TRANSLATORS – Page 194 – Translating Cuba

Did the Cuban Economy Grow 2.2% in 2018?

The shortage of agricultural products was one of the most evident signs of the economic crisis that deepened at the end of last year and that still extends over the whole Island. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez, Havana, July 15, 2019 — Many economists have been seized by incredulity at the official announcement that Cuba’s Gross Domestic Product recorded an increase of 2.2% in 2018, almost double the 1.2% published last December by the same authorities.

In his speech last Saturday before Parliament, president Miguel Díaz-Canel took a surprising turn when he declared that “after concluding the calculations and reconciliations of the levels of activity that determine the performance of the economy,” they had reached the conclusion that the results had been better than expected and that the GDP had grown by 2.2%.

The change was owed mainly to the performance of the construction, public health, and agricultural sectors, according to the state-owned Cuban News Agency (ACN). Several economists call these figures into question, noting the complex economic situation of the second half of 2018, especially with the food shortages. continue reading

The economist Pedro Monreal questioned the method followed to raise the GDP. “The revision of the growth of agriculture to 2.6% is noteworthy, it radically modifies a previous estimate of a decrease of -4.9%. It’s a big variation of 7.5 points,” he pointed out.

The shortage of agricultural products was one of the most evident signs of the economic crisis that worsened at the end of last year and still extends over the whole Island. In December pork reached 70 CUP per pound in some markets in the Cuban capital, despite the government’s attempt to force it down by imposing price caps.

Monreal appeals to the figures recently published by the National Office of Statistics (ONEI) and which don’t seem to fit with the new results. “A few days ago chapter 9 of the Statistical Yearbook of 2018 had been published with information on agriculture. Those statistics were not expressed in value, but rather in physical indicators and they seemed to indicate a not very optimistic trend.”

The economist Elías Amor goes a step further in his criticism. “After the disastrous balance made previously, they’re declaring that the economy grew double what was predicted. Is that how they intend to get credibility? What are the reasons for this statistical, or perhaps political, fraud?” he writes in his blog Cubaeconomía.

Amor recalls that “since 2007 there hasn’t been recorded a polemic like this in the data on the Cuban economy. (…) At the moment, we are not going to accept the 2.2% growth in 2018. There is no reason for it,” specifies the economist, who lives in Spain.

The opinion of both specialists coincides with the warning given by the economist Carmelo Mesa-Lago in February during the Conference on Cuban and Cuban-American Affairs at Florida International University. Then, the University of Pittsburgh professor emeritus emphasized that the Island’s economy is in its worst moment since the 1990s.

Mesa-Lago also recalled that in 2006, when Raúl Castro took power, the government announced a GDP growth of 12.3%. “But it had been gradually declining until in 2018 it fell to 1.2%,” he said in reference to the figure that was modified this Saturday. “The figures become complicated,” according to Mesa-Lago, with the fact that the fiscal deficit jumped from 3.2% in 2007 to 8.7% ten years later.

On social media, users also criticized the new figure for GDP and made jokes about it. On Twitter, a user identified as Conodrum lamented that “the worst thing isn’t that they lie but that some in the hierarchy believe the lies and act in accordance with them.” While Mario J. Pentón wrote ironically on Facebook: “We have always heard that the Cuban Government puts makeup on its growth figures. This is no longer makeup, it’s total plastic surgery.”

Nor were jokes lacking among customers of the agricultural market on San Rafael street, one of the most important in Havana. “Now, yes, we have an abundant GDP, to fill the platforms, the plate, and the eyes,” laughed a lady who had come in search of an avocado but decided to leave with her bag empty when she saw the price: 15 CUP each (roughly 60¢ US, in a country with an average monthly wage of about $30).

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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The 14ymedio team is committed to serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time by becoming a member of 14ymedio. Together we can continue to transform journalism in Cuba.

AMLO and Uncertainty

The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. (EFE)

14ymedio, Carlos A. Montaner, Miami, July 14, 2019 — Mexico is trembling. It occurs every once in a while. AMLO is the acronym for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, its president. The word that best describes all that is happening there is “uncertainty.” No one knows what could happen. When societies are in this situation, generally the worst occurs. The cloudy forecast paralyzes investment and influences negative outcomes. Mexicans overwhelmingly elected a peculiar personage and there will be consequences there.

The stock market and the peso have fallen. Carlos Urzúa, a notable economist, moderate and reasonable, resigned from AMLO’s cabinet and the fire started. He was, until a few days ago, the Minister of Finance. Like well-mannered suicides he wrote a letter in which he explained, more or less, his reasons. Evidently, he has not killed himself. He’s returning to academia, which is a form of taking one’s own life, at least the public one.

AMLO is a person comfortably installed in the past. He wants to develop Mexico with the political vision of 1906, 113 years ago. But his model is the general Lázaro Cárdenas, nationalizer and anti-imperialist, who occupied the presidency in the six-year term of 1934 to 1940, a mere 85 years ago. That foolishness appears in the papers of the MORENO sect, created by López Obrador to aspire to the presidency. continue reading

Another crazy idea. Isn’t the tragic performance of Pemex, the state-owned petroleum company, enough for AMLO to understand that it makes no sense to promote once again the entrepreneur-state? The era of trying out nationalization was that of Cárdenas and it has already been seen where that led. Does AMLO realize that it is impossible to eradicate corruption by widening the perimeter of the State and giving officials greater discretion?

The terrible corruption in Mexico, begun in the colonial era, but exponentially increased during the Republic, is the result, precisely, of the nexus between the State and the productive apparatus. When AMLO affirms that in his Government “the long neoliberal night” ended, he is not only reiterating a corny, empty phrase that the epigones of the Forum of Sao Paulo (Hugo Chávez, Rafael Correa, Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega) were in the habit of repeating, but also demonstrating his incapacity to understand the disastrous relationship between public spending and good government.

What AMLO called “the long neoliberal night” was the result of the inflation, the loss in purchasing power of the currency, and the rampant corruption during the terms of Luis Echeverría (1970-1976) and José López Portillo (1976-1982). How is it possible that AMLO thinks, seriously, that the evils of our republics can be cured with a larger dose of state interventionism and control if those were, precisely, the evils that have traditionally poisoned our public life?

The good Governments of the first term of Óscar Arias in Costa Rica (1986-1990), of Luis Alberto Lacalle in Uruguay (1990-1995), of César Gaviria in Colombia (1990-1994), of Ernesto Zedillo in Mexico (1994-2000), of the second term of Carlos Andrés Pérez in Venezuela (1989-1993), and also of the fourth term of Víctor Paz Estenssoro (1985-1989), who started in the fifties leading the first populist project of Bolivia and, three decades later, put forward and carried out the first liberal Government of national salvation, were the result of the awful consequences of Keynesianism applied in Latin America.

On that list of benign reformers would have to be included the Argentinean Carlos Menem (1989-1999) because of his privatizations. If he had kept public spending under control, which would have prevented the devaluation of the peso and the subsequent evil history of the “corralitos,” a new day would have dawned in Argentina. Ultimately, he would have buried the disastrous Peronism and the band of Kirchner and her 40 thieves would have remained in their cave without reaching the Casa Rosada.

What happened in Latin America starting in the eighties and nineties was what happened in Israel with Likud’s arrival to power (1977), in England with Margaret Thatcher (1979), in the United States with the ascension of Ronald Reagan (1981), and in Switzerland with the triumph of Carl Bildt (1991). They put an end to the “long socialist night” (we allow ourselved to be corny in just vengeance), because the example of what was happening in Chile in the economic sphere was decisive, even though what was happening in the political sphere sickened us.

I conclude where I began: AMLO and uncertainty. If he does not improve he will do much damage to Mexico. I fear the worst. It’s what usually happens.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Artemisa Municipality Records up to 30 Admissions a Day for Dengue

Special school of San Cristóbal, Artemisa, which health authorities have equipped to hospitalize patients with dengue. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Bertha K. Guillén, San Cristóbal (Artemisa), 1 July 2019 — An outbreak of dengue keeps Public Health authorities on alert in San Cristóbal, in the province of Artemisa. Up until now seven people have been confirmed as carriers of the virus, but more than twenty are admitted under suspicion, as an official from the Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology in the province confirmed to 14ymedio.

“We are equipping an admitting room in the special school with a capacity for 40 people, there all the conditions are set up to avoid the illness being spread, the number of admissions suspected of dengue vary between 18 and 23 people daily, although in recent weeks we have reached up to 30,” said another employee of the Institute via telephone.

The symptoms of the dengue virus include rash, muscle and joint pain, migraine, and weakness. The illness can cause hemorrhage and requires hospitalization, especially if the patient has previously suffered the same ailment. continue reading

Last year the official press reported on the presence in the center of the Island of a “serotype of dengue” of which there had not been outbreaks reported since 1977 and which required extreme epidemiological measures. In Cuba there are four serotypes transmitted by the Aedes Aegypti mosquito present in the country.

San Cristóbal is currently the municipality of the Artemisa province with the greatest number of focal centers of mosquitos that transmit the disease, with around 68 detected in the month of May and another 49 in the first twelve days of the month of June, according to a note published in the provincial newspaper El Artemiseño.

The causes of the growth of the focal centers are attributed to the rains of these months that create a favorable environment for the proliferation of the mosquito, in addition to the lack of personnel to carry out sanitation campaigns and home inspections.

“Although these focal centers are localized, we have not yet been able to exterminate them, many have left this type of work to start their own businesses or work privately, here we don’t make enough, and at this point we no longer ’invent’,” Arsenio Rodríguez, one of the fumigators, explains to 14ymedio, using a common Cuban expression for figuring how to get by on very little. “This week some workers from other nearby municipalities will have to come to help control the situation.”

Rises in the number of people infected by the dengue virus are frequent in the summer months, especially in years with a lot of rain. In addition to the intense heat, in the summer season of 2019 high precipitation levels are being reported above historic averages, according to data provided by the Institute of Meteorology.

In the past few weeks medical students have been displaced from the classrooms to cover the deficit of workers. The young people must make inquiries through the whole community, especially in the zones where the principal focal points of the vector have been located.

“They told us that we would have to be very meticulous and also report any case with fever or symptoms that would suggest a dengue infection, in addition to collaborating with the sanitation work,” explains Susana Méndez, a student in the third year of medical school.

The causes of the increase of the focal point are attributed to the rains of these months that create an environment beneficial for the proliferation of the mosquito. (14ymedio)

Despite the risks many people prefer to go through the illness in their houses and not go to the doctor to not risk being admitted. Although the institutions guarantee they are in good conditions, there are problems in potable water supply and cleanliness and the facilities are in a deplorable state.

“This is still an old woman wearing blush, as they say, now it is a special school, but side by side it’s also a maternity waiting home, a primary school, and high school, before everything was only one thing, imagine so many people together in the same place,” says one of the ex-patients of the ward.

“The truth is that the water situation is really complicated, it comes on Friday for a while and until Monday we don’t see it again,” affirms María Eugenia, one of the nurses.

The doctors do not have a record of the real number of infected persons, “Everything is a question of statistics,” says one of the doctors in charge of the admitted patients who prefers to remain anonymous out of fear of reprisal.

“The patients enter with criteria for admittance out of suspicion of dengue, the follow-ups are done, and later we send specimens to the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine to do the analysis that confirms the diagnosis, but the results never reach our hands, they remain, presumably, in the National Institute of Hygiene, Epidemiology, and Microbiology,” he says.

The majority of the patients find out this confirmation weeks after the illness passes or they never end up receiving the official notification that they suffered from dengue.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Mystery Solved: Why Cubans Call Buses “Guagua”

The word “guagua,” which for Cubans means bus, comes from the English Wa & Wa Co. Inc (Washington, Walton, and Company Incorporated) which was the first United States factory to export buses to the island. The logo of Wa&Wa Co. Inc. was a white blue and red hare, colors of the American flag, and figured prominently on the front, back and sides of their buses.

Additional notes: The closest English approximation of the sound of the Cuban word “guagua” is “wawa.”

Source: Eagle eyed translator Norma Whiting. Thanks Norma!

Independent Journalism In Cuba: Flourishing But Underfunded / Ivan Garcia

Journalists from Latin America, Central America, and the Caribbean participate in the Investigative Journalism Workshop, organized by the Institute of the Americas on 10-14 November 2014, in San Diego, California. Representing Cuba was the independent journalist Iván García Quintero (back row, far left).

Iván García, 9 May 2019 — Around the mid-1990s, the cohort of official reporters taking the leap into unrestricted journalism in Cuba had — besides experience and media training — the privilege of typewriters at their disposal. Those just starting out in the world’s best occupation were hand-writing their articles in school notebooks.

Newbies would be tasked with reporting evictions, setting up interviews, or being gofers. Those who had been at it longer would sign the articles to be published later by some daily or website based in Florida. In 1995, when poet, writer, and journalist Raúl Rivero founded the Cuba Press agency, he opened the door to a handful of young people who lacked a journalism education but had the desire to learn and work.

To the rookie reporters, Raúl would assign brief write-ups, which after his meticulous review of spelling and style, would be replete with strike-throughs from his red pen that he kept in the pocket of his perennial blue denim shirt. Rivero would dress up the story and insert a compelling headline, never longer than five or six words. In the end, the text would emerge, infused with the literary flavor of his excellent compositions. continue reading

Twenty-four years later, Luis Cino, Jorge Olivera, Víctor Manuel Domínguez and I, among others of Raúl’s followers, continue to religiously publish two or more columns per week on several sites.

We learned that work culture and respect for the profession from dyed-in-the-wool journalists such as Raúl Rivero, Tania Quintero and Ana Luisa López Baeza (deceased in 2018 in exile). It was a time when the Internet sounded like science fiction. Articles would be read by telephone to someone in Miami who would record the texts and later upload them online.

At that time, at the start of the independent journalism movement, you had to climb a sort of military ladder. First, you had to learn to write longhand. Then, you had to master the heavy-duty typewriters made in East Germany. And when you were finally capable of writing a decent text, you could produce it on a laptop that was rotated among various journalists. In those hard years, the beginner reporter learned by doing.

In the spring of 2003, Fidel Castro made a gross mistake: he sent 75 peaceful opposition members, 27 of whom were independent journalists, to prison. He expected that, by jailing a third of those who dedicated themselves to writing freely, he would intimidate the rest. But from the Island there was no stopping the denunciations about repression, the political prisoners of the Group of 75, nor about the situation in Cuba or of Cubans – even if the texts were published unsigned.

Fear did not freeze the writing pens. In November 2007, a group of journalists headed by Juan González Febles y Luis Cino founded Primavera Digital (Digital Spring), an openly anti-Castro weekly. Others continued sending their articles to Cubanet, Cubaencuentro, Revista de la Fundación Hispano-Cubana, and the Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa website.

Some months before, in April of 2007, following the success of the Generación Y blog created by Yoani Sánchez, other oppositional blogs began multiplying. Dozens of bloggers irrupted into digital journalism. Starting in 2012, the incessant trickle of journalists quitting their positions in state media has been unstoppable. As of today, the independent (or free, or alternative – whatever you want to call it) press has grown impressively.

To the more than 200 reporters who, on their own and at their own risk systematically write from Cuba on political, social, cultural, ecological or sports-related topics, we must add newspapers, magazines, Facebook accounts, YouTube channels, and other online platforms.

Also administered from the Island are Primavera Digital, 14ymedio, Periodismo de Barrio, Postdata Club, La Joven Cuba, El Estornudo, El Toque, and Vistar Magazine, among others. Ignacio González of En Caliente Prensa Libre, headquartered in Havana, and Rolando Rodríguez Lobaina of Palenque Visión, located in the eastern zone of the Island, lead audiovisual agencies that are notable for their social protests.

Almost all free communicators lambast the government. Others demand democratic changes, but they recognize and accept the status quo. The biggest problem faced by sites edited in Cuba is monetary. Periodismo de Barrio is the only one that transparently informs the public how it receives and spends its funding, which isn’t much.

The lack of regular cash flow when it’s time to pay contributors for their work, and of the minimum financing needed in journalism, puts the brakes on various projects. Journalistic investigations and in-depth reporting are expensive: they tend to be team efforts, they can last for months, and occasionally require travel to other locations, provinces or countries. With no access to bank credits, the new independent journalism presents a great many difficulties for self-management, growth, and solvency.

The majority of independent journalists in Cuba survive by writing for sites whose editorial staffs are based abroad. A great portion of the materials published in Diario de Cuba, Cubanet and Cubaencuentro come from Cuba. But other sites, also located in foreign countries and dedicated to the subject of Cuba, are sustained by contributors who do not live in Cuba, by international news agencies, and by the rehashing of content from independent sites or the official Cuban press.

Some non-official reporters collaborate on commercial sites run out of the United States, Mexico, and Spain. Those who do this on sites that are subsidized by various foundations will charge $30 to $40 dollars per published text, a bit more if accompanied by photos or videos. Those who publish in for-profit media can make double that, from $50 to $60 per piece. But there are very few who can publish between eight and ten works per month in a private newspaper.

Due to the boom in the number of journalists and a deficit of financing for the editorial offices anchored in other countries, even a willing editor cannot publish more than five or six pieces per month by a single contributor. On average, an independent journalist in Cuba makes somewhere between $125 and $150 per month. This amount is the equivalent of four to six times the median salary in Cuba, but given the scarcities and inflation rampant in the country, it is not enough to live on and provide for a family.

So, what happens? With no outlets for their writing, talented journalists – who, besides lacking material goods, are harassed by State Security – are making plans to exit the country permanently. This is a shame. Young people are leaving who excel in the profession and have even taken courses and won scholarships in foreign universities.

One solution that would stem this bloodletting might be that serious and professional sites such as Diario de Cuba, Cubanet and Cubaencuentro, could receive greater funding so that they could publish more journalists residing on the Island and pay them better rates. Or that foundations or non-governmental organizations would facilitate funds for independent reporters with possibilities of establishing a digital journalism site headquartered in Havana.

Cuba’s future will be decided in around five or six years. By then, the country will find itself with an even more ruined economy, without public infrastructure to speak of, and decapitalized corporations.

And, contrary to the spokespersons for neo-Castroism in the state-run media, Cuban independent journalists will continue denouncing injustice and shedding light on the reality of their country and people. As they have done up to now.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

A Rabid Dog Always Ready to Bite

Promotion for the monologue of the Italian Primo Levi entitled “If this is a man.” (Cortesía)

14ymedio, Carlos A. Montaner, Miami, June 30, 2019 — Incredible. Anne Frank is a venerable old woman of 90. She remained frozen in the image of a smiling, sensitive, and good girl who discovered love and sexuality in the middle of adolescence as she records in her Diary. The Nazis murdered her in February or March of 1945, a little before the end of the war. She had been born in June of 1929.

So a foundation called “Anne Frank Space,” at this time led by its vice president, the architect Ilana Beker, caught my attention. It is composed, essentially, of Venezuelan Jews. If the massive immigration of that people is great for the societies that receive them, it is even more significant when it comes to Jews. They tend to have excellent education and a profound sense of social responsibility. This foundation’s objective, in essence, is to fight againt prejudices and that we manage to live together in harmony with different people. continue reading

Within that spirit, they brought to Miami Beach, to the Colony theater, the monologue of the Italian Primo Levi entitled If This is a Man, published in 1947. They are his memories from the Auschwitz concentration camp. Along with Levi, 650 Italian Jews were transported like animals to that horrible slaughterhouse. Only 20 survived. Four decades later, in 1987, hounded by depression, Levi committed suicide by throwing himself to the pavement from a third floor. Elie Wiesel, upon finding out, wrote: “Primo Levi died in Auschwitz forty years later.”

The actor Javier Vidal achieves a tremendous resemblance to Primo Levi and turns to an excellent “trick:” he recites the text admirably with the accent and cadence of an Italian who speaks Spanish. For an hour and a half it is very easy to believe that Levi himself transmits to us his experiences. His wife, Julie Restifo, directs the work with an enviable economy of media. A few chairs on the stage and the projection of some drawings and images set the horror with total clarity.

Almost at the end of the work, Primo Levi warns that what they are suffering can be reproduced in the future. And thus it is so. One of the constant features of Western civilization is antisemitism. Hitler and the Nazis did not invent anything. They limited themselves to picking up a bloodthirsty tradition initiated by the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, but amplified by primitive medieval Christianity, which has been changing with each generation and adapting itself to every stage of history.

Hitler attributed to the Jews the German defeat in the First World War, despite the heroic participation of many Jews on the German and Austrian side, and supposed that by eradicating that “damned race” from the face of the earth all of Europe’s problems would suddenly disappear. Of course it was an unjust stupidity, but the ground had been fertilized for centuries with outrages against Jews.

It is true that the Roman papacy has asked forgiveness for its criminal excesses, but antisemitic prejudices are still alive in our culture. I remember a meeting of the Liberal International in Finland, in which they asked me to sit with an enigmatic Russian politician, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who had created a supposed Liberal Party and wanted to affiliate it with our political family.

It was enough to ask him “how are things in Boris Yeltsin’s Russia” for antisemitism to rise to the surface. “Imagine,” he said to me, “the Jews are keeping everything.” He criticized to me the “cosmopolitanism” of that ethnicity and even mentioned “the conspiracy of the Jewish doctors” denounced, persecuted, and murdered by Stalin at the end of the forties.

Everything continued the same way in the Russian mentality, like in the time of the czars, when the political police, the fearsome Okhrana, fabricated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as if there existed a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy to take control of the planet. Of course antisemitism has not diminished. It has mutated and presents itself today as anti-Zionism, but it is the same dog with a different collar. A rabid dog always ready to bite.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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The New Heat Record in Cuba is in Veguitas

This Sunday the maximum temperatures marked by thermometers in Cuba fluctuated between 32 and 35 degrees Celsius (89.6 to 95 F). (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, July 1, 2019 — This June 30 in the afternoon the record for heat in Cuba was broken when the station in Veguitas, province of Granma, registered a maximum temperature of 39.1 degrees Celsius (102.4 F), as the Institute of Meteorology reported this Monday.

Armando Caymares, of the National Forecast Center, told the official press that this maximum was reported at 3:30 in the afternoon and it is the most notable value since records started being kept at a national level. continue reading

The data was later ratified by experts from the Cliamte Center who certified the new national record of absolute heat.

As Caymares explained, the few clouds and the weakness of the wind favored the intense evening warm-up in the area; a high pressure system in the low and medium levels of the troposphere influenced the eastern region.

The Twitter account @invntario, which posts data about Cuba, offered records going back to 1901.

Why limit yourself to feeling the heat when you can also visualize it?

This is how the average monthly temperatures (C) have behaved in Cuba from 1901 to March of 2019 pic.twitter.com/8boDTF4erK

Previously the record was 38.8 (101.8 F) degrees, and it was recorded in Jucarito on April 17, 1999.

This Sunday the maximum temperatures marked by thermometers in Cuba fluctuated between 32 and 35 degrees Celsius, although they were higher in some places in the eastern provinces. For this week forecasts indicate possible temperatures around 33 degrees Celsius.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Cuban Football Team Captain "Deserts" From the Gold Cup

Raúl Mederos, coach of the Cuban soccer team, at the press conference after the game with Martinique. (El Universal)

14ymedio, Ernesto Santana, Havana, June 21, 2019 — The news spread quickly through the international press. The captain of the Cuban soccer team, Yasmani López, had abandoned the team at the Gold Cup of the Confederation of North America, Central America, and the Caribbean (CONCACAF) in the United States. One media outlet called him “the first of the Cuban players to flee” at this event, as if others could follow him.

Like so many other times, the team leadership delayed in making statements, waiting for instructions from Havana, which in turn was waiting to measure the repercussions of the event. Finally, the manager of the team, Raúl Mederos, recognized the act, which happened after the first match against Mexico.

“The team, as everyone knows, did not arrive at the Gold Cup with the full delegation,” said Mederos, “and indeed the number four defender abandoned the team on Saturday night. It’s his decision. None of his colleagues, there are 30 of us, have anything to do with that,” he specified at a press conference before the second game, against Martinique. continue reading

The curious declaration reveals the fear that in Havana they will try to look for supposed accomplices of the “deserter” and, additionally, reveals that a third of the group was made up of “non-athletes,” something customary in these delegations, which come to international matches well-escorted to prevent “escapes.”

The “number four defender” that Mederos alluded to is the 31-year-old captain and defender who had debuted with the national team in the Gold Cup of 2013 and since then had become an important part of the squad. “We only come to the pitch to give what we have, giving our hearts,” were his last words before leaving the team.

The high-profile repercussions and the sleepless nights of the team’s management are logical. By now it’s traditional that in CONCACAF competitions our players take the opportunity to request asylum in the US, like 12 members of the under-20 team did last November in Florida.

In the last six editions of the Gold Cup alone 11 athletes have abandoned the team, not to mention other soccer competitions in other places. Some continue playing the sport and have had success. Others not. But nothing indicates that this bloodletting will stop.

This 15th Gold Cup is being held (at the same time as the other main tournament on the continent, the America Cup) from June 15 to July 7, and 16 teams are participating. Cuba participated five times previously, beginning in 1998 and, for the last time, in 2007, but only in 2003 did it advance to the second round. Now they were competing in Group A with Mexico, Canada, and Martinique.

The Island had already lost the previous captain, the midfielder Yordan Santa Cruz, 25, who was denied a visa for unconfirmed reasons; according to some it was because of a disturbance of public order in Jamaica in 2015. According to others, it was for an unproven accusation of rape in the United States. Santa Cruz is contracted with the Jarabacoa FC de Dominicana and made the goal that got Cuba to this tournament.

When the Cup began, Mederos’s boys seemed the tournament’s weakest team. Their debut on Saturday the 15th against Mexico, which massacred them 7-0, amply confirmed all fears, aside from which it is certain that the Cubans have had problems with arriving on time and even with their uniforms.

On Wednesday the 19th, having already lost the second captain, Cuba fell again in the second game, 3-0, against Martinique, which had been thrashed 4-0 by Canada. Thus, without having scored a single goal, the Cubans were already eliminated in the group phase, fulfilling the majority of the predictions.

If some believe that this could be an insurmountable blow for the new generation of players who cannot see the sun, others believe that this disaster could sound the alarms and call attention to a discipline that is very marginalized despite the enormous and growing popularity of soccer in our country.

The criticisms of this performance, one of the worst in the last 20 years, begins with the poor selection of players starting with the recent National Championship and with the bad management of the lineup, but above all with the dreadful work of the Soccer Federation, which keeps the playing fields in lamentable conditions and refuses to consider including athletes who are on their own in foreign leagues.

In the end, the blame always ends up pointing toward that dark zone from which the instructions come down for the sports authorities, that, ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether or not they have intentions of carrying out the essential reforms to save the sport, because they don’t determine anything.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Coach of the Cuban Football Delegation Confirms Defection of Yasmani Lopez

Yasmani López deserted after the game with Mexico on Monday according to Miami press. The federation remains silent.

14ymedio, EFE, Havana, June 19, 2019 — “The team, as everyone knows, did not arrive at the Gold Cup with the full delegation and indeed the Number Four defender (Yasmani López) abandoned the team on Saturday night. He is the only player that is now no longer with us,” confirmed Raúl Mederos, coach of the Cuban football team.

The coach explained in a press conference before the Cuban team’s match against Martinique that the decision of the midfielder and captain of the team was an isolated incident. “Regarding Yasmani’s case, it’s his decision. None of his colleagues, there are 30 of us, have anything to do with that. It’s his decision, he made it and he carried it out,” pointed out the manager in statements gathered by AFP.

El Nuevo Herald wrote this Monday that López, 31, who last Saturday played with Cuba against Mexico in the second game on the opening day of the Concacaf tournament in Group A and which his team lost by 7-0, disappeared afterwards from the Caribbean team.

With the loss of López, Cuba loses one of the most important players on the team.

It was also learned that for the game against Mexico, the Island’s team received its uniforms only a few hours before the match, which was played at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena (California).

López, a native of the town of Morón in Ciego de Ávila province, debuted with the Cuban team precisely in the Gold Cup in 2013 in a match against Belize and ever since has been a fixture on the national football team.

López’s defection keeps the tradition of turning Concacaf tournaments in which Cuba participates into the best system the island’s players have to escape and remain in American territory, where they immediately request political asylum.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Venezuelans in Ecuador, X-ray of the Hunger Emigrating All Over Latin America

Caption: Lines of Venezuelan migrants trying to cross the border between Colombia and Ecuador. (EFE)

14ymedio, June 16, 2019 — An emaciated man with soot-colored clothing and tattered shoes walks alone with a firm step and carrying a bedroll in the direction of the Rumichaca bridge between Ecuador and Colombia; it is one of those doors of hope for the Venezuelans fleeing hunger and poverty.

With two crevices on both sides of the face, which draw the outline of his jaw and skin burnt by the sun and inclemencies of the Andes, this Venezuelan named Fredy Ramón Castillo, 60, has covered more than 2,000 kilometers from Valencia, in the state of Carabobo, to the main entrance to Ecuador and has spent eight days walking.

“My salary wasn’t enough to buy medicine and I decided to leave Venezuela to help my mom,” he says before breaking into tears over his situation, shared by some 2,000-3,000 compatriots, up to 5,000 on critical days, who cross this border. continue reading

It’s a border that in 2018 alone was crossed by more than a million Venezuelans, of whom more than 220,000 did not register their exit from the country through official points, according to official data.

Venezuela, in the last five years, has faced a grave economic crisis, aggravated by shortages in food, medicine, basic products, and services like electricity or potable water, insecurity, which has led more than four million to leave their country and swell the biggest and fastest movement of people in recent history in Latin America.

Ecuador is the fourth largest recipient of Venezuelans in Latin America after Colombia, Peru, and Chile, and has an estimated population of more than 300,000 Venezuelans, a figure that could approach half a million by the end of the year, according to predictions by its Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It is also the country in the region that receives the most emigrants in proportion to its size and number of inhabitants.

Every day about twenty buses arrive at the border with Ecuador from Colombia, where the exodus to the South American region begins, although many individuals alone or in groups make the trip on foot. That’s the case for half a dozen men and women in their twenties, who arrive almost in a faint at the territorial border with two babies, and their lives in barely two suitcases on wheels and several bundles they have taken turns carrying on their long journey.

“We started 19 days ago,” Edison Mendoza, from the state of Lara, tells Efe, with his one-and-a-half-year-old daughter asleep on his lap.

His goal is also to get to the Peruvian capital, where he has family members, after having ruled out Ecuador, “because not having anything to eat has motivated us to travel all this way, and what we don’t have.”

According to a recent report tracking the flow of the Venezuelan population in Ecuador by the International Organization (OIM), 54.4% of the Venezuelans began their journey between one and seven days before arriving at the main entry ports, with their average cost being between $100 and $500.

Also, 46.3% travel alone, 42.9% with family members, and 10.6% with non-family groups, and 33.8% of those surveyed at the border expressed their desire to remain in the country, 52.3% plan to settle in Peru, and 12.4% in Chile.

With a dollarized economy and a regular delivery of remittances to Venezuela averaging $20, Ecuador has become, for many, an option to start from nothing.

The profile of those currently entering this country is changing in relation to recent years, as international bodies emphasize, with an increase in women (44.7%), and the vast plurality with only a high school diploma (43.6%), while in previous years the number of college graduates was greater.

“We can say that in the first stage of the movement were the heads of families, and now since a year ago they had their economic resources and can manage a family reunification,” Vladimir Velasco points out to Efe. Velasco is the district director of the Ecuadorian Ministry of Social Inclusion (MIES) in the border city of Tulcán, adjacent to Rumichaca.

A few meters from the international bridge, at the common divide, a bus chartered by OIM makes its last stop on the trip from Colombia and on its steps, a worker from the organization tells the Venezuelan passengers descending to separate into groups of those staying in Ecuador and those who will continue on to Peru, which since Saturday has required a humanitarian visa.

Near the group of recent arrivals, three young Venezuelan porters hope to get a few coins by helping the migrants carry their belongings to the area where they must go to sort out their documentation.

They receive pesos and dollars of the new kind from emigrant passengers, that they throw to them, “some days we come, others no,” says Lewis Cuello, from Caracas. If they are lucky they can even send something to family in Venezuela, the so-called Bolivarian Republic.

On both sides of the crossing several buildings of international organizations like Acnur, Unicef, International Red Cross, World Food Program, ONG, local governments, and ministries have become for many of the travelers a stop and boarding house on their journey.

Children use play spaces and older people charge their cellphones at an authorized point, get their health checked, or simply receive food during a wait that can last several hours. The majority of the travelers who cross the Ecuadorian border do it with identity cards and passports, although 2.5% do not have documents, especially minors, the responsible entities state.

Between the beginning of February and the end of March of 2019, the Ecuadorian government demanded that Venezuelans entering the country present their stamped criminal records, a measure suspended by the law.

Despite leading regional forces to confront the phenomenon, advocating for flexibility and “open arms” policies toward the vulnerable population, Ecuador’s president, Lenín Moreno, has announced that a humanitarian visa will be required, following the Peruvian example.

From Rumichaca each day between four and eight humanitarian buses, depending on the demand, depart for Huaquillas, on the border with Peru, a flow that could slow down once the provision adopted by Lima goes into effect.

A small square that hosts the humanitarian installations at the crossing with Colombia has become a big waiting area where Venezuelan families crowd with their belongings.

Génesis Camacho, 24 and a native of Zulia, waits her turn to be able to feed her small son thanks to the Food Bank. She traveled with her husband by bus and is thinking of settling in Ecuador where her entire family is already. “We were the last,” she says.

There are more and more cases of mothers migrating with their children, the elderly, and disabled people who, at an earlier stage, did not consider it.

A “growing” tendency, according to the deputy high commissioner of the UN for Refugees (Acnur), Kelly Clements, who in her first visit to the Andean country told Efe that the majority of the Venezuelans on the move throughout the region need “international protection.”

The massive exodus of Venezuelans was accelerated starting in 2016, and has increased in the last two years, in parallel with the power struggle between the Chavista leader Nicolás Maduro and Juan Guaidó of the opposition, who is recognized as interim president by more than 50 countries.

As almost everywhere on the continent, many begin at a crossroads with a sign that pleads: “I’m Venezuelan, I’m hungry, please help me.”

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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Central Planning of the Economy, What For?

Cubans wait in line to buy milk powder. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, June 3, 2019 — The Castrist regime announces the beginning of the process of drawing up the economic plan for 2020, the main instrument to intervene in the state economy. The information in the newspaper “Workers” speaks of the beginning of the analysis meetings with workers for the economic plan preparation and the budget corresponding to the next year. An initiative that claims to make a more participatory and flexible plan, in accordance with the desires of the Minister of Economy and Planning.

The question, paraphrasing Fidel Castro in reference to elections, is: What For? Confidence in the economic planning over six decades is directly responsible for the backwardness and general impoverishment of the Castroist economy. And now, undeterred, they have embarked upon what they call “indentifying internal reserves and strengths in each territory and company, exploiting the potential of productive linking, and exporting more, without limiting productive growth.” Hopefully they achieve it, but I see it as complicated. continue reading

Communism introduced central planning of the economy as an alternative to the market in the allocation of resources that were always scarce for alternative purposes. By substituting the mechanism of supply and demand, and price adjusting, with decisions by planning bureaucrats almost always remote from reality and tangled in dubious calculations of calories, weights, and other evils, the Cuban economic system was turned upside down in a matter of years.

From the first moment, the economists still holding their positions at the head of the companies that had not yet been confiscated to become property of the state, realized that the model was on its way to disaster. And thus it has been. Castroist economic planning has the merit of not having been right in even a single year in its forecasts, and in particular, since 2006, with the opening of small spaces to private activity, the results are even worse.

Why does this happen? Why, despite the insistence of the authorities and the efforts made in its preparation by the administrative management and the workers to improve the results of the planning, are the results worse and worse? Are we facing a demand for real change in the Castroist economy?

One can think what one likes, but in my understanding, yes. On the one hand, the bureaucrats continue buried in their calculations and estimations that never seem to end, with an increasing volume of norms, regulations, and provisions. Before it was easy to “plan,” by listening to a long and boring speech by Fidel Castro, it was already known how the accounts would have to be squared. Now the matter is worse.

For one thing, one has to read a panoply of documents so boring as to be useless, like the new Constitution, or the so-called Conceptualization of the Cuban Economic and Social Model of Socialist Development; even the most optimistic must read the Foundations of the National Plan for Economic and Social Development until 2030, and finally if one still has the desire, the so-called Guidelines for the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution for the 2016-2021 period.

As they say in Workers, “to these documents must be added speeches, interventions, directions, and articles referred to the topic, which would serve as a basis to develop proposals with ’all the tools,’ with clear definitions and a strategic character.” With so much reading, and so much iron, economic decisions lose that spontaneity and richness that the market offers them when the objective is to satisfy the consumer.

In the end, the planning is a game that ends in a bad result. Because even if on the one hand they want everyone to participate, and I have my doubts that that would be easy to achieve, on the other hand, from the ministry (previously the communist Junta Central de Planificación [JUCEPLAN], or Central Planning Board) nothing is left to improvisation, and the premises are being established for the plan, so that no one leaves out even a single comma from the framework that really concerns the ruling leadership. This is what we have. Unfortunately the priority of customer service is replaced with some undefined “potentialities to contribute more to the strategies and priorities of the economy,” and end up the same way.

The truly worrying thing is that they are committed to playing this dangerous game, just as things are. The Cuban economy no longer works, and it has exhausted its tail engines, for what will have to be thought about changing on the fly. There have already been several scares like the absence of products in markets, but worse times will come. One doesn’t have to be a strategist to know that things are going to get worse, and that the year 2020 will be characterized by a situation of a lack of cash flow, of unbearable foreign debt that will asphyxiate the impoverished Cuban economy even more, without anyone moving a single finger.

The design of the plan, if they insist on this communist nonsense, would have to be oriented toward promoting to the maximum amount what is working in the Cuban economy, but the ideological priorities and the historical complexes prevent the regime’s authorities from adopting the fundamental decisions to place Cuba on an even plane with the rest of the surrounding countries. That would mean more markets, more property rights, more economic freedoms, more private business sector. A plan that allows the private sector to assume the global operation of the economy, concentrating the largest percentage of resources, and driven by an accelerated privatization of the productive and business capital of the country.

Studies confirm that gains in productivity and creation of value in the Cuban economy are centered in small business deals by self-employed people and entrepreneurial initiatives. It makes no sense to continue restraining these economic agents for the benefit of loss-making state-owned companies and a budgeted sector that is drowning the country. Central planning of the economy must be removed to let the market take its place.

It’s no use to establish priorities like “increasing production or services bound for export and satisfying the demands of export entities; achieving the maximum use of existing capacities, and assuring the processes aimed at satisfying the demands of the internal economy, fundamentally of food, transport, computerization of society, housing, construction materials, renewable energy resources, medicine, and tourism,” if the economic agents involved in them are not capable of driving these objectives and find themselves so limited and conditioned in their operation, that they can barely survive.

Translated by: Sheilagh Herrera

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City of Miami Approves Resolution Against Cultural Exchange with Cuba

The City of Miami mayor asserts that the decision is a moral one, although it also has its detractors in Miami. (Mario J. Pentón)

EFE/14ymedio, Mario J. Penton, Miami, 14 June 2019 — The City of Miami approved on Thursday 13 June a resolution by its mayor, Francis Suárez, and commissioner Manolo Reyes, which seeks to prohibit cultural exchanges with artists from Cuba, according to the local press.

“This resolution urges the federal government to end cultural exchange [with Cuba] and invests us with all potential powers so that we, as the local government, can prevent artists from the Island utilizing [the city’s] public resources,” said Suárez.

“We are very proud to have the support of so many important persons, artists and community activists supporting this effort,” he added. continue reading

The mayor showed a video in which artists such as Willy Chirino, Los Tres de La Habana, Amaury Gutiérrez, and politicians such as former Congressma Lincoln Díaz-Balart voice their support for the measure.

“City of Miami facilities should not be lent for these artists to come here and mock us, make money here, and then return to Cuba to utilize those funds against their own people while denigrating the liberties that allowed them to be here,” Suárez added.

The resolution declares that the prohibition will remain in force “until freedom of expression is reestablished for all Cubans, and not only for certain favorite artists.”

Commissioner Manolo Reyes considered it unjust that artists sponsored by the Cuban government should come to Miami “and fill their pockets with money that they then take back to Cuba,” while anti-Castro artists on the Island cannot do the same.

The Miami newspaper El Nuevo Herald spoke with the Miami businessman and activist Hugo Cancio — who in 2000, following a complaint, obtained a reversal of an ordinance that prevented local groups from using public funds for activities for Cuba-related activities — and on this occasion was again critical of the city’s initiative.

“It seems to me that the reasons they give are absurd and obsolete. They criticize the Cuban government because it supposedly restricts, limits, and prohibits it citizens — and they are doing exactly the same: preventing people from enjoying culture for the simple fact that they are in disagreement with the artists or with their political positions,” he argued.

The newspaper also spoke with Juan E. Shamizo, founder of Vedado Social Club, who considers the decision to be an electioneering action. “What they want to cut off is not only Cuban artists coming to Miami, but also North American artists going to Cuba and interacting with the people,” he said.

“Cuba and the United States are neighbors, we have much in common, thousands of people who yearn for those who they left behind. When the doors are shut to exchange, they are closing off the connection between our people and the possibilities we have of enriching each other,” he added.

In Cuba, Ambassador José Ramón Cabañas mocked the decision on his Twitter account: “The United States has 35,000 recognized cities and towns. The authorities in Miami decided that their citizens will visit 34,999 other places to legally enjoy the music of Cuba. And they have decided this in the name of Freedom of Expression (probably a new definition),” he wrote.

Under the current administration of President Donald Trump, the US has hardened its policies toward Cuba and, in a surprising decision this month, the government cancelled travel to Cuba — a reversal of the reestablishment of relations advanced by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

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Returning Cuban Doctors Treated Badly / Juan Juan Almeida

Cuban doctors returning from Venezuela wait to be processed on their return to Havana.

Juan Juan Almeida, 8 June 2019 — A large number of Cuban workers, who had completed a mission in Venezuela, were treated like nobodies when they returned to the island.

What happened last Friday, June 7th, was no less important just because it was habitual. These people, mostly health workers, having finished their task, and returned to the island, waited over 3 hours, completely ignored, outside the terminal, because, not being a priority for the Ministry of Health, nobody was there to receive them.

“Now, in accordance with the usual procedure, we should have been in epidemiological monitoring; but, it didn’t happen. They forgot about us, and some of us have to think how to get home, using our own savings. They were incapable of guaranteeing us a comfortable and safe return. Obviously, as we had finished our work, and were of no further use to them, they treat us like non-reusable surgical materials,” one of the Cuban professionals who arrived on the flight told Juan Juan Al Medio. continue reading

The plane landed around mid-day at Terminal 5 (Wajay) at Jose Marti Airport in Havana. That’s where they receive and see off the workers’ flights, carry out their detailed inspections, well away from the normal passenger flow, and out of sight of the rest of the tourists and travellers visiting the country.

Doctor Raiza Planells, a graduate in oral medicine and dentistry from the Holguin University of Medical Science, and a member of the abandoned group, told us about their uncomfortable situation:

“This is what makes us angry. Workers, just come back from the end of the mission, and some from vacation, waited around for over 3 hours, without any transport to get us to quarantine. There was nobody from support staff or from the airport to give us an explanation for this neglect. How much longer???”, she wrote in her Facebook profile.

Translated by GH

A Cuban Family Sues Melia for 10 Million Euros

Melia is the foreign company that manages the most hotels in Cuba with some 34 properties. (Flickr/Andrew O.)

14ymedio, Havana, 12 June 2019 — The descendants of businessman Rafael Lucas Sanchez Hill on June 3 filed a lawsuit against the Spanish hotel group Melia, under Title III of the Helms-Burton law, the suspension of which was ended in May by the Donald Trump administration.

The Sanchez Hills, who live in the United States, seek as compensation about 10 million Euros for the lands, located in the current province of Holguin, which were expropriated from them by Fidel Castro in 1960 and from which Melia benefits by managing several hotels that the Cuban military built on them.

According to a report in The Confidential, it is the first lawsuit filed in Spain against companies of that country for managing expropriated properties in Cuba. The Helms-Burton law allows the owners of properties confiscated with Fidel Castro’s arrival to power to sue those who “traffic” in those properties. continue reading

Previously the Sanchez Hills had negotiated with Melia and were close to an agreement for five million Euros, but seeing the chance of Title III’s activiation as remote, the Spanish company reduced the compensation to 3,000, and there was no agreement.

The Sanchez Hill family fled Cuba after the Santa Lucia LC headquarters and more than 40,000 hectares of surrounding lands were expropriated. The patriarch of the family had built the headquarters in 1857 after moving to Holguin from Matanzas, but Law 890 of 1960 signed by then-president Osvaldo Dorticos left them with nothing.

In recent decades the military built the hotels Melia Sol Rio de Luna y Mares, Paradisus Rio de Oro, Costa Verde, and Playa Costa Verde, among others, on the expropriated lands.

The family demands in a Palma de Mallorca court that the company compensate them for an amount equal to the benefits the hotels have obtained in the last five years, explains El Confidencial. They also reproach the company for its attitude toward the claims of the owners.

“The illicit character of said confiscation is known by Melia, who for the last 20 years has ignored claims by those companies and families at whose expense it has profited,” says the lawsuit, according to the Spanish newspaper.

Melia is the foreign company that manages the most hotels in Cuba with some 34 properties. Iberostar is next with 20 properties. These companies have been heavily criticized by human rights groups and opponents of the regime in Havana for the conditions in which they make their investments on the island. Until 2008 Cubans were prohibited from staying in the same hotels as foreigners, and the wages of the workers in the international hotels are barely some tens of dollars a month.

“In these 31 years we have made it very clear: the commitment to Cuba is unconditional. We believe that it is totally unjust, all these measures,” Gabriel Escarrer, executive vice-president and CEO of Melia Hotels International, said to Cuban state television about the activation of Helms-Burton’s Title III.

“Faced with that, we continue with our road map: we will continue to collaborate closely with the Cuban authorities to develop the tourist industry of this country, which I believe is exemplary in every way,” he added. By 2020 the company projects it will have 38 hotels and more than 15,000 rooms in the country.

Escarrer visited the island with the Spanish Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Reyes Maroto, who tried to issue a calming message to Spanish investors in the island. “Our will is to continue investing in Cuba and for our companies to have the will to contribute to the development of the island,” said the minister, who lashed out at the U.S. executive and asked for Cubans to pay a debt of 300 million to the entrepreneurs.

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

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"We are not afraid of what might happen to us", says Melia Vice President

Escarrer, Meliá vice president, in his interview for Cubavisión

14ymedio, Havana May 13th 2019 — The Executive Vice President of Melia Hotels International, Gabriel Escarrer, has dismissed “external pressures” and announced the strengthening of the hotel chain’s presence in Cuba, in an interview on Cubavision, picked up by Hosteltur.

The entrepreneur has rejected the Trump administration’s policy toward Cuba following the activation of Titles III and IV of the Helms-Burton Act, which recognises claims in US Tribunals by those affected by the confiscation of property after 1959.

“We are not afraid of the pressures which might be applied from abroad,” he explained, while detailing a forthcoming investment of several million euros. In 2020, the company hopes to get to 38 hotels and more than 15,000 rooms on the island. continue reading

“We have been very clear over the last 31 years: that our stake in Cuba is unconditional. We consider these measures to be totally unjust, and we are continuing with our chosen route. We will continue to work closely with the Cuban authorities in developing this country’s tourism industry, which I consider to be exemplary in every sense,” he confirmed.

“In company with our Miramar joint venture, we have approved an investment of about 200 million dollars, to be committed in the next three years, and we will be reforming and broadening out Melia Habana and adding in a large convention centre; and three hotels in Varadero: Sol Palmeras, our five-star hotel, which has given us a great deal of satisfaction, the Melia Las Americas, and Melia Varadero,” he explained.

The Melia CEO, who is in the island for the tourism fair FitCuba, said that the investment in these four hotels was around 200 million dollars, and that construction of the Melia Trinidad was under way, in this case, with another joint venture, Athos-Cuba, in which they will be investing approximately 60 million dollars over two years.

Escarrer considers that Cuba is able to not just exploit sun and beach tourism, but also its patrimonial and cultural offerings, in cities such as Havana, Trinidad, Cienfuegos and Camaguey.

“I would also mention some other aspects which should be developed, which we call the MICE sector, to do with congresses, conventions, and incentives. And I think there are some great possibilities there, because Cuba offers things which other Carribean islands don’t have. Among other thnigs, security, which is a fundamental basis for success in any important event”.

Escarrer also praises the professionalism of Cuban workers, and the character of the people, which provide a unique destination in the region.

“We are here to stay and to work hand in hand in the development of tourism in the country. For me, it’s a success story, and we have been delighted to be here these 31 years and we would hope for another 31, at least.”

Translated by GH

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