Phosphorescent vests, rechargeable headlamps, flashlights or even traditional oil lamps are used to move around the city
At night and seen from above, the city is an expanse of darkness / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 26 October 2024 — A couple crosses paths with a friend on one of the main streets of the Kilo 12 neighborhood in the city of Sancti Spíritus. They can barely see each other, because the lack of public lighting has forced the young man, who runs into them head-on, to wear “a miner’s headlamp.” When the man greets them they are dazzled by the light that, in the midst of absolute darkness, leaves them, for a few seconds, disoriented and stumbling over the holes and cracks on the sidewalk.
“People have already given up on the street lighting,” the woman admits. “If we get used to having electricity inside our homes only a few hours a day, then what happens when we have to go outside at night?” she asks this reporter. “What most people do is stay home, but we go to eat at my mom’s house two or three times a week, and we have to walk back because there is no transportation at that time.”
Phosphorescent vests, rechargeable headlamps, flashlights or even traditional oil lamps are used to move from one point to another in the city, to avoid stumbling into a pothole or breaking a leg after falling into an uncovered sewer. Some are guided by the light coming from houses that are are lucky enough to have electricity at that time, and others take advantage of the headlights of vehicles that pass to detect the nooks and crannies of the road in front of them. continue reading
Some are guided by the light coming from houses that are lucky enough to have electricity
“My brother sent me this miner’s headlamp, and it helps a lot,” Susy, a 42-year-old resident near the historic center of Espírito, told 14ymedio. “I use it if I have to go out at night, but also in the house to scrub my floor during the blackout, make food or wash my daughter’s uniform for the next day of school.” When the light is placed, clinging with elastic bands to her head, Susy acquires a strange appearance and knows it: “I’m like a firefly; I carry my own light.”
Without public lighting, residents in the city of Sancti Spíritus have come to the conclusion that everyone must provide his own light when going out at night. A long time ago, like the rest of Cubans, they gave up depending on the ration system’s basic family basket for food; they stopped waiting for the Electric Union to supply them with constant energy in their homes; they said goodbye to a Public Health system that guaranteed them everything from medical sutures to painkillers, and converted their kitchens to the use of coal or wood, tired of waiting for stability in the sale of propane.
On the list of orders that Susy has sent to her brother in Jacksonville, Florida, she has added two new miner’s headlamps: “one that can be adjusted for a smaller head, like my daughter’s, and another for my husband who leaves at dawn for work and really needs it.” At night and seen from above, the city is an expanse of darkness where tiny little lights move around. Each one is a person who is going somewhere.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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The figures, carved from guayacán and ebony, were created between the 13th and 17th centuries
Los Buchillones is also the most significant archaeological site of Indo-Cuban art
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 26 October 2024 — It took almost 30 years for more than 150 pieces of indigenous art from the Los Buchillones site, in Ciego de Ávila, to be described and dated correctly by archaeologists. The merit, however, does not really go to the historians of the Island but to the University of Toronto, Canada, and the Royal Ontario Museum, who were in charge of the scientific study of the figures.
Despite the importance of the discovery, which greatly enriches the vision of pre-Columbian Cuba, the official press has hardly mentioned it. Last Thursday, however, ’Invasor’ explained the controversy over the pieces found in 1995 in Los Buchillones, which had been incorrectly attributed to “groups of farmers and ceramicists.”
Thanks to the scientists of the Isotrace university laboratory, it is now known that the figures, crafted in guayacán [lancewood] and ebony, were created between the 13th and 17th centuries of our era, more precisely between 1220 and 1690; the community remained there after the Spanish Conquest. That, the specialists add, was the “peak moment for ceramics.”
Nor were they created, as was thought, in Los Buchillones, but rather in another settlement located 500 meters from there, in an old salt flat known as La Laguna. This was suspected by Cuban scholars and fans of archeology, explains ’Invasor,’ since many of the pieces had marks that showed that they had been taken from the bottom of the sea or a river. continue reading
As for the typology of the figures, they correspond to the artistic forms that are known from the Tainos. They are ’cemíes’ – gods, ’dujos’ or ceremonial stools, spatulas and trays. Few of the Greater Antilles have so many representative pieces of indigenous art, and in the Cuban context, it also marks a milestone: Los Buchillones is the most significant archaeological site of Indo-Cuban art.
Ebony bowl found in the deposit / Patrimonio Ciega de Ávila / Facebook
Of the sculptures, eight stand out, whose characteristics help to better understand the imaginary and everyday life of the Tainos. They are dark in color, carved in guayacán and ebony wood, whose height ranges between 10.5 (4.1 inches) and 34 centimeters (13.4 inches). You can see in some of them the head and limbs – with emphasis on the male and female genitals – of a divinity, and others are in the form of sexless animals.
They are, judging by their shape and careful symmetry, idols linked to fertility, and that is the name that the most remarkable sculpture has received, 18 centimeters (7.1 inches) high, and of which ’Invasor’ provided a sketch. In addition to sexual symbolism, it contains elements – the representation of a skeleton and a kind of halo, in the manner of Catholic saints – that refer to the passage from life to death and to the notion of time that the Taínos possessed.
It is believed that the vases and bowls also have a ritual character and were used by the Taínos in their religious ceremonies. According to ’Invasor,’ the Canadian specialists recommended “developing a stylistic study of these objects” and continuing the investigation, headed by Cuban archaeologist Jorge A. Calvera Rosés.
Only fragments of Cuba’s indigenous past remain. The few archaeological studies that have been published in the country have given little clarity about the different groups that formed the Indo-Cuban area, and most Cubans have erroneous or outdated notions about their lives, customs and rituals.
A decisive step to understand the religion of the Taínos was taken, in 1947, by the Cuban ethnologist and polygrapher Fernando Ortiz with his book, ’El huracán, su mitología y sus símbolos (The Hurricane, its Mythology and Symbols). Published by the Economic Culture Fund and impossible to obtain in the the Island’s bookstores – it is rare, even in the libraries – Ortiz’s meticulous study of several pieces similar to those found in Los Buchillones allowed us to understand the sacred universe of the Taínos.
Ortiz’s meticulous study of several similar pieces allowed us to understand the sacred universe of the Taínos / Patrimonio Ciego de Ávila / Facebook
Ortiz focused his research on a set of enigmatic sculptures, formed by a human trunk with a head and another creature in its chest with arms crossed in an X. Although the shapes of the “curious figurines” were variable, these elements were the common factor and pointed to a sacred conception of the hurricane, the Father of Winds for the Taínos.
His conclusion was that the idol of the hurricane was “the most typical figure in Cuba,” since he had not found specimens on any other Caribbean island. To explain it, he composed a work that seeks the traces of the cult of the hurricane from Hindu swastikas to Andalusian dances, describing a mythical itinerary practically virgin in Cuban historical studies.
Despite the shortcomings, the field of Indo-Cuban studies offers the researcher a terrain full of novelties and a whole bibliography of pioneers such as Ortiz, who in his time reached the height of classical mythological studies like James Frazer and Joseph Campbell. His personal collection, absorbed – with little care – by the National Library and other state institutions, is a good starting point for the researcher.
“Every archaeological object is in itself a search for an intelligible expression. It is a dead and unearthed being to which its name and life must be returned,” Ortiz then said, before, effectively, giving meaning to his discovery. The more than 150 pieces of Los Buchillones continue, as predicted 100 years ago by Ortiz, in search of someone who knows how to speak in their “own language.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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Beatriz Luengo, co-author of the 11J anthem and wife of Yotuel Romero, talks about the documentary with ’14ymedio’
The film has managed to extend its time in theaters / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Madrid, 27 October 2024 — To finish the documentary Patria y Vida: The Power of Music, its director, Beatriz Luengo (b. Madrid, 1982), says that her parents – she is the daughter of a carpenter and a pharmacy assistant – had to lend her money. This is one of the examples she gives to defend herself from the attacks that usually criticize her and her husband, the Cuban Yotuel Romero, also co-author of the song that became an anthem of freedom, charging that they do all this for money. “There are many things I can do in my country, which I have earned with my 20 years of work effort. The cause of Cuba is not defended based on money,” she said.
Despite the couple’s fame and the repercussion of the song, which won two Latin Grammys, the industry turned its back on this project. Today, nine days after the film’s premiere, having filled 25 theaters throughout Spain, they are extending the run in theaters. The industry overlooked them, but the people did not.
At the end of the interview with 14ymedio, a young man, whom we had not noticed, approaches us. He was a fan of Luengo and knew nothing about the song or the film and promised to go see it this weekend. It is very easy to be infected by the passion that the artist transmits.
14ymedio: So Patria y Vida [Homeland and Life] was born in a kitchen?
Beatriz Luengo: Yotuel always carries a coin from Cuba that is dated 1953 and says ‘patria y libertad‘ (homeland and freedom). It was given to him by his father, who passed away in 2018. We were cooking, he took his wallet out of his pocket and we saw that it was falling apart. As he took the coin out, so as not to lose it, we started looking at it. I know he always carries it, but I had never looked at it before. I see “patria y libertad” and I tell him: oh dear!, Yotuel, do you remember the first time I went to Cuba, that “patria o muerte (homeland or death)” was all over the place and I was so shocked?
You arrive in a country like Cuba -I explain here to people who have no context- and since there are no advertising posters, everything is publicity about the revolution, everything is that “Patria o muerte” (Fatherland or death). What you feel, as you get off at the airport and you see that, is “Be continue reading
careful, either you are with my way of thinking or you are not going to do well here.” So we started that conversation. The Cuban personality is a great contrast to the “Patria o muerte” slogan, I told him. And also, what a pity, because what a country should advocate is for life, that you have a homeland and have a dignified life.
We also pointed out the difference between the O [or] and the Y [and]. Yotuel says the O is egocentric, either you or me, and that Y is inclusive: you and me, your thought and mine, your sex and mine, your race and mine. Suddenly we said “patria y vida,” we went to the piano we have in the living room and started to create this song. We have always been very concerned, as artists, about adding, the exercise of bringing together, because I believe that the strategy that has worked best for the regime has been to divide and conquer, a very old war strategy.
This was the idea: a united vision of art that broke that dynamic of “divide and conquer”
Inviting Maykel Osorbo, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and El Funky, we also did this exercise, as well as Descemer Bueno and Gente de Zona, who have a very loud voice in the world. Although they are from very different genres, we felt it was important to have a single voice, that of the Cubans. And this was the idea: a united vision of art that broke that dynamic of “divide and conquer”.
14ymedio: A friend who participated in the 11 July 2021 [Island-wide protests] asks me to ask him if they imagined that this song would “ pump up the blood in our veins in such a way that we all took to the streets and ate our fear”. Did they ever think this would become an anthem?
Beatriz Luengo: We never imagined this would happen, because Yotuel had so many protest songs and nothing happened…. He was always releasing songs for Cuba, along with the songs he was releasing with his team, and his team didn’t even put them on the agenda. But Yotuel said: I’m going to keep making songs for Cuba; the day I don’t make a song for Cuba, I won’t be myself. The documentary tells of this twofold difficulty: the issue of Cuba and what the regime is and the difficulty within the industry. It is very important to know this: you get to a platform and say “I have this song with these artists” and they tell you – Yotuel’s manager says it in the documentary and I was very grateful that he was sincere – well, you are going to make a collaboration with some guys who do not have a profile on Spotify, a song about Cuba, a minor tune, a protest rap song, there is no playlist, no streaming platform is going to support us.
If we had been told that Patria y Vida was going to be a viral phenomenon on TikTok, we would have laughed. When it started to go viral on TikTok, we couldn’t believe it. The same platforms that one day rejected us, began to pay attention to us. People can see how we have also confronted an industry that has stopped looking at this kind of subject matter since the numerical algorithm came into existence. Because in the last century, there was more room for songs with a social topic. Sam Cooke with Martin Luther King, Billy Holliday with Strange Fruit, or Scorpions with the fall of the Berlin Wall, Bob Marley, John Lennon…
In the documentary, there is an image that makes people cry. On the day of the release of the song, only the very brave YouTubers wanted to cover the release of the song, and you see the guys connected to a live stream, like any kid anywhere in the world, and suddenly the electricity is cut in the whole island and the internet is cut. On the screen you see the whole of Havana going dark. The people in the cinema at that moment say: “ Holy shit.” It’s something you can’t expect. When the power comes back on, you see Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara in the neighborhood of San Isidro, on a corner with people singing the song loudly.
Not a day goes by that I don’t cry about 11 July in the documentary, because the whole room cries, because everyone sees the freedom, they feel part of it
That image reminds me of Yotuel crying at three in the morning. At that time I was in the last days of my pregnancy, I wake up feeling sick and I find Yotuel crying like a child on the couch, “Look, mami, look!” We were petrified, we didn’t even know what to say. Already on 11 July, I don’t want to tell you, it’s something that still freezes my blood with shock. Imagine how many times I have seen the documentary, because there is not a day that I don’t cry about 11 July, because the whole room cries, because everyone sees the freedom, they feel part of it. That is the magic of the documentary. I didn’t want to tell a point of view. I want people to ride on that emotion. You are not seeing an external feeling and analyzing it from the outside; you are inside, with the Cubans, in the demonstration, you are with that lady in Old Havana who pulls down her mask and says “patria y vida.”
14ymedio: Before 11 July, what was the realization of what that song meant, they saw some power in it, and they immediately started a pathetic war of songs. How did you live those months before 11 July?
Beatriz Luengo: Well, the first thing that was very crazy was Díaz-Canel posting “patria y vida.”
14ymedio: They said it was a phrase pronounced by Fidel Castro.
Beatriz Luengo: There were two or three tweets by Díaz-Canel, with the hashtag #PatriayVida. As if trying to make the song their own, it was very surreal. Then, of course, they realized that there was no way. Then came the 62,000 millennials, then a song of some policemen rapping, and then they included some children. This was also sad. When I saw those children, like attacking, I felt very sorry for them, because in the end children are the great victims of all this suffering.
In a key part of this documentary entitled “The true story, not the one incorrectly told,” Jade, Maykel’s daughter, appears. And starting with Jade, people get emotional and get goosebumps, especially when she sings: “The chicks say ’peep peep peep peep’ when they are hungry when they are cold.” She sang it as just another little girl who sings that song, as we have all sung it, but it makes people cry because when you come from where you come from, from the images you see, and that little girl sings that, the song takes on a different meaning and brings tears to your eyes.
A beautiful, brave girl, whose father is imprisoned, a man who has done nothing criminal, that the International Courts have already said the trial of Luis Manuel and Maykel makes no sense, they were sentenced without a defense lawyer, without witnesses, they are in maximum security prisons. This week we visited Father Angel, trying through the Church to send food and toiletries for Maykel and Luis Manuel, and the Church cannot help us either.
14ymedio: Why can’t it help them?
Beatriz Luengo: They have told us that they cannot help, that it is a sensitive issue. That is what we have been told.
14ymedio: Another who also immediately used Patria y Vida as a slogan was José Daniel Ferrer, also in jail and without a trial.
Beatriz Luengo: It is terrible what happened to José Daniel, he is also in the documentary. He is a brave man and he alone deserves a documentary.
The couple decided to premiere the film in Spain “so that the media would have the opportunity to see what is happening on the island” / 14ymedio
14ymedio: Why do you think that after so many years, with so much information available, the reality of Cuba is still distorted, especially in Spain?
Beatriz Luengo: Look, I am glad you asked me this question. The reason why we decided to premiere here, which is the most difficult country, is because it was necessary so that the media would have the opportunity to see what is happening on the island, to publicize it. What is going to change the context of the island is the people making noise. On Monday the media already covered us, in about eight newspapers, because the news was the surprise of the Spanish film Patria y Vida because nobody believed in us.
Every person who decides to go to the cinema is a contribution to something that has to make noise because that is our purpose. That is, to cover not just us, but also what is happening in Cuba from different points of view, because in the end it is always the same, it comes down to repression. This is the first thing. Indeed, here people are looking the other way because Cuba was romanticized at a certain moment and people live in that romanticization.
The other day a person said to Yotuel, and I am sure that the person was not saying it to offend him: “I went to Cuba and it was amazing, it’s like traveling to the past,” and Yotuel said: “Cubans don’t want to live in the past, Cubans want to live in the present.” That bothers Yotuel a lot, as it bothers him to see actors who go and take a picture riding in an almendrón (vintage American car) with a mojito, or singers, and say how beautiful Cuba is, how beautiful the people are, getting into a car which ordinary Cubans have no access to and drinking a mojito that is worth a doctor’s salary.
14ymedio: What was your first contact with Cuba?
Beatriz Luengo: As soon as I arrived with Yotuel in Havana, at the airport. I was carrying several suitcases because I was bringing gifts for Yotuel’s family. It was the first time I was going to see them, I was going to meet them, I had about three suitcases and two of them were little things for the people. And Yotuel was carrying a suitcase. Just passing through the police checkpoint, how they treated me, how they let my suitcases through with absolutely no problem, “Welcome to Cuba,” and how they mistreated Yotuel… As soon as we got in, they put him in the police area, they held him for an hour, they opened his suitcase.
What do the people of Cuba not see and what does the documentary show? That in one day the whole world talked about them and that if they had stayed in the streets, today we would be talking about freedom
14ymedio: Knowing who he was, that is, recognizing him?
Beatriz Luengo: Yes, Yotuel, as the film also shows, started rapping in the 90’s. He went to Paris, founded Orishas and Orishas was very successful. Then the government wanted Orishas to do concerts and they refused to sing for the dictatorship, so they were banned in Cuba. Yotuel also here, in the media, always said “Freedom for Cuba,” “Cuba needs a democracy,” so he was not welcome. Yotuel, who is an only child, had his mother, who was not allowed to leave Cuba. One of the times we managed to get my mother-in-law to come, but not my father-in-law. Whenever I have gone to Cuba it has been to see his family, which we could not bring with us.
We would arrive and all the time the feeling was “You are not welcome here.” They put people to watch us, they would come everywhere with us and it was very uncomfortable to feel that we had people watching us.
14ymedio: Luis Manuel in jail, Maykel in jail, José Daniel in jail. Is there any hope? How do you see the future of Cuba? What has to happen? It seemed that 11 July was it, and suddenly all that vanished with repression and fear.
Beatriz Luengo: I believe that there is a reality that was not told to the 11 July demonstrators. If you go out into the street, they cut off the Internet and all you see is repression against those who demonstrated, you don’t go out again. Now, what did the Cuban people not see and what does the documentary show? That in one day the whole world talked about them and that if they had stayed in the streets, today we would be talking about the freedom of Cuba. Because it is an ideological war. There has been a lot of support for the idea that Cubans are fine, that they are happy, and 11 July broke that idea. We are only artists, musicians, a small contribution, but I do believe that in this ideological war, it is very important that Cubans here make noise to break this attitude in Spain of looking the other way when it comes to Cuba.
When people take to the streets, then the world really starts to watch. I feel that also the people on the island when they see the documentary, will see a side that they did not see before, the international repercussion that their bravery generated. I hope that this will help them to go out to the streets. Because what is true is that everything has to be activated from within. It is the Cubans who have to fight for their own freedom, like any other country; it is they who have to light the fuse.
14ymedio: Would you return to Cuba if freedom were achieved?
Beatriz Luengo: Of course, we would take the first flight. Besides, look, Celia Cruz’s manager, Omer Pardillo, told us that she used to say all the time that she was going to return to a free Cuba and that when she arrived in Havana a double-decker bus would be waiting for her, one of those buses with no roof on top, to go singing her songs from the airport to Havana, that she did not want to waste a second in a car, that she wanted to go singing. I hope we can fulfill Celia’s dream. Then Yotuel pours cold water on my idea and tells me: “Mami, that bus does not exist in Cuba.”
Translated by LAR
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
Castroite totalitarianism accumulates an unparalleled level of evil regarding imprisonment in our hemisphere.
Díaz Bauzá landed on the shores of Caibarién on October 15, 1994 / Instagram
14ymedio, Pedro Corzo, Miami, 27 October 2024 — I regret to be forced to write again about the immortal Cuban political prisoners, the best and most glorious proof – after the firing squad, the dead in combat and the missing – that a broad sector of our people refuses to live under totalitarianism.
Miguel Díaz Bauzá is a worthy example of Jose Martí’s statement: “When there are many men without honor, there are always others who have in themselves the honor of many men.” Being outside Cuba, far from the traumatizing experience of living under oppression, he decided, together with a group of comrades, to leave for the island to bring freedom to his compatriots, organizing an armed uprising against Fidel Castro’s dictatorship.
It is fair to say it because honoring honors. Many Cuban exiles have abandoned their family life and possessions, risking everything to land in Cuba to fulfill their duty to fight for freedom and human dignity. Heroism has not been lacking, as the writer and former political prisoner Jose Antonio Albertini affirms.
The living conditions of political prisoners are inhuman, those imprisoned for common crimes are not any better
Díaz Bauzá arrived on the shores of Caibarién on October 15, 1994, together with the martyr of the country Armando Sosa Fortuny, who died in prison after serving 44 years in two terms. Sosa Fortuny entered Cuba twice clandestinely, in 1960 and 1994, and died in 2019. continue reading
Castroite totalitarianism accumulates an unparalleled level of evil regarding imprisonment in our hemisphere. The living conditions of political prisoners are inhuman; those imprisoned for common crimes are not any better.
The number of people who have served more than 20 years in prison under brutal conditions is striking, with Mario Chanes de Armas who reached 30 years, today surpassed by Díaz Bauzá, who reached more than 30 years with his two sentences, a term invented by the Cuban prison authorities to try to destroy the dignity of these brave men.
Many prisoners served their sentence facing year after year the repressive acts of the regime’s henchmen and challenging the authorities, so that when the time came for their release they were not released, having to serve months and even years in prison due to the administrative disposition of the Ministry of the Interior, at the whim of a high-ranking official or through a trial as spurious and unjust as all those carried out by the dictatorship. These prisoners began to be known as the “reconvicted” among their fellow inmates.
The regime could not tolerate the rebellious behavior of many men and women, so, violating its own laws, they “recondemned” them.
It is unacceptable that Díaz Bauzá, 81 years old, has served 30 years in prison and is still in jail. We must not remain silent in the face of such cruelty and we must denounce the false pretext of a new sentence of 25 years for having participated in a violent incident in one of the many dungeons of the tyranny.
Many prisoners served their sentence facing year after year the repressive acts of the regime’s henchmen and challenging the authorities
Those who know him affirm he is a man of honor with a deep sense of justice. Angel de Fana, a former political prisoner for 20 years, with whom he speaks relatively frequently, says that the prisoner is not willing to make any kind of concessions to get out of prison, despite the decades that have passed and his poor health condition, which is why medicines have to be sent to him from overseas.
Díaz Bauzá is one of the people who has been in prison the longest for political reasons in the continent, a painful distinction that the totalitarian dictatorship intends to extend until 2032, which would make him serve 38 years in prison. The behavior of the Cuban dictatorship against Miguel Díaz Bauzá is the reiteration of evil, injustice and abuse of absolute power against those who want freedom and citizens’ rights on the island.
The Cuban regime’s perversion has no equal. Poverty and the violation of citizens’ rights reign from one end of the island to the other. Crises follow one after another in these six-and-a-half-long decades leaving a severe impact on the citizens.
Translated by LAR
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
The funeral service was held at the El Sauce Cultural Center in Havana
His followers burst into applause and sang some of his songs / Cuban Institute of Music / Facebook
14ymedio, Havana, 26 October 2024 — Dozens of people went on Friday afternoon to the state-owned El Sauce Cultural Center in Havana, to say goodbye to the Cuban reggaeton singer José Manuel Carbajal Zaldívar, known as El Taiger, who died at the age of 37. Although the ceremony was held only for the artist’s relatives and acquaintances, as reported on social networks by the Cuban Institute of Music, 500 followers accompanied the funeral procession to the Colón Cemetery, where his ashes were deposited.
During the tribute, the urn was placed on a table surrounded by wreaths next to his portrait, along with a Cuban flag and some candles. Behind, a screen projected images of the reggaeton singer. In one of them he was seen with his arms crossed next to a message that read: “El Taiger, the emblem of a country forever.”
After the tribute, the urn was taken to the cemetery, and when it was deposited in the family vault, the artist’s followers burst into applause and sang songs by the musician. The funeral procession led by his family and friends was accompanied by a group of admirers who left flowers in farewell.
The urn was taken to the cemetery, and when it was deposited in the family vault, the artist’s followers burst into applause and sang songs by the musician
The Havana necropolis, hit by vandalism, and now with El Taiger’s ashes in a colorful container, is unleashing the concern of his followers, who fear that his remains may be desecrated or stolen. continue reading
The ashes of the musician, who died on October 10 in a Miami hospital after remaining unconscious for days, arrived in Cuba on Thursday in a black bag from the Miami Memorial Plan funeral home carried on her shoulder by Teresa Padrón, the singer’s manager .
In a brief text published on social networks on behalf of the relatives of El Taiger “and Cuban cultural institutions,” the Cuban Institute of Music thanked the crowd for their displays of admiration and respect “expressed by our people in the face of the hospitalization, death and funeral ceremony for the young Cuban musician.”
In the Havana necropolis, hit by vandalism, the colorful container with his ashes is a source of concern to his followers
The Cuban Government rarely grants the use of a cultural space to pay tribute, especially to figures that are “uncomfortable” for the official cultural world. This time, however, the willingness of the authorities was the finishing touch on a series of acts of solidarity with the singer, whom the official press described as a “victim of a society as violent as the American one.”
The acts of support by the ruling party included extensive coverage of the case since El Taiger appeared in the back of a van with a bullet in his head, next to a few gallons of gasoline, on October 3, near Jackson Memorial hospital, in Miami.
The investigations in Miami to clarify his murder are still ongoing, and recently the chief of police, Manuel Morales, stated that the crime could be solved very soon because they have new evidence of what happened. “At this time we are not ready to discuss that level of detail of the investigation,” he said in an interview with Univision.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
Unicef donates 1.5 tons of medicines to Cuba for those affected by Hurricane Oscar
Many parishioners offered their homes to welcome the victims / Facebook / Methodist Church of Guantánamo
14ymedio, Havana, October 26, 2024 — A first donation of 1.5 tons of “medicines and consumable material” from Unicef arrived this Saturday in Havana to be delivered to the victims of Hurricane Oscar, which left seven dead in the eastern province of Guantánamo. The UN fund estimates that this aid will serve to support the medical care of some 140,000 people, “especially pregnant women, children and adolescents.”
The organization’s representative in Cuba, Alejandra Trossero, said that the objective is “to contribute to national response and recovery efforts in the most affected areas, especially so that children and adolescents and their families in Guantánamo have basic services.”
The donation is made up of kits that include analgesics, antipyretics, antibiotics, antifungals and other supplies for medical emergencies. Likewise, UNICEF said that, with the support of the Directorate General of Civil Protection and European Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO), it was able to secure “1,000 roofing sheets, 680 metal roofing purlins (braces), and 4,700 screws” for the reconstruction of 74 affected schools in the eastern province.
The Methodist Church of Guantánamo recently published images of its members helping residents in the most affected municipalities of the province after Oscar and the heavy rains that hit this Friday. It also announced that it would welcome 65 evacuees, who will be transferred to parish homes, and it has gathered donations to distribute among the victims.
Compared to the wave of solidarity with the eastern provinces, including from the exile community, the regime’s performance seems weak. After San Antonio del Sur, Maisí, Imías and Baracoa were devastated and isolated, it took the authorities two days to reach the municipalities, and actions to continue reading
accelerate the recovery have been scarce. In the official press and social networks, however, there has been no lack of voluntarism from leaders like Miguel Díaz-Canel and Manuel Marrero, but so far, it’s just been words.
Oscar entered Cuba on Sunday as a category 1 hurricane (out of 5) on the Saffir-Simpson scale, very close to the coastal city of Baracoa, and became a tropical storm before leaving on Monday through an area near Gibara, in the province of Holguín. So far, the authorities have not been able to give a definitive account of material and human damage in the area, due to the difficulty of access after heavy flooding in those localities, where there are dozens of missing people. It is feared that the death toll will be higher.
There are still isolated areas where the storm damage was severe
There are still isolated areas where the storm damage was severe, with accumulations of rainwater that caused runoff from the mountains, flooding and landslides, preventing access to the groups of rescuers.
According to Unicef estimates, the affected population amounts to 149,693 people, of which 32,600 (22%) are children. On Friday, the Cuban authorities began to evacuate the inhabitants of the eastern municipalities of Baracoa (Guantánamo, 80,000 inhabitants) and Moa (Holguín, 70,000 inhabitants), after heavy rains were recorded in the last few hours.
*The principle of relying on voluntary action (used especially with reference to the involvement of voluntary organizations in social welfare) – Oxford Dictionary
Translated by Regina Anavy
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He also supported the concept of the “New Man” defended by Che Guevara
After Ratzinger’s retirement, Pope Francis received Gutierrez at the Vatican in a kind of official rehabilitation. / Archbishopric of Lima
14ymedio, Havana, 25 October 2024 — Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, an admirer of Fidel Castro and father of Liberation Theology – a theoretical-religious approach that sympathizes with Marxism – died Tuesday in Lima at the age of 96. Involved in multiple controversies, he was criticized by the Vatican but rehabilitated in 2013 by Pope Francis, who after learning of the death defined him with an enigmatic expression: “he knew how to be silent when he had to be silent.”
Indeed, Gutiérrez was not the most publicized theologian of his time – if compared with others in his context, such as Camilo Torres, Leonardo Boff or Frei Betto, the latter an inveterate apologist for the Cuban regime – but he did lay one of the most important theoretical foundations for Liberation Theology, collected in his book of the same name, published in 1971.
In those pages, Gutiérrez praised the Cuban Revolution and applauded the measures taken by Fidel Castro, in whom he saw a leader who had reconciled the Marxists and Christians of his country. The leader had endowed tropical communism with a “solid and proper theory,” full of “historical realism,” and which could serve as a model for other movements on the continent.
He also subscribed to the concept of the “New Man” defended by Ernesto Guevara, in which he recognized a Christian inspiration, and recommended following the opinions of the Argentine to sustain “the effort of liberation continue reading
of Latin American man” that Cuba, according to Gutiérrez, was leading.
He suggested that, on the island, Fidel Castro had been right to point out a common enemy of Christians and Marxists
He suggested that, on the island, Fidel Castro had been right to point out a common enemy of Christians and Marxists – the capitalist “oppressors” – against whom they could take up arms, as Torres, a Colombian priest and guerrilla, had done. Gutierrez cited a 1969 speech by Castro in which he called Torres a “symbol of Latin American revolutionary unity.” During the decade in which he uttered those words, the leader had persecuted and imprisoned dozens of the Catholic religious and “put in check” the Episcopal Conference, which was critical of its rapprochement with Soviet communism.
The reality of the island – which Gutiérrez ignores or pretends to ignore in his book – is also not present in his account of “subversive priests,” who denounced the dictators of the region or supported the opposition militias. Several Cuban priests, who ended up imprisoned and then expelled from the country, played the same opposition role, supporting the militia uprisings in the Escambray or the invaders of Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs).
With the passage of time and the formal condemnations of the Vatican – Francis’s predecessor in the papacy, Joseph Ratzinger, was one of his most famous opponents as prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – Gutiérrez moderated his speech and passed to a secondary plane in public. Ratzinger signed a series of documents condemning the attachment to communism of Liberation Theology, and warning the priests about the “deviations” of their approach, for resorting, “in an insufficiently critical way” to “concepts taken from various currents of Marxist thought,” disguised as a “preferential option for the poor.”
In 2013, when Ratzinger – who had become pope under the name of Benedict XVI – had already retired, Francis received Gutiérrez at the Vatican in a kind of official rehabilitation. In public speeches, years later, he declared that Liberation Theology had been “a positive thing” in Latin America. He mocked the fact that several books of condemnations by the Vatican contained “80% of their notes in German” – an allusion to Ratzinger’s language – and that the Latin American “telluric path” was ideologized according to European parameters.
Unlike in other Latin American countries, Liberation Theology failed to take root in Cuba. Castro’s persecution of Catholic communities since the first decades of the Revolution meant that, on the rare occasions when Latin American missionaries sympathetic to this doctrine tried to spread it on the island, they found an audience that was very unreceptive to the Marxist approach.
Betto, author of the interview ’Fidel and Religion’, is a systematic defender of the Cuban Government
Another factor that influenced the rejection of Liberation Theology in Cuba was the caution that the Episcopal Conference took in the reception of missionaries enthusiastic about Marxism. However, important figures within the doctrine never renounced their old enthusiasm for the Cuban Revolution and several, such as Betto and Boff, have remained close to Havana. Betto, author of the interview ’Fidel and Religion’, is a systematic defender of the Cuban government and a columnist in its main propaganda media.
After his death, Gutiérrez’s detractors and admirers have offered their opinions on his life and work. Many have even tried to disassociate it from its Marxist theoretical roots. Boff said this week that it was an unfair “accusation” against the Peruvian priest, and that Francis had offered him “apologies” on behalf of the Catholic hierarchy for the “sufferings he endured in life.”
Gutiérrez was born on June 8, 1928 in Lima. He studied medicine and the humanities, and was ordained a priest in 1959. He belatedly joined the Dominicans in 2001 – an order from which other liberation theologians, such as Betto, come – and founded the Bartolomé de las Casas Institute in 1974.
He received a solid theological training in Louvain (Belgium) and Lyon (France), and was a professor at several prestigious universities, such as Cambridge, Harvard and Comillas. He was a pupil of important theologians and intellectuals of the time, such as Yves Congar and Henri de Lubac, and had contacts with Karl Rahner, Hans Küng and Jürgen Moltmann. In 2003, Gutiérrez received the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and the Humanities in Spain.
Until this Friday, only the Cienfuegos newspaper 5 de Septiembre, among the newspapers of the Communist Party of Cuba, had reported the news of his death.
Translated by Hombre de Paz
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The authorities also announced the cancellation of the U23 Tournament due to lack of resources
The National Series will be postponed until September 2025 / ’Escambray’
14ymedio, Havana, October 25, 2024 — The official media of Sancti Spíritus, Escambray, justified this Friday the decision of the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (Inder) to postpone the two most important baseball competitions at the national level due to the crisis. As the newspaper explained, in the context of the “economic war” in which the Island lives, carrying out the III Elite League and the 64th National Series would be “counterproductive.”
Escambray recalled that, after the announcement on October 14 of the calendar change, many sports fans demanded that the Elite League – celebrated at the end of the year – be rescheduled for next March and the National Series for a year from now. For the media, however, the change of date is nothing extraordinary, because the events require “important logistics of all kinds that the country can’t manage today.”
In that sense, at least, the state newspaper went deeper into the causes to postpone the games than Inder, which did not dedicate a word to the deep economic crisis. “It is incoherent to carry out an event that has not yet shown its validity after resuming, at least not in a country that is debating how to share a drop of fuel between electricity generation and ambulances, that can’t guarantee rice and sugar in the family basket or the supplies to produce food, not to mention the medicine that is missing in the pharmacy,” Escambray said, referring to the Elite League. continue reading
The events require important logistics of all kinds, which the country cannot manage today
Given that scenario, the media adds, “baseball and any sporting event, even a cultural one, are not priorities.” In fact, he advises that this tournament be suspended until the country’s conditions allow it and makes an unfortunate comparison, by giving as an example the Olympic Games, which canceled three editions due to world wars – conflicts that, taken together, left about 85 million dead – and the case of Tokyo 2020, which was postponed a year due to the pandemic. “As far as I know, the Elite Baseball League doesn’t compare on any scale of importance to those events,” he says.
With the “few resources that the country has,” the article continues, the National Series could be developed, “which demands an even stronger logistical scaffolding and which is, in short, Cuba’s main sociocultural event.”
Postponing the date will have several consequences. One of them is the statistics, since there will not be a National Series until 2026. Therefore, there will be no winner in 2025. In addition, “it is too long a downtime for one of the few recreational reliefs in the nation,” explains Escambray, which estimates that it will mean at least five months without baseball on the Island.
There is no way to distract yourself or disconnect from the problems that the Cuban has day after day
In the comment section of the Cubadebate article about the Inder’s announcement, Cubans also made clear their discontent: “In all that time until March 2025, fans will not be able to enjoy the national pastime. There is no way to distract yourself or disconnect from the problems that the Cuban has day after day. Very bad decision, really,” says a user.
The negative announcements of the authorities about the sport did not end there. On October 15, during the preparation of the team of players to compete in the Premier 12 tournament, Juan Reynaldo Pérez, president of the Cuban Baseball and Softball Federation, reported that the National U23 Tournament was canceled because half the provinces “are not in a position to develop it.” The reason: the event depends on the local budget, and there are no funds.
“This is the second consecutive time that the U23 suspends its national championship for reasons of money. You can’t do something that contributes to the development of the youngest players in the country, but you do have to play a non-professional Elite League anyway in March, whose objectives are still very questionable,” criticized sports journalist Yasel Porto.
Last Wednesday, Porto also reported on the economic problems experienced by the Industriales of Havana team. According to him, the members have not received their salaries for more than two months. In his message, alluding to the authorities, the journalist added: “Let’s see if someone notices this and at least feels a little ashamed.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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Last June, five Cuban specialists joined the Mexican Chetumal oncology hospital in Quintana Roo / Diario de Quintana Roo
14ymedio, Mexico City, 25 October 2024 — Mexico announced this Thursday the arrival in Quintana Roo of another 173 Cuban doctors, who join the 36 already established in that state, to reinforce care in the health centers. Mexican authorities are waiting for another 30 doctors from the Island to distribute them in 13 hospitals in isolated communities and in 18 mobile units, where they will provide care on Saturdays and Sundays.
The Mexican government has been extremely cautious about the centers in which it places Cubans. As of September, the health authorities of Quintana Roo had registered a hematologist, an epidemiologist and three gastroenterologists from the Island, who in June 2023 joined the Chetumal oncology hospital. It is known that in 2022, another 31 specialists arrived, but their distribution was never revealed.
The state coordinator of Imss-Bienestar, Moisés Alejandro Toledo, announced last June that specialists sent to remote areas, including Cubans, will receive “a bonus independent of their salary.” Months ago, in April of this year, the director of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (Imss), Zoé Robledo, was more specific: the salaries for these positions are 50,000 pesos (2,732 dollars per month), in addition to an incentive of 10,000 pesos (545 dollars).
The newspaper Reforma also reported in early October that it cost Mexico 5,188 dollars a month to maintain each of the Cuban doctors. The figure includes the salary – 27,000 pesos (1,351 dollars) – and the costs that the Government must cover to pay for food, lodging and transportation of about 966 health workers. The 2,135 specialists who arrived in the country this year make a total of 3,101 doctors who will also benefit. continue reading
The state of Quintana Roo placed 173 Cuban specialists in rural hospitals / Video capture
The 3,277 dollars received in total by Cuban doctors is managed by Neuronic Mexicana, a subsidiary of Neuronic S.A Cuba, a company that, since 2018, has represented the products and services of the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry of the Island, under its president Tania Guerra.
The management of the company has been questioned after the escape of several Cuban health workers, who have left their positions in Mexican centers – a total of 48 left between July 2022 and 2023. In practice, to cover their basic needs, doctors receive only “a stipend.”
Toledo said that a significant shortage of specialized nurses persists, confirming the weakening of the health system. The promise of former president López Obrador to create Imss-Bienestar, a free healthcare organization to replace the Seguro Popular and “have a better health system than Denmark,” is still far away.
“We have made a diagnosis of the infrastructure of our health centers and hospitals; maintenance by the state government has been carried out, and we are continuing with the work. We are improving the quality of care everywhere,” Toledo acknowledged.
Cuba has been favored by this program since the administration of López Obrador. Between 2022 and 2023, Mexico signed three agreements with the Island for which it paid 23,227,156 euros for 610 specialists.
The agreements were strengthened between the two countries despite the fact that several organizations, such as Prisoners Defenders, have criticized Mexico for promoting the hiring of Cuban professionals in “conditions of slavery.” The president of the organization, Javier Larrondo, has also said that there are “State Security agents” among the contingents of doctors who have arrived in Mexico.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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Local media reports the overflow of the Miel River and several landslides
The town of Cabacú, on the outskirts of Baracoa, is one of the most affected / Primada Visión
14ymedio, Havana, 25 October 2024 — Baracoa woke up again with floods this Friday, after being incommunicado since last Monday due to the passage of Hurricane Oscar. This time, the heavy rains that have ravaged the municipality of Guantánamo since dawn caused the overflow of the Miel River, whose waters reached several areas of the city and caused some landslides.
“Since two in the morning it’s been raining heavily here in Baracoa, and my street is flooded,” a resident told 14ymedio. “What Oscar didn’t do to us, this rain is doing. The water is about to enter the houses, and to top it off, an underground spring erupted on my patio, so we have water everywhere,” he complains. The man reports that, with the soil saturated by the rains left by Oscar, the slightest downpour wreaks havoc.
On Friday, Cuba’s Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero, reported on X that the authorities have begun to evacuate residents of Baracoa and Moa in the eastern province of Holguín. He stated that the Government has begun to mobilize after “the hard experience of the last few days.” “Landslides, floods and damage to homes are reported” in Baracoa, he added. The rainfall of the last few hours has also affected the municipality of Moa.
As reported this morning by the local television station, Primada Visión, the Jamal Weather Station reports intense rains from 1:00 in the morning. By 7:00 am, the cumulative rainfall was 128.8 millimeters (5.1 inches). The showers could last until Sunday. The rains are “related to the presence of an extended trough over the region, the transit of a tropical wave to the south of the territory, together with high values of humidity on the surface and a warm and humid flow from the southern region,” meteorologist Miriam Teresita Llanes told the media. continue reading
The television station also reports floods in the neighborhoods and towns of Cabacú – on the outskirts of the city and one of the most affected – La Playa, La Pasada, La Granjita, Reforma Urbana and areas near the Miel riverbed.
According to the Facebook post of Adalberto Moreira, a broadcaster on Radio Baracoa, in some areas of Cabacú, “landslides and floods” were reported.
“Very intense rains continue in Baracoa. Unusual floods in the city and river penetrations into homes are part of a critical panorama,” Primada Visión explained on social networks, where it showed images and videos sent by residents with entire streets flooded and houses with water up to the windows.
Not 48 hours had passed since Miguel Díaz-Canel left Guantánamo, where he visited San Antonio del Sur and promised that the Cubans of those areas were “neither alone nor abandoned.” But the people were again immersed in helplessness, and one resident reproached the leader to his face.
The tasks of the “recovery phase” announced on Thursday by the Civil Defense did not take effect either, and this Friday it was the residents themselves who tried, on their own, to unclog drains to facilitate the runoff.
Although reporting on the rains and sharing the images published by Primada Visión, the state media have not dedicated one line to reporting on the Government’s action plan to reduce damage in Baracoa.
After the passage of Hurricane Oscar, San Antonio del Sur, Imías and Baracoa were left incommunicado by the overflow of rivers and the destruction of several bridges that made it difficult for the authorities and rescuers to reach the municipalities. During those days there were seven deaths confirmed by official media, but large-scale floods and reports from families on social networks indicate that the number could be higher due to the dozens of people who are still missing.
The Minister of Transport, Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila, then reported the formation of a sinkhole that caused a road closure before Imías, leaving the population of Baracoa and Maisí isolated. In addition, in Macambo and La Farola, there were “big landslides” and damage to the San Antonio-Puriales road, whose bridge had one of its supports undermined.
As of Thursday, authorities accounted for at least 1,183 partial collapses and 1,048 partial roof collapses, in addition to 51 total house collapses. These numbers could grow if heavy rains continue in Baracoa.
Residents of Guantánamo province denounced the abandonment of the Government, which kept them uninformed due to the general blackouts on the Island. The news took two days to reach the devastated communities.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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Cuban boxer Arlen Lopez was one of the medallists who received an electric motorbike. / Video Xinhua/Image Capture
14ymedio, Havana, 22 October 2024 — Vehículos Eléctricos del Caribe (Vedca), a Chinese-Cuban joint venture based in Havana, presented the medallists and coaches who took part in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games – and the Paralympics – with a batch of electric motorbikes. The reward for so much “sacrifice and abnegation” is ironic: it comes in the middle of a national blackout.
The president of the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (Inder), Osvaldo Vento, thanked China for the “gesture” and claimed that the motorbikes – which have been proving to be dangerous and unsuitable for the tropics for months – will help mitigate the transport crisis that affects athletes as much as other Cubans.
The information was reported by the Xinhua news agency, but the official press on the island did not report on the ceremony to accept the Chinese “gift”, which took place on 18 October. A video released by Xinhua shows that diplomatic personnel from the Asian giant – including the ambassador himself, Hua Xin – as well as Vedca executives and representatives of Inder took part in the ceremony.
Winner of bronze in Paris, boxer Arlen Lopez said he was “surprised” by his motorbike and welcomed Beijing’s “show of support” for Cuban sport. Vento, with rhetoric also in tune with the country’s electrical disconnection, assured that he accepts Chinese “support” at a “time when dreams and aspirations can be obscured by challenges”. He promised that, in future, athletes would be “provided with resources” that would allow them to “train more efficiently and focus on achieving new and important goals”. continue reading
For Hua Xin, the motorbikes represent the “historic ties of cooperation between the two nations” and he welcomed the fact that a group of Cuban coaches travelled to China to train Chinese boxers. It paid off: China won three gold medals and two silver medals in boxing, a sport which is one of the island’s specialities.
Also at the event were Yarisleidis Cirilo, bronze medallist in canoeing in Paris, and double Paralympic long jump champion Robiel Yankiel Sol. The athletes were given the keys to LT 4202A1 and LT 4202 motorbikes, priced between 1,200 and 1,600 dollars, according to the costs listed on Vedca’s Facebook profile.
Inder president Osvaldo Vento thanked China for the “gesture”. / Video Xinhua/Image Capture
A month after the Olympics ended, the Cuban medallists received cakes, syrup, rum, balloons and applause from the leaders and “the people”. The delegation had protagonists – Mijaín López, Erislandy Álvarez, Yusneylis Guzmán López, Luis Alberto Orta Sánchez, Gabriel Rosillo, Milaimys Marín, Yarisleidis Cirilo Duboys, Rafael Alba and Arlen López – whose gifts fell far short of what their emigrated colleagues received.
The shortages gave rise to regrettable episodes, such as the sale of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 mobile phone given to triple jumper Andy Hechavarría for his participation in Paris. He was asking $900 for the phone, which had logos referring to the event. After a few hours, the Holguín native claimed in a Facebook post that “a neighbour had hacked” into his account. “He put my photo and everything. That means that he got into my profile to steal photos of me and information, because, look, none of those publications appear on my current account,” he claimed.
For its part, Vedca was established in 2019 through an international economic partnership contract between the Chinese company Tianjin Dongxing and the Cuban company Minerva. According to the official media Cubadebate, it operates with a workforce of 60 workers, including engineers, technicians, sheet/metal workers, welders and electricians, who assemble nine models of motorbikes – including the three-wheeled LT4 203 – and two models of tricycles: the C-400 with a load capacity of 400 kilograms and the C-800A with a capacity of 800 kilograms.
According to the company’s sales promotion manager, Deans Daniel Rodriguez Arias, so far this year the company has earned $2,043,000 for its products. “By 2024, it should get to around six million. By 2025, we project a turnover of over eight million. Sales in shops abroad with delivery to Cuba, for example, should generate external revenues of more than one million dollars, which is also a contribution to the country,” he calculated.
Translated by GH
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Contributing to the square’s racy image was the proximity of El Templete – a foundational site of the city – from which name derived a joke, given the colloquial use of the verb “templar” / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 24 October 2024 – Once upon a time there was a place that was pure noise. Legend has it that in Old Havana’s Plaza de Armas “you had to ask one foot’s permission to place the opposite foot down”. Luis Mario, who worked in the nearby restaurant La Mina when it was “overrun with business and the employees left every night with a wad of banknotes”, can’t believe what he sees now. Damp, blackened through lack of cleaning and empty of visitors, the square, which is also home to the Palacio de los Capitanes Generales, the Palacio del Segundo Cabo, the Santa Isabel Hotel and the Museo Nacional de Historial Natural, looked like a desert this Wednesday.
Damp, blackened through lack of cleaning and empty of visitors, the square looked like a desert this Wednesday / 14ymedio
Anyone familiar with the square since the 1990’s used to call this place – which once was brimming with sales activity – “books square”. While it’s true that there was an abundance of sleep-inducing editions of Che’s ’Bolivian Diary’ and Fidel Castro’s almost dissenting ’History Will Absolve Me’, in this same space you could also find – if you knew how to ask and could make it clear that you weren’t a State Security agent – a rare print copy of the demonised ’Out of the Game’ by Heberto Padilla, or that agonised mea culpa which Eliseo Alberto Diego titled ’Report Against Myself’.
You just needed to know where to look. Chroniclers say that no one left the square without what they were looking for. If it was love, there was always a wide choice to hand: a girl, a girl and a boy, a girl and a girl or a boy and a boy. Tourists were dazzled and surrendered themselves to this place. They gave in, loosened their wallet and put reason to sleep. More than a few would wake the next day without wallet, documents or even shoes. But now all of that sounds almost like just a past and happy piece of history. Where there was life, only dampness and emptiness remain.
Where there was life, only dampness and emptiness remain / 14ymedio
Contributing to the square’s racy image was the proximity of El Templete – a foundational site of the city – from which name derived a joke, given the colloquial use of the verb “templar” as synonymous with having sex. What serious city could have as the epicentre of its birth a synonym for a whorehouse? Only Havana, before they turned it into a militarized centre that disowned its nights of revelry, partying and carnival. From those enforced chastity belts that were imposed by the Cuban regime, this current sense of desolation has arrived.
Translated by Ricardo Recluso
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Most of the Cubans who crowd in front of the points of sale are elderly / 14ymedio
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 24 October 2024 — Nothing in the streets of Sancti Spíritus suggests that, as the state press states, life has returned to normal. The reconnection of the National Electric System (SEN) did not take the city out of the blackouts but merely returned it to the system of “rationed” cuts that it has been suffering for months. With the beginning of the school year scheduled for this coming Monday and the few services that have reopened, the streets remain almost empty. Only one place gives signs of life: the gas lines where Cubans gather daily to try to buy “a little something.”
“For days there has been the same crowd of people at the points of sale. The tickets for the application to buy are still suspended, and that forces people to go every day to check that they are on the list and look at what number they can get for a turn in line,” says Luis, a resident who, in recent days, has had to get up at the crack of dawn on several occasions to try to buy propane. “Yesterday I even fell asleep in line; that’s how tired I was.”
“The SEN was fixed, but here they continue to turn off the electricity in blocks as before. Therefore, those who do not have propane risk being left without cooking or heating water,” he explains. The places where charcoal is sold are also scarce, “although a bag has gone up to 2,000 pesos.”
The only option to eat when you don’t have electricity or propane, says Luis, are the places that sell broth. “Yesterday I went to the agricultural square and came across some broth being made on top of stones with a lot of sticks serving as firewood. One little glass was 32 pesos.”
In the Plaza de los Agros, broth was sold at 32 pesos / 14ymedio
Luis, therefore, has become one more of the hundreds of Cubans, mostly elderly, who crowd in front of points of sale for propane to try to get their name on the list of buyers. Carrying cylinders in wheelbarrows, on bicycles or in tow, Cubans settle on sidewalks or on the tanks themselves to wait long hours. The pose and age change, but the expression of helplessness on their faces is the same.
“I now managed to sign up, but I have about 1,000 people in front of me, and when the list reaches 1,500 it restarts. The lucky ones were the first to be able to add their names on Wednesday, because in the morning 100 cylinders came in, 15 of them authorized for state entities and five for the physically disabled. The remaining 80 were for the population,” Luis said, aware that the amount is insufficient.
“According to my calculations, from how the line has progressed so far, I should get the propane in about 20 days. I’m praying that it doesn’t end and they don’t stop bringing it,” says Luis, who knows that “the regime is limping along on its last legs.”
Just a few weeks ago, in early October, the Government managed to pay for the liquefied gas that is now being distributed on the Island. Before its arrival, the shortage kept many Cubans awake, and after the ship was able to dock, the distribution became “complex” due to bad weather caused by a cold front that arrived from the western provinces. “Cured of fright,” Luis knows that those situations, far from being exceptional, are quite frequent on the Island.
The provincial bus terminal this Wednesday afternoon was completely dark / 14ymedio
Like Sancti Spíritus, in other provinces there have also been long lines to buy the product. This is the case of Holguín, reported by this newspaper, where residents went to the points of sale in search of a means to cook during Hurricane Oscar’s passage. Many did not get to buy then, and the lines are still as long as at the beginning.
In the middle of the week, and with the alleged return to normalcy that the regime announced in its official media, no students or passers-by circulate in Sancti Spíritus. Only some employees that the Government described as “essential” continue to go to work.
The provincial bus terminal on Wednesday afternoon was completely dark with no service, and with the lack of fuel, hardly any vehicles circulated on the main roads. In his round-trip walks to the point of sale, Luis has found himself in a desolate city, “as if the hurricane had passed through here and not through the east.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
Translator’s note: ‘Alumbrón‘ is a coined Cuban word referring to the time when the light (electricity) is ON, that is the opposite of ‘apagones’ – blackouts. It comes from the verb ‘alumbrar’ which means to be bright or give off light.
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
The easternmost province of Cuba is also the poorest, and the ideologues of the regime know that the greater the poverty, the greater the dependence
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel arrived in the areas affected by Oscar with an army of escorts, but empty-handed / Cubadebate
14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, October 24, 2024 — Thanks to the theater, I was lucky enough to tour almost the entire Cuban archipelago, from Pinar del Río to Santiago, including the Isle of Pines (now the Isle of Youth). However, I was left with a debt before I was expelled from Cuba: Guantánamo. Some of my works were presented on its stages, but the performance always coincided with a trip outside the country. That aphorism that reads “know Cuba first and abroad later” has never been taken very seriously by most Cubans who have the privilege of boarding planes. So when we are far away, we are crushed by the full weight of nostalgia. Guantánamo is my loose end, my little thorn, my pending account.
The easternmost province of Cuba is also the poorest. And the ideologues of the regime know that the greater the poverty, the greater the dependence. That is why no one rules out that planned misery is one of their strategies to maintain an obsolete, impoverishing and catastrophic model. In the “elections” of delegates of 2023, for example, Guantánamo was the province with the most validated votes (92.94%).
The regime prefers to concentrate the scarce resources it distributes on the most problematic areas, the least obedient, those where the spark of protest ignites more quickly. That’s why they tend to leave the territories that show greater loyalty alone. The poverty of Guantánamo is not only the result of a geographical fatalism. Its helplessness is directly proportional to the confidence that the bureaucrats feel in the political fidelity of the region. “You don’t waste bullets on won territory,” could be a new aphorism. But all that, perhaps, is about to change. continue reading
The regime prefers to concentrate the scarce resources it distributes on the most problematic areas, the least obedient
The hand-picked dictator arrived in the areas affected by Hurricane Oscar with an army of escorts, but empty-handed. He arrived with a lot of excuses, but without solutions; with a troop of cameramen, but without supplies. Cubadebate published this Thursday: “Neither alone nor abandoned, Cuba works as a function of you.” However, in all the images that circulate on social networks, the truth slaps the official headline in the face. People did not receive Díaz-Canel with applause. In their voices you could repeatedly hear a blunt phrase: You abandoned us.
We still don’t know, for sure, the size of the destruction. Hurricane Ian (2022), category 5, left five fatalities. Oscar, with category 1, has already claimed seven lives, although it is feared that the figure is higher. Not even the response to hurricanes, which once enjoyed prestige, can now boast of anything. The disaster is total.
Some Cubans have suggested turning the Guantánamo Naval Base into a city for free Cubans. Although the idea is Macondian* and unlikely, it would be interesting to transform that little piece of Cuba, occupied by the United States, into a kind of Caribbean Hong Kong. Imagine the moral impact that a free city could cause in the very mouth of the caiman. Imagine the contrast between both sides of the metal fence. Of course, this suggestion is no more than a fantasy. But since the regime has taken practically everything from us, don’t let them also take away our ability to imagine.
No one, not even the most bitter enemy of the regime, is happy about the tragedy that occurred
I’ve never been to Guantánamo, but I have a lot of friends there. I attest to the talent, intelligence, creativity, nobility and courage of the people I know. Our thoughts and prayers go out to them today. No one, not even the most bitter enemy of the regime, is happy about the tragedy that occurred. We all hurt for Guantánamo. In exile, many Cubans are already organizing to send aid, prioritizing the most affected areas. And we are aware that a bandaid does not solve the whole problem, but it serves, at least, one injured person. That’s not a small thing. Worse would be to stay with our arms crossed or limit ourselves to denunciation and catharsis.
Cuba is fed up with political speeches. Those of us who have focused on fighting for change should avoid reproducing the regime’s talkative model. Practicing politics is, above all, doing concrete things for the people. It should be more about doing and less about talking. It should be a practice, not just simple rhetoric. It’s true that it is extremely complicated to do it from the outside. It’s true that, with any aid, there is the trap of indirectly benefiting the regime. But that fear cannot cause us to abandon those who need help.
How to force a humanitarian intervention? How to achieve it despite the obstinacy and arrogance of a dying regime? Let’s not just stay in a corner singing La Guantanamera. Doing something today for Guantánamo is the best way to do it for the Cuba of our dreams.
*Translator’s note: Macondian is a term associated with the fictional Colombian town of Macondo, which is featured in Gabriel García Márquez’s novel ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’
Translated by Regina Anavy
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
Venezuela, whose candidacy had been received with reluctance by Brazil, was not included
Central table of the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia / EFE
14ymedio, Havana, October 24, 2024 — Cuba was admitted this Friday, along with 12 other countries, to the BRICS group, at a time of maximum devastation for the national economy in which the Island desperately seeks the bloc’s help. The announcement was made this Thursday during the XVI summit of the organization, in Kazan, Russia, according to the official media Cubadebate.
Together with the Island, the alliance – originally formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – also welcomed Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. Venezuela, however, was not accepted. Its inclusion had been met with reluctance on the part of Brazil.
Celso Amorim, the right-hand man of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – who did not attend the conclave – asked to “go slowly” in including the group of emerging economies to the group. “I don’t defend the entry of Venezuela,” Amorim said before the summit. “It’s no use filling BRICS with countries; otherwise, a new G-77 will soon be created.” continue reading
Putin’s words reaffirmed that the members of the bloc will have the same support and that the group is open to all those who “share its values”
However, Putin’s words reaffirmed that the members of the bloc will have the same support and that the group is open to all those who “share its values.” To exemplify this, the president spoke of the war in Ukraine. He claimed that the West wanted to turn his country into “a satellite of raw material,” but stressed that, on the other hand, the BRICS partners respect the independence and traditions of Russia. Some, like Cuba, in a more than enthusiastic way and with full support.
In his message, the Russian president pointed out that the group does not create alternatives to the SWIFT system and highlighted that Russia uses its own financial messaging system and that several other Bric countries also use it.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel was unable to attend the summit. The energy situation on the Island, which since Friday suffered a blackout in most of its territory, and the passage of Hurricane Oscar through the eastern provinces, forced him to stay in the country. In his place was Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, with the mission of doing everything possible to achieve the inclusion of Cuba in the bloc.
President Díaz-Canel said that Cuba’s goal was to find in the group a very favorable environment for Cuba
In a tweet about the summit, the president said that Cuba’s goal was to find in the group a “very favorable environment for Cuba,” “cooperation and collaboration,” “mutual benefit” and “the creation of an economic and commercial cooperation structure that does not use the dollar as its currency”; that is, a country linked to large economies, such as Russia or China.
As of now, the bloc temporarily led by Putin has become 45% of the world’s population and a third of the gross domestic product of the entire planet.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
14ymedio, Mercedes García, Sancti Spíritus, 26 October 2024 — A couple crosses paths with a friend on one of the main streets of the Kilo 12 neighborhood in the city of Sancti Spíritus. They can barely see each other, because the lack of public lighting has forced the young man, who runs into them head-on, to wear “a miner’s headlamp.” When the man greets them they are dazzled by the light that, in the midst of absolute darkness, leaves them, for a few seconds, disoriented and stumbling over the holes and cracks on the sidewalk.
