Translator: Hombre de Paz – Translating Cuba

The Butterfly Returns: Promises, Ruins and Nostalgia in Havana’s Lenin Park

After years of neglect, the recreation center is trying to attract visitors with ranch-style huts, horses, and soft drinks.

14ymedio, Darío Hernández, Havana, 27 July 2025 (delayed translation) — After several years of abandonment, Mariposa Park, one of the most emblematic areas of Lenin Park in Havana, seems to want to take flight again. Although the official reopening has not been announced, there is already a mixture of work, improvisation and distant memories on the ground.

“What they are doing for now is fixing the open-air eateries and other things like that to inaugurate the park again,” says a worker at the site, while pointing to a couple of freshly painted wooden structures. “Inside they are fixing the equipment for the holidays. They have already made enough progress,” he adds.

The image offered today by Mariposa Park is far from the hive of children’s laughter and endless queues of yesteryear. Apparatus covered by bushes, children’s figures corroded by the weather and roller coasters frozen in time draw a scene that is more reminiscent of a ghost town than a recreational center. Every now and then you remember a device that was set up in your childhood and you get a little nostalgic.

The image offered today by Mariposa Park is a far cry from the hive of children’s laughter and endless queues of yesteryear. / 14ymedio

At the side entrance – through which it is possible to sneak without great effort due to the absence of fences – you are greeted by a lackluster version of Captain Plin and Elpidio Valdés. Behind, the immense metallic star that once rotated luminous now remains motionless, rusty, without seats, a symbol of deterioration. continue reading

One of the few elements in the park that shows some life is the modest kiosk that offers jams, beers and soft drinks. “They treat you quite well,” admits a regular visitor. Even so, some employees consulted are skeptical about the alleged arrangement of the rides. “There is nothing new here. Go to Expocuba if you want to see something, there at least they are setting up playthings for the children,” said a clerk between resignation and incredulity.

In the surroundings of the park, other spaces reveal the same pattern of abandonment. Behind the area known as “the head-and-headless riders,” an ancient Chinese restaurant called El Dragon [The Dragon] survives without offering Asian food, but beer and the occasional quick meal. Later, La Parrillada and other eateries that once functioned as restaurants and cafes, are now ruins covered in rubble.

In the park’s surroundings, other areas reveal the same pattern of neglect. / 14ymedio

The bamboo forest, which used to be a magical place to hide or simply stroll, has been partially cleared out, leaving behind a picture of toppled logs and bare clearings. Silence prevails, barely interrupted by the birds or the constant buzzing of cicadas.

In the midst of this desolate landscape, the attempt to revive the space manifests itself in small details. A few children’s playthings have been installed on the outskirts of the Mariposa and eateries are being rehabilitated where families can sit down to eat. “Every weekend that passes a few more people come,” says an optimistic worker.

The horseback riding business, which has also suffered the consequences of the tourist decline, is trying to stay afloat. “We are doing well, but it has to comply with regulations. We have a contract with the head of the park, because the police require papers,” explains one of the drivers.

The Butterfly Returns: Promises, Ruins and Nostalgia in Havana’s Lenin Park

Only a few horses are available and those who rent them out must compete with their memories of a tourism that was once much more dynamic. “Now there are hardly any tourists and it is difficult to find someone out there,” laments one of the people who give rides.

Among those who offer the rides are minors, some as young as 10 or 12 years old. “There are few of us because we are the only legal ones,” clarifies the caretaker of one of the animals, while trying to convince a family to dare to ride.

The attempt to reactivate Mariposa Park parallels the state of the faded memory of the rest of Lenin Park. Its green areas continue to attract families who improvise picnics, fly kites or play soccer among the palms. In the Palace of the Pioneers, the open bars and the absence of guards turn the place into another symbol of institutional abandonment.

The horseback riding business, which has also suffered the consequences of the tourist decline, is trying to stay afloat. / 14ymedio

The new director of the Mariposa park has guaranteed certain improvements, say workers at the site. “This has been allowed to decay here because of several previous administrations. But this director has done a lot. This was abandoned, with stagnant water that rusted the devices,” recalls an employee.

“When this was working, it was good,” says one custodian wistfully. Meanwhile, two of his colleagues interrupt the conversation to ask a group of visitors to leave the area of the devices, with such moderate firmness that it suggests that they are exercising a learned routine rather than authority.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

____________

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.

Elections Under Castrochavismo

The rulers of these countries tightly control the electoral mechanisms and present themselves as a bloc against a divided opposition.

Venezuelan citizens participating in primary elections. / EFE

14ymedio, Pedro Corzo, Miami, 7 September 2025 — In all honesty, I express my deepest doubts that the peoples subjugated by what we identify as Castrochavism – in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba, controlled by organized crime in association with “real socialism” – can once again embrace democracy through the electoral route.

The rulers of these countries tightly control the electoral mechanisms and present themselves as a bloc in the face of a fractured opposition, with the exception of Bolivia, where the ruling party is broken into anthropophagic (cannibalistic) factions, which has led to its defeat.

With this statement I am not calling for violence, but for the leaders of the opposition of those nations to seek other alternatives to achieve the long-awaited change. If they do not do so, by participating in knowingly flawed elections, they are providing legitimacy to the regime they are fighting.

It is true that not participating in elections significantly affects the democratic identity of the cause that is defended, but to assume as valid spurious processes in which fundamental guarantees are absent, is to accept being part of the oppressive dystopia. It is a very complex situation, a real trap on the part of the ruling party. continue reading

The mock elections for the Castro-Chavistas are nothing more than public maneuvering, very similar to the military maneuvers to which dictatorships periodically resort

It is a kind of electoral suicide to exercise the right to vote regardless of the doubts we may have about the fairness of the process and knowing that the Government has abused the resources of the State in its favor, has resorted to the manipulation of information held by the State. This misinformation threatens the political challengers and undecided and announced that the triumph of the opposition could lead the country to ungovernability and Civil War.

The mock elections for the Castro-Chavistas are nothing more than public maneuvering, very similar to the military maneuvers to which dictatorships periodically resort to frighten the population and energize their supporters.

In each electoral cycle, controlled before it is carried out, these regimes emerge stronger and in clear progress towards the establishment of a totalitarian system of government whose only objective is the perpetuity and absolute power of its leadership, as has happened in Cuba, the model desired by the aforementioned partners.

Socialism of the 21st Century (read “Castrochavism”), encourages a false political pluralism that in each electoral incursion loses relevance and interest for the contenders, as a consequence of the growing rigidity of the imposed social control and the constant institutional reforms of the public powers that exclusively strengthen the executive.

The citizenry in general also suffers from the repression by the ruling class. The population suffers from the ineptitude of its rulers and the deterioration of the general conditions of the community, to which is added an abusive police action that enjoys total impunity, particularly when it acts against the sectors that antagonize it.

These servile collaborators of the despots in power do the real dirty work

The temporary enjoyment of freedoms such as those of expression and information decreases drastically until it reaches its absolute extinction. Civil society organizations will be integrated as a whole into the immense government machinery and formulas will be established that seek to outlaw the most innocuous opposition, while promoting apparently contrary political groups, which in reality will respond to the government’s plans.

These servile collaborators of the despots in power do the real dirty work. The so-called organic or functional opponents are those who most contribute to the fact that the citizenry, transformed into a servile mass, adopts a double standard in which they conceal their true views, contributing to the widespread display of hypocritical moral conduct in society in which the true opinion is ignored.

For its part, Cuban totalitarianism has all these ailments and more. Fidel Castro from the same year 1959 made his supporters proclaim a slogan against the elections, “Elections? What for?”, after having promised in a public statement to go to the polls within a year under the Constitution of 1940 and the Electoral Code of 1943.

Based on the beliefs of Nicolas Maduro, Daniel Ortega, and Evo Morales, the largest island in the Caribbean enjoys a kind of paradise from repression, a perfect police state where the only existing political party doesn’t require electoral simulations and the enjoyment of citizen prerogatives is a power of the totalitarian state, the blessing of all autocrats.

Translated by Hombre de Paz

____________

A Desperate Mother Travels Through Havana in Search of Her Daughter Who Disappeared Four Months Ago

Doraiky Águila Vázquez disappeared on March 15 during a blackout, when she was traveling along the Diez de Octubre causeway

14ymedio, Havana, 27 July 2025 (delayed translation) — A Cuban woman walks the streets of Havana with a sign hanging around her neck, imploring help to find her daughter who has been missing for more than four months. Since March 15, all trace of Doraiky Águila Vázquez has been lost and, as time passes, the anguish of the family grows. “Looking at the phone is already part of my life, accompanied by pain and a lot of anguish,” wrote Maura Vázquez, the teacher’s mother, in a recent message published on her Facebook profile, where she also thanked the solidarity she has received.

“I have been able to listen to the opinions of the people… I was able to see a people (at least the ones I have encountered) that is already demanding more action to find Doraiky, which everyone is willing to support,” explains the woman, who expects more involvement from the police authorities in the search for her 48-year-old daughter.

One of the most moving testimonies that the old woman has heard came from a former student of Águila, who approached her in tears to remind her of her dedication: “I was a student of her daughter, she taught me a lot of Law… the Law that she taught so much is not being applied with her, nor the values that she always demonstrated as a human being,” challenged the young woman in the face of official inertia.

The young woman also recalled how Águila, attentive to her students, even helped with material details: “On one occasion she realized that a student did not go home because she did not have money, and she immediately bought the ticket, and even shared her soap with the students from the province.” The student is clear in her recommendation to Vázquez: “Mother, shout from the rooftops, that Doraiky deserves that the best techniques be applied, the best professionals and that the leadership of the country know and participate,” she insisted. continue reading

“I have been able to listen to the opinions of the people… I was able to see a people (at least the ones I have encountered) that is already demanding more action to find Doraiky, which everyone is willing to support”

Águila disappeared on March 15 during a blackout, when she was traveling along the Diez de Octubre causeway in Havana. She was wearing a yellow dress with red or pink flowers and suffered episodes of transient memory loss (technically “Transient Global Amnesia”), according to the family. Since then, there have been no solid clues to his whereabouts. The police report is registered with the number 19434, and the relatives have offered a reward of 350,000 Cuban pesos to anyone who provides information that leads her to be found.

The image of the missing teacher circulates on social networks, in informal messaging channels and has been shared by organizations such as Yo Sí Te Creo en Cuba and Alas Tensas. The case has been reviewed by several independent media outlets and frequently cited as an example of the growing number of unsolved disappearances on the island.

The passage of days has transformed the tone of family messages. Since June, Maura has held the State directly responsible for the lack of results. “My mood is one of criticism… I no longer ask, I do not beg, I do not implore; I hold the Cuban government responsible for the search process,” she wrote. She complains that the necessary resources have not been mobilized, despite the existence of organized bodies prepared for tracking operations. She also stresses that no state authority has offered her information on the progress of the investigations.

In the meantime, her absence is the only certainty. “Having to see my wonderful daughter only in photos does not make my tears stop,” says her mother. The search continues, in the absence of official answers, sustained by the faith of a family and the echo of solidarity of those who, without knowing Doraiky Águila, believe that her case deserves more attention and justice.

Translated by Hombre de Paz

____________

A Free Hand for Repression in Cuba

The independent press raises the alarm over the arbitrary detention of two journalists.

Miguel Díaz-Canel, presidente designado de Cuba. / EFE

14ymedio, Maite Rico, Madrid, 15 April 2025 — Zoila Chávez is almost 85 years old and lives in a wooden house in Encrucijada, a town in the Cuban province of Villa Clara. She has circulatory problems, legs with sores and walks with difficulty. She was cared for by her son, José Gabriel Barrenechea. But the regime’s police arrested him in November and Zoila has been homeless for five months.

A physicist by training, a writer by vocation, Barrenechea published his reflections in independent media and was in the crosshairs of the regime. He was taken away for protesting, along with his neighbors, the endless blackouts that exacerbate the hardships of Cubans. It was a peaceful march, like so many others that took place throughout the country. But the huge-bellied president Miguel Díaz-Canel has already said that he will not tolerate anyone disturbing “the tranquility of the citizenry.”

In La Pendiente prison, Barrenechea is awaiting trial for “propaganda against the constitutional order,” which may carry the death penalty.

In La Pendiente prison, Barrenechea is awaiting trial for “propaganda against the constitutional order,” which may carry the death penalty. Meanwhile, Zoila heats water on a charcoal stove, walks holding onto the walls and fantasizes about an impossible trip there, to ask for her son back. “He’s the only thing I have” she relates in a video released by the Cubanet website. It is a heartbreaking monologue, which flows between reflections, prayers and a sad song. “Every night I ask God and the Virgin to let me wake up. I just want to see Gabriel walk through the door.” continue reading

Not far from there, Yadiel Hernández, 33, a designer, a graduate in theological studies and independent reporter, is in pretrial detention in the fearsome Combinado del Sur prison. He had been missing since his arrest in January, when he was investigating drug trafficking in a school in Matanzas for the independent digital newspaper 14ymedio. The regime is not so much concerned about the growing consumption of narcotics on the island as it is about the fact that it is talked about. It is only known that he was interrogated for weeks by State Security and that he will be tried for the same crime as Barrenechea.

Repression does not subside an inch in Cuba, where, since 2024, an unusual number of prisoners have been dying. Nor in Venezuela. Not even in Nicaragua. We must remember this, now that geopolitical shocks have taken these countries off the radar. In this week of the media promotion of Rodríguez Zapatero, that sinister “enabler” of dictators, it is essential to give a voice to those who fight them.

____________

This text was originally published in El Mundo and is reproduced by permission of the author.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz
____________

Theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, Who Saw in Fidel Castro a Model for the Continent, Has Died

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

____________

A Fourth Cuban General Joins the FAR Pantheon This Month

The recently deceased Jorge Luis Guerrero Almaguer was part of the “cleansing” of the Escambray, of the literacy campaign, and of the war in Angola.

On the left, Cuban General Jorge Luis Guerrero Almaguer // Screenshot / Canal Caribe

14ymedio, Havana, 19 September 2024 — The list of generals who died in the last month continues to add names. After he passed away on Tuesday, the major general of the reserve, Jorge Luis Guerrero Almaguer will become part of the pantheon of the Armed Forces (FAR) in the Colón cemetery in Havana. The military officer is the fourth of his rank to die this month and the third of the week.

On the Cuban Television newscast, the official press assured that the military will bid farewell, in their umpteenth visit to the Havana cemetery, to Guerrero Almaguer with full honors this Thursday. The soldier was cremated and his ashes will be deposited next to those of other “combatants” of the so-called historical generation.

According to the newscast, since joining the FAR in 1960, Guerrero Almaguer was part of key actions such as the Cleansing of the Escambray – as the hunt for “counterrevolutionary bandits” in the mountains of the center of the island is called – and the literacy campaign, and he even served as a major general in the war in Angola and participated in the battle of Cuito Cuanavale. A militant of the Communist Party, a member of the Central Committee and head of artillery in the Army, his military career is described as impeccable for the Revolution. continue reading

A militant of the Communist Party, a member of the Central Committee and head of artillery in the Army, his military career is described as impeccable for the Revolution.

A day before his death, Juan Antonio Hernández, former head of the Youth Army of Labor, died at the age of 91; his ashes were also buried in the FAR pantheon. A member of the Youth Labor Army of which he would later be in charge, head of transport and armaments in the Army of Camagüey, a militant of the Communist Party, a literacy teacher, and even a student in the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: the record of his life – also unquestionable, according to the obituary – shows his loyalty to the regime.

Curiously, Hernández was part of the internationalist contingent “to repair the damage caused by the war in the People’s Republic of Angola,” while Guerrero Almaguer also participated in that campaign.

Before Hernández’s death, the death of Juan Israel Cervantes Tablada was in the news, in which he is credited with “the modernization of war material” in the country and the creation of the Union of Military Industries. A minor figure in the history books of Castroism, Cervantes Tablada was buried in niche 47 of the Pantheon of the Armed Forces.

Weeks earlier, on September 1, a notorious Cuban repressor, General Romárico Vidal Sotomayor García, died.

Weeks earlier, on September 1, a notorious Cuban repressor, General Romárico Vidal Sotomayor García, died. A member of the Central Committee, a deputy in the National Assembly and a senior official in the FAR and the Ministry of the Interior for decades, he was one of those responsible for the violence unleashed during the demonstrations of July 11, 2021 (11J), for which he was sanctioned by the United States.

Despite the fact that their military careers are described as exceptional, none of the generals merited that Miguel Díaz-Canel or Raúl Castro Ruz – who limited themselves to sending floral arrangements – attend their funerals. Only the funeral of Cervantes Tablada had some figures from the top brass such as the prime minister, Manuel Marrero – who has a military background and is a retired colonel – or Álvaro López Miera.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

____________

A Group of Cubans Protest in Miami Against a Billboard That Compares Trump to Fidel Castro

The founder of Mad Dog PAC, responsible for the campaign, believes that the American wants to be a dictator “as evil” as the Cuban leader was.

The controversial billboard has caused outrage among some Cubans living in Miami. / EFE

EFE/14ymedio, Miami, June 20, 2024 — A group of Cubans protested Wednesday on a Miami highway because of a billboard in Spanish that compares former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump to the late Fidel Castro.

“No to dictators, no to Trump,” reads the huge sign with photos of both leaders, located next to a busy highway.

Outraged, members of the group Hispanos por América (Hispanics for America) called for a protest Wednesday afternoon on the Palmetto Expressway, in south Miami, against the announcement of Mad Dog PAC, a political action committee.

Outraged, members of the group called for a protest Wednesday afternoon on the Palmetto Expressway

Protesters in Miami, home to Cuba’s largest exile community, called the announcement “a lack of respect by Democrats for the personality and dignity of our President Donald Trump.”

The ad is one of many that Mad Dog PAC has installed in several states, including others with legends in English such as ’Loser’, ’It’s a Cult’ and ’Unfit’.

“Our mission is to defeat Donald Trump by exposing the truth about him,” PAC founder Claude Taylor told local NBC. continue reading

The activist told T51 Miami that he has spent time in Cuba, Florida and even Guantanamo Bay and considers that “Fidel Castro was a horrible dictator.” However, he adds: “In the opinion of my organization, Donald Trump would be an equally horrible dictator.”

“I think it’s very fair to compare Donald Trump, who, in his wildest dreams, aspires to be a Fidel Castro. He wants to be another dictator, and as evil as Fidel Castro was,” he added.

In response to the campaign, Trump’s Hispanic communications director, Jaime Florez, said in a statement that “if there is anyone who has shown us that he has no interest in being a dictator, it is President Trump, who has already been president of the United States.”

“It’s another sign of the desperation of President Biden’s campaign and the Democratic Party, who are realizing that they have failed miserably with Hispanics,” he added.

These ads are focused on states considered undecided ahead of the November presidential election, such as Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan and there were already, since January, between 15 and 20 billboards of this type in Florida, which has, for Taylor, “special importance due to its association with Donald Trump”. The coordinator of Mad Dog PAC, who points out that his campaign is financed by ordinary people, warns that this has been the first in Spanish, but it will not be the last.

Translated by Hombre de Paz

____________

The Cuban Church Denounces at Least 50 Robberies in Catholic Temples Since March

Some 34 parishes and religious houses in the country have been affected by theft and vandalism

In addition to thefts, the Catholic Church reports that it is the victim of intimidation / EWTN

14ymedio, Havana, July 5, 2024 — In Cuba, at least 50 robberies have been recorded in 34 Catholic parishes and religious houses since March of last year, according to the Catholic news channel EWTN. The thieves, who often vandalize the premises, have taken all kinds of objects, from electrical equipment such as televisions, microwaves, laptops, fans and audio systems, to lamps and light bulbs with which the churches are illuminated.

The loot, according to information revealed by the Archdiocese of Havana, also includes propane tanks, refrigerators, farm animals, stoves, stoves, washing machines, bedding, tablecloths and even personal hygiene items such as soap. Religious images, Easter candles (large ceremonial candles) and donations collected during liturgical celebrations have also disappeared.

“So far we have not been notified of any results of the investigation,” the nun María Cristina Rivas explained to EWTN. This was in reference to the robbery suffered on March 1 by the congregation of the Carmelite Missionaries in Camagüey. That day there were two robberies: one in their community house and another in the parish they attend. continue reading

“They broke the window of the sacristy and entered the church through it. Once in the church, they broke the offering box that is near the image of Nuestra Señora la Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre. They took the money from the offerings of the aforementioned offering box (…) When we returned to our house, we found that, at that time, while we were in the parish, they also tried to enter our house and broke a fence of the house. They could not gain access because we were already arriving,” Rivas detailed.

Havana registers most of the cases reported by the Church

But it is in Havana where the vast majority of cases are registered, according to EWTN, and a single thief has robbed at least six churches of the Archdiocese so far this year. The man was caught by members of the community, on June 22, in the parish of Nuestra Señora de la Medalla Milagrosa, in the municipality of Diez de Octubre.

However, the police never came to the scene, so the parish priest had no choice but to let him go. The next day, the very same thief was caught trying to rob the church of Santa Rita de Casia, in Playa, where he again got away with it. Now, the channel explains, parishioners are left with only one option: to share a photograph of the thief in their WhatsApp groups, in order to be prepared against future robberies.

This is the message that the community of Nuestra Señora de la Medalla Milagrosa has shared in order to be alert / EWTN

Other cases have been registered in important places for the Catholic faithful in Cuba, such as the network of Loyola Centers, from which an image of Saint Lucia was stolen, as well as some electrical equipment. Robberies are also reported in the church of the Sacred Heart and San Ignacio de Loyola, in the church of Nuestra Señora de la Medalla Milagrosa de Santos Suárez or the parish of Cristo Redentor.

Many of these complaints can also be found on social networks, as is the case of a robbery suffered by the Sagrado Corazón church on Línea Street, in the capital’s Vedado neighborhood. This is where the priest Lester Rafael Zayas Díaz officiates – one of the most critical voices against the Cuban government within the Catholic Church – who wryly stated: “Once again ‘Brother Thief’ visits us, this time for the need of lamps and light bulbs. He is a thief who has keys and comes and goes as he pleases,” he denounced on Facebook on June 15.

The robberies are not only a reflection of the serious economic crisis that the island is going through and the precariousness to which it leads, but on many occasions, they go hand in hand with intimidating acts by the political police of the regime against priests who have raised their voices about the social situation.

EWTN was able to document some of the ’modus operandi’ of the robberies, which include forced entry / EWTN

This was one of the complaints contained in the 2023 report on international religious freedom prepared by the U.S. State Department – published last week – which shows in detail that all the persecution recorded on the island against religious groups, regardless of their denomination, is inescapably related to political dissidence with the regime.

Such harassment includes the use of repressive tactics against religious leaders and activists who oppose the Communist Party’s ideology through arrests, arbitrary fines, strict policing of their daily lives and, in some cases, exile. In addition to being denied licenses, religious visas or freedom of movement, they suffer physical and mental abuse.

“Every month, at least one stone, two stones, five stones are thrown against the windows of the church at a time when the perpetrators cannot be seen.” So said Kenny Fernández Delgado, pastor of the church of San Antonio de Padua, in Arroyo Naranjo, located in the Archdiocese of Havana, in an interview with the Catholic news agency.

The Cuban regime has a long history of repression of priests and members of the Catholic Church – lay or religious – which intensified after the protests of July 11, 2021 (11J). After the mass arrests, and even during the demonstrations, priests such as Lester Zayas, Alberto Reyes and José Castor Devesa, who spoke in favor of the citizens or marched alongside them, have frequently been called to explain themselves to State Security, harassed or reprimanded by their superiors under pressure from the government.

Given the scarcity and economic crisis that the island is going through, after the churches are vandalized, they have no choice but to fix the damage with what they have at hand, so it is common to see zinc or acrylic sheets replacing stained glass and windows. This way at least they manage to prevent the attackers from breaking the religious images of the church with the next stone throwing, and prevent anyone from getting hurt.

Translated by Hombre de Paz

____________

Cuba Draws Close to an Unprecedented Social Catastrophe

The only living founders of the Dissident and Human Rights Movement in Cuba, created in 1983, make an appeal in view of the grave situation in the country on the anniversary of the 11J protests.

Hundreds protest on May 17, 2024 in Santiago de Cuba / Facebook

14ymedio, Miami, 10 July 2024 — Cuba is rapidly accelerating towards a turning point where any event could occur, including a major social catastrophe of unprecedented magnitude, before which the lynchings and looting at the end of the Machado regime could appear to us as mere childish brawls.

We are not exaggerating. On January 1, 2021, both signatories published and warned that government leadership, in what we called Conclusions from a balance sheet on Cuba at the end of 2020, that if radical changes were not made immediately, the discontent “could explode massively with serious irreparable consequences.” And yet, instead of following that advice, they made the situation even worse with measures that aggravated the already deplorable state of the people.

Then, the demonstrations of July 11 of that same year, with thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of people — if we add all the participants from the different cities of the country– were peaceful. The violence was then initiated by the repressive forces.

But now we have enough reasons to fear that this time, the protest will not only not be peaceful but, most likely, catastrophic. There is already too much suffering and resentment among the population to believe that new reforms as inefficient as those already implemented will solve the country’s serious problems. “Reform,” as the word itself indicates, means only a change in form and not in the essence of these problems. continue reading

The argument of this leadership to deny radical changes is that they would mean the end of the “revolution.” The answer to be given them, once and for all, is that this revolution has not existed for more than fifty years, if we are to use the term as defined by the Royal Spanish Academy – “profound change, generally violent, in the political and socio-economic structures of a national community”- because in 1968, when they finally ended up expropriating the people themselves in the so-called revolutionary offensive, confiscating all the small landowners, including the most humble independent workers such as shoeshine boys and hamburger sellers. There was no longer, since then, any other profound change.

So what has there been in Cuba for more than fifty years? The political and socioeconomic system that was the product of that revolution, was a totalitarian dictatorship that imprisoned or took by arms former comrades in arms who tried to prevent the betrayal of failing to fulfill the democratizing goals they themselves had promised — restoration of the constitution and free elections — to impose by force a regime that made real the darkest fears that José Martí had harbored almost a century before in a letter to Máximo Gómez. He wrote about a possible “caudillo” (authoritarian) who, “at the head of an enthusiastic and grateful people, with all the trappings of victory,” would turn the Republic into a command-and-control camp.

The suffering and resentment of the population is already too great to believe that new reforms as inefficient as those already implemented will solve the serious problems of the country.

Let us speak properly: there is no longer a single revolutionary in the ranks of the Communist Party or the State. The true revolutionaries are demonstrating in the streets, or in prisons, like Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, José Daniel Ferrer and Maykel Castillo Osorbo, who, like hundreds of other prisoners, only expressed peacefully their yearnings for a better Cuba, a right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

However, they were sentenced to longer prison terms than those received by the assailants of the Moncada barracks, who carried firearms and left many dead. And more than that, the Moncada assailants were amnestied two years later.

That economic-social system, which in spite of everything is still called a “revolution,” has been responsible for the destruction of the whole country. Because that leadership, like Frankenstein, created a monster that it was not able to control, a corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy of thousands of officials elected not by their ability but by political trustworthiness, with no real interest in productivity; a model, therefore, that only generates a permanent crisis.

That crisis is only alleviated when there is an external ally capable of subsidizing it, and when that ally is missing, that is when the system really shows itself as it is. It is in those cases when they resort to mass exoduses to alleviate internal social tensions, a resource that only serves to buy time while they look for a new ally capable of supplying the resources the country needs to stay on its feet. And that is precisely what they are desperately looking for since the collapse of the Venezuelan economy.

But that ally has not yet appeared and, if it does not, the system will collapse definitively. In general, the magnitude of these exoduses is directly proportional to the magnitude of the crisis, and this last exodus has been the largest ever, which indicates that they are facing the deepest crisis in their entire history and the tensions relieved by this great exodus tend to be reproduced in the very short term, while the international situation would not allow, in such a short time, another exodus like the previous one.

All together they would constitute a moral force with enough convening power to peacefully and harmoniously displace that failed leadership.

We have arrived, then, at a definitive and decisive point where the alternatives present themselves very clearly: either that leadership makes a profound change in the immediate future, or the desperate multitudes will sweep away that leadership in the worst fashion.

But if this leadership continues to turn a deaf ear to the demands that have been made to it to make these changes, if it has neither the interest nor the courage to face the serious conflicts of the country in a radical manner, there is no other alternative but to appeal to the most serene and fair-minded sectors of the people so that they may become the guides of these crowds.

We therefore call for dissidence, for a unity of all those alliances that have been taking place in the last few years; we likewise exhort many the honest and sensible intellectuals to exert their influence. All together they would constitute a moral force with sufficient convening power to peacefully and harmoniously displace that failed leadership to avoid tragedy, and to lead the people, for the good of all, including the physical integrity of those same current leaders, without revenge or vindictiveness, towards a profound process of social transformations.

Cuba will rise from its ashes, and will be, for the world, a paradigm of freedom, peace and prosperity.

Translated by Hombre de Paz

____________

The Cuba Regime Calls U.S. Report on Human Trafficking ‘Manipulative’

Díaz-Canel calls the US report an “outrageous maneuver of war” against medical collaboration

Some 300 Cuban doctors in a meeting with Díaz-Canel/Cubadebate

EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 25 June 2024 — On Tuesday, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel described as “manipulative” the report prepared by the United States that keeps the island among the countries that do not comply with the minimum standards to fight human trafficking.

The U.S. report points mainly in the Cuban case to the so-called international missions of Havana, which for decades has sent thousands of professionals – mainly doctors – to dozens of countries.

“The empire has once again listed Cuba in its manipulative report on human trafficking. Outrageous maneuver of the open war against Cuban medical collaboration. Enough of this cynicism,” Diaz-Canel wrote on social networks.

He added that the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, “is well aware of our policy of zero tolerance for this criminal practice.”

The United States considers Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to be among the countries with the highest levels of human trafficking because they do not meet the minimum standards for its elimination and do not make significant efforts in this regard.

This is reflected in the Trafficking in Persons Report 2024 (TIP Report) released Monday by the State Department, which divides countries according to their degrees of human trafficking and places the above-mentioned continue reading

countries, which were already at the most severe level a year earlier.

In this regard, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez also commented on social networks that “Cuba maintains a zero tolerance policy against human trafficking.”

“The inclusion of our country in unilateral and arbitrary reports by the U.S. government, only seeks to maintain and justify its criminal policy of economic asphyxiation against the Cuban people,” the foreign minister said.

The report calls on Cuba to ensure that “government-sponsored labor export programs comply with international labor standards, specifically that participants receive fair wages that are paid in full into bank accounts that workers can control.”

The US State Department considers that the missions of Cuban doctors abroad are “an indisputable case of forced labor.” That is why it keeps Cuba on its “blacklist” of countries that do not comply with the minimum standards for combating human trafficking.

The Cuban government considers “totally legitimate” the medical collaboration program that the island maintains in several countries and criticizes Washington for “committing a crime by trying to deny or hinder it for political reasons.”

Thousands of Cuban professionals have participated during the latter decades in missions in hundreds of countries. According to some estimates, they have become one of Cuba’s main sources of foreign exchange.

Translated by Hombre de Paz

____________

Teacher Alina Bárbara López Arrested On Her Way to Havana and Charged With ‘Attack’ According to Her Daughter

The teacher was arrested along with her colleague Jenny Pantoja when they were on their way to Havana for a peaceful protest.

Jenny Pantoja Torres and Alina Bárbara López Hernández, in an image shared by the latter’s daughter / Facebook/Cecilia Borroto López

14ymedio, Madrid, 18 June 2024 — Historian and activist Alina Bárbara López Hernández “is being informed of charges of an attempted crime,” her daughter Cecilia Borroto López reported Tuesday on her social networks. The historian and a colleague, Jenny Pantoja Torres, have been in the hands of State Security for several hours, since they were detained this morning before reaching the Bacunayagua bridge, in Matanzas, when both were traveling to Havana, where they planned to demonstrate peacefully this Tuesday, as the Matanzas teacher does on the 18th of every month.

“We hope that both Alina’s and Jenny’s integrity will be respected, as every citizen deserves. We hope that this time they do not decide to beat them, since they have decided to violate once again the right of mobility,” Borroto had expressed.

Jenny Pantoja had reported on her social networks this Monday that she had received threats on her cell phone from the number +53 5 505 1333. “Since you arrived in Matanzas very well, I warn you this is the last time you will arrive in Matanzas,”,said the message, so full of spelling mistakes that it made the activist say: “The person who wrote should go back to the twelfth grade”.

Pantoja explained in her post that she was going to accompany López because she could not leave her alone “on a trip to Havana in which she could once again suffer police mistreatment.” She also warned: “I hold State Security, the Cuban government and its police forces responsible for continue reading

anything that happens to me from now on. I have not committed any crime, nor do I have any legal case against me. Only the spirit and the willingness to do the best for my suffering country.” According to what she also said, her house was under surveillance by the Political Police.

Alina Bárbara López had announced on Monday her intention to move her usual protest on the 18th of every month to the Cuban capital – since March 2023, which was the centenary of ‘The Protest of 13’ carried out by intellectuals against the then government of Alfredo Zayas. Her intention is “to be in the Park where the statue of Martí stands.” Her demands, the professor detailed in a long Facebook post, were the same as always: the democratic election of a National Assembly to draft a new Constitution, freedom for political prisoners “without sending them to compulsory exile,” cessation of harassment of citizens exercising freedom of expression and “that the State stops ignoring the critical situation of the elderly, retirees, pensioners and families living in extreme poverty.”

“I warn those who decide everything in this country: if you are going to arrest me, do it with an official arrest warrant”

“I warn those who decide everything in this country: if you are going to arrest me, do it with an official arrest warrant (which must be based on a complaint or well-founded suspicion of a crime, as you well know),” said López Hernández, who also blamed in advance “Counterintelligence” and the Government, “if anything should happen to me in those 100 kilometers that separate Matanzas from Havana: an accident, an assault, whatever.”

The teacher endured a similar detention on April 18, also on her way to Havana and also on the Bacunayagua bridge. López Hernández denounced before the Prosecutor’s Office the attack, which could constitute crimes of “injuries, illegal deprivation of freedom and the disclosure of private communications.”

Meanwhile, in Havana, Professor Jorge Fernandez Era, who regularly shows solidarity with his colleague from Matanzas, reported that his home was also under siege by a police operation on Tuesday. After learning of the arrest of his friend Alina Barbara and Jenny Pantoja, he went up to the rooftop and found that “since early in the morning, the usual fierce fighters, those who squander resources we don’t have in order to watch over a few citizens who think for themselves, have been on my doorstep.”

Art historian Miryorli García also denounced the harassment by State Security for her solidarity with the teacher from Matanzas. In a video broadcast on her social networks, an agent is seen not allowing her to leave her house. “I suppose you have a legal document to present to me to defend this measure of detention in my home, of prohibition to my right to enter and leave my house. If you don’t have it, stop making a fool of yourselves,” she said.

Translated by Hombre de Paz

____________

Cuban Government Denounces ‘Cowardly, Fascist-Like Acts’ Against the Duo Buena Fe in Spain

Buena Fe’s tour of Spain began last Friday in Madrid and was to include performances in the cities of Bilbao, Barcelona, Zamora, Salamanca and Cáceres. (Buena Fe/Facebook)

EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 18 May 2023 — Cuban authorities said Thursday that the cancellation of three concerts in Spain by the musical duo Buena Fe, a group close to government and party circles, was due to “harassment” and media “campaigns” against them.

The president of the Cuban Institute of Music, Indira Fajardo, described the situation as “harassment” at a press conference.

“The evidence that these attacks had been previously prepared is evident, since the videos on social networks provided incitement to attack the Cuban group,” said Fajardo, according to the Cuban News Agency (ACN).

Meanwhile, the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac) expressed in a communiqué its “indignation” at the “barbarity revealed in the harassment and persecution” directed against the Cuban musicians.

“This is an attack against civility, a manifest disregard for culture and for those of us who defend the right to do our work from this blockaded and slandered island,” the text states. continue reading

Uneac claimed that the perpetrators of this campaign are “anti-Cuban elements” who “have followed the fascist script dictated by the Platista faction entrenched in South Florida.”

Cuban Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso, stated on Twitter that “the harassment of the due Buena Fe and the pressures on the owners of the venues that programmed their concerts in Spain are cowardly acts, of a McCarthyist and fascist nature.”

On the same social network, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel also spoke of “harassment” and assured that “all of Cuba” stands with the duo.

Buena Fe’s tour of Spain began last Friday in Madrid and was to include performances in the cities of Bilbao, Barcelona, Zamora, Salamanca and Cáceres.

But at the first concert there was an incident: two activists against the Cuban government claimed to have been beaten — allegedly by personnel of the Havana embassy in Madrid — after shouting slogans against the system on the island during the performance.

The following day the cancellation in Barcelona was announced, which the group linked to “organizational and logistical reasons”, followed by the cancellation of their performances in Salamanca and Zamora.

“Under the pretext of defending democracy, fascistic harassment and threats have been unleashed against the owners of the venues and that has been more powerful than the songs,” said the members of the musical duo.

Created in 1999, Buena Fe is a regular at official events and celebrations of the Young Communist League (UJC). Several times it has traveled as part of official Cuban delegations to events such as the World Festival of Youth and Students.

Translated by Hombre de Paz
____________

Food Prices in Cuba Rose Almost 71 Percent in One Year and Much More in the Informal Market

As Cuba imports 80% of what it consumes, according to UN estimates; the depreciation of the peso is relevant in the inflationary spiral (14ymedio)

14ymedio/EFE, Havana, 20 May 2023 — Annual inflation in Cuba’s formal market stood at 45.36% in April, compared to 23.69% in the same month of 2022, fueled by food and catering, the National Statistics and Information Office (Onei) reported Friday.

This agency does not include the changes in prices in the island’s informal market, which is the largest and best-stocked, and is more prone to inflation due to the severe shortage of basic products on the island and the total lack of regulation.

Meanwhile, the consumer price index (CPI) increased by 2.78% in April compared to the previous month, Onei said.

By category, the annual increase in Food and non-alcoholic beverages (70.67%), followed by Restaurants and hotels (64.91%), Miscellaneous goods and services (21.79%), Furniture and household items (21.19%), Education (19.50%) and Transportation (19.15%) stood out.

In April alone, prices for Restaurants and hotels experienced a 4.01% increase, followed by 3.70% for Food and non-alcoholic beverages. continue reading

All categories experienced annual price increases, many of them with double-digit rates. The least inflationary were Health (2.41%), Communications (0.34%) and Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco (1.82%), sectors controlled by state monopolies.

This sharp price increase follows upon the one recorded in 2021, when Onei put inflation at 77.33%, and 39.07% for the Cuban formal market in 2022.

There are no data on the trends in the Cuban informal market, where some commodity prices have doubled in the last 12 months and an exchange rate of 120 pesos to one dollar is in effect. A carton of 30 eggs has gone from 600 to 2,000 pesos in Havana, when the average salary in 2022 was 4,200.

According to a report by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), inflation in the informal market reached almost 740% in 2021, the first year of the entry into force of the Ordering Task legislation. The situation improved in 2022, as prices rose 140% in the informal market, according to US economist Steve Hanke.

Since Cuba imports 80% of what it consumes, according to UN estimates, the depreciation of the peso is relevant in the inflationary spiral. Cuba has been going through a serious economic crisis for two years, as evidenced by the shortage of basic products (such as food, medicines and fuel), the partial dollarization of the economy, prolonged and frequent blackouts, and a sharp increase in prices.

The effects of the pandemic and errors in national macroeconomic policy are the main causes of this crisis, which is fueling migration – mainly to the US – and social discontent.

Translated by Hombre de Paz

____________

Cuba’s Diaz-Canel, Five Years as Hand-Picked Dictator

Díaz-Canel’s international policy has placed Cuba on the side of the most infamous causes (EFE)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 5 April 2023 — That April 19, 2018, when deputies had to “elect” the president of the Republic, there was only one name on their ballots aspiring to the position. Raúl Castro himself cleared away all doubts by declaring that his appointment was not a coincidence, that it was planned and foreseen by the Party’s leadership. Díaz-Canel was the only survivor of a dozen “test-tube” leaders who had been training to inherit the throne.

The electronic engineer and lieutenant colonel had slowly climbed from the Union of Young Communists. His ascent was meticulously calculated, without haste, so as not to repeat the mistakes they had previously made with Roberto Robaina, Carlos Lage, Feliz Pérez Roque and Jorge Luis Sierra Cruz.

The “star of Placetas” fulfilled an international mission in Nicaragua. He next became the highest authority of the Party in Villa Clara, his native province, and then was given his litmus test: Holguín. In the “city of parks” he earned the nickname of Miguel Díaz-Condón [condom] for preventing peasants from smuggling milk. And it was also there that he met Lis Cuesta, broke up his marriage and fearing that his promotion would be frustrated.

I remember that on one occasion they both attended the premiere of one of my works. At the end of the show, they stayed for the toast and told us about the adventures of their romance. The then-first secretary of the Party in Holguín feared that the scandal would affect his image and asked for advice from the most experienced boss in the province.

The old man, Miguel Cano Blanco, was familiar with local customs and situations and suggested to his namesake that he grab his lover by the hand and take her everywhere. For a couple of weeks there would be no talk of anything else in the city, but over time, the gossip would run out, people would end up getting used to the new normal, and his career would not be affected. Creative resistance, is what Cano Blanco recommended. Lis Cuesta would take his advice to the letter, to this day. continue reading

There’s not even a shadow left of that guy I once met in Holguín. His face has hardened, giving him a robotic appearance. Paranoia has made his hair turn white in a very short time, and his belly increased at the same rate as his blunders. Pigeons never landed on the new dictator’s shoulder, only vultures. The crash of a passenger plane, a tornado in Havana, the pandemic, the explosion of the Saratoga Hotel and the fire at the Supertanker Base at Matanzas are just a few examples of the unluckiness (salao) that is Díaz-Canel, according to his own words.

But not everything has been a consequence of misfortune. His obstinacy in giving continuity to a perverse and dysfunctional model makes him a direct culprit for the destitution suffered by the Cuban people. The Ordering Task* was a catastrophe and plunged the country into unbridled inflation. And his international policy has placed Cuba on the side of the most infamous causes, such as Putin’s imperialist war and Daniel Ortega’s criminal extremism.

This has also been a five-year period of protests. On July 11, 2021, more than 40 cities took to the streets in a domino effect, and Díaz-Canel decided to stain his hands with blood. His combat order unleashed violence that left a young man shot in the back and killed, several wounded and more than a thousand political prisoners. The 11J was a definitive watershed moment, and the dictator earned the worst nicknames in Cuba’s history.

Then would come the biggest migratory wave of all time in the archipelago, a mass exodus that has left the country without young people and without a future. The popular disenchantment has been clearly reflected in the polls. The regime’s placebo votes have recorded the highest rates of abstention, apathy and rejection.

It is clear that his government has been disastrous. Not even in healthcare, which has always been the regime’s banner, can they boast of anything. His plan to build 1.7 homes a day per municipality went by the wayside. And Parliament itself gave him a standing ovation when he confessed that his management was a disaster.

In any democratic country, someone with his record would have already resigned or would be swept from power at the polls. But Cuba is a dictatorship. Díaz-Canel has received the order to hold the fort as long as Raúl is alive. And no one would be surprised if his name, on April 19, is again the only option on the deputies’ ballot.

*Translator’s note: The “Ordering Task” [Tarea Ordenamiento] is a collection 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.

Translator: Hombre de Paz

____________

Miguel Diaz-Canel, the Most Faithful Servant

Miguel Díaz-Canel and his Russian counterpart, Vladímir Putin, in front of the statue of Fidel Castro unveiled in November in Moscow (EFE/EPA/Sergei Savostyanov)

14ymedio, Pedro Corvo, Miami, 13 February 2022 — In the late 1990s, times when spy Ana Belén Montes successfully insisted that Castroism was not dangerous for the United States — an assertion that resonated with some US officials who have always looked on the island dictatorship with fondness — a considerable number of Cubans rejected that assertion, arguing that the aggressive nature of the regime did not allow it to overlook any opportunity that would allow it to affect US interests.

However, everything seemed to indicate that after Fidel Castro’s death, the imperialist influence of the project he sponsored would lose momentum. This because, during Raúl Castro’s term of office, there was a notable decrease in Cuba’s participation in the international arena. This a situation that has been slowly changing since the hand-picked dictator, Miguel Díaz-Canel, “received,” at least apparently, “the baton,” as the head of government was identified by the compatriots of the beginning of the last century.

Island totalitarianism has taken at least two particularly intense initiatives. One towards the interior of the country, through which it controls power and the other towards the exterior, in order to gain political clients and associates, who have been particularly useful to it over the years. In addition, the Castro regime has masterfully used its real or supposed successes abroad, making them an essential part of its coliseum or circus with the aim of manipulating the population, aware of the chauvinistic vision that many Cubans suffer from. continue reading

Díaz-Canel’s first trip as head of Cuba’s failed state was to Venezuela, a visit that ensures the mutual dependence of both regimes. The island supplies repressive experience and social control and Caracas continues to provide vital oil. This was shown by an agency report that the Venezuelan government bought approximately 440 million dollars worth of crude oil abroad and shipped it to Cuban ports under very favorable payment conditions.

There is no doubt: it is increasingly easy to conclude that the ties between these countries are a kind of parody of the relations between Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, both autocrats of the same ilk.

It must be acknowledged that the hand-picked President is adapting to the times and, contrary to what his predecessors did, he travels with his wife, Lis Cuesta, who, it seems, enjoys the advantages of being the “First Combatant” as they say in our beloved Venezuela.

To this difference with the Castro brothers we must add a similarity, and that is that the despot travels with a bodyguard who, moreover, is his stepson, a situation that shows that nepotism is a constant in that old dictatorship.

The island’s press, always loyal to the boss, has highlighted Díaz-Canel’s numerous trips abroad since he was appointed dictator, describing him as “tireless president,” a title not as distinguished as those granted to Fidel Castro.

The international exposure of this most faithful servant, a label deserved because he took other distinguished vassals out of the game, such as Carlos Lage, Roberto Robaina and Felipe Pérez Roque, among others, has been constant, if we bear in mind that in his first eight months in office he made 11 trips abroad. He demonstrated on one of them, to Jamaica, that he is as much a liar as the Castro brothers, because he brazenly said that Cuba was “perfecting socialism” and building a “prosperous and sustainable” nation, while in his appearance at the United Nations he spoke cynically about his commitment to fight chronic hunger, a constant in his government, as in that of his benefactors.

One of his most recent trips was to Algeria, Russia, Turkey and China, countries he visited in search of vital aid for his regime, while reiterating to Colonel Vladimir Putin his unrestricted support for the invasion of Ukraine, a support that Kiev should evaluate, if it is true that “the friend of my enemy is my enemy”.

Díaz-Canel is irredeemably faithful to the Castroist route of being an ally of countries hostile to the United States, as evidenced by the Iranian Foreign Minister’s visit to the Cuban capital and Pyongyang’s vaunted and invincible friendship with Havana.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

____________

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: