Category: Zunilda Mata

The UIC carries part of the heavy burden of the “revolutionary organizations” founded primarily in the sixties. Despite which it expects to be flexible, bold, connected and committed to its time, as well as demanding fidelity to the principals of the Revolution, as was clear from the day of its founding.

Some 200 delegates participating in the Constituent National Assembly of the UIC signed its Code of Ethics, which governs the behavior of affiliated professional. The principals range from ensuring compliance with the laws, to maintaining strict confidentiality of information that comes to them through their work.

Ailyn Febles Estrada, president of the Organizing Committee of the UIC said that this organization will be “self-financed and non-profit.” In its statutes it specifies that it has legal standing and its own assets and that its legal seat is in the province of Havana.

In the opening act, where many government officials participated led by Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, the National Council and the Board were presented. Several speakers noted that this is the first organization founded in the 21^st century.

The news has caused barely any reaction in the information sector, which is dedicated mainly to developing custom applications and software and installing programs on smartphones, tablets and computers.

Also attending the meeting were members of the entity’s Standing Committee on Community Culture, Heritage and Traditions and representatives of the Ministry of Culture, which called for transforming the “citizen and his environment” through art. Miguel Barnet, president of UNEAC, considered this as the artists’ ” biggest challenge.”

As a solution to the escalating violence in Cuban streets and the moral impoverishment of the population, authorities in the arts called for more “hard work” and “strengthening the identity and culture of the country.”

Several of those attending the meeting, among them writers, playwrights and theater and television actors, were concerned about the social situation in the country. The consumption of audiovisual materials, which a number of people described as “violent without artistic values,” was also a focus of the discussions in which “the weekly packet” was sharply criticized.

Criticism also fell on artists, with participants noting that “there is insufficient level of preparedness” to carry forward the “community cultural work,” and that there is often “limited awareness” of this type of project at the neighborhood level.

Members of UNEAC have reported an increase in violence in recent months, and they are asking for effective measures against crime. In the city of Camagüey, the intellectual Pedro Armando Junco is leading an initiative to apply stricter penalties against perpetrators of murder.

The death of his son, the rocker Mandy at the hands of a gang with knives, last May, has led Junco to believe that “the only way to eradicate the violence in the streets” is “to punish severely those responsible for a case of this magnitude.

Clashes between gangs are happening more and more frequently in different neighborhoods of Havana, where families are often left to mourn a victim who was killed.

These groups, such as the one that calls itself Los Desaforaos (The Outlaws) and an increasingly popular composed of girls who identify themselves as Las Apululu, are composed of children who are often under 14. The gang members often have a very strong sense of identity and commitment to the group, which revolves around two or three older leaders, more experienced in the art of street fighting.

The market stalls show the effects of the increased demand. Every day 5,000 tourists visit Viñales, slightly more than one-sixth of the number of residents. They come looking for products like fresh fruit, lobster, shrimp, rum, beer and, of course, the local tobacco. “Sometimes we have to go to other towns to find papayas and oranges for breakfast,” says a woman who rents rooms to tourists.

She acknowledges, however, that she is “happy” with the surge of visitors. “Bring more, we’re profiting,” she repeats a very popular phrase exuding optimism, although she would like to improve the town’s infrastructure, “to solve these bottlenecks.”

There are 60 private sector restaurants in the Viñales valley with a high demand for vegetables, fruits and meats. A good share of them are supplied by the illegal market and buy directly from the farmers. “We only have imported beer,” says a sign outside one private restaurant. The local beers, Cristal and Bucanero “are not available because the ‘yumas’ [foreigners] arrive very thirsty,” a waiter comments jokingly.

A few yards away, a young man offers horseback rides through the valley for five convertible pesos for twenty minutes. “All my animals are busy now,” he tells some Canadians want a little cross country trot. “I’m full up, you’ll have to wait for the ones making the tour now to return.” The man started with four horses, and now has nine and is expecting to have fifteen this year.

In Havana, Obispo Street is buzzing at two on a Saturday afternoon. Some pedestrians choose parallel streets such as O’Reilly or Obrapia to avoid the crowds. Tour groups walk slowly with their guides, stopping to take pictures and marveling at an old woman smoking an enormous cigar or a woman dressed up in colonial-era clothing.

The whole place seems like a great Tower of Babel with the different languages heard. Among the millions of visitors who came to the island last year were some 125,000 Canadians, 36,000 Germans, 35,000 French, 32,000 British, 30,000 Spaniards and 26,000 Italians, among other nationalities.

With the beginning of Air China flights, there are also a lot of Chinese tourists beginning to arrive. “I can’t complain,” says Lucia, who rents two rooms near Plaza Vieja in the historic center. “Last year my rooms were occupied almost the whole time. I have spent a long time in this arena and have never seen anything like it,” she said.

The problem, points out the self-employed woman, has been that “the supplies in the stores and the markets haven’t kept up.” Her family has had to search everywhere to buy toilet paper, milk, soap and alcoholic or sweetened drinks, these latter to fill “the minibars in the rooms,” she said.

“Sometimes we have to go out at the crack of dawn to guarantee that there is bread for breakfast,” details Lucia. “This neighborhood has collapsed, there is no way we can maintain quality service if we don’t have an improvement in supplies,” she points out. A simple stroll through the most important stores in the area, among them the centrally located Harris Brothers, confirms her words.

“No, we haven’t had small bottles of water for weeks,” says a clerk on the ground floor when asked about that product. “They are bought by the boxful by the people who rent rooms,” she adds. The same thing happens with “beer, large bottles of Cola, and toilet paper,” she emphasizes.

Old Havana still has its chronic problems of water supply, and with the flood of customers in state and private accommodations, the prices charged by the water trucks have also risen. “There are days when even 20 CUC isn’t enough to get my water tank filled,” comments Lucia.

For Maria del Pilar Macias Rutes, general director of Quality and Operations of the Ministry of Tourism, there is “a challenge to continue to improve quality systems in order to meet the demands of the boom in tourism,” she declared this week on national television. Among them, are “programs to improve the situation in food and beverages, entertainment and shopping,” she explained.

“Havana can’t take any more,” jokes the keeper of a private restaurant near Havana Bay when asked about the volume of foreign visitors who come to his place. “We have already renovated three floors in the place and we still can’t cope,” the man comments proudly, dressed like a gentleman of the eighteenth century to attract more tourists.

The increase in visitors is also noticeable in the availability of transport. A couple of years ago there were few people waiting at the Havana Bus Tour stops, but now the lines are almost like those “for the buses to go to work,” laughs the driver of one of these double-deck buses. For five convertible pesos, the route provides a two-hour tour of the main tourist sites in the city.

The country currently has just over 60,000 rooms, of which 66.5% are in four- and five-star hotels. By 2020 there are expected to be 85,500 rooms with international standards, according to the Minister of Tourism, Manuel Marrero, but the signs are that the growth will have to be faster than programmed. For 2016 barely 3,700 tourist rooms will be added, and 5,600 will be renovated or improved, particularly in Havana, Varadero and Northern Keys.

In the private sector, there is a total of 28,634 licensed housing units, rooms and spaces, but some of them are intended for Cubans or are premises rented for services.

Nor do the airport terminals escape the congestion and saturation of passengers. In the Havana airport, travelers can expect to wait between an hour-and-a-half to two hours from the time their plane lands until they get out the door with their suitcases. The lines at the passport checkpoints “at times are so long they almost stretch to the steps of the plane” says a customs worker.

Customers complain about the stifling heat while waiting at the baggage claim because the air conditioning in Terminal Three, the most modern in the country, barely cools the room. “There is no toilet paper in the bathrooms, and no place to even buy a bottle of water here,” a recently arrived Argentine tourist complained this weekend.

The situation could worsen throughout the year, during which the number of visitors is expected to exceed 3.7 million, according to Deputy Minister of Tourism Mayra Garcia Alvarez; this would be 175,200 more tourists than last year.

Just outside the Havana airport the taxi drivers no longer fight for customers, it is the latter who have to try to get to one of the Panataxis as they are approaching the terminal from the street. Two men were arguing over a cart to carry their luggage. “I saw it first,” protested one, with a French accent. Finally he managed to hang on to it, but it had a broken wheel.

Night falls and tourists are pouring out of the airport to visit a country that cannot cope with meeting their expectations.

With a simple and intuitive interface, Zapya is available in Android and iOS versions. Its programmers boast of having exceeded 300 million users worldwide, thanks to a Chinese version that is gaining popularity among users in the Asiatic giant.

Its intuitive design makes Zapya an easy-to-use tool, with files received at an approximate speed of 10 MB per second.

For Epiphany, the traditional Christmas gift-giving day in Cuba, many children asked for “a tablet with Zapya,” which led other Cuban parents to have to deal with installing the application on their own devices. The tool has many followers in elementary schools, where the children amuse themselves exchanging songs and videos and where many teachers have started a full-out battle against the application.

“At my daughter’s school bringing phones is banned, because they spend the whole day playing games and sending little messages,” comments the mother of a nine-year-old in Havana’s Plaza district. When her daughter heads to class she goes to the park to “zapya,” explains the mother, using the word as a verb, which is spreading in popular speech.

The most attractive part of the application is the chat function, which allows the exchange of messages free, and without needing access to the internet. “This is driving the teachers crazy, because the students use it to mock the teachers, fall in love, and even send each other the answers to the tests,” says Mirtha, the mother of a teenager in high school.

In Wifi zones the use of Zapya is also proliferating. “I come, I start to download what interests me, and I’m going to send it to several friends,” says Ivan, 19, who was connected in Havana’s La Rampa area this weekend to download “videogame tricks.”

Zapya has gained ground thanks to its distribution in the so-called “weekly packet” that circulates throughout the country. Along with anti-virus updates, and other applications for smartphones, the tool has managed to reach a wide audience that uses it as a substitute for WhatsApp, because you don’t have to be connected to the web to use it.

At the end of 2015, State telecommunications industry authorities claimed that 150,000 Cubans connect to the Internet in public wifi areas every day, but the island is still among the countries with the lowest rates of connectivity in the world; only 5% of population is on-line (and only slightly over 1% are using broadband).

Among the many ways to overcome these obstacles, Zapya is today one of the most creative and popular applications. Ease of use, privacy and its ability to operate offline are keys to its success among Cubans.

The measure was expected after an experiment that started earlier this month in Artemisa province, with the sale of agricultural products at “a maximum fixed value” by the Provincial Administrative Council.

In Havana, the controlled prices have not been extended to the majority of markets managed by the state farms and cooperatives. “This market has been one of the first to test the experiment,” said a vendor at the market administered by officials of the EJT.

The young man, whose stall was selling pineapples, yucca and other products, seemed apologetic at having to charge a customer 2.80 Cuban pesos (CUP) for a pound of guavas. The same quantity of product hadn’t dropped below 20 CUP at the end of last year. “This can’t last long, because eight guavas for six pesos can’t be maintained,” the employee complained.

A very different picture was developing in the central market of Egido, managed by private sellers and intermediaries. Since the beginning of the week a pound of red beans has held steady at 16 CUP and pork hasn’t fallen below 50 CUP for months. Despite the high prices, the quality of the merchandise attracted dozens of buyers on Tuesday.

“We’ll see how long they keep it up,” comments Gerardo, a truckdriver who brings goods from private farms in Alquizar to the well-known market. “Since the beginning of the year they’re making our lives hell on the highway,” he says, referring to the escalation of police controls on all the trucks carrying farm products and trying to enter the capital.

“Now we even have to show proof that we bought the fuel legally,” complains Gerardo, who says “with these decisions prices are going to shoot up.”

Next to him, a customer was shocked by taro at 15 CUP a pound, threatening to leave “for the EJT” but ending up buying it there. “A ride from Boyeros and Tulipan costs me 10 CUP. What I’ll save on one thing I’ll spend on another. Anyway, the quality isn’t the same, here it is always better because ‘the master’s eye fattens the horse’,” she concludes.

Television has accompanied the price controls with reports blaming intermediaries for the rise in prices. An appeal recently published by the National Union of Agricultural and Forestry Workers called for the total elimination of intermediaries saying that this would “contribute to a lowering of prices.”

Havana residents are in the midst of a silent price war between the State and private vendors which has almost completely eliminated from the urban landscape an element they has already become common: vendors with rolling carts. These improvised “kiosks with wheels” bring access to agricultural markets to distant places and offer their goods house-to-house.

Julia, who lives at Espada and San Lazaro Streets, says she is willing to pay “when I see a cart in the street.” With a bedriddem mother, she comments that she doesn’t have “the time or money to go a long way to buy food.”

Tato, one of the cart vendors who for years has sold near the park at Infanta and San Lazaro, was sitting on a wall this Tuesday with his legendary cart. “The inspectors they send take everything, the police won’t let us live anymore,” he says. He says the suppliers have had their goods confiscated on the roads entering the city.

The old man is convinced that what is happening now has been ordered by Raul Castro. “But let’s see how long the joke of controlled prices lasts,” he says.

Meanwhile, a young employee at the EJT market cajoled a girl looking undecidedly at pineapples. “Buy them now, my girl, you don’t know when they’ll run out. It’s the right gift for Epiphany, just a little late.”

The most recent studies warn that Cuban women are increasing their consumption of alcohol. The share of men who drink is 47% while for women it is more than 19%. In the case of women, they suffer greater rejection, being in a macho society, and they wait longer to seek expert help.

Experts also warn that alcohol does more harm to women because they have less body fluid than men. The saturation or condensation of substances in the body is higher and the level of toxicity faster and more intense for women.

A survey in 2014 showed that consumption before age 15 is more common in men than women, with rates of 11% vs. 3% respectively.

Alcoholism is among the top ten causes of death in Cuba. In late 2015, a report form the National Transportation Directorate detailed that in that year in Cuba, 17 people had lost their lives and more than 140 were injured in traffic accidents where it was shown that some of the parties had higher levels of alcohol than permitted.

Urban areas have the highest rates of alcohol consumption, both for men and women, but overall the highest rates were recorded in the central region of the country, where 53% of men are drinkers.

Education also influences consumption, as women with higher levels of education levels consumed more alcohol, some 24% more than those with the least schooling. Among men, however, the opposite phenomenon occurs and the highest percentage of drinkers is among those with little education.

Health officials are calling on the Community Mental Health Centers and specialized consultations in polyclinics to make a call to help those in need of treatment or counseling for alcohol issues.

There are more than 200 Alcoholics Anonymous groups in the country, with the entry of that organization into Cuba dating back to 1993; they mainly hold their meetings in facilities provided by Catholic and evangelical churches.

This year ONAT has added the ability for taxpayers to send the main form, known as DJ-08, by email. The move could speed up receipt of the document and guarantee that it reaches the right hands, instead of getting lost in the inefficient Cuban postal service.

However, the improvements announced are not enough for people like Claribel, who for most of her life only heard about taxes as an evil of the capitalist past. For her, filling out the declaration presents obstacles almost impossible to overcome. “Next year I’ll hire someone to help me even though I will have to give them give part of my earnings,” she says.

Mairell Naranjo offers financial advice to small private businesses and also handles all of the license holder’s ONAT paperwork. Her specialty is the payment of monthly and quarterly taxes, plus the preparation of the tax return.

Services like those offered by Naranjo are well received among the the country’s 496,400 self-employed. Computerized tools that help keep track of a business and accurately calculate profits and taxes have also begun to be available.

Under the name Cuentapro, a tax program sold on the informal market that allows “efficient management of accounts,” according to Alexander, the young man who created it. It keeps a thorough record of payments to employees, costs for buying goods, and un-taxed earnings, letting the self-employed person know “what goes into our pocket and what we have to give ONAT,” says one of the sellers of the software.

Like every year, those who meet their tax obligations before 28 February will be entitled to a discount of 5%. Last year, only 67% of taxpayers filed for this benefit.

In 2015, the gross income declared by the self-employed totaled 3.825 billion Cuban pesos. This represented an increase of one billion over the previous year. However, 68,000 taxpayers were called to account by ONAT for declaring incomes below those estimated by the tax administration itself.

Among the activities with the greatest weight in the private sector are preaparing and selling food, with 56,270 licenses granted; the transport of freight and passengers with 50,482 self-employed workers; and the leasing of houses, rooms and spaces with a total of 28,634 self-employed people.

These occupations are followed by telecommunication agents, which total 24,195 across the island, while contract workers total 114,000, 22% of self-employed Cubans.

In its report, the ministry states that of the total number of people authorized to be self-employed, at least 17% are paid by the state sector. Youth and women account for 30% of all self-employed in the country and retirees represent 12%.

At present, there are just over 200 activities approved for this type of non-state labor. The high taxes, the absence of a wholesale market, the excessive controls and the inability to import commercial goods, hinder the performance of the sector.

The decrease in the number of self-employed could be interpreted as hitting the “natural limit” in self-employment since the flexibilities initiated in 2010. However, specialists at the Ministry of Labor and Social Security expect the number to grow “gradually,” and that added to this form of management will be “a set of dining establishments and services to the population” that will remain under state ownership.

As revealed to the press by Manuel Santos, a department official in Villa Clara, centers for the processing and sale of food, including snack bars, restaurants, coffee shoos and workers dining rooms, have been affected by the preventive measures.

Another of the most common infractions is committed by employees who serve food with their hands, without correctly using protective clothing designed for kitchens and food service. To this is added the placing of raw meat near sausages and smoked meats, increasing the risk of salmonella, a disease caused by a bacterium that causes severe diarrhea, vomiting and headache.

The drought affecting the country has aggravated the problems in hygiene in many places serving food, as their water supply has diminished in recent months. Other difficulties, including acquiring detergent, transport, and appropriate refrigeration equipment affect both government and private businesses.

Health standard violations storing, handling and preparation of food put consumers’ health at risk. First Deputy Health Minister Jose Angel Portal Miranda confirmed in the National Assembly, last December, that acute diarrheal diseases had decreased by 13.5% in 2015 over the previous year, but not as much as in 2014 when they were down 25.6% compared to 2013.

In recent weeks television has reinforced messages urging consumers to avoid eating foods that have not been properly protected, or that have some into contact with dust or flies. The adds alert staff not to handle food with the same hand that touches money.

The limited number of models available and the high prices for cellphones in the State stores contrasts with the diversity offered by the informal market. While the illegal networks offer latest generation models and operating systems that support the installation of apps, the “Telepuntos” of the Telecommunications Company of Cuba SA (ETECSA) display a limited supply of outdated models at prohibitive prices.

“We have everything, original and Chinese imitations of almost all the phone models on the market,” says “El Micky,” a technology seller exhibiting his wares in a doorway on centrally located Carlos III Street in Havana. “Most buyers are looking for touch phones, although we also have simpler models with large keys, targeted more towards older people,” the young man explains.

Prices in the black market vary according to the performance of the device. “We have them from 15 CUC (under $20), to the iPhone 6 Plus, which is hard to find for under 450 CUC,” El Micky elaborates, adding that the most popular are the ones with removable micro SD memory because customers want, “to put their own music or videos on the phone, or save files.”

State phone offerings are a very different picture. Currently the only models available cost more than 50 CUC, are made by Alcatel, and feature technology several years out-of-date.

“Few people buy these phones, because right there in the doorway there are illegal vendors selling something cheaper and of better quality,” an employee of a State Telepunto located in the Miramar Trade Center told 14ymedio. On the other side of the window two men with a backpack where whispering what they had for sale, among them the latest Samsung Galaxy phones which just appeared in the international market.

Last Tuesday, Cuban television also addressed this issue through a report presented by journalist Manuel Lazaro Alonso. Yisel Fernandez, head of ETECSA’s marketing department, said in the program that they are selling “about five different cell phone models ranging from 37 to 166 CUC.”

State prices are related to “the quality of the products we sell. Our company is charged, of course, with finding phones with better features, better benefits,” added Fernandez. Customers, however, do not feel the same.

“I also need a phone I can use to connect in the wifi zones, and these models won’t let me do that,” said a customer who, after waiting in a long line outside the Bishop Street Telepoint found that they had run out of the device he wanted.” I’ll have to check on Revolico [Cuba’s illegal “Craiglist”] to see what I can find,” concluded the young man.

The State telephone monopoly has never offered plans that include the phone when a customer contracts for service. “Here everything has to be paid for in advance, and they don’t offer any incentives,” complained José Manuel, a 47-year-old Spaniard working for a Cuban joint venture company. “I recently managed to change my pre-paid mobile for a contract plan, but I am able to do that because I am a foreigner with a work contract here, but Cubans can’t do it.”

The problems, however, don’t end with the purchase of the physical phone. Customers complain that there are few spare parts and limited services provided by the State-owned repair shops.

Since 2008, the year when Cubans were legally allowed to open a cell phone contract, prices to activate a line have been dropping. There have also been ​​some reductions in the cost per minute for national and international calls or for sending text messages, but cellphone service still remains a luxury for many people .

With the recent opening of the wifi hotspots that provide access to international e-mail and digital pages, the modernity and performance of handsets has become a determining factor. This is now the border that separates the true internaut from the disconnected Cuban.

Better economic rewards would contribute to reducing the movement to other work, most education professionals agree. Teachers have been waiting for years for a pay increase consistent with the effort they expend, but its coming has been postponed over and over.

“I have been putting off retiring, waiting for a raise, but I can’t wait any longer,” says Melba, 68, a fourth grade teacher in a Havana primary school. After more than three decades of work, the educator says she stays in her job “for love of the profession.” And she adds, “Many of my students today are the children of others I’ve had in the classroom, so I owe it to them.”

In 2014, workers in the public health sector were given a wage increase, some of them seeing a doubling of their salaries to more than 1,000 Cuban pesos a month, the equivalent of about $40 US. However, personnel in the Ministry of Education have not enjoyed a similar benefit.

The authorities in the sector have seized on student volunteers to fill the void left in classrooms by the continued migration of professionals towards better paid activities. More than 10,000 students are helping to meet the deficit in classroom teachers right now, the newspaper Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) reported last Wednesday.

Substitutes, however, fail to resolve the problem. “They do not come with sufficient preparation and do not last long in the job,” the director of a primary school in Havana’s Cerro district told 14ymedio. “Previously teachers loved their work and prepared the students in different subjects, as well as passing on ethical values, and this is harder and harder to find,” explained an official who asked to remain anonymous.

Yosvel, who served as a teacher of Spanish and literature for a decade, now manufactures footwear for the casual market. “I loved my job, but I love my family and I could no longer bring home the little I was earning,” he says. However, he says he is willing to return to his profession if a salary increase is decreed, because “this is the most beautiful job in the world.”

On the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, where thousands of Cubans throng on their way to the United States, Yordon “the prof” sleeps on a makeshift mattress. Born in Sancti Spiritus and trained in the pedagogical institute in his province, he spent four years teaching teach math at a junior high school, but now longs “to work at least in construction in Miami.”

The exodus and desertions affect the whole country, although the situation is more difficult for teachers in the capital and in Matanzas province, according to Minister of Education Ena Elsa Velázquez Cobiella. Education authorities call for a greater sacrifice and awareness from teachers, but the slogans do not seem sufficient to keep them in front of the blackboard.

In a message sent by the minister for Educator’s Day, she calls on teachers to march “in the vanguard embracing the future.” She adds, “The success of our socialism will depend largely on what we are capable of doing.” The text was read at the morning assembly at countless Cuban schools this morning, a few minutes before the teachers entered the classrooms to share a piece of cake and refreshments.

“Today is one of those days when I was glad I hadn’t asked to retire, but the rest of the year I think about it all the time,” says Melba, whose students, this Tuesday, have brought her gifts ranging from scented soaps to a pen-shaped USB flash drive.