral Council cannot inflate the sum of the data that are sent by the provinces, which also are not public, without hundreds of people knowing and maintaining their silence.

It may not qualify as “fraud” that the oppressive atmosphere that sent an undetermined number of voters, who attended for fear of being labeled disaffected, to the polls. But the degree of pretense required to attend that parody of an election knowing that the preferred candidates are not being elected, without believing one bit of the electoral process, being intimately in disagreement with the political system that declares itself valid by “the majority presence at the polls” is evidently fraudulent. It is most similar to those marriage of convenience that the judicial system of most countries annul when the pretense is discovered. continue reading

The submission occurs when faced with the lack of alternatives, or worse, to keep the escape hatch open to the desired alternatives. We will never know how many of those who did not dare abstain opted for behaving well because they are awaiting the conclusion of their parole process to leave to the U.S., or desiring to be sent on an internationalist mission or a sporting or cultural event where they plan on deserting.

Or because their child aspires to go to university or because they are that child; because they cannot survive on their salary, but rather from what they call the “hustle” and their work place offers a way of surviving on corruption and, for that, one must be as invisible as possible.

The victory declared by the dictatorship feeds off of those individual defeats.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Nightmare of a Cuban-Russian Couple, Pursued in Both Countries For Their Rejection of The War in Ukraine

Cuban citizen Carlos Jiménez, and his Russian wife Daria, pictured in a Havana street. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 24 March 2023 — Before being forced to escape from Russia because of the threat of his being recruited to fight in the war in Ukraine, the Cuban Carlos Jiménez was living a quiet life with his wife Daria in Kushelevskaya Doroga, St Petersburg.

They met whilst studying philology at the hydrometeorological University in Russia which, although it sounds odd, has a prestigious program of language and literature studies. Carlos already spoke the language because as a child he lived in Moscow for five years when his father worked at the Cuban Embassy.

These days he is an admirer of Russian culture, amongst other things Russian, because of the influence of his wife. Through her he got to know the writer Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita), the works of Dimitri Yemets, a children’s writer whose books are the most Russian that he has ever read in his life, he says. Through Daria he got to know the Russian rock group bi-2, which has become his favourite, and he has seen the best of Russian theatre and cinema and also Soviet cinema.

The young couple are currently in Havana. She is very scared of what could happen to him. He is very scared of what could happen to her. The nightmare began in Russia and has kept going for them all the way to Cuba.

One afternoon, two armed men banged heavily on the young couple’s door in St.Petersburg, looking for men to fight in the Ukraine war. “At that moment we knew we couldn’t stay in Russia”, says Carlos. We took out all of our savings, sold everything that we owned, which wasn’t much, and set off towards Armenia. We couldn’t ask for help from my wife’s family because being a foreigner I wasn’t well received there”. continue reading

It wasn’t a matter of choice, Armenia was just the first destination possible for them because Russia had already cancelled almost all flights to other countries. There they found that the cost of accommodation rose massively because of the sheer numbers of Russians that were emigrating and because of this there was no other option for them than to travel to Havana — at the beginning of January of this year. Havana is where Carlos is officially allowed to stay, in his parent’s house. He knew that staying there would be difficult because of their differences in ideology, but he had no other option. Daria was also not well received by Carlos’s parents.

“On the morning of the 8th of March a uniformed guy came into our room, accompanied by my father. He didn’t even bother to knock this time. He was an ’immigration official’. He said that my wife had been in the country longer than was allowed for foreigners, but this was a lie because we had only been there for 55 days and you are allowed 90 days. He was very strange and aggressive. He couldn’t explain the actual objectives of his visit and kept changing his story, saying that there had been complaints about noise, but without explaining who had made the complaints. Finally he set a date for a meeting for a different day at the immigration office in East Havana. For the whole time he refused to even speak directly to my wife”.

One hour after this supposed immigration official left the house, Carlos got a telephone call commanding him to turn up at the police station.

“At this station, where we had to wait for more than two hours, they took me to an office where the presence of my wife was ’not allowed’. There, three armed men lectured me about my poor conduct, and the most surprising thing was that they said they had witnesses! The door opened and then in came my parents, who lied! — so much about me and about Daria. But they could not even look me in the eyes”.

The couple still have to attend a meeting of the 9th of March, presumably to clarify Davina’s status as a migrant.

“That was not an immigration office nor even a police one. There, they shouted at us they insulted us, they threw chairs and banged on the table and did everything to intimidate us and humiliate us. They tried to frighten us in every way possible. They interrogated me about our motives for leaving Russia and about my contacts — about friends I have here in Cuba who they take to be troublemakers”.

“They also even argued that our marriage was not legal because we didn’t get married in Cuba and because of this my wife could not live here with me. They wouldn’t even allow me to interpret for her, and she hardly knows any Spanish. When I tried to explain to her what was happening they told me to shut up, saying that only they had the right to speak”.

After hours of interrogation they gave us another meeting arrangement, this time at the central immigration office, and they left us with the threat that we would ’pay’ for our insolence.

The first thing that occurred to Daria was to contact the Russian Consulate in Havana to ask for help. Because she’d always heard that Cuba and Russia were friends and brothers, she supposed that everything would be okay, that it had all been a misunderstanding.

With the help of Carlos as a translator Daria told this newspaper “We called the consulate and explained my situation, then a man told me that there was another number that I should call. When I dialled this number a few moments later the same voice came back at me not even trying to hide his laughter; this made me realise that here they would not help us so-called ’traitors’”.

When finally they got to speak to the actual Immigration Office they were spun yet another tale: they were told that the real problem was Daria’s economic insolvency. Also a complete lie.

“They told us we have to leave the country immediately. But we don’t have any ticket to travel anywhere, because we don’t know where we can go! We are in a terrible situation. We can’t stay in Cuba because the secret police are after us and neither can we go back to Russia because there’s no security for us there either”.

She says something in Russian which Carlos doesn’t translate straightaway. They take each other by the hand, and at length he says: “We’re so scared that something terrible could happen to us”.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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To Vote or Abstain on March 26? For Once Cubans Are on the Same Page

Those who go to the polls on March 26 will do so for three different motives: conviction, inertia or fear. (Xinhua)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, March 13, 2023 — It can be said that, for the first time in more than sixty years, Cubans opposed to the regime have (almost) unanimously agreed that abstention is an appropriate response to the Communist Party’s call for a “united vote” on March 26 in favor of the list of candidates that will make up the tenth Parliamentary Legislature.

I say “almost” because, on an individual level, there are citizens who would like to show up just so they can cancel, or not fill out, their ballots. Some even want to make the defiant gesture of not going into the voting booth, where the right to secretly mark one’s preference with an X is exercised. “I’m going to tell the people at the table that I don’t believe in this process and drop a blank ballot into the box in front of them,” a friend promises.

Those who do go to the polls will do so for three different motives: conviction, inertia or fear. Of the five or four (or perhaps only three) million who go to their polling stations, most will do so out of fear, or because of that defense mechanism masked as inertia. “I don’t want to get into trouble,” say the fearful. “Why make a fuss if they’re going to do whatever they want anyway?” ask those who vote out of inertia.

Who are the true believers? (I say this in all seriousness.) They are the ones who feel the candidates who appear on the ballot actually represent them. True, they do not know what these people think because candidates are prohibited by law from coming up with proposals or campaigning on platforms that might make an electorate swoon. But for reasons I cannot fathom, they deduce from head shots and biographical data that these men and women will raise their hands in Parliament to vote in favor of what matters to their constituents. continue reading

There are others, less naive but more disciplined, who are also convinced. They are the ones who, if the party tells them they must vote for the entire ticket, they will do so, without their blind obedience weighing on their consciences.

Among the dissenters’ motivations for abstaining, one has to consider the lack of alternatives.

On previous occasions, especially for elections on a municipal level, some were incentivized to get out and vote for a candidate who was, or seemed to be, at odds with the government. That can be ruled out in this case because the list of candidates submitted by the Commission of Candidacies for the National Assembly is airtight. Not a single suspect among them.

In the last two elections, the referendum on the constitution and on the Family Code, there were also different options.

In the case of the former, there was the idea that voting a resounding NO would signal one’s refusal to accept the dominance of the Communist Party and the irrevocability of the system. Others, however, believed that voting — even if it was in the negative — gave legitimacy to a bogus referendum. No consensus was reached and the division between the NO supporters and the abstainers weakened their message.

In the referendum on the Family Code, official propaganda had people believe the only option was to vote for it. And since it addressed the specific interests of the LGBTI community, as well as those who sought a legal pathway for surrogate pregnancies, neither a NO vote nor an abstention could be read as a clear expression of disagreement with the government.

This time is different.

Neither supporters of strong-man rule, nor those with generational prejudices, nor even those with a propensity for notoriety and who always have something different to say; neither Trumpists nor Obama-ists; neither radicals nor moderates have come forward to argue for voting NO, for abstaining, for staying home, or for whatever else you want to call it.

When Fulgencio Batista organized sham elections in 1958, Cuba had 2,310,262 citizens with the right to vote. Only 46% of them went to the polls. None of those elected to public office managed to take up their positions because there was, what appeared to be at the time, a popular revolution.

The triumphant regime never forgave the roughly million-and-a-half citizens who went to the polls that year out of conviction, fear or inertia. They were not allowed to join the sole political party or hold important public office. In the tell-all forms that had to be filled out for almost anything, there was always the question about whether or not one had participated in the 1958 elections.

I hope that, in a future democratic Cuba, this is never allowed to happen again.

Iranian Refugee Keivan Esfandiyar Has Been Trapped in Cuba for More Than Four Years

Esfandiyar, in addition to being a teacher, has a degree as a nurse anesthetist. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 20 February 2023 — Keivan Esfandiyar taught teenagers aged 13 to 16 years at a school in Tehran, and although he taught Experimental Sciences, he used to make comments in class and with his colleagues about human rights, democracy and civil liberties. One day he received a summons to appear before the Judiciary and he knew then that he could no longer remain in his country.

Born in Tehran in March 1988, Esfandiyar, in addition to being a teacher, has a degree as a nurse anesthetist. He is married, he lost his mother when he was very young, but the rest of his family is in the Persian country. In November 2018 he arrived in Havana and after spending more than four years, he can no longer tolerate his status as a refugee in Cuba and his main concern is how to emigrate to any country that is not Iran.

This week, Esfandiyar spoke with 14ymedio from a funeral home in Central Havana, a place to evade prying eyes and also a symbol of the fatalistic state in which he feels his life on the Island has become.

Question: How did an Iranian end up as a refugee in Cuba?

Response: The most logical thing was to go to Turkey, with whom we share a border, but right now there are more than three million Syrian refugees there and a growing number of Afghans who are fleeing the Taliban and the situation is very difficult.

Q: Did you know that the Cuban regime is a friend of the Iranian government?

R: I learned that later, but what I do know is that Turkey is friendlier than Cuba to the Iranian dictators. They have returned thousands of Iranian refugees, many ended up in prison and several were executed. Cuba hasn’t returned any.

Q: But, why Cuba?

R: A friend told me that at least 15 Iranian refugees had been received here and that they were protected by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) offices. I then consulted the internet, read that in Cuba there was security and good health services and I entered through the airport in Havana with a tourist visa.

Q: Was it difficult for you to make the decision to emigrate?

R: In Iran, in every office, in every school or institution belonging to the government there is a man from the security forces. This man is responsible for surveilling, being aware and pressuring others to inform on their colleagues. They, in turn, inform their bosses at the political police. I was viewed as a bad influence on those young people, as an enemy of the government. They kill for those reasons. It was difficult to make the decision, but I had no other choice. continue reading

Q: You said that you spent two years as an “asylum seeker” and another two years as a refugee. You receive economic support for refugees from UNHCR which covers the basics. How has it been going for you in Cuba?

A: I live like a Cuban, with problems in the water supply, power outages, lining up to buy food and looking for medicine on the black market, but with the added difficulty that they see me and treat me like a foreigner who is here as a tourist, which makes people think I’m rich.

Not long ago I asked a man on the street to let me light my cigarette with his lighter. He was a middle-aged man with a respectable appearance who said, very seriously, “Give me 50 pesos and I’ll light your cigarette.”

Neither my wife nor I have a work permit, we spend the day in the small room we rent in a licensed private house, we do not have the luxury of doing anything fun like dining in a restaurant or going to the beach. The only advantage we have is that among Cubans we have not felt racism nor xenophobia.

Q: You place your hope in obtaining refuge in another country, especially the United States. What processes have you gone through or plan to undertake to achieve your objective?

R: I should say that UNHCR is not the problem, but rather the countries that should give us refugee visas. Canada does not receive any and the European countries have the idea that refugees who are in Cuba are the responsibility of the United States Embassy, but those offices have been closed for a long time and have not processed a case similar to ours through UNHCR. Now we have a bit of hope because they now have people working in the consulate.

Q: In August 2022 your daughter Viana was born in Havana; she is registered as a Cuban. Does that change the situation?

R: We decided to have a child now because we did not know if time would run out. We hope that with Cuban emigration [Directorate of Identification, Immigration and Foreigners] there won’t be a problem [for their daughter to leave the country], but they have told us that the Americans no longer provide refuge to Cubans and other countries have the same problem.

Q: How has it been for you with the free public health?

R: For the last year, we’ve had a card issued by the Red Cross, which states that it serves to “receive services at Health Units authorized by the Ministry of Health,” but the problem is that it is very difficult to obtain the medicine. I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and I need to take pills called sertraline and for five months, the pharmacies have not stocked them. This issue is not viewed as serious enough to obtain refuge in other countries. If I were diabetic it would be viewed as an emergency situation.

Sometimes I believe they are waiting for me to go completely crazy to process my case.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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The Useless Diversity of the Cuban Parliament

Official propaganda defines the Cuban Parliament as a showcase of national diversity. (Minrex)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 17 February 2023 — Beyond any semantic or etymological definition, the action of parleying is always interpreted as an act of negotiation between individuals or entities that, having different interests, try to reach an agreement.

Hence, the most desirable feature of a Parliament, as a government formula, is that the various political tendencies are represented in it, provided that their presence is proportional to the preference of the citizens expressed in the vote. Easy to say.

Since 1976, Cuba has had a kind of Parliament called the National Assembly of People’s Power. The official propaganda defines it as a showcase of national diversity, which is intended to be demonstrated with the data of its composition that reflect how many women and men, whites, blacks and mestizos, artists, athletes, scientists, workers and farmers, have a seat.

It is significant, even surprising, that the balance in the proportions of this diversity is the product of the random will of the proponents and not (as it seems to be) the result of meticulous planning.

But a balance based on the variety of genders, ages, races and occupational profiles, even when it responds to a mathematical model in relation to the proportion of these elements in reality, fails to disturb the monopoly of that political tendency that manifests itself in a more that 90% communist militancy. A militancy — that is active membership in the Communist party — which in real life does not exceed 7% of the population.

This perhaps explains why, in almost half a century, not a single proposal brought by the Government to Parliament has been disapproved, and even worse, that they have all been approved unanimously or by an overwhelming majority. It’s called partisan discipline. continue reading

The fact that the only political party allowed in the country is the Communist Party, like its youth organization, does not mean that there are not other citizens who feel liberal, Christian-Democratic, social-democratic, environmentalist or any other denomination and, even more so, who would like to see themselves represented in Parliament and who, given the opportunity to freely present their proposals, would have followers, meaning voters.

To make matters worse, when the voting process (not the election) takes place to approve the candidacy of the deputies to Parliament, the voters only know the photo and a biographical summary of the candidates that they have to approve according to their municipality.* Election campaigning is prohibited and with this prohibition the promotion of different platforms that compete to conquer the electorate is prevented.

When in the polling station a citizen votes in favor of the candidacy of one of those proposed on the list for their district, they find out that the candidate served on some internationalist mission, is an engineer and is 42 years old, but the voter does not have the slightest idea of how this candidate will raise their hand in Parliament when something that interests this voter is being discussed.

If that deputy is the one who is going to vote on behalf of his constituents, the latter should know if their candidate wants to favor the socialist state company or if he chooses to benefit non-state forms of production and services; if he prefers to propose relaxations in immigration laws or new restrictions; if he agrees or is against expanding the right to property or whether professionals can practice on their own; that private parties can import for the purpose of marketing; if the freely convertible currency stores should be expanded or eliminated; whether to continue building hotels or to build houses and many other things.

If being black, white or mulatto, man or woman, peasant or intellectual could define the political position of the deputy at these crossroads (which are the ones that matter), the proclaimed diversity of the National Assembly would make sense.

If that diverse condition does not contribute to the way in which you are going to vote on behalf of your constituents, then it is useless.

*Translator’s note: The only ’campaigning’ that is allowed is the posting in a window of a one page ’biography’ of each candidate, with their photo, and this bio is not prepared by the candidate themselves. In one election, independent candidates’ biographies described them as “counterrevolutionaries.” In the final round of elections there is only one candidate for each position; voters can vote yes or no, or deface the ballot or turn it in blank.

The Last Cuban Parliament With the ‘Historicals’

Among the 470 proposed candidates, and who will surely be elected, 128 deputies from the previous legislature repeat: they are the supervening ones. (Twitter/Cuban Parliament)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 12 February 2023 — If the massive abstention is as successful as the opposition expects in the electoral process scheduled for March 26, none of what is outlined here would make sense.

The Cuban Parliament scheduled for the X Legislature of the National Assembly could be the last to have the presence of members of the so-called “historical generation”: Raúl Castro, Ramiro Valdés, José Ramón Machado Ventura, Guillermo García and Ramón Pardo Guerra — all nonagenarians — will return to their seats again, but they will have very little chance of being around to be re-elected in 2028.

In the recently released list of candidates, the notable absences are striking: the one who was held as the manager of the Ordering Task*, Marino Murillo; the Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso; the Minister of Science, Technology and the Environment, Elba Rosa Pérez Montoya; the Minister of Education Ena Elsa Velázquez Cobiella; the Comptroller of the Republic Gladys María Bejerano; Rodrigo Malmierca, Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment; Samuel Carlos Rodiles Planas, President of the Physical Planning Institute; and the cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo; they no longer they will raise their hands again to approve what they propose.

Among the 470 candidates proposed, who will surely be elected, 128 deputies from the previous legislature repeat: they are the survivors of the drastic reduction of the number of seats in Parliament. continue reading

If the current occupant of the position of President of the Republic were not appointed to repeat his mandate (which is unlikely, but possible), a member of Parliament under 60 years of age would have to be elected by law. These repeaters are supposedly the ones who would have the best chances against the upstarts.

Among them there are 33 born between 1963 and 1968 who on this occasion meet the requirement of not exceeding 60 years of age to be appointed as president of the Republic, but who by the next election, in 2028, would already be past that age.

This forecast can be closer to reality if it is specified that, among the 33 blessed (and punished) by the almanac, only 4 are members of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party: Manuel Marrero Cruz, who is also Prime Minister; Roberto Tomás Morales Ojeda who is the second in the hierarchy in the structure of the Communist Party; Marta Ayala Ávila, General Director of the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology; and Teresa María Amarelle Boué, who is a member of the Political Bureau for being the general secretary of the Federation of Cuban Women.

Four others belong to the Council of State and also appear on the Central Committee, these are: Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, Miriam Nicado García, Homero Acosta Álvarez and Ana María Mari Machado.

I conclude the list with: Luis Antonio Torres Iríbar, and Jorge Luis Tapia Fonseca, members of the Central Committee and first secretaries of the communist party in the provinces; José Ángel Portal Miranda, Minister of Public Health; Inés María Chapman Waugh, Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic; and Rogelio Polanco Fuentes, member of the Secretariat and head of the Ideological Department in the Central Committee of the Party.

This hypothetical investiture, even if they have no aspirations, is presented to these 13 as a last chance. In five years the list of possible suitors would be made up of virtually unknown people, unless the age requirement is modified.

There can always be surprises. The first would be that Miguel Díaz-Canel does not continue in the position of President of the Republic. The second is that someone is appointed to replace him who is not mentioned in the previous paragraphs.

It is not that the country is inevitably headed for a radical change, nor that because another person mentioned here is placed at the helm of the nation, these changes will occur in the necessary direction, depth and speed. It is not about that, but that the changes towards democracy and economic freedoms are the main demand that is being called for with more pressure from within and from without, and that nothing would delay this process of change more than the continuity that is proclaimed today as a motto from power.

*Translator’s note: Tarea ordenamiento = the [so-called] ‘Ordering Task’, is a collection of measures that include eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and many other measures related to the economy.

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