Voice of America is one of the media outlets affected by the USAID shutdown. / VOA
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, 22 March 2025 — Things are bad for the press when newspapers themselves become the protagonists of the daily news. In recent weeks, we’ve witnessed an avalanche of headlines about funding cuts to many of the media outlets in Latin America that have gained audiences and prestige for their reporting. The paralyzation of activities by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has put in check the work of thousands of reporters, editors, and audiovisual professionals throughout the region.
From El Salvador to Mexico to Cuba, the front pages of numerous newspapers have come to a virtual standstill due to a lack of resources to carry out their work. But tearing one’s clothes serves little purpose in the current situation. The scenario could, however, be more fertile than it appears at first glance. It is crises and moments of greatest danger that often give rise to the most lasting solutions. One of the lessons we must learn from this situation is precisely that relying on a single source of funding condemns the press to collapse when that patron or donor turns off the tap.
The need to diversify income should be a priority for any newsroom. Advertisements, membership programs, sponsorships, and agreements with entities such as universities, foundations, and international organizations could help reduce dependence on budgetary allocations that are at the mercy of the decisions, sympathies and antipathies of the current leader. If we don’t broaden the spectrum of financial sources, journalists risk having our reporting cut short by a slashing of resources in a president’s office. Relying primarily on one source of income is irresponsible and dangerous.
The paralyzation of activities by the USAID has put in check the work of thousands of reporters, editors, and audiovisual professionals in Latin America.
Now, when many reporters are left without a salary to pay their bills and support their families, it is worth asking how the Latin American press has failed by failing to create a more diverse and solid financial ecosystem. Beyond criticizing the current US administration and tearing our hair out over the end of certain budgets, we need to reflect on how we have failed our journalists and our audience by depending so exclusively on a single source of income.
Every crisis forces us to grow, and this one will be no exception. The press will emerge from the current slump strengthened and improved. Dreams will likely have to be scaled back, projects will be canceled, staff will be cut, and the update frequency will slow on many digital sites. But the media outlets affected today will also mature and understand a hard lesson: the press cannot operate with its back to corporate management. Producing dividends to sustain part of its work must be among those premises carved in stone in every newsroom, along with the need to verify sources, to have truth and accuracy as our true north, and to commit to the constant pursuit of professionalism and to the information service to society.
This doesn’t mean we have to become bankers or brokers; it means we understand, in its proper measure and importance, that the health of our coffers is just as important as the quality of our publications.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Deutsche Welle in Spanish.
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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 scene of a toast and libertarian laughter on the Havana coast will no longer be able to materialize.
Yoani Sánchez and Mario Vargas Llosa, at the Casa de América in Madrid, in 2014. / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 14 April 2025 — The last time we spoke was in his native Peru. After sharing the stage and reflecting on literature, authoritarianism in Latin America, and the paths of journalism, Mario Vargas Llosa and I parted, joking about a possible lecture he might offer at the University of Havana. I remember telling him that the Aula Magna would surely be too small, Plaza Cadenas would be filled with young people, and all of La Colina would be packed with Cubans who had read him despite the publishing censorship imposed on his books. But the return to the island never happened.
In 2000, while working on my thesis, Words Under Pressure: The Literature of the Dictatorship in Latin America, I received from the Peruvian the greatest literary gift I could have hoped for. The publication of The Feast of the Goat was not only a delight for the ardent reader of his work I had long since become, but also reinforced the hypothesis of my thesis: literature on the dictatorship has not been exhausted on this continent, as the satraps continue to taint our lands with repression and authoritarianism.
Vargas Llosa had the ability to touch my life, twisting and turning it with some of his works. In 1993, spurred by the desire to read a novel by that son of Arequipa, blacklisted by Cuban publishing houses and universities, I found myself in the office of an irreverent journalist estranged from his profession. From that encounter, I gained two experiences that shaped my life: immersing myself in The War at the End of the World and meeting Reinaldo Escobar, the person with whom I share my life, dreams, and a son to this day.
Vargas Llosa had the ability to touch my life, twist it and turn it with some of his works.
Another earthquake, but this time an academic one, was the inclusion of that book about Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in the list of works analyzed in my thesis. Mario had managed not only to portray the Dominican dictator with his excesses and moral decadence, but he had also drawn a map that made it possible to track any tyrant. It was very difficult not to find analogies between the capricious Chapita and the fickle Fidel Castro, who would continue reading
embark on a pharaonic sugar harvest or economically devastate the island just as easily as he would imprison a poet for his sharp verses against power.
The Feast of the Goat was about one leader, but at the same time, it affected them all, because tyrants share more traits than meets the eye. Most lack a sense of humor, reject public debate with their opponents, locking them in dark dungeons or shooting them, and turning their omnipresence in every aspect of national life into a way of controlling everything from the uniform children wear to the best-selling ice cream flavor.
Approaching the dark depths of the personality of El Jefe, El Benefactor de la Patria Dominicana, or El Perínclito, as he was known, also evoked the tenebrous depths of the Commander who, in January 1959, initiated the destruction of the Cuban nation in all its aspects—economic, ethical, educational—and condemned its population to an unprecedented mass exodus.
Those similarities between Trujillo and Castro were not only evident to me as I read the book
Those similarities between Trujillo and Castro were not only evident to me as I read the book, which was covered with a page from a pro-government magazine to ward off informers and extremists. The panel evaluating my graduation thesis also noted those overlaps and was annoyed, especially because I included as the main author of that work the “black beast of Latin American literature,” according to the narrow confines of revolutionary cultural politics.
It wasn’t easy to earn my diploma after that daring act. The thesis discussion proved to be a test to avoid the humiliations and provocations that sought angry responses from me and thus cancel my graduation. I resisted. I clung to the character of Urania, who had been locked in a room with El Chivo and had seen his perversions, his excesses of power, but also his human fragility. I swallowed hard, defended my work, and they gave me that card with Gothic letters stating that I was now a philologist. That same day I buried my profession. I didn’t want to dedicate myself to words in a country where so many of them were prohibited.
Years later, when I managed to travel to Spain after almost a decade of being banned from leaving Cuba, I was able to meet Mario. Talking to him was far better than reading him, if anything can surpass the joy of delving into the thousands of pages he wrote throughout his life. A loquacious interlocutor, he also had a gift for listening and asking good questions. He was generous with his personal anecdotes, his literary advice, and his extensive political knowledge. He treated the group of Cuban activists and journalists who spent several days with him at Casa de América with deference and respect. By then, he was a Nobel Prize winner in Literature.
In 2014, when the newspaper 14ymedio’was born, he showed us his loving and enthusiastic support.
One of those days, I asked him to let me know when he published his next book: I wanted to prepare for the earthquake those pages were going to cause in my life. “Thanks to you, I found the love of my life, and I was on the verge of not graduating from university, so I need to make the necessary arrangements for the next cataclysm that a title from yours will cause,” I told him. He laughed like a child, with that mischievous little snicker reminiscent of Fonchito, the angelic, yet demonic boy in his Elogio de la madrastra In Praise of the Stepmother .
We met again on several occasions. He always wanted to know what had become of some of the places, officials, and writers he had met on those trips to Cuba, when, like so many other Latin American intellectuals, he saw the Cuban Revolution as an emancipatory and libertarian process. That idyll didn’t last long, and Vargas Llosa’s keen sense of smell soon detected Fidel Castro’s authoritarianism, his allergy to artists, and the totalitarian drift of the regime he built through censorship and firing squads.
In 2014, when the newspaper 14ymedio was founded, he showed us his loving and enthusiastic support. He was as good a journalist as he was a novelist, so he fully understood the importance of a free press to cement a democratic opening in Cuba. He offered us an interview at his home in Madrid. I heard that childish laugh again, and we fantasized about sitting on the wall of Havana’s Malecón on a starry night, where, together with thousands of people, we would celebrate the fall of Castroism.
This Sunday, Mario Vargas Llosa died. The scene of a toast and libertarian laughter on the Havana waterfront will no longer be realized. Nor will the predicted talk in the Aula Magna at La Colina come to fruition, packed with young people who would bring their novels, no longer having to cover them to hide the author’s name, for the Peruvian to sign.
However, I am convinced that in a future closer than we can imagine now, the name of the author of Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter,Conversation in the Cathedral, and The Green House will grace chairs, research centers, literary competitions, and faculties on the Island. Graduation theses on his work will be countless, and no student will feel pressured for including it in their bibliography. That day, perhaps I will take my philology degree out of the drawer and return to a profession that Mario helped shape, like so many other things in my life.
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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.
Now, when so many reporters are left without work, it is worth asking where the Latin American press has failed.
Voice of America is one of the media outlets affected by the USAID shutdown. / VOA
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 22 March 2025 — Things are bad for the press when newspapers themselves become the protagonists of the daily news. In recent weeks, we have witnessed an avalanche of headlines about funding cuts to many of the media outlets in Latin America that have gained audiences and prestige for their reporting. The paralyzation of activities by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has jeopardized the work of thousands of reporters, editors, and audiovisual professionals throughout the region.
From El Salvador to Mexico to Cuba, the front pages of numerous newspapers have come to a virtual standstill due to a lack of resources to carry out their work. But tearing one’s garments serves little purpose in the current panorama. The scenario could, however, be more fruitful than meets the eye. Crises and moments of greatest danger often give rise to the most lasting solutions. One of the lessons we must learn from this situation is precisely that relying on a single source of funding condemns the press to collapse when that patron or donor turns off the tap.
The need to diversify revenues should be a priority for any newsroom. Advertisements, membership programs, sponsorships, and agreements with entities such as universities, foundations, and international organizations could help reduce dependence on budgetary allocations that are at the mercy of the decisions, likes, and dislikes of the current leader. If we don’t broaden the spectrum of financial sources, journalists risk having our reporting work cut short by a slashed snippet in a president’s office. Relying primarily on one source of income is irresponsible and dangerous.
The halt in USAID activities has jeopardized the work of thousands of reporters, editors, and professionals in Latin America.
Now, when many reporters are left without a salary to pay their bills and support their families, it’s worth asking how the Latin American press has stumbled by failing to create a more diverse and solid financial ecosystem. Beyond criticizing the current US administration and tearing our hair out over the end of certain budgets, we need to reflect on how we have failed our journalists and our audience by depending so exclusively on a single source of income.
Every crisis forces us to grow, and this one will be no exception. The press will emerge from the current slump reinvigorated and improved. Dreams will likely have to be scaled back, projects will be canceled, staff will be cut, and the frequency of updates will slow down on many digital sites. However, the media outlets affected today will also mature and comprehend a hard lesson: the press cannot operate with its back to corporate management. Producing dividends to sustain part of its work must be among those premises carved in stone in every newsroom, along with the need to verify sources, to have truth and accuracy as our guiding principle, and to commit to the constant pursuit of professionalism and the information service to society.
This doesn’t mean we have to become bankers or brokers; it means we understand, in its proper measure and importance, that the health of our coffers is just as important as the quality of our publications.
________________________
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Deutsche Welle in Spanish.
____________
COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
In the vast circuit of world music venues, Cuba no longer competes. It lacks any material attraction.
Joaquín Sabina during a presentation in Mexico in early February 2025. / jsabinaoficial/Instagram
14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 25 February 2025 — Last Saturday, in Miami, thousands of spectators sang along with Joaquín Sabina’s best-known songs. The city of Florida hosted the concert of the Spanish composer on his farewell tour of the stage. Among the audience were many of those Cuban fans who once enjoyed his performances in Havana. Now, they are migrants in a foreign country and it is unlikely that the author of Hola y adiós will be allowed back into the Island.
In 2022, the Úbeda-born artist made his position clear: “I was a friend of the Cuban revolution and of Fidel Castro. But I am no longer, I cannot be.” Those words cost him a place on a list that the Castro regime constantly updates with artists who have dared to criticize its political model, the character of its leaders or the Communist Party. The list is very long and has changed over the years. It not only contains exiled Cuban musicians but once included figures such as José Feliciano, Roberto Carlos, Julio Iglesias, Raphael, Carlos Santana, more recently Fito Páez and even the Beatles themselves.
“I was a friend of the Cuban revolution and of Fidel Castro. But I am no longer one, and I cannot be one”
Among those censored were also songs by Joan Manuel Serrat, Mercedes Sosa and Miguel Ríos. Sometimes the scissors came because of the performer’s public attitude, other times, simply because the lyrics of one of their songs irritated the rigid Cuban commanders and generals. However, despite so many controls and suspicions, in those years performing in Havana, Varadero or Santiago de Cuba continued to be an aspiration of many international musicians, so being excluded from those concerts was considered a punishment.
However, time passed and everything changed. Now, performing in our country is of little interest to most of the great artists of the moment. Colombian Shakira is on the world tour Las mujeres ya no lloran [Women No Longer Cry] and the Cuban capital is conspicuous by its absence among the chosen destinations. Bad Bunny has not given any sign that he will rock, in the short or medium term, the seats of the Karl Marx theater or the Ciudad Deportiva de La Habana. The voices of Rosalía, Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift have not been heard live in any of the concert halls continue reading
on the Island.
Now, performing in our country is of little interest to most of the great artists of the moment.
The reason for these absences is not only the political exclusions carried out by the regime. There is also an economic motivation. In the wide circuit of musical venues worldwide, Cuba no longer competes. It lacks any material appeal. In what currency should tickets be charged so that the artist can collect some income from their show? The Island has also lost its appeal as a stopover to gain prestige or a name; rather, it is quite the opposite. Singing at the National Theater or the Martí can now be seen as an act of blindness to the excesses of a dictatorship and an act of gross complicity with a government that has more than a thousand political prisoners.
That is why, and for many other reasons, Joaquín Sabina sang in Miami and not in Havana last Saturday: not only because they might not let him enter the island, but also because most of his audience is already abroad.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Deutsche Welle in Spanish.
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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 resentment of the the US State Department’s new leader towards Nicolás Maduro will also have repercussions on the Island. / EFE
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 23 January 2025 — Cuba had been removed from the United States’ list of countries sponsoring terrorism for just six days. This Monday, after Donald Trump took office, the island’s regime was once again on a list that carries serious diplomatic and financial restrictions. Havana has barely had time to react to a see-saw that, in less than a week, has caused official spokespeople to go from declaring victory to cursing Washington.
Every time a new president arrives at the Oval Office, speculation about his role in the downfall of Castroism is high. In Trump’s case, there is a fairly unanimous consensus that his four years in office will be a real time in the wilderness for Miguel Díaz-Canel. In the midst of the greatest economic crisis of this century, the dictatorship finds itself in a state of extreme material fragility. The presence of Marco Rubio, son of Cuban exiles, as Secretary of State will be one of the most bitter pills that the Plaza de la Revolución will have to swallow.
With an absolutely unequivocal stance against the regime that has controlled the Island for 66 years, Rubio will be a tough obstacle on the international stage.
With an absolutely unequivocal stance against the regime that has controlled the island for 66 years, Rubio will be a tough obstacle on the international stage, where Havana has long experience in manipulation, buying loyalties or silence based on diplomatic favors, and presenting itself as a victimized David in the face of the disproportionate force of the Goliath of the North. The resentment of the new leader of the US State Department towards Nicolás Maduro will also have repercussions on the island, which is dependent not only on Venezuelan oil but also on the political support provided by the Miraflores Palace. continue reading
In a region where attempts at unity have been marked more by ideology than by the search for the well-being of its residents, a US administration more focused on Latin America could shake up the continent’s alliances and loyalties to a very large extent. The process of Havana’s loss of influence in this hemisphere, which has been ongoing for years, could accelerate starting this January. It is not surprising that some current allies of the Cuban regime prefer to rush to have their photo taken with Trump rather than to continue courting a failed and bankrupt system tied to the designs of the nonagenarian Raúl Castro.
The haste with which Trump cancelled Joe Biden’s decision to remove Cuba from the list of nations sponsoring terrorism seems to indicate that new penalties may rain down in the coming weeks. Within the Island, ordinary people are debating how to position themselves in the face of the pressure that is coming. The oldest remember that the dictatorship has shown signs of closing ranks and becoming more dangerous when cornered. Among those who are not yet graying, however, there is the illusion that the erosion of the model is so great that a push is enough to make it fall like a house of cards.
Nobody knows what will happen, but there is a new deck of cards on the table. More specifically, the cards on one side of the political battle are now different, while on the side of official Cuba they are the same worn-out scraps as always: repression, voluntarism and diplomatic hullabaloo.
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Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Deutsche Welle in Spanish.
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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.
“They have left the small prison to enter the big prison,” said an elderly woman on Thursday
Dariel Cruz García, with his mother, Yaquelín Cruz García, this Wednesday, after his release from prison 1580 in Havana. / EFE/ Ernesto Mastrascusa
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 17 January 2025 — In the last few hours, more than thirty Cuban political prisoners have been released. The number is just a small part of the 553 people who will be released from their cells after the agreement between the Havana regime and the Vatican which led to the United States removing the island from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism. On this side of the bars, the prisoners are awaited by their families but also by a country where dissent continues to be a crime.
Among those who have left the cells are internationally recognized opponents such as José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, citizens who only protested peacefully in the streets such as Luis Robles, known as “the young man with the placard,” and very poor people from the Havana neighborhood of La Güinera who on 11 July 2021 (11J) demonstrated demanding change and chanting the word “freedom.” It is expected that in the coming days more locks will be removed and other dungeons will be opened.
The joy, however, has been dampened. Organizations that have been working for years on a database of political prisoners warn that there are more than a thousand people convicted of these crimes on the island. To these alarming numbers we must add that the current releases are not full freedoms but a partial measure with serious limitations on rights. If those who benefit from this decision incur in any “indiscipline,” they can be returned to prison. Hanging over their heads is the return to the locked cells, the meager rations of food and the mistreatment of the guards. continue reading
For those less known and therefore barely protected by international visibility, everything will be more difficult.
The lives of these prisoners will also be very difficult in a nation that has experienced an intensification of controls and official intolerance in recent years. With an economic crisis that seems to have no end, a mass exodus that also does not stop and a ruling elite anchored to ideological continuity, walking through Cuban streets is not very different from spending the days in a prison. “They have left the small prison to enter the big prison,” said an elderly woman on Thursday standing in one of those endless lines to buy food. The rest of those waiting in line nodded in silence.
For those less known and, therefore, barely protected by international visibility, everything will be more difficult. For example, Yaquelín Cruz García, mother of Dariel Cruz García aged 23, told me this Thursday how she experienced the first 24 hours after the release of the young man, convicted for the 11J protests. The woman says that she is happy to finally have El Bolo, as his friends also know him, at her side, although she fears that “something will happen and they will want to put him back in jail.”
Cruz García feels that the anxiety continues. “He is under a conditional release regime and he has to follow the rules imposed on him,” explains the mother. “If my son had been given total freedom and could leave the country, I would do everything possible to get him out of Cuba as soon as possible, even if it were to go to Haiti,” she says. Her fear is not exaggerated. An invisible shackle surrounds the ankle of all the released prisoners.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Deutsche Welle in Spanish.
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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.
As a good con man, he believes that this new fallacy will work out well for him and will allow him to remain in power for much longer.
Pomp is not enough to make someone the legitimate ruler of a nation. / EFE
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 11 January 2025 — Nicolás Maduro has finalized, this Friday, one of the most notorious cases of presidential hijacking in the recent history of Latin America. The sash on his chest, the swearing-in in front of the president of the National Assembly and the few leaders who attended the investiture ceremony, were part of an elaborate script that the Miraflores Palace designed for the occasion. But pomp is not enough to turn someone into the legitimate ruler of a nation. Citizen votes are the legal path to achieve this and the tenant of the Miraflores Palace does not have them. His new mandate is illegitimate, as much so as is the inauguration he carried out on January 10.
What is born from lies can never confirm the truth, it should be stressed. On a similar date, but in 2013, Venezuelan official propaganda was focused on making national and international public opinion believe that Hugo Chávez was recovering from cancer in Havana and would soon return to the country to take office as president. There was talk that he was in a “stationary” stage of his convalescence, after suffering postoperative respiratory failure that complicated his recovery. However, the testimonies and indications that have emerged a posteriori indicate that, most likely, on that January 10, twelve years ago, the military coup leader had already died or was in a state that made him incapable of being sworn in as president. The subsequent pantomime of his supposed transfer alive to Caracas and his official death in March 2013 is becoming less and less credible.
I remember that, during those days, the Cuban regime also launched a furious media campaign to reinforce the thesis of a Chávez in full capacity to lead the country. For those of us who are well acquainted with the narrative traps of Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución, it smelled fishy from all sides. Maduro’s leadership of the Venezuelan nation emerged precisely from that farce; it is the direct offspring of a colossal hoax that, surprisingly, the major international media have been too lazy to investigate all this time and the majority have accepted as true that crudely retouched story.
Díaz-Canel could not be absent from the staging of this coronation because he is part of the theater
As a result of this deception, a man who has plunged the country with the largest oil reserves in the world into an unbelievable economic crisis, has forced millions of its citizens into exile and spread corruption and continue reading
clientelism throughout the nation has risen to the top position. That initial falsification is, to a large extent, the cause of the impunity with which Maduro was photographed this January smiling with the yellow, blue and red sash across his chest. Like a good swindler, he believes that this new fallacy will work out well for him, allowing him to remain in power much longer.
To help Maduro complete the lie, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel could not be missing; in the end, it was the regime of Fidel and Raúl Castro that was one of the managers of that original invention that placed him in the presidential chair. The Cuban leader has traveled from the Island, even in the midst of an extremely serious situation that would have made any other leader refrain from leaving his country. In the province of Holguín, 13 soldiers, nine of them young recruits of the Military Service, remain missing as of last Tuesday, after several explosions shook warehouses where ammunition and weapons are stored. The situation merits the uninterrupted presence of the first secretary of the Communist Party on the Island, but the engagement in Caracas was inescapable.
Díaz-Canel could not be absent from the staging of this coronation because he is part of the theater. Havana supported that fiction that brought Maduro to the Presidency for the first time and will continue to do everything in its power to keep him in office. This will affect Castroism not only with regards to a part of the oil supply it needs but, very probably, to its own survival.
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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.
At the beginning of 2025, the explosion in Holguín has gotten in the way of so much paraphernalia
Every January, the same tiresome sequence of commemorations, freedom caravans and official evocations is repeated in Cuba. / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 8 January 2025 — Lovers of ritual, and anchored to symbolic acts, dictatorships are given to organizing ahead of time and in a rigid manner a script of celebrations, public events and media coverage on anniversaries and founding dates. Nothing can make them deviate from this protocol projected to aggrandize their power and show themselves eternal. Every January, in Cuba, the same tiresome sequence of commemorations, caravans of freedom and official evocations of that January of 1959 when Fidel Castro took power on the Island is repeated. But at the beginning of 2025, tragedy has gotten in the way of so much paraphernalia.
Throughout Tuesday, Cubans have been following the news that, in dribs and drabs, came out from the vicinity of the weapons and ammunition warehouse in the community of Melones, belonging to the municipality of Rafael Freyre, in Holguín. In the military enclave, a series of explosions put the neighbors on alert and forced the Ministry of the Armed Forces to publish a note in which it limited itself to briefly reporting the explosions. As the day progressed and the testimonies and images taken by residents in the area reached the social networks, concern grew that the incident was much more serious than the authorities admitted and that it was far from being controlled.
Shortly afterwards, the number of 13 people missing at the military base began to be mentioned in the streets, but the official press continued to give priority to the events planned to commemorate the January 1959 anniversary. Nothing could interrupt what was planned for the day: showing a smiling Miguel Díaz-Canel surrounded by young communists in La Plata, echoing the ceremony for the anniversary of the National Revolutionary Police and closely following the pathetic caravan that travels through the provinces, imitating the route that the bearded men in olive green made 66 years ago. continue reading
The drama had no place in this scheme of self-satisfaction. The possible victims of the explosions did not fit into the operetta created to boast of having controlled a country and its millions of inhabitants for more than six decades, of having completely destroyed the economy of a nation and having forced hundreds of thousands of its children into exile. Nothing could tarnish the days of festivities. Therefore, the update on the incident and the names of the missing officers and soldiers were relegated to the end of the main newscast and as for President Díaz-Canel, it took him almost 24 hours to make a mention of what happened on his social networks.
But tragedy does not choose the time or the place, even though it seems to have been infatuated in these lands for years.
But tragedy does not choose the time or the place, even if it seems to have been infatuated in these lands for years. The analogies are inevitable. The pain of those days of the fire at the Supertankers in Matanzas is repeated, the collective affliction left by the explosion at the Saratoga hotel and the terrifying images of a crashed plane near Havana airport that claimed 112 lives. Once again, suffering is installed in Cuban homes and secrecy tries to hide it, to reduce it to a mere incident that does not deserve the major front pages or the first minutes of the news.
Dictatorships cannot stand desolation ruining their celebration, or the suffering of others forcing them to cut short long-planned celebrations.
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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.
From this part of the world, more than one authoritarian ruler must have nightmares since Al Assad fell.
For a nonagenarian like Raúl Castro, it must be especially difficult to deal with what has happened. / Prensa Latina
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 13 December 2024 — The big news of the end of the year is, without a doubt, the flight to Moscow of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. The collapse of his regime, which opens up a range of possibilities and fears about the political direction that Damascus will take, also refreshes lessons about tyrants that, although well-known, should not cease to be repeated and taken into account. Like a paper tiger, the once fierce leader escaped with his family, left his officials in the lurch and abandoned his army. More than one authoritarian ruler in this part of the world must have had nightmares since then.
He who until a few weeks ago seemed to be a man firmly in power, who had managed to resist a long civil war and was beginning to be reinserted in international organizations such as the Arab League, in just a few days escaped from his palaces, boarded a plane with his family and ended up in Moscow. His soldiers hurriedly removed their uniforms and left them lying in the street, the jailers guarding the fearsome Sednaya prison fled and the Baath party he led has suspended all its activities “until further notice.” The autocrat’s entire apparatus of control and coercion collapsed, despite the fear of the population and the support of Russia.
On this side of the Atlantic, the images of the Syrian people entering the richly decorated rooms where Al Assad lived and the opening of the cells full of opponents must have cost more than one person their the peace of mind. For some time now, the unpresentable regimes of Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba have also been eager to show their closeness to the Kremlin. They appear in photos with officials, ministers and military officers under the orders of Vladimir Putin to, among other things, send the message that behind their backs the fierce Russian bear is rising. They use their proximity continue reading
and political harmony with Moscow also as a warning of invulnerability and strength.
On this side of the Atlantic, the images of the Syrian people entering the richly decorated rooms where Al Assad lived and the opening of the cells full of opponents must have cost more than one person their the peace of mind.
However, along with Assad, the great loser in Syria has been Russia, which, bogged down in the invasion of Ukraine, could not defend its crony Damascus. Neither the naval base in Tartus nor the planes with pilots sent by Putin prevented the fall of a dynasty that robbed its people of their freedom for more than half a century. Nor did the diplomatic complicity that Moscow displayed with Damascus in international forums protect it. In a few days, all that became just words, gestures and the past.
For a nonagenarian like Raúl Castro, who maintained ties of collaboration and complicity first with Hafez al-Assad and later with his son, it must be especially difficult to deal with what has happened. The world he knew no longer exists: the socialist camp imploded, the Berlin Wall fell, political allies have been losing power one by one or dying in oblivion, and more than one of his close caudillos has been swept away by the pressure of their own people. And to make matters worse, Moscow no longer seems to inspire the fear it once did, it is not capable of looking after the backs of its cronies. The only option for his fellow authoritarians now is to take refuge in Putin’s land.
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Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Deutsche Welle in Spanish.
Gina Montaner narrates the end of life of her father, the man who knew how to listen, the antithesis of Fidel Castro
The book has other interpretations through the prism of Cuban history. / EFE
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, 23 November 2024 — Just by reading the first pages of Wish Me a Good Journey we already know the ending: this is a book that ends with death. We enter into the narration of the last months in the life of Carlos Alberto Montaner, the Cuban writer, journalist and analyst. However, it is not a heartbreaking approach to the end of an existence, but rather a testimony built from the sweetness and understanding of a daughter who asserts, not without doubts and pain, her father’s will to die.
The volume, which has just been published by Planeta, shows Gina Montaner’s maturity as a writer, an exercise in which it is easy to detect her training and experience as a journalist. We are faced with a carefully crafted account, which largely maintains a linear chronology, although with the necessary leaps into the past to explain eight decades of a man who seems to have compacted several lives into one.
Gina gives us a map, but not a treasure map. She spreads before our eyes a plan to follow the rough road of saying goodbye to someone we love. If, in addition, that person is going to close the door of their own free will, choosing the month and the day, Wish Me a Good Journey will then be an indispensable companion on the road. Little has been written, in Spanish literature, about euthanasia, much less by a front row witness to the emotions and responsibility.
In just over 200 pages, we witness with Gina and Carlos the long and tortuous bureaucratic process of claiming the use the Euthanasia Law that was passed two years ago in Spain. The family returns to the place they considered home after the exile they were forced into six decades ago. In Madrid, they deal with bureaucracy, emotions and the deterioration of Montaner’s health due to progressive supranuclear palsy, the neurodegenerative disease that affected his facial expression and continue reading
locomotion, as well as his ability to speak and write.
Montaner imparts a master class in courage that his daughter manages to capture in the small anecdotes of everyday life
However, even though the reader sees a man who was synonymous with elegance in language and politics gradually deteriorate and fade away, CAM, the acronym by which many called him, emerges in a greater light. Without excesses, without displays of feigned courage or lessons of bravery in the face of the approaching Grim Reaper, Montaner gives a master class in bravery that his daughter manages to capture in the small anecdotes of everyday life. From the enjoyment of the cinema in the family room, even hours before his death, to his calm but determined stance in front of the doctors.
We walk alongside them and Linda, the eternal partner who shared her life with Montaner, through the paths of health bureaucracy. A journey that is sometimes frustrating and moving in circles, but flanked, of course, by a right that Spanish legislation enforces and to which, little by little, patients and doctors are getting used to, the latter often anchored to the conviction that euthanasia goes against the Hippocratic oath.
The book also has other readings through the prism of Cuban history. Carlos Alberto Montaner is confirmed to us as one of the most lucid and consistent human beings who inhabited the rarefied scenario of the politics of this Island. The most libertarian among the island figures, he exercised his will until the end, deciding the way and the moment of leaving this world. With the exception of several famous national suicides, Cuban leaders have shown attitudes towards death that range from the irresponsible search for a heroic end to the fearful denial that the last breath is approaching.
Fidel Castro, the man who was Carlos Alberto Montaner’s nemesis in so many ways, clung to a long and debilitating final agony with the sole objective of prolonging his control over the lives of Cubans. The dictator spent ten long years fading away and writing delirious reflections in which he mixed moringa plantations with the light years that separate us from the most distant galaxies. In the face of death, he hid, behaving in the same way as in that early morning of 26 July 1953, when he did not enter the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba but ordered dozens of young people who blindly followed him to die and be killed.
Montaner took his last breath surrounded by the family he founded, a brotherhood based on love and understanding.
While Montaner knew how to put a final point, already in time, to the articles of international analysis that he published punctually each week, Castro imposed the diffusion of his ramblings on the front page of the main media on the Island. One had the nobility to spare his readers any stumble that cognitive deterioration could cause him, and the other forced us to listen to his disjointed litanies read by the anchors of the main news program and repeated in morning school assemblies and party meetings.
Montaner took his last breath surrounded by the family he founded, a brotherhood based on love and understanding. Castro hid his children and his wife for decades, he even refused to give his surname to several of his children and those who knew him closely defined him as a person incapable of feeling empathy for anyone, not even for those who carried his own blood. Authoritarians are known by their lives but above all by how they die. Perhaps it is because they sense that after closing their eyelids they will no longer be able to dictate orders, imprison enemies and shackle countries.
The leader and the writer portrayed in their final moments. One, with his sickly need to dictate to others what they should do, even after his death. The other, gathered in that intimate circle made up of his wife, his children and his granddaughters, doing what he did best: listening. Because Carlos Alberto Montaner was one of those rare Cubans with the ability to listen to others, to sit back and become all ears while his interlocutor told him about prisons, exiles or literary projects.
Reading Wish Me a Good Journey is especially emotional and at times very difficult.
If one asked for a mausoleum to be erected for him that must be visited, the other knew that the most honorable pantheon where his memory should rest was in the books he left behind, the family he founded, and the thousands of friends he had everywhere. For the latter, reading Wish Me a Good Journey is especially emotional and at times very difficult. We are witnessing a testimony that confirms what we already knew but had not wanted to accept: that the most complete public figure that Cuba has produced in the last half century is no longer here.
The man who taught us not to fear freedom, which of course implies immense amounts of responsibility and civic maturity, has left us; nor to fear the leader who sank a country run by an ancient family clan that has caused the ruin of the nation, the greatest exodus in our history, and a political infantilism that is horrifying. The writer who did not reach the shelves of our national bookstores but who people sought out with the eagerness not only for what is forbidden but for what is of value. The analyst who had read with delight and was one of the most cultured minds that has represented our country on the world stage.
The book ends, the last page finishes before our eyes. We must say goodbye, or better yet, hasta luego. The journey continues and Carlos Alberto Montaner has left us the map to explore it fully and at will.
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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.
What collapsed that day in Germany was the need to express political opinions quietly and to sing, without conviction, the praises of communism.
Every November the assessments and reminders arrive, and the images of Berliners hitting the wall are republished. / CC
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation y, 9 November 2024 — Every November the assessments and reminders arrive, and the images of Berliners pounding on the wall that divided their city and split the world into two opposing parts are republished. Every anniversary, the minutes before the hammers and chisels sounded are reviewed, testimonies are heard and the media interviews the protagonists of those days. The physical and symbolic end of a structure is celebrated, but also the moment when the masks fall.
How many of those people we see in the photos pounding the concrete 35 years ago went to work in the days leading up to 9 November 1989, and nodded in agreement with the ideological demands of their superiors? How many obediently went to a meeting of their party core, reported a neighbor to the feared Stasi, or participated in some political event where they sang victory songs and shouted slogans predicting the eternal superiority of communism? How many pretended to obey the system until the last moment, fearful of punishment or eager to obtain some prebend?
The covers of magazines and newspapers will remain full of smiling workers.
Understanding the mechanisms that make simulation a form of social survival in authoritarian models is vital to deciphering the duration of these systems and predicting the date of their downfall. As long as pretending to adhere to the regime is safer and more beneficial than opposing it, the dictatorship can show hundreds of thousands or millions of individuals who appear to live in the best of all possible models. The covers of magazines and newspapers will remain full of smiling workers, soldiers willing to give their last drop of blood for “the beloved leader” and foreign delegations who come to the country to applaud the achievements. That is, until one day. continue reading
An old joke about the Soviet Union depicted the communist system as a train at a standstill, with no railway line in front of it, but with passengers jolting, jumping and looking in amazement at the supposed scenery passing before their eyes, when in fact the carriages had not moved an inch. Under the Communist Party of the USSR (CPSU), pretending was more important than being. Putting on a mask meant staying alive or walking the streets instead of living in a dark cell. Playing the role of conformity also helped one achieve a few privileges.
That is why that November in Germany not only did the wall collapse, but also the need to express political opinions in a low voice, to conceal criticism of leaders and to sing, without conviction, the praises of communism. What they struck was not just a barrier that separated Berliners from their own compatriots on the other side, it was much more. That is why today, in front of microphones and cameras, they can applaud or complain about how things turned out after those days of euphoria. They are free to point out the achievements and disappointments, the benefits and the setbacks in these more than three decades. They earned the right to do so, without wearing any masks, with the blows of hammer and chisel.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on DW and is reproduced under license from the author.
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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.
Political prisoners cling to those things that give them warmth, courage and strength to continue living.
File photo of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. / EFE/EPA/Yuri Kochetkov
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 22 October 2024 — A Cuban political prisoner, convicted during the Black Spring of 2003, told me that he had managed to obtain a tiny radio in prison, which he hid among his belongings and with which he could find out what was happening beyond the prison walls. One day, during an exhaustive search by the guards, this precious possession was found and confiscated. The prisoner was punished for having this small device with a beating and several days in solitary confinement.
The objects that prisoners hoard are part of the narrow universe in which they have been confined. If the person is also convicted for his ideas, the things that surround him in prison also become an emotional support and part of his growth as an activist. It is not for nothing that books, correspondence and everything that contains words and information are on the list of things most censored by the jailers. A volume with historical anecdotes, a novel about some faraway place or a compendium of reflections by political leaders helps to cope with loneliness and to mentally escape from the rigors of confinement.
They were more than coats, spoons or blankets, they were real emotional lifesavers.
Several media outlets have recently published excerpts from the diary that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny wrote in prison. The dissident, who died last February, left behind a record of his daily life behind those walls, his fears and his hopes. In one of the passages he describes, the prisoners are preparing for the low temperatures in Siberia: “They gave us the standard padded jackets, fur hats and winter boots a few weeks ago.” Reading these details after the activist’s death is shocking because of the continue reading
helplessness and fragility of his situation. Each word he wrote behind bars thus transports us to the squalor of a prison that ended up being his tomb.
More than half a century earlier, in his book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the Russian Nobel Prize winner for Literature Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn recounted the shocking testimony of a prisoner in a Soviet labor camp. The captives’ belongings also play a leading role in this story. Isolated and deprived of their family contacts and professional environment, political prisoners clung to those objects that gave them warmth, encouragement, and the strength to continue living. When one of them died, their things became the comfort and support for some new arrival in those dark dungeons. They were more than coats, spoons, or blankets; they were true emotional lifelines.
Right now, in innumerable prisons across the planet, there are human beings who cling to a small possession that keeps them sane. Whether in Venezuela’s El Helicoide, in Cuba’s dreaded Villa Marista or in some remote penitentiary located in the Arctic Circle, a precariously carved piece of wood or a folded and hidden photo are a prisoner’s only connection to the world that beats on the other side of thick walls. They are, in the words of one poet, “the things that speak,” the objects that keep them sane and with hopes for freedom.
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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.
When Díaz-Canel is among the guests at the ceremony, it will be like a stinger piercing the pain of our migrants and political prisoners
López Obrador shared the podium with Díaz-Canel during the celebration of Independence Day / EFE
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 27 September 2024 — The incendiary controversy that has been unleashed between Mexico and Spain upon learning that King Felipe VI has not been invited to Claudia Sheinbaum’s inauguration has overshadowed the names of the leaders who have been invited to the October 1st ceremony. In the official list that has been released among the press, the name of Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel stands out, a figure frequently entertained in recent years by outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Raúl Castro’s successor has been a frequent guest at official ceremonies and public events in the neighboring country during this six-year term. In September 2021, a few weeks after the historic popular protests that shook the island on July 11 of that year, López Obrador not only hosted Díaz-Canel for several days but also shared the stage with him during the celebration of Independence Day in Mexico, the famous “Grito de Dolores.”
The rapprochement, which has served as a diplomatic buttress for the Havana regime, has also included economic support through large shipments of oil. In 2023, the Mexican state-owned company Pemex sent crude oil to Cuba worth close to 400 million dollars. López Obrador has also contributed to calming the criticisms from foreign ministries and governments in Latin America after the repression of the demonstrations that, shouting Freedom! and Homeland and Life!, swept through the Cuban streets more than three years ago. The Mexican leader has played an active role in diluting the accusations against Castroism for the more than a thousand political prisoners it holds in its prisons, the suffocation of independent journalism and for forcing so many activists and opponents into exile. continue reading
Mexican authorities have not even expressed their concern to the island for the thousands of Cubans forced to cross its territory.
Now, when the presidential replacement knocks on the door of the founder of the Morena party, Sheinbaum’s assumption of power seems to be marked by the same imprint of the elderly leader towards the authoritarianism imposed in Cuba more than six decades ago. The winks between both governments, the complacency in the face of the excesses of the Palace of the Revolution in Havana and the complicit silence in the face of the misdeeds of the Castro regime will continue to be the tone that will mark the relationship between both countries. In this diplomacy of complicity, the Mexican authorities have not even conveyed their concern to the Island’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the thousands of Cubans forced to cross their territory escaping from their country due to the lack of freedoms and the chronic crisis that grips their lives.
Next Tuesday, when Miguel Díaz-Canel appears among the faces of the guests at the official ceremony that will open Claudia Sheinbaum’s term, it will be like a stinger piercing the pain of our migrants, political prisoners and victims of official intolerance. Will the Mexican president ever apologize for this offense? Will she be willing to change the course of a bilateral relationship that only enthrones authoritarianism? Does she think that time will make us forget the names of those who supported the dictator who muzzles us?
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Editor’s note: This article was originally published on DW and is reproduced under license from the author.
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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.
Castroism has shown that the times of greatest scarcity are not the scenarios that most threaten its power
Ideological radicalization is noticeable these days and is growing at the same rate as inflation and despair. / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 23 September 2024 — The drip drip drip of bad news for Cubans does not stop. Within just a few days, the authorities announced the reduction in the size of the bread rolls sold in the rationed market; the energy deficit has escalated to a point where blackouts in many provinces exceed 12 hours a day; and the lack of water affects more than a million people throughout the island. Faced with such a scenario, citizens are wondering to what extent the situation could deteriorate in the coming months and what the government is willing to do to stop its fall.
Seen from outside, the crisis that Cubans are experiencing could be seen as the final stretch of a political and economic model that will end up imploding. However, Castroism has shown, over the course of six decades, that the moments of greatest scarcity and desperation are not precisely the scenarios that most threaten its power. The most difficult periods for ordinary people are the times the regime takes advantage of to tighten controls and reinforce its authoritarian discourse. This ideological radicalization can be perceived these days and grows in the same measure as do inflation and despair.
Analysts who have been wrong in successive predictions of an opening are once again venturing to predict that, faced with a lack of resources, the Plaza of the Revolution will have to embark on the path of reforms. But the signals that the Cuban government has given in recent weeks point in another direction: an offensive against private businesses. Faced with the imposition of price caps on certain basic products, and an army of inspectors fining merchants who do not accept the new regulations or who are too slow in implementing electronic payments, the private sector finds itself on alert. continue reading
The signals that Cuban leaders have given in recent weeks point in another direction: an offensive against private businesses
There is also no progress in the area of civil liberties. More than a thousand political prisoners remain incarcerated, a good number of whom demonstrated during the Island-wide ’11J’ mass protests of 11 July 2021. The demand for an amnesty that would allow these prisoners to return home has been met with deafness by a government that has opted for exemplary punishment rather than a conciliatory and magnanimous gesture. Added to this is the imminent entry into force of a new Communications Law that will further narrow the space for independent journalists and intensify the reprimands for those who publish dissenting content on social media.
Described in this way, if the current situation continues, it would seem like a suicidal path for the regime itself, which will end up provoking a new social explosion if it persists in its stubborn control over every corner of the country’s economic and political life. But, in its logic of surviving at any price, the Cuban leadership believes that any opening will be read as weakness, and allowing a small space for dissent could weaken its authority. The leaders of the Communist Party are willing to witness, from their comfortable seats, the national ruin rather than publicly recognize their inability to solve the problems of the Island and allow the emergence of new political actors.
The mansions of the olive-green bosses avoid the stench of the garbage dumps that grow on every corner of Havana, and their swimming pools are filled with water even though thousands of families only receive it from tanker trucks once every two or three weeks. There is no shortage of food on their tables, the size of their bread has not shrunk, and the lamps above their heads do not go dark due to the lack of fuel. Surrounded by privileges, the military leaders can hold on to the ship’s helm much longer. It remains to be seen how the people react to a worsening of the crisis: by taking to the streets to change the course of the nation or by taking to the sea to escape from Cuba.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on DW and is reproduced under license from the author.
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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.
They are not driven by the desire for economic improvement, because they have lived for years in the bubble of receiving remittances in foreign currency
Trash and stagnant water in the in the Luyanó neighborhood in Havana. / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 7 September 2024 — She decided to pack her bags in less than 24 hours. It was a Tuesday. Gladys had gone out with a friend and left her house “as always, tightly locked.” When she returned, the door of the apartment on Ayestarán Street in the municipality of Cerro had been forced and the television, a cordless phone, some food in the refrigerator and other personal belongings had disappeared. “That same day I called my son in Miami and told him to get me the [humanitarian] parole,” she recalls.
After several weeks of police investigation, the pensioner has lost hope that the thieves will be caught and has had to ask a niece to stay overnight with her. “I’m afraid to be at home, that had never happened to me before, but now when I’m alone I even get palpitations. You can’t live like this.” The insecurity that is spreading throughout the island has become, in recent years, a new reason for emigrating.
Gladys was one of those who swore up and down that she did not want to start a new life in another country, far from the house where she was born 67 years ago. “I lived comfortably, because if I asked my son to fly away, he would send me away, but it is no longer a question of money, I am leaving because the next time they come into my house, if I am inside, they will kill me.” This week she auctioned off some appliances and, with the parole already approved, she is only waiting for the travel permit to get on the plane. continue reading
Low crime was portrayed for decades as one of the social achievements of the political model imposed in Cuba 65 years ago. Like all authoritarianism, with an extensive network of controls, vigilantes, informers, political police and repressive bodies, the Havana regime was very effective in detecting and neutralizing criminal groups, gangs and even lone wolves planning a robbery or some other misdeed. Security was, according to an independent journalist, a collateral benefit of the dictatorship.
You avoid going out at night, you look over your shoulder when you hear footsteps behind you and you hide your cell phone in your underwear
However, that sensation that one could walk through any Cuban neighborhood in the early morning without fear of being assaulted or murdered has long since disappeared. Doors and windows have been covered with bars, people keep a machete, a crowbar or a metal pipe somewhere in their house to defend themselves from any invasion by thieves and scoundrels. People avoid going out at night, look over their shoulders when they hear footsteps behind them and hide their cell phone in their underwear to avoid it being snatched away.
We Cubans live on tenterhooks, and not just because of insecurity.
Edwin woke up with pain all over his body and a fever. He had been suffering from constant mosquito bites for several days due to a huge pool of stagnant water in the corner of his building that has served as a breeding ground for the Culex insect and the gnats that fly freely through the Havana neighborhood of Lawton where he lives. “I spent almost a month without being able to even get out of bed,” he explains.
“When I felt worse, I decided to go to the Polyclinic, but that day there was no doctor on duty, only a nurse trying to care for almost ten patients with similar symptoms.” Edwin had tried, by every possible means, not to get infected: “I live locked up, I have air conditioning, mesh on the windows, I never go out at dawn or dusk, which they say is when mosquitoes bite the most, because at 71 years old and with diabetes, any illness can become quite complicated for me.”
But the game of hide and seek didn’t work. “I caught the Oropouche and I had a tough time.” Lying down, with shivers running through his body, one thought kept coming back to him: “I can’t stay in this country, where there aren’t even any aspirin.” When the virus allowed him to get up, he started selling some electrical appliances and auctioned off his Lada car. “I already have the money for the ticket to Spain. Years ago I got my passport through my father and my daughter lives in Madrid, so I’m leaving.”
Epidemiological problems and the deterioration of the Public Health system have been, in his case, the main reasons for leaving the Island. “The puddle on the corner will still be there and I can’t lock myself in a glass box so the mosquitoes don’t bite me and the next time I go to the Polyclinic, there won’t even be a nurse because she left on a raft.”
A year ago, neither Gladys nor Edwin had any plans to live anywhere else, but this summer they had reached their “breaking point.” They were not driven by the desire for better economic conditions, because both have lived for years in the bubble of receiving remittances in foreign currency and enjoying their own home. They packed their bags to escape the violence and unsanitary conditions. It is the knives and filth that are the reason they are shortly boarding a plane.
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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.
14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, 22 March 2025 — Things are bad for the press when newspapers themselves become the protagonists of the daily news. In recent weeks, we’ve witnessed an avalanche of headlines about funding cuts to many of the media outlets in Latin America that have gained audiences and prestige for their reporting. The paralyzation of activities by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has put in check the work of thousands of reporters, editors, and audiovisual professionals throughout the region.
