Category: Translator: LAR

He also has a disorder in his middle ear and a skull fracture caused by a machete attack he suffered in his youth

In 2023, the prison authorities sent González to the medical post to receive treatment for his insomnia, a follow-up by neurology and psychiatry, and an adequate diet and the necessary medications. These are conditions almost impossible to meet on the Island.

However, three days ago, the Artemisa Court again denied him out-of-prison leave, arguing that his health deterioration is due to the lack of medicines and not to the conditions of the prison. In addition, it considered he could recover in his cell while serving his sentence since his pathologies do not justify the granting of a leave, they alleged.

Cubalex reported that Gonzalez has not been seen by a neurologist for more than a year, that a psychiatrist has not seen him for over six months and that a psychologist has never seen him. They have also denied him a proper diet, so he has lost 14 kilograms (31 pounds).

Cubalex denounced Gonzalez has not been seen by a neurologist for more than a year

They also do not give him the medicines he needs regularly, such as amitriptyline, clonazepam, and carbamazepine. Even though he has been prescribed zolpidem for life, it has never been administered in prison.

Finally, after the struggle that the family of the man from Artemisa – one of the 1,580 protesters arrested for having participated in 11J – has waged so that he can have acceptable conditions, less than a month ago the judicial authorities granted González Fernández a transfer to a less severe regime from the prison of Guanajay to a correctional facility with internment near Taco Taco prison, in Pinar del Río.

Translated by LAR
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“The evident intention with this case is to involve me in a new ordinary process because all this comes out as an ordinary criminal offence, not a political crime. “

The events were precipitated when López requested the arrest warrant or, at least, the reason for an arrest, and the agent refused. Thus, the situation ended when the official executed “a martial arts technique” by pushing her legs. This destabilized the 59-year-old professor, who fell on her back and hit her head. “I did not lose consciousness, but I was very disoriented because it was a strong blow,” she recalls. The teacher recalls a distortion in her senses that made her fear brain damage, so she refused to get up when the officer ordered her to.

At that moment two officers appeared in another patrol car and dragged her to a car while her friend took off her glasses to avoid further damage. However, that caused her, coupled with the confusion of the moment, not to see well and instinctively to cling to something that turned out to be an epaulet from the police uniform. “It looks like I ripped it off or, at the very least, loosened it, I didn’t keep it in my hand,” she explains. The accusation of assault that now weighs on her is based on that event.

López Hernández goes over other violent moments, including when they grabbed her hair and jerked her head. This caused severe pain in her neck, already damaged due to age and poor posture typical of her profession. As a result, the medical examination she underwent on Friday showed post-traumatic labyrinthitis – an inflammation of an area of the inner ear that regulates balance and that should improve in about three months. In addition, she mentions how the agent climbed on top of Jenny Pantoja, squeezing her chest tightly while she was screaming she could not breathe.

“I grabbed some of her hair, but I didn’t have the strength to pull it, because my head was twisted forward. Then Jenny also somehow grabs the officer to defend herself, that’s all we did: instinctively try to save ourselves, “she confirms. Due to these events, Pantoja will also be accused of assault.

As a result of this, a post-traumatic labyrinthitis was found in the medical examination she underwent this Friday

Another violent moment was still to come. When the vehicle was already heading to the station, the professor decided to lie down in the car to calm her discomfort and rested her feet on the door. “When she saw that I did that, she stopped the car, said to the other officer: ‘You drive.‘ She got in the back with me, and took out a pair of handcuffs,” she describes. The agent, who squeezed her handcuffs considerably and increased her pain, told her she would go like this to the station: “So you can learn.”

Upon her arrival, the agent was checked by a doctor for the”aggression” charge on which they will support the case that, according to the then detainee, did not conveniently occur in front of the cameras to prevent everything from being filmed and to be able to make “a false accusation.” The professor recalls that in June 2023, when she was arrested and accused of disobedience, the events occurred in a public place, with witnesses, which forced the political police to withdraw the charge of assault, but this time they did it better, she observes.

López Hernández praises her friend Jenny Pantoja, who never wanted to leave her alone. “She was a great person, very good friend and very brave, and she stayed. Now, although we are both co-accused, my statements help her and her statements help me, ”she adds. Both will be represented by the same lawyer, who was present at the interrogations of the two activists.

“Be honest, just admit that Cuba is being governed as a state of exception, outside the Constitution

“We were attacked savagely, in a sadistic way, without any justification. Simply put, what they want is for us not to exercise our rights, “she adds. López Hernández is proud of having said two things in front of State Security’s cameras that set her stand. Firstly, she regretted that the same camera had not been used to film her arrest; secondly: “Be honest, you just have to admit Cuba is being governed as a state of exception, outside the Constitution.”

The intellectual adds that she now has an order of “house confinement” that prevents her from moving to Havana. “Well, that does not matter. In Matanzas, the Parque de la Libertad is still in the same place and they won’t be able to move it from there,” she warns.

The professor announced the posting of the video apologizing for her time defending the regime. “What you will hear is very serious, they are things that years ago I myself would not have believed. My apologies to all those who have suffered something like this and were not properly accompanied.”

Her statements close with a call for harmony and dialogue, despite the brutality with which she is treated. “What has happened neither discourages me nor frightens me nor will it make me an entrenched person, a person who does not want dialogue. I do want to continue the dialogue. I want the way out for Cuba to be peaceful, it is the Cuban Government that does not want it. But I’m not going to get tired of demanding it. ”

Translated by LAR

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comunismo”(Down with Communism), “Abajo los Castro”(Down with the Castros) and “Viva el 27 de Enero”(Long Live January 27) on the train station walls in the town of Entronque de Herradura. In Kilo 5 y Medio prison, he also faces constant threats of being transferred to a punishment cell for denouncing the living conditions inside the prison.

Cuban musician and activist Maykel Castillo, known as Osorbo, is serving his sentence in the same prison. The Venezuelan Casla Institute, which monitors the state of democracy in Latin America, requested proof of life for him last Friday.

Through social media, its executive director, lawyer Tamara Suju, warned that the artist, a member of the San Isidro Movement, denounced that “they are trying to kill him in prison,” that “he is being punished and the dictatorship has him incommunicado.” On April 18, the rapper was assaulted by four ordinary inmates in complicity with the prison authorities.

The Observatory for Cultural Rights denounced last month physical and psychological aggressions against Osorbo, who receives “no or defective medical care” in the face of the multiple ailments he has presented. Likewise, they protested against the concealment of the medical records from his family. The rapper is confined to solitary confinement and visits have been cancelled as a punishment for sending messages or repeatedly refusing to be transferred to another prison. In addition, they accused him of planning “an uprising” inside the prison, so they even installed a security camera to monitor him.

The rapper is confined to solitary confinement and visits have been suspended as a punishment for sending messages or recurrently refusing to be transferred to another prison

Osorbo, one of the authors and performers of the song Patria y Vida, a winner of two Latin Grammys, was arrested two months before the historic protests of 11 July 2021 — known as ’11J’ — and sentenced to nine years in prison. He was accused of “attack,” “public disorder” and “prisoners or detainees’ escape,” although he was held in prison for a whole year without trial, until May 2022.

The musician was declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International in August 2021 and earned the Freedom Award from Freedom House in May 2022.

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to board your flight,” says the document that De Céspedes showed and where the logo of the Colombian airline Avianca can be seen.

“These people have punished me to life imprisonment on this island prison”

“The crying is not because of the refusal, the crying is because of the decision I have had to make. Everyone who knows me knows that my homeland is above everything, above my feelings. And these people [the Cuban regime] have punished me to live in prison for life on this island prison,” he said.

In April 2021, he was detained for several days after making a pilgrimage to the Nuestra Señora de la Merced church in Camagüey. De Céspedes was released with a precautionary measure of house arrest and a fine of 2,000 pesos for not wearing a mask.

The Camagüey activist arrived at the church on Good Friday carrying a huge cross that said 62 years of dictatorship, with his torso shirtless and painted with a Cuban flag. He was detained by uniformed officers when leaving the temple.

A few months earlier, the police also arrested him in the middle of a crowd when he was handing out leaflets in the historic center of the city of Camagüey printed with texts by José Martí. On that occasion, he managed to hand out dozens of flyers to passersby and sang the national anthem. He also shouted several times: “Viva Cuba libre”(Long live free Cuba).

This is not the first time Managua has denied Cuban activists entry. Before De Céspedes, journalists Héctor Luis Valdés Cocho and Esteban Rodriguez, members of the San Isidro Movement, and doctor Alexander Figueredo, for example, were prevented from entering.

Translated by LAR

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by the number of parties or is democracy measured, really, by how people can exercise their rights in a society?”

“They say we’re not democratic because we have only one party. But what about the United States, is it democratic because it has two parties?”

The president wanted to give examples of the inequality of rich countries regardless of the flaws in his speech. “When we go fetch food, we go fetch food for 11 million Cubans. It is not putting food in the store windows and letting those who can afford it buy it, and letting those who cannot afford it starve,” he reflected, although on the Island that is already the constant reality, as a result of the absence of products in the rationed market, sales in freely convertible currency and skyrocketing inflation, among other factors.

Much of the meeting, and it could not be otherwise, touched on the policy of “suffocation” that, according to the president, the United States applies to Cuba, an island that overcomes this thanks to its “creative resistance,” and which would reach unimaginable levels of development if it were allowed to move forward without a “blockade.” “Where would Cuba go if it did not have a blockade? I think that’s where the answer lies as to why they want to keep blockading us. They are afraid of the example, what we are capable of doing, for everything we have managed to do amid that circumstance,” he said.

Manolo de los Santos started the evening by thanking Díaz-Canel for receiving the group, which has been trying for months, without succeeding, to get Joe Biden to meet with them and only finds an armored White House, while in Cuba Díaz-Canel’s arms are open. His first question revolved around the long history of the revolutionary struggle on the island, which went back to the era of slavery, the War of Independence and, of course, Castroism.

Díaz-Canel lamented that Washington resorts to wars to use its million-dollar arms industry first and addresses reconstruction later

Palestine dominated the discourse – both De los Santos from the beginning and the president, who received them from a guest, wore “kufiyas” on their shoulders – and the speech at times sounded more like an excuse to lash out against the United States, which was accused of genocide on repeated occasions.

Díaz-Canel lamented that Washington resorts to wars to use its million-dollar arms industry first and addresses reconstruction later, at which time he also introduced Ukraine into the equation. “It is very normal that, in the face of an international crisis, for the United States to create a focus outside its border where there is a war and where the United States can do its big business. That’s what Ukraine is going through.” In addition, the Cuban president applauded the pro-Palestinian movement that emerged in some universities in the United States, which he compared to the activism against the Vietnam War in the 70s, and Europe.

After 10 minutes of talking about Palestine, he compared resolutions calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip to those that reject the US embargo on Cuba every year.

He said another great topic of the day was the difficult moment that the Island is experiencing, which is taken advantage of by the United States to convey the image that the Cuban Government is incompetent. “We are living through a difficult time, but Fidel and Raul also faced very complex situations when they led the country, and together with the people they overcame them,” said Díaz-Canel, who mentioned the lack of fuel, electricity and food – all of which build off each other – as the source of those problems. “We are not perfect, nor do we want you to idealize us. We also make mistakes, we have shortcomings – like ’laziness’ and ’corruption’,” he mentioned. “But there is a huge vocation for perfection. ”

He told the young people present – as he usually does with Cubans – that the Washington mechanism consists, of provoking “a social outbreak that ends the Revolution” through “economic suffocation” and “media intoxication.” Asked how Cuba fights this situation, Díaz-Canel was blunt: with more democracy. The president alleged that there is endless discussion in the neighborhoods and assemblies and, therefore, the many laws that are being approved have countless versions, because the people are listened to. He failed to mention that the limits of the discussion are set precisely in one of the main constitutional precepts, which indicates that it is not possible to change the socialist system.

The challenges that, in the president’s opinion, remain to be faced, apart from the explicit mention of the problems with the exchange rate or the measures that must be taken without making them known – and he added, once again, that “the enemy” blocks the international solutions that Cuba finds if informed of them – are keeping social programs and winning over the youth, where the future is.

“[We are] a country that has been blockaded for over 60 years, defending socialism. Socialism fell in the 90s and this country continues like this. How can this country still pass a socialist constitution? Doesn’t that have a tremendous merit?” he asked rhetorically. There was no need for answers in an event that opened with chants that claimed: “The socialist world is the world we want.”

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The young woman’s mother, Norma Pérez Ferrer, denounced in Martí Noticias that in the prosecutor’s request “there are things that didn’t happen, things that are true, but things that are lies.”

The Prosecutor’s Office, as pointed out in the indictments, will present various pieces of evidence . Among them are a statement from Martínez Pérez and the results of a search of her phone and her home in Las Guásimas, Arroyo Naranjo, Havana.

Last April a “confession” was shown on television in which Salem Cuba incriminated herself: “The publications I made were all against the revolutionary process, either against the president, against the Government, against the party, against everything.”

Salem Cuba “gave two interviews,” her mother said. “The first one was the one they published and the second one was the one she made under normal circumstances, the real one,” her mother denounced

However, the detainee’s mother clarified that in Villa Marista, the State Security headquarters in Havana “they gave her (Martínez Pérez) a piece of paper so that she could read everything, everything, what she had to say.” The woman said in a video, “They tricked her because they told her that if she said all that, they were going to release her and in the end, they did not release her at all.” She reported that her daughter was shown on television and “they did not call her lawyer to be with her.”

Last March, the woman informed the Cuban journalist Monica Baró, a resident of the United States, that the indictment against her daughter changed, from “propaganda against the constitutional order” to “instigation to commit a crime”, one of the crimes applied to many of the protesters of July 11, 2021.

Even though Martínez Pérez has no criminal record, the Prosecutor’s Office has insisted on maintaining the “precautionary measure of provisional detention.”

Salem Cuba is accused of “collecting several bottles” from Las Guásimas store to make “Molotov cocktails,” located 100 meters from her home, but her accusers clarify that the bottles were not taken.

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because he works for a press “paid by the empire,” according to the media.

In a conversation he had with his family moments after the incident, and from which his sister Jacqueline shared a screenshot, it can be read that the activist narrates the following: “It said on the computer (of the airport) that my exit from the country was disqualified, and then the two guanajos* (agents) arrived and told me ‘did you see that we do what we want?’”

The screenshot was accompanied by a text in which the 23-year-old’s sister laments that “beyond the pecuniary damage of 3,000 dollars (which we are going to claim) lost in a plane ticket impossible to cancel or modify an hour and a half before the departure of the flight, there is the clear and unpunished violation of the right to free movement.”

She added that the arrest of her brother and the restriction to leave Cuba occurred “without a valid argument, nor ongoing criminal proceedings, nor accusation, nor debts with the tax authorities.”

In October 2021, Sardiñas was sentenced to 10 months of correctional work with internment in the La Lima camp, located in the Havana municipality of Guanabacoa, for his participation in the anti-government protests of 11 July 2021 (11J).

“I do not lose hope, one day I will be free, I will be able to vent and get out all those feelings and anecdotes that I have been living since 11J and years before and after, the agony of living in a country under a dictatorship,” Sardiñas said through his social media after the incident was reported.

In recent months, this is not the first time that State Security has detained him. On April 14, agents arrested him while he was documenting the Dog Day march at the Colon Cemetery in Havana. On that occasion, he was held incommunicado and subjected to an interrogation that lasted seven hours. Another of his sisters, Yaima Sardiñas, was also summoned that same month.

*Translator’s note: “Guanajo” is used pejoratively to refer to someone foolish or stupid.

Translated by LAR

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Television.”In it, I have grown, studied, worked on something that caught my attention since I was a child and where I have been fulfilled as a person,” Porto said.

“They have been unfair to me, but it has never affected my professionalism or the quality of my work, and it has always taught me to get to the end of things”

However, Ruiz Moreira also pointed out that at the television workplace “they have been unfair to me, but it has never affected my professionalism or the quality of my work, and it has always taught me to get to the end of things.”

In the same interview, the filmmaker, who began his career as a production assistant, lamented that today many young people believe that, because they graduate from the Higher Institute of Art, or make a video clip, they are already television directors and, “that is something else, it has to do with trying to feel the same as those who see the product from home.”

In his long career, Oscarito directed the Noticiero del mediodía, the Noticiero ANSOC of the Canal Habana, the Ponte al día newscast and the Noticiero Nacional Deportivo. He was also in charge of remote sports programs and participated in the Olympic Games.

Ruiz Moreira’s departure adds to that of narrator and sports commentator Ángel Luis Fernández, who arrived in Miami a few days ago through the humanitarian parole parole program, which as of May had favored 95,000 Cubans since its coming into effect in January 2023.

On May 4, the arrival in the United States of Angel Andrés Hernández Vargas, also known as Andy Vargas as announced. The “iconic” figure of the Coco radio station and especially of the Industriales team “was sponsored by one of his two sons, a resident of Miami.”

Translated by LAR

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He showed the bill to the Police so that they could verify “that there was no problem.” Agents disagreed and replied that the invoice was false.

De Prada cannot specify how much cement it was. Still, he estimates there were “quite a few bags, perhaps 40 or 50, which Pastor Ramos was going to allocate to constructions in the church of Camalote,” an area located in the Camagüey municipality of Nuevitas. “We lost the cement,” Reynaldo told Ramos as he returned empty-handed. Shortly after, they were told they would be summoned for a trial in the coming months.

As one of the leaders of the Assemblies of God, De Prada took action on the matter and called, from Havana, the Office of Attention to Religious Affairs of the Communist Party. “That was over a week ago. They told me they were unaware of the situation and that they would find out. ” When he called again, two days ago, they still didn’t know.

De Prada then took it upon himself to warn them that they would not agree with the potential measures that could be taken against Ramos and Reynaldo. “It could bring an altercation between the Church and the State,” he considers. “We are asking the State to assess the situation and that nothing happens.”

He also contacted the provincial office of the Communist Party in Camagüey and offered to meet with them. A meeting “out of respect and understanding that we will not agree on any action taken against our pastor,” he demands. “They say that the measure was not taken for the mere fact that a pastor was involved,” he says.

He also contacted the provincial office of the Communist Party in Camagüey and offered to meet with them. 

In his calls with Party officials, De Prada was told that perhaps the entity did not have the right to sell that cement. De Prada repeated the argument that Reynaldo had given to the Police: Cubans take for granted that what the State sells is legal. Later this week, De Prada will travel to Camagüey.

With more than 53 million members worldwide, the Assemblies of God, one of the most popular Christian denominations on the Island, has always been a target of State Security because of its close ties with the Pentecostal communities of the United States. With a great capacity for mobilization – they are famous for their “mega-churches,” capable of gathering thousands of faithful followers – they are not affiliated with the World Council of Churches nor the Council of Churches of Cuba.

In June 2020, the board of directors of the Assemblies of God on the Island issued a statement making clear its position on the “debates, articles and criteria” that questioned its “non-negotiable principles on the nature of the family, its function and purpose.” The text stressed that “the Church is independent of the State” and that it did not have to accept equal marriage endorsed in the Family Code, then pending approval.

Given the attacks by people linked to the National Center for Sex Education (Cenesex in Spanish), led by Mariela Castro, they assured that the Church “is not contentious nor does it allow itself to be provoked by the hate speech by people and sectors that do not accept our doctrine.”

The government’s tensions with ministers of different denominations have again made headlines in recent weeks. Last May, as a gesture of protest against the blackouts, the Camagüey priest Alberto Reyes rang the bells of his parish in Esmeralda. The priest, one of the most critical voices of the Catholic clergy, was forbidden by his own bishop to repeat the bell ringing, a call to order in which more than a few suspected the State Security’s pressure.

Translated by LAR
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Russian invasion of Ukraine, or a visit to Cuba in 2023.

Other characters enter this game of mirrors and enrich the picture: they are poets, Russians and Cubans, with equally broken lives: Joseph Brodsky and Heberto Padilla; Marina Tsvetáieva and José Martí; Lezama Lima and Dulce María Loynaz.

We immersed ourselves in the drama of the nostalgic byvshi in Bolshevik Russia, in Russian-Cuban relations from the Batista years to the present day; in the Cuban idiosyncrasy and its delight in exceptionality (like the Spaniards); in the role of intellectuals and journalists turned into choristers of the dictatorship.

Ferrer also pays tribute to the abused Cuban exiles, to their generosity, to their ability to forgive. “The only, greatest achievement that the Revolution can flaunt without blushing is its exile: its nobility, its dedication, its love for Cuba and Cubans. The economic muscle with which it has maintained the island’s residents. The nerve of the affections with which it has kept the Cuban nation united, only the exile alone,”he writes.

“From Russia to Cuba” is a vital journey and a reflection on uprooting, memory and oblivion. It is a search for roots and a journey of introspection. Ferrer does not judge the protagonists, guilty of history, who brave will and destiny as much as they can. But it does target autocrats. And a Revolution in whose “strenuous duration lies its genuine cruelty.” “Grinding for generations, the Revolution has not even needed to kill too much, because by lasting, it has left us to die. And it has watched us die. Time has killed us, like the bullets of the clock and the grainy fire of the calendar.”

Translated by LAR

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Abrahantes has already denounced the situation faced by prisoners in Cuban prisons on several occasions. In the case of Prison 1580, the political prisoner has described it as “a concentration camp” where food is scarce and of poor quality, hygiene is precarious, and medical care for inmates is almost non-existent.

Other detainees in anti-government demonstrations in the rest of the country have denounced similar conditions. Yoandri Reinier Sayú Silva, sentenced to eight years in prison for sedition for demonstrating on 11 July 2021, denounced a case of medical negligence and an outbreak of tuberculosis in Prison 1580 a week ago.

The 22-year-old man suffered from severe pain in the abdomen for 10 days, was unable to defecate and had a high fever, it was then that the prison commanders transferred him to the Salvador Allende General Hospital, where he arrived with a burst appendix and a severe infection.“Inmates fall ill and have no medicine. I survived, but I could have died and there are some who did not survive because of poor care and poor hygiene,” said Sayú Silva.

Another case is that of Lisdani Rodríguez, sentenced to eight years, one of the two sisters of Placetas, Villa Clara, arrested after demonstrating on 11J. She was granted a one-year extra-penal leave on Tuesday for her pregnancy. News about Rodriguez’ pregnancy began circulating at the beginning of the year, when her mother, Barbara Isaac, denounced the pressure by the political police officers at the Guamajal women’s prison, in Santa Clara, for her to have an abortion. Now, she says, the authorities hid, for several weeks, a condition suffered by the young woman that puts her pregnancy at risk.

Likewise, Isaac has denounced the poor diet that the inmates receive in the prison, which is accompanied by poor medical care, which causes the imprisoned women’s health to deteriorate. “They take her to the consultations but do not fully inform her of the results. She asked and only then did the doctor tell her she had to rest, but that’s impossible. She has to make physical efforts all the time because they don’t have water and they have to carry it,” Isaac said about the care her pregnant daughter is receiving.

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