Category: Translator: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

Cuban State Security Came Looking for Me

With all the problems one has, I prefer the secret police in their “bad guy” mode

Cuban military personnel (stock photo: CubaNet)

Cubanet, Luis Cino, Havana, 30 April 2026. — A few days ago, an official from State Security showed up at my house and, in no more than 15 minutes that we talked while standing at my door, augured for me–in varying tones–a future even darker than that which his fellow repressors predict when they have this type of conversation with me.

Imprisonment, misery, hardship, death, are what he predicted for me. As if I didn’t already know that I’ve had a little of each of those things for a long time. Even death, because even though I am blessed with good health, the life we Cubans live is no kind of life. As Solzhenitsyn wrote, “If in order to live it is necessary not to live, is it worth it?”

For starters, the Lieutenant warned me that “tolerance is over; with the threats from the yanquis, this is no time for your antics,” and he assured me that “if there is  an attack, all counterrevolutionaries will be taken out of circulation.”

The official did not specify if the withdrawal from circulation–or disappearance (as they have called it to various oppositionists)–means that they will kill us. But it doesn’t matter, because if the official (who is convinced that the conflagration will occur within a matter of days) is to be believed, it is likely that before they have time to “pick me up preventively,” I would be one of the first victims of the US missiles.

“You’d better pray that Trump will not decide to attack us,” he told me, “because you, who live less than a couple of kilometers from the Western Army* General Command, won’t stand a chance when the bombs start continue reading

flying.”

After he got apocalyptic, he put his hand on my shoulder and counseled me to “get out of that independent journalism, because with your age and how skinny you are, you wouldn’t last in jail.” Right away he got into good-guy mode, as if he were a friend worrying because I smoke a lot, taking interest in my family problems and my future.

“Why didn’t you stay one of those times when you went to the US? What a mistake you made, what a blunder!” he lamented. “Here you have no future. You have one foot on the street and the other in jail. But, supposing that you don’t end up in jail, can you imagine when you get even older, your mind not working, and not being able to write anymore? What will you live on? At that point you won’t have the strength to work in construction or agriculture. And you don’t have a pension. I see you scavenging the dumpsters for cans and bottles.”

Then suddenly, as if illuminated from heaven, he gave me the solution to my problems: “You need to set up a business, become a self-employed worker.” Then he got indignant and before long called me an ingrate when I told him that, if I were to set up a business, then I really would be vulnerable–not as they officially or euphemistically refer to the disabled–but rather because I would be continuously subjected to the multi-thousand-peso fines imposed by the inspectors, who would sometimes be deployed by the very same State Security as a way to harass me without it seeming for political reasons.

He didn’t finish listening to me. He turned around, got on his Suzuki, cranked it up, and went back the way he came.

Truly, with all the problems one has, I prefer the secret police when they come in their bad-guy mode. When they mix their bullying with friendly advice, they make my head spin.

______________

Translator’s Notes:

*The Western Army of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces is headquartered in Havana and covers the strategic western end (the region closest to the US) of the Island.

Luis Cino biography: Born Havana, 1956. He worked as an English teacher, in construction, and in agriculture. He began working in independent journalism in 1998. He was a member of the editorial board of the magazine De Cuba and deputy director of Primavera Digital. A regular contributor to CubaNet since 2003, he writes about art, history, politics, and society. He lives in Arroyo Naranjo. He dreams of being able to dedicate himself fully and freely to writing fiction. He is passionate about good books, the sea, jazz, and blues.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Iglesias and the Convoy: Propaganda During the Cuban Crisis

Silvio Rodríguez,  the convoy, and Pablo Iglesias: propaganda during the Cuban crisis

Cubanet Noticias de CubaCubanet, “Journalist in Cuba”, Havana, 24 March 2026 — The Nuestra América Convoy* arrived without incident on the announced date. Its crew members would have preferred greater media coverage, more noise and visibility, but they had to settle for the reach of Cuban state media and a few headlines on social networks that sparked more mockery and criticism than support. Cuba is not Gaza, as was pointed out long before the convoy members boarded their flight in first-class seats, and this has been confirmed following the end of the deplorable spectacle put on by spokespeople of a socialism perverted to the core, in the capital of a country dying of that same appropriated and lucrative socialism, all of which is no secret. Perhaps this is why the episode is all the more repugnant to us.

After meeting up they proceeded to the Convention Palace for a gathering presided over by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, whose mere presence underscores the importance of this caravan and its participants, and the real impact that this little adventure could have in the current context of the “talks.” There they boasted of the rampant misery (branded as “creative resistance”) in the Antilles, traded slogans, used up energy till they brought down the National Electrical System (SEN), then retired to their five-star hotel accommodations, ready to receive that committed Left that always puts its shoulder to the wheel for the people. From his luxurious room, Pablo Iglesias, one of the most despicable and terrifying politicians Spain has ever produced, celebrated himself and conveyed the message that while the crisis is tremendous, the island isn’t doing as badly as portrayed.

The former leader of Podemos had his selfies, his live broadcast, his five minutes of fame, and his tropical getaway, all paid for by the Socialist International. The rest of the truckers called for a sincere dialogue between Cuba and the United States, conveniently ignoring the fact that the convoy’s organizational advisor is the aunt of the lead negotiator for the Cuban side, who until a week ago claimed he wasn’t negotiating with the United States. Honesty above all else is what one can expect from the Havana regime. That’s why we learned on January 4th** that there were Cuban military personnel guarding Nicolás Maduro, a reality denied for years by the island’s diplomats.

Cuba isn’t in such dire straits, nor is it unreasonable, that transparency cannot be demanded from the dictatorship as it dialogues with the Trump administration while the Cuban people are deliberately ignored. It never occurred to any of the comrades, amidst all the sloganeering and continue reading

proletarian embraces, to suggest that the government communicate with its citizens. Such are the friends of Cuba, those who get excited when Díaz-Canel claims that the people are prepared to die standing up to the United States. Fidel Castro assured Nikita Khrushchev of something similar during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Even today, many Cubans are unaware of how coldly the idolized leader sentenced an entire nation to death, speaking for those who then inhabited the island.

Currently, the more the Trump administration denies that a military operation in Cuba will take place, the more Havana escalates its confrontational rhetoric. While there is no one left in the White House who hasn’t ruled out the possibility of a military intervention, here come the fleet drivers, ready to soak in the rhetoric of resistance to the last drop of foreign blood, while Silvio Rodríguez shows up requesting an AKM “in case they come at us…” And who would “they” be? So far, only Cubans themselves have attacked—those who suffer blackouts, political repression, hunger, and shortages of all kinds; those who have no right to demand that the dialogue be with them; those who have repeatedly asked that the problem be resolved collectively by all Cubans, without reservations.

Silvio Rodríguez continues to widen the gap between the people and his miserable existence as a militant singer-songwriter. It won’t be long before his work can no longer save him from the disgust and disappointment his pronouncements provoke. It won’t be long before we see if he’ll actually be capable of responding with his AKM to the call to arms that Díaz-Canel (or anyone else up there) might be willing to issue as soon as circumstances demand it.

The troubadour, once again, turns his back on his people and closes ranks with the dictatorship he has loyally served as symbolic capital. He aligns himself with a nefarious Pablo Iglesias in this final charade, blaming the “blockade” *** and minimizing the regime’s blunders. Iglesias seeks to salvage his lamentable political image, and Silvio doesn’t miss the opportunity to demonstrate that he is willing to die as he lived: being a fool.

The founder of Nueva Trova will never confront Castroism, no matter how unjust its designs or how ruthless its aggressions towards the people. Rodríguez demonstrated as much during the protests of July 2021. Any statement he makes against the regime would come thirty years too late, overshadowed by the coherence by which another, truly great, Pablo chose to live out the remainder of his life.
Silvio’s train left without him, he lost his unicorn, his ventricles shrank. All he has left is his AKM. We’ll see if he’s capable of pointing it at us, although he’ll probably end up using it to defend himself against the ill will his words have stirred in the hearts of thousands of Cubans.

Translated By: Alicia Barraqué Ellison.

Translator’s Notes:

* The convoy was named after an essay by José Martí. Martí has always, throughout Cuba’s history, been referred to as the “Apostle of Cuban Independence.”

** U.S. forces captured Maduro and his wife on January 3.

*** There is, in fact, no US ‘blockade’ on Cuba, but this continues to be the term the Cuban government prefers to apply to the ongoing US embargo. During the Cuban Missile Crisis the US ordered a Naval blockade (which it called a ‘quarantine’) on Cuba in 1962, between 22 October and 20 November of that year. The blockade was lifted when Russia agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from the Island. The embargo had been imposed earlier in February of the same year, and although modified from time to time, it is still in force.

Jorge Gómez and the Silence Surrounding His Fall From Grace During Cuba’s Five Grey Years

Jorge Gómez / Moncada group (Photo: Prensa Latina / blogspot)

  Cubanet, Luis Cino, Havana, 24 March 2026 — There is much talk about Jorge Gómez Barranco, leader of the band Grupo Moncada, who died on March 23—and it’s almost always good talk, because there is no doubt that Gómez was a good person and much loved by many in the cultural sphere, particularly music and television.

What is not talked about (it seems that few remember or prefer not to remember) is how in 1971, when Gómez, a young philosophy professor at the time, fell out of favor with the regime because of his connection to the magazine, Pensamiento Crítico (“Critical Thinking”).

This publication, which brought together left-wing intellectuals—veritable human think tanks but who differed from the Soviet line, such as Aurelio Alonso and Fernando Martínez Heredia—was shut down shortly after that infamous and misnamed “Congress of Education and Culture” that ushered in, on orders from Raúl Castro, the Five Grey Years. Castro, then-Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, labeled the periodical, along with the University of Havana philosophy department, “a bastion of revisionists and counterrevolutionaries.” All because they dared to dabble in the ideas of Marcuse, Gramsci, Sartre—and, perhaps, even Bakunin and Trotsky—precisely at a time when the Castro regime, still reeling from the failure of the Ten Million Ton Sugar Harvest, didn’t want to upset the Kremlin, to whose chariot they had hitched themselves so that the Soviets could pull them out of the crisis.

Jorge Gómez, like most of his colleagues at Critical Thinking and in the philosophy faculty, preferred to forget that time of closed-mindedness and censorship of intellectuals, to downplay its importance. He even ignored the controversy that led a recalcitrant commissioner to accuse him, playing on his second surname*, of wanting to send Marxism tumbling off a cliff.

After all, the end of his foray into philosophy allowed Jorge Gómez, who had learned to play the piano as a child, to return to music, his great passion. In 1972, along with several university students, he formed a group that continue reading

combined Cuban son with Andean music, and which he named Moncada in honor of his uncle, the poet Raúl Gómez García, who died in the attack on the Santiago barracks on July 26, 1953.

Years later, after replacing the influence of Quilapayún and Inti Illimani with more pop and catchy tunes—and the overly serious Alberto Falla and Manuel Calviño, first with Carlos Enríquez and then with other long-haired, handsome and younger singers—Moncada managed to become popular in the 1980s and mainly during the years of the Special Period, when his concerts packed the steps of the University of Havana.

Music lovers, and especially rock fans, have Jorge Gómez to thank for his 80s television program, Perspectiva, where we had the opportunity—unusual at that time when prohibitions on rock music remained staunchly in place—to see groups like Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, etc. on the small screen.

Ten years ago, on August 30, 2016, when singer-songwriter Amaury Pérez  interviewed Jorge Gómez on his TV show, Con dos que se quieran (“With Two Who Love Each Other”)—a kind of confessional for the singer-songwriter’s big and little friends—Pérez asked Gómez how the philosophy department came to be terminated and why Critical Thinking magazine was shut down.

When asked that question, Jorge Gómez dodged it, sidestepping the issue. He said the magazine “had been gradually losing circulation,” excusing this development by saying that “these things happen in revolutions.” It would have been too presumptuous for the obsequious Jorge Gómez to say more and thus jeopardize his moment in the spotlight as a successful musician within the mainstream culture.

Besides, I would think, why would he look for trouble by stirring up the past? What for? After all, most guests on With two who love each other—when asked this type of confrontational question by Amaury Pérez—far from complaining about grievances and reprisals, evade the issue, choose forgiveness, and almost always end up proclaiming their devotion “to Fidel and the Revolution.”

Jorge Gómez preferred to forget ‘the mistakes of the past,’ to turn the page, as did some of his Critical Thinking colleagues, who after being rehabilitated, became tin-pot repairmen dedicated to reinventing socialism.

* A “barranco” is a narrow, winding river gorge.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

Author’s biography:

Luis Cino. Born Havana, 1956. He worked as an English teacher, in construction, and in agriculture. He began working in independent journalism in 1998. He was a member of the editorial board of the magazine De Cuba and deputy director of Primavera Digital. A regular contributor to CubaNet since 2003, he writes about art, history, politics, and society. He lives in Arroyo Naranjo. He dreams of being able to dedicate himself fully and freely to writing fiction. He is passionate about good books, the sea, jazz, and blues.

Cuba’s Most Notorious of 2025

Los más infames de 2025 (Ilustración: Mary Esther Lemus)

The Most Notorious of 2025
Cubanet, Luis Cino, Havana, 30 December 2025

Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez. Photo: Cuban News Agency (ACN)

1-Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez

As he has done since taking office, the most inefficient and unpopular ruler that Cuba has ever had repeats in first place. This past 2025, Díaz-Canel has enthusiastically added to his track record, further increasing his total disconnection from reality: faced with the catastrophic situation in the country, in almost-daily meetings, all he managed to talk about was “creative resistance.”

The hand-picked ruler demonstrated his lack of charisma and empathy when, during his pointless and choreographed tours of the eastern provinces in the wake of Hurricane Melissa, he lost his composure before complaints from several victims. And this year he also threatened once again to make those protesting in the streets over power outages and water shortages feel “the full weight of the law”; a mere handful of people, according to him, whom he described as being “confused by the narratives created by enemy propaganda,” and even “lowlifes and criminals.”

2-Alejandro Gil Fernández

Alejandro Gil Fernández, Photo: Cuban News Agency (ACN)

The man sentenced to life imprisonment—Gil, the now-former Minister of Economy—once so hated by the people (as was Marino Murillo Jorge*) because of the chaos and inflation unleashed by the failure of the Ordering Task**, now is to be pitied. In the most significant purge since “Case Number One of 1989,”*** Gil was chosen as a scapegoat, and the blame for ill-conceived decisions—approved by the regime’s top leadership at the most inopportune moment—was placed squarely on him. But he wasn’t only blamed for that: among other charges, Gil was accused of “espionage.” It is unknown for whom he was spying. This remains unknown because the two trials against him were held behind closed doors. Therefore, the corrupt individuals involved in the case, who must be numerous and highly placed, also remain unknown.

Gil had more luck than Arnaldo Ochoa and Tony de la Guardia and avoided the firing squad. But, given how much he knows, he will most likely die in prison: he’ll have a heart attack or be “suicided”.**** Just like José Abrantes, the former Interior Minister who was purged in 1989. But, in Gil’s case, they likely won’t even announce his death.

3-Vicente de la O Levy

Vicente de la O Levy
Photo: Video capture, Canal Caribe

With help from the services of his sidekick, journalist Bernardo Espinosa of the jet-black dyed hair, Energy and Mines Minister de la O has comfortably beaten other scoundrels for this ranking on the list by the many and lengthy blackouts (planned or not) occurring on his watch, the energy generation deficits, the thermoelectric plant breakdowns, the National Electric System failures, and the unconvincing explanations that nobody understands.

4-Manuel Marrero Cruz

Manuel Marrero Cruz (Photo: Estudios Revolución)

Prime Minister Marrero, despite habitually staying closer to reality than Díaz-Canel, got himself into a straitjacket when trying to explain (but only superficially and with a dearth of detail) the so-called “Government Plan to Correct Distortions and Restart the Economy.” For the most part, he left us Cubans dumbfounded by his prattle about “dollarizing now so that we can gradually de-dollarize later.”

5-Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla

Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla (Photo: Cuban News Agency – ACN)

Besides his attacks on the US Secretary of State, the Cuban-American Marco Rubio, and his accusations of piracy against Washington for its operations in the Caribbean—Foreign Relations Minister Rodríguez also made time to complain about his compatriots’ hate speech and incitements to violence via social media, and declared himself to be all for moderation and respect. He, no less, who represents before the world a regime that advocated revolutionary violence, preached hatred, and which today–through official spokespersons as well as the so-called “cyber catfishers” *****–dedicates itself to insulting its adversaries and muddying their reputations. And the chancellor knocked it out of the park when he denied that in Cuba there are political prisoners or people who are going hungry.

6-Raúl Castro Ruz

Raúl Castro Ruz, Photo: Prensa Latina

Fidel’s hermanísimo [‘Supreme Brother’] and successor to head the Castro network, Raúl Castro has returned this year to frustrate those who believed the rumors of his demise. It has happened so many times before, that when it finally occurs for real, nobody will believe it. But the fact that the nonagenarian Army General continues to cling to the world of the living is no longer news. What is novel is that he’s no longer content to have one foot in the stirrup, but rather, given how screwed up everything is, he has decided to show that he is the one in charge. After all, isn’t he, by dynastic right, the “Leader of the Revolution”?

Castro already proved that he is determined to leapfrog over institutional processes, and anything else, whenever he deems it opportune. Such as when he postponed until further notice the IX Congress of the Communist Party (PCC), which was supposed to take place in April, 2026–a decision that was not his to make, but rather up to Díaz-Canel, First Secretary of the PCC.

7-Marta Elena Feitó Cabrera

Marta Elena Feitó Cabrera in the National Assembly of People’s Power. Photo: Cubadebate

Once the Minister of Social Security, Feitó resigned in July. This followed the great controversy provoked by her brazen insensitivity in declaring that the indigents seen on the streets rummaging through the garbage and panhandling are not beggars, but rather people in costume seeking easy money or hunting for recyclables.

The sad thing is that many of the parliamentarians who applauded these shameless statements of the then-minister, such as Yosuán Palacios, later applauded Díaz-Canel when he lambasted Feitó and left her with no other choice than to resign.

8-Sandro Castro Arteaga

Sandro Castro Arteaga during the podcast, ‘‘Solo gente bonita’’ (Only nice people). Photo: video capture

The grandson of the deceased “Maximum Leader,” indifferent to the embarrassment he must cause his family, Castro continues performing his clown show. The most recent episode involved “Vampicash,” a convertible currency exchange, which Little Prince Castro—fancying himself “Mama’s Boy in Chief”— tried to establish before the National Bank announced the official floating rate.

9-Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga

Photo: Cuban News Agency (ACN)

The nephew of Fidel and Raúl Castro (he is the grandson of Ángela, a sister of theirs) Pérez-Oliva rose fast like foam this year. From Vice Minister of Foreign Commerce he went on to Minister and, more recently, to Vice Prime Minister of the Republic, one of the highest State positions. Additionally, he was elected deputy to the National Assembly of People’s Power, which makes him presidential material.

Many believe that this engineer, a member of the dynasty albeit he doesn’t bear the surname Castro, will be the one who takes the place of Díaz-Canel. If this comes to pass, it is to be supposed that next year (if the regime lasts that long), Pérez-Oliva will rise higher on this list also.

10-Luis Carreres Ortiz y Belissa Cruz Pupo

The actors Luis Carreres Ortiz and Belissa Cruz Pupo. Photos: MINCULT [Ministry of Culture]/ TVC
The actor from Santiago, who was so funny in his role as the coarse Voltímetro in the lamented TV show Vivir del Cuento [“To Live By Lies”], Carreres lost his charm and a considerable portion of his fan base recently when—more than acting appeasing and compliant—he declared himself against the anti-Castro exile and the street protests in Cuba.

A similar loss of public favor happened to the actress Belissa Cruz. Not even lending aid alongside her colleague Alejandro Cuervo to the victims of Hurricane Melissa has managed to improve her standing after she appeared in a TV spot and cynically suggested that Cubans should solve their energy problems by buying their own electrical plant instead of protesting the blackouts. And Cruz made matters even worse when she tried to rectify her comments but ended up complaining about her critics.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

Translator’s Notes
* Marino Murillo Jorge is the president of Tabacuba, the Cuban state-owned enterprise that oversees all aspects of the Island’s tobacco industry.
** The “Ordering Task” (Tarea Ordenamiento) was a set of measures that include eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and a broad range of other measures targeted to different elements of the Cuban economy.
*** “Case Number One of 1989” refers to the trial and execution of General Arnaldo Ochoa and other officials on charges of drug smuggling and treason.
**** “….[to be] suicided” is a colloquialism used by Cubans when referring to someone, usually a prominent figure, who is reported by official channels to have committed suicide but whose death is popularly suspected to have been perpetrated by the government.
***** “Catfishing” is pretending to be someone else online, i.e., stealing someone’s identity. In this context, the term refers to fake, pro-government, social media accounts operated by Cuban government-recruited trolls. See Freedom House’s Cuba: Freedom on the Net 2024 Country Report.

The ‘Five Grey Years’ Kept Going Much Longer Than a Decade, Primarily Because of Fidel Castro / Cubanet, Luis Cino

That dark, inquisitorial period lasted much more than five years. It did not, as some would like to pretend, end in 1976.

The work, “1971,” from the series, “Reconstrucción. Quinquenio Gris,’ [Reconstruction. Five Grey Years,” by the plastic artist Alejandro González. Image: MNBA.
Cubanet, Luis Cino, Havana, 7 June 2025 – It was the late essayist Ambrosio Fornet who coined the term, “The Five Grey Years,” to refer to the repression of artists and intellectuals during the 1970s–a disastrous time for the national culture.

Fornet first utilized this expression in January of 2007 during his appearance at an event convened by fellow essayist Desiderio Navarro with the blessing of the Ministry of Culture, and by which Fornet attempted to resolve the so-called “email storm.”

That storm, also known as “the little war of  emails,” was provoked by the fawning  presentations on the TV programs “Impronta” and “La Diferencia” (hosted by singer Alfredo Rodríguez) of Luis Pavón and Jorge “Papito” Serguera, executors of the cultural policies of that period—the former as president of the National Council of Culture (CNC), the latter as director of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT).

During his appearance in that roundtable, and in his attempt to do some belated damage control by minimizing the era as much as possible (and above all, by not indicating who bore the primary responsibility for it) Fornet understated matters by employing the term, “five-year period.”

That dark, inquisitorial time lasted much longer than five years. It did not, as some claim, end in 1976, when the National Council of Culture was continue reading

replaced by the Ministry of Culture, with Armando Hart at the helm; several more years would elapse before the darkness would begin to dissipate in the early 1980s.

Nor did it start in 1971 with the Congress of Education and Culture, and the Heberto Padilla affair. For a long while already, dark clouds had been gathering over writers and artists. Before the commissioners, irritated by the homoerotic tone of Chapter VIII of Paradiso, ordered Lezama Lima‘s monumental novel to be removed from bookstores and turned into pulp; before the ordeal visited upon Heberto Padilla and Antón Arrufat for their books Fuera del juego and Los siete contraTebas, respectively, began in 1968; before that Stalinist ectoplasm who would sign his name as “Leopoldo Ávila” (and whose authorship remains unknown, whether it was actually “Lieutenant” Pavón, José Antonio Portuondo*, or both of them in a duet) began to fire mercilessly at writers from the pages of Verde Olivo, the magazine of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.

Several years before Lieutenant Armando Quesada* ordered the burning of the Guiñol Nacional puppets related to Afro-Cuban traditions in 1971, considering them to represent “backwardness, underdevelopment, the stuff of black santeros,” other figures in official culture, imbued with “revolutionary fervor,” were already setting themselves up as inquisitors.

In October of 1963, one of the most Stalinist cultural commissars of the regime, the scholastically Marxist Mirta Aguirre, declared: “In the hands of dialectical materialism, art can and should be an exorcism, a form of knowledge that contributes to sweeping the dark shadows of ignorance from the minds of men, a precious instrument for replacing the religious conception of the world with [Marxism’s] scientific conception, and a timely Marxist resource for the defeat of philosophical idealism.”

In 1965, a recalcitrant and obtuse extremist like  Magaly Muguercia believed she was capable of deciding that Cuban theater had to be “an obligatory socialist expression.”

The writer and folklorist Samuel Feijoo, on April 15, 1965, in order to get in tune with that statement from the Union of Young Communists that screamed “Out with the homosexuals and the counterrevolutionaries from our schools,” and anticipating the UMAP by a few months and the Parametración*** carried out by the Evaluation Commission of the CNC in the early 70s by six years, published in the newspaper El Mundo a commentary entitled “Revolution and Vices,” in which he stated:

“This most virile country, with its army of men, should not and cannot be expressed by homosexual writers and artists. Because no homosexual represents the Revolution, which is a matter of men, of fists and not pens, of courage and not trembling, of integrity and not intrigue, of creative courage and not cheap surprises. Because the literature of homosexuals reflects their epicene natures, as Raúl Roa said. And true revolutionary literature is not and will never be written by sodomites… Destroy their positions, their procedures, their influence. That is what is called revolutionary social hygiene. They must be eradicated from their key positions on the frontier of revolutionary art and literature. If we lose a dance group because of this, we are left without the sick dance group. If we lose an exquisite literary figure, the air becomes cleaner. Thus, we will feel healthier while we create new virile figures emerging from a brave people.”

The witch hunt against artists and intellectuals would reach its climax with Fidel Castro’s speech in April 1971, at the closing of the Congress on Education and Culture. But the scribes of official culture and some of those who suffered from Stockholm syndrome yesterday, when speaking of the Grey Decade, prefer to reduce it to a five-year period and avoid mentioning that the responsibility for that dark and sad period lay with Fidel Castro, beginning with his “Words to Intellectuals” in June 1961**, and culminating 10 years later with the closing speech of the Congress on Education and Culture.

Luis Pavón, Papito Serguera, Armando Quesada, and other anti-cultural henchmen, however extremist they may have been, were merely the underlings with limited authority who, in compliance with “the instructions from above,” were charged with carrying out those aberrant policies to bring artists and intellectuals in line and “within the Revolution.”

Translator’s Notes:

*Portuondo and Quesada are pictured in this Translating Cuba article, Cuban Writer Jorge Ferrer Releases the Recordings of Heberto Padilla’s ‘Confession.’

**A reference to a speech by Fidel Castro on June 30, 1961, in which he set limits to the free expression of artists and writers: “Within the Revolution, everything; outside the Revolution, nothing.”

****Parameterization/ parametración: From the word “parameters.” Parameterization is a process of establishing parameters and declaring anyone who falls outside them (the parametrados) to be what is commonly translated as “misfits” or “marginalized.” This is a process much harsher than implied by these terms in English. The process is akin to the McCarthy witch hunts and black lists and is used, for example, to purge the ranks of teachers, or even to imprison people.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

In Cuba, Even the Will To Live Is Lost

Currently in Cuba, along with hunger, poverty, ill health, disease, criminality, and repression, suicides are on the rise

Source: El Toque

Cubanet, Luis Cino Álvarez, Havana, 17 March 2025 — Rare is the day we don’t hear of a suicide: someone of any sex or age who hanged or poisoned themselves, jumped off a bridge or rooftop, shot themselves, slit their wrists, set themselves ablaze, threw themselves under the wheels of a bus or truck.

At this time in Cuba, along with hunger, poverty, ill health, disease, criminality, and repression increase, suicides are on the rise.

According to official data, which are most likely conservative, the suicide rate in Cuba has ranged between 12 and 20 for every 100,000 persons.

According to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the suicide rate in Cuba is 14.11 for every 100,000 inhabitants. The worldwide average is 9.49, and 7.3 on the American continent.

According to data from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), in 2021 the suicide rate in Cuba was 16 per 100,000 inhabitants, and in 2022, 12.9 suicides.

In the neighboring Dominican Republic, the rate is almost half that: 6.3.

In 2015, ONEI stated that suicide was the tenth leading cause of death in Cuba. But in the last five years, with the country’s economic and social continue reading

conditions worsening to extreme levels, the number of persons taking their own lives must have increased significantly.

The number of Cubans who die by suicide is surpassed only by deaths from traffic accidents, heart attacks, strokes, and cancer.

In official reports (police, forensic, demographic, etc.), they avoid using the term “suicide.” So as not to admit the fact that so many Cubans (even among the elite, as was the case with Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart) are unhappy, stressed, and depressed enough to prefer death. In official Cuba—given as they are to euphemisms—they use a rather long one to refer to suicides: “death by intentionally self-inflicted injuries.”

Capable as they are of any absurdity in official circles, I don’t know if they also use that euphemism when there are no injuries, as in cases of poisoning, which are among the most common, especially among women, children, and adolescents.

Regarding the latter, the Statistical Health Yearbook revealed that suicides among minors between the ages of five and 18 rose from 18 in 2022 to 28 in 2023; and that among adolescents between the ages of 10 and 18, suicides increased from 31 to 34, making it the fourth leading cause of death in that age group. These are mostly due to bullying, family problems, and also, among those aged 16 to 18, to avoid compulsory military service.

If the authorities deem that the attempt to take one’s own life disrupts the public order and “civil peace,” the failed suicide is sent to prison. A military conscript who tried to kill himself is also put in jail. How can a draftee attempt to take his own life, which, like the means of production, information, and everything else, also belongs to the socialist state?

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

The Celebration of a Bloody Failure / Cubanet, Luis Cino

It is an aberration that the Moncada carnage, which began a nightmare that seems endless after 65 years of dictatorship, became a national holiday.

Celbration of 26th of July / Poverty in Cuba. (Fotos: Cubadebate / CubaNet)sdsd

Cubanet, Luis Cino, Havana, 26 July 2024 — A few days ago, writing in 14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera recalled when Fidel Castro, appearing on a State TV “Roundtable” [Mesa Redonda] segment in 2000, admitted that he could have avoided the attack on the Moncada Barracks and gone up the Sierra Maestra to begin the battle against the Batista regime.

This would have prevented the loss of 86 lives: 22 military personnel and 64 revolutionaries — eight who died during the assault and 56 who were killed by the soldiers after being taken prisoner.

Fidel Castro’s plan of using 160 men armed with pistols and 22 carbines to take the Moncada Barracks—Cuba’s second military fortress, defended by a garrison of a thousand men—had no chance of success.

Even assuming that they had managed to take Moncada, and that a large part of the Santiago population would have joined the revolutionaries, and that they had also managed to take the barracks of the National Police and the Navy, Santiago de Cuba would have become a mousetrap for them. Even if the Fidelistas had managed, as they had planned, to also take the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks in Bayamo, they would not have been able to contain the army reinforcements that would come to Santiago. And it would have been difficult for the rebels to withdraw from the city, escape the bombings of government aircraft, and take refuge in the Sierra Maestra to start the guerrilla war. continue reading

But Fidel Castro, a delusional guy who was given to hatching the most outlandish plots, needed to make big headlines before taking up arms against the Batista regime. And he achieved that with the tragic debacle that was the attack on Moncada and, to top it all off, his subsequent statement with a title inspired by a quotation from Mein Kampf: “History will absolve me.”

Starting on July 26, 1953, and throughout the following decades, Fidel Castro’s specialty would be to take advantage of his setbacks and turn them into victories or, at least, into something that seemed like success or that he could present as such.

It is an aberration that the Moncada carnage, which began a nightmare that seems endless after 65 years of a dictatorship that has led Cuba to ruin, became not only the most exalted passage in Castro’s history but also a national holiday: the so-called “Day of National Rebellion,” the longest celebration of Castroism, with three holidays.

If it’s a matter of celebrating failures, they could have chosen, among many others, the Ten Million Ton Sugar Harvest that did not happen, the Havana Greenbelt [or Cordon],  the energy revolution, the experiments that wiped out the country’s livestock, the destruction of the sugar industry or, more recently—in keeping with the post-Fidel-continuity regime—the Tarea Ordenamiento (Ordering Task) and its consequent uneconomic rearrangements.

But Castroism requires stories of martyrology, mourning, the cult of the dead. Like vampires, it needs blood.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

Popular Protests Have the Cuban Regime Backed Into a Corner / Cubanet

Mothers protesting in Maisí, Guantánamo Province, Cuba (captured from YouTube)

Cubanet, Luis Cino, Havana, 27 March 2024 — More than a few Cubans in exile are skeptical about the scope and effectiveness of the current protests by the Cuban population. They belittle them, arguing (in agreement with the official narrative) that the demonstrations are only about food and electricity, and that to calm them down will take only bestowing a little rice and beans from the state reserves, reducing the blackouts a little, blasting some reggaeton from loudspeakers, and hauling in the kegs to dispense beer on tap.

Many who think this way are disgusted and scared when they see protesters in flip-flops, the men without shirts, yelling vulgarities and expletives against Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel. They cannot conceal their elitism and contempt for what they consider to be easily-manipulated mobs of hungry rabble, politically illiterate. Thus, they betray a dissociation from reality and an arrogance as great as that of the leaders of the Castro succession.

If it is true that six decades of dictatorship have eroded societal values and civic sensibilities, and managed to keep many Cubans in a state of confusion and degradation, the populace overall has had enough of so much misery and oppression, and will not be meekly herded back into the fold.

The women and men who took the streets to protest are demanding freedom, because that is what they need to live with dignity–not only food, water, and electricity, as those trickster-bosses who try to hide the will of the people would have us believe. continue reading

There is room for agreement with those who speak of the need–now and in the future, if we aspire to democracy and not banana-republic anarchy–for the protesters to have leaders who can present a coherent political program as an alternative to the regime. But we cannot look down on those who, since July 11, 2021 (11J), in their own way and within their range of possibility, have been resisting the government with demands that, within a totalitarian state, inevitably become political.

The sum total of protests documented since 2021 by the Cuban Observatory of Conflicts produces a statistic that until very recently would have been inconceivable: 12,972. And that number will only increase.

Ordinary men and women, many of them illiterate, who demand to live as human beings, are managing to back the regime into a corner — something which the pro-democracy opposition did not achieve in decades.

We must humble ourselves and, however painful it may be, recognize that those of us who were endowed with civility and a certain intellectual baggage, opposing the regime since the 1990s, have failed in our efforts. We
have done so without knowing the job, improvising as we went, with a high level of idealism, without explicitly proposing to take power; all the while denouncing the abuses of power, and struggling to open spaces for democracy in the very smallest chinks feasible, as happened with the Varela Project, the high point of the opposition. And throughout, with a high toll of beatings, imprisonments, banishments, and even murders.

But we were unable to fully connect with the average Cuban. How were we going to reach a blackmailed, frightened population, who after decades of indoctrination and ideological manipulation, was sick of harangues and rejecting anything that smelled of politics? To top it off, this population was subjected to a constant bombardment of defamation against the oppositionists, who had no right of reply via any of the media in service to the State.

Everything conspired against opposition movements. And it was not only the repression. It was also the lack of resources and the ill-use or embezzlement by unscrupulous elements of the little that there was available; insufficient or poorly directed international support; internal disagreements and conflicts due to inflated egos and roles — often fomented by undercover State Security agents; the vices and tricks of Castroism transplanted to the opposition camp; the opportunists and imposters opposition to obtain a refugee visa.

Today, leaders who were moral role models are missed, such as Oswaldo Payá, Laura Pollán, Vladimiro Roca, Elizardo Sánchez, and Gustavo Arcos Bergnes.  

José Daniel Ferrer, Félix Navarro, and dozens of other oppositionists are in jail. Hundreds more have been forced into exile.

But currently, the regime has to face the daily demands of a people who are fed up with abuses and lies. Because the government has no solutions to offer, these protests will continue. And the people, unlike the stubborn bosses, have learned lessons from 11J.

In his article, “The art of protest in Cuba”,  Omar López Montenegro explains, “Neo-Castroism stopped being the only referent in the life of Cubans and, therefore, the whole false mythological construction undergirding it fell apart — including stereotypes such as ‘nobody can fix this thing, but nobody can do away with it, either,’ and so many others that for years nourished a culture of apathy and acceptance of injustice as an inevitable evil. The people what changes, they want them now, and they want them as a result of their own actions, not regime accommodations or miraculous intervention by third parties.”

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

Musician Gorki Aguila Arrives in Mexico After Days of Uncertainty Over His Exit From Cuba

The artist was detained on May 3 for more than 24 hours by Cuban State Security.

The musician Gorki Águila after landing at Mexico City International Airport / Facebook/Capture

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 13 May 20204 — “I am glad to get out of hell, out of the Castros’ extermination camp.” Such was the bluntness of Cuban musician Gorki Águila upon arriving in Mexico City on Monday, May 6. After several days of uncertainty, due to his arrest on Friday, May 3 at José Martí International Airport in Havana, the leader of the band Porno para Ricardo has managed to leave the Island.

“They tore me from my homeland,” a visibly emotional Águila declared, but adding that they had been unable to pull him out “by the roots” from the place where he has made his art and life’s work. With an affectionate shout-out to his followers, the artist sealed his entry into Mexican territory in what appears to be a journey with no quick return, at least as long as the current political regime remains in Havana.

“We filmed Gorki’s first moments in Mexico City airport after he finally got out of Cuba,” boasted Czech photographer and filmmaker Hana Jakrlova. She recalled that at first, the rocker could not board the plane because immigration officials had informed him that he was being “regulated,” the official euphemism for Cubans who are prohibited from leaving the country.

The “regulation” contradicted what he had previously been told by State Security

“Stay tuned for our documentary film, Permanent Gorki,” Jakrlova announced. “We were filming the final days of Gorki’s life in Cuba, and we plan to follow him in his involuntary exile. Freedom for Cuba!” Águila’s departure closes a week-plus of uncertainty as to whether the Cuban authorities would let him emigrate, a question that had opened with his arrest on May 3 at Cuba’s most important airport terminal. continue reading

After passing through the airline check-in, Águila went over to the counters of the Directorate of Identification, Immigration and Emigration, where he was notified that a regulation was pending on his person. Upset with the arbitrary decision, which contradicted what State Security had previously informed him, the musician protested angrily at the scene.

Right then and there Águila was detained by the police. Although at first he had been reported missing, 14ymedio was able to confirm with an operator of the Ministry of the Interior telephone service that, following his detention at the airport terminal, the leader of the rock band Porno Para Ricardo was temporarily held at the Santiago de las Vegas police station.

“Gorki was released yesterday (Saturday night) after they made him go through that whole disturbing situation; he missed his flight,” confirmed Ciro Javier Díaz Penedo, another Porno Para Ricardo member, more than 24 hours later via social media.

For its part, the Cultural Rights Observatory, during the hours following his arrest, issued an “alarm over arbitrary detention” of Águila and reported him “missing.” The organization criticized the political police for “significantly violating the freedom of movement, among other human rights” of the activist, and demanded his immediate release.

Águila, whose songs became a symbol of the counterculture opposed to the regime, got on State Security’s radar decades ago. The musician suffered many arrests on the Island, the most notable being in 2008, when many artists and intellectuals demanded his release.

He also had numerous immigration-related run-ins with the Island’s authorities. In 2010, for example, the regime prevented his return to Cuba from the U.S., alleging that his passport had not been extended. Águila extended the document’s validity that same day and traveled the next, but he continued to be harassed.

In 2018, the authorities again prevented his departure, this time to Miami, from where he was set to travel to Lima, Peru as a guest of the Forum of Civil Society and Social Actors.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

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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 Cuban Minister of Tourism Expects Half a Million Russian Visitors

Juan Carlos García Granda, Cuba’s minister of tourism  / Presidencia Cuba

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Moscow, 14 March 2024–The Russian MIR payment card, accepted in Cuba since November 2023, is here to stay and will boost Russian tourism to the Caribbean nation to an expected half-million visitors, Cuban minister of tourism Juan Carlos García Granda declared today.

“The Russian MIR card arrived in Cuba to stay,” García Granda stated during a press conference called by the Russian news agency TASS.  He explained that the Cuban tourism sector assigned itself the task of “creating many more benefits for the Russian customer.”

“One of the challenges we have overcome, because we can now announce the results, is that Russians can use rubles to pay in Cuba, which is already the case today,” he pointed out.

García Granda recalled that since 20 November 2023, “we were able to complete the first transactions with MIR cards, and we officially announced the use of MIR cards on terminals at points of sale since 5 December 2023.” continue reading

The minister reiterated the interest in promoting Cuba as an attractive tourist destination for Russia

“In these first months of operation, more than $2.7 million dollars have been transferred via the MIR cards; there are 20,000 point-of-service terminals in major stores and tourist spots throughout the country. This is something that will continue to grow and the conditions exist for it to be so,” he asserted.

The minister reiterated the interest in promoting Cuba as an attractive tourist destination for Russia, and averred that Havana “is not abandoning the objective of having Russians occupy one of the three top spots among foreign visitors to the country.”

He indicated that even throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Russian tourists could visit the Greatest of the Antilles, thanks to agreements between Havana and Moscow. Also, Havana is in permanent dialogue with the Russian authorities to increase not only the number of flights, but also to add new routes, in particular from St. Petersburg to the Island.

Already for the current year, García Granda noted, Cuba will exceed 200,000 Russian tourists.

“This is not a great amount in terms of absolute figures, but it will be a very motivating result for us. I expect that soon, even while I’m still leading this ministry, we will get to a half-million Russian visitors,” he added.

Translated by Alicia Barraqué Ellison 

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Cuba Has Lost Carlos Alberto Montaner

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

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 30 June 2023–“What qualifier should I use to win the title of top toady?” I asked Carlos Alberto Montaner one day. “Illustrious,” he replied, and we could not stop laughing.

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

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

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

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

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

Goodbye, my illustrious friend.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison 

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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.

‘Mi Tierra’: A Record Preserving the Estefans’ Roots Turns 30′

Gloria Estefan in the video for Los años que me quedan (“The years I have left”), one of the album’s greatest hits. Source: video capture.

14ymedio biggerEFE (via 14ymedio), Jorge I. Pérez, Miami, 11 June 2023 — Mi Tierra (“My Homeland”) remains the favorite album of Cuban American singer Gloria Estefan who, 30 years after its release, describes the record as “a cultural project” that she and her husband, producer Emilio Estefan, did for their children.

“It was made to keep Cuba alive and for our children to know their roots,” says Estefan in an interview with EFE in Miami on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of an album that was not the first she recorded in Spanish, but was the first that she made in Spanish “after success in English.”

“It’s a project that plays variations of Cuban music, which is so rich. Culturally, it reflects Emilio and me. As artists, it has been the greatest contribution we have made to who we are. That mixture (of sounds) is very real within us,” says the singer, composer and actress.

With 12 songs written especially for the album, which was released on June 22, 1993 under Sony Music’s Epic Records label, Mi Tierra includes pieces in such Cuban genres as bolero, son montuno, chachachá, and danzón, and closes with a conga santiaguera [music for an ensemble dance from Santiago de Cuba in Oriente, Cuba’s easternmost province].

From 1993 to now, 19 million copies have been sold, she declares with pride.

“I grew up singing the Cuban ’standards’.” When we left Cuba, my mother was able to take only one suitcase with her. But my grandmother would send me mango compotes — which didn’t exist in this country — and inside the box she’d put records by Olga Guillot, by Celia Cruz, by Cachao. So as a child l sang all these songs that meant a lot to me,” Gloria says. continue reading

About the origin of Mi Tierra, Gloria says that when they were “at the height of success,” she and her husband began to dream of being able to show the world why they were mixing Afro-Cuban sounds with their music.

“We wanted to put out something new, compose new songs, but ones that would sound as if they’d been written in the 40s, during Cuba’s musical golden age, songs before Castro. So, we came up with that concept.”

According to the performer — who was born in Havana in 1957 and arrived in Miami at two years of age — “the project began to develop.”

“We talked about bringing in the greats of Cuban music. So, there’s Cachao (Cuban musician and composer Israel López, who died in 2008), Arturo Sandoval, Paquito D’Rivera–and Juanito Márquez, a composer who was the king of feeling,” she explains.*

“We were touring the world with music in English, and when we told the [record] company we wanted to do it, they thought we had gone crazy, because it was an American company. But we said, ’You know, you have to trust us,’” recalls the Miami Sound Machine vocalist.

Gloria Estefan, one of the most successful artists in the history of Latin music, explains that the album’s title song was written “with an idea of Emilio’s” that the Colombian composer Fabio Alonso Salgado, better known as Estéfano, ended up rounding out.

“Emilio told him he wanted to make a song about what one feels about the land one leaves behind. ’I want it to be a nostalgic song, so that any immigrant anywhere in the world can remember the smells, the flavors,’ he asked him, and the two of them sat down and composed the song.”

The singer recalls that with Miami Sound Machine she had already recorded a Spanish album, A Toda Máquina, which only had two songs “snuck in” that were in English: I Need A Man and Dr. Beat.

“I’ve sung in Spanish long before all the hits in English, so (with Mi Tierra) it was like going back to our initial idea and the songs we played here at quinces [girls’ 15th birthday celebrations], weddings, bautizos [christenings], but with new and original songs.”

“I loved every moment of the creation of that record,” she says.

Asked how she feels knowing that her music is still officially banned in Cuba, she replied: “This album was a love letter to our land and a hand that I extended to Cuba across these 90 miles. Cuba is still very important in our lives–we share something, which is heritage,” she remarked.

Next week Gloria Estefan will be inducted into the American Songwriters Hall of Fame. It’s “something that means a lot to me,” she says.**

Translator’s Notes:
* “Feeling,” a term which, in the context of musical styles, is often spelled phonetically in Spanish as filin, was a type of popular song in the Cuba of the 1940s.
** Gloria Estefan was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on June 19, 2023. She is the first Hispanic woman to be so honored.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

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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.

Cooking Gas Is Also Lacking In Cuba

Wood-fired kitchen typical of the Cuban country dwellings. Taken from Invasor, the provincial newspaper of Ciego de Ávila province, located some 400 kilometers to the east of Havana.

Ivan García, 26 May 2023 — The National Highway running through Matanzas province divides Los Arabos municipality in two directions. On the left, a town of just over 23 thousand inhabitants, cracked streets, and wagons pulled by horses that in their tiresome trot leave their poop on the main road.

On the right, a handful of isolated villages with clapboard huts and thatched roofs, surrounded by small food plantations and a few lean cows grazing under the gaze of their owners. If not watched, they are lynched by clandestine butchers.

160 kilometers east of Havana, in the middle of the 21st century—the century of new technologies, 5G and artificial intelligence—Pedro, 56 years old, a generous guy as are almost all the residents of the interior of Cuba, still plows the land with a team of of oxen and cooks with firewood. He lives with his wife and two children in a wattle-and-daub hut with a polished cement floor.

Pedro and his family own few belongings. An antique cathode-ray tube television set, a Haier [Chinese] refrigerator, and a rice pot “from when the Government was giving them out in 2007 during the Energy Revolution,” Pedro explains, and begins plucking a hen. Besides a patch of yuca [cassava] and another of plantains, there are mango, avocado, and sour orange trees. In a pigpen are five native Cuban hogs with shiny black coats.

Two cows and a bull sleep in a shed at the back, attached to the house. “I have to keep them close so they don’t get stolen. It’s a daily struggle to make sure the thieves don’t slaughter the animals and destroy the harvest.” With the milk from the cattle he makes cheeses that his children later sell along the National Highway. continue reading

The fuel shortage prevents him from renting a tractor to plow the land. “We are the same or worse off than during the Special Period. A liter of oil to run the turbine costs me 200 pesos on the informal market. And you can’t always find it. The government talks about food sovereignty, but it provides no fertilizers or fuel, and farm implements and tractors are sold for hard currency. If they don’t change their methods, we are heading for famine,” Pedro predicts.

Three years ago, his wife started cooking with firewood in an open field. “We have a kerosene stove, but it is difficult to find fuel for it. The fuel is usually dry firewood or marabou–the best and healthiest. It doesn’t smoke and the food tastes good. If there is anything in surplus around here, it’s marabú”.

Some 200 kilometers from Pedro’s ranch, in Havana’s Sevillano district, Julia, an 81-year-old housewife, saves liquefied gas down to the smallest measurement. “In March and April, we had a hard time. We had to cook and boil water with an electric oven. In May they gave us a gas cylinder that lasted fifteen days. They should have given us another one, but liquefied gas has not reached the point of sale yet,” she states, then adds:

“There are six people in my house, including a small child. Almost all the gas we expend is for boiling drinking water we and preparing food. At most, it lasts us nine or ten days. On the black market, the gas cylinder costs between 1,000 and 1,200 pesos. Add to that what the courier charges to deliver it. There is no wallet big enough. Before Díaz-Canel’s economic crisis, the gas would be used up sooner, because there were beans to soften, a piece of pork to roast, or a panetela [Cuban sponge cake] to bake. But now, there ain’t nothin’ to cook.”

On April 17, Vicente de la O Levy, Minister of Energy and Mines, said that one of the country’s products with low available reserves is domestic fuel. “Some provinces have one day’s worth left in reserve, others two. But in the eastern region, for example, the fuel in CUPET [state-run petroleum company] tanks at our bases has already run out,” he said.

From end of February to the first days of May, instability in the delivery of liquefied gas has raised alarms among Cubans, who live in constant suspense, awaiting a new crisis. More than 1.8 million customers cook with liquefied gas.

“In Santiago de Cuba we have only the month of May guaranteed. In June, we will see if a fuel ship arrives,” said a worker from the gas company. On May 21 in Havana, families who depend on street gas for cooking lost service that day for a period of more than 24 hours.

“It was about two in the afternoon and I was making dinner. When I turn on the stove, I see that there is no gas. We were like this until Monday afternoon. These people (the rulers) have turned the country into a hell. When it’s not gas that’s lacking, then sugar is scarce, there’s no water, or the electricity goes out. We live in a bloody state of shock,” Luisa, a pensioner, complains.

According to the state-run press, the street gas deficit was caused by an accident at the Puerto Escondido plant, east of the capital. So far in 2023, the fuel shortage in Cuba has grown. There are provinces where gasoline is not sold to private drivers.

“You have to have a permit from the governor or the provincial mayor. That represents another avenue of corruption, because you have to pay an arm and a leg to get the permit. Also, they only sell you 20 liters a week,” stressed a private taxi driver in Villa Clara.

State-owned companies have had to make drastic cuts in fuel use. ETECSA [the state-run telecommunications company], for example, is only receiving fuel for ten or fifteen work days. Most state companies have ceased providing transportation for workers, except military corporations and Communist Party institutions.

On Tuesday the 23rd, the line to buy fuel at the gas station at Infanta and San Rafael streets was three blocks long. “They have tried to alleviate the queues with a WhatsApp feature that notifies you the day you should come to buy. But since there is so much corruption, people arrive early to verify that they’re dispensing gasoline, because sometimes when you get there, they tell you that they’ve run out,” says a private taxi driver.

A liter of gasoline is sold in the informal market for between 500 and 800 pesos, and oil between 200 and 300 pesos. The fuel crisis has shot up transportation costs within the city and also for travel to other provinces.

The fare from La Víbora to Vedado by collective taxi [taxis that pick up people and travel set routes, often in old American cars], which used to cost 100 pesos, increased to 150 pesos–and 200 at night. If you rent a taxi using a WhatsApp feature–a kind of local Uber–an eight-kilometer trip comes out to no less than 1,200 pesos.

This inflationary spiral generated by the fuel shortage has, in a domino effect, caused food prices to increase by between 10 and 40 percent on the informal market–where the vast majority of people are forced to do much of their shopping.

To illustrate: The price of a carton of eggs rose from 1,500 to 2,000 pesos. A pound of rice was 170 pesos, and is now 200–280 if the grain is of higher quality. A pound of ham that used to cost 850 pesos is now priced at 950. The cost of fish increased from 500 to 650 pesos per pound. The biggest increase was that of chicken imported from the US, from 230 to almost 400 pesos per pound. A box of chicken that used to be priced at 7,000 pesos now exceeds 11,000 pesos.

Within the last year and a half, the price of food in Cuba has risen by almost 71%. Various factors have an impact, ranging from the systemic crisis of the economic, political and social model implemented by the regime, to the rise in food and fuel prices on the international market.

Pedro, the farmer from Los Arabos, considers himself lucky. “We don’t even have clothes to wear, and if a cyclone were to pass over us, the house would be blown away by the wind. But at least we have food,” he says. Meanwhile, his wife continues tenderizing a hen with a piece of marabou firewood. And that, in Cuba, is a luxury.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison  

Crony Capitalism in Cuba

Private business in Havana. Source: Diario de Cuba

Ivan García, Havana, 22 May 2023 — Juan José, a private entrepreneur in Cuba, spent a year and a half trying to find a place to install a mini-brewery west of Havana. “He greased the palms of several government officials in the Playa municipality with bills to speed up the procedures. But no go. Things never loosened up,” said a relative of Juan José.

Two years ago, on February 21, 2021, the state newspaper Juventud Rebelde published this news: “Companies from China and Cuba sign an agreement to install a mini-brewery in Havana.” According to the official press, the Cuban ambassador in Beijing, Carlos Miguel Pereira, commented that the agreement was signed by the company Jinan China-Germany Co LTD and the Cuban company Maquimport.

“This is the first import of this type carried out by the Foreign Trade Business Group in the Asian State, to support a non-state form of management. Pereira explained that the purchased equipment will go to a vacant locale of the Playa Municipal Government, west of Havana, which will be converted into a gastronomic complex,” the report reads.

On April 5 of that same year, Cubadebate published an extensive report entitled “Local Project without a locale, or, the dream that dissipates like beer foam,” and showed the extensive catalog of economic absurdities that operate on the Island.

What the entrepreneur Juan José and his group have experienced is an authentic criollo farce. They invested a considerable sum of dollars to import the machinery, following to the letter the convoluted regulation instituted for “non-state forms of management”, as the regime pompously calls private businesses.

Goodbye to the dream

Juan José went through all the twists and turns designed by the Cuban bureaucracy, trying to obtain a license that would allow him to produce top quality malt and beer. But the state bureaucracy monopoly did not approve him. He bid goodbye to the dream of opening a business that would generate 30 new jobs and could produce up to 4,500 liters of malt and beer daily. continue reading

Why was Juan José not approved? “A guy with more money and better connections appeared on the scene. It’s that simple,” says a former Communist party official in the capital. He tells Diario Las Américas* about the shady dealings behind a legal bidding process, or the granting of a permit to a private business or “Micro, Small, or Medium Enterprise” (MSME). Here is his testimony:

“I know the case of the brewery that was going to be set up in Playa. Those entrepreneurs passed the screening and internal investigations. We were still in the pandemic stage and it was urgently needed to reactivate the economy and generate new businesses in goods and services. But in Cuba there is no marketplace to determine, according to the proposals presented, who is to be granted permission to open the business.”

Under the table

“Everything works through relationships and money moving ‘under the table’ [to buy influence]. After the MSME is approved by the ministries of finance and prices, economy and planning, and other government functionaries, the mayor of the municipality is the one who gives the OK. From the outset, they saw a gold mine in the emerging MSMEs. Those are big chunks of money. To approve a certain business, such as a restaurant that sells food or a mini-industry that produces preserves, you have to pay between 3 and 5,000 dollars or its equivalent in pesos.

“The money is there for the taking. If the business is a construction cooperative, party officials in the municipality or province are in charge of getting you the jobs. For example, a contract to paint a certain state company is valued at 300,000 pesos and from that money the president of the cooperative pays 30 or 40,000 pesos to the mayor. Of course, never directly.

“With the MSMEs, the business is more succulent and a flock of government vultures are hovering around those ‘businesses’ that fork out money. From the import permit (state importers charge a fee of up to 20%), to paying 300 dollars to the little guys to speed up the operation or 2,000 or 3,000 dollars to a high-level official to lease you premises in a central area of the city”.

According to the former official, the government’s intention is to approve as many MSMEs as possible. Since the process began in September 2021, and until November 2022, the Ministry of Economy and Planning had approved 5,643 private MSMEs, 68 state-owned MSMEs, and 59 non-agricultural cooperatives.

“In the corridors of the provincial government headquarters it is rumored that MSMEs are going to sell their merchandise even in the warehouses of the Ministry of Interior Commerce. Businesses that can invest hundreds of thousands of dollars or one or two million are being favored. The strategy is to dismantle the blockade (US trade embargo), because those private businesses can import directly from the United States and OFAC grants them a license,” he clarifies.

“Of course, not all the people who manage these businesses are politically reliable. That is why a group of mysterious MSMEs have burst on the scene, run by ‘heavyweights’ from the Revolutionary Armed Forces, the Ministry of the Interior, or relatives and friends of important government officials. This business has the approval of the Russians, who are currently advising the Cuban economy. The State does not disburse a single dollar. All expenses are paid by the MSMEs, which are charged 30 or 35% taxes. It’s a good deal,” concludes the former official.

An employee of a Havana MSME confesses that all “these businesses do not have the same rank. There are MSMEs that move a few thousand dollars and others that handle millions. The government has its eye on those. Almost all of them are in a conspiracy with the authorities or the high-ranking government officials who own the business”. And he describes the modus operandi to replenish themselves with dollars and have a clientele on the side.

“As the State banks do not sell you dollars–only privileged MSMEs are sold foreign currency at a lower price and are allowed to import products directly–the others buy euros and dollars on the informal market, according to the daily exchange rate published on the site, El Toque. But because right now there is a deficit of dollars, I am paying the dollar at 195 pesos, one or two pesos above the daily rate. Then, when we buy the container of foodstuffs, that increase in the price of the dollar is added to the cost of sale. As the dollar becomes more expensive, the prices of the products we sell go up. Some MSMEs are allowed to import pork, chicken, cheese, and sausages. The owner of the business sells a part of it on the leased premises and another part is sold on the informal market–in order not to avoid taxes–to VIP clients, usually restaurant owners and others who pay in cash with dollars and buy large quantities”.

From repressor to businessman

Former FAR and MININT officers have been allowed to open private businesses. Yoandy Riverón, identified as agent ‘Cristian’ of State Security–who harassed and repressed dissident activists in Villa Clara province and is now a businessman–owns the shoe store Jona’s SURL in the town of Camajuaní. A former manager of CIMEX [the state-owned Domestic Business, External Market conglomerate], emphasizes that there is “a strategy to convert a group of retired military and civil servants into business owners so that in the future they can circumvent the yanqui blockade. For some time now, government heavyweights have had accounts in tax havens and are owners of very lucrative businesses. They use frontmen and foreign citizens as intermediaries to establish companies abroad”.

The dictatorship tries to monopolize the most profitable private businesses and tack on an incipient oligarchy obedient to its interests. As happens in Russia. There is a segment of commerce–online food sales paid with international credit cards–whose owners are important government figures. This is the case of Supermarket, run by Guillermo García Frías, a nonagenarian former combatant in Fidel Castro’s guerrilla forces in the Sierra Maestra, who no longer holds any political office, but he has more power than any minister. Or Ramiro Valdés, another of the so-called ‘historical’ ones, at the head of COPEXTE [National Electronics], who manages a digital business in dollars.

Hugo Cancio, a Cuban-American businessman, owner of the company Fuego Enterprise, does not belong to the official nomenklatura nor is he affiliated with the Communist party, but he manages a food sales business that imports directly from the United States. And recently OFAC granted him a license to import automobiles to Cuba.

The crony capitalism that prevails in Cuba takes brings us ever closer to Haiti.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

Cuba’s 64 Years of Agrarian Reform: Nothing to Celebrate

A farmer works on the sugar cane crop in Maduga, Maraeque. (EFE/Ernesto Mastrascusa)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Elías Amor Bravo, Economist, 21 May 2023 — Fidel Castro activated a plan, not deviating one millimeter from its content, for seizing power in Cuba following the fall of the Batista regime. And in that plan, one of the first actions — when the execution machinery was in full swing at La Cabaña fortress — was the agrarian reform law. The law was one of the plan’s media events, and so Castro decided that the setting for its signing should be the Sierra Maestra de La Plata* in Bartolomé Masó municipality, Granma province — located more than 1000 kilometers away from the ministerial offices of the capital — where panic was starting to spread among state officials. It all happened on May 17, 1959. It’s been 64 years now. A lifetime.

The Castro regime turned the agrarian reform into one of its main points of reference. So much so that, at the international level, others tried to copy it, but in the end threw in the towel. The usurpation of economic power that took place in Cuba in favor of the state caused a trauma that was very difficult to overcome in a productive sector that, until then, had generated enough food to feed the entire population, and had two export products with which it obtained income from abroad: sugar cane and tobacco. Never after in history have there been similar processes in other countries of the world.

Agrarian reform took place in Cuba because the circumstances of the moment allowed it. The economic powers that could have opposed those measures now had nothing to do but escape repression and death. And the political powers were dragged down by the revolutionary pressure. Not even the president of the republic, Manuel Urrutia, forced to resign in July, and who ended up taking refuge in the Venezuelan embassy, ​​or Miró Cardona (whom Castro himself had replaced in February) had anything to say in the matter.

The only protagonist from then on was Fidel Castro, who appropriated, on the other hand, a program that was not his, but which served him well. In fact, the author of the text, Humberto Sori, minister of agriculture, resigned days later when he saw that his attempt to protect Cuban agrarian interests was falling on deaf ears. Sori was executed on April 20, 1961, shortly after the Bay of Pigs invasion. He did not see the end result of the reform in which he had to submit to the dictates of Che Guevara.

In reality, when that agrarian reform law was signed in the guerrilla and campesino landscape of Bartolomé Masó, few of the guajiros** present at the act knew what it was all about. A law that, up until the last moment, was being touched-up by Che Guevara as efforts were made to explain to those around there what the whole thing was about. continue reading

For Castro’s propaganda, which already in those months of 1959 had entrenched itself to influence society with its messages, the law was a triumph, one more victory for Fidel, the first revolutionary measure aimed at “restoring hope to the humblest” and at the same time, promote a profound transformation of Cuba’s economic and social structure. However, the law was full of inconsistencies and falsehoods that, with time, could be more than verified.

To begin with, it established a presumed right of the farmers who farmed the land to own the land. But this was not the case, since what the law really did was to pass the large estates and large private farms, in which sugar cane production or livestock economy was carried out, into the hands of the state. Marxist collectivism turned the communist state into the main owner of the land, of the means of production, while the existing farmers were forced to accept small plots of land from which they could do little more than produce for their own consumption.

The communists claimed that before the law, 1.5% of the owners owned more than 46% of the national land area. After the agrarian reform, a single owner, the state, came to hold practically 54.2% of the land area, a percentage that increased over time until it reached almost 80% before Raúl Castro’s reforms, while independent farmer participation was practically marginal. And the most alarming part was that the land in the hands of the state remained idle, without being put to use, which reduced productivity and yields, forcing the Island to import food that it used to produce.

In addition, the law made inefficient smallholdings the main feature of agriculture. In effect, the maximum limit of land that a natural or legal person could own was established at 30 caballerías (402 hectares)***. Castro’s plan was to consolidate small agricultural property, tying the farmers to the land, in order to prevent rhwie progress, accumulation of wealth and development. The law turned former tenant farmers into poor small landowners, with little or no possibility of accessing more land to increase the economies of scale.

It is true that more than 100,000 property titles were granted and that this benefited some 200,000 farming families, but with economic and social costs that ended up causing structural damage to the productive sector, from which it never recovered. After the reform, no farm in Cuba reached more than 100 caballerías.

Thus, the law put an end to large estate ownership and foreign private possession of land by creating an army of poor farmers, who, after a while, were forced either to work as wage laborers on state farms, or to join cooperatives controlled by the communist party to market their admittedly limited productions. The result of these changes was immediately evident: loss of technology, capital, and investments, causing irrecoverable damage.

The communist narrative of agrarian reform insists on drawing a scenario in which the transformation of the Cuban countryside manifested as a fatal blow only for the national and foreign landowners, and in particular for the Americans. It has even created a false image that these sectors, “wounded in their pride and displaced from their bourgeois and landowner position, later led, in exile, the countless campaigns and actions that since that time and to date have been orchestrated against Cuban agriculture, even introducing pests and diseases into various crops”.

There is nothing to say about these falsehoods. Arguments of this type topple under their own weight and confirm the root of the hatred that communism exudes against those it considers its enemies, and it does not accept differing positions. The reality of this story is that the main victim of the agrarian reform was the small Cuban farmer, the people in general, and what happened is that those agrarian entrepreneurs whose properties were confiscated on the Island were able, in some cases, to rebuild their lives and achieve success for their projects in other countries.

To complete the operation of control of the agricultural sector, two years later the revolution allowed the creation of ANAP, the National Association of Small Farmers, on another May 17 —in this case, grouping the farmers in an organization penetrated and directed by the Communist party to impose its thesis on the sector. ANAP is not a business organization; it does not defend the economic interests of its members and is a mere instrument for transferring power from the state to the producers.

Some 64 years after the enactment of the law, what can be said about the Cuban agricultural sector?

The state continues to be the absolute owner of the land, which is also recognized in the Communist Constitution of 2019. Its percentage has grown to around 80%, but through the lease formula it has transferred the management of production to the farmers — who have, if this is possible, more problems than ever in achieving better harvests and more productivity. The lands that continue to be in the hands of the state are idle, without the Communist organizations ceding them to the private sector. On the other hand, these producers lack incentives to work and improve what they know will never be theirs. The conflict in the legal framework hangs like a sword of Damocles over the Cuban countryside.

There is abundant labor in the agricultural sector, much more than in other sectors of the economy. Almost a fifth of the employed population works in the countryside, and although statistical data are unavailable, it is an aging population, geographically dispersed, with low mobility, and with increasing levels of dependency and vulnerability. This concentration of the working population means that the productivity of the agricultural sector barely reaches 10% of the average for the entire economy.

The agricultural trade balance continues to show a deficit and it is necessary to import two billion dollars annually in agricultural products that are not obtained on the Island and that are necessary to avoid systemic famines. There is no product capable of obtaining income from exports, except for tobacco, which maintains its figures. Sugar, the emblem of the Cuban agricultural sector, disappeared after the reforms introduced by Fidel Castro at the beginning of this century, and currently the harvests, around half a million tons, are even lower than in colonial times.

The regime’s recent experiments to reactivate the sector, such as the 63 measures or the 93 measures, do not yield results because they are superficial and do not address the structural problems that must be tackled. They provoke price increases, a galloping inflation of the “Food” component of the Consumer Price Index above the average, and a real impoverishment of Cubans in relation to the dwindling shopping basket.

The agricultural sector is not an exception to the rest of the economy, but suffers from the same problems as other economic activities, because the regime’s model is not capable of finding formulas for improvement and prosperity that pass, above all, through the legal framework of property rights.

The limits to the development of agriculture in Cuba do not come from outside, but are found in the internal structure of the economic model that has created all kinds of pitfalls and shortcomings that have limited the efficient development of an essential sector for the welfare of the entire population.

In reality, 64 years later, Cuban farmers have very little for which to thank the Revolution’s agrarian reform. Reversing this scenario is possible and necessary. They already did it in Vietnam with the Doi Moi land ownership reforms that actually transferred property rights to the farmers. In just five years, Vietnam went from suffering famines to becoming a grain exporting power in Asia. It even makes periodic donations to impoverished Cuban agriculture.

The true meaning of the agrarian reform that Cuba needs will force a change in the Communist constitution. The regime itself wanted to block the necessary reforms, but it has no alternative. The Communist path is exhausted.

Translated By: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

Translator’s Notes:

* The Sierra Maestra mountain range was home to the rural guerrilla headquarters of Fidel Castro’s revolution in the 1950s.
** In Cuba, “guajiro” [wah-hee-roe] is a colloquial term for farmer.
*** The word caballería here means a unit of measurement in Latin America, equal to approximately 100 hectares.

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